Birthright (Residue Series #2) (23 page)

Accepting
their request, I levitated their supplies to the platform, landing them before the ladies even arrived themselves. There
were,
of course, no thanks
.

The bayou was cold tonight
, causing
our breaths
to
drift
in translucent puffs up over our heads, dispersing
when
they reached the cypress branches above. It was also
eerily
silent, the chill in the air
forcing the
animals
to seek refuge.
Even the water seemed to be frozen without a single ripple,
which made
it look like a smooth, black mirror set around tree stumps and mossy embankments. This was a part of the bayou I hadn’t visited before
,
and for reasons beyond what I could deduce
,
it felt
mysterious and
lifeless in comparison to the village.

By the time
I finished assessing
our surroundings
,
our housekeepers were standing over the
black pot, each holding a cluster of items in one hand. As Miss Mabelle spoke, they took turns dropping, sprinkling, or throwing the
ir
items into the pot.

“Hail full moon, sovereign of the night. Guard me and mine
,
until first light.”

I vaguely recognized this to be a protection spell
.
Then
Miss Mabelle lifted her cane and, to my amazement, stood steadily on both feet while drawing an indistinct, pointy figure in the air.
Once finished, she
settled
the
cane
back
on
to
the platform
, leaning
her immense frame
against
it
again
.

Their ritual
was
complete,
and
without hesitation, they both turned to Jameson and me, raising their left hands and facing their palms directly at us. Their stance was strange enough
,
but it was their expressions that caught me off guard. They were darker, carefully focused, and unfriendly.

All of a sudden, I felt a forceful suction from inside my body, so strong that it felt like I was an aluminum can being crushed in preparation for recycling. My body was caving into itself, shriveling until unbearable pain was all I could feel.

“Jocelyn,” Jameson called out
,
though I couldn’t move to face him. His voice pitched at the end
,
so I knew his head
had pivoted
to witness my pain. “Jocelyn!”

His hands came to my elbows, holding me, as I crumbled
and landed
in a curled ball against the platform’s soft, rotting wood. Purely by accident
,
he channeled what he saw
,
and it terrified me.

I
was lying
on my side, head
pressed
against the wood, although it was no longer my face he
was seeing.
Where
my eyes had been, were now
hollowed sockets with
small,
almost undetectabl
e
eyeballs
set far in their recesses. My nose was gone, leaving only an
outline of the tapered bone beneath my skin
.
The steep edges of my skull forced my cheeks to give
way to cavernous
depressions that looked even more
severe
against my other features.

Life was being drained out of me.

Jameson’s voice
was
hollow in my ears, echoing
, as he called out,
“Stop!”

When
nothing changed
, his hand left
mine, and
through the haze, I
sensed
he was charging our housekeepers, our confidantes. For him, one was his surrogate mother. I understood
somewhere deep inside
that he was going to hurt them
in order
to save me.

As
the platform vibrated
rapidly,
his body slid back next to mine. They’d defended against him, defeating him.

When he
rose again,
leaving my view,
his hands
were
bloody from scraping the wood
, and he was violently
slammed back
down
to
the platform near
me a second later.

“You’re supposed…” he grunted, holding his arm. It looked injured. “Supposed to help us.”

“Help yerselves,” retorted Miss Celia, blithely.

“You-
you
led us here!
” Jameson raged, staggering to his feet. He
only
made it a single step before collapsing back to me.

I heard the
wicked
cackling
,
taunting
and
confident
; telling me
they weren’t going to ease up. They wouldn’t bring this to an end. Not until…

The mere thought of Jameson being hurt summoned the energy I needed
, filling me, goading
me through the agony.

I
was relying on
it
completely,
as my lips began to move,
and the
words surfaced in my mind.
My voice, barely a
whisper
,
was faint but reached my ears.

“I am strong. I banish this wrong. I send it away. I send it astray. I am strong. I banish this wrong. I send it away. I send it astray.” Repeating this cast over and over, my voice quickened as Jameson became inflicted with the same pain I felt, his skin sinking in before my eyes. But he heard it, my cast, and he fought to take my hand.

Slowly,
I
continued,
and together our voices rose
as his joined in. The power pulsed against my torso and
my
limbs;
the words
were pulling
out my energy like never before. I felt him, his energy, surge through me, a blinding, passionate wave
causing
me
to
shudder.

As we lay coiled together, our hands clasp
ing each others,
our eyes
focusing
on the other,
and
our words
flowing in unison, we repeated
the cast until it was nearly a scream
.
I felt my power returning
,
and I
knew we were overcoming them. Then I
redirected my energy
by altering my chant
, sending it back at them, at our housekeepers
…
our attackers
.
 

“I repel this energy back to its caster. I return it to them harder and faster. I repel this energy back to its caster. I return it to them harder and faster.”

This went on for what seemed like several minutes
,
and then, as suddenly as it started, it was over.
They
were standing above us
,
as we scrambled to our feet.

“What did ya learn?” asked Miss Celia,
casually
brushing off her skirt
,
as if she’d been dirtied in the process.

“WHAT DID WE LEARN?” Jameson
bellowed
.
His hands were still on my arms, holding me behind him
and
acting as protection against them. I felt his anger
crash
over me, inciting me too, as I actively tried to face them myself
, but
he
wouldn’t allow
it.

Miss Mabelle answered calmly, ignoring my efforts to get at them, allowing each word to sink in before saying the next. “Ya gotta channel together. Always. Together. Channelin’ is what makes ya strong.” She briefly pinched her lips in disapproval, though I couldn’t
care
less about impressing her at th
is
moment. “Yer enemies will use different ways ta kill ya n’ each one has their own way of doin’ it. Stranglin’ is just one way. Work together n’ you’ll survive.”

“Well, yer likely to, anyways,” Miss Celia interjected
,
flippantly.

Jameson and I stared back at them, dumbfounded.

“Interesting way to educate us on it,” I retorted.

“Right,” scoffed Jameson. “Did you think about just telling us?”

“We warned ya. Don’t you go expectin’ us to go easy on ya,” Miss Celia added
,
as a terse afterthought, “Can’t be done. Not when yer learnin’ to protect yerselves against The Sevens.”

With that warning hanging in the air, they casually stepped around us and headed for the car, leaving us to fume behind them.

“Now, heal the boy,” Miss Mabelle instructed
as she meandered away,
a surreal command coming from someone who’d just inflicted the
exact
harm I would be curing.

Jameson caught my eyes
then
.

“Are you all right?” he asked
,
his voice so tender it made my response catch in my throat.

“More mad than anything.”

“Me too,” he admitted.

“If that’s what we have to look forward to each night
,
the Vires won’t need to worry about killing us.”

“Why?” he probed.

“Because by the time they’re ready to attack, we’ll already be dead.”

He laughed through his nose, although he didn’t respond.

“How’s your arm?” I asked, tipping my head at it.

He was holding it again, his shoulder lifted against the pain. “It’s been better.”

We stood
in awkward silence
for a moment
,
because we both knew what came next. In order to heal him, I’d need to touch him.

Suddenly, he leaned forward. “Tell me what’s wrong,” he implored
, sending
crushing remorse wash
ing
over me. “Just tell me what I did, what I said,” he pressed.

“It’s nothing you did or said,” I told him, my head ducking away from the tenderness in his eyes.

“Are you sure? Because you changed right when I mentioned that I’m The Nobilis.” So he had picked up on it. Of course he would.

“It’s nothing that can be changed,” I said,
hopeless,
feeling the full weight of that statement. “I can’t change
,
and you can’t change. So there’s no point in explaining it. Let’s just…
we
have a job to do. Let’s focus on learning how to prevent another assault.”

He refused to concede. “I can’t help the problem if I don’t know what it is.”

“You wouldn’t be able to either way,” I replied
,
flatly.

His eyes fell to the platform
,
and he became quiet
,
while considering our discussion. After what felt like
forever,
he
said
something
, conveying
his arrival at
the reason behind my forcing us apart, at least partially. “You’re right, Jocelyn. I can’t change the fact that I’m The Nobilis.”

His words
actually made the knife
plunge into
my stomach
again, but
this time it felt as if someone were turning it. He thought he was at fault, an impression I couldn’t
endure
leaving
with him.

“Don’t change. I love you the way you are,” I blurted
,
before thinking about its effect.

His head snapped up. “I know you love me. You can’t hide it…even though you’re trying so hard to.”

I bit my lip from saying anything more I
might
regret.

“So why do this?” he asked, longingly. “Why are you pulling away from me?”

Unable to answer, I reached out
, seizing
his arm. He observed me, never taking his eyes from me even though mine were down. I drew in a
shaky
breath and whispered briskly,
“Incantatio sana.”