Reliquary (Reliquary Series Book 1) (16 page)

“Sure.” As carefully as I could, I helped him to his feet, pulling his arm around my shoulders to help him stay upright as he swayed. “But do you want to maybe go to the hospital instead?”

His eyes were half-closed. “Nothing they could do for me.” He clumsily drew his sleeve across his chin to wipe away the blood. “Please, Mattie.”

With my hand on his waist, the tremors in his body were shaking me, too, and it only made me hold on to him tighter as we started walking. I wanted to celebrate each time he put one foot in front of the other, because as I looked at his face, I knew it was a struggle. We passed through the gate, and I glanced over to see the Strikon standing at the curb like he had nowhere to go.

“He’s not going to hurt us,” Asa mumbled as I paused, unwilling to turn my back to a guy who’d been trying to kill us a few minutes ago.

“Isn’t that manipulation stuff going to wear off, though?” The one tab he’d given me back in that hotel in Kansas City hadn’t seemed to last more than ten minutes or so.

“Yeah.” Asa’s head was bowed, and I tightened my grip on him as we turned to walk the final blocks back to our hotel. “But not soon enough.”

“If you say so.”

We had just crossed the street when I heard an engine roar, tires screech, a horn blare, and a woman scream behind us. Startled, I craned my neck and looked back.

A block away, a bus had come to a stop in the middle of the intersection. Lying crumpled against the curb was the Strikon, his head canted weirdly to one side. A cold chill spread through my chest as I looked up at Asa. “Oh my God,” I whispered. “You told him to walk into traffic.”

Asa’s bloodshot eyes opened and settled on me. Then he slowly brought his hand up and touched the tip of his crooked nose. “It’s them or us now, Mattie. And when it comes to that, I’m going to choose us every time.”

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Asa managed to wait until we made it through the door of his hotel room to start barfing, but it was a close call. He wrenched himself away from me and dove into the bathroom, landing in front of the toilet just in time. His entire body heaved as if it were trying to turn itself inside out. Having helped out a few sorority sisters after nights of over-the-top partying, I grabbed a glass and filled it with water, then cautiously edged over to Asa as he sank to the tiles.

I knelt next to him, reaching up to flush the toilet before touching his sweaty cheek. “Hey,” I said gently. “Sit up. Take a sip so you can rinse out your mouth.”

He rose on shaking arms, and I lifted the cup to his lips. But the moment the water hit his tongue, he grimaced. “Nope,” he said, lunging forward and retching into the toilet again.

I had my hand on his back and felt his muscles flex as he arched, as his body worked to rid itself of whatever the Strikon had done to him. “Is the magic on you?” I asked. “Should you take a shower?” I didn’t know what to do for him—that Strikon had touched me, too, and I was a little achy, but otherwise fine. He’d had hold of Asa for a lot longer, though, and had seemed determined to damage him.

“I-I j-just need—” His body heaved again. “Time,” he said as he sank down again. “I’ll be okay.”

He sounded so weak that it made my throat tight. “You can have all the time you want, but I’m not leaving you alone like this.” He was soaked in his own sweat and shivering in the air-conditioned room. His eyes were so bloodshot that it looked like they might start to bleed. He had bruises on his throat, and the knuckles on his right hand were swollen. One was oozing blood.

I pressed a damp washcloth over the cut. “Thanks for saving my life, Asa.”

He let out a weak croak of laughter. “Thanks for saving mine.”

“Did I? You kind of look like death warmed over.”

“Stop hurting my feelings.”

I got up and rinsed the cloth with cold water, then ran it along his neck, smiling as he sighed and relaxed a little. “Strikon magic hurts you more than it does other people, doesn’t it?”

“Yep.”

“It makes you sick, when there’s too much.”

“Yep. But that’s true of nearly all magic.”

“You could have avoided him. But you came straight to us.”

He cracked one eye open. “We were supposed to meet at eight thirty. You were late.”

“I’m going to get you a fresh shirt,” I blurted out. His was clinging to his chest and abs like someone had tossed a bucket of water on him.

I got up and went to his duffel, grabbing a clean black T-shirt that was right on top. When I returned to the bathroom, he’d stripped off his soaked shirt and was kneeling next to the tub, wiping the wet washcloth over his torso. I was torn between turning away and helping him, because he looked so fragile. I told myself to get over it and moved forward to help him up.

Being that close to him made my heart race. I knew he was dangerous; he had calmly told a man to walk in front of a bus and wasn’t showing even a hint of remorse. I understood why—that Strikon could have gone straight back to Zhong and gotten more men, or he could have followed us to our hotel and struck again—but still, it was the coldness with which Asa had done it that was so terrifying. And now I was pressed up against him, nothing between us except my shirt. The unforgiving lines of him, the way there was no softness at all, just the smooth sweep of skin stretched over lean muscles, all his angles, all his edges . . . being near Asa was just intense in a way I couldn’t explain, on so many levels. It was a relief to help him pull the clean T-shirt over his body, covering it again.

“Are you finished puking your guts out?” I asked him.

“No promises. But I’m pretty much empty, so you can leave the wastebasket by the bed and I’ll be all set.”

I put my arm around his waist and escorted him to his bed. He sank into it with a groan. “What do you need?” I asked.

“Nothing,” he whispered, closing his eyes. “I can take care of myself.” He was lying on his back, one hand sprawled out to his side, the other lying on his chest.

I shook my head in frustration and went to the foot of the bed, where I tugged the heavy motorcycle boots from his feet, then removed his socks. Whatever was in his pockets rattled as his legs fell to the bed again. “Do you want to take off your pants?”

He chuckled, a pained, dry sound. “Why, Mattie. I thought you’d never ask.” But he didn’t move.

I looked down at his belt buckle and swallowed hard. “Um . . .”

“It’s fine,” he said, and I looked up to see him squinting at me. “I’ll be fine, okay? You can go order yourself some dinner. We have a long trip ahead of us.”

“I’m not hungry.” I walked over to the side of the bed and sat down, and he scooted over a little to give me more space. I watched him rest for a few minutes, and some of his color seemed to come back. But in the dim light from the bathroom, his cheeks looked so hollow. “We were going to talk about Bangkok tonight,” I finally said. “I don’t know the first thing about Thailand. Only that it used to be called Siam but that’s not cool anymore. Oh, and I like pad thai. But is that the kind of thing that they serve here and call Thai food, but it’s really American and actual Thai people would never eat it? Like those Chinese superbuffet places?”

Asa’s expression turned pained the longer I babbled. “Shh. I’m pretty sure Thai people do actually eat pad thai sometimes, but finding out is pretty low on my list of priorities. We leave at noon tomorrow. Your passport and our tickets were delivered by courier this afternoon,” he mumbled.

“Not on a private jet this time, I guess.”

“Not this time. Montri monitors incoming private planes. Easier if we sneak in—in plain sight.”

“How are we going to find something when we don’t even know what we’re looking for?”

“I’ll make friends with the locals. There are ways.”

“You don’t sound worried.”

“Right now my brain feels like it’s going to dribble out my ears.”

I slumped. “Sorry.”

“It’s all right, Mattie. I’ve been to Bangkok before, but I know this is all new to you.” His voice was gentle, like it had been when he’d played me in Chinatown, just to keep me calm. “You’re doing good.”

I looked down at him, searching for a sign that he was just playing me like he had before. But I swear, there wasn’t one there to find. On impulse, I drew my finger down his slightly crooked nose. “You’re so confusing, Asa.”

“I prefer to think of myself as fascinating.”

Maybe a little.
“You’re nicer than you admit.”

“There’s a corpse down the street that would argue with you if he could.”

“You were protecting me.”

“Shut the fuck up,” he whispered.

“And you’re risking a lot for a brother you claim to hate.”

“Mattie . . .”

“Why didn’t you stay to talk to him last night?”

He groaned. “Just because I’m doing this job doesn’t mean everything’s all better. It won’t ever be. That might be how it works in your little world, but—”

“If it’s because you’re ashamed to face him after you threatened him, I really think—”

“Ashamed?” he rasped. “Fuck no. I’m not ashamed.”

Asa’s fingers closed over my wrist, and he pulled my hand to his face again, roughly clasped my index finger, and drew it along the bridge of his nose. “Who do you think did that to me, Mattie?”

I stared down at the place where his nose curved just off center. “Ben? Asa, he’s one of the gentlest people I’ve ever met.” I pulled my hand from Asa’s grasp, and his flopped onto his chest again. “Do I want to ask what you did to provoke him?” I asked in a teasing voice, though it felt a little strained.

Asa laid his arm over his eyes, fully blocking out the light. The movement pulled his T-shirt up, revealing a stretch of bare stomach, the defined V-shape of his abs above the low waist of his pants. I resisted the urge to tug the hem of the fabric down and cover him again, and instead focused on his face as he said, “I brought him home.”

“What do you mean?”

Asa sighed. “My dad had kicked me out the year before. He’d found me with . . .” He swallowed. “We’d never gotten along. I’d stayed for a bit with a friend whose dad was into magic, and he got me hooked on the nectar. It was better than weed for taking away the pain. At first it didn’t take much to get me high. Hell, I could just walk into the den, and I was floating.”

“Because you’re so sensitive to it.”

“Yeah. So I got into that scene, and started dealing. Because I could find it, you know, and the local den owner realized that. He had me stealing relics before I turned nineteen, and I was happy to do it, because I had money in my pocket again. Soon as I could, I started freelancing. Hustling. Fixing. Making whatever I could.”

“Wasn’t it hard for you, though? To be around magic?”

“Not Ekstazo magic. That’s like catnip to me.”

“You don’t seem sensitive to it now.”

He was quiet for a minute. “Now I know how to handle myself. Back then I was fucking lost. I needed more and more just to feel normal. And then one day, my little brother shows up. He’d seen me on the street and followed me into the den, and I found him all spread out, high as a fucking kite, his fucking letter jacket on and this stupid peach fuzz on his upper lip . . .” Asa let out a choked sound, and for a minute I thought he was going to be sick again, but then I realized it was emotion, not nausea, that was making him shake. “I hadn’t seen him in months, and he was so fucking innocent, and so fucking young, and so fucking perfect. I couldn’t stand the sight of him there, on that dirty floor, in that fucked-up drug den. I picked him up and took him home.”

My own chest felt a little tight at the thought of Ben having followed his big brother into this unknown place, maybe just because he missed him. “You were trying to save him.”

“Our dad was waiting when I got him through the door. One look at Ben and he fucking lost it.”

“He didn’t give you a chance to explain?”

Asa coughed out a laugh. “You never met my dad, did you?”

“No. He died before Ben and I met.”

“He was a fucking bastard,” Asa whispered.

“He blamed you for what had happened to Ben.”

“He blamed me for
everything
.” Asa’s nostrils flared, and it seemed like he was trying to slow down his breathing. “Ben was snapping out of it at that point. He knew what had happened. He knew he was in trouble.”

“He didn’t blame you, did he?” I couldn’t even imagine that. “He wouldn’t have lied about it.”
Would he?
Suddenly I wasn’t sure anymore.

“He didn’t have the chance. ‘Get off your fucking pansy ass, boy.’ That’s what Dad said to him.” Asa’s voice had gone low and gravelly. “He shoved Ben. Started beating on him. I tried to stop him.” His loose fingers curled into a fist. “But then he was screaming to Ben that I was trying to kill him. And Ben tackled me. Plowed into me like the fucking varsity linebacker he was.”

Even then, Ben must have been thicker and more muscular than his lanky older brother. “That’s when he broke your nose?”

“No. My dad got hold of me, picked me up off the floor,” Asa murmured. “He held my arms behind my back and told Ben to hit me. He told him I was the reason our mom left. He said I was a fucking perverted scumbag who would drag him down, too. He said Ben had to choose.”

“No,” I breathed.

“I thought he would choose me. We were brothers. It was him and me. I was so fucking sure.” Asa let out a shuddering breath. “But then Ben hit me so hard I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t see. I was kicking and thrashing. Felt like I was choking on my own blood. Dad had my arms, though, and I couldn’t . . .” Asa still had his arm over his eyes. “He told Ben to call the police. To tell them I’d broken in and threatened them.”

“Oh my God.”

“It wasn’t hard to make the police believe their story. They had me in cuffs within seconds, even though all I could do was bleed on their uniforms.”

I remembered what Detective Logan had told me—Asa had been arrested at nineteen and charged with assault and breaking and entering.

He’d served over a year in prison for trying to save his little brother from his own fate. “That’s when you said you were going to kill Ben.”

“I’m not sorry,” Asa snapped. “I won’t ever be sorry. So you can take your horror and your pity and your ‘poor Ben’ and your
kumbaya
‘but you’re family’ shit and—” He gritted his teeth, trapping his words inside.

I reached up to touch his rigid jaw. “Shove it up my ass?”

It relaxed, just slightly. “Just for that, I’ll supply the lube.”

I couldn’t laugh; I was on the verge of tears. I felt so bad for both of them—seventeen-year-old Ben, who must have loved his brother, but had been placed in the wrenching position of choosing between Asa, whom he hadn’t seen in months, and his father. And Asa, who’d only been trying to help his brother, and had gotten beaten and imprisoned for his trouble. The betrayal was so painful that I felt it stretching through the years, growing with time. Asa must have relived those moments over and over: the hope that Ben would help him, the moment he realized he wouldn’t. That night had to be a thick scar on his heart.

“I don’t blame you, Asa,” I murmured. “I don’t blame you at all.”

Asa slid his arm up onto his forehead, letting me see his eyes. They were slightly redder than before. “Dammit, Mattie,” he said in a broken voice before covering them again.

I reached up and stroked his fist, which loosened enough to let me squeeze his fingers. I didn’t know what I was trying to do, exactly. Just let him know I was there, I guess, and on his side. Not because I was against Ben—he’d been put in an impossible position—but because I understood. Asa had needed his brother to stand with him, and he hadn’t. Instead, Ben, no doubt terrified and conflicted, had rearranged Asa’s face and broken his heart.

Asa didn’t return my squeeze, but he didn’t pull away. Still, I could feel his muscles going slack, his weight sinking into the mattress. Eventually, his chest rose and fell with even breaths, and I didn’t want to move for fear of disturbing him. I sat there, gently cradling his fingers in my palm, until I was certain he was asleep.