The Wizard King (17 page)

He pulled Kerry free just as Gen raised her fist and smashed it into the altar. The altar broke in two, green fire licking along the edges, cleansing away the blood that had pooled on it.

Gen nodded in grim satisfaction. “It is done.” There was a strange, echoing quality to Gen’s voice, one he’d heard only once before. He shivered in response, but not in fear.

The last time he’d heard that voice, the darkness of the altar had reached for Zach, intent on killing his baby brother. Gareth had leapt between Zach and the darkness and almost lost his life.

Gen had saved him, twined their souls around each other until he didn’t know where he began and she ended. It had been the most beautiful, most shocking moment of his life.

It had marked him as hers forevermore, even more deeply than the Beckett mate spell ever could.

So he didn’t even hesitate when the darkness leapt again, this time going for Daniel. He took that darkness, sacrificed himself before it, knowing his mate would keep him safe.

And she did, with a cry of despair that tore at his heart. Ecstasy filled him as his mate battled the darkness inside him.

But something was different this time. This time, the darkness had avenues that hadn’t been open to it before. Gareth worked hard to keep those avenues clear, knowing full well where those pathways led. No wizard would be tainted by the darkness of the Godwin family, not if he could help it.

Together, he and Gen beat back the evil, kept it from corrupting the power that now resided within him. They battled it back, forced it from him until it dissipated, twisted and lost. He collapsed, exhausted beyond belief, barely keeping Kerry’s head from hitting the hard floor.

“Shit. You have to stop doing that, asshole.” Daniel gently took Kerry’s unconscious form from him, cradling her close. “We can’t lose you.”

“Love you too, butt munch.”

Daniel smirked, the fury that had plagued him since they found out Kerry was missing slowly bleeding away. “Yeah, yeah. Just don’t expect me to carry your fat ass through Manhattan, bro.”

“Hugh?” Gareth reached for Gen, trading a weary smile with his mate.

“Got away.”

Gen blushed deeply at the long, involved curses Gareth spit out.

Gen was exhausted, but there was no time to rest, not with the way Kerry was bleeding all over the place. Something was wrong with the way her legs were. They just weren’t laying right, flopping bonelessly as Daniel carefully carried her out of the building and placed her in Chris’s car. Daniel treated the mundane as if she were made of spun glass, unable to hide his agony over her pain. He settled into the backseat with Kerry, her head on his lap, and held her steady while Gen and Gareth climbed into the front seat, Gen sandwiched between Chris and Gareth. Zach and Mac had declared they would take Mac’s car back to the hotel.

“How are we going to sneak her in?” Chris pulled into traffic, watching to make sure they weren’t being followed by either the police or Hugh. “We can’t exactly carry her through the front door.”

“Mac told me there’s a service entrance we can use.” Gareth leaned wearily against the passenger window, his eyes closed, his shoulders slumped. The attack had taken its toll on both of them, but their work wasn’t done. Kerry needed medical attention, and fast, but taking her to a hospital would only alert the authorities. How were they supposed to explain what had happened in that abandoned construction site? The stone altar was broken, but Hugh was still out there. The police were no match for a warlock who’d bound himself to a demon.

No. They’d have to do what they could for Kerry themselves and pray it was enough.

“We’ll sneak her in that way and get her up to the penthouse. If we have to, Zach can shield us from sight.” Chris turned down the street that led to the back of the hotel and the service entrance. “We’ll figure out how to heal her once we have her safely inside.”

Gareth nodded, murmuring his agreement. He probably wouldn’t last much longer. They both needed sleep, badly. Two vision quests, plus confronting a warlock while channeling her Goddess, plus battling the deadly evil of Hugh’s altar had left her vision fuzzy and her limbs weak. If she had her way they’d head straight to bed and sleep for a week.

But they didn’t have that luxury, and as Chris parked the car she prodded Gareth awake. “We’re here.”

He grunted and slid out of the car, stumbling a bit and yawning so wide she thought she heard his jaw crack. Zach pulled up behind Chris as Gareth helped Gen out of the car.

Chris opened the back door, reaching for Kerry to pull her out, only to be met by a vicious growl. “Yeah, you keep telling yourself she’s not your mate, Danny-boy.”

“Fuck you, Christopher.” Daniel wouldn’t let anyone help with Kerry, climbing out of the car and reaching back for her himself. He cradled her close, following them all as they followed Mac.

Mac led the way to the service entrance and pulled out a card, swiping it through the lock. The service door opened and Mac held it, allowing them to go first and finally entering the building with one last look behind them.

They were safe, and so was Kerry.

Mac showed them where the service elevator was, again swiping his card to get them to the penthouse level. It let them off in a little service corridor that opened up just off the front door of Gareth’s apartment. “Let’s get her inside, sire.”

Gareth opened the front door, pointing Daniel toward the gurney that still sat in the middle of the living room. Daniel placed Kerry down, then got a dining room chair and settled right next to the gurney, her hand in his. “We need to get a doctor in here to examine her. I think her legs have been broken.”

“Sire, if I may, there’s a doctor we can call in who’s discreet and a wizard. He might be able to perform some healing on Ms. Kerry.”

“Call him, Mac.” Gareth collapsed onto the sofa with a weary sigh, running his hand down his face. “Get him here as fast as possible. Pull whatever strings you have to. Kerry comes first.”

“Yes, sire.” Mac pulled out his phone and began dialing, heading into the kitchen for privacy.

“Any idea where Hugh might have run off to?” Gareth pulled Gen down beside him and put his head on her shoulder.

Gen rested her head against Gareth’s, trying desperately to stay awake. “No idea. He’d run to ground, go someplace where he felt safe.” She shrugged. “He’s not nearly as bright as Arthur. Arthur is the one who truly frightens me. Hugh is nothing but a big bully compared to him.”

“Should we be hunting Arthur instead?”

“No. We need to stop Hugh. He’s the immediate threat.” She was fading faster than she wanted to. Gareth was just too damn comfortable to lean against.

“The doctor is on his way, sire.”

“Good.” Gareth took a deep breath and sat up. “What will he need from us?”

“I’m not certain, sire.” Mac frowned. “Unless we have medical knowledge, we might not be of much use to him.”

“Kerry is a nurse.” Daniel’s voice was soft, his hand stroking over Kerry’s hair. His gaze never left the injured woman.

“Then I’m certain she’ll understand the road she has ahead of her.” The doorbell rang and Mac sprang to answer it.

Chris, still disturbed by Annabelle’s abduction and Kerry’s injuries, pulled Lana behind him. Jo, on the other hand, tried to put herself between Zach and the door, but baby brother wasn’t having that. He tugged Jo behind him as Mac opened the door, revealing an older gentleman with a black bag and an air of competence. The gentleman nodded a quick greeting to Mac before moving immediately to the woman lying on the gurney.

When Daniel gave a warning growl the doctor shot a startled look at Mac.

“The royal family are Becketts, Dr. Hamming.”

The doctor darted a quick glance toward Gareth before turning his attention once more to Kerry. He placed the black bag on the floor by the gurney and began pulling crystals from within. Gen recognized a smoky cathedral quartz. A crystal with a single point surrounded by smaller, less dominant points, in the hands of a healer it would dull pain in a patient. Tiger’s eye was placed on her legs for broken bones. Malachite, a powerful healing stone, was placed next to the tiger’s eye. Aligned with female energies, it would ward off evil as well as help mend any fractures. A black tourmaline was placed over her heart, protecting her from evil energy, and rose quartz was placed on her forehead, promoting positive thoughts and energy flow.

Dr. Hamming pulled out a red tourmaline wand, waving it over the cuts and slashes in Kerry’s skin. Red tourmaline aided in the repair of blood vessels, and Kerry was still bleeding, staining the white sheets red.

The doctor concentrated on Kerry, waving both the red wand and his hand over her, his eyes closed as he used the power of the crystals and his own abilities to assess the damage to Kerry. He hissed in pain when he passed his hands over her hips, pulling more tiger’s eye and malachite from his bag and draping them over both hips. “Both of her hips are fractured, the joint dislocated. It took a tremendous amount of force to do this.”

Wide-eyed, Gen turned to Gareth. “The demon?”

The red wand trembled in the doctor’s hand. “A warlock did this?”

Gen winced. It was common for the terms warlock and demon to be automatically linked together. “A warlock tied to a demon did.”

“Is there any other kind?” The doctor’s tone was absent, his attention focused solely on healing Kerry.

“Yes. The queen-consort is a warlock Own.”

This time it was Mac she stared at in shock. His expression matched his tone: pissed. He was defending her with the same fervor he would use to defend Gareth.

“Ah. I see.” The doctor frowned, his hand hovering over a particularly nasty slash in Kerry’s thigh. “There’s something in there.”

Daniel growled. “Get it out.”

“I’m trying.” The doctor scowled, his hand going from being a flat plane to making a pulling motion. The crystals surrounding Kerry began to glow, especially the black tourmaline and the rose quartz.

Something dark flowed out of Kerry’s wound, and the unconscious woman sighed, a sound filled with relief. The darkness flowed into the black tourmaline, confined within the gem.

The doctor smiled and continued to heal Kerry.

“Give me that.” Zach picked up the black tourmaline and studied it, ignoring the doctor’s hiss of disapproval. “Shit. That’s the same stuff from the altar.”

“And we brought it here, into our home.” Gen shivered, grateful when Gareth wrapped his arm around her. “It could have sunk into the protections surrounding this place, weakened them enough to allow Hugh entry.”

Zach held the tourmaline tightly, his fist vibrating as if the crystal was trying to break his hold on it. He began to glow softly, his magic forcing the darkness to remain within the crystal. “Silk bag, Mac.”

Mac darted off, returning quickly with a white silk bag. Zach dropped the tourmaline into it.

A high-pitched shriek of rage was silenced as Zach closed the top of the bag.

“Never a dull moment.” Mac sank down onto one of the arm chairs near the sofa and rubbed his forehead wearily.

“Are you all right?” Gareth reached out and touched Mac’s shoulder, trying to comfort him.

Mac smiled, but it was strained. “I’ll be fine, your majesty.”

“Maybe I should give you hazard pay.”

Mac chuckled. “Maybe I wouldn’t turn it down.”

The doctor stepped back with a sigh. “I’ve done what I can, for now anyway. Her hips will heal, but she’ll need therapy for the inflammation. She isn’t allowed to put any weight on her legs for at least a week to allow the swelling to go down, and after that she’ll need physical therapy and a walker to assist her in getting around. I’ll check back before then, see how the bones are knitting as well. Her blood vessels have been repaired, and now that that…
thing
is out of her, she should recover nicely. She may have a limp on damp days, but that will be the worst of it.”

“Thank you, doctor.” Daniel stood and held out his hand for the doctor, who shook it even as he cleared away the gems. Only the black tourmaline was left behind, trapped in the white sack with the evil inside it.

Chapter Eleven

Gareth woke to find himself alone in bed. They’d barely had time to take their shoes off before falling face first into the pillows, too exhausted to do much more than pass out. Now Gen was gone, the warmth that should have been next to him cold. She’d been up for at least an hour, then.

He sat up, stretched and yawned before padding into the bathroom to brush his teeth and grab a quick shower. He was feeling a little ripe and was eager to wash the stench of the empty building, and Hugh’s broken altar, off of him.

Before too long he was in the kitchen, making a simple cup of coffee. Gen’s empty caramel macchiato cup was in the trash, his mate up and moving far too early for what they’d been through.

“Hey, Gareth.” Zach brushed past him with a yawn, his blue eyes rimmed with red.

“Zach.” He knew better than to try and talk Zach into getting some more rest. His baby brother could be damn stubborn when he chose, and he recognized the look on Zach’s face. He was on the hunt, and nothing would get him to back down until he was good and ready.