Black Spring

“Do you want me to be left like that again?” I said. “Will you feel that you’ve done your duty if I’m left standing over your body as I was with him?”

“Will you feel that you have done your duty if I’m left that way instead?” he said. “Do you think I could live with the loss if I thought I could save you?”

“No,” I said, my voice small.

He put his arms around me. I resisted for a moment, then relaxed. There was comfort here, and I needed to learn to accept it.

“You are not being weak if you allow me to share the burden with you,” he said.

“I know,” I said. And I did know, in my head. But my heart was another matter entirely.

It was stupid of me to fight over every little thing. Didn’t I have enough conflict in my life without picking a fight with my friends and allies? But I was afraid of weakness, afraid of exactly what Nathaniel had said. Death had been the first companion of my life, and Death never seemed to leave me.

“I’m sorry,” I said.

He didn’t respond, and I pulled away from his shoulder to look at his expression.

His face was frozen, a mask of pain, and blood was seeping from his mouth and nose.

“Nathaniel!” I screamed as his body started to crumple. I grabbed him as he went limp in my arms, but his weight was too much for me when I was already off balance from pregnancy. He tumbled away to the first-floor landing.

“Jude!” I shouted. “Jude, help me!”

I heard Jude and Samiel running. A moment later Jude shouldered past me, picking up Nathaniel’s limp form and carrying him back up the stairs past me.

Samiel and Beezle stood at the top of the stairs watching as Jude carried Nathaniel into our bedroom. I huffed up the steps after him.

“The shapeshifter has to be nearby,” Beezle said. “You’ve got to protect the house before he comes after you.”

“Nathaniel,” I said, trying to follow Jude, but Samiel grabbed my arm.

Beezle’s right. You’re the only one who’s strong enough to protect us.

“I don’t know what to do,” I said. “I’ve never done a spell like this on my own. Nathaniel’s the architect. I just put power into whatever he designs. The only thing I know how to do on my own is destroy. And you need to let me go because I have to help him. He’s bleeding from the inside. He’s going to die if I don’t do something.”

Nathaniel had almost died once protecting me, when I’d killed Azazel and the result had triggered a violent explosion of magic. But back then I hadn’t cared about him. He’d been an unwanted bodyguard, a replacement for Gabriel who could never replace my husband.

Now he was something else to me. I wasn’t sure what that something was, or what I wanted him to be, but I wasn’t going to lose him five seconds after we’d argued about this very thing. I wasn’t going to stand over another bleeding body knowing that my enemy had taken someone else from me.

I know how to do a healing spell. Gabriel taught me that much, Samiel signed. But you’ve got to protect us. You’ve got to protect your baby.

It was hard to think when part of me was panicking, picturing Nathaniel in his death throes on the bed where we slept together. It was hard to accept that Samiel could fix this when I needed to do it myself. I needed to see with my own eyes that Nathaniel would be all right.

And as I thought this, I felt a questing thread of power swirling around me, seeking, hunting. It wanted me. It wanted to destroy me and my child.

I didn’t think. I pushed my own power out, against the thing that shouldn’t be here, that shouldn’t be able to violate the sanctity of my home but somehow had.

The other’s magic resisted. It pressed back against my will, and the resistance hurt. This magic was a strange and alien thing. It was not the product of its own will but another’s, and as such it wasn’t affected by emotion as I was. The shifter had been told to do something and it would exert whatever force necessary to achieve that task.

I pushed harder, drawing deeper into the reserves of my power but not dipping into the well of darkness. I didn’t know what might happen if I tapped into my black heart when I was in my present confused emotional state. There was a good chance that I wouldn’t have control over my magic, and then I might end up destroying us and everyone on the block in an effort to keep the shifter out.

On the upside, the shifter problem would be solved.

I exerted more will, more magic, pushing against the shifter’s power. I needed to get that thread out so I could seal up the house. The shifter’s spell receded against me, and I could actually feel it draw its attention away from Nathaniel to me. The spell crept toward me again.