If I could have prepared myself for what I’d see once I walked through the door, I might not have acted so rashly. Anya sat on top of Tyler, straddling his waist, bent over him, his wrists pinned beneath both of her hands. With one fluid motion, I left my physical self, appeared at the side of the bed, and yanked Anya’s long rope of braided hair, propelling her from Tyler into the far wall.
I turned from the bed, intent on ripping her head right off. Raif caught me by the elbow, pulling me close against him while Anya picked her sorry ass up off the floor. “Seriously, what in the hell has gotten into you?” Raif gave me a jerk, and I looked past him at Anya, a red haze of anger preventing me from forming a rational thought. “Darian!” Raif said louder, shaking me soundly. “Look at him! Anya was trying to help!”
One more jaw-rattling shake cleared my mind enough to turn toward the bed. Tyler lay sprawled across its surface, blood staining the light gray coverlet as it seeped from the lacerations made by thin iron rods in his wrists. My eyes roamed farther down, and my breath stilled in my lungs as I noticed a larger iron stake protruding from just above Tyler’s left pec.
“Motherfucker!” I shouted, converging on the bed in a single leap. “Anya, get your bony ass over here and help me!”
“What do you think I was trying to do?” she asked, “Fuck him? Sorry, not my type.”
“Shut up!” I snapped. I did not have time to get into it with her. Tyler was bleeding to death all over his comforter. “How do we get these out without doing any more damage?”
“The stakes are iron,” Dimitri said quietly from the doorway. “Jinn, like Fae, are allergic to iron. They must be removed.”
“No shit,” I said from between clenched teeth. “But I don’t want to hurt him any worse-”
“Darian,” Tyler said, his voice pained with labored breath, “just pull them out.”
“But, Ty.”
“Like a Band-Aid,” he rasped. “Do it quick.”
Anya glared at me but placed one hand on Tyler’s palm, the other just below his wrist. She gave a curt nod, and I wrapped my hands around the rod, took a deep steadying breath-and yanked.
Tyler’s back arched, and he thrashed against us, his jaw set and teeth clenched tight in obvious agony. Dimitri came around the bed with stacks of sterile gauze and rolls of tape, slapping the absorbent pads against the wound before wrapping his wrist with the tape. Anya shifted, secured Tyler’s other hand, and we repeated the process. We allowed Ty a moment to catch his breath, everyone in the room staring at the spike in his chest like a group of kids standing around an arcade game.
I laid my hand against his cheek, my fingers creeping up into his hair and brushing the sweat-dampened, coppery curls from his face. “Are you ready?” I asked.
Tyler tensed beneath me, and Anya shifted, placing her weight squarely on both of his shoulders. “Ready.”
Without steeling myself against the pain I was about to inflict, I pulled-hard-on the stake, and I felt the sickening resistance as it fought to hold on inside his body. Tyler lurched once, and I yanked the stake free. Tyler’s body went slack, sweat beading on his brow, and he lost consciousness.
I reached for my dagger, ready and willing to do for Tyler what I’d already done for him once before. “What do you think you’re doing?” Raif asked, grabbing my hand before I could cut my own wrist.
“Helping Ty! My blood can heal him.”
“Gods, girl.” Raif shook his head, jerking the dagger from my hand. “You needn’t do anything quite so rash. Give him a little time. Now that the iron has been removed, he’ll be fine. His magic will heal him.”
Dimitri had begun to dress the wound, so instead I unwound the tape from the first wrist we’d worked on. Still ugly, still oozing, but, strangely enough, it did look smaller than it had when we removed the spike. “Why hadn’t he healed from the Enphigmalé attack then?” I asked, rewrapping his wrist.
“Your guess is as good as mine,” Raif answered. “Why does Lyhtan venom affect us? Who knows these things?”
Who indeed. Fuck it all, I was exhausted. “Thank you, Anya,” I said while still looking at Raif. If I had to make eye contact with her while expressing my gratitude, I might’ve still taken the dagger to my wrist for a completely different reason. “You too, Dimitri. Thank you for going after him.”
Anya snorted in response, and Dimitri shrugged as if to say, Don’t worry about it. “Get out of here, Raif,” I said. “I’ve got it from here.”
Raif laid a hand to my shoulder. “I’ll set a guard outside the building, just in case.”
“No.” I didn’t want to be beholden to Xander for anything else.
“You forget an attempt was made on your life as well. You’re one of mine. And I take care of mine.”
Damn Raif for making me feel all mushy when I’d been going for tough bitch. “Fine,” I said against the thickness in my throat. “I still think it’s a waste of time, though.”
“Obviously,” Raif said as he headed for the door, “I don’t care what you think is a waste of time. Call me if you need anything.”
I nodded my head, swallowing the emotion that threatened to leak from my eyes. When I heard the elevator doors slide shut in the foyer, I managed to exhale the breath I’d been holding. I reexamined Tyler’s wounds. Already the bleeding had slowed, barely showing through the gauze. Tyler’s eyes fluttered, and I sat on the bed, tracing patterns on his fingers as I waited for him to come to.
“Thanks for staying,” Tyler said lazily. “I’m going to need help getting out of my clothes, and I sure as hell didn’t want Raif doing it.”
I bit back a laugh and squeezed his fingers. “I can help you with that,” I said. “Gladly.”
Chapter 9
I’d shucked my boots and pants and lain on the bed, stripped of its bloody linens, with my arm draped carefully across Tyler’s muscled abs. He twirled the silver ring on my thumb as he spoke, as if it bore the memories of a thousand years.
“I’m not used to being the one who needs to be rescued,” he whispered against my hair. “I can’t say I like it very much.”
“Well, you owe me only once.” I caressed his silky hair, the strands slipping through my fingers. “You’ll have to settle up with Raif for this one.”
Tyler laughed, and then his body jerked in pain. The wound on his chest had yet to heal completely. I’d changed the dressings twice, and finally the bleeding had slowed. His wrists were much better, the injuries appearing to be weeks old rather than merely hours. I had no idea he could heal so fast.
“Raif is a good man,” he said, surprising me. The previous night he’d been ready to throw down with the guy for spending too much time with me. Now, he was extolling his virtues?
“He is,” I agreed. “Like family. I’d do anything for him.”
“I think he’d do the same for you,” Tyler said, his tone growing dark. “But I’m glad for that. It’s nice to know someone else has your back.”
“Do you have family, Ty?” I’d always wondered but never asked. Perhaps the conversation would take his mind off the pain.
“Not really.” Tyler slid my ring up and down my thumb between my knuckles. “I didn’t grow from infancy. Nor do I remember a childhood. Jinn are born from magic. No mother, no father. Just a moment of self-realization and conscious thought”-he shrugged his shoulders-“and I existed.”
Shit. That beat my story a millionfold. Granted, I too was a creature created from sheer will. But I’d been a human first-a real person, born and raised. I’d had a mother, a father, a pretty normal existence. It was years later that Fate, or whatever you want to call it, had done a number on me, and I’d been transformed into something more than human. I’d evolved into what I was-not just a force of magic brought to life. “How did you know what you were? How to live?”