The wounds weren’t terribly deep but they weren’t paper cuts either.
Fuck. He paced back and forth. The sight of her blood turning the icy water around her red had his heart pounding in his chest, hands pulling at his hair.
“You must care for her a great deal.” Nanu’s words took a moment to sink in.
“No. I am her Protector. She is my responsibility.” He couldn’t hold it back anymore.
The anger and fear inside him finally spilled out and he bit his lip until he tasted blood and drove his fist into the wall. The brief flare of pain didn’t help, but it brought him a little back down to earth. The stone crumbled around his fist.
Tyrian turned back to watch Nanu work. How she managed to keep her hands from
shaking was a pure miracle. Though that was a big part of why she worked for him. He had only the best. Nanu wasted no time after the cuts were made. She sprinted back into the lab and came back with a green flask he was familiar with.
During the Great War when the Atal Warriors were created to battle the demons, many men and women died because of the idummi’ s poisonous claws. Nothing any of the healers did could cure the vicious fluid or stop its destructive path to the brain where it quickly feasted upon the matter and killed the being; no matter if the being was vampire, shapeshifter, or even succubus.
There was no surviving once it reached there. That is, until hundreds of years after the Great War, when the battles had settled to mere pockets of excursions, and healers worked together to develop an anecdote. They did it, too.
At first, the concoction didn’t work. They injected it into the blood and still the poison ate its way to the brain and destroyed the unlucky being. It was only after countless more deaths and experimentation that the healers developed a method to cure the idummi poison.
First, there was time. They had to act quickly because it didn’t take long for the poison to make its way through the body. Second, blood had to be let. The healers referred to the process as “leaching” though they didn’t use leaches anymore. Tyrian didn’t know what the purpose of it was, but knew that it was necessary for the injection that came.
Nanu stuck a large needle into the green flask and pulled back until fluid nearly filled the entire syringe. Nanu lifted Chloe’s closed eyelids and said, “Shit.” Then she plunged the big needle straight into Chloe’s heart. “Grab me the bucket from the corner over there.”
Tyrian grabbed it and held it next to the tub, his stomach tightening at what was to come.
If it hadn’t already killed her, then this was going to be the messy process, the third step in the cure.
For long, breathless moments, nothing happened. Not a flicker of movement, not even a blink. Seeing the full of life succubus so...dead twisted his heart like a coiling snake. He didn’t have time to breathe as he normally would have done, or to take a moment to block himself off from feeling. Chloe always seemed to find a way to make him feel no matter how hard he fought it. Was this why Francis sent her to him?
Chloe’s eyes sprung open, their color an eerie pale green. Her body started convulsing, flailing. Water sloshed violently out of the tub.
“What’s wrong?” Tyrian said.
Nanu shook her head. “I don’t know. It might have reached her...”
Tyrian felt his heart stop beating in his chest. Chloe start screaming, a horrendous, gut-piercing sound that he hoped he’d never have to hear again. Then she leaned over the tub and vomited. Relief surged through him with such incredible force, he felt lightheaded. Somehow he still managed to put the bucket under her as hard, wretched heaves came from her.
The last step of the process. She would live. She would vomit every drop of poison from her body.
Nanu sighed with relief. “Thank the Gods. We almost lost her.” Tyrian’s veins froze with anger and ice. He stared at Nanu and her eyes widened a fraction.
“Commander Tyrian, I saved her, not killed her. I am not the one who put her in danger.”
Tyrian pulled back as her words hit him. Henry came running into the room with Rayn and Draven behind him.
“What’s happened?” Henry said, his gaze flicking over Nanu.
Nanu answered, for which Tyrian was grateful because he wasn’t sure he could talk
without screaming right now. He still couldn’t understand why he was feeling this crazy. What kind of spell was he under?
“She was poisoned by an idummi. We got it out, though. Barely.” Chloe gave one last long heave, then flopped back into the tub with a splash.
Tyrian realized her nudity and said, “Everyone out but Nanu.” The men obeyed
immediately.
“There’s been news since last night,” Rayn said. The warrior’s short hair was sticking in thick spikes as if he’d run his hand too many times through it.
“What?” Tyrian said. He tried to control his anger, his fear, and put it into the
dispassionate place he always did, but it didn’t work. He sounded angry and at the point of breaking, even to his own ears.
“Telal Demuzi called early this morning. He said he has some interesting news you’ll want to know about. It didn’t sound good. I tried to get him to tell me, but he said he’d only deal with you and not some...servant,” Rayn said with a twitch to his eye.
Draven clapped him on the back. “Don’t take it seriously. Telal’s just a dick because his entire race and family is forced to live under the rift.”
Henry turned to him. “Don’t tell me you support freeing the demons to run amuck
upstairs.”
Draven shrugged. “Listen, our scientists have proven that only the idummi are the psychopaths. Like Telal, most demons are family-oriented, honorable even. Plus, I may have been young when the Great War started, but some of those rumors floating around might have some merit to them.”
Tyrian couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “Are you trying to insinuate that the war my father waged and fought was over some simple matter of jealousy?” Tyrian was letting his anger get to him.
“No, Commander. My apologies,” Draven said, bowing his head.
“That’s not what it sounded like to me,” Tyrian said. Nanu saved the warrior from any more lashing as she came into the room. She had a small smile on her face that eased Tyrian’s nerves markedly.
“She’s fine. We got all the poison out. She’s loopy from the drugs and everything that’s happened. I’m going to give her some pain meds to ease her. I suggest you take her to bed, she’ll need plenty of rest after this.” Tyrian went into the bathroom and met Chloe’s foggy eyes.
Her wrists and knees were wrapped in gauze bandages and another was taped near her
sternum. The sight shouldn’t have bothered him. He’d seen far worse on, and off, the battlefield.
Hell, he’d had worse done to him, but none of that mattered.
Whatever this demon was she’d summoned was powerful. It didn’t just want her dead
either, but wanted her brought to it. But that only brought even more absurd hypothesis to the table. What on earth would a demon want with a succubus? She had no powers, nothing that could benefit the demon in any way he knew.
“Tyrian?” she asked, hesitantly. Tyrian grabbed a thick white robe off a hook and
wrapped it around her before lifting her into his arms.
“I’m here,” he said, his voice gruff. Her arms came around his neck and he finally felt lighter, his head clearer. Enchantress.
“I feel like shit,” she said weakly. Tyrian choked on a laugh and she smiled up at him.