Cursed (The Brookehaven Vampires #4) (81 page)

Okay, so back to this tattoo business…

I had never been so thankful to have my ability. Okay, maybe a few times in the beginning when Laney and I had first gotten together, but other than that, I was truly grateful to be me once again. I was thankful to feel Laney’s emotions, to have her look at me the way she look
ed at no one else, to have her melting against me when I held her. All of it! I was so relieved to be back!

The effect of the full moon on Carter’s body when I was
in it was still slightly lingering with me. Perhaps it was just the memory of what it felt like…that desperate need to mate…wow.

Needless to say, I felt hungry for Laney.
But I think that would’ve been the fact, moon or not. My body needed her just as much as my mind did.

I was ready to put this mess behind us and get us the hell out of “Treeville.” I knew it
wouldn’t be easy, but I would do what I could to get the community going as soon as possible. In the meantime, maybe Laney and I could move into one of the coven-owned safe houses…

Or, perhaps it was time to take her home…to Brookehaven.

Blood Magic

“It’s called Blood Magic,” Melody explained to us.

I was sitting on the table beside my Oliver, a tight grip on his hand while Melody and Felix explained what they were about to do. And what they were about to do was take blood from all three of us: Carter, Oliver, and me. I was the linking factor between Oliver and Carter. I was their connection. Therefore, my blood was needed to bind theirs… Alrighty then.

“Aww,” Carter said, clearly trying to hide the nervousness he was experiencing, “now we’ll always be a part of each other.”

Felix rolled his eyes, which made everyone laugh.

With the laughter quickly fading, Felix pulled three syringes from his black doctor’s bag. Starting with me, he drew what he needed, placed the cap over the needle, and handed the syringe to Melody. He licked his thumb and ran it over the tiny hole in my arm, healing it instantly.

With wide green eyes, Melody watched with a morbid fascination as Felix moved on to Oliver. It was a little disturbing how fascinated my former demon-halfling-biology-professor’s daughter was by the act of drawing blood. It made me wonder if blood was something demons craved…

Brushing off that thought, I glanced past Oliver to Carter who was sitting on Oliver’s right side. Carter was looking away, humming to himself. I shook my head and huffed to myself. Oliver noticed both Carter’s behavior and my response. He also found it amusing.

God, it was great to have them back where they belonged.

After handing Melody the syringe of Oliver’s blood, which she clutched to her chest with the syringe of mine, Felix moved on to Carter.

Carter kept his eyes shut tight, and he bit down hard on his bottom lip as his chin gave a little quiver. Oliver and I tried stifling our laughter.

“It’s not funny,” Carter grumbled as Felix finished taking his blood, slowly removing the needle from the vein in the crook of Carter’s arm.

Then Felix and Melody set to work laying out the other items they
needed to complete the…I guess it was a prevention spell, considering it was supposed to
prevent
Oliver and Carter from being removed from themselves ever again.

We were still in that same “office” in the tunnel system that
we’d been in most of the night. Felix didn’t want us to leave the tunnels until he and Melody could…”tattoo” the guys. I guess that was the right way to say it, but I wasn’t sure they were actually going to be tattoos, rather than more of another spell, a permanent one. A permanent one that was going to leave a mark, but not like a tattoo, more like a scar.

Felix and Melody had a bowl and a few other items set at the corner of the table, right beside me. Requesting that Oliver and Carter remove their shirts, Melody began very quietly reciting an incantation over the bowl while she helped Felix mix together our blood from the syringes.

Once the syringes were empty, and the last drop of blood had dripped from the tips of the needles, Felix reached for a small, stoppered bottle sitting next to the metal bowl they were using to concoct the blood magic spell. He unstoppered the blue bottle and poured the contents in with our blood. The liquid that poured from the bottle was dark red.

While
watching our blood being mixed together, I noticed that there really wasn’t much difference in the shades of red… Carter’s was probably the lightest of the three, but that was probably because his vampire line was much further removed than say…um, mine! Yeah, I said it, pretty damn positive about it too. I was pretty damn sure my dad was the leader of the vampire coven where my boyfriend, Felix, and everyone else I knew belonged.

But this
wasn’t the time for such thoughts. I would worry about it later, and I would drag an answer out of someone very, very soon.

For the moment, I needed to focus on making sure Oliver stayed where he belonged. Meaning, in his own body.

When Felix set the bottle back onto the table, I noticed that there was a label on it. The label looked worn and the writing was faint, but I was pretty sure that it read “dragon’s blood.”

Not wanting to interrupt Melody, I privately questioned Felix about the contents of the bottle with my mind.

Without looking up from what he was doing, he answered, “The dragon is the most powerful creature ever known, the strongest in every aspect. Mixing in a few drops of dragon’s blood will forever bind this spell.”

Alrighty then!

I saw Felix fight back a smile. His dimple formed in his left cheek. As usual, he’d heard my inner thought.

As Felix continued slowly stirring the contents of the bowl, Melody finally stopped her incantation. Without a word, she nodded to Felix. Lifting the bowl in his hands and moving to stand in front of Oliver, he placed the bowl in Melody’s hands as she stepped up beside him. She waited silently while Felix reached over and took a dragon’s claw from his doctor’s bag that was sitting beside me. It was a big claw, bigger than the one in the slayer case.

I found it interesting that Felix had his own dragon’s claw… Perhaps he’d confiscated it.

Felix stood directly in front of Oliver and dipped the claw in the blood mixture that Melody was still holding. Then, he took a large breath that made his massive chest expand. He locked eyes with Oliver. Oliver tensed. I squeezed his hand in mine, holding my breath as he nodded to Felix.

Then, right over Oliver’s left pec, the space over his heart, Felix quickly carved a symbol into Oliver’s flesh with the tip of the dragon’s claw. Oliver’s hand tightened on mine, but his body remained still. I stared, wide-eyed, as I watched fresh blood from Oliver’s chest mixing with that from the bowl.

When Felix was done, blood from the bowl and from Oliver’s chest trickled down the front of my boyfriend. Oliver released a breath which reminded me to breath
e. He looked down at his chest, eyeing the distortion of what was to be with him the rest of his life.

“It burns,” he whispered to me, his eyes meeting mine. By the looks of it, I was sure it more than just burned.

Melody and Felix said nothing as they moved on to Carter. He was already pale, and they probably should’ve shaved his chest before getting started. Carter wasn’t overly furry, but his chest definitely wasn’t as bare as Oliver’s.

Felix was much quicker with Carter, getting started faster, anyway. However, he wasn’t quite quick enough. As he was about to finish carving the symbol in the exact place
he’d done on Oliver’s chest, Carter’s eyes began to roll. Oliver was quick to grab Carter and keep him upright while Felix completed the mark.

Once Felix took a step back, Melody finally spoke. With a final, unrecognizable word, Oliver and Carter’s wounds sealed. The bleeding stopped. I felt one of my eyebrows rise as high as it could possibly go.

Oliver, still holding Carter to prevent him from falling from the table, gave Carter a gentle pat to the face, bringing our needle-fearing (in this case, dragon-claw-fearing) friend back around.

Carter’s eyes took a moment to focus before he finally seemed okay to sit on his own. He held himself up, gripping the side of the table for support. His eyes were quick to find the new scar he would always have.

Felix gave the guys some damp paper towels so they could clean the drying blood from their fronts.

Once his chest was blood-free,
Oliver stood. It was hard to tear my eyes away from his shirtless-ness, and especially hard not to stare at what had been done to his once perfect skin. It was already healing, the mark on their chests, especially Oliver’s. But it would always remain as a scar, not dark like the infinity dragon tattoo down Oliver’s side. No, this resembled the raised pink skin like the scar over Carter’s eye.

“Does it hurt,” I asked as I gently traced my fingers around the new mark on Oliver’s chest.

Oliver pulled me off the table and into his arms. He shook his head ever so slowly as he gazed down into my eyes. “It’s fading,” he said, rather quietly.

I wanted to kiss the scar, but it was neither the time nor the place for such an act.

Tearing my eyes away from Oliver’s, I asked Felix, “Do the rest of us need to do this?”

He shook his head as he packed his doctor’s bag. “No. I believe such a threat is rare now that Helos and Habitha have been removed.” He zipped the bag closed and his eyes met mine. “However, these two are susceptible to such magic now. This is only a precaution; we do not want to take any chances.”

No, no we did not.

As relief settled in, I felt a smile spread across my face. I was so grateful to have all of this crap behind us.

Oliver and I were getting ready to leave, now that Felix had agreed all was once again right in the world. However, as we were about to head out the door, Carter thought it would be funny to pretend to be Oliver one more time.

“Hey! Where do you think you’re going with my girlfriend?” he shouted, unable to completely wipe the goofy grin from his face.

Oliver was not amused. But, before Carter could shout, “Just kidding!” Oliver punched Carter in the arm so hard that it knocked Carter off the table.

Laughter erupted from Felix. Good, heavy, booming laughter.

Carter pulled himself up from the floor, rubbing his arm as he stood. “Sorry, dude. I was just playing.”

“You might want to find a different game,” Oliver told him. Then he took my hand, told the others goodbye, threw in a thank you, and we headed out of the tunnels.

We were headed home to make up for lost time.

It was midday as we emerged from a secret passageway in Zoey’s grandma’s shop. She greeted us as we passed through her store, only glancing up for a moment from some receipts on her glass counter.

I’d questioned Oliver the previous night when we’d entered the tunnels through the same means. He explained that a few of the buildings downtown posed as storefronts, but in actuality they were run by coven members, and each store led to a passageway below.

I’d
lived nearly my entire life in “Treeville,” and the more I learned about it, the more unfamiliar and foreign it felt to me.

We hurried across the street outside Grandma Levesque’s shop and into the parking structure across from it. Once we reached the Challenger, Oliver pressed me against the car and kissed me long and slow there in the quiet of the parking structure, making sure I knew how much
he’d missed me.

Our lips parted
, and I stared up at my boyfriend, unable to prevent the smile on my face. I was so happy to have him back in himself and so happy to be in arms that were actually his.

A smirk formed at the corner of his mouth as he gazed down at me.

“What?” I questioned.

“
I’ve missed the feeling you give off when you look at me,” he said, a little mischief to his tone. Then he kissed me again, making sure I knew every part of him had missed me.

Oh, yeah, we needed to get home.

Oliver eventually removed his lips from mine and opened my door for me; I quickly scooted inside. I jittered with anticipation as I watched him round the front of the car and then slide into the driver’s seat.

Throwing me a mischievous little grin, he said, “I’ve missed her, too.” He
affectionately rubbed the steering wheel of his car.

A laugh escaped me, and it felt so damn good. But what felt even better
were Oliver’s cool lips on mine as he leaned across the console and kissed me.
Really
kissed me. A moment later, I was over the console and in his lap.

Needless to say, we
didn’t make it farther than the front seat of the car before expressing exactly how much we had missed each other.

As Carter would say, insert wicked grin here.