New Blood (33 page)

“If I don't marry you, I won't ever marry,” she whispered. “You're the only man I trust enough to marry, the only one I've ever trusted. But if you can't bear it . . .” She used his grip on her wrists to pull his arms forward, wrapping them around her in place of her own. “I'd never ever force you.”

More of his thick, self-protective hide sloughed away and Jax shuddered. Yvaine would have forced him. She had forced him to do so many things, sometimes on mere whim. Amanusa wasn't Yvaine. He knew that, but it was still hard to remember.

It wasn't her trust at issue here. It was his own. On an instinctive level, he did trust her. His body knew she would never use magic to harm him, never retaliate unfairly, or he would never have dared to lay hands on her this way. He never, in the hundred years
he'd served her, would have taken physical hold of Yvaine this way.

But his mind kept whispering to him, telling him what he was, what Yvaine had made him, asking why this sorceress would want him, a man who had nothing of worth to offer save for what she already had. It was all he had to offer her. Himself.

Something he'd long ago learned had no value.

Amanusa valued him. She saw him as protector, as partner. As more than just a magical thing. She saw him as a man.

A man worthy of her complete trust. Amanusa trusted him, a woman who had no reason to trust men and every reason to fear the harm a man could do. She trusted him so completely that she allowed him to imprison her like this without once calling on the weapons she possessed. She could have stopped him, could have rendered him helpless with less than a word. And she hadn't.

Yvaine would have. Yvaine would never have allowed the first touch. Yvaine had never, ever trusted him. And he'd never trusted her, because she'd betrayed him from the very beginning.

So did that mean Amanusa trusted him because she was a person who could be trusted?

Jax held Amanusa with his arms where she'd placed them around her, his mind flashing from raw shock to understanding. Yvaine had bound him so tightly because she feared him. She'd never trusted him—because she herself could not be trusted. People always feared in others the sins they possessed themselves.

Jax groaned, letting his head fall forward until his
cheek brushed along hers. He shivered at the touch against his exposed nerves. He felt odd, as if his chest were too small, his throat too tight. He'd been learning to love her all along, but he had clung to his fear and his mistrust, unable to give them up. Unable to love her as she deserved.

He did have something else to offer her, he realized. She claimed she didn't know what love was, but it was a small step beyond trust. Since she trusted him, perhaps if he loved her enough, he could teach her about love. Perhaps they could learn together.

His memories still weren't what they should be, but he didn't remember feeling this way ever before, even before Yvaine. He thought perhaps this was new to him too. It didn't matter. The only thing that did was this love he felt. And if he loved her—

Jax turned his head the fraction necessary to murmur in her ear. “I am an idiot. Forgive me?”

She gave a tiny start at his words, turned her face toward his. “What?”

“I—” He began again, carefully enunciating every word. “Am an idiot. A great, bloody fool. And I humbly beg your forgiveness.”

She twisted, as if to pull out of his arms, and his grip tightened, reflexively.

He didn't want to let her go. “You won't run away again, will you?”

“Jax—”

“Our thanks, monsieur, for capturing the witch for us.”

The guttural French was so unexpected, Jax blinked for far too long at the roughly dressed man with the knife in his hand, and the others spread out behind
him. Only when the man lunged, did Jax thrust Amanusa behind him and dive for his dropped stick, whacking it across the man's shins hard enough to knock him howling back.

Amanusa screamed. Jax whirled around, stick out to fend off the other thugs, but no one had circled around to attack her. No one came at her, yet. He hit the trigger that released the rapier inside its wooden sheath, drawing out the long, sharp length of steel, retaining the hollow staff in his other hand. Not as good as a dagger, but better than nothing.

“Ooo, the English pig has a pig sticker,” one of the men mocked. There were five of them, all roughly dressed, all armed with sharp knives glittering in the distant lamplight. They had the air of men who knew how to use them and had, often.

“Works well on French curs.” Jax moved the rapier's point in a tiny circle. “Run along before I run you through.”

“Five of us. Only one of you.” The man in the lead, the one who'd lunged first, served as spokesman.

“Not the best odds. But then, I've faced worse, and here I am, facing you. How many of you do you think I'll kill before you can kill me?”

Amanusa stifled her cry of alarm. She didn't want to draw Jax's attention away from the attackers, not again. They wouldn't kill him. She wouldn't let them.

“We only want the witch, monsieur. Give her to us and we'll kill you quickly.”

Jax laughed, a dark ominous sound that sent shivers skating through Amanusa. “You know what she
is, and still you dare? You who have spilled enough innocent blood to overflow the gutters of the streets you prowl?”

Some of the men glanced uneasily at each other, but the leader attacked with a snarl and a feint, and the others followed his lead. They spread out, like a wolf pack attacking a stag at bay. One would leap in with a slashing attack and while Jax fended him off, another would dart in from behind with glinting steel to slice and stab. They were trying to encircle him, to get at Amanusa. But she was no doe without antlers.

Jax was a blur of motion, spinning from one side to the other, sword flashing through the air in a bright, deadly counterpoint to the whir and crash of the staff in his other hand. He fought with a skill Amanusa never imagined possible, knocking the men back again and again. He was magnificent. Powerful and swift, dangerous, glorious, and all hers.

But he was still one man against five, and when one of them caught Jax's skin with his knife, Amanusa felt it. It was a shallow cut across his back. Not enough to slow him, not enough to keep him from smashing his stick across the other's arm, but the cut bled. Magic rose. And Amanusa gathered it in.

She tried to wrap it around Jax, hide him from their attackers, but in the midst of a fight, it wouldn't stick. Or perhaps—yes—the men had spells laid on them. True sight, she thought. And shields against magic.

While Jax fought off two men, two others circled around and this time, one of them lunged at Amanusa while the other went for Jax. She jumped
back, slower than she could have. The knife sliced through her sleeve, along her upper arm, and magic flared.

Jax shouted. He'd been cut again, across his forearm this time, and as he attacked, driving the thugs back, blood flew. Amanusa hissed with pain as she touched her bleeding arm. The cut was deeper than she'd hoped, blood soaking her jacket, her blouse. She caught it in her hand and threw it out, splattering it across their attackers.

The instant it touched them, their magic shields flared and died. None of the men was unbloodied, and with their shielding gone, Amanusa's blood and Jax's blood mingled with theirs. She sent her magic rushing into them, invoking the call of innocent blood for justice. She forbade the magic to kill or maim, but otherwise let it do as it willed.

The attack stopped, the men shuddering as memory hit them, this time from the victim's side, the suffering they'd inflicted now visited upon them. They dropped their weapons. They screamed and fell to the ground in convulsions. Amanusa looked away.

Jax put his arm around her, tucking her face into his chest, his wooden staff bumping awkwardly against her back as if he feared setting it aside. “Justice can be harsh,” he murmured, “when there is no remorse to call forth mercy.”

Amanusa leaned into him, trembling arising from somewhere until she shook so violently she feared she couldn't stand. She didn't want to need his comfort, not when he didn't want her. Her arms burrowed beneath his frock coat and went around him anyway. She clung tightly to him as the magic raged. She
tried to block the awful images from her mind, the sins committed with such casual carelessness by these men, but she was the sorceress. It was her magic and her blood that invoked it.

Whistles sounded at a distance. Footsteps thudded against pavement, rushing toward them.
What now?

Amanusa clutched at Jax, then set him free, in case they needed to fight again.

“Witch!” The accusation came in English, in a vaguely familiar voice. “This woman attacked these men with black magic. Sorcery. Arrest her!”

“Shut yer gob, Nigel, or I'll shut it for you.” Harry's familiar voice came ringing over the whimpers of the fallen men.

They were safe. Amanusa turned her face into Jax's bloodied shirt again, clinging to him for strength. “Blood of my blood,” she whispered into it. “Send the power back to those who granted it. Give them the rest they so richly deserve.”

The magic seemed to swirl threateningly once more over the thugs, before it rose into the air and dissipated on the breeze.

“What has happened here?” a new voice demanded, in French. Harry's stone translated for her, but she could still tell the original language.

“Sorcery,” Mr. Cranshaw intoned, for it was the English wizard Harry had threatened to shut up.
“Sorcellerie.”

“I saw it.” A woman's voice now, older, cultured sounding. “We did, didn't we, Louis-Baptiste?”

Amanusa loosened her grip on Jax, and when she wobbled only a little, dared let him go almost entirely, clinging only to his forearm. How would she manage
without Jax to rely on? She turned to see an outraged matron and her equally outraged spouse talking to a man in a policeman's uniform with a great deal of gold braid on it. A whole troop of other, less gaudy policemen stood behind him.

“Those men—” The woman gestured at the thugs collapsed on the paving. “They attacked the gentleman and the lady.”

“Look at them. They are lying unconscious on the street!” Cranshaw shouted. “With blood all over them! It is black magic, I tell you!”

He must not have one of Harry's translation stones, Amanusa decided, or the police superior would pay more attention to him.

“Oui,”
Louis-Baptiste agreed with his wife. “We were on our way home after the theater, walking to the corner there to catch a cab, and we heard this lady scream. I came ahead to see what was happening, and saw the gentleman protecting the lady from those men with his stick-sword. He is quite a fighter, that one.”

“Is this so?” The officer looked at Jax, who nodded. “Then why are they on the ground and you are not?”

“Blood magic.” Cranshaw was shaking with outrage, his face dark. The light was bad in this narrow alley, but Amanusa was certain he'd gone red with fury.
“Sorcellerie du sang,”
he hissed.

The policeman gave him a quick glance, while the matron's eyes widened and she stepped a pace back. “So?” he asked. “Explain.”

“The lady is a member of the British National Council of Magicians,” Harry said, stepping forward.

She'd heard him before. Of course he was here. And Elinor too, smiling worriedly at Amanusa from behind the alchemist.

“And therefore Miss Whitcomb is recognized as a magician by the International Conclave currently meeting in Paris,” Harry went on. “Would you deny her the right to defend herself?”

“No one is denying anyone anything,” the officer said. “I am merely trying to discover the truth.”

A
MANUSA TUCKED HER
hand in her pocket and closed it around the translation stone, wishing it gave clarity and persuasiveness to one's words as well. “Innocent blood demands justice,” she said yet again. She was getting almighty tired of having to explain this.

“We are not the only innocents these men have attacked over the years, and when our blood was spilled—” She showed the cut on her arm and that along Jax's forearm. “I called magic on behalf of ourselves and all the other innocents whose blood these men have shed.

“This man—Rene Boulanger—murdered the grocer and his family in Faubourg St. Jacques last week. Only his most recent crime. That one is Georges Cie. You have been looking for him, I think. He did commit the crime you suspect him of, and many others. He likes little girls far too well.” Amanusa went on, identifying the other three unconscious
men and labeling them with the crimes they'd committed.

“They were hired to attack us,” she said, weariness piling on top of exhaustion. “But they did not know who hired them, nor did they see his face. It was a man, but he wore a cloak and hat, and kept to the shadows.”

“How do you know these things?” the French police captain demanded.

“The magic exposes their crimes. It shows them to me. Innocent blood does not want anything hidden.” A wave of horror swept over her and her knees crumpled. Jax caught her, held her steady, the sword's sheath bumping against her side.

“I have seen every last detail. More than anyone should have to see. But for them, for M. Villet and his wife and their three little boys, for Lily Charbonne and Jeanne-Anne Duval and Marie-Claire Beauvais and all of the others, I will do whatever is needed to give them their justice. They experienced the horror. I can bear to merely see it.”

She hadn't quite learned yet how to limit the magic only to vision, but it was better this time than the last. Surely next time would be easier still, less reliving the horror and more like watching a terrible, tragic play?

Was that what had made Yvaine into the cold creature she was? Years of cutting off her emotions while watching visions of depravity and cruelty? Or had she been unable to block the experiences and been filled with hate and the icy thirst for revenge? Amanusa wanted, needed to know. She did not want to become a copy of Yvaine, whose callous manner
surely had contributed much to the world's opinion of blood sorcery.