Raven (Legends Saga Book 2) (15 page)

The moment he stepped away from her, the chill of solitude lashed at
Ireland’s soul and cut deep. Bending eye-level with her withering subjects, Ridley pursed his rose petal lips to blow a soft, healing breath over both of them. Wan complexions of the dying were ripened to plump apricot. Both men blinked away their disappointment before dipping in a low bow—foreheads to the ground in a show of respect.

“No need for that, boys.” Ridley s
moothed the front of his suit coat, a self-depreciating chuckle playing over his lips.

Neither humbled servant budged.

“You’re like me?” Pacing in a slow circle around him, Ireland’s eyes narrowed.

He matched her steps, leading them in an intimate waltz normally reserved for predators—or lovers.

“Like you?” He tsked. “Oh no, my darling flower. There is no other like you. Our only similarity is being pawns in a game that began centuries before either of our fathers got an amorous gleam in their eyes.”

Ireland
’s gaze lingered over the soft curve of his mouth, wondering if his lips could possibly taste as delectable as they looked. “How do we play?”

Curling
one finger into a ruffled tuft of her skirt, Ridley pulled her to him. Bowing his head, he brushed his cheek over the delicate curve of her collarbone. “The game is already in motion,” he murmured. “The rule sheet not meant for our eyes. All we can do now is stay alive.” 

Ireland weaved her fingers into his hair, yanking his head back with a passion driven force
that bordered on violent. “I’ve taken lives. I’m a monster,” she snarled against his lips, tormenting them both with the agonizing veil of energy that denied their touch.

His hand snaked up her arm
to find her fingers and loosen her grasp. Palm to palm. Fingers entwined with fingers. “Does granting it make me any better?”

Ridley didn’t give her time to answer
. With one hand pressed to the small of her back he crushed her to him. Their lips met with a desperate urgency that caused Heaven and Earth to quake in nervous anticipation of what was coming … 

A soft chorus of beeps roused Ireland from what was turning out to be a disturbingly hot dream. Fighting against medicinally weighted down eyelids, she struggled to reclaim her consciousness. Her head lulled to the side, the pillow beneath rustling like sandpaper, in search of the warm and delicate touch that cocooned her right hand. She expected Noah to be the cause as he diligently hovered by her bedside. A dry rasp, that sounded a little too much like a groan, escaped her parched throat before she could stifle it. The cause? Ridley, staring down at her while clutching her hand in both of his. Behind him was a backdrop of medical supplies and contraptions.

A plethora of questions pirouetted through her mind
,
Why are you touching me? Where are we? Did I make sex noises in my sleep? What the hell happened? Are you really that good a kisser?
Thankfully, the one that snuck past her chapped lips was, “Where’s Noah?”

Ridley rubbed the rough stumble of his chin against his shoulder to scratch it instead of releasing his hold on her suddenly sweaty
palm. “Rip watched them insert your I.V. and hit the floor like a chopped tree. A flurry of activity followed. It seems to the medical community a black out like that is a cause for concern. Noah followed them out, screaming at them that using a defibrillator on a narcoleptic would make matters far worse. I’m sure he’ll be back soon.”

The simple act of swallowing
awoke what seemed to be shimming razor blades lining Ireland’s throat. “You’re surprisingly articulate for a guy that admitted to conversing with an invisible orangutan a few hours ago.” Wincing and adjusting her position, she attempted to retract her hand from his. “Can I have that back, please?”

“No!”
he barked, then immediately attempted a softer approach at her wide-eyed reaction. “I’ll explain, I promise. Just, please, don’t let go yet.”

As o
dd and uncomfortable as it was to endure physical contact of any kind with the guy she just dream cheated with, Ireland couldn’t bring herself to deny his desperately pleading eyes. “Okay, easy.” Her free hand rose, the heart monitor waving off her pointer finger, to halt his freak out. “Take a breath and maybe loosen your grip a little. I’d like to be able to feel those fingers again when you’re done with them.”

“Sorry.
It’s just …” His scruffy chin fell to his chest. His pause dragging on in his hunt for the right words, “Right after the birds, everything changed. I started hearing … voices.”

Feeling her eyebrows raise, Ireland struggled to maintain a neutral façade and prayed
her expression came across as even remotely casual. “What kind of voices? More ‘
Come play with us, Danny
’ or ‘
If you build it, they will come’
?”

“Horrible ones, saying ghastly things.”

“The Stephen King variety then. Never a good omen. Can you hand me that water?” Ireland rasped, lifting one finger to point at the tray behind him.

Ridley
released her hand with
one
of his. The wheeled stool beneath him squealed its protest as he pivoted to retrieve the Styrofoam cup. Positioning it beneath her chin, he guided the bendy straw to her lips. “The visions started soon after that. Awful, horrible things that would make every scary movie ever made look like a Pixar fairytale. I felt myself on the verge, about to break. Then, at the cottage, I realized there is one thing that can make it all go away—
your touch
. The moment you took my hand, you hushed all their ghostly shouts and scared away their rotted forms.”

Cringing at the pain that jolted through her contract
ed her muscles from tipping her head, Ireland eased herself back down on to the pillow. “We’re really going to have the ‘I see dead people’ talk?”

“I guess you could say that,” he huffed
with an almost smile. “Only they were well aware they had died and were ten degrees of pissed off about it. Like when the EMTs first wheeled you in here, two men appeared in the hallway charred to black smoldering briquettes. They were gang members burned alive in front of their rivals as sport. Can you imagine anyone doing something like that in jest?”

Her mind drifting to the Horseman living in
side of her and all the atrocities he committed, Ireland shifted her gaze away guiltily and merely nodded her head.

After s
etting the cup back down, Ridley leaned his forearms against the edge of her hospital bed. His index finger traced the edges of her sugar skull tattoo. An intimate gesture Ireland bristled at, however considering that he was pouring his heart out she refrained from clubbing him with her I. V. pole—for now.

“One spirit in particular
warned me that there was more to this than the voices and apparitions. He claimed,” Ridley’s tongue flicked out to wet his lips before he pressed on, “that my touch could … resurrect the dead.”

A fresh rush of panic launched Ireland’s
palpating heart into her throat and lodged it there. “I was stabbed …
oh, God
. But … that’s not … you didn’t bring
me
back did you?”   

The terms of her curse were quite simple; the Horseman is unending. Ireland’s death would not stop it. Instead, the end of her mortal life would allow the beast to run free without
the limitations of her humanity to keep it in check. Her hand fluttered nervously to her neck, wishing the talisman, which kept her other half at bay, there.

“No.
No,
” He reiterated for emphasis. “Your wound—severe as it is—miraculously missed anything vital. Before we arrived here at the hospital the EMTS already had you stabilized.”

Puffing her cheeks,
Ireland exhaled a relieved sigh through pursed lips.

Ridley
bowed his head sheepishly. His gaze cast to the flimsy blanket that covered her, he found a fuzz ball and plucked it free. “Even if you hadn’t been, I couldn’t have attempted it. Not after what the spirit told me.”

Whether she believed his story or not—and really
, she was the
last
person that should
ever
accuse an idea of being too far-fetched—there was no denying that Ridley was a broken version of the man he’d been just yesterday. Gone was the chiseled heartthrob. Hours in his haunted hell had cut heavy bags under his eyes. Turmoil had sharpened his features, drained his complexion to a sickly yellow.

That alone was all the reason she needed to
hear him out. “What did he tell you?”

“That if I touch someone
like that, they come back … wrong. That’s why he led me to her. He wanted me to see for myself. A lesson I could’ve learned without the help of that terrifying visual aid, by the way.”

“So
, she was real?” Pinching her eyes shut, Ireland raised her free hand to massage her temples. “I get some pretty messed up visions of my own and I was
really
hoping she was one of them.”

“Nope, she’s very much real and very much still out there somewhere.”

“Well, aren’t you a sunbeam of happy news,” Ireland grumbled mostly to herself just as the pink curtain, spotted with yellow diamonds, that surrounded her bed hissed across the bar.

“Look who’s awake!” The doctor’s eyes crinkled at the corner
, the rest of his smile hidden beneath a surgical mask. His thick apple shape strained against the fabric of his light blue scrubs. “You gave us all quite a scare. It’s not every day we get a patient in here with a broad sword injury, of all things.”

“Well, that’s me.” Ireland stared at the drop ceiling overhead, blinking hard in a paltry attempt
to distract from the sharp ache drilling through her core. Whatever they had given her for pain was clearly wearing off. “Always thriving to be different.”

“Maybe next time just try an outlandish hair color.” Hooking his hand underneath the edge of the bedside tray, the doctor wheeled it around
to the edge of the bed and stopped it in front of him. From one scrub pocket he pulled a packaged syringe, from the other a small vial. “Now, it’s medication time. Which, unfortunately, means your boyfriend is going to have to step out for a minute.”

“I’m not her boyfriend.”

“He’s not my boyfriend” Ireland and Ridley clarified in unison before exchanging matching offended sneers at each other’s disgusted tones.

“No offense intended.” Amusement drew the doctor’s eyebrows up to his surgical cap as he gripped each side of the syringe packaging in a gloved hand and tore it open. “I saw the hand holding and took a guess.”

“He’s just really needy.” Ireland’s dry snort of laughter quickly morphed into a pained cringe.

“I hope that hurt.” Ridley glared out of the corner of his eye, his mouth twisting up to the side.

Turning the vial top down, the physician rolled it between his palms. “Friend, brother, neighbor, distant cousin—doesn’t really matter. You two can work that out between you,
after
I administer the medication. But for now, out ya go!”

For a brief moment
, Ridley had almost returned to himself. His over-confident Casanova gleam warmed his ocean blue eyes like the tropical sun coaxing lapping waves onto a white sandy shore. Yet all it took to turn those blue seas stormy was the mention of him extracting himself from her touch.

“I-I can look away,” he stammered in his building dismay. “But you have to understand after the scare she gave us, I hate to leave.” 

The doctor’s head cocked in sympathy. “I can respect that. Truly, I can. Even so, it’s hospital policy and my hands are tied. I’m sure you can understand that.”

Something in the physician’s comforting tone sparked a memory that skirted along the dark corners of Ireland’s mind, refusing to step into the light. She was snapped from this momentary reverie by Ridley’s hands tightening around hers in a vise grip that
threatened to reduce bones to splinters.

“Hey,”
her voice sounded weak even to her, but she fought for some semblance of assertiveness, “It’s only for a minute. You’ll be—” Her stare flicked to the doctor for a quick check that he hadn’t caught that very blatant slip up, “
—I’ll
be fine.  Then you can come right back in here and be the creepy guy watching me sleep, if you need to.”