The two different feelings war within me, until I’m confused, conflicted—like there are two separate people inside me taking this all in. Two separate moral codes that are making very different judgments.
That makes no sense, especially considering I don’t suffer from multiple personality disorder. Or at least, I never have before.
“Xandra, darling.” Declan’s voice intrudes on the strange fog that seems to have enveloped me. As it does, it snaps me back from the edge of whatever crazy cliff I’m standing on.
Horror overwhelms me—at my own moment of callousness as much as at the sight of Councilor Alride—and I stumble backward, hand pressed against my mouth.
“Are you going to be sick?” Declans asks.
“No.” But I bend over, let the blood rush back to my head. Better safe than sorry.
He’s right there, rubbing my back, all concerned eyes and worried voice. As I struggle to pull air into my tortured lungs, it occurs to me that this is the reaction he’s been looking for. What he’s been expecting all along—a minor freak to show just how incapable I am of handling the darker aspects of this gift he’s brought into my life.
Once I can breathe, I look up. See the guilt shining in eyes as dark as obsidian.
It straightens my spine, pulls me back from the edge in a way nothing else could have right now. “It’s okay,” I tell him, running a hand down his back.
Then I turn to my best friend. “Lily, are you okay?”
She stares at me with haunted, incredulous eyes. “Are you kidding me?”
“Take her into the hall,” Declan tells me. But even as he says it, we know it’s not going to happen. I won’t be able to move from this room until Councilor Alride has been cut down.
“I’m fine,” she tells us. “Just do whatever you have to do so we can get the hell out of here.”
I don’t bother to tell her that it doesn’t work like that. I’m too busy staring at the body at the front of the room again. Now that I have my feelings under control, my earlier impressions are all ricocheting back—one thought chief among them.
“Declan?” I ask, looking over the carnage with the most impersonal eyes I can manage.
“Yeah, baby?” I can feel his resistance in every breath he takes, every word he doesn’t say. He wants nothing more than to gather me up and take me as far away from this place as we can get. The fact that he can’t—that it simply is not possible—is ripping at him the same way the compulsion ripped at me earlier.
It’s another realization, another by-product of our relationship that I’ll have to think on later. Because right now, my mind is occupied by just one thing—the bold and terrifying truth staring back at me out of Councilor Alride’s unseeing eyes.
“There’s no blood.”
Twelve
“What?” Declan snaps out the single syllable, but I can tell he’s looking at the scene with new eyes.
“Oh God,” Lily moans as she comes to stand next to me. She wraps an arm around my waist—as much to comfort as to take comfort.
“He’s been cut open, his internal organs have literally fallen out of his abdominal cavity and he’s hanging from the ceiling.” The place should be drowning in blood, but it’s not. There’s almost nothing, just a scattering of drops on the desk. “So where’s the blood?”
It’s a rhetorical question. Whoever murdered Councilor Alride bled him dry first, and took the blood with him when he left. There’s only one reason for that, and it isn’t a good one. The darkest magic, the blackest form of Heka in existence, uses blood magic. The strength of the spells, of the power, depends partially on the practitioner and partially on the blood.
The blood of a Councilor would make some very, very powerful magic.
On the heels of that thought comes the realization that we need to start tracking his blood. I’m not sure that’s even possible, but if it is, someone needs to do it. The alternative—that all that blood, all that power, is just out there for someone to tap into—is terrifying.
Bleeding someone out—
How did you get here? You need to leave immediately. Councilor Alride’s voice booms through my head, blocking everything out but the deep tenor of his words. The fact that they echo Declan’s so closely has me blinking, confused, at the angry man looming over me. The very angry, very alive man.
When I don’t answer, he continues. What are you doing? Stay right there. Don’t come any closer. I’m calling security. He reaches for the phone. I’m—
The crack of a whip sounds over his angry posturing. Pain—sharp, focused, hot—rips through my hand. My arm.