Banishing the Dark
Page 54

Electric pain shot through my arms as Lon’s chest seized.
“Lon!” I shouted in his face, as if that would help.
Breathe, dammit! I pinched his nose again, but when I fitted my mouth over his, he jerked and gasped for air.
“Oh, thank God,” I said, silvery tears blurring my sight.
His eyes opened, but he didn’t see me. He was struggling for breath. His body wasn’t moving.
Venom.
Fuck.
I started to slice open the snakebite on his arm. Were you supposed to do this or not? I couldn’t remember! But when I set the blade against his skin, I stopped.
All knacks. I had all of them, including healing. And if I could perform metaphysical surgery on Yvonne to dig out a damn spell, then removing venom had to be possible. Somehow.
Wrapping my hand around his injured arm, I closed my eyes and pushed my consciousness inside him. If I was afraid I wouldn’t know what I was looking for or how to find it, I was wrong, because the venom was as bright as neon in fog. It didn’t belong. And it was everywhere. Unlike what I’d done to Yvonne, I couldn’t just rip this out.
In my panic, the only thing I could think to do was picture my hand as a magnet and the venom as one of those Wooly Willy toys, the one with a magnetic wand that could be used to create a beard or a mustache made of metal fillings over a drawing of a man’s face. If Lon lived, we could laugh about it later.
Come to me, I thought, willing the venom out of him. Leave this body. I repeated it like a mantra, over and over, not giving a good goddamn if it was tipping my crazy scales to be talking to some animal’s body fluid. I cared about nothing but the sound beneath my ear, where I’d laid my head on Lon’s chest to hear his heart. How remarkable it was that I fit so perfectly there, in the dip of his breastbone. I had the oddest feeling of déjà vu. As if it was the most natural thing in the world for me to be lying there on top of him. As if I belonged there.
Please. I’ll do anything, please.
Christ. One kiss and a hand job from the man, and I was ready to give away my soul to keep him alive. But I didn’t have long to dwell on that, because two things happened at once.
Something warm slid against my hand.
And beneath my ear, Lon’s chest rumbled. He was coughing.
“Lon!” I pushed myself up to give him room.
His halo bloomed around the crown of his head. Alive! Most definitely alive. He cracked open his eyes and looked surprised to see me. In a rough voice, he asked, “Where is he?”
“You’re not dead,” I said stupidly. Then I started blubbering like a maniac.
“Hey, whoa.” He strained to pull himself up.
“Don’t move,” I said through the tears. “Your heart just stopped, you idiot. Oh, Jesus, that was—” My hand was tingling. I loosened my grip on Lon’s arm to find blood-tinged liquid dripping off my hand. The venom, hell’s bells. Well, at least it distracted me from crying. I wiped it on the side of my jeans—they were ruined anyway, what with the new tail hole.
Lon reached up to swipe a thumb under my eyes. “Where’s Payne?” he asked again.
“Dead in the viper pool. We’re safe.”
Despite my protests, Lon sat up and inspected his wound. The swelling was already going down. “You did this?”
“Well, not the biting part, but yeah. I just—”
“How did you get out of the temple? I heard glass breaking.”
“I jumped.”
“Cady! Jesus. You can’t do that. Are you okay? Are you feeling any pains?”
“Just my knees. My God, I’m not some precious porcelain doll. I healed myself in the hospital, as you kindly reminded me before you gave me that angry orgasm in the hotel room.”
He made a strangled noise. One hand clamped around the back of my neck. He pulled me close and kissed me firmly. “You saved my life,” he said against my lips.
“Technically, I brought you back to life. Or, at least, back from the brink of death. Not too shabby for an abomination,” I said with a tight smile.
He made a low noise as his gaze moved over my face. “You’re the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.”
“Please don’t make me cry again.”
“Your mother—”
I shook my head. “I haven’t heard her. But I probably shouldn’t stay like this much longer. Tell me how you feel. Are you tingling? I don’t know if I got it all. Should I try to heal you some more? I don’t want your skin to turn black and fall off, and what about your heart? Does it feel right? I’m not—”
“All right, already. Enough with the questions. You sound just like Jupe.”
“But—”
“I’m a little light-headed, and my arm hurts like a motherfucker.” He rotated it and flexed his fingers. “But I can move it, which is something I couldn’t do about ten seconds after Payne forced that damned snake to sink its fangs into me. Where the hell is that thing?”
“Somewhere over there.” I gestured toward the downed fence. “Payne took my phone. Do you have yours?”
“I’ll tell you if you get off me.”
“Oh,” I said, slightly embarrassed, as I rocked away from him and teetered on one knee.
“Don’t be. I like you on top. And for the record, it wasn’t an angry orgasm.” The corners of his mouth quirked up in a dirty little smile that made me fall backward onto my ass. Which hurt. In a weird way. It took me a second to realize I was sitting on my tail.