Captive Mate - Eliot Grayson Page 0,32

He paused with his hands wrapped around them. The touch of his skin made my flesh crawl. It wasn’t even necessarily a bad flesh-crawling, but…I wanted him to stop. I couldn’t explain it. The panic welled up again, bubbling through my chest like air pockets in gelatin, slow and heavy and viscous. “And he will. What he does afterward is up to all of you to sort out.”

Dor twisted his hands oddly, his fingers working some pattern on the cuffs I couldn’t begin to follow, and they fell away.

Sensation rushed back in. The trees around me, solid pillars of ancient life, flowing dark-green so slowly the human mind couldn’t encompass their motion. Bright sparks dotting the forest in all directions, tiny bursts of life-force so delicate they could be snuffed with little more than a thought: squirrels, birds, rabbits, mice, and the pinpricks of insects of every variety. Nate, a glowing bundle of energy in a tangle of conflicting currents. Ian, with his deep-red alpha strength throwing out heat, and the other weres, weaker but similar, each with their own flavor. Fenwick and Dor were voids in my senses, present by their absence. I shied away from them instinctively, like a mosquito blown off course by the swat of a giant hand.

And Matthew. Matthew, who was guttering like a candle, his life force reduced to the smallest burgundy ember. I could feel him most of all, tugging on me, trying to pull my life into his through the spell that bound us.

I could stop it. Easily. The spell was mine, and I could control it — with the fucking manacles gone, I could cut him off like closing a window, escape the effects the spell was having on me, and let him die instantly.

Instead I dived in, chasing that faint glow, wrapping my magic around it like a shield and feeding it the slightest trickle of energy. It was like blowing a tiny stream of air into a dying fire, giving it stronger temporary life and praying for a bit of kindling to fall into place. I held that, and I stretched my senses through his body, finding the source of his imminent death.

I’d expected poison of some kind, but this was worse: it was magical in nature, and it had been created by a shaman. And not just any shaman. The same one who’d watched while Parker brutalized me. I’d have known the oily feeling of his magic anywhere, and I flinched back, the touch of it against my own magic almost more repellent than the touch of his body would have been.

But I couldn’t remove it without touching it, since magical tweezers weren’t a thing. I braced myself and reached out, feeling the contours of it. It was an insidious little spell, bound to a physical compound that must’ve been coating Tyler’s claws. I made a mental note to dissect him later, if Parker hadn’t thought to carry off the body.

I grasped one particle of the magical filth and poured power through it, calling out to all the similar energies in Matthew’s body. They coalesced, slowly at first, and then rushing through Matthew’s veins in clotting, black clumps that gathered around my magical touch like tar. I pulled, and pulled, and finally it was all there.

One last pull, one violent yank, and poison oozed visibly from the wound in Matthew’s shoulder, flowing over his arm like a venomous snake.

“What the fuck is that?” Nate whispered. “It looks — it looks like death.”

“Get it off him and incinerate it.” I kept pulling. Nate made an exaggerated moue of disgust that might have made me laugh if I hadn’t needed to concentrate so hard, focused his own power, and started to gather up the goo and compress it into a levitating ball that hovered over Matthew’s chest.

At last it was all out, all together, and Nate swooped it away, dropping it onto the dirt a few yards away with a splat.

I felt a rush of power and heat. He was doing what I’d told him, thank the gods.

I closed my eyes again and dipped back into Matthew’s energy. That ember of life was still glowing, and now I could feed it and let his body take over. My strength poured into him as I opened the floodgates and gave him what he needed.

The magic hit him like a wrecking ball, and he arched off the ground, his mouth open in a silent scream. His head rolled on the ground, dust