Nightstruck - Jenna Black Page 0,83

from this range. But even if I had missed, Aleric would have at least flinched if he’d been lying about his invulnerability.

Just to be sure, I raised the gun to his chest again and pulled the trigger a second time. And again he just stood there patiently, unaffected.

Reluctantly, I lowered the gun. I hoped he was telling the truth about not being able to come inside. If my gun didn’t hurt him, then I didn’t suppose Luke’s fireplace poker would be any more effective. We had no way to defend ourselves.

“Satisfied?” Aleric asked with a quirk of his eyebrow and a jaunty smile that grated on my raw nerves.

“That’s not the word I’d use,” I answered, shivering in the cold that was pouring through my open door. “What is it you want with me, anyway?”

His eyes widened in mock surprise. “Isn’t that obvious? I want you to come out.”

“But why? Why me, I mean?”

He pursed his lips, and once again I had the feeling that he was searching for an answer, like I was somehow asking him questions he wasn’t expecting. “Because you’re special to me. Because we share a bond.”

“Bullshit! I don’t even know you, and I don’t want to.”

“The bond is there, whether you like it or not. I am blood of your blood, as it were.”

I felt momentarily dizzy and had to put a hand on the wall to steady myself. Blood of my blood.

“Becket?” Luke asked with concern. He touched my shoulder lightly. “Are you all right?”

I looked into Aleric’s eyes, at those electric green eyes that couldn’t exist in the natural world. Eyes I had first seen in the nearly invisible face of the not-baby I had tried to save. A creature I had bled onto, thanks to the hidden pin that had pricked me.

Blood has significance in folktales the world over, and though the magic that had taken over our nights was like no folktale I’d ever heard, it wasn’t hard to believe that blood was the key. That pin had been in the not-baby’s blanket for a reason. I remembered my thought that the creature’s eyes sparked with triumph when my blood hit it.

Luke’s hand tightened on my shoulder, the concern on his face deepening. “Talk to me, Becket. What’s wrong?”

How could I possibly answer that?

“She’s putting the pieces together,” Aleric answered for me. “Figuring out who and what I am.”

“B-But…” I stammered, then took a deep breath to try to pull myself together. “But that … thing … burst into a million little bits and blew away.”

Aleric nodded. “And so it did, spreading the seeds of magic all through the city. But your blood remained, rich with the magic it had absorbed, and I am what it produced. I might almost claim you as my mother.”

“You’re lying,” I said, without conviction.

“You know I’m not. You brought me into this world.”

Luke gave my shoulder a little shake. “Hey, don’t let this guy get to you. He … it is just trying to get into your head.”

“Like calls to like,” Aleric said. “Blood calls to blood. Come with me, and I can take all your pain away. You’ll be free of mourning and fear and loss. Anything you want can be yours. All you have to do is take it.”

My heart thumped loud and hard against my breastbone.

Luke stepped in front of me, shielding me from Aleric’s view and brandishing the fireplace poker. “You leave her alone,” he snarled. “She’s not coming with you, so get the hell out of here.”

Aleric laughed. “You couldn’t stop me from taking Piper. Hell, you didn’t even try. What makes you think you have any say in this?”

I couldn’t see Luke’s face, because he had his back to me, but I could see the red flush that crept up the back of his neck. It hadn’t occurred to me that he felt guilty about what had happened to Piper, that he might consider it was somehow his fault he wasn’t with her on the night she succumbed.

Aleric clearly had a knack for finding people’s weak spots. I moved forward to stand by Luke’s side, hoping to present a united front.

“Don’t let this guy get to you,” I said quietly, and Luke smiled ever so slightly to hear his own words echoed back at him.

“It’s so precious how the two of you defend each other,” Aleric said. He fixed me with a piercing stare. “I think you’ll find that changes when it sinks in that you’re directly responsible for