Kilian was floating. Disconnected. The last time he had lost his magic, he had been driven to madness, but now all he wanted to do was sleep.
Ashes to ashes.
Dust to dust.
Kilian was drifting when Silas pressed a bleeding wrist against his mouth. “Drink, child.”
Kilian did not have the strength, but Silas rubbed his throat. Kilian swallowed against the irritation, and magic trickled into him, filling all the empty places where the witch had been hiding, where her bloated magic had stretched every bit of his supernatural nature out of shape, leaving gaping wounds and abscesses behind.
“Drink,” Silas repeated, and Kilian obeyed his sire.
Chapter Nineteen
Kilian woke, everysense on alert as he searched for danger. The whirlwind of magic had vanished and he smelled trees and the faint stink of dog shit under the much stronger odor of a wood fire. Part of Kilian wanted to keep his eyes closed because as long as he clung to the darkness, the demon couldn't find him. That was horrifically illogical logic, but Kilian had had a shitty day, and he didn’t much care about being rational.
However, he needed to face whatever danger remained. He slowly opened his eyes to bright sunlight coming in through tall windows and a cheery fire in a rustic stone fireplace.
“You're awake!” Stephen perched on the edge of a straight-back dining room chair at the side of Kilian’s bed. A hospital bed. A hospital bed in the middle of what appeared to be a resort. Kilian had missed something important.
“What happened?”
Stephen reached out, but then pulled his hand back at the last second and twisted his fingers together. “Do you remember banishing the demon?”
Kilian thought he remembered, but if he had touched wood from Christ's cross and invoked Christ's name, he would have been a pile of ash drifting on the wind, so his memories were faulty. “Is it gone?” Kilian asked.
Stephen nodded.
“Are you okay?”
Stephen snorted. “I'm better than you. You needed surgery to remove a dead witch, and your hand is...” Stephen grimaced. Kilian lifted his hand, expecting a bare skeleton to shake apart at the movement, but instead his injured hand was a mass of gristle and exposed muscle. As gruesome as it looked, that was an improvement.
“Where are we?” That seemed the most pertinent question since their current location was relevant to any plans.
“You were unconscious and Silas said that if he fed you too much blood that it could fuse the witch’s body to yours because your magical nature would embrace all the connected flesh. So he said we needed to call Mia.”
“Did the Army arrest us?” Kilian asked.
