Page 55 of The Witch They Fear

He's fast. I'll give him that. One second the field is emptying around me and the next he's there, blocking the light, standing close enough that my magic does its lurching, current-reversal pull hard enough to make my stomach flip.

"Walk with me," he says.

"No."

"Wasn't asking."

His hand closes around my upper arm—above the bandages, above the burns, but the grip is firm enough that my options are walk or be dragged. I choose walk. He steers me behind the equipment shed at the far end of the field, out of Zeva's sightline, into the narrow strip of shadow between the shed wall and the oak line.

"You've got thirty seconds," I say. "And then I scream and my enforcer puts a hole in you."

"She's welcome to try." He lets go of my arm. Steps back just enough to lean against the shed wall, blocking the exit with his body. His eyes drop to my forearms. To the bandages.

His nostrils flare.

"I could smell it when you walked onto the field." His voice is different—lower, rougher, stripped of the teasing edge. "Charred skin. Under the gauze. Burns." His jaw works. "You did that to yourself, didn’t you?"

I don't answer. My hand moves to cover the bandages instinctively.

He reaches out and grabs my wrist. Before I can pull back, his other hand finds the edge of the gauze near my elbow and rips. One sharp pull—the bandage tears away, unraveling down my forearm, and the burns are exposed. Raw, blistered, the handprint pattern obscene in the morning light.

"Don't—"

He grabs the other arm. Rips that bandage too. Both forearms bare now, the twin handprints seared into my skin, my own fingers permanently outlined in damaged tissue.

He stares at them. The smirk is gone. The teasing is gone. His mouth is a flat line and his nostrils are still flared and I watch his hands—the ones holding my wrists—start to tremble. Not fear. Rage. The kind that lives so deep in the body it bypasses the face entirely and goes straight to the hands.

"You blasted me twenty feet across a field," he says. Quiet. Too quiet. "But you didn’t leave lasting damage like this."

"Let go of me."

"You're more violent with yourself than you were with me. You know that? You threw me like a ragdoll and I walked away without a scratch but this?" He holds up my forearm. The handprint. "—this. Why?"

"Because the alternative was worse."

"The alternative was letting someone help you, wasn’t it?"

"The alternative was burning down a room with someone inside it!" My voice comes out louder than I intended. The magic spikes behind my sternum—that familiar, terrible pressure—and I yank my arms free and step back. "You don't know what I—you don't know what happens when I lose control. People die."

"Yeah. I heard." Flat. Unimpressed. "You’re powerful. You’re unpredictable. You killed people. And what? You’ve been punishing yourself for it every since"

I stare at him. Breathing hard. The burns throb in the open air.

He moves. Fast—wilder, less controlled, a predator closing distance because the distance offended it. He bites into his own wrist. Fangs sinking into skin with a wet, vicious sound that makes my stomach lurch. Blood wells up—dark, almost black in the morning shadows—and before I can process what I'm seeing he grabs my shoulder and spins me.

One hand whipping me around so my back slams against his chest. His arm locks around my stomach—tight, crushing, pinning my arms to my sides—and his bleeding wrist comes over my shoulder and presses against my mouth.

His body is cold. That's my first insane thought—he's cold, the way all vampires are cold, but up close it's sharper, more absolute, like pressing your back against a marble wall. I can feel every inch of him behind me. The hard plane of his chest. The belt buckle digging into my lower back. And his nose—his nose—dragging along the side of my neck, inhaling slow and deep, a low sound vibrating in his throat that I feel more than hear.

"Drink."

I thrash. Kick backward against his shins, wrench my body sideways, try to duck under the arm banded around my stomach—but he's a wall, solid and immovable, centuries of muscle and bone holding me in place. My hands claw and wiggle to get free. My heels slam into his boots. His arm doesn't budge. His wrist stays sealed over my mouth and his blood is hot—his blood is hot even though his body is cold, the contrast making my brain short-circuit—slick and metallic against my lips, seeping through no matter how hard I clamp them shut, coating my teeth, sliding across my tongue.

His nose drags up the side of my neck to the spot behind my ear. "Drink," he snarls against my skin, and I feel the word vibrate through his chest into my spine.

I swallow.

It's involuntary—a reflex, my throat closing around the blood before my brain can veto it. One mouthful. Hot and metallic and alive in a way that food has never been alive, and the second it hits my stomach the world goes sideways.