Page 87

I opened another book, opening it to dive before flames shot at me, tendrils seeking the oxygen from the tome I picked.

I slammed it shut and shuffled back. I spat and hacked, using saliva to wet the inside of my shirt as much as I could before clutching it flush to my face. The wet cloth filtered what it could as the flames sucked in and I charged forward, stumbling over ash, toppled books, bits of broken wood and char as I reached for the doorknob, hand trembling.

A microsecond before I touched the doorknob, I realized my mistake and screamed the moment the sharp hiss penetrated my ears. “Ahh! Fuck!”

The sharp pain shot up my arm and throbbed in tune to my beating heart, pulsing in a way that told me the damage hadn’t gone too deep. If I couldn’t feel it, then I should have worried.

I fought my shirt off and wrapped my hand, using it as protection to twist the knob and barge in, vision growing dim as I swept the room with my gaze, focusing on the singed edges of an open book on his desk.

As sputtering flames fought with the flood of carbon dioxide fog, I forced myself into the book, shucking my shirt back on to protect myself from the sparks and embers gusting through.

I stumbled and choked down a lungful of air, wheezing and coughing as I registered my surroundings—a grim field of ash and dead animals… Cats? “What kind of serial killer shit is this?”

My thundering heart and waning air made my head spin as I searched around me for my mate, vision still white at the edges as I gulped stagnant, filthy air and registered two things.

Zeke lay on the ground, blood pooled around his head from a wound that was nothing less than fatal.

Standing above him in a half crouch was a sneering man in all black, dust and ash peppering his clothes. Striking blue eyes peered at me above a cloth mask but beneath the rolled brim of a toboggan. His eyes widened in surprise, and he stood abruptly, bloody key dangling from one hand, gun from the other.

Without thinking, I charged.

“You weren’t supposed to be here!” The man windmilled backward, arms swinging away from me as he dropped the key and fell onto his ass on one of the many skeletons with a brittle crunch.

What little training I’d had in the realm of books and self-defense kicked in as I focused everything I had. I kicked out, aiming right for the dude’s dick with every bit of force I could muster. When the satisfying thwack of my shoe to his junk rang out from the rafters, I took his bellow of pain and curl as an opening to slam my foot against his nose and realized very quickly, the man who’d done this had zero self-preservation skills. He wasn’t trained to do this, had no experience, and from the way he restrained himself, had orders not to touch me.

Still.

I kicked him right in the dick again.

As he choked on blood and the hopeful loss of his virility, I forced the key and chain back around my bloody mate’s neck and turned Zeke’s head in time to check him over.

Blood from his mouth.

Eyes blank.

Every part of my brain told me that logically Zeke was dead, but Isa promised me the key would protect, but only until a doctrinus or inscriptor—I caught a glimpse of something broken on the ground, stomped into the dust, a half-crumpled pen with red ink. I snatched it up and breathed hard as I glanced from it to Zeke’s hand.

I wrapped his fingers around the pen and clenched my burned hand over his, fisting the pen as I used it to write in the air, breathing harshly as I desperately tried to align my mind and magic to the world as both a physical plane and a page.

A protesting rasp and cough came from the assailant as I wrote the only thing I could think of. ’Tis only a flesh wound.

Nothing happened.

I panted and squeezed Zeke’s hand, willing his power to work, and all I could do was outline the words again and scream it. Nothing else. “’Tis only a flesh wound!”

Zeke gasped air and choked, body bowing right as the rattle of a shaking hand holding heavy metal interrupted my thoughts.

I thought it before I could write it, saying it aloud while not knowing why, “Knife to a gunfight!”

The gun in the man’s hand fumbled and in a blink, clattered to the floor as a rainbow sheen of one of those cheap gas station pocketknives with the titanium-anodized coating clattered to the ground, blade snapping from the handle as it did so.

Zeke was up before I was, diving atop the man with all the strength he could muster. Fist in hair, Zeke had the man on the ground, beating his head into the concrete until I shouted, screaming before he listened, “Stop!”

Zeke halted, body heaving as he glanced over his shoulder, teeth bared, alpha fangs on display, body nearly vibrating with the urge to protect me.

A hard twist in my belly sent pain rucking through my bladder.

Something felt weird as something warm then cold eased that sensation.