“Dammit,” I mutter, pissed they got away. “And ow.” Gritting my teeth, I look at my arm. The arrow just grazed me, and I need to find it before someone finds it and reports the bloody weapon to the police. The last thing I need is my blood on file with the Chicago PD. It’s already been examined at one of the area’s biggest private research labs.
I look around the ground, knowing the arrow couldn’t have gone too far after it hit me. I’m on the sidewalk, in front of a large brick house that has impressive landscaping, which makes looking for the arrow difficult.
Blood drips down my arm, and I wince as I increase the pressure on the wound. I need to clean and bandage this fast. Before I can take another step, someone speeds over, moving so fast he’s just a blur in the night.
“Callie.” Lucas appears before me and puts his hands on my shoulders. “You’re bleeding. I smelled your blood a mile away. What the hell happened?” He cradles me against his chest and looks around, fangs already drawn.
“Witch hunters,” I grunt. “They left in a car. I need to find the arrow they shot me with.”
Lucas hesitates, not wanting to let me go in fear that another hunter will pop up out of nowhere and shoot me. But he knows we need that arrow so we can get off the street. He looks around, sniffs the air, and then lets me go, zooming away and coming back in just seconds.
“Your blood is easy to track.” He puts his arm around me and starts to guide me toward his house.
“I was leaving Abby’s when this happened,” I quickly explain. “I need to make sure they’re okay.”
Lucas’s jaw tenses but he nods, and then scoops me up and speeds across the street, stopping at my sister’s gate. Phil is still on the ground, mouth open as he stares out at me.
“C-Callie,” he stammers and climbs to his feet. “Are you okay?” His eyes go to Lucas and then to the blood dripping down my arm. “What the hell was that?”
“Witch hunters.”
Phil just stares at me for a good few seconds, the shock apparent on his face. Then he waves us in. “You’re bleeding.”
“Tis merely a flesh wound,” I say in a horrible British accent.
“Should you get your sister?” Lucas asks. “She’s a doctor.”
“I am too,” Phil says, still looking. “I can…I can clean you up.” He takes in a sharp breath but gets no oxygen.
“Breathe,” I tell him.
“Are they coming back?” he rushes out.
“I hope they do,” Lucas growls, fangs flashing.
“I cast a circle of protection around the house.” Blood oozes between my fingers. “They couldn’t if they tried.”
“Good,” Phil says but doesn’t sound too sure of himself. He leads me into the kitchen and has me sit at the island counter. “Were you shot or stabbed?”
Lucas holds up the silver-tipped arrow. “She was grazed with this.”
Phil pulls towels out of a cabinet, hands shaking. He’s one of the best urologists in the Midwest. The sight of blood or any sort of injury isn’t going to rattle him.
It’s knowing someone tried to kill me right here on his front porch that’s freaking him the fuck out, and I can’t say I blame him one bit.
“Remove your hand,” he tells me and presses a towel against the wound instead. He gives me another to wipe my bloody hand with, and he looks at the blood and then at Lucas several times, wondering how Lucas is able to control himself.
While you can count on pretty much all young vampires to lose control at the sight or smell of blood, older vampires like Lucas know how to control themselves, and seeing blood is no different than a human walking into an all-you-can-eat buffet and not going hog-wild on the food.
“I didn’t know witch hunters were a thing.” Phil’s eyes widen and he carefully peels back the towel. “Though I never would have known witches were a thing if I hadn’t married your sister.”
“The more you know,” I say through gritted teeth. “Humans have been trying to kill us since the beginning of time. It’s one of the reasons we prefer to stay in the dark. It’s not fun being hunted.”
“You weren’t even doing anything.” Phil’s brows pinch together.
“I know.” I turn, taking a glance at the damage. My dress didn’t get torn and I think I can wash most of the blood out. I hope so at least. I like this dress and I’ve only worn it two times before. Tossing it would be such a waste. “Witches aren’t terrible monsters like the fairytales make us out to be. Most of us are regular people with regular jobs who just happen to have powers.”
Phil flits his eyes to Lucas again. “Can you…can you hold this? You need to apply pressure to try and stop the bleeding while I get the first aid kit.”
Lucas cocks an eyebrow, but I give him the look, telling him to just keep his mouth shut and not tell Phil that he’s been tending to wounds and stopping bleeding for over a thousand years.
“Do you think she needs stitches?” Lucas asks, pressing the towel against my arm.
“I think a few butterfly bandaids will do the trick. I’m not seeing any fat or muscle tissue exposed, and the bleeding is slowing a lot.”
“I’m fine,” I press. I just need this disinfected, bandaged, and once it’s scabbed over, I’ll slather on healing balm and hopefully won’t get a scar. Though I was cut by my own enchanted dagger in the same freaking spot this past spring so there’s a good chance this is going to leave a mark.
“Keep the pressure on,” Phil tells Lucas and hurries out of the room to get the first aid kit.
“I will find who did this,” Lucas promises. “And I will inflict the same pain over and over, every day for the rest of their life.”
And Eliza calls me dark. “I think I already know who it was.”
“You do?”
“He called me a fang-banging whore. It might be easy for a hunter to figure out I’m a witch, but…”
“But only a few know you’re a witch who’s also fang-banging me.”
“Exactly.”
“I knew I should have ripped Easton’s fucking throat out when I had the chance,” Lucas snarls.
“It wasn’t him,” I say quickly. “I saw the first guy who shot at me and the second one was in the car, but it didn’t look like him.” I tip my head up, looking at Lucas. “Don’t go thinking I’m defending him now, because I’m not. He might be hotheaded, arrogant, and doesn’t know when to leave well enough alone, but I honestly don’t think he’d be stupid enough to try and attack me like that.”
Lucas is still holding the arrow in his other hand and holds it up. “There are engravings on the shaft of the arrow.” He turns the arrow over and the tip glints under the bright kitchen lights. “And this is sharp. Whoever tried to kill you tonight meant business. This would kill both you and me.”
“They were a good shot,” I admit. “When I opened the front door, it was aimed right for my heart.”
“Do you have a way of getting a hold of Easton?” Lucas asks as Phil comes back into the room.
“I have Miranda’s number. I’ll call her.”
I close my eyes as Phil cleans up and bandages my arm, not from the pain, but from feeling more and more overwhelmed. Can’t one group at a time try to kill me?
“So witch hunters,” Phil starts, voice shaky. “How did they know you were here?”
“Someone had to have tipped them off I was back in the city,” I answe
r, slitting my eyes open. Lucas stands behind Phil, watching him wipe blood away from my skin. “I think I know who, and I’m sorry they came after me while I was here.”
“You shouldn’t have to be sorry for that,” he says, brows furrowing. “But…are they going to come back?” he asks again.
“No, they knew I was here and were waiting for me. Witch hunters only go after witches. Though they continually seem to underestimate me.”
Lucas catches my eye and tips his head slightly, then looks at Phil. I know what he’s asking, and I give him a tiny nod.
“You’ve had witch hunters go after you before?”
“I have,” I sigh. Might as well tell him everything now since Lucas is going to take away his memory in just a few minutes. “When I was sixteen. I came from Grim Gate Academy—it’s a school for witches—for the summer so I could spend time with Abby. But our asshole father arranged for her to go do some sort of summer internship at a hospital so we didn’t get to spend any time together.”
“Abby told me about that. She still regrets it, you know.” Phil tosses the bloody wipes in the trash and comes back, removing his rubber gloves. “She feels really awful for what happened to you. I didn’t know about it until recently. She was so ashamed.”
“I don’t blame her,” I say, looking into Phil’s eyes. I want him to keep this memory. “Not at all. She’s only a few years older than me. She couldn’t have done anything, and I know now that part of her taking that internship was because she was afraid of William Martin.”
“Yes, it was.”
“So, the warding I put on your house protects you from evil, which covers the obvious, but might also include what I specifically think is evil. So don’t be surprised if William and Nancy can’t come into the house.”
“I’ve never been that big of a fan of my in-laws,” he admits. This is the most one-on-one time I’ve ever spent with Phil, and I’m starting to realize he’s not as bad as I thought. I knew he was a nice guy, he had to be for Abby to want to marry him, but he’s not as douchey as I thought.
“That makes two of us,” I sigh. “But anyway, that summer I met this guy I thought was really into me. Turns out he knew I was a witch and was just pretending to like me so he could get close and kill me.”