Black Heart (Cursed Hearts 1)

“I’m going back to bed,” she announced, turning around and heading for the stairs, deciding that she could make her call upstairs before she crashed for the day.

“Are ye sure, lass?” Quinn asked, joining her on the stairs.

“Yes,” she said, pressing her fingertips to her temple that was already starting to throb.

Instead of disappearing like she’d expected him to, he continued to walk with her up the stairs. When he took a right turn at the top of the stairs to walk towards her bedroom she said, “You don’t have to follow me.”

“I’m afraid that I do, lass,” Quinn answered with a careless shrug and a gesture for her to keep walking when she stopped to frown up at him.

“No, you don’t.”

“Aye, I do.”

“No, you really don’t,” she stressed, feeling her patience begin to fray.

He leaned down until his face was only a few inches away from hers and with a devilish grin said, “Aye, I really do.”

“And why is that?”

“Because it’s my watch,” he said with a wink as he stepped back and gestured for her to continue.

“There really isn’t any point in arguing with you, is there?” she asked, too exhausted to put up much of an argument and not dumb enough to even try for two very important reasons.

They were dealing with spirits and as stubborn as she was, she had to admit that she was out of her league on this one. She didn’t know how to protect herself against them and doubted that it was even possible since their touch seemed to paralyze her with fear and dread. It was an experience that she never wanted to repeat again if she could help it.

The other reason that she didn’t even bother to argue with Quinn was very simple, he was Tristan’s brother and obviously just as stubborn as her husband. Any other day or situation and she’d probably argue with him just to wipe that smug smile off his face, but today she was exhausted, cranky and wanted nothing more than to crawl back in bed with her husband and sleep the rest of the day away.

“Ye won’t even know we’re here,” Quinn explained with a touch of arrogance that had her rethinking her decision not to argue.

“Fine,” she sighed, resigning herself to the fact that she just didn’t have the energy to do anything more than send her father a text message letting him know that they were both going to be out sick for the day. Once that was done she shut the phone off and placed it on Tristan’s bureau as she walked by it. She’d wait until after they got a little sleep before she worried about how she was going to drag Tristan to see a doctor for his shoulder.

It was probably going to take a lot of threatening, pleading, and manipulation on her part to get him to a doctor, but this time he was definitely going. Last night she’d been overwhelmed, stressed, and trying to get over the scare that Tristan gave her to put up much of a fight when he’d refused to go to the emergency room. His arm and shoulder were covered with bruises, slightly swollen and obviously causing him a great deal of pain. He needed to go to the doctor and if she had to, she would drag his stubborn ass all the way there. First however, she really needed some sleep before she dropped dead from exhaustion.

She nearly wept with relief when she pulled back the covers and crawled in bed with Tristan, who was still sound asleep. The half hour of sleep she’d managed to get last night, or rather this morning hadn’t been enough to wipe away a month’s worth of exhaustion. A day of rest should take care of that problem, she’d decided an hour ago when she’d forced herself to get up and go hunt down her cell phone so that she could call in sick.

Tristan wasn’t going to be happy and he’d probably bitch and glare at her when he woke up, but she didn’t care. He was just as exhausted as she was, if not more. He needed some rest and if this was the only way to make sure that he got it, then-

Why was the bed so hot? It felt like she’d crawled into a sauna. In a matter of seconds, she was sweating and shoving the covers away.

“Is everything alright, lass?” Quinn asked, stepping away from the wall, disappearing a split second later and reappearing by the bed before she could tell him that everything was fine, but one look at Tristan’s still body had her questioning that assumption.

“Tristan?”

When he didn’t open his eyes or show any sign that he’d heard her, she placed her hand on his good arm to give him a little shake, but the instant that she touched him, she knew that she’d made a mistake in giving in last night.

“Tristan?” she said, trying not to panic as she shook him. “Tristan?”

“Lad?” Quinn grabbed Tristan by his good shoulder and rolled him over onto his back. “Ah, shit……”

“I-I need my phone,” she said, swallowing back the panic as her eyes locked on the large dark purple bruises covering his left shoulder and half of his arm. That alone would have been enough to terrify her, but the swollen angry red almost purple skin that surrounded the bruises was the real reason that she was suddenly terrified beyond words.

She was by no means an expert on injuries, but thanks to the summer first aid courses that Tom ran every year she knew enough to know that Tristan’s injury was very serious and definitely infected. They needed to get him to the hospital so that a doctor could have a look at the shoulder and fix it so that she could kill Tristan for scaring her like this.

“I’m verra sorry, lass,” Quinn sighed with a small shake of his head as he stepped back.

“You’re not the one that hurt him,” she pointed out as she pressed the back of her hand against Tristan’s damp forehead.

“That’s not what I’m sorry for.”

“Could you get my phone please?” He was definitely burning up. Maybe she should grab some ice packs and try to cool him down while they waited for help. She moved off the bed to go grab as much ice as she could carry when she remembered that she’d forgotten to make more earlier after she’d used the last ice cubes up.

Shit.

Wait, no this wasn’t a problem, she assured herself as she headed for the door. Beth always kept a couple of bags of ice in the chest freezer just in case they lost power. Hopefully Tom was home and could bring the ice over, because she didn’t like the idea of having to leave Tristan’s side right now. Before she did anything else she still needed to call 911, she realized when she saw that her phone still sitting on the top of the bureau.