Chapter 341

I pulled my power to me and slammed it into Lynn. She arched off the bed and screamed. Wendy and Toya came running, and I could hear a faint yelp from Carly. I would explain it to her later, but right this second, my entire focus was on the woman slowly dying on my bed.

“Amy, what the hell are you doing?” Wendy came running to my side.

“Amy, stop.” Toya ran back from the cabin, but I shook my head.

“I can’t.” I was holding her wrist, but the blood wasn’t slowing. “Grab me a towel from the bathroom. Now.” Toya ran.

“What happened?” Wendy knelt next to me, putting her fingers against Lynn’s neck. Toya came back from the bathroom with a towel and held it out. I pulled my hand away from her wrist, and they both gasped.

“I needed her blood for the shield. I can’t bring her there until she is added to it. Otherwise, she can be traced there. I was just going to take a little blood.” I wrapped the towel around her wrist and squeezed. I held her arm to Wendy. “Squeeze. Hard.”

“Why isn’t she healing?” Toya looked at the blood on the floor.

I growled. “Vince and Derek, I think.”

Toya looked at me as I wrapped both hands around Lynn’s arm. “What did they do?”

“Wolfsbane,” was all I could get out. “Cover her mouth. I don’t want to scare Carly, and I have to use all my power to heal this.” She nodded and crawled into the bed with Lynn. She shifted her so that her head was in her lap and then covered her mouth with both hands. “This is going to be painful, Lynn. I’m sorry.”

I ran to the plant in my mind. She was beautiful and flourishing, and normally I can connect with my power no problem, but this time I wanted to go straight to the source. I slammed my hand into the soil, and I felt my magic filling me. I pulled more and more magic to me, as quickly as I could, but it was still slower than I liked.

I had to wait as the magic kept building, because if I pressed too early, Lynn wasn’t going to make it. “Amy.” Toya stared at me as I held there. “Amy, what are you doing?” Toya looked down at Lynn. Her panic was building. “She’s fading, Amy.” I nodded, I knew it, but still I waited.

Wendy squeezed the towel tighter, but the blood was dripping, the towel already soaked with blood. “Amy, she’s lost too much blood.” Her voice wasn’t panicked yet, but she was worried. “What should I do?” She looked to me for something: advice, admonishment, direction—I didn’t know, but she waited for me to give it to her.

But I was almost full, almost at capacity, and I couldn’t think or move. My entire focus, my entire being, had whittled down to this: to building power, to watching the tiny flame in Lynn’s chest flicker. I watched as her flame started to die. I closed my eyes and prayed to the goddess. Please, don’t let her die at my hands. I opened my eyes, and I focused back on her as a wave of strength covered me, and her tiny flame steadied. “One more minute,” I whispered the words as I stared down at my friend, my wolf. Her spark was almost out, almost gone, but I refused to allow her to fade.

“Amy!” Toya screamed when Lynn stopped breathing.

I felt the moment the magic was full; I had drawn as much as I could. Wendy looked at me, but her eyes widened. “Holy goddess. How the fuck did that happen?”

But in the next second, I slammed all the power I had gathered, all I had drawn in, and I shoved it straight into Lynn. The raw power of my magic was like straight electricity, but I screamed my intention as I kept shoving it in. “Cleanse and heal.” Wendy and Toya closed their eyes, praying for it to work. But I just kept shoving power directly into her body.

I pictured the wolfsbane in her blood, and I forced it out of the wound. Blood poured from her faster, and Wendy screamed. But this is what Lynn needed. “Amy!” Wendy was full of panic now.

Toya had abandoned holding Lynn’s mouth. The woman wasn’t screaming; she wasn’t even breathing. “Amy, you need to stop.”

But I refused. “You don’t get to take her. Not yet, not now.” I slammed another enormous wave of power into her, and this time it was intent on healing her. I pictured the wound at her wrist, so shallow, so small, closed. Then I forced more power to refill her blood, giving her the life source she so desperately clung to.

With the very last of my power, I shoved it directly into her heart with only one intention:

Breathe.