Blood Knot Read Online Free Page A

Contact was essential.
    This one wasn’t going to let her get that close.
    Except sometimes talking would get them to lower their guard enough.
    “ I suppose you’re wondering what I’m doing here,” she began.
    “ Shut up,” he snapped.
    “ I got lost, you see—”
    “ I said, shut up!” he screamed.
    Crap.
    Suddenly, there was a sharp sound of snapping wood, muffled. The guard grunted and sighed. Winter twisted to see what had happened.
    The guard was crumpling to the polished, gleaming floor. Sebastian stood over him, a broken broom handle in his hand, the inner core of the spruce handle showing startling white in the dull night lights of the corridor. The bristled end lay on the floor next to the slowly oozing guard.
    Winter jumped forward to catch the guard before he hit the linoleum too hard. “Damn it, I told you before, no violence unless necessary!” She reached for the guard’s wrist, intending to soothe him, just as she had the others. She couldn’t send him to sleep until she had sent Sebastian away on a pretext.
    “ A gun at your back doesn’t make it necessary?” Sebastian replied. His tone was at once amazed and offended.
    “ No, it doesn’t,” she snapped, stepping around the guard to face him. “Damn it, how many times do we have to do this, Sebastian? You take care of your stuff. I take care of mine. I was handling it. I don’t need you to rescue me, take care of me, or watch out for me. It just trips me up and makes you dangerous. It screws up the job. Is that clear?”
    His face hardened. “Clear as crystal,” he said flatly. He gaze flickered past her.
    Eleven months later, dozens of recalls later, Winter still could not put together in her mind a visual sequence of what Sebastian did next. Only logic supplied her with what he must have actually done.
    He must have seen the guard she had failed to put to sleep stir behind her and reach for the broken off broomstick. The guard picked up the jagged, pointed end and reared up behind Winter, who was stupidly facing Sebastian. The guard aimed the sharp end of the broomstick at her back.
    Sebastian grabbed Winter’s shoulders and spun her out of the way, using a strength and speed she had never seen before. He moved so fast, in fact, that she couldn’t follow the movement with her naked eye.
    He pulled her around, out of the way of the up-thrusting spike of the broomstick, which put him in front of it.
    The sharp, broken-off end punched through his ribs and into the right ventricle of his heart. Sebastian gasped, his eyes widening.
    The point of the stake pushed up against the front of his ribcage and Winter could feel the grinding of the point against his bones.
    Through his grip on her shoulders Winter measured instant shock circle through him. Shock…and something else. For the first time in the nearly two years since Sebastian had strolled into her life she went inside his body.
    She ripped her way in without thought, without care. She just wanted to stop the pain.
    But there was none. His body was disintegrating like that of someone long dead.
    “ No!” Terrified, Winter threw herself into holding him together. To fixing it. She poured herself into reversing the damage.
    And it hurt . She screamed.
    “ What are you doing?” Sebastian cried, his grip tightening.
    Winter grasped at him, not sure who was holding who up. Like the guard, they both sank slowly to the floor. She couldn’t speak. Her focus, both mental and visual, was on the black, nameless processes inside him and bringing his body back to normal.
    Her vision was clouded over, so she felt her way around Sebastian’s body to where the stake protruded, gripped it and drew it out slowly, repairing tissues and organs as it withdrew.
    “ Winter…” he breathed. “What are you?”
    “ Shhh…” There was such deadness in his body. Such damage. It wasn’t just the stake. She fixed the damage the stake had caused, then encompassed the rest. It was like trying to