But she’d done it. However, she couldn’t feel it. It really wasn’t a yee-haw, throw-your-fist-in- the-air kind of victory, anyway, right? The image of her face was a brand on her mind, but more than that she felt Derek’s silence. His eternal absence. The hollow emptiness of it all. Thinking of her exultance when she’d gloried in the creature’s pain, she felt a little sick. A lot sick.

She barely made it to the commode, and then she was coughing, retching it all up. Breakfast, lunch…. Actually, she hadn’t eaten lunch, so just breakfast and bile, dark, putrid bile that smelled a lot like the soul-eaters. She’d taken the Darkness into her, made it work for her, used it to drive them back. Kept Miriam…. Oh Goddess, Miriam.

She straightened from the commode with a snap, reaching for a hand towel with shaking fingers. As she scrubbed it over her mouth, she made it to her feet. She needed to go see if Miriam was okay, if they needed help.

When she stumbled to the bathroom door, she ran into Derek’s chest, as he was coming back in. “I told you to stay here,” he said evenly, taking her arm and leading her back to the commode. She winced in embarrassment because she hadn’t flushed yet, but before she could close the lid, he stayed her, stared down at the leavings from her stomach. After a weighted moment, he used the toe of his dragonskin boot to close the lid and depress the handle as he maintained his less-than-gentle grip on her arm.

“I didn’t…. I didn’t hear you say that. Is Miriam….”

“She’s on her way to the hospital. Linda and Christine are taking her. She’s got a broken arm and some nasty cuts, nothing that required an ambulance, but she does need medical attention. The two of them will do a cleansing on her there. The soul-eaters got hold of her long enough that she’ll need that to prevent soul infection. As it is, she’s going to have some pretty serious nightmares for a while.”

She was shivering in her soaked clothes. Looking down at the tile, she saw mud, blood, soot and water tracking up the floor. “At some point, you’re going to have to look me in the eye, Ruby,” he said quietly.

“I don’t want to.”

“I know you don’t. What do you think you’re going to see there?”

“Things I don’t want to see.” She didn’t want to play games. She was miserably cold, and everything felt wrong, broken, unfixable. Her shields were too thin. “Leave me alone, Derek. I’ll get cleaned up and get out of here. I’ve taught them enough. We only had a few days left anyhow, and you can handle that.” Her teeth were chattering, making her voice quake. She’d figure out how to get at Asmodeus another way. Where innocent bystanders couldn’t be hurt. She had the key to getting in now. She didn’t need to be here anymore.

“Lift your arms.”

She stared at his chest, feeling his eyes on her face. “No. Go away.”

“Ruby, I’m a lot bigger and stronger than you are. You’ll either help me undress you, or I’ll rip the fucking clothes off you, but it’s going to happen. You’re going to take a shower, get warm, and then we’re going to talk.”

“You can talk. I’m not going to.”

He pushed her arms up over her head, worked the shirt up with a quick, impatient jerk, discarded it with a wet plop on the ground. Then the undershirt, unhooking the bra with neutral efficiency. He pulled off the jeans with a bit more force, since wet jeans were never easy, and once he got them down her hips, he pushed her back onto the closed commode to get them and her sneakers all the way off. He’d turned on the water, and blissful steam was curling out now. Her trembling increased. Why was it that cold became even colder, almost unbearable, on the outskirts of such a blissful, heated spray?

“I swear to God,” he muttered, “I’m going to blister your ass before this night is done.”

“I had it handled.”

“Yeah, you against four soul-eaters. I could see that.”

“Took your ass long enough to get here,” she managed.

“I didn’t anticipate that Asmodeus would try a test strike.”

She pressed her lips together. “Neither of us did. Really, is Miriam…. all right?”

He cupped her face, his thumb tracing her lips. Ruby closed her eyes at the touch. When a shudder went through her, she realized she hadn’t expected him to touch her in more than a functional way. Ever again.

Letting out a sigh, he put his forehead against hers. “She’s pretty shook up. She’ll need to talk to you, understand what happened to help her deal with it.”

“You’d be better at it.”

“No, I wouldn’t. It needs to be a woman, someone she respects. You’re her teacher. She was pulled out because she tried to help you, Ruby. Because she thought you needed help. You taught them well, though. Christine and Linda were nearly flawless in that advance-and-retreat circle formation to get her back. What they lacked in strength they made up for in sheer guts and will.”

“Mom always said I was a good teacher.”

“Fuck your mother, may she rot in Hell.” His fingers slid around to her nape. She could feel how much he wanted her to lift her gaze, but she wouldn’t. He let out that sigh again, a part growl in it this time. “Since at some point I’m going to be yelling at you, a lot, I’ll say something else now. I always knew you had the capability you showed tonight. You’re a hell of a witch. You knew they’d overwhelm the circle, and you handled yourself pretty damn well outside of it to draw the soul-eaters’ fire and keep the fault line from having a bigger split. Miriam is alive because of you. As far as the rest…. we’ll hold it for now. Jesus, your skin’s like ice.”

In her entire life, no one had ever commended her on her magical abilities. Granted, until tonight, no one had known she’d discovered and embraced them to the extent she had, but it was still an unexpected, incredibly warm feeling, no matter how brief, amid all the other wretched things she was feeling right now.

He guided her into the shower. When she hit the hot water, she sucked in a breath, experienced a deep, almost convulsive quake. Leaning against the tile wall, she wished Linda had a bench in here, because she wasn’t sure she had enough strength to clean herself up and stand at the same time. Magic use at this level was more draining than she’d expected, and now that the adrenaline was leaving her, things were starting to hurt. Throb. She was so cold, she wasn’t sure even the hot water could penetrate her numbness.

She was about to slide down the wall, grab the soap on the way down, when he got in with her. Closing his arms around her, he brought her full against his heated, naked length, keeping her back to the spray, her front against him. Laying her cheek against the sleek, firm skin and light covering of chest hair, she pressed her lips together to taste the water drops running down her face. Simple, straightforward things. She didn’t have to think about anything else right now. He’d said so. Later. All of it could be later. Her and Scarlett O’Hara, thinking about it tomorrow. Though Scarlett hadn’t had the advantage of Rhett joining her in the claw-footed tub to help scrub her back and make that temporary amnesia possible.

Derek worked the band out of her snarled ponytail, set it on the soap tray, then combed his fingers through the strands, loosening knots, helping the thick mass become saturated with water. She tilted her head back at the pleasurable sensation, keeping her eyes closed. He met her parted lips with his own, sealing the heated water drops between them, his fingers tightening on her scalp.

He was giving her more than heat in that kiss. She felt the tendrils of power unfurl in her chest, her stomach, her legs, all originating from that point where their lips touched. It was pure elemental magic, spreading out to all corners. A cleansing. He was giving her a cleansing, not with the usual chants and meditation, but through touch and the gentle exercise of his own reservoirs of pure Light energy, letting it sweep through her, cleansing her inside the way the shower was cleansing her on the outside.

It was always amazing to feel Derek’s power. In the heat of battle, fueled by psychotic rage, she hadn’t been able to appreciate it, but here she could, on so many levels. As a passive, grateful recipient. As a magic user, awed by how effortless it was, how it felt. He didn’t need to speak chants, use wands or staffs. The magic was Derek, making it difficult to say whether the man was a conduit for it, or the magic was a conduit for the man.

It did have one negative effect. It unsettled the Darkness, made her shift uneasily under his hands, but maybe because the woman wanted what he offered, that feminine energy overcame the resistance. She eagerly embraced it, grabbed onto it like an outstretched hand before she could be swept away on a dark tide.

He folded her in to his body, and the warmth of it, even better than the hot water, caused a moan in her throat. His bare thighs pressed against hers, his cock and testicles an intriguing nest of flesh against her mound and lower abdomen. She slid her hands over his slippery skin, the muscular sides, the valley of his ribs, until they came to rest on his hip bones. His hands slipped to her jaw, fingers on the sides of her throat, teasing strands of her hair as he kept kissing her, kept that focus happening. She quivered, becoming even more limp, letting go of all of it, letting exhaustion move in.

When he finally broke the kiss, she lay against him in vertical repose as he washed her hair, moved and turned her as needed to soap her skin. He propped her in the corner to do her front, to kneel and wash her legs. She watched his hands move over her with such intimate familiarity. Unlike the way he’d been in the forest, he was taking his time. Part of it was the cleansing. Though he was aware of her, a man in the shower with a naked, wet female, she could see the focus in his eyes, the serious set of his mouth. He was cosseting her in the way only a sorcerer could, ensuring every inch of her felt the touch of that cleansing, healing Light, drawn from the Earth and Water, the elements that had the strongest connection to the female spirit, driving out the taint the fight with the Underworld might have left upon her.