“Rihyani,” he croaked, pausing for a heartbeat when his voice sounded raw in his own ears. “I’m sorry, but there’s nothing we can do.”
Rihyani’s gaze swung to him, and for an instant, Milo feared she would sink her fangs into his face as her fingers dug into his hand.
“This shouldn’t happen,” she sobbed, a fierce light shining in her eyes. “This can’t.”
‘It did.” Ambrose huffed as he tugged the bandages tight, drawing a cry of pain from the contessa as she let go of Milo’s hand. The magus stared at five dots of blood where the fey’s nails had bitten into his flesh, thankful she’d kept herself from sprouting the wicked talons from before.
“Right now, we need to get out of here,” the big man added.
The shadows had deepened in the copse of trees to the point that Milo was finding it hard to see beyond the trees to the hills. The paranoid itch of being exposed to the enemy spread from the back of Milo’s head to nestle between his shoulder blades. He didn’t dare to hope that Ambrose had managed to kill or drive off all the ambushers. In truth, there could be enemy reinforcements closing off their retreat right now.
He felt the tightness in his wounded leg and saw the bandages on Rihyani already growing damp with her pale blood. They wouldn’t survive much longer if they didn’t get moving.
“Carry her and let’s get to the Rollsy,” Milo said before rising with a heavy grunt. “Lokkemand should be on his way, so let’s hope to God we can outrun the bastards long enough to reach friendly forces.”
“We should bring their bodies,” Rihyani said, obviously taking great pains to keep from sounding too desperate. “Their clan will wish to perform the rites, and—”
A trunk less than a meter from Ambrose sent up a shower of splinters an eyeblink before the report of a rifle was heard.
They were out of time.
“Their clans will have to understand that we’ll come back for them,” Milo hissed through clenched teeth. “Ambrose, let’s move.”
Ambrose scooped Rihyani up as though she weighed no more than the cloak she was wearing.
Bleeding, limping, and ducking each crack of rifles in the growing dark, the trio made their way between the trees to the patiently idling Rollsy. A second later, the engine growled and Ambrose wove through the trees to thread a course back up the hill and toward Shatili.
7
The Heresy
The Rollsy gobbled up the miles as the last of the daylight was swallowed by the horizon and the countryside became a series of undulating shades of black.
Thankfully, none of those in the vehicle required visual assistance, though Milo did have to fetch the nightsight along with more healing unguent for his leg. As he applied the former, shaking the distortions from his eyes, he looked at Rihyani in the back of the Rollsy. Her bandages were beginning to seep blood, and Milo wondered even with his leg throbbing abominably if he should work on her first, but then he remembered the failure with Meinir.
Had he made things worse by attempting to save her? There had been so much blood; Milo was no trained doctor, but it had seemed to do something, if only for a minute or so. Was it because she was fey, or did it have something to do with her attacker? Something about Ezekiel Boucher had struck Milo as unnatural, and it was not the unnerving laughter or bloodlust. As a budding magus, Milo was learning that there were clues and truths that could be discerned but not by anything as pedestrian as the five senses.
Remembering the deceased cowboy sent a shiver down Milo’s spine, but then the car thumped over a section of pitted land and Milo’s leg bounced against the bed of the truck.
Another mind-throttling surge of pain sprang up from his leg and the immediate course of action resolved itself. If Milo didn’t do something about it, he wasn’t going to be any good to anyone very soon.
Wincing and blinking back tears as he unwound the dressing, Milo finally had the clearance he needed to pour in the unguent. Steeling his mind and soul against the pain that tried to distract him, he compelled the unguent to work and soon felt the stinging itch of flesh mending. He went slow, careful lest the regenerative create a distended tumor or jar his focus to create some other even worse side effect.
The wound began to close as they rolled on, their headlights off as Ambrose used whatever supernatural senses he possessed to steer them across the countryside
They very nearly plowed into Lokkemand’s patrol, which came rolling up along the crest where it slid alongside the Argun and thus toward Shatili. Milo had unclenched his focus and dissipated the last of the unguent as the light of many headlamps broke over the Rollsy like a false dawn.
Ambrose swore and swung over to the side, sending Milo scooting across the bed to fetch up next to Rihyani. Only his outstretched hands kept him from losing his teeth, but his momentum still saw the wind knocked from him. He sank down to the bed, gaping like a landed fish as he looked at Rihyani’s downturned face. Her skin was ashen and almost translucent enough that he thought he could see the layers shifting as her lips parted in a weak smile.
“You don’t look so good, Milo,” she said, her voice barely audible above the trembling growl of the engine. “Maybe you should lie down and catch your breath.”
Milo forced enough air into his stubborn lungs to manage a wheezing laugh.
“Speak for yourself, my lady,” he got out as he struggled to his feet.
“I’m just a little tired.” She gave him a wink. “Had a long trip to see a good friend, you know.”
Even with his entire abdomen determined to never breathe again and his limbs trembling as he favored his recently mended leg, Milo felt that staring at her face was something he could do forever. It plucked his shrunken heart like the first note of spring, taunting and teasing a gnarled tree to consider awakening. It was so unfamiliar it seemed painful, but he knew somewhere in the root of him he couldn’t deny the siren song, not forever.
Then her wine-dark eyes with their piercing golden pupils rolled upward as her whole body shivered. A soft groan escaped her gray lips, and her fingers groped her wounded shoulder. Pools of her pale blood had formed under her on the floorboards.
If his heart ever wanted to hear that tune, he needed to get her help and quickly.
“Lokkemand!” Milo barked as he stood in the bed of the Rollsy. “Captain Lokkemand!”
There was the protesting squeal of a heavy door swinging on ill-maintained hinges, then the clank of that door on an armored hull.
“Volkohne, report,” Lokkemand’s voice instructed coolly from behind a large set of headlamps.
Milo hated how calm and confident the man sounded, even though somewhere in the back of his mind, he knew it was a good thing.
“The contessa and her companions were ambushed by Georgians and two Americans,” Milo shouted back, trying to force his voice to be steady but not succeeding. “The contessa is wounded and needs immediate medical attention.”
“The companions?” the captain asked, his voice neutral and unassuming.
“Dead,” Milo reported stiffly, unable to ignore the soft sob that came from Rihyani at the proclamation. “Killed by the Americans.”
There was a pause, then Lokkemand’s voice rang out, steady and sure.
“How was the enemy equipped?”
Milo faltered as he thought of how to describe the Americans, but Ambrose piped up readily.
“Small arms only, sir,” the big man reported. “The Georgians were probably just a militia turned mercenary. Fair shots and they knew the ground, but they weren’t organized or motivated to face hardened opposition.”
“The Americans?” Lokkemand asked.
“Dead or wishing they were,” Ambrose said confidently. “Left them in a small copse of trees about ten miles west of our position with the bodies of the contessa’s companions and whatever is left of the Georgians, which is shy of a dozen by my count.”
Milo couldn’t keep from giving Ambrose an impressed look. He’d single-handedly reduce
d the enemy numbers by half and had still found time to save Milo and Rihyani from the Americans.
“Any clue as to the enemy objective?” Lokkemand asked. In response, Ambrose shrugged and threw a glance at Milo.
“Umm, p-possibly the capture of the contessa,” Milo stuttered lamely, trying to replay and interpret the events in his head. “Not entirely sure, Captain.”
“Any signs of pursuit?”
“No, sir,” Milo said with a shake of his head after looking over his shoulder to make sure he wasn’t being proven a liar.
Milo could almost see Lokkemand give a thoughtful nod before straightening and issuing his orders in crisp, smooth commands
“Brodden’s vehicle escorts the magus and sees that the contessa is tended to. The rest of you, adjusted pattern Roth Ritter. We sweep wide around the last confirmed point of contact and approach from the east.”
There was a quick chorus of confirmations from the men in the other vehicles, then one of them peeled off from the formation and executed a three-point turn to head back to Shatili and the fortress. Ambrose followed, almost as though he might nudge the vehicle along with the Rollsy’s jutting nose.
“We’ll retrieve the contessa’s companions,” Lokkemand shouted before turning back to address his soldiers. “Maintain fire discipline out there. The last thing I need to do is pay to replace some shepherd’s goats.”
* * *
“I don’t understand,” Ambrose said as they carried Rihyani into Milo’s study. “Why can’t you just rub one of your potions on her or something?”
Brodden the medic strode alongside Rihyani, working to apply a tourniquet as they moved into the room. Seeing an open table, he barked an instruction that she be laid on it.
“I tried that with Meinir,” Milo said as they eased the fey’s limp form onto the table. “It worked for a second, then the wound opened again. I think it might have made things worse.”
“Is it because she was fey?” Ambrose asked as they stepped over to observe Brodden as his hands worked with crisp professional rapidity.
“I’m not sure, but Rihyani acted surprised when she started bleeding again,” Milo said, trying to force his brain to work but only managing to stare helplessly at Brodden’s pink-stained hands. “Really, they all kept asking why it was happening, almost like they were surprised she had been hurt at all.”
Ambrose and Milo both winced as Brodden tightened the tourniquet, drawing a soft but distinct moan of pain from Rihyani.
“One of you with a strong stomach, get over here,” the medic directed as he held Rihyani’s arm up in the air.
Ambrose was quicker to step forward and was soon holding the contessa’s arm aloft while Brodden worked some sterile packing into the wounds. Milo moved closer to watch, though his mind was preoccupied with possible adjustments he could make to the formula so he could try his healing unguents again.
“She seems close enough to human,” the medic said as he worked. “So I’m assuming that the amount of blood she’s lost is as dangerous to her as it would be to a human.”
Ambrose nodded with a sigh as Brodden reached out and grabbed Milo, who started but didn’t resist as his hands were led to press against the packing.
“What does that mean?” Milo asked, staring into Rihyani’s face. Her eyes were shut and seemed sunken into her face, which they had not previously been.
Milo felt an icy talon of fear digging through his guts, searching for his heart.
Was it already too late?
“Means she needs blood,” Brodden said, wiping sweat from his forehead with a forearm while his other hand plunged into his bag. “Plenty of blood if she’s going to last much longer.”
“Take mine,” Milo said without pause as the medic dragged out a series of tubes and an arcane set of steel devices. “Take however much you need.”
“It’s not like books and radio programs,” Brodden growled as he set about assembling and checking the equipment for the transfusion. “If I give her the wrong type of blood, it could kill her as surely as not giving her any, and seeing as she’s not human, I doubt we’re going to be able to hook you up and hope for the best.”
Milo’s fear kindled to a frustration that sharpened his tongue into a flailing weapon.
“Then why are you wasting time getting that wretched thing out?” he demanded with a snarl.
“Because I’m a medic, damn it!” Brodden shot back. “I’m doing what I know how to and hoping someone’s going to tell me they’ve got a stash of faerie blood in this weird workshop of yours.”
Ambrose raised a hand to give Milo’s trembling shoulder a steadying squeeze.
“Got anything like that, Magus?” he asked, his voice steady and soothing like a man seeking to calm a skittish horse. “Anything that could help?”
Milo almost threw off the hand and screamed in the big man’s face for the stupid temerity of the question. He almost raved at the idiocy of thinking he kept bottles of fey blood for just such an occasion.
But he stood there silently, mouth moving in a string of unvoiced half-formed words as his mind hit upon something that could help. The healing unguents had sought to regenerate and bind flesh, and to his mind, they had been violently rejected by either fey physiology or something in the wound created by Ezekiel Boucher, but what if it was something where the magical process had ceased and was just, from all points of view, blood? It wouldn’t heal Rihyani like his unguents, but it might give them time.
“I don’t have fey blood on hand,” Milo said, his eyes searching the shelf behind his desk for his copy of Transitional States: Transmogrified Truths of Matter Living or Otherwise. “But I might have a way to make some.”
* * *
Not for the first time, Milo wondered if the dreaded ghul scholars who’d penned the works he studied ever thought a human would come along and break what constituted the few taboos of their kind.
For reasons both practical and similar, the ghuls had strict injunctions against using the blood of the living in their magics, especially a necromist performing alchemy. The fact that Milo, in refusing to use human remains, used his own blood to power his works was a smack in the face of everything the ghuls held sacred. Using his blood magic to pervert an alchemical formula into making blood now seemed comically transgressive.
He hoped he was going to live long enough to be able to gloat the next time he met one of those depraved troglodytes.
“You sure this won’t kill you?” Ambrose asked for the third time since Milo had rushed through the rough outline of what he was going to do.
“No,” Milo repeated, also for the third time as he ground a pungent mixture of herbs, preserved amphibian extracts, and his own blood. “I’m not, but we don’t have time for me to be sure.”
“You really don’t,” Brodden said as he hovered over Rihyani, his face a grim mask. “She’s hanging on by sheer willpower at this point.”
“You’re saying this might not even save her?” the big man asked, his eyes working a jagged triangle between the medic, the fey, and the magus.
“I’m saying we do this,” Milo cut in before Brodden could answer. “And that’s the final word.”
Ambrose opened his mouth to argue, but his jaws clamped shut with a snap.
Milo checked the consistency of the contents of the bowl, not only physically but through his probing magical senses, then checked his text.
It was two parts daring and one part foolishness, bending the theory the way he was, and it involved more than a few intuitive leaps, but one look at Rihyani’s listless body on his workbench told him all he needed to know. He was going to make her blood or die trying. Everything from here on out was a consequence playing out.
“Are you ready with that thing?” Milo asked as he approached with his elixir.
“I suppose.” The medic shrugged and held up a long needle connected to a strand of tubing that wound back to the bizarre arrangement of metal that Milo had a hard time believing was not ma
gical. “Are you?”
“Almost,” Milo said, and he stepped over to Rihyani.
Her wounds had slowed to a trickle, but that trickle still stained the packed bandages. With a muttered apology, Milo squeezed the bandage to get a few drops of blood from the fabric that he flicked into the bowl. Though not apparent to anyone else in the room, Milo felt the ingredients align metaphysically, almost snapping into place with a ripple of magical pressure.
“That’s got to be a good sign,” he told himself before tilting back his head and downing the mixture.
Milo felt the magical matrix bound up in the ingredients slide down his gullet and diffuse as it went. Magic was not science, though necromantic alchemy came the closest in comparison, and gestures meant things. The act of ingestion wasn’t about digestion so much as reception, willingly partaking so that the power imbibed could work itself into a welcoming host.
And work it did.
Milo’s body spasmed as the power poured through his veins and arteries.
“Now!” Milo gasped as he sank into a chair next to the workbench. “Quickly.”
Brodden slid the needle in and then activated a pump, and within seconds, a stream of living fluid was spiraling through the tubes and headed to the needle already buried in Rihyani’s arm. The vitae was a pale shade of pink.
“It worked,” Ambrose murmured, then frowned as he stared at Milo’s face. “What’s wrong?”
“I’m trying to control it,” Milo growled, sweat running from his brow as he wrestled with the catalyzing forces inside of him. “Changing what’s going out without changing all of it and killing me.”
Ambrose swore, a long and potent assemblage of profanity in a particularly florid French dialect.
“How much does she need?” the big man asked Brodden, who was busy overseeing the technical aspects of the transfusion.
“As much, ugh, as much as I can give her,” Milo hissed between gritted teeth, which became a strained, defiant smile as Ambrose glared down at him.
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