Mindhealer

by lillith saintcrow

  “You kidding? Danny never slowed down long enough to take notes.” The taller woman’s voice broke.

  Caro stroked her shoulder, a kind touch. “It’s all right, Joanie. Why don’t you go get a cup of coffee and head back to the safehouse? Merrick can bring me back. I’ll be fine.”

  He wasn’t prepared for the way his heart slammed against his ribs. Merrick can bring me back. It sounded as if she had changed her mind about him.

  The voice of caution intervened. Don’t count your chickens before they’re in the basket, Merrick old man.

  The taller witch glanced at him. “So it’s true, you’ve finally seen reason?”

  Caro shrugged. “Fran’s asked me to be careful, in light of this . . . chain of events.” Her tone was carefully neutral. Apparently that sufficed as a warning, because the other woman lifted her hands, taking a step back.

  “I was only curious. All right, I’ll see you back at the safehouse. Be careful, Caro.” Joanie’s voice shook.

  “I’ll be all right. Go on, take care of yourself. Go.” Caro shooed her out, then came back to the bed, her heels clicking softly. She stood looking down at the battered mass of humanity, her nose wrinkling. “Gods above,” she whispered, and glanced up. Her eyes met Merrick’s.

  I’ve been staring at her. He scanned the room again, his attention sweeping the hall—the other Mindhealer and Avery were moving away. Despite the placidity of the room, the air swirled with heavy energy, human pain and desperation. It was a wonder Caro could stand being in a hospital, she was probably so bloody sensitive.

  Circle Lightfall had an unofficial understanding with most hospitals. Their healers would work among the sick and traumatized, and everyone would generally look the other way. Most healers had medical training from nurse to doctor to surgeon, plenty of Mindhealers had psych degrees or worked as counselors. But it was still up to the Watchers to make sure everything went smoothly—to keep the interest in the gifted averted, to provide a small push where necessary so the Lightbringers could go about doing their work.

  “You can’t smell that?” Her forehead creased, her eyebrows drawing together. She’d also paled, the color draining slowly but surely out of her face.

  I don’t like the looks of that. He took a deep breath, closing his eyes. Nothing but disinfectant, pain, and Caro’s perfume.

  Merrick frowned and inhaled again, this time letting down the walls between him and the crouching thing in the bottom of his mind. Not the tanak—that occupied a wholly different space. But this was the part of him that had made being a Watcher possible, inescapable. The hard, cold, ruthless part.

  The part of him that tracked a target.

  It hit him hard, making his eyes water, a sulfurous stench that wasn’t quite physical for all its power. “Bloody hell.” He tipped his head back, blinking away the sudden stinging in his eyes. His scars lit with sudden, liquid fire, burning into his face; the scars on his shoulder and chest woke up too. “That’s what you smell?”

  She looked relieved. “You can smell it?”

  No, the thing in me that can find a lost child in a shopping mall or a target in the jungle can smell it. Not quite the same thing, love. “Not quite. Feel it, maybe.” It was half a lie, but he felt no guilt. She didn’t need to know about that part of him, not yet. It was a part he could never allow to touch her. Not this pretty witch with her sharp tongue and her dark-blue eyes. There was no reason for her to know what an animal he was.

  She was right next to him, her aura sliding against his. “Are you all right?”

  “Fine.” His chin came back down, and he shook his head habitually. His hair fell down, curtaining the scars. “It’s just . . . it reeks.” And I don’t like the thought of you near anything that smells this bad. It smells contagious. Thankfully, he couldn’t smell it anymore. But the sense of a heaviness in the air remained, not like the bell jar effect under Watcher shields. No, it was as if the room itself had become full of a leaden gas.

  “Well, she can’t help it.” Caro turned away so sharply a single curl of her hair popped loose, falling over her shoulder. She dug in the canvas bag she’d brought. “Make sure nobody comes in, all right? I can’t have normals poking around while I’m doing this.”

  “Of course.” What did you do without a Watcher, pretty girl? Took the risk of a normal coming in and disturbing you? “Caro?”

  “Hm?” She looked back over her shoulder, her indigo eyes wide, and Merrick realized he was lost. Now that she was the only Lightbringer in the room, the tanak folded itself down at the bottom of his mind, nestled around the cold hard part of him he rarely let out if he wasn’t tracking. But it wasn’t just the fact that he didn’t feel the acid bath of pain as much when she was near, and it wasn’t the jolt of agonizing pleasure he’d felt last night. It was the one look, and the realization that she was far more frightened than she would let the other Mindhealer see. Something was very wrong here, something was off, and this witch knew it. Still, she was about to do the very same thing that had killed another Mindhealer.

  She was terrified, and yet she calmly shooed the other Mindhealer away and set about doing her work.

  That kind of quiet, hidden bravery was something to be protected. “How can I help?” Don’t do this, he thought, but couldn’t say it. Not his place to give a witch orders. Don’t risk yourself, he wanted to say.

  He already guessed how well that would go over with her.

  She drew out a slim shallow bowl, mellow green. It was jade, and the way she handled it told him she loved it, her fingers gentle on the smooth satiny surface. “Just stay near the door and be quiet. I don’t suppose I can ask you to wait outside.”

  You’re absolutely right, duck. I’m not letting you out of my sight. It wasn’t a direct order, so he simply settled himself next to the door. This room was small and didn’t have a bathroom, just a sink. After all, the people in this section of the hospital never left their beds. He watched as she filled the bowl with water from the sink across the room, set it on the small table arching over the bed. She went back to her bag, pulling out a thin silver chain with an amazing teardrop cabochon of amber that could fill her cupped palm set in filigreed silver. Then she removed a long string of jet beads that glowed with Power. Merrick watched, fascinated.

  The chunk of amber on its silver chain went down her shirt, and a hot flush worked its way up Merrick’s cheeks. She didn’t notice, settling the jet beads around her neck and drawing a small glass bottle out of the bag. A few pinches of whatever was in the bottle—probably salt, the great purifier—went into the jade bowl. Then she dragged the vinyl chair to the bedside, and her fingers flashed over the bowl as she stood looking down into the ruined face on the bed.

  Power hummed, taut, between her fingers and the water, soaking in. Her lips moved slightly, her aura brightening.

  Creature of water, be thou purified. He deciphered the words with no trouble, they were a traditional purification. He had never seen a Mindhealer work this way before.

  She sank down, businesslike and graceful, into the chair. She gently, gently, slid her fingers underneath the puffed and mangled hand on the bed, cupping it delicately in both of hers with a tenderness that made Merrick swallow dryly.

  “All right, my dear,” she said quietly to the ruined face. Her voice was kind now, losing all its sharpness, and Merrick’s entire body tightened at the sound of that kindness. “Let’s get comfortable with each other and . . .”

  She frowned slightly, closed her eyes. Her aura glittered, spun with pinwheels, and he sensed that she had gone. The essential part of her had slipped out of her body and was now walking in the corridors of another mind.

  Merrick’s eyes narrowed. He watched her carefully, every muscle taut and alert. She was so gentle with the hand of a person who in all likelihood couldn’t feel it.

  He waited, and wondered how frightened she had been, and for how long, to be so good at hiding it.

  No more. You’re safe now, I promise
. For a moment, he wondered why he felt so uncharacteristically . . . involved. She was his witch, she could touch him without dragging acid across his nerves, but that was no reason for him to be feeling so unsettled. Emotional involvement meant he wasn’t thinking clearly, and clear thinking was something a Watcher needed desperately. He had watched over many a witch without feeling the urge to shake them and comfort them at the same time.

  But how had she become so bloody good at hiding that kind of fear? It wasn’t normal. Lightbringers were usually far more transparent.

  The water in the jade bowl trembled.

  Uneasiness began under Merrick’s breastbone. Wrong. This was wrong. Was it just his natural inclination to be cautious, or something else? His skin roughened with gooseflesh, and he leaned back against the door, scanning the hall outside. Nothing stirring.

  The EEG suddenly blipped into life. High hard alpha waves, beta scrabbling thickly enough to blur, static crawling over the screen. Stink filled the air, heavy and close like the smell of an animal’s lair, and Merrick didn’t stop to think. He bolted forward, blurring with preternatural speed, over the bed, getting her down and away as the thing burst like a poisonous flower, snarling in a psychic falsetto that drove through his teeth. Caro let out a short cry, bitten off halfway as Merrick hit her, driving her down.

  Landed, hard, twisted so she didn’t hit the floor, he barked his elbow a good one and his head smacked the radiator under the window with stunning force. He had her down and rolled, covering her body with his as the thing clawed at the air. There was no space, his legs tangled with hers and he pushed himself up, knife hilt smacking into his palm. He made it to his feet, facing the thing that rose from the shattered body like a cancerous mushroom. Warmth slid down the side of his neck, wet and coppery. He’d smacked himself a good one in the close quarters between the bed and window.

  Red dappled the walls, the runes chased into the black steel of the knife blazing with clear crimson radiance that cut through weak wintery sunlight. Merrick’s lips pulled back from his teeth.

  The thing squealed again as sunlight pierced it, thin red lines from the blazing runefire bouncing off the walls. The dual assault striped its smoking flesh. A low head, eyes made of unhealthy crimson radioactivity, a clawed paw that swiped at him uselessly as it shredded in the sun falling over his shoulder. The body on the bed twisted and jerked, a fine mist of blood spattering up from broken capillaries in the skin of her face and hands; the machines began to give out warning beeps, boops, and whistles.

  Lovely. That will bring everyone running. Dammit.

  Caro struggled up to her knees. Merrick kept himself between her and the bed. The jade bowl chattered, water turning to steam, the thing howled again as the steam billowed around it. The smell was insistent, sulfur mixed with a darker tang, and the thing retreated, hopping down from the bed and clumsily splatting on the floor on the other side. He could see it, writhing and melting, and his blood went chill. “Caro?”

  “I’m all right.” She sounded dazed, and most definitely not all right. He was unprepared for the sharp pinch of fear under his skin. He had just touched a Mindhealer during her work. You were never supposed to do that lest you disturb the careful balance necessary for them to leave their bodies and walk in other minds. He was damn lucky she was still alive. “Merrick?” Wondering, disoriented.

  Thank you, gods. She’s alive and conscious. Two to the good, luckier than I have any right to be. “Right here. It’s dying, the sunlight hurts it. Get your bowl and your bag, we’re leaving.”

  She shook her head as if dazed, and he was suddenly possessed of the intense desire to shake her. Don’t ever do that to me again. He discarded the thought. It wasn’t the kind of thing a Watcher could say.

  “But—Colleen—”

  Who? Then he remembered. The victim. He heard running feet, shouts. The nurses and doctors would be along soon. The thing shrieked again, but fainter. The chaos of noise from the machines splashed through the room, tore at his ears. He shut it out.

  Merrick scooped up the jade bowl with his left hand. The water was gone and the stone bowl was hot enough to burn a man’s fingers. Thankfully, none of the bloodmist had fouled it. He resheathed the knife—this thing, whatever it was, was losing coherency quickly. Each moment of sunlight made it more insubstantial.

  It still might hurt her, so he kept his body between Caro and the thing as he bent down, offered her his free hand. “Come on, love. Best to be on our way.”

  Her fingers closed over his, but she looked bewildered. Her pupils were so dilated her eyes looked almost black. A bright crimson thread of blood slid down from her nose; Merrick suffered a moment of almost-panic before he remembered it was likely her reaction to the proximity of something Dark.

  He pulled her up—careful, Watcher. She’s fragile. The bolt of pleasure sliding down his arm spurred the tanak rather than pacified it, made the scars on his face burn as if they had just been made. Fire slashed down his chest—the other scars. Don’t think about that.

  The jade bowl went back in the bag. He took care not to peer further inside. A Mindhealer’s bag was like a Watcher’s knives, intensely personal. He got the strap over her head and settled it across her body, trying to avoid touching her through the silk. The back of his knuckles brushed the slope of one breast, he felt lace under the silk—her bra, almost certainly—and he shrilled at himself to stop being such a bloody idiot and get her OUT of here!

  The door smashed open and he folded her close, pressing her back against the counter that held the sink and cabinets for linens and other things. She bit her lip, wary sharpness returning to her eyes even as his glamour stretched to cover both of them, hard and thick. The medical personnel didn’t see him, although one of the doctors, a bright-eyed black woman, looked up and frowned suspiciously. She had a shine to her, almost Lightbringer, but that wasn’t Merrick’s problem.

  The thing bubbling on the floor—one of the normals, a nurse in thick white shoes and bright dyed-blonde hair, stepped in it and flinched aside, shivering, unaware of why she had felt the chill up her back—squealed again, but weakly. Sunlight was deadly to many forms of Dark, and particularly deadly to whatever this was. It subsided to a bubbling psychic sludge, inert except for its hatefulness and eye-watering smell.

  Dark, then. It was Dark, but no kind he’d ever seen before.

  Caro shivered, trembling against his chest. He didn’t dare speak—sound would break the glamour. Instead, he maneuvered her, step by careful step, toward the door.

  Be quiet, love. Please. Just for a few moments. It’s past, it’s all past, it didn’t get you. Let’s get you out of this awful bloody room and somewhere nicer. All right? Christ, Merrick, concentrate on your job.

  Out in the hall, more chaos. More people pouring through the hall, running for the room. A code. A heart stopped.

  Caro shuddered, buried her face against his chest. Merrick was busy keeping the edges of the glamour hard, navigating her through the hall and listening, one hand on a knife hilt. He ducked into the chapel—of course, this was Saint Crispin’s, each floor would have a chapel. This was a long narrow room, nondenominational now, a plain cross at the end spotlit with bright white, a few pews, and a great sheaf of lilies and scarlet carnations under the cross. He leaned against the wall just inside the door, felt the years of praying and anguish and misery this place contained lap at his skin, and kept the edges of the glamour hard and impassable. The red-black of a Watcher stained the borders of Caro’s aura, a defense against both the emotional atmosphere of the place and possible Darksickness.

  He was just glad a tanak wouldn’t trigger Darksickness in her. That would be awful.

  The tanak burned, melding the gash in his scalp together, flushing him with Power, ready for combat. He had to breathe deeply. There was nothing to fight here. Yet.

  It took maybe ten minutes for Caro to stop shaking. She lifted her head, finally, and he was surprised to find that he didn’t want her to. I
f he could have stayed there forever with his witch leaning against him, her canvas bag at her hip and her hair tangling out of its chignon, he would have been . . . what? Happy?

  He didn’t think he even remembered what happy felt like.

  “What the hell was that?” she whispered, and that brought him back down to reality. Stray curls fell in her face. He wanted to touch them, smooth them back. Her earrings swung uneasily, delicate wonderful pieces of jewelry he found himself staring at. He tore his eyes away.

  “Don’t know, love.” He touched a knife hilt, then stroked her shoulder under the silk. Reassured himself that she was still alive. “Are you hurt?”

  “Me? No, of course not.” Her voice shook. “But you . . . you leapt right over the bed. Are you all right?”

  “Fine.” He didn’t dare look down. If he looked down he was going to be tempted to do something insane—like maybe shake her until her teeth rattled and tell her to never do that again, tell her his heart had stopped, that the thought of that thing tearing at her with its claws still smoking from the touch of sunlight made him afraid in a way he had never been afraid before in his entire life.

  She wiped at her nose with the back of one hand, irritated. “I hate this. Nosebleeds are so messy.”

  He dug in a pocket, retrieved a crisp white handkerchief. “Use this.”

  “Just like a Watcher. Always prepared.” Her voice shook as she took the cotton cloth and pressed it under her nose, tipping her head back. “What was that thing?”

  “I don’t know.” He could finally look down without wanting to shake her. Saw her eyes were wide and dark, the eyes of a haunted child. But whatever it is, it didn’t get you, and I’m going to make sure nothing does. Absolutely nothing is ever going to touch you.

  “You don’t . . .” She lost the words as she breathed out harshly, as if she’d been hit. “You’re bleeding.”