Drink of Me

by Jacquelyn Frank

  And Reule.

  The entire Pack was snapped out of the tension between the two men when the small woman at Reule’s back issued the threat to the Assassin as though she had never known an instant of fear in all of her life.

  “Mystique?” Darcio lifted a brow at her and tried to repress a wave of delighted humor.

  “Do you doubt me, Shadow?”

  Darcio threw up his hands in submission when her eyes flashed furious platinum sparks of outrage. “Not in the least, good lady,” he said quickly. “Frankly, I would be a fool to underestimate you at this point. But I think we all would like to know why you want to see Chayne. He suffers badly and is very proud. He wouldn’t wish for strangers to see him so.”

  “No doubt,” she agreed, pausing to take a calming breath. She turned to Delano. “And no doubt you have great cause to suffer hurt, as well as think me a grave danger. Especially after these past minutes. But I promise you…” She looked at Reule to include him in her statement. “I promise you both that you can take a blade to my throat the very instant I do him a harm. Although, by now, there is little anyone could do to harm him more than was already done. Reule,” she coaxed, reaching out her hand, “take me to him. Please.” Her eyes flicked to Delano. “Ready your blade, Assassin. Even your Prime cannot outmaneuver your speed.”

  “Let’s go, then,” Delano said grimly as he slid his dagger from its sheath.

  Chapter 6

  Reule was wary as they entered the parlor just outside of Chayne’s private room. Mystique was right. Though he’d yet to figure out how she’d known, Delano was faster than he was. The Assassin was far lighter on his feet, for starters, and he’d achieved a mastery with the dagger that even Reule couldn’t match. Regardless, he wouldn’t let Delano come close enough to Mystique to put her throat or any other part of her in jeopardy. He knew his Prime Assassin far too well, and he knew that Delano would never let go of an opportunity to rid Reule’s realm of a perceived threat. Since he’d seen Mystique as a threat even before this business with Chayne, Delano would risk his life and his Prime’s wrath if he believed he was protecting Reule and Jeth in the long run.

  Mystique was bold and fearless as she strode ahead of them and grasped the door handles to Chayne’s private chamber. She hesitated, and he understood why. Any sensitive who approached that room would have. Beyond those doors was a maw of raw emotion and agony. Even in sleep Chayne fought, striving for some kind of survival. Or release. Reule couldn’t forget the words she’d spoken on the Prime Tracker’s behalf. He watched her push open the doors as he moved in behind her protectively, placing himself squarely between her and Delano.

  The stench was the first thing to hit the entire gathering, making them all stop in shock. Mystique was the first to recover, however, pushing on into the room as the men struggled to overcome the innate dread they felt at seeing a friend suffer this kind of death.

  The room was nearly pitch-black and Mystique paused to allow her eyes time to adjust. There was a single tallow candle sputtering on the nightstand beside the bed. The air in the room was stagnant and reeking of rotting flesh. Mystique realized immediately that it was a smell she was familiar with, to the point that it almost didn’t bother her. She didn’t question the understanding. She was already on automatic pilot and was allowing her body and instincts to do whatever they wanted to do. Apparently they both had a memory that had outlasted that of her conscious mind.

  Next she focused on the bed and the man not within it, but sitting beside it. It was clear by the start he gave and the way he struggled to his feet that he’d been dozing. She knew what his purpose was instantly, just as she knew that sleeping wasn’t a part of that purpose. A rush of fury injected itself into her when she thought of how the injured man in the bed was suffering day in and day out, yet this healthy creature couldn’t find the strength and concern to watch over his patient with more attentiveness.

  “Charlatan!” she spat out, pointing a nasty, accusatory finger at the apothecary. “How dare you call yourself Healer! Where are your herbs? Where is your common sense? I see no disinfectants, no sponges freshly made to soothe his fever. Or do you have magic that will heal this sufferer while you sleep beside him?”

  She felt the stunned eyes of the Pack on her as she stormed to the nearest window and threw it open. Cold, fresh air swirled in, sweeping up the smell of gangrene.

  “W-who…? How dare you!” spluttered the apothecary. “The cold will kill him in his fever! My Prime! You bring another apothecary? You usurp me because I cannot help a hopeless situation?”

  “Speak to me!” Mystique’s command might have come from a small body, but it reverberated with astounding power around the rafters of the room. “Answer my charges and seek no solace from those you know are ignorant of the ways of medicine! Answer my questions, charlatan. Herbs? Sponges? Clean air? Lighting? Disinfectants?”

  One of the Pack, she knew not which, hit a switch and light flooded the room, blinding everyone. Mystique recovered quickly and finally looked at the man in the bed.

  “By the Lord and the Lady,” she breathed.

  “To hell,” Delano gasped when he saw his brother.

  Chayne was lying in sheets drenched with putrefaction, yellow and brown fluid-soaked bandages at all four points of injury. The mattress was ruined. Chayne was wet and flushed with fever, blessedly insensate from Reule’s sleep command of earlier.

  “It was always dark. The room was always dark,” Reule heard himself saying, shocked to understand that Chayne’s condition had been deteriorating right under his eyes all this time. Mystique also knew that even if he’d read the physic’s thoughts, he’d have found no hint of deception because the apothecary no doubt believed he was doing what any medic would do. Dark sickrooms, closing in the ill, waiting out fevers or death, these were common practices in many cultures. But he could have done more, even in his ignorance. He could have changed dressings and bedding. He could have soothed the fever. Herbs might have fought off the putrefaction in its early stages.

  “Dismiss him, Reule. He is useless to you,” Mystique said bitterly. “I’m surprised he didn’t insist on those barbaric vises in order to set the bones…as if that would help anything so shattered.”

  Reule faced the apothecary even as Mystique turned her back on them, no longer interested in the useless medic. By the time Reule’s snarl curled back his lip to give the physic a glimpse of fang, his eyes were gleaming the green-yellow glass of threat. The apothecary didn’t need to be told twice. He didn’t even make any attempt at apology, protest, or even explanation. He still had a gauntlet of severely riled Packmates to run before he could consider himself safe, so he concentrated on that until he was out of the door.

  “What do you need?”

  The question was punctuated by the sound of a sheathing dagger. Mystique looked up at Delano and cocked a brow, but she didn’t crow or gloat. She merely answered. “A fresh bed. Fresh sheets. Bandages. Gather dried herbs from the kitchen. I’ll need desert spice, Jakal root, gloaming goat, white singer, and kettle greed. He will need a good hot broth when we are done changing this mess. I need disinfectants. Barley fluid and…what do you use for your soap base?”

  “I can find out,” Darcio promised as he headed out with Delano to split the tasks she’d set.

  “Reule, Rye, you are the strongest here. I’ll need you to lift him. Anyone who doesn’t have the stomach for this should leave now. When we remove these bandages it’ll be an unbearable stench.”

  “Eh, if I lose my dinner I’ll have cook whip me up some more breadcakes,” Amando quipped, giving her a grin that reflected the determination of the entire Pack.

  “Moving him might wake him, Reule,” she said, biting her lip apprehensively.

  “Believe me, kébé, nothing will wake him.”

  “Good,” she whispered. “Then let’s clean him up.”

  In a half an hour Chayne’s broken body was lying on a sheet in the middle of the floor of his p
rivate parlor while the men worked on switching a fresh mattress onto his bed. Reule and Delano stuck close to her side while she finished washing his broken body clean of every touch of infection. Both legs were rotted nearly to the bone already, the arms only slightly better. The clean bandages awaited, but Reule and Delano exchanged a look over her head.

  “I don’t know what she thinks she can do. We’ve both seen this before. There’s no cure for such extensive rot.”

  Reule nodded shortly in agreement. “But she can hardly do worse than an idiot willing to hack him apart or just let him die.”

  “Can either of you dress a wound?” Mystique asked quietly, drawing their attention from the thought exchange.

  “We’ve both field dressed wounds before,” Reule informed her.

  “Very well. But this will be more complex. Listen carefully. Crush the desert spice and Jakal root in the mortar and pestle until it makes a paste. It will smell nasty and be yellow, but that is normal. Cut up the gloaming goat, white singer, and kettle greed into very thin slices no bigger than a coin, and drop them in the broth you will feed to him when we’re done. It isn’t important he eat the herbs, only that they are in the broth he does eat. The heated liquid will absorb the medicinals. Once I’ve done what I can, drench each wound on both sides with the barley fluid, spread the salve on afterward, again on both sides, and then dress the bandages snug but not too tight.”

  “I don’t understand…”

  “Shh.” She hushed Reule before he could ask something she wasn’t sure she had the answer to. Nor did she think he’d like the answer even if she did have it. There was something inside her, in her mind and in her body, that was guiding her to something she knew was critical to the survival of this man. He was too important to Reule and his Pack for her to listen to anything that would discourage her or make her think it was acceptable to be afraid.

  Her last instructions given, she knew there was nothing left to do but give herself over to intuition. Her heart was pounding out a terrible rhythm, and she hoped Reule wouldn’t take note of her fear until afterward. She took a deep breath and laid a hand on Chayne’s pale, sweating face. She looked down on him for a moment, then closed her eyes and pictured his face in her mind. They’d been closed, but she knew his eyes were a pretty light tan with little specks of black around the edges. She saw them and the startling contrast that they made to his rich chestnut-colored hair. His complexion, she realized, was supposed to be tan. The paleness of his fever was a death pallor. This Sánge Packmate was on the cusp of death.

  “Not if I have any say about it, Sánge,” she whispered over him.

  She slid her hand down his throat and on to his breastbone. She pictured his shoulders, the mangled arms connected to them, and the breadth of his chest with all its whorls of curls resisting the draw of her fingers.

  “Shh,” she exhaled softly, cutting off the building protest crawling up Reule’s larynx as his glittering eyes watched her small hand trail almost sensuously over the body of another male. It was an insane and ridiculous impulse to feel threatened by an unconscious male, especially over the touch of a woman he had no claim on whatsoever! But the logic failed to settle the territorial raising of his hackles as her fingertips ran down the center of Chayne’s bare belly.

  “What’s she doing?” Delano asked in confusion.

  “I don’t know!” Reule thought back in a growl of intensity.

  One hand became two and Reule had to grit his teeth to keep from growling aloud this time as he watched her stroke her fingertips across to Chayne’s hips and begin moving down his legs. She didn’t stop until she reached his knees. Then she grasped his shins just beneath those joints and just above the terrible damage done by spikes and neglect. The smell was still overpowering in spite of the cleanup job she’d done, and Reule wondered how she could bear being so close to it for so long. She was a surprising woman, his kébé was. He could hardly look at her without feeling a sense of wonder.

  He still didn’t understand what she was trying to accomplish. She wasn’t even watching what she was doing. Reule relaxed though, feeling better now that she’d settled her hands in a safe, nonsexual place. He sought briefly for Chayne, making sure he was still well asleep.

  He only looked back at Mystique when Delano suddenly reached out to grab him by his biceps and shook him hard. He followed his Assassin’s speechless gesture to the small hands of his kébé.

  There, right before their astounded eyes, Chayne’ rotting sinew slowly changed from putrid black, brown, and green to the fresh colors of pink, healthy flesh. Reule looked up at the small, pale face of the stranger he’d brought into his city, into his home, and wondered what star had shined on him that he should find such an extraordinary gift in so incongruous a place as a rotting attic.

  “Lord and Lady,” Delano whispered, unable to help himself.

  Reule didn’t even look at his Packmate. He could feel Delano’s astounding gratitude. This toward a female Chayne’s brother had wanted to kill under an hour ago. Instead, Reule remained focused purely on Mystique’s face. There was one rule every ’pathically inclined being knew as well as they knew their names: When it came to the use of great psychic power, there was always a great price to be paid. For himself, it wasn’t so much the telepathy and empathy that demanded a price. Those were actually very natural, only as taxing as running in short bursts might be. Eventually it would wear him down if he didn’t rest, but it’d take the equivalent of miles and miles of telepathy before he reached that point.

  His emanation power was another story entirely. It taxed him twice, sometimes thrice as quickly as his other abilities and took as much energy not to use as it did to use. It burned his candle at both ends, so to speak, and anything outside of the normal daily use he was accustomed to became an exercise in fortitude.

  After the unexpected telemetric episode that had taken her over, Mystique was already worn. It was still too soon after her ordeal in the wilderness for this healing to be safe, but he couldn’t call a halt to what was likely the only way to save Chayne’s life.

  “A true naturopathic ability,” Delano telepathed in awe. “Reule, there hasn’t been a naturopath in this tribe since before your parents were born. Where in hell did she come from? This is no Sánge woman.”

  “No. She has no telepathic ability and no real empathy outside of the usual sensitivity. All Sánge have both. No, she is something else…something I’ve never known in my experience nor heard of in our history.”

  Then again, their history had been lost in war. All he had of it was what little remained of their tribal library and the oral stories his parents had handed down to him before their deaths. This was the experience of his Packmates as well.

  Reule heard a soft squeak and he quickly looked back at Mystique. Had she grown paler in the past few minutes? He took in the lines of white suddenly etched into the corners of her mouth. It was pain. She was in pain.

  “Kébé…” He spoke gently, not wishing to startle her. When she didn’t respond, he carefully reached out to take hold of her shoulder. Before he touched her, though, he made very certain he’d blocked himself from all of her psychic feedback. The last thing the Pack needed was to be caught up again in the backlash of her unexpected power. He grasped her, shook her minutely. To his astonishment, she violently threw him off and shifted her hands up to Chayne’s shoulders without ever once opening her eyes.

  It was when she leaned forward that he saw the stain spreading through her skirt. The silver had darkened with saturation from a fluid he couldn’t identify. He could only assume Chayne had shed body fluids onto her. He glanced down at the wounds on the Prime Tracker, which were still open and raw, but completely free of any sign of decay. And, unless he was hallucinating, the pulverized bones that had left his legs bent and deformed were now lying straight as if they weren’t broken at all.

  Reule looked up from the floor when he sensed the rest of his Packmates coming to stand over the unbelieva
ble tableau. It was a picture of hope, of a future for a fallen comrade they’d all but given up on. Her telemetric ability had proven that Chayne had given up on himself as well. They stood and blinked back emotion as the diminutive outlander woman handed them a miracle.

  For Mystique, the next few minutes were little more than a haze of red swirling around in her brain. It swept into her nose every time she breathed in, turning her brain redder and redder. Her body had long since gone numb and disappeared. All there was now was Chayne’s body. It had been through five days of utter hell, but other than that it was a good body, a strong one fortified with healthy muscle and unbelievable determination.

  He’d fought her at first, demanding release and comfort instead of help. She’d spent precious time and energy explaining something to him she barely understood herself. He made her swear he wouldn’t be left half a man. She had sworn. Now he called her an angel, sent by the Lord and Lady, and at last lent his spirit to his own healing instead of fighting her.

  “Angel?”

  “Yes, Chayne?”

  “Who sent you?”

  “Your Prime sent me. He loves you very much. He refused to fail you.”

  “Angel, what did I do to deserve this miracle?”

  “You survived, Chayne, when others wouldn’t have.”

  “Reule would have survived.”

  “Yes. He is extraordinary, your Prime.”

  “You have feelings for him. How does a man earn the fondness of an angel?”

  “Hush, Chayne. Focus on your healing. Your loved ones anxiously await your recovery.”

  Mystique concentrated on the connection of her hands to his skin. She’d learned while healing his legs that it was best to envision a pair of tubes, one in the seat of each palm, and each was used to draw the putrescence and fever into herself and away from the raw wounds. She took it all, as best she could, drawing it off and away. She knew it worked by instinct alone, and knew when she couldn’t push herself an inch further before she had to switch tasks. Mending came next. His bones were ground to splintered shards, and she was amazed none had found a way into his blood system to shoot like a knife into his heart or brain. He’d been luckier than he might ever know. She shook her head as the redness within began to burn, as though she was looking too long at the brightness of the sun. Her face, arms, and legs were burning. But she’d sworn to Chayne he’d be whole again, and she’d at least see him mended to a point that he could carry on for himself. Nothing would be perfect. His bones wouldn’t be fully healed and his wounds wouldn’t be closed, but she’d leave his skeleton positioned for healing and she’d instructed Reule and Delano on dressing the wounds. It would be enough until she could find the strength to return to him.