by Eileen Wilks
She cozied into her nest of pillows and drank the tea in three big swallows. And shuddered.
The stuff tasted nastier than it smelled, but it worked fast. Even as she snuggled down flat, warmth opened in her middle like a blossom and began sending out tendrils.
She lay in the darkness breathing quietly, listening to the wind as it kicked up a fuss outside. Warmth continued to spread, reaching places that made her think of Nathan and wishes… a wish that hovered in the air, its wistful lavender woven threaded with silver and red. A nice carnal shade of red.
A sensible woman would be glad their relationship hadn't gone in the direction she'd wanted. He was leaving, wasn't he? He'd told her that three months ago. People he worked with were beginning to be suspicious about him. He couldn't stay in Midland much longer.
Surely it would hurt worse when he left if they'd become lovers. As it was, loss already ached inside her like a tooth going bad.
Maybe he wouldn't leave if…
Yes, he would. Dammit, she knew that.
Rain tapped its first, uncertain fingertips on the window. Time to finish putting herself out… not for her own sake, but for everyone else's. Her Gift might not be empathy, as she claimed, but it was skewed.
Which was just as well, since that was probably why she wasn't crazy. Telepaths usually were.
Kai didn't read minds. She saw thoughts and the emotions connected to those thoughts, and sometimes she changed minds. Literally. If she stayed awake for tonight's storm, there was a good chance that some of her thoughts would split off to tangle themselves up in other people's heads.
This wasn't unusual. The biggest null on the planet left a residue of thoughts and feelings behind, but such a faded wash that only a strong psychometry Gift could read anything from it. Strong emotions caused many people to project, and a few others were natural projectors.
But normal thought-bodies evaporated soon after separating from their origin. Kai's didn't. Her stray thoughts might cause her neighbors no more than a brief confusion or bad dream, but it could be worse. Much worse. And with the way her Gift had strengthened since the Turning, she couldn't take any chances.
Kai no longer needed to speak the entire spell aloud. Long practice plus the focusing property of the tea allowed her to carry only a single word deep inside, where she released it. In a dizzy, immaterial shift she slid into white fog, a place diffuse and warm where thought slowed… and slowed… and faded away.
Chapter 2
IT was the sobbing that woke her. Kai hung in the blurred state between sleep and waking, eyes closed, hearing the wash of rain drained of its earlier frenzy, the wail of her neighbor's Siamese cat, and the sobbing: Deep sobs, bereft of hope, aching with a terrible loneliness.
And familiar. She'd heard this before, in other dreams. Oh, sweetheart—there now, you aren't alone, I'm here. I'm…
Her eyes opened. The sound of that terrible sorrow died, but the colors of it lingered for a second in alien shapes of black and silver before dissolving.
Kai sat up, shaken. She'd brought those thoughts back with her. That had never happened before. And she never experienced the emotions connected to thoughts.
Was her lie somehow coming true? Was she was turning into an empath as well as a weird-ass telepath?
That fear, put into words, sounded so silly she was able to set it aside. She'd been asleep, after all—normal sleep, not in-sleep; the trance state never lasted more than a couple hours. She'd connected with someone's thoughts, but her dreaming mind must have translated colors and shapes to conjure the experience of grief instead of the sight of it.
Could it have been Nathan's mind she'd touched?
She frowned, not liking the idea. She'd caught such a quick glimpse of those thoughts… for some reason they hadn't struck her as human, but she wasn't sure why. Nathan was lonely, though. Deeply so. That was one reason she'd reached out to him when they first met, both of them out running in the early morning.
That, and his incredible thighs. And shoulders. And…
And that was enough of that sort of thinking. She shook her head at herself and glanced at the red numerals on her clock, bought because the numbers were big enough for her to read them without contacts or glasses.
Two-ten.
Well, shit. She grimaced and reached for her glasses. No point in trying to go back to sleep. The in-sleep state rested her deeply, and with a couple hours of real sleep on top of it, her tank was topped off. She might as well read for awhile.
Someone pounded on her door.
What the… it couldn't be good news, not at this hour. Kai swung out of bed, heart pounding, mentally sorting through various disasters as she hurried to her living area.
The police, arriving with some terrible news? A drank? A neighbor with an emergency?
Her last guess was right, she saw as she neared the door. Patterns clung to it, coining from the person on the other side—patterns she recognized.
Nathan. And pain. She fumbled with the locks, swung the door open, and let in a rush of cold, wet air.
The man standing in the puddle of yellow light from her porch light didn't move. He was on the lanky side of lean with a long face, black hair, and weathered skin that suggested native or Hispanic blood, though his features were Anglo. His clothes were dark and dripping. No jacket. He was cradling his left arm with his right, but she didn't see any blood.
"Nathan. Come in. What—No, come in first, then tell me."
"There's a bullet in my shoulder."
"An ambulance. I'll call… or do you want me to take you to the hospital? I'll get my coat." Keys. She needed her keys. She turned.
"Eh." One long arm reached out and stopped her. "No hospital. I don't want that. Will you take the bullet out?"
Her mouth gaped. She shut it. "I'm a physical therapist, not a doctor. Certainly not a surgeon."
"I don't need a surgeon. You know how a body is put together."
"I don't know how to—" She heard her voice rising and shut herself up, took a breath, and said more quietly, "I can at least clean it and wrap some gauze around it. Come inside."
"I shouldn't have bothered you." He turned.
This time she grabbed his arm. "In, dammit."
He looked down at her hand, then up at her face, and smiled a singularly sweet smile. That was typical. Nathan's smiles were rare, but each arrived as a new discovery, invented on the spot. "Yes, ma'am."
Standing still, Nathan didn't draw the eye. When he moved, men stood straighter and watched, wary. Women just watched. When he moved, Nathan was power.
Power with a bullet in the shoulder. A bullet. God! Kai shut the door, locked it, and stalked around behind him to look at the wound. How dare he get himself shot. How dare someone shoot him. And he wanted her to cut into him! She wanted to punch things. She was furious and irrational and hoped she'd get over it soon, but she wanted to punch things first.
His cotton shirt clung to his back, soaked through. There was a small, neat hole in the cloth in the neighborhood between his spine and his left scapula. "There's hardly any blood."
"It's usually best not to bleed."
She couldn't help but smile, which made it hard to hold on to her anger. "Bleeding isn't optional for most of us. What about pain? Is that optional, too? Unless you can shut the pain off, it's going to hurt badly if I start digging around in you.".
"Shutting pain off is dangerous."
"Can you do it?" she asked, startled.
He didn't answer. He did that sometimes. If she asked a question he didn't want to answer, he said nothing—no evasions, no anger. And no lies. In the eighteen months she'd known him, Nathan had never lied to her.
The last of her temper poofed out like mummy dust. "Nathan, I'm not qualified. You know that. You need a doctor."
He turned to face her. "Being cut will hurt, but I'm already in pain. Removing the bullet will allow me to heal properly. You're worried that you might damage me, but you won't. I'll direct y
ou. If your hand slips and you cut where you shouldn't, I'll heal it. I heal quickly."
He spoke patiently, as if she were making a fuss over a simple favor. Maybe to him that's all this was. "And if I don't remove the bullet?"
"My body will push it out in a few days, but my range of motion will be impaired until then, and my healing delayed."
Not to mention the pain thing. "I guess a doctor would notice the quick healing. You don't want that."
"Yes. He or she would also have to report a gunshot wound."
Her neighbor's cat had quieted. The apartment was silent except for the shushing of the rain outside. Kai's heart thudded hard in her chest and her palms were damp. Was she seriously considering doing what he wanted?
She met his eyes. They were steel gray like a winter sky, and heavily lashed, striking beneath his dark brows. As usual, they gave away nothing. But the slow, indigo shapes of the thoughts weaving around his head and torso kept spiking into ragged scarlet, toothy orange. Pain colors, when they shaped themselves that way.
He'd given her what he considered enough information to make a decision. He wouldn't ask again. "Who shot you?"
"A city cop. I was somewhere I wasn't supposed to be."
"You'll tell me," she said fiercely. "If I do this, you'll tell me why you were shot, what you were doing—all of it."
He nodded.
"All right. I'm insane, but I'll do it."
Chapter 3
NATHAN lay on his stomach on Kai's couch, waiting for her to return with whatever medical supplies she thought she needed. He heard her muttering to herself as she rummaged in the medicine cabinet in the bathroom.
He'd already selected the knife—a short, sharp paring knife from her kitchen, part of a set he'd given her last Winterfaire.
Not Winterfaire. Christmas. That's what they called the celebration of the winter solstice here. Even after all these years, in the privacy of his mind he sometimes forgot to name things in the common way.
She'd given him a present, too—a suede shirt the color of sand, soft as a mare's nose. He was glad he hadn't worn it tonight… but that was silly thinking. He wanted to keep it for as long as possible, so he seldom wore it. Certainly not for a hunt, even such a limited one as tonight's had been.
Kai had laughed when she opened his gift and said something about the difference between men's presents and women's. She did see him as a man. Sometimes he wanted to ask her why. Was it only his shape that made her think of him that way? Or were his thoughts man-shaped in some ways?
That could be. He'd been here a long time. Perhaps he wasn't as far from human as he sometimes felt.
Feelings spiked in him at the thought. Complicated feelings. Humans dwelled within their complications so consistently, even as they squirmed and disavowed and tried to make the world simple by thinking it so. Nathan had never grown accustomed to human complexities, even—especially—when he experienced them. This wash of huge, contradictory feelings made him want to weep.
Instead he paid attention to the texture of the blanket beneath him, the rhythm of his breath, and the hot pain in his shoulder.
Tonight's shirt was ruined, but it was only cloth, not a gift. She'd helped him remove it. At his suggestion, she'd placed a blanket on the couch to keep it dry, since he hadn't taken off his wet jeans. He'd have been more comfortable without them, but that would have sent a sexual signal.
The blanket would also absorb blood, and there would be some. He could limit bleeding, but he couldn't stop it entirely without prematurely sealing the wound.
The first bright shock of pain from the bullet's entry had long since subsided to a crimson haze, unpleasant but manageable. Controlling pain did not mean setting up some magical shield to deny it, but going into it, accepting it fully. Just as his muscles would accept the knife's message when it sliced into him.
Harder, much harder, was making himself vulnerable to that knife. But Kai would be wielding it, so that was all right.
He lay quietly, waiting, bemused at himself. How odd that he'd come here. It had been instinct, of course. He'd been hurt, in need of help. He'd come to his friend.
His friend. Nathan basked in the wonder of that. He'd known he liked Kai, that he felt good around her, but hadn't realized… gods. He'd just found her. A year ago he would have felt nothing but joy at the finding. Now…
"Okay, I've got gauze and antibiotic ointment and peroxide," Kai said. Her footsteps, soft as they were on the carpet, were audible to him as she approached. "And I found my tweezers. I sterilized them with the peroxide, but I should probably boil them and the knife."
"Not necessary. I'm not susceptible to bacteria or viruses."
"Oh." She took a deep breath. "I'll still clean the area around the wound. It will make me feel better, and I need to get the dried blood off so I can see what I'm doing."
"All right." He slowed his breathing further, closing his eyes. The couch smelled musty; she gave off the fresh, bright scent of a healthy young woman, plus the subtle mix that said Kai to him.
He couldn't go under all the way. Her scent might be enough to keep him from interpreting the knife as an attack, but he wouldn't risk it. Besides, he needed to guide her.
"Where were you that you weren't supposed to be?"
The peroxide was cool and wet. Her touch was firm enough to do the job without being rough. It hurt, but he liked having her touch him. He wished she could do it more often. "At the morgue."
"Are you going to make me pull your story out question by question?"
He smiled at the image of her extracting answers with her tweezers. "I'd prefer to discuss it after the bullet's out."
Another deep breath. "I guess I'm trying to delay."
"Are your hands shaking?"
A pause. "No." She sounded surprised.
"You know how to cause pain when it's needed for healing." They'd talked about that, about how she'd had to learn to allow, even encourage, others to hurt in order to help them reclaim their bodies.
"Yes. Yes, I do. All right. Let's do it."
"You see the entry."
"Yes. It, ah, it's scabbed over and looks about three days old, but I see it."
"Good. The bullet's path was slightly up and to the left, leaving it wedged just beneath the edge of the shoulder blade. I've delayed the internal healing enough that I think you'll be able to see its path. Make a vertical cut, starting about two inches above the entry hole and extending an inch below to give you room to work. There will be some bleeding. I can't prevent that entirely without sealing up around the knife."
The next several minutes went about as he'd expected. Nathan didn't like pain, but it was a familiar enemy. He only tensed once, when her knife skidded across the bullet, sending it deeper.
Otherwise she did well. Kai wasn't trained in this sort of thing, but she understood the basic layout of the body. Her hand remained steady and she followed his directions meticulously. Still, by the time she finished it was a relief to relinquish control and let his body heal. He lay there and panted, exhausted.
She seemed to be doing the same, sitting back on her heels with her eyes closed and her face pale. After a moment she spoke. "It's closing up."
Her voice sounded odd. Spooked, maybe. He couldn't think of what he was supposed to say—agreeing that the wound was, indeed, closing seemed pointless. Perhaps she wanted to know what to expect. "The visible part of the wound heals first, to seal it. Since no vital organs were affected and I'm not in combat, the rest will heal more slowly."
"How slowly?"
"Several hours, probably."
"If you were in combat, it would heal faster?"
"Yes."
"Do you control the healing?"
"No." He reconsidered. That wasn't entirely accurate. "I can, to some extent. I slowed it on the way here, but it's difficult. Tiring."
"Your body prioritizes for you." A thread of humor lightened her voice.
She wasn't too spooked, then. Relieved, h
e made the effort to sit up. The pain was much less now. "Yes. A good way to put it. May I see the bullet?"
Her eyebrows lifted. "Ghoulish interest, or a souvenir?" She handed him the clump of bloody gauze where she'd dropped the slug.
"I haven't been shot in a long time, and ammunition has changed. It could be useful to know what kind of damage to expect from today's weapons."
"If you're well enough to sit up and examine your bullet, you're well enough to explain why a cop shot you in the back."
"He couldn't shoot me from the front. I was running away." He inspected the smashed lump. Hollow point, as he'd expected. That was standard police-issue and what he used himself. Good stopping power, and less likely to pass through the target and harm a nearby civilian or hostage. Probably a lightweight .38, he decided. Some of the older officers clung to their .38s.
"The officer will be disciplined, I imagine." He lifted his hip so he could slip the slug in his pocket. "He was too hasty in using his weapon. Chief Roberts thinks within narrow channels, but he's correct within his limits."
She huffed out a breath. "That is not an explanation."
He felt a smile start. Kai was angry. If he told her she was pretty when temper brought that flush to her skin, she might pick up the knife again. But she was.
Her Gift was linked to water, and she wore its colors often. The soft flannel she wore tonight was a pale green that made him think of one of the many bright pools in the Summer Lady's land. Her throat rose from the neck of her pajamas, a strong and beautiful pillar the color of warm, wet sand. She would smell so good right there, in the hollow between neck and collarbone.
He took a moment to rein in his body, but the smile lingered inside. "I've been searching for the killer."
"I know that. I don't know why you were at the morgue. Or why you were shot for being there."
"I wanted to see the bodies of the two who were slain. I didn't have permission." The two victims had been killed within city limits, so the city police were handling the investigation. Chief Roberts didn't play well with others, particularly those in the sheriff's office. "I hoped to pick up a… a scent. Traces left by the killer."
