Shaman

by Chloe Garner

  Jason stared at Sam’s body, hung like a dressed kill, feeling ill, then desperate, then something dark and bottomless that he had no words for.

  “I trust you.”

  “You two have the same blood type?” she asked.

  “Yes,” Jason said.

  “Start eating.”

  “I’m not hungry.”

  “Didn’t ask if you were. No alcohol. I’ll be back in an hour. Keys.”

  Jason was still staring at Sam.

  “It isn’t hurting him,” she said softly. “I have to be clinical. Only way I can do this. I’m sorry. Keys.”

  He dug them out of his pocket and handed them to her, then, after she left, sat down on the bed facing away from Sam and poured himself a glass of orange juice.

  “Sorry, buddy,” he said.

  <><><>

  She came back with blood bags and blood-draw kits, as well as a box of saline bags and a couple of shopping bags from the same store Jason had gone to.

  “What’s that for?” Jason asked.

  “He’s going to need live blood,” she said.

  “How did you get him up there?” he asked. He had been dying to know, since the question had occurred to him, and now that Samantha was in motion, he was letting himself pretend that everything was going to be okay. She looked at him for a moment as she cleaned a spot on his arm and held a needle above it.

  “Anger.”

  She stabbed him, mercilessly but cleanly, and set the bag on the bed next to him.

  “Call me when that’s full.”

  She took the bucket from underneath Sam’s head and took it to the bathroom. Jason nearly lost what little he had managed to eat at the sound of her pouring it in the tub. She returned and put a chair under Sam so that his shoulders were on the seat and the back was tipping, then untied an anchor at the wall and lowered him, the chair continuing to tip until he was laying on the ground. She untied him and rolled him over, looking up at Jason.

  “You may not want to watch this,” she said.

  “What are you going to do?”

  “I need to repair his heart,” she said. “I’m going to cut him open so I’m sure I do it right.”

  She was right. He didn’t want to watch. He turned away and focused on drinking his juice as the bag sitting on the bed next to him continued to fill.

  “You’re drinking two quarts of orange juice for every quart of blood I pull, and eating a bowl of cereal,” she said.

  “Isn’t that much orange juice fatal?” he asked.

  “No. That much blood loss is,” she said.

  “How much are we talking about here?” Jason asked.

  “Two quarts, if you can manage it,” she said. “We’re on a clock, but the biggest thing is how quickly we can get a stock of your blood for him.”

  “Why me? Why not just steal it?” he asked. He felt her looking at him and turned.

  “Do you really not understand?” she asked. “Your life for his. Some stranger isn’t going to have nearly the power you do.”

  He swallowed.

  “Right.”

  Her eyes widened.

  “I’m not sacrificing you for him. There’s no guarantee this is going to work. I would never let you die for a chance at bringing him back.”

  He turned back to his orange juice, the hole in Sam’s back more than he could stand.

  “Even if you did,” he said. “Do what you have to do.”

  “He’d be mad, to hear you say that,” Samantha said.

  “He’d pretend to be mad, but he wouldn’t be surprised,” Jason said.

  <><><>

  Hours later, Jason had three pints of blood sitting next to him on the bed. He was dizzy and his stomach sloshed when he moved. Samantha had built a stretcher out of a system of iron rods and nylon straps and was little by little building it up under Sam, raising him off the ground inches at a time. Jason wanted to offer to help, but he felt like if he got up, he would fall over. She had put him on an IV an hour ago.

  “You have one more in you?” she asked. “Or do you want to sleep for a couple of hours?”

  He shook his head.

  “Do it.”

  She put another pillow under his feet.

  “Do it,” he said again. “I’ve been worse.”

  “I was there,” she said. “I need you to be here for the last part. Really here.”

  “I’m fine.”

  She took another bag out and switched the line out of his arm. The red fluid pushed its way out the line in little bursts and then coated the inside of the flat bag. She put a fresh glass of orange juice into his other hand.

  “Keep drinking.”

  “I’m going to throw it all up,” he said.

  “You’re keeping your blood pressure up,” she said. “Just keep it down.”

  She returned to building the platform under Sam. Eventually, she pulled the dresser away from the wall and started sliding him over onto it, suspended six inches above the wide wooden surface. She had stitched shut the exit wound where the rifle round had come out, just right-of-center on his chest, and Jason had finally watched the process of closing the deep hole on his back when she finished work on his heart. Sam was pale, his skin a translucent gray and crisscrossed with veins. Jason closed his eyes and looked away again.

  <><><>

  He slept for three hours.

  Samantha woke him up at dawn. The dresser under Sam had two lines of candles, alternating black and white, and three bags of saline solution were suspended above him.

  “Are you ready?” she asked.

  He sat up, cold, dizzy, and nodded. She looked at him with soft eyes.

  “The longer we wait, the lower our odds are. I’m sorry.”

  He struggled out of bed.

  “Do you know CPR?” she asked. He shook his head, grabbing hold of the bed to hold himself up.

  “Really? All the people you have dying around you, and you never learned CPR?”

  “Usually they die because they have a big hole in them,” he said. She sighed.

  “Lay down.”

  He managed a controlled fall to the floor and she knelt over him.

  “You are going to be pumping his heart for him. There’s not going to be much space, and you won’t have anything to balance on. Keep your mass centered. Hands like this,” she showed him, “over his sternum, here. His ribs will flex when you do it. Normal. The training says one to two inches of compression. See?”

  He nodded, grateful she didn’t actually push his chest. Just laying on the floor had him seeing stars. She helped him up.

  “No matter what happens, that’s your job until I say otherwise,” she said.

  “What’s going to happen?” he asked. She licked her lips.

  “I’m about to do the stupidest thing I have ever done in my life.” She took a shaky breath and sucked on her lip. Looked at Sam, then closed her eyes hard and nodded. “It’s time.”

  She put his hands on the corners of the stretcher.

  “This is where you hold at the beginning, then I’ll tell you it’s time to beat his heart. Okay? I won’t be able to help you get up. There’s a chair right there. Right?”

  Jason checked and nodded.

  “Okay.”

  She took the four bags of blood out of the refrigerator and hung them from a hook on the wall, running their lines down to Sam’s neck, then did the same with the saline. She stepped back, then touched Sam’s forehead.

  “Hold on, Sam. I’m coming for you.”

  She stepped further back and nodded, chanting something in hellspeak.

  “Aren’t you a prize?” a voice behind Jason said. He turned to find Brandt standing in the room.

  “You know what I’m doing and you know why I pulled you across. You can decide right now if you want to help or not.”

  “Or what?”

  “The room is lined with sandsilk and jellyfish. I’ll push you back before you can get through it. I contract that I will open the
door for you myself if you help, success or failure.”

  “Do you now?” Brandt walked over to Sam, looking down at him like an owl.

  “You do not touch him,” Samantha said. “You touch him, the contract is void and I push you back across.”

  “Who’s your third?” Brandt asked.

  “Him,” Samantha said, indicating Jason. Brandt wrinkled his nose, looking at Jason.

  “Has she told you what you’re roped into here, boy? Only six people have managed this, in all of time.”

  “Where light, dark, and gray agree,” Samantha said.

  “And what exactly is he?” Brandt asked.

  “Gray. Broad spectrum warrior. Measured him out myself.”

  Brandt sniffed.

  “No skin off my nose, this goes wrong, but why aren’t you using Carter?”

  “You know he wouldn’t come. Not for something like this.”

  Brandt grinned.

  “Bit stodgy about death, isn’t he?”

  “In or out,” Samantha said. Brandt shrugged.

  “Oh, I’m in. Wouldn’t want my suit to get thrown out in disrepair before I ever got to wear it.”

  Jason sneered at him.

  “Just the way it’s supposed to be,” Brandt said, grinning. “Well, you two aren’t getting any younger.”

  “Hold on,” Samantha said to Jason.

  “You’re sure you know what you’re doing?” Jason asked.

  “It’s the only thing I know of.”

  <><><>

  Samantha watched as Jason groggily held the corners of the improvised cot, the iron forming a conduit for the power of the three of them. She held the two handles on her side and Brandt took the opposing two.

  “Light,” she said in hellspeak.

  “Light,” he echoed. The candles at the edges of the table lit, white then black, and Samantha started the light side of the spell as Brandt wove the dark side. She motioned at Jason and he let go of the cot and pulled the chair over, carefully climbing up. For a moment he wavered, but Samantha couldn’t spare any focus in the battle of power with Brandt. He would be planting trap doors and parasites and loopholes all over his spell, and beside actually pushing life into Sam, she had to block all of them. He spoke fast. She spoke faster. Jason steeled himself, finding his balance, and began to pump Sam’s heart.

  Five minutes.

  Ten minutes.

  Fifteen minutes.

  They had laid the foundation, and Jason was visibly tiring, sweating in the considerable heat of a table full of candles. Brandt took the next step first, sparking a surge of power through the iron that caused the black candles to burn high and hot. Samantha continued the defensive side of her spell laying, glancing down at the white candles and their demure, wax flames. She looked back up and Brandt looked around Jason, eyes mocking. Jason looked at her, sensing the change. She closed her eyes and sent the replying light power back, surging in ripples over the dark power. The candles roared higher, and Jason’s breath came in short pants as he forced himself to continue his part of the work. The light magic and the dark magic sparked against each other, battling as mutually-consuming natural elements, only held apart by a third layer, one fueled by Jason’s sheer determination. The bags of blood were empty. The bags of saline were empty. There was a roar of raw power that only Samantha felt - it was her spell. She had won it. She pulled it up and over Sam like unfurling a cloth over a kitchen table, and she felt the spark of life as it hit his heart and his brain simultaneously.

  Unthinking, she flung Jason off of him, tossing him into Brandt as much to get him off as to use him as a shield against the demon, and she climbed onto the stretcher, continuing the chest compressions as his heart beat weakly, and breathing air - warm, live air - into his lungs. Candles tumbled onto the floor and rolled across the dresser, but she was singularly focused on that spark.

  She could feel it. She pulled hard as the bond reconstituted, willing life to follow heartbeat and breath. He established a steady rhythm and she breathed for him for a minute longer, then he took his first breath on his own, deep, like emerging from water.

  His skin color returned. The candles had created a zone of heat that had already started to warm his body. The sutures on his neck had vanished with the magic, as had the hole on the front of his chest. She searched everything the bond would tell her. No pain. He felt no pain. He was simply exhausted of energy, repairing and reclaiming life.

  She looked at Jason and nodded, finding tears on her face. He knelt on the floor and put his hand over his mouth.

  “So,” Brandt said. “Door.”

  She looked at the demon and he smiled.

  “Send him back,” Jason said. Samantha shook her head.

  “I contracted it. I will not break my promise.”

  “An impressive show, really,” Brandt said. “Though, I should mention. I’m coming for him now,” he said, indicating Jason. “I figure, if this is what they’ll do for each other, I should use that, right?” He pointed at Jason. “I’m going to make you scream and plead for death, boy. Sam is going to let me take him, eventually. You’re going to be the reason.”

  “Go,” Samantha said. “The door is open. I didn’t promise I wouldn’t close it again.”

  Brandt glitched out and Jason stood. Samantha found the candles on the floor and put them on the dresser, blowing out the black ones first, and then the white ones. It didn’t make any difference at this point, but it made her feel better.

  Sam blinked.

  “What happened?”

  END OF BOOK TWO

  Thank you for reading Shaman, book two of the Sam and Sam series by Chloe Garner. . If you enjoyed this story please come on over to Amazon and tell us what you liked about it. Also be sure to check out the next book in the series, Psychic.

  In-over-their-heads was a ways back, now. Demon hunting trio Sam, Jason, and Samantha are on the run, trying to find a way to keep both Jason and Sam away from the whiny demon who is hellbent on possessing Sam. Samantha doesn’t seem much like herself, though, and complicated is too hopelessly simple a way of describing her ever-changing relationship with Sam. They may not have known what they were signing up for, when they started to dabble in Samantha’s world, but they’re going to have to learn fast. The stakes are high, and they're only getting higher.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Chloe Garner is, a wanderer with a host of identities in her head fighting each other to get out. Chloe writes about the things that go bump in the night, the future, and all things fantastical. Find her on Twitter as BlenderFiction, on Goodreads and Facebook as Chloe Garner, or at blenderfiction.wordpress.com.

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