Hemorrhage (Medicine and Magic Book 4)

by SA Magnusson

  Considering who he was, it was possible that he would. Of all of my attendings, Allen was the most open and empathic.

  “I was kind of thinking I had gotten enough experience with traumas during residency.”

  “There is something to be said about volume,” he said. “I just thought you might want to pursue a fellowship, seeing as how your good friend Dr. Stone has shared with me her interest in applying for an ultrasound fellowship. And then we have several outside candidates for the toxicology fellowship, which we rarely fill internally, something I find surprising. It must be that we don’t build up enough with our own residents.”

  I nodded, not really sure what to say, but a little surprised by the fact that Jen had interest in the ultrasound fellowship. I thought she was ready to be done.

  But then, maybe she wanted the reassurance of having more time to prepare. The ultrasound fellowship was pretty slow-paced, and while it allowed for the fellow to gain increased expertise with ultrasound, more of a teaching-type fellowship, it also allowed the person pursuing the fellowship to have more time under supervision of attendings.

  That was the last thing I thought Jen would want.

  Maybe I had been so caught up in what was going on with me that I had neglected to ask my friend how things were going for her.

  Damn.

  “Are you okay?” Allen asked.

  I nodded. “Just thinking about a patient.”

  “You’re on trauma these days?”

  I nodded. “I saw the patient in Five.”

  “I was just going there next.”

  “She was restrained, but only the lap belt.”

  “Any injuries?”

  “She had some blood on ultrasound, but she was mostly stable. I think she’ll avoid surgery and pull through. Those kids of hers need their mother.”

  Dr. Allen looked at me, and I could see him struggling with what to say.

  I turned away, facing the computer, and hurriedly grabbed the phone to page my service. It didn’t take long for Darnold to call back, and I filled him in.

  “Stay there and let me know if anything changes.”

  “I will,” I said.

  It was a relief that I wasn’t asked to come join him on the floor. It was near the end of the day, and as long as she was stable, I would be able to get home.

  Rest.

  That was all I wanted.

  I got up from the computer and headed toward the resident lounge, feeling Allen’s eyes on my back, resisting the urge to turn. What would I say to him, anyway? Sometimes I thought he knew more than he let on, but that was quite unlikely. I was the only fool plugged into the magical world, and even if I wanted someone else to share in that burden, I wasn’t sure I wanted it to be Allen.

  The lounge was empty and I took a seat on the sofa, leaning back. I must have closed my eyes because I woke to Jen dropping onto the sofa next to me.

  “It’s almost like you’re on your ER rotation again,” she said.

  “I was waiting to make sure a patient was stable. I can go home if she is.”

  “The lady in Five?” Jen asked.

  I nodded.

  “That one was mine,” Jen said. “She was pretty stable. Blood pressure was good. Heart rate was good. No signs of bruising or anything worrisome.”

  I debated whether or not to tell Jen about her injuries, but decided against it. It would only make her second guess herself, and from the way it sounded, she did that enough already.

  “Allen tells me you have interest in the ultrasound fellowship,” I said.

  She looked away. “It was just a thought. I haven’t made up my mind on whether or not I was going to apply for it. Why? Are you interested in it?”

  I shook my head. “I’ve told you. I don’t really want to spend another year bouncing around here.”

  “You can’t still be serious about wanting to head out to some rural hospital and work,” she said.

  “More than ever,” I said.

  “Just because Aron is gone?”

  “That’s not the reason.” But it made it easier. Jen knew it, too. Had Aron still been around, I might have been tempted to stay, even to consider a fellowship, though that would be unlike me. There were plenty of positions I could take within the Cities where I didn’t need a fellowship. And I really had enough experience with traumas that I didn’t think I needed to be fellowship trained. The only thing the fellowship would offer me would be a greater opportunity to teach, and that wasn’t something that appealed.

  “I’m just not sure I’m going to be ready,” she said.

  “You’re a good doctor,” I told her.

  “I know I’m a good doctor, but I want to be more than just good.”

  I nodded. “I know.”

  “Besides, this is all I have.”

  I frowned, arching a brow. “What are you saying?”

  “Well, it’s not like I have something else to turn to if I am not any good at this.”

  “I don’t have anything else to turn to, either.”

  “Don’t say that, Kate. I see you when you’re out there with them. It fits you.”

  “And this doesn’t?”

  “Well, this suits you too. I don’t know what to say. You’re a good doctor—damned good. You make me question whether I can ever be good enough.”

  “You know you can be.”

  “I know that I can be, but there’s nothing wrong with taking an extra year, gaining a few extra skills, and making sure.”

  “Why didn’t you ever tell me before?”

  “Because you’ve been caught up in everything else and I didn’t want to add anything more to what you’re going through.”

  “We’re friends, aren’t we?”

  “Friends, but…”

  “But what?”

  “But you never would have said anything to me had you not been forced to, would you?”

  I met her eyes, hating the truth, but she deserved it. “Probably not.”

  “Why?”

  “I never wanted this power,” I said. “I never wanted to be able to do the things that I can do. And I tried to hide from them, but it seems that the more that I try to hide, the more that everything seems to pull me back, almost as if it wants to bring me into the magical world.”

  “Because you’re meant to be a part of it, Kate.”

  “I don’t want to be meant to do anything.”

  She laughed. “You should be happy. You are able to do both of these things.”

  I smiled, but I wondered if I would be able to do both of these things or whether I would feel the same way that Jen felt, never mastering either.

  And I didn’t know if I wanted to master magic. I wanted to know it well enough that I didn’t cause trouble, and that if anything occurred, I would be able to react, but the more I was around magic, the more I was drawn into a world that was incredibly dangerous, and it was a world that I didn’t always feel connected to.

  Partly because I didn’t know how I fit in.

  And maybe I never would. Maybe I needed to stop looking for what my other half was and simply embrace the kind of magic I had. My magic was different, and there was nothing wrong with that. That magic had saved me. It had saved the Veil, and I should be proud of that.

  In that magic had just saved a woman with children. Didn’t that matter?

  I rested my head back, breathing slowly.

  “You can go home,” Jen whispered.

  “I’m supposed to wait and make sure the patient is stable.”

  “I just told you that she was.”

  Right. She had told me, and I wasn’t about to tell her that I had needed to use magic to save her.

  “Whatever came of last night?” Jen asked.

  “I can tell you about it later. It was quite a bit more bizarre than we ever had known.”

  “Bizarre? I think I like the sound of that.”

  “No. Trust me. You definitely would not.” I got up and started toward the door. “The
y told me they were going to leave your car in the garage.”

  “I hope they filled up with gas,” she said.

  I chuckled. If gas was the only thing she was worried about, then we were in good shape. Considering what the Volkswagen had seen last night, we’d be lucky if that was all it needed.

  15

  I awoke with a start.

  There was sound in my home. Something had startled me, though what was it?

  Maybe it was nothing more than Lucy, but as I looked around, I realized that wasn’t it. She was sitting near my head as she often did, though she was quiet, not doing anything that would keep me awake, not as she often did. I’d tried giving her a pillow to use, but she preferred my head.

  It was something else, but what?

  I heard it again.

  Crawling out of bed, I summoned magic, wrapping myself in a barrier.

  As I headed to the doorway, a part of me wondered if maybe Aron would suddenly appear.

  I had to push those thoughts away. He was gone. I had seen him die, and I had been dragged away from him. There was no saving Aron, and there would be no Aron sitting in my kitchen, flipping through the newspaper, looking up at me in that way of his. There would be no warmth from his gaze. No more of the car accelerating away, slamming me back in my seat. No more Aron.

  It still didn’t feel quite real. I needed a funeral or some way of grieving him more than I already had. Having spent a little time with Ariel had helped, but I still felt as if I needed more.

  I considered summoning the magical sword, but what if I’d left my door unlocked and it was nothing more than Marvin trying to make sure I was safe? I wouldn’t put it past him to do that, and if he did, revealing a magical sword would only lead to the kind of questions that I had wanted to avoid with my neighbors, Marvin in particular.

  The barrier would have to be enough.

  I wrapped it tightly around myself as I headed out of the bedroom and toward the kitchen. There was no one there.

  Moonlight spilled through a window and the curtain fluttered.

  Had I left a window open?

  I didn’t think so, but maybe Jen had.

  I hadn’t spent any time in the kitchen when I got home. I had fallen straight into bed, exhaustion dropping me into a deep slumber, regardless of the fact that it was barely six-thirty in the evening. I needed as much sleep as possible to recharge.

  I felt better, but not great. I didn’t know what time it was, and I wished I had a clock in the kitchen I could use to tell me, but those concerns weren’t helpful right now.

  If the sound wasn’t in the kitchen, it had to be in the living room or the spare room. I checked in the spare room first, but found it empty.

  I headed toward the living room. And froze.

  “Ariel?”

  The shifter sprawled out on my couch, completely naked. A pile of clothes was heaped on the floor in front of her.

  She stirred and looked up at me. “Dr. Michaels. I expected you to be sleeping until quite a bit later.”

  “I would’ve been, but the sound of someone in my home startled me awake.”

  “I’m sorry. I considered heading back to the Iron Range, but I wanted to help get to the bottom of all of this before I did.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I feel as if I owe you still.”

  “You don’t owe me anything.”

  “And I want to know why the archer died,” Ariel said. She sat up, leaning forward and resting her elbows on her knees. In human form, she had an incredibly athletic and muscular build. There appeared to be no fat on her body, and while I was in good shape, Ariel looked like a world-class athlete, making me feel as if I were overweight. “I’m sorry to have disturbed you.”

  “How are you able to get in? Aron placed protections around my home.”

  “That’s one thing the archer never managed to fully master,” she said.

  “What’s that?”

  “Protections that could exclude shifters,” she said.

  “You can bypass magical protections?”

  “Most of them. We have a way of shifting past things.”

  “Great. So locks don’t really matter when it comes to shifters?”

  “They matter, and with the right protection, I suspect you would be able to keep me out.”

  “You mean if I were to place the protection.”

  Ariel smiled and grabbed her clothes off the ground, slowly pulling them on. “You would likely be more successful at keeping me from entering than the archer had been.”

  “Why?”

  “Because your magic is different than his. Your power comes from a source on the other side of the Veil whereas his comes from—”

  “Came from. And his came from the same place on the other side of the Veil.”

  “I’m not entirely sure that it did. Mages draw upon power that isn’t necessarily tied to how secured the Veil might be. What I’ve seen from you suggests that your magic is stronger where there are gaps.”

  “Gaps?”

  “Places like the river. Have you ever experienced anything else like that?”

  I had, but I hadn’t thought of it in that way. When I had been in the basilica, the circle in the basement of the neutral ground had filled me with a raw sort of power, something that was unlike anything other than when I had stolen power from Solera.

  Ariel climbed off my couch and leaned toward me. “You have noticed power from the gaps.”

  “I don’t know that I would’ve called it power from the gaps, but I have detected a connection before.”

  “When you rescued me?”

  “That was one such time,” I said.

  “How?”

  “I stole from Solera.”

  Ariel studied me, frowning. “You stole from Solera? One of the fae?”

  “I didn’t know what I was doing at the time, and when I had gone to her, we were looking for answers. All I wanted was some way of trying to stop the Great One and understanding what had happened.”

  “They were freed from their prison is what happened.”

  “I gathered that, but I wanted to know how they were freed and if there was anything I could do to help put them back into their prison. I figured one of the fae would have some explanations.”

  “The prison was not on that side of the Veil.”

  “Why are you telling me this now? It doesn’t matter to me.”

  “It will matter if you face one of the Great Ones again. There are—or were—a dozen, and the one who was freed might have been closest to the surface, but that doesn’t mean that Chazarn is the most powerful of the Great Ones.”

  “His name was Chazarn?”

  Ariel nodded. “He was a talented Great One, but more of a hunter than a leader. The others remain.”

  “What do you mean by closest to the surface?”

  “The prison used to contain them. It lies outside of the Veil, and it’s a place of power, but it’s a prison. It restricts their access to their own power and saps it, funneling it across…”

  “Across to what?” I hesitated. Ariel was powerful, Aron had made that clear, and had said that her great power was something that very few shifters possess. “Do you draw upon the power of the Great Ones?” I asked.

  “Careful,” she said.

  “That’s why you have the magic that you do?”

  Ariel turned away. “All alphas are granted the power of the Great Ones. It’s part of the taking of the title. It’s what makes us strong; it’s what makes us leaders. I didn’t know it meant that we were taking power from others who were real. They were little more than legends, myths, and when I was elevated to the position of alpha, I thought it was nothing more than a story.”

  “But the Great Ones are real.” I cocked my head, studying Ariel. “Is that why things have changed for you?”

  “I refused to force my people to follow me, and I refuse to draw upon the power of the Great Ones, not now that I know what it is and the danger t
o using it.”

  “Are there other alphas who won’t hesitate to use it?”

  “There are other alphas, and I have tried getting word to them about what we faced, but I have heard nothing.”

  And I had thought that a battle between factions of mages would be difficult, but this could be even worse. If the shifters began an all-out battle, everybody else could be caught in the middle.

  “I thought you wanted to unify your people.”

  Ariel spun to face me. “Don’t speak to me about what I would do with my people, Kate Michaels. I am the alpha of the Iron Range pack, and I will do whatever I need in order to ensure that my people are safe.”

  “Everything other than drawing on the power of a Great One,” I said.

  Ariel growled softly.

  “There’s another gap, as you call it,” I said. “On neutral ground. When I went there with my grandparents, facing the gorgon, I was aware of that power.”

  “That’s a direct access to the power within the Veil itself,” she said.

  “There’s power within the Veil?”

  “What do you think the Carters do? We fill the Veil, securing it, ensuring that it remains solid. It needs to be secure, a real thing, and were it not, other creatures besides the gorgon would find a way to cross over.”

  “And what does this have to do with everything else?”

  “This has to do with the vampire.”

  “What about the vampire?”

  “After leaving you, I’ve been trying to understand why the vampires would be involved, and what role they would have in everything that has taken place so far. I’m still not certain I have uncovered everything, but I believe that it has to do with jockeying for position within the vampire families.”

  “This is all about one of the families taking control?”

  “There are five different vampire families, and all of them would like to lead the others. In this part of the country, the Vangalor family is most prominent, but the woman we encountered last night is a member of the Siren family.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Her screams. I had never heard anything quite like it and went looking for information about what it meant, especially as it seemed as if she were intent on trying to call others with her screams. That, apparently, is a hallmark of the Siren family.”