by Mark Henwick
That left Jason, and I turned to him with a sick certainty in my stomach. Alex and Bian had worked a triage system on the wounded, dealing with those they thought they could save rather than those they knew they couldn’t. Jason’s skin was white and the stench told me his muscles had loosened. There was a limp finality to the way his whole body sprawled on the floor of the van. I couldn’t find a pulse or see a breath. He had only a single bullet wound through the groin, just below the Kevlar vest, but beneath him was a lake of blood where the severed artery had completed the emptying of his body. It must have taken a supreme effort for him to get back to where Paul had been waiting in the factory. He’d probably died even as Paul carried him.
I bent my head over his body. I didn’t even know how old he really was. Athanate tended to look young, but maybe he’d had a good long life as humans count it. Regardless, he didn’t deserve this. I touched my hand to his cooling forehead. At least he looked at peace, forever safe from our unprofitable strife.
I turned back to Alex and the concerns for the living. Working swiftly in the unfamiliar layout of the van, Alex had managed to rig up an IV drip and blood pressure monitor. His fingers were delicately probing Jen’s stomach, trying to assess the damage the bullet had caused.
Beneath the professional mask of the doctor, I could feel a seething anger.
“What is it?” I asked.
“She’s slipping away from me, Amber. We need to get her into an ICU.” His eyes flicked across to Bian. “She says we’re heading back to the Altau house.”
Bian’s head came back up, her eyes dark.
“Bian, I’m sorry about Jason,” I said urgently. “But we have to concentrate on the living. Jen needs a hospital now.”
“No,” she said. “We have to return to Haven. Those are Skylur’s direct orders. We have to get back now. We can’t go to the hospital.”
I could see she was furious about her orders, and that she wasn’t going to change her mind.
“Then you have to help Jen. You did it for Mykayla when she was injured.”
She turned her gaze away, closing her eyes, and her voice caught. “No, I can’t,” she replied.
Chapter 48
“What do you mean, Bian?” I reached across the van and pulled her around, gasping as my shoulder screamed protest. Bian moved easily, not resisting, but her eyes were bright with anger.
“You think I don’t want to?” she yelled at me. “I’m a healer, I want to help her. I feel her calling out to me.”
“So why don’t you?” I asked, confused.
“Skylur’s orders,” she replied. “He was patched into our comms. He said anyone in your House gets injured, you have to heal them.”
“Jen’s a bystander, for heaven’s sake.”
Bian turned her face away again. “She’s not, Amber. Even I acknowledge that. You claimed her as kin.” She threw her hands up. “And we don’t have time to argue.”
That at least I agreed with. Rain drummed on the roof of the van, making it difficult to think. Jen needed me. I wasn’t a full Athanate. I was some weird hybrid. I didn’t know how to heal people, not like Bian did. Why was Skylur doing this?
“I can’t do it, Bian. I don’t know where to start.”
It was Bian’s turn to seize my shirt and pull me close. “You are fully Athanate,” she shouted over the noise of the rain. “You think because you’ve got some crazy wolf stuff going on that you’re not, but you are. I can tell. I can tell you can heal. You have to believe me, for Jen’s sake.” Were those tears in her eyes?
“What do I do then?”
“You’re already doing it. You want to heal her. I can smell the aniatropics coming off you.”
“So…”
Bian gripped my face. “Kiss her.” A smile just touched her lips, a little of the playful Bian coming through. “It’s not as if she would object.”
She yanked me forward roughly till I was kneeling. Jen’s bloodied face was pale beneath me. My heart ached to do something. Now that Bian had said it, I could taste changes in my mouth—strange flavors, acidic, almost like unripe berries. Things were happening in me, it was just I had no idea what they were.
“Need to do something soon,” Alex said, his words blurred by the drumming rain, his fingers searching out a weakening pulse.
This felt all wrong. There was a risk that I would infect Jen with prions. I didn’t know what agents my body was producing. But Jen was out of options. I had to trust Bian. I had to try.
I kissed her cold lips. I wanted to lift her up in my arms, protect her, keep her safe. I had failed her. It was my fault for not being there, for not concentrating on getting Hoben before the Assembly. Hoben was after me, not her. She’d taken this in my place. This was my responsibility.
“BP falling.” I could hear Alex. I could feel his presence, and Bian’s, urging me on to do something. Anything.
The aniatropics weren’t enough.
Jen!
Cold. Hot. Hurt. Not just my shoulder, my whole body awash with pain, my mind clouded in despair. Shame. Humiliation. Everything that had been done to me. No, not my body. Jen’s. As fragile as the deep sea creature I’d glimpsed, shivering on the hillside above Denver; a fleeting phantom of hopes and desires, joy and pain.
Jen! Jen, trust me.
Always.
Our translucent phantoms touched, twined together, wreathed in light until I could not see where one stopped and the other started.
Our pain, our injuries. Hearts beating as one, air rushing into our lungs, blood flowing in our veins. Heal. Together in the heart-thudding silence. Without let or limitation, our strength, our health.
“BP rising!” Alex. Far away. “Pulse steady. It’s working, dammit Amber, it’s working!”
I flashed back to a childhood memory. My mother lifting me when I had fallen, kissing me on the knee and elbow and magically making me all right. This wasn’t the same at all, but I wanted to make everything all right again, all the damage, everything that had happened to her because of me. I didn’t want to heal only the cuts and bruises. I wanted to take away the terror, these last things in the darkness, screaming and full of pain. They were mine, my responsibility.
No! Jen struggled. You mustn’t.
They’re mine. I have a place for these.
And I took them.
“Good, Amber, good. Now enough.” Bian was murmuring in my ear. I was aware of her hand on my shoulder.
The lights seemed to fade and I heard the sound of thunder above the rain.
I was sitting back upright, with no recollection of moving. Jason’s blood was soaking into my jeans. Tullah was next to me, peering worriedly into my face. My shoulder ached.
Alex gently took Jen’s hand out of mine. She was so limp. I reached out weakly to take her back.
You can’t take her away from me.
“Amber! Stop. Just relax,” Bian said. “You did well. It takes a toll.”
“Was it enough?” I asked. Jen looked so lifeless. Alex was carefully washing the blood from Jen’s body. Horrific images of cleaning corpses for burial forced their way into my head.
“Yes,” Bian replied simply, and the images left me. “She’ll recover. She’ll heal completely.”
I slumped back against the side of the van and closed my eyes again. I’d done it. I didn’t care what happened to me now. Nothing could be worse than the nightmare of this day. A little smile, tentative as a spring flower, tugged at my lips. Just rest.
“Amber.” Tullah knelt next to me and shook me back to alertness. “I have to get out. I can’t go anywhere near an Athanate meeting.”
Bian looked at her without expression, and I had a bad feeling about this.
Alex cut across the tension. “Let her take the Ford, Bian.”
“But you’re House Farrell,” Bian said to Tullah.
“No.” Tullah and I spoke at the same time.
“Really?” Bian’s eyes became heavy and calculating. “Then we must mee
t again, young Adept.” She reached for an intercom behind her and told David to pull over.
Pia stopped behind us, on the roadside.
“Alex,” I said reluctantly, “maybe you’d better…”
He shook his head. “I can’t leave my patient at the moment,” he said. “Or you.”
“I have to go back to Ma,” Tullah whispered in my ear. “She was right. Kaothos is too strong. And what happened…Ma will need to talk to you.”
I snorted. “If she lets me talk before ripping my head off for putting you in danger. Yeah, okay.” I reached with my good hand and squeezed her shoulder. “Thanks. And if that was us, at the end, then we had to do it.”
“No. We broke all the rules. Kaothos used you, and she spoke to you, without telling me. I didn’t tell you her name. How can I trust her?” She pulled away and jumped out into the rain.
Pia joined Paul and David in the cab. I could just make out Tullah, through the heavy rain, getting into the Ford. Bian closed the door.
“You’re a fool if you don’t make her House Farrell very soon,” she said as we got back on the road.
“That’s not how I’ll work,” I replied. Mary would probably kill me as it was. Trying to get her daughter to join an Athanate House would only make things worse.
“We’ll see. Athanate imperatives may change the way you think.” Bian sighed. “We’re not finished here. We’ve all got to be one of two things when we arrive at Haven. House Altau or House Farrell. It’s not a matter of just saying it.”
Alex’s head came up and his eyes shaded towards the wolf. I put a calming hand on his arm and looked quizzically at Bian.
“Skylur’s had to take desperate measures. He’s got…” She stumbled a bit. “He’s got reserves that aren’t strictly legal in the view of the Assembly. Look, we don’t have time to explain this. The Lyssae are loose on the grounds,” she said. “It’ll be hard enough getting House Altau people through.”
“What are the Lyssae?”
Bian shrugged impatiently. “You’ll see. Athanate who’ve lost the part that keeps them sane.”
“Rogues?”
“No. They’re not that. Maybe we’ll understand them better when we understand the prions you’ve told us about. We’ve always just said they have lost all their humanity.” She rubbed her face. “They’re difficult to communicate with and you can’t fight them. They’re just too strong and quick. They understand and defend House Altau, and they should accept House Farrell. If they can identify you all as House Farrell.”
“Pia and David—” I started.
“They’re clearly House Farrell. So’s Jen with the amount of aniatropics you’ve just pumped into her.” Her eyes swiveled to Alex.
“I don’t belong to any Athanate House,” Alex growled, his eyes becoming more golden with every passing moment.
“You’re more than halfway there already, wolf,” Bian said. “You don’t smell like the Denver pack. And as for it being an Athanate marque, it’s half wolf.”
“I don’t belong—” he repeated.
“Hmm, maybe we can fix that,” Bian suddenly moved with her predatory grace and rested a hand on him.
Before Alex could react, before I had time to think of what I was doing, I shoved her away and, protesting shoulder or not, I reached around him and pulled him to me. Almost all the way.
We looked at each other from inches away. His eyes were full-on golden now and although he hadn’t fought it when I grabbed him, his muscles were stiff and wary.
Mine, mine, mine yammered my brain, but I forced myself to relax. I wouldn’t ever conscript anyone, and it wouldn’t work with this wolf anyway. I could feel my Athanate senses straining to reach out to him, to do something, but I refused. My jaw felt hot, but no fangs emerged. I wasn’t going to bite. That wasn’t what Bian was saying anyway, I thought.
I wasn’t any good at this. I certainly couldn’t make myself as attractive and seductive as Bian could. I didn’t even have a clear idea of what it was to bind someone. Bian seemed to think I would find my way instinctively through all these Athanate powers.
In the end I sighed, closed my eyes and waited. It was up to Alex. I couldn’t, wouldn’t force him.
His mouth touching mine was almost a surprise. We kissed gently and parted.
“House Farrell?” I whispered. He couldn’t have heard me above the noise of the rain, but maybe he could read my lips.
“Pack Deauville,” he joked back. “You can’t bind a Were any more than I can bind a vamp, but if it’ll keep Bian off me, why don’t we try anyway.”
We did just that, much less tentatively this time. I didn’t know if this was what I was supposed to do, but, as he said, if it kept Bian off him…
Not lights and mists, like Jen. Darkness and commotion in the night. A sensation of sharing. To be one, to hunt together.
And my gradual comprehension that all the groundwork had been done already, while we’d been, ahem, distracted in his office.
Was it all working? I hadn’t a clue. It just felt right.
And when we broke the kiss, Bian was grinning. Witch. She knew just what sort of reaction she was trying to provoke in me.
I scowled at her, as she slid across to Alex. My hackles came up, but she just sniffed.
“Smell’s better anyway; bit more vamp over all that wet dog. I now pronounce you House Farrell.” She held her hands up in surrender at Alex’s look. “At least for the purposes of getting into Haven.” Her eyes lingered over his naked body. “Time to get dressed again, wolf.”
His clothes had been tossed in the back with us and were stained with blood. He wrinkled his nose, but started to struggle back into them. He grinned at me, clearly not understanding what had just happened. I was going to have a hell of a time explaining it when I had a chance.
“Round-eye, another couple of things you need to know before we get there.”
I looked at her. The shutters had come down again. This was Bian’s hard shell showing now.
“Firstly, I don’t know if I’m still Diakon. Skylur went ballistic over this morning.” She shrugged. “I’d do it again, and at least we achieved the objectives I told you about.”
My hand rested on Jason. “At a cost,” I said.
She nodded and the shell slipped a bit. “The second thing you have to understand is how important you’ve become.” Her head turned away, her voice nearly lost in the noise of the rain. “I had a third objective I was given. In the event you were captured, I was to make every effort to kill you all, at any cost.”
Shit. I opened my mouth to ask the obvious question, and the van turned and came to a jerky halt.
“Not a moment too soon,” Bian said. “Playtime’s over.”
Chapter 49
We all got out into the pouring rain at the gates of Haven.
Thunder rumbled down from the mountains, feeling its way through the valleys like some blind, hunting monster, seeking us out, slowly getting closer.
The rain got harder. We were already wet and there’s a point where you don’t get any wetter. Good thing I didn’t spend much on hairdos. And maybe some of that water would wash away the blood.
The gatehouse had steel shutters blocking the firing slits. Two figures emerged from inside. One was a man I had seen on the gate before and the other was Mykayla. They both embraced Bian. With Bian there to compare against, my nose told me the man was her kin. I didn’t think Mykayla had been bitten by Bian yet, to my surprise, but she might as well have been.
“You should be inside already,” Bian said to them, but not angrily.
“We had to wait for you,” Mykayla replied. “Everyone else is in now, or well away from the boundaries.” She looked over towards the dark grounds and shuddered. “They’re out. And someone tried to get in on the far side.”
“I know,” replied Bian. “Open the gates and let us through, then close them behind us. Amber stays with me, the rest get in the van. And leave the back doors open. Same with t
he windows in the cab, David.”
Alex started to argue, but Bian wasn’t having any of it.
“You have no idea, Alex. You’ve just got to trust me. Get in there and do not move, whatever happens.”
I touched his arm. He’d taken Bian’s refusal to take Jen to the ICU. He’d worked without complaint in the back of the van while Jason’s blood washed the floor. He’d submitted to Bian’s requests about binding. He had been getting angrier and angrier as the night went on and I was worried about how he might react now. He’d been wolf already once tonight and I sensed that made the wolf close now. I didn’t know whether there was a point when the wolf just took over.
“Please, Alex. I’ll be okay. Stay with Jen.”
He spoke to me quietly in my ear, disguising it with a hug.
“I’m worried about this, Amber. She’s right—I don’t know what’s going on. Do you trust her? After what she said?”
“I don’t know what’s going on either,” I replied. “But I trust Bian. And I’m glad you’re here.”
He nodded unhappily and got back in the van. Once the gates were closed behind us and everyone else was on board, we started towards the house. Bian and I walked in front. The van rolled slowly along behind us. It was like a funeral procession. In fact, I reminded myself, it was. Jason’s body lay in the van.
The van’s lights glared around us. It was quieter than it had been inside the van, but there was still the unceasing surf sound of the rain, the howl of the wind, and gravel crunching beneath our feet and the tires of the van.
One second, the van lights showed nothing but the falling rain, and the next, they gleamed on a huge figure blocking our way.
I gasped in shock and stumbled. Seven feet tall and dark as the void, the statue of Anubis from Skylur’s dungeon stood in front of us, his breath steaming around him like an old-time locomotive.
Bian, at least, had expected this. She walked forward confidently, dwarfed by his size, and spoke to him.
