Dancing on the Wind (40 page)

“Do you see what’s happening to your daughter?” Matty snarled. He was

struggling to pull Keenan’s hands from her throat where she’d already gouged the

flesh. “She and Fallon aren’t just bonded, they are soul-linked. What he feels, she’s

feeling. If he dies, she dies!”

Lily’s mouth dropped open and her eyes widened. “You can’t let that happen!”

“
Roland
!” Matty shrieked.

“
I’m trying but
she
doesn’t want to give him up
.”

Breslin and Lily heard the words as clearly as Matty did.

Matty twisted his head toward Breslin. “Go help him! Add your powers to his!”

“What are you people talking about?” Bolivar demanded.

“You too!” Matty ordered. “Go with Breslin! Now damn it!”

Breslin shot past Lily, grabbing Bolivar’s arm as he went careening out the door.

“I’m sending Breslin and Mignon to you. Take them,”
Matty sent privately to Roland on

the link he had established with the Rom a week before.
“Take them to appease the

demoness.”

“I will try.”

Lily had slumped against the wall, staring tearfully at her daughter. “Please don’t

let her die. I’ll give you anything you want, just don’t let my baby die.”

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Keenan’s face had turned from red to a deepening bluish color as she strained to

draw breath into her lungs. She was burning with fever and the ebony sweat pouring

from her had a stench that made it necessary for Matty to breathe through his mouth.

“Pick up the phone and dial this number,” Matty ordered Lily, and was a bit

surprised when she hopped into action, punching in the number as quickly as she

could. “Give me the receiver.”

Lily wedged the receiver between Matty’s chin and shoulder, staring fearfully at

Keenan as the young woman’s struggles became weaker and weaker.

“This is Groves, agent number 014505680471X-ray. Our Reaper is down. I need a

medivac chopper and biohazard crew dispatched to this location STAT, and a jet fueled

and ready to take him to the Exchange. I repeat, I have a Reaper in need of immediate

transport by a biohazard team. Do you copy?”

Lily nearly dropped the phone as her daughter convulsed violently then slumped

limply against Matty.

“Never mind that shit. Just get that chopper here ASAP!” Matty shouted into the

receiver then moved his chin away to let it drop.

“Biohazard?” Bolivar asked. “Is he contagious?”

“His flesh is,” Matty replied. When she started to dial 9-1-1, he asked her what the

hell she was doing.

“My girl needs medical attention,” Lily said. “Do you think I’ll let her ride in the

same helicopter with an infectious…?”

“Put that phone down. All we need is the police out here,” Matty snapped.

“Don’t tell me what to do!” Lily shouted. “My child needs help!”

“And the only place she can get it is at the Exchange. She’ll have to go in the plane

with Fallon. Stay with her. I’ve got to get him onboard then have them come back for

her.”

“I don’t give a damn about Fallon!” Lily told him. “Take Keenan first and come

back for him.”

“He’s going to need medical help much faster than Keenan will,” Matty snapped as

he gently released Keenan and got up from the bed. “If he dies, it won’t matter when

we get her to the Exchange. She’ll be dead before his body is even cold.”

“But…”

“Listen to me!” Matty snarled, grabbing Lily’s arm in a punishing grip. “Misha is a

Reaper. He is the closest thing to immortal that you’re ever going to get. If Keenan were

to die, he’d go into a decline and eventually will himself to death. That is the way with

his kind and bonding. But if he were to die before her, Keenan would follow him in a

matter of hours. Do you hear what I am saying to you?” He shook her. “Your daughter

is human and she has the frailty of a human. Fallon is a Reaper. Her death would kill

him, but it would not be from physical causes as Keenan’s would be. If we let him die,

you can kiss your daughter goodbye!”

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Charlotte Boyett-Compo

Lily looked at Keenan. “I don’t… I can’t…”

“She’s breathing better and she’s lapsed into unconsciousness. Stay with her, make

sure her air passage is unobstructed.”

He didn’t give her a chance to argue further with him. He released her and hurried

from the room, shoving the front door open and jumping from the motor home. Even as

he ran across the backyard, he could hear the chopper winging its way toward the

fairgrounds.

People were crowded around Roland’s motor home, drawn by the shrieks and

howls coming from inside—though not a one of them dared venture into the trailer.

Matty had to shove them aside in his haste.

“Get the fuck out of my way!” he shouted.

Roland opened the door for him and there was a strange look on the Rom’s face.

“I don’t think he’s going to make it,” Roland said.

“Breslin and Bolivar?” Matty snapped as he headed for the bedroom.

“Gone,” was all the gypsy needed to say. “She wanted the Reaper, but she wanted

the woman even more.”

Matty came up short as soon as he saw the wreck of a man who lay sprawled across

the bloody bed. Nausea leapt up his throat and he barely had time to turn before the

bile came rushing from his throat. “God!” he croaked.

“Not a pretty sight,” Roland agreed from the doorway.

Matty gagged again, bracing his hand on the wall. He couldn’t look at the carnage

on the bed, and when two men in full biohazard suits came bustling into the room, all

he could do was point a trembling finger.

“Holy fucking shit!” one of the suited men exclaimed, setting down his equipment

bag. “What the hell happened to him?”

“Just get him in the chopper, STAT!” Matty managed to say, his voice as shaky as

his body. He wiped the back of his arm over his mouth. “As soon as you get him to the

jet, get your asses back here. I’ve got another patient to transport.”

“As bad off as this one?” the other suited man inquired as he leaned over the bed.

Matty shook his head. “No.”

The biohazard team did a quick evaluation of the man on the bed and the taller of

the two informed Matty they would need to perform a needle thoracocentesis to relieve

the intrathoracic pressure inside.

“What does that mean?” Roland inquired, his head tilted to one side.

“He has a collapsed lung,” Matty said. “They need to evacuate the air in the pleural

cavity to relieve the pressure and allow the lung to re-inflate. They can’t take him up in

the chopper until that’s done.”

“Huh,” Roland grunted.

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“That’s not all that’s wrong with him,” the shorter suited man declared. “It’ll be a

miracle if he survives. You told dispatch this guy is a Reaper?”

“Yeah,” Matty said, sagging against the wall but still avoiding looking at the bed.

“Why isn’t his Revenant worm healing him?”

“You see those pustules?” Matty snapped. “That’s ghoret venom bubbling to the

surface. His hellion and all the fledglings have dissolved. You touch that shit with your

bare hands, get even a drop of it on you and you’ll die in the blink of an eye.”

Both men straightened, their eyes meeting through the plexi-shields of their suits.

“Will you hurry while we can still save him?” Matty shouted. “We need to

transfuse him and transfer a fledging so it can begin building another hive. If he dies,

I’ll inject both of you with some of his sweat!”

The men bolted into action at the vehement threat. Not bothering with a gurney,

they scooped the broken body of the Reaper up beneath his arms and legs.

“Get outside and keep anyone from coming close, and for the love of God, don’t get

any of this blood on you, Roland!” Matty warned and the gypsy jumped out of the way,

hurrying to clear a path for the suited men.

Following the men as they carried the broken body of Mikhail Fallon from the

motor home, Matty swallowed the gorge that threatened to erupt again as he saw the

black blood dripping from Fallon’s fingertips.

Outside, a pathway had been cleared to the chopper that had landed a few hundred

feet away. Ducking down under the wash of the spinning blades, the biohazard team

was met by another set of suited team members who had offloaded a gurney. The body

was strapped to the gurney then lifted to be placed inside the helicopter.

“What do we need to know before we transport him, Doc?” one of the men from the

chopper inquired.

Despite the sick feeling still plaguing him, Matty walked over to the chopper as the

gurney was loaded into the belly of the bird. Taking a deep breath, he climbed into the

chopper after it and looked down into the swollen and destroyed face of a man he had

once called friend. Two feverish amber eyes filled with unspeakable pain were staring

back at him.

“They put a needle in your lung so you’ll be able to breathe better now, Misha,”
he sent

psychically so the others could not hear.
“You’re on your way home. I couldn’t let them kill

you. She would have died if I had.”

Bleeding lips tried to speak but no sound came out, just a bubble of black blood.

“I’ll be coming for her,”
Matty told Fallon.
“Keep her safe until I do.”

Matty looked at the man he thought was the team leader. “Just keep him

comfortable and get him to the Exchange as fast as you can. You have blood onboard?”

“Yes sir.”

“Then feed it to him. That will help some. Give him as much as he’ll drink.”

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Charlotte Boyett-Compo

The suited man swallowing convulsively. “Yes sir!”

“Now go!”

Matty jumped down from the bird and ran bent over to where Roland was

standing. He put a hand on the gypsy’s shoulder.

“You have a decision to make, my friend. You can either stay here or you can go

with me. If you go with me, I promise you will never regret it.”

“I will go where the
Bhen
goes,” Roland said, the loyalty he had developed so

strongly to Keenan strong in his cinnamon-colored eyes.

“That’s what I was hoping you’d say. Get whatever you want to take with…”

“There is nothing I want here,” Roland said.

“Okay, then get over to Mignon’s and get Keenan ready to transport.” At Roland’s

perplexed look, Matty explained that was Sister Tandy’s true name. “We’ll meet up at

the tent once Keenan is secure.”

“Fine by me,” Roland acknowledged.

As the gypsy headed for Bolivar’s motor home Matty looked among those gathered

and sighted the team leader from the Exchange. He motioned the man over.

“Get our people out of here,” Matty said. “I don’t want any of them here when the

shit hits the fan. Tell them to keep their mouths shut. Understand?”

“Yes sir,” the team leader said. “What about Agent Breslin, sir? Where’s he?”

“I don’t know but I’m going to find him,” Matty said. “Now get your ass in gear

and don’t leave anything of ours behind.”

The last anyone saw of the man they knew as Reggie Quinn, he was sliding behind

the wheel of the rusted coupe in which he, Nate and Tandy Lynch had arrived.

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Dancing on the Wind

It had been over a week since Fallon had been brought back to the Exchange.

During that time, he had been restricted to an isolation ward where contamination

protocol had been strictly enforced. Placed in a maximum security containment

chamber within the isolation ward, access to him was granted to only a small

contingent of specially trained medical personnel. For the first forty-eight hours of his

confinement men and women in HAZMAT suits had meticulously and thoroughly

washed away the bubbling black poison that erupted from the pustules covering every

inch of his body. Contact with a single drop of the noxious fluid emitted from Fallon’s

pores would cause instantaneous death to the humans exposed to it. A potent salve was

applied to the broken skin. All materials used either on or around his body were

incinerated on the spot after utilization. Each HAZMAT suit underwent a stringent

detoxification routine, the wearer hosed down with high-pressure water suffused with

very strong disinfectant and sent through a final decontamination chamber before being

allowed to dress and return to their normal lives.

A fledgling that had been harvested years before from Fallon’s own body as a

precaution against damage to his hellion was transferred into an incision made over his

right kidney. The small eel-like abomination with green flesh covered in hard scales

dove into the incision and disappeared. It was hoped the revenant worm was strong

enough to endure any residual poisons left from the ghoret envenomation and fight

them. Subsequent tests revealed the fledgling was surviving.

On the third day of his confinement, a surgical team was allowed in to connect the

various tubes and catheters necessary to make him comfortable and to administer hefty

antibiotics to aid in his healing. On the sixth day—when the pustules stopped forming

and leakage of the ghoret venom from the wounds ceased—his arm and leg were set,

pins screwed into place and his fractured jaw wired shut. It would be another day

before casts could be plastered over his flesh.