Magic Rises (25 page)

Next to Keira, Derek fished plastic jars with various medicines out of what used to be a cabinet. Eduardo was still out like a light. Desandra walked around in a bloody, shredded dress and heroically tried to pick things up, despite her stomach. I’d expected her to curl into a ball, but instead she rushed around all hyper. Mahon had ushered her into the room shortly after Curran had taken off. From my blanket, I could see Mahon looming by the front door.

Normally the sight of a twelve-hundred-pound bear didn’t fill me with confidence, but right now knowing he was blocking the doorway made me downright warm and fuzzy. Especially since keeping Doolittle alive had taken every drop of strength I had. My arms had turned to wet cotton and lifting my head was an effort. Right now if a butterfly landed on me, I wouldn’t wake up till the next morning.

No word from Curran. He, Hugh, Aunt B, Raphael, and Andrea had gone off over an hour ago.

Doolittle rested next to me in the makeshift tank. The green healing solution soaked his body. He hadn’t said anything or opened his eyes, but his breathing was even.

I wanted him to wake up. I wanted him to open his eyes and chide me about something, anything. I would drink whatever medicine he demanded, I’d promise to stay in bed, I’d do anything just to have him wake up.

Hugh had said he would live. Being in a coma did technically count as living.

I pushed that thought away from me. That way lay dragons.

Barabas strode through the door, wearing a pair of sweatpants and nothing else. A wide gash streaked across his neck and his pale chest. He saw me and came into the bedroom. George followed him, carrying scissors, and pointed at my bloody jeans. “I’m sorry. I have to cut them off.”

“I don’t suppose I can get some privacy?” I asked.

“No,” Derek said.

“Absolutely not,” Keira said. “You can be modest later, when we’re not under attack.”

“This is probably a shock to you.” Barabas crouched by me. “But we have all seen naked women before. The sight of your legs isn’t going to traumatize anyone.”

“Thanks.”

George took the scissors, stretched my jeans, and cut. The fabric tugged on the wound. I inhaled sharply. Argh. George cut the other side and pulled the blood-soaked denim rag away. “Okay. There are wounds. I’m not sure how severe this is for a nonshapeshifter.”

“Mirror?”

Derek got up and passed George a handheld mirror. She held it. The left corner of it was gone, but enough remained to give me a view of my side. Three long jagged gashes cut the lower right side of my stomach, stretching all the way across my hip down over my thigh.

“Tilt it toward me?”

She did.

The wounds looked shallow. They bled and hurt like all get-out, but none of them would impair my ability to swing my sword. I tried moving my leg. Still worked. Little creaky. Little agonizing. But it still worked.

My face hurt, too. My lip felt swollen. “How’s my face?”

George picked up the mirror. “Ready?”

“Hit me.”

She raised the mirror. A big bruise blossomed in all of its blue glory on the left corner of my jaw. My mouth was puffy and swollen, and a long cut snaked its way from my hairline down to my right ear. The swelling and the bruise came courtesy of being hit with a shapeshifter’s tail. The cut, I had no idea.

“I’m a sexy fiend, aren’t I?”

She winced. “It’s not that bad.”

“It’s good that Curran is gone. He might not be able to contain himself. If he decides to ravish me in public when he comes back, I expect all of you to look the other way.”

Mahon cleared his throat at the door.

“You’ve got a status report for me?”

“The attack involved five creatures,” Barabas said. “It started here. They busted through the door. One smashed Doolittle’s equipment and attacked Eduardo and Keira. They crippled her and then the doctor latched onto her throat. That’s her.” Barabas pointed at the woman’s corpse outside the window, on top of a short tower.

“He never let go,” George said quietly. “When I got here, she’d smashed everything, rolled, flailed, rammed the walls with him. Eduardo got knocked out, and Keira would jump out of the way, but Doolittle never let go. I had to rip him away, and then she tried to fly away.”

“She was dying,” Keira said. “Doolittle had clamped onto her neck and severed the jugular. His teeth kept her wounds open and bled her dry. Thirty seconds more and she wouldn’t have been able to fly.” She put her hands over her face. “We should’ve fought harder.”

“We’re all still here,” Mahon told her from the door. “You did your job.”

“While Doolittle was fighting, the second and third attackers blocked access to this room,” Barabas said. “Aunt B and Mahon took down one in the hallway, and Curran met the third in the hallway and fought it into Desandra’s room. The fourth busted in through the balcony into Desandra’s room after the fight began. The fifth, we are not sure.”

“Injuries?” I asked.

“Doolittle is the worst of it,” Barabas said. “Derek has a broken arm. There are some cuts and wounds, but everyone is still alive and moving around.”

They hit here first. “Doolittle was the primary target.”

“It appears that way.”

Curran had said Doolittle wanted to talk to us. He must’ve found something, something that made him a target.

Barabas sat on the floor next to me, his face serious.

“Whenever you have that face, it means something nasty is coming.”

“Do you remember that you asked me to set up meetings with you and the three packs tomorrow morning? Do you want to cancel?”

“Hell no. I want to go and look them in the eye when they tell me they didn’t attack our medmage in the middle of the night.” Anger flared inside me. I would find the assholes responsible and they would pay. Nobody hurt Doolittle and lived. “He was a noncombatant. We will find whoever went after him and I will personally make them regret the day they were born.”

“What she said,” Keira said. “Nobody touches the medic and lives.”

George swung into my view. She held a bottle of brown liquid in her hand.

“What is that?”

“Whiskey.” She handed me a wadded-up rag. “Here, I need you to bite down on this.”

What the hell? “Why?”

“I’m going to clean your wounds.”

“The hell you are.” Not with alcohol. It didn’t disinfect the wound unless one drenched it, it killed the living cells, and it generally did more harm than good. Not to mention the wound would take forever to heal after being treated with alcohol, and pouring whiskey on an open gash guaranteed scars.

“Kate,” George said, her voice suddenly very patient. “You don’t have a shapeshifter’s immune system. Your wounds need to be sterilized.”

“You’re not sterilizing them with whiskey. Are you nuts?”

“They always do it in movies and in books. So many people can’t be wrong.”

I channeled every iota of menace I had into my voice. “George, if you come near me with that bottle, I’ll hurt you.”

“Right.” George looked at Barabas. “We may need to hold the Consort down.”

Barabas looked at Derek. Derek shrugged, as if to say,
I don’t know
. Barabas clamped my arms to the floor.

“Do you need me to help hold her?” Desandra called out. “Because I can totally do that.”

“George!” I snarled.

She uncorked the bottle. “I’m sorry it’s going to hurt. I don’t want you to get sepsis.”

“Barabas, let go of me. This is an order.” I strained, but I had no strength left. I might as well have tried to lift a car.

“It’s for your own good,” Barabas said.

George stepped toward me with the bottle.

“Let me go, you idiots!”

“I’ll make it quick.” George leaned over me.

“Stop!” Doolittle said.

Everybody froze.

“Georgetta, put down that bottle.”

George sat the bottle on the floor and stepped away from it.

Doolittle had raised himself in the tub and was looking at us. “I don’t have the strength to tell you all of the things that are wrong with what you doing. Release the Consort this instant.”

Barabas raised his hands. I slumped on my blanket. Thank God. He was conscious.
Thank you, thank you, Universe.

“Derek, find a large blue bottle marked
STERILE SALINE SOLUTION
. Georgetta, look for a green wooden box with clean gauze. Keira, did you hit your head?”

Keira’s eyes got really big. “Yes. Among other things.”

“Is that rag on your head cold?”

“Ummm . . .”

“It should be cold. Preferably iced. Blurred vision?”

“No.”

“Did you vomit?”

“A little. I’m fine now.”

“You need to ice that rag. Why is Eduardo naked? Did none of you think about the man’s dignity? Find him a clean sheet. Has anybody checked his vital signs? There is a pregnant woman here covered in blood and none of you are alarmed by this. Nobody is helping her to get clean.” Doolittle surveyed us. “I leave you for a few brief minutes, and you’re courting disaster.”

Suddenly everyone became terribly busy.

“I’m glad you’re okay, Doc,” I told him.

“I shouldn’t be alive.” He looked at me. “It seems it was my turn to be the patient.”

“Let’s not do that again,” I told him. “You’re so much better at being the doctor.”

Doolittle hesitated. “What kind of healing . . .”

I read the question in his eyes. He had seen me heal Julie. He’d watched my blood sear hers, cleaning it of the virus and binding her to me, and now he wanted to know if I had done something with my magic that compromised his free will. I looked into his eyes and I didn’t see gratitude or joy at being alive. I saw suspicion and fear. He was terrified that I had turned him into an abomination. In that moment I knew with complete certainty that Doolittle would rather die than be brought back to life by me.

An invisible wall slammed into place around me, cutting me off. I was still in the room. I still heard people I viewed as my friends move around, talking, but they seemed impossibly far away. I sat there, disconnected and alone.

No matter how much time I spent being a part of the Pack, no matter how much I sacrificed or how dedicated I was, Doolittle’s eyes told me that the divide between me and them would always remain. The man who’d brought me back from death time and time again now looked at me with dread, afraid of being tainted.

I forced the words out. “Just strong medmagic. The usual kind. It wasn’t me. You were healed by a medmage.” Or at least I was pretty sure Hugh would be rated as one had he bothered to apply for certification. “You’re still you, Doc.”
I didn’t turn you into anything you’re not.

The tension melted from his face.

The desire to get away swelled in me, so strong that if I could’ve stood up, I would’ve walked out. I didn’t want to be in the same room with anyone. I wanted to be by myself.

George appeared, holding the saline solution and a green box. “I have the gauze.”

“Desandra first,” I told her.

George turned to Desandra. “Come with me. Time to get cleaned up.”

“But I like my war clothes.”

“If you need me to hold her down,” I growled, “I totally can do that.”

“Fine, fine.” Desandra sighed and followed George into the bathroom. They shut the door.

Doolittle looked at me. “Do
you
need to be restrained?”

“I’m fine.”

“Lie back, Kate.” Keira walked into the room and picked up the spare bottle of saline solution and gauze.

I hadn’t realized I was sitting. I forced myself to lie flat.

“Very well. Saturate the wounds, rinsing them with gentle pressure. Make sure no debris remains,” Doolittle said.

“Got it.” Keira poured some saline on the gauze and began to gently blot my leg.

“Curran mentioned you wanted to tell me something.”

“I kept thinking about that verse from Daniel,” Doolittle said. “One part, in particular, stood out to me. It says,
I beheld till the wings thereof were plucked, and it was lifted up from the earth, and made stand upon the feet as a man, and a man’s heart was given to it.
Note it doesn’t mention that the lion’s fur or his claws were gone. Only that the wings had been plucked and they were the difference between the beast and man.”

“I don’t follow,” I said.

“Do you recall how I told you that these things may be able to hide their scales?”

“Yes.”

“I’ve wondered if, since the verse mentioned the wings specifically, they might be the final stage of their transformation. Most common shapeshifters have two complete forms, human and animal.”

“And the warrior form,” Keira said.

“That’s a hybrid form that one has to concentrate to maintain,” Doolittle said. “I’m talking about final-stage form that a shapeshifter can maintain indefinitely. I think our orange friends have three: human, animal, and winged beast. I believe that in their animal stage they may look very similar to naturally occurring animal species.”

I didn’t like the sound of that. “Why?”

Doolittle lowered his voice to a whisper. “Do you recall how I tested the blood from the severed head against all the other blood samples?”

“Yes.”

“I had taken fluid samples from Desandra. Blood, urine, and amniotic fluid. I completed my diagnostic run, and since I had exposed every other fluid sample to the creature’s blood, I tested Desandra’s blood and amniotic fluid just to be on the thorough side. Her blood reacted. Her amniotic fluid did not. One of her children is not what he seems.”

Oh dear God.

Keira froze with the gauze in her hand. If we told Desandra that one of her children was a monster, there was no telling what she would do.

“This can’t leave this room,” I said.

“Agreed,” Doolittle said.

I glanced at the main room.

“I didn’t hear anything,” Derek said.

“Me neither,” Barabas told me.

There could be only two possibilities. One, Desandra had had sex with a third man, besides Gerardo and Radomil. That was extremely unlikely. For all of her flirting and outrageous declarations, she never actually came on to anyone, and her distress when she told us about Gerardo throwing her out was genuine. She wouldn’t have taken a chance on having sex with some random stranger. She’d slept with Radomil because she knew he would be kind, and she had needed that kindness. That left door number two: either Gerardo or Radomil sprouted wings in his spare time and amused himself by swiping guards off the towers.