Unbinding (15 page)

Kai laughed in delight. She could just imagine how people had reacted to a visiting medicine man who wouldn’t let them honor him properly. “That sounds just like Grandfather. It’s like him, too, that he never told me the story.”

They were maybe halfway up. It was steep here, and Nettie was beginning to look drawn. Her colors suggested she was hurting a bit and tiring a lot. “Hold up a moment,” Kai said, and she bent and pretended to disentangle her jeans from an encroaching gooseberry branch.

“Be careful,” Nettie said. “You don’t want your vest getting hooked by those thorns. It’s crazy beautiful.”

“And a lot tougher than it looks.” The temperature had been just nippy enough that morning for Kai to use it as an excuse to wear her long vest which, when sealed, looked much like a medieval tabard, slit at the legs for ease of movement. She’d left it open this morning. It was heavily embroidered in shades of brown and gold, and it was, as Nettie said, crazy beautiful. It was also crazy durable. “It’s spelled against dirt, rips, punctures, knives, swords, fire, rain, and several types of magic. If I keep the spell renewed, the vest might outlast me.”

“Is it sidhe work, then?”

Kai nodded. “It was made for me by the mother of a patient.”

“That must have been a very sick patient. I can’t imagine how long it would take to make something like that. Or did you mean she had it commissioned?”

Kai explained that the vest was an
adit
, an honor gift made by the giver’s own hands, and yes, the young man she’d treated had been in bad shape. As a healer, Nettie was naturally curious, so as they continued up the path Kai told her about the rare type of madness that afflicted a few unfortunate half-elves. From the outside, the condition resembled autism; from the inside, it was a hellish disordering of the senses. Tastes might itch or turn yellow while the color purple shrieked or burned. It was synesthesia on steroids and randomized. “It’s genetic, of course, but they don’t know what triggers the—”

“Wait a minute. If it’s genetic, then it’s physical.”

“I’m told a lot of madness is, to some degree.”

“But you aren’t a physical healer.”

“No, but brain and mind are so intertwined—I couldn’t heal one without affecting the other. Um, I should add that my teacher says that mindhealers only affect minds, but the connection between mind and brain encourages the brain to change, too. I’m not convinced that’s always what happens. Some amendments take a lot of power. In those instances, I think I’m making a physical change in the brain. I can’t sense physical structures myself, so I can’t be sure, but that’s what it feels like. Eharin doesn’t agree.”

Nettie’s slightly lifted eyebrows expressed disapproval. “You don’t have much confidence in your teacher.”

Kai grinned. “Sound pretty full of myself, don’t I? I’m sure Eharin is teaching me what she was taught, what fits her experience. The thing is, well . . . she’s less powerful than I am, so she can’t do some of the things I can.” Which chapped Eharin’s ass big time, but Kai wasn’t going to go into that. “So she doesn’t have experience with the kind of amendments I’m talking about.”

“Surely she’d have heard of such things, though.”

Kai shrugged. “The sidhe don’t share knowledge much, so maybe not. Plus the Gift takes an unusual form in me. Other mindhealers experience thoughts tactilely. It’s like they have a mental hand they use to touch thoughts or move them around. What I see as color and pattern, they experience as texture and structure.”

“It sounds like the difference between the way Lily experiences magic and the way Cullen does. It’s a texture for her, but he sees it.” Nettie gave her a sharp glance. “Do you think seeing thoughts gives you more information than your teacher gets from touching them?”

“Well, yes, I’m pretty sure it does. On the other hand, my teacher’s form of the Gift gives her very fine control in crafting temporary amendments, and that’s what’s needed most of the time.”

“And these temporary amendments, as you call them, don’t change the brain, but they encourage changes in it. Sounds like the placebo effect.”

“It may be the same mechanism.” They fell into a discussion of the mind-body connection that lasted until they reached a spot where the path widened and flattened out. Just ahead was a steep stretch. Kai wasn’t surprised when Nettie heaved a sigh and dropped to the ground to sit cross-legged.

“Dammit. I need to catch my breath.”

“Okay.” Kai sat, too, to be polite.

“I thought I was doing better than this,” Nettie said. “I’ve been walking two miles along the road every day for a week with no problems.” She cocked an eyebrow at Kai. “Aren’t you going to point out this is not exactly a nice, level road? Remind me that you offered to carry my tote? Ask if I’m all right or if you should summon help?”

Kai grinned. “You’re in a little pain, but not enough to worry me. Mostly you’re annoyed because you tire so easily compared to what you’re used to.”

“You can see all that in my thoughts?”

“Physical pain is mostly red, sometimes with shards of orange. Other feelings are red or orange, too, like annoyance, but pain looks different. Jagged. You’ve got some flickers of pain-red, but not enough to worry me. Then there’s those grumbly, red-orange wrinkles that tell me you’re peeved about something. They don’t tell me what. I was just guessing about that.”

Nettie laughed. “When we first met, I was uncomfortable about what your Gift might tell you. That didn’t last. You’re just too easy to be with. I’ll bet people end up telling you all kinds of things they hadn’t—oh!” She sat up straight as Dell slipped into view about ten feet up the trail. “I could swear she wasn’t here a second ago.”

“Chameleon, remember?” Kai smiled at Dell, who was pleased that she’d startled the human. Not that humans were much of a challenge, but Dell took her pleasures where she found them.

“Does she get tired of being told how beautiful she is?”

“Not that I’ve ever noticed.”

Nettie grinned and addressed Dell directly. “You are, you know. I realize I shouldn’t stare at you, but you’re so lovely it’s hard not to. Especially when—what is it?”

In a micro-second, Dell had gone from smug to hackles-raised alert. Kai spun to face the way the big cat was looking, her hand going automatically to the sheath at her waist—and she wasn’t in San Diego now. The knife was right where it was supposed to be.

Somewhere up the mountain someone yelled loudly, the words lost in the distance. Dell tipped back her head and let out her war cry—a deep-chested grunt of a roar halfway between leopard’s cough and lion’s bellow.

And it was answered with an identical coughing roar.

N
ATHAN
was in the kitchen getting more coffee and talking to Ackleford on the phone when he heard Benedict’s outraged bellow. He tossed the phone at Carl and took off, shooting through the open French doors a few paces behind Isen—and stopped dead.

Like some vegetative snake, a vine had thrust itself up onto the deck to wrap itself around Abe’s middle. It was a damn thick vine, too, with twisted, woody cables like an old wisteria. Benedict hacked at one cable with his knife. Parted it, too, but the snake-vine was growing incredibly fast, like the one in that Disney film that swallowed Sleeping Beauty’s castle. Another cable twined across the deck and shot out tendrils, green and supple, that whipped themselves around Benedict’s leg and yanked him off his feet.

Isen sprang at it. Two guards rounded the corner of the house and another leaped off the roof onto the ground. Abe was down now, with a new tendril wrapped around his throat while others sprouted and began to cover him. Benedict had cut off the ones that pulled him off his feet, but more arrived, trapping his other leg and heading up his torso.

The guards and Isen had knives. Nathan left them to do what they could. It wouldn’t be enough. He dodged around them at a run, headed for the end of the deck where the vine had arisen. Claw could kill anything, but it would die faster if he struck near the thing’s source of power. With animate plants, that was almost always the roots. He leaped off the deck as he reached into thin air—and drew Claw.

The second he landed he swung at a cable whipping through the air at his head. But though he cut it cleanly, the damn vine didn’t wither. A pair of cables snaked across the ground toward him, coming from a veritable thicket that must be the vine’s origin. He got them, but missed the one whipping at him from the side—and damned if the thing didn’t sprout inch-long thorns in time to rake his arm!

He was in a T-shirt, so the thorns slashed him pretty good before he sliced that stalk free from the plant. Blood dripped from his torn biceps. He felt his healing rev up.

And calmly, deliberately, slowed it as close to a dead stop as possible. This was it. This was when he found out if he was right.

Kai was going to be so pissed.

A strangled shout from behind him reminded him that the others needed the vine dead
now
. He advanced on the thicket, where tendrils writhed like Medusa’s hair, but the vine didn’t sprout anything new to attack him with. He’d cut it four times now with Claw. Not enough to kill the thing, but it was hurting.

Time to put an end to this.

*   *   *

D
ELL
was in a rare fury. These males were in
her
territory, threatening her and her person! It was intolerable—and baffling. Males might challenge a female, but this was no challenge. They were treating her as prey! She would punish them, punish them badly, for this.

Kai felt her familiar’s confusion as well as her furious determination to punish the males. But punishment wasn’t going to work. She could see the lattice of
intention
laced through the two chameleons’ thoughts. That intention was lovely, really—thin ribbons of silvery lavender in an elegant pattern. The damage it caused wasn’t so lovely. Any place that the chameleons’ thoughts threatened to escape the pattern imposed by the silvery cords, pus-colored yellow oozed up.

It was clear what was happening. She formed a thought as firmly as she could and pushed it at Dell:
They’re controlled.

Quickly she summoned her Gift and reached out to begin removing the alien intention. But the instant she touched a shimmering ribbon she recoiled, shocked by the sheer power. Then the fast-moving blur of chameleons surged closer, forcing her to dance back. The two males were darting at Dell, trying for a quick strike or to maneuver her into leaving an opening, neither daring to fully engage—for obvious reasons. Although the males were no more than a foot shorter than Dell nose-to-tail, she must have had nearly twice their mass, and all of it muscle.

A few feet behind Kai, Nettie drummed steadily. Whatever the shaman was doing left her wholly unprotected. Kai knew the outcome of this battle would be up to Dell, but she could watch Dell’s back. She could stay between the chameleons and the defenseless shaman. She had Teacher’s help. She just had to keep her muscles loose and the knife ready and—

One of the males either miscalculated or got tired of aborted strikes. He and Dell collided in a whirlwind of snarls and claws. That let the second male jump in, lightning-quick, while Dell was entangled with the first. Kai stiffened against the need to go to Dell’s aid—she’d just get in the way, dammit!—when a dun-colored chunk of the cliff turned into a third chameleon and flung himself down at her.

That instant’s stiffening nearly cost Nettie her life.

Once Teacher considered a lesson learned, the knife would not step in if Kai flunked the lesson’s application. Staying loose was the first lesson, one Kai was supposed to have mastered, so she was on her own for that first critical second. And she called it wrong.

The third cat wasn’t after her. He was aimed at Nettie.

The stroke Kai began was meant to protect herself, so her knife was in the wrong place as the chameleon sailed over her head. But her muscles were loose again. With smooth haste, Teacher took over. Kai’s upper body twisted, her grip shifting minutely as the knife changed the arc of her strike. The sudden change made for a weak blow—but it did connect. Hot blood spattered her head as she spun into the next position the knife wanted: one leg back, knees flexed, right side forward, right arm swinging into a new strike as if she’d planned that first, awkward one merely to set herself up for this.

The chameleon’s head was down. Either he’d already latched onto Nettie’s throat or was about to, for she was prone now, the drum a couple feet away. No chance for a killing blow from this angle. Instead Kai’s blade sliced into the beast’s rump, cutting deep into muscle.

Got his attention but good—and gods, he was fast. Even as Teacher danced Kai backward, the cat flung himself around and launched himself at her. Surely even the best teaching blade couldn’t stop eighty pounds of speed and fury when—

A gray blur sailed in out of nowhere and smacked into the male, knocking him aside. This time, Dell wasn’t thinking of punishment. As they hit the ground she head-butted him under the chin, throwing his head up to expose his throat. Which she slit open with one swipe.

That took two seconds. It was one second too many. Both the remaining males had already launched themselves at her—and now Kai saw that Dell was wounded, with one haunch cut to the bone. She wasn’t bleeding. Her body was knitting itself back together already.

Not fast enough. She couldn’t heal fast enough.

Sheer terror for her familiar made Kai do instinctively what she’d recoiled from before. She tossed out caution and training and
reached
for the glowing ribbons controlling the chameleons—latched onto them and clung even as the alien power shrieked through her and burned, gods, but it burned!—and she
pulled.

They broke.

The recoil sent her spinning in a dizzy cacophony of movement that had nothing to do with the physical. She spun and spun in a rainbow brilliant with color and pain, a silent rainbow where, after an eon or two, even sight began to fade. Darkness fluttered at the edges. And she knew, with a sudden bolt of terror, that she wasn’t just spinning. Something had grabbed her the way she’d grabbed those ropes. Something was reeling her out and away, thinning her out . . . .

All at once her world held sound again. The sound of a drum.

The unseen grasp loosened. Vanished. Kai’s spinning slowed, slowed, until she was nearly steady when she blinked herself back into the regular world.

She was still standing. That surprised her. How had her body been able to—oh. Teacher, probably. The knife couldn’t animate her body if she were truly unconscious, but she hadn’t exactly passed out. She’d nearly been removed, but she hadn’t passed out.

Dell stood beside Kai, her big, warm body pressed against her as if she meant to prop Kai up. She was purring frantically and broadcasting frustration and worry—and the certainty that the other two male chameleons were gone.

Gone?

Just gone. Dell didn’t know where or how. The body of the one she’d killed was still there, but the living chameleons weren’t.

Kai stroked Dell’s head—
I’m here, I love you, I’m fine, are you okay?
Dell sent back impatient reassurance. Kai looked around. Turning her head made the world spin, but it wasn’t the same sort of spinning and it quickly stopped.

The two males were nowhere in sight. Nettie was, though. The shaman had retrieved her drum and was sitting up and beating it again . . . the same drumbeat Kai had heard in her excursion into otherwhere. There was a long, bloody scratch along the woman’s cheek, but otherwise . . . “Are you okay?” Kai croaked, then thought to add, “Dell is sure the other chameleons are gone.”

Nettie drew the drumbeat to a close before she replied. “Only bumps and bruises. You got that bloodsucker off me before he got his mouth on my neck. Dell’s right. The other two winked out about five minutes ago, just as you went into trance. Or whatever that was.”

“I was gone for five minutes?”

“Didn’t seem that long to you?”

Kai made a vague gesture. “It seemed like either a very long time or no time at all. Five minutes.” She shook her head, marveling that such a finite limit existed for her time away, and noticed the knife still in her hand. She frowned at it thoughtfully, then pulled out a cloth from one of the vest’s pockets and began cleaning the blade. “Your drumming went there. Wherever I was, your drumming reached me and it let go.”

“Not it,” Nettie said grimly. “He.”

“You know what happened?”

“I know Dyffaya tried something. I don’t know what.”

“He tried to grab me. Did grab me,” she corrected, “and was pulling me away, but you made him let go.”

“Someone did. My drumming called and Someone answered.”

She’d been saved by one of the Powers? A chill touched the base of Kai’s spine—not fear, but awe. “I need to thank him or her. You don’t know who answered your call?”

“No. We’ll do that.” Nettie set her drum aside and stood. “You didn’t feel a presence when the Power responded?”

“I was distracted. Stretched pretty thin.” Literally. She’d been pulled out, reeled out, thinner and thinner . . . would she have snapped like the cord in another moment, or just continued to unravel until she was too thin to hold together?

“How do you feel now?”

“Okay.” She finished cleaning the blade and tried to sheath it. Her hand was shaking. She scowled at it and tried again. It worked this time, and she gave Nettie a twist of a smile. “Scared spitless, maybe, but okay.”

“We’ll need to do a cleansing ceremony.”

“Why? I didn’t—”

Dell butted Kai’s hip with her head. Kai looked down. “Oh. Right.” If that grasp had been the chaos god, he might have left something behind—some bit of his power, a hook he could use to persuade or delude her. She didn’t feel anything, but even Cullen couldn’t see a spiritual—“Shit!” She spun around to look up the trail.

“What?”

“There was a shout. Just before we saw the chameleons, someone shouted from up near the node. And the fight—Cullen should’ve heard it, shouldn’t he?” And he hadn’t responded. Kai did not like to think of the likely reason.

“I can’t run. You can. Go!”

“I’m not leaving you to—”

“Who just saved your ass?” Nettie gave Kai’s shoulder a push. “Go!”

*   *   *

“N
O.”

Cullen blinked blearily up at his beloved’s stubborn face. “I’m fine. Already healed. You need to go see—”

Cynna snorted. “Healed, my ass. You were unconscious. You’re still so weak from blood loss you can’t sit up.”

“Making more,” he assured her.

“Why do men and small children think that if they keep asking for the same thing over and over they’ll get a different answer?” Cynna’s words were a verbal eye-roll. Her hand was tender as she stroked his neck—which was, indeed, healed. “Your blood carries a lot of your magic. If you lose much of it, your healing’s slowed. I don’t how much that beastie stole, but somewhere in the vicinity of a whole lot. You’ll be hours, maybe all day, replacing it. I’m sticking. His friends could come back to finish what he started.”

The problem with being married to the Clan’s Rhej, Cullen thought as he lay flat on his back, too weak—as she had so annoyingly pointed out—to sit up, much less stand, was that she knew so damn much about lupi. Sometimes that came in handy. Sometimes it was a pain in the ass. “I can keep an ear out for—shit. Help me sit.”

One thing about Cynna. She knew when not to argue. She was buff, too; the arm she slid behind his shoulders propelled him up with little effort on his part. She flowed to her feet the second he was sitting and began drawing power.

He did, too—from the diamond in his earring, which was fully charged, unlike his personal power, which was sadly depleted at the moment. He might not be able to use stored power to heal, but he could for damn sure use it to throw some fire now that . . . “It’s okay,” he said as the scent he’d caught intensified enough for him to fully identify it. “It’s Dell.”