15. Chapter 15 The Dock #2
His face changed. Just a flicker, but he knew what I was talking about. “Psh, I don’t know any cat-kin.”
I let the cold come up.
Not the gold. Not the heat that rose out of my palms when I healed. It came from the same place but it went the wrong way, pulling in where the heal pushed out, and my hand in Vaughn’s grip went cold the way metal goes cold in winter, fast and total.
[Smite.]
His ribs cracked first. The left side, the same side I’d healed on Elin an hour ago, the same fracture lines, the wet click of bone separating under pressure.
Vaughn’s mouth opened but nothing came out.
His grip on my hand went from firm to crushing and then to nothing, his fingers going slack as the pain hit.
His lip split from the inside. The left orbital swelled, the bruising blooming dark around his eye, fast and ugly, the same pattern Elin had carried into my clinic.
His right hand, the one not holding mine, went to his face and came away with blood.
I went in harder to make a point. Dozens of bones began to snap.
“You know who I’m talking about now,” I said. “That’s what you did to her this morning. A cat-kin woman, half your size. She was carrying groceries. You grabbed her and you beat her and you took her food. I’m giving you a little extra. You can call it punitive damages.”
Vaughn was shaking and in utter agony. His legs were going. He tried to pull his hand free and I held on.
“You’re going to feel all of it,” I said.
“Every rib you cracked, every bruise you put on her. I healed her, Vaughn. I had my hands on every injury you gave her and I know exactly what you did, but you deserve more and you’re getting it.
You need to remember this when you feel the need to pick on those less fortunate or people that don’t look like you. ”
It went further. Past Elin’s pattern, past Tova’s pattern from the tannery.
The [Smite] pulled from somewhere deeper, older, carrying more than one woman’s injuries.
Bones snapped in his forearm, the sound sharp and clean on the quiet quay.
Something gave in his shoulder. Blood came from his mouth and ran down his chin and dripped onto the wet stone.
Vaughn dropped. His knees hit the quay and then his hip and he was on the ground, curled around himself, screaming.
The scream went out across the water and came back thin and flat.
I was still holding his hand. I’d gone to one knee with him, keeping the grip, keeping the contact.
His hand was limp in mine but the [Smite] was still running and he couldn’t pull away.
His hand felt like Jell-O in a glove. I had broken all of his bones in the hand I grasped.
He bit down with unfathomable force and his teeth began to break.
The dock went silent. The men who’d been loading sacks had stopped. The barge master had his ledger in his lap and his mouth open. Five or six workers stood frozen on the quay and the boards, watching something they didn’t understand.
“I’m going to explain something to you, Vaughn, and I need you to listen.
I don’t think the [Smite] has ruptured your eardrums…
yet.” I said it in my patient voice, calm and steady, the one I used when someone was crying on my table and hadn’t believed the pain could stop.
“You don’t touch beastkin. Not tomorrow.
Not next week. Not ever again. The next time you raise your hand to a beastkin woman, or a beastkin man, or a beastkin child, I will come back here and I will do this again. It can get worse… much worse.”
“Please.” His voice came out through blood and broken teeth and the shaking that had taken his whole body. “Please, I won’t. I swear. Please stop.”
“I can’t hear you through the mumbling. It’s almost like you’re focused on something else and not paying attention to me. That’s disrespectful, Vaughn.”
“No. No, I understand. Please, I can’t take it anymore.”
“Good.” I shifted my grip. I put my other hand on top of his, both palms flat, and I let the cold go and called the gold up.
[Mend.]
The warmth came. It rose out of my palms, the familiar heat, the low golden light that pushed outward and went where it needed to go.
His ribs set under my hands with the quiet sound I knew by heart, bone finding bone and sealing.
The fractures in his forearm reversed, the break line closing.
His hands became firm once again. His shoulder pulled back into the socket.
The swelling in his face receded, the split lip closing, the bruising around his eye fading and clearing.
The blood on his chin dried and flaked. The broken teeth rebuilt themselves in his jaw.
I let go of his hand and stood up.
“See? You’re all better now. There’s no evidence that this even happened.
Your friends won’t tell anyone because they don’t want this happening to them.
I will go to any lengths for the people I care about.
I’m an Outworlder and I’m from a place called Earth.
On Earth, we have God who is the good guy and we have Satan who is the bad guy… I can be both.”
Vaughn lay on the quay, physically whole. He didn’t have a mark on him, face clean and ribs sound and nothing broken anywhere. He was shaking so hard his boots were tapping against the stone. His pants were drenched at the crotch where he pissed himself. He stared up at me and he didn’t move.
I straightened my robe and looked at the dock workers. They were frozen in place. A man with a sack still on his shoulder hadn’t moved. The barge master’s pencil lay beside his crate.
“My name’s Daniel. I’m the healer at the clinic on the avenue.
I fix beastkin for free, every day, because no one else will.
If any of you have thoughts about putting your hands on the people I take care of, I want you to know something.
” I looked at Vaughn on the ground, then back at them.
“I can take you apart just as easily as I can put you back together. You all look like reasonable fellows whom I can trust to do what I say.”
Nobody said a word. They just stared at me, petrified.
“Have a nice night. I’m sorry to have interrupted your work. Carry on.”
I turned and walked up the quay. Liv was where she’d been the whole time, standing at the edge of the stone, ten feet back from where Vaughn had fallen. She hadn’t looked away. Her face was steady and I couldn’t read it. She’d been there for every second of it.
She fell into step beside me without a word. We walked up the slope together, away from the river, away from the quay with the silent workers and Vaughn on the wet stone sitting in his own piss.
The light had gone and the street had gone dark with it, nothing left but the lamp poles the taper man had lit, the small flames burning steady in their glass housings. Our footsteps were the only sound on the packed dirt.
We were halfway up the slope when Liv reached for my hand. Her fingers were small and warm and she laced them through mine and held on.
“Are you okay?” she said.
“Yeah.” I thought about it. “I don’t feel bad about it. I thought I might, but I don’t.”
“I don’t want you to.”
“Good. It wasn’t a pretty sight. I was concerned it was going to horrify you.”
“It did the opposite. I feel much closer to you now. I know that’s weird but it’s true.”
I leaned over and kissed her on the cheek. “I feel the same way.”
“Also, it was fucking hot as hell.”
I snorted. “I’m glad I found a new method to excite you.”
“I’m surprised you can’t smell my undies. They are so wet right now. I’m obsessed with you.”
“I can’t smell them. That’s unfortunate. It’s such a nice scent.”
We reached the front of the apartment building and waved at the girls at the brothel. They were doing catcalls, telling me they loved the new gear. Some asked to see what was under it.
“Thank you, ladies! I’m glad you approve,” I said gallantly.
Liv laughed and turned toward the girls. “Daniel is ours. Hands off. This cock is for me… well, us.” She motioned toward the apartment.
I cocked a brow. “For us?”
“Yeah, don’t act like you’re totally not going to fuck Sif. She practically throws herself at you on a daily basis.”
“I think that’s just her messing with me.”
“No, not at all. She wants to take a ride on your face. When you decide to fuck, will you let me watch?”
“You’d be fine with just watching? You wouldn’t want to join in the fun?”
“No, I want your first time with her to be special and focused on her. I mean, I will be fingering myself in the corner of the room, I’m sure.”
“You think I’ll be able to keep all my focus on her while you play with yourself in the corner? That ain’t happening.”
She nodded. “Yeah, you’re probably right. I won’t watch your first time. You can fuck by yourselves.”
I scratched the back of my head. “Every conversation with you is like a new adventure.”
“You like when I surprise you?”
“I do.”
“How’s this for a surprise? Come on,” Liv said as she pulled me toward the brothel.
“Um, you’re going the wrong way.”
“No, I’m totally going the right way. Let’s go to the clinic.”
“You sick?”
We entered the room and Liv shut the door behind her.
I turned to find her pulling her top off and unlatching her tight leather pants. The shaft of my cock began to fill and my trousers began to feel tight.
She shoved the leather down her hips in one impatient motion. No underwear. Just the wet gleam of her already, the scent of her hitting me the second the air moved. Her ears were locked forward, eyes dark and hungry.
“You said you liked the scent,” she said, voice low. “Prove it.”
I crossed the space in two steps, grabbed her by the waist, and lifted her onto the examination table. I yanked the rest of the leather off her legs and tossed it aside. She spread for me immediately, heels braced on the edge, thighs open.