Chapter 20 #3
It was a relief to know he was telling the truth despite the guilt I felt for asking. “I don’t know. I don’t know you.”
“We’re very selective in what jobs we take. There’s gotta be proof that a person committed a crime, a violent crime. We only hunt the worst kinda people. The kinda people who like to hurt others.”
People like me. That’s the kind of person he thought I was. It stung, which frustrated me. I knew that’s what he thought of me, so why did it keep fucking hurting?
“Did any of the Reapers ever show signs of powers after you healed them?” Wolf asked abruptly.
His question startled me, but then I felt my cheeks warm. “No,” I hesitated, “I didn’t use my power on them.”
There was a pause.
“I thought you were their healer.”
My voice came out wooden. “Juck made me keep my powers a secret. I only healed him and two other men who knew. I was just a regular healer for everyone else.”
He was quiet for what felt like a long time. I didn’t dare look at his face.
“Did any of those three ever show any signs of power?”
Did he think I was giving people powers? Was I? Oh fuck. Horror rushed through my body, paralyzing me. What if I had given Juck powers? No, what if I did? What if he had a power that revived him? What if he was out there right now?—
“Em, calm down,” Wolf said, stepping toward me.
I held out a shaking hand, wordlessly pleading for him to stop, and he did. “You think I’m giving people powers?”
“I don’t know,” he replied evenly.
Fuck. I couldn’t breathe. Wolf took another step toward me, but I retreated, and he halted once more, glancing at Lee.
The responsibility of bestowing powers on potentially everyone I’d ever healed felt like an entire mountain dangling over my head and threatening to crush me.
My vision swam. People were going to be hurt and used, and it would be?—
Warm hands cradled my face, and I blinked in surprise at Lee’s face close to mine.
“What do you hear right now?” he asked in a low voice.
“What?” I choked out.
“What do you hear? Tell me.”
I stared at him, confused, but I tried to focus. “Birds?”
“Good. What else?”
“Why?”
“Just humor me a second, Freckles,” he murmured. “What else do you hear?”
“Dog barking?”
“Good. Give me three more.”
I had no idea what he was doing, but I strained my ears, “People workin’ on that roof, the wind…” I paused, listening. “Somebody laughin’.”
He grinned at me like we were both in on something, but I had no idea what it was.
“What are you doin’?”
“You breathin’ easier?”
I wrinkled my nose, confused, but I was breathing easier.
“It’s a trick Sable taught us,” he explained, still holding my face. “Focusin’ on stuff you can hear or see or taste or feel ,” his thumbs stroked across my cheeks in emphasis, and goosebumps rose on my arms, “can help distract your brain when you’re panicking.”
I bit my lip, torn between feeling annoyed and embarrassed.
“What scared you just now?” he asked, lowering his voice.
I tried to step back and pull my face out of his hands, but his fingers tightened. It wasn’t enough to hurt, but enough to hold me there.
“Yes, I am holdin’ you hostage until you tell me,” he smirked.
I glared at him as fiercely as I could manage, but he didn’t release me. I knew better than to test my strength against his, so I gave up and whispered, “What if Juck is still alive?”
He blinked in surprise. “He’s not.”
“How do you know?”
“I know ’cause we came across what was left of the Reapers’ camp probably a couple days or so after the fight. I looked at Juck’s dead body myself.”
The relief that surged through me made me shaky.
“He’s definitely dead, Em,” Wolf added, reminding me he was also here.
I pulled away from Lee again; this time, he let me go, smirking. My whole face felt hot.
“You know how I’ve always been good at trackin’?
” Wolf asked, and I nodded. “I usually just…get a sense of where to go, at least a general direction. But with you, there was nothin’.
” He frowned. “For twelve years, it was like you’d just vanished.
Until one day, it came out of nowhere. I was mid-sentence and suddenly knew we had to go west. We followed the trail, and it led us to the Reapers. ”
I stared at him, unease trickling through me.
“I can’t say for sure, but it seems like I sensed you again when…when Juck died.”
I wrapped my arms around my torso. “What does that mean?”
“I don’t know,” he said, his voice solemn.
I wished Mac were here.
The clinic door squeaked as it opened, and we all turned to look. Sam stood on the porch, staring at us with a frown.
“Is Sam sick?”
I glanced at Lee when he spoke, surprise giving way to guilt. “Kinda.”
“Have you tried healing him?” he pushed.
“Yeah.” I turned back toward the clinic, but Lee caught my arm.
“What happened?” he asked. “You couldn’t heal him?”
I narrowed my eyes, studying his expression. His voice had a strange tone. I glanced at Wolf and caught him studying Lee, too.
Lee sighed like he was annoyed with both of us. “If she couldn’t heal Sam, maybe it’s the same reason she couldn’t heal Dune.”
Oh. I barely resisted cringing, my eyes darting to Wolf again. “It’s not the same reason.”
“I thought you didn’t know why it didn’t work on Dune.” Wolf’s voice sharpened.
“I don’t,” I muttered, jerking my arm free from Lee. “But Sam?—”
“—saved her life like the fearless, noble hero he is,” Sam finished, coming to a stop beside Lee, his hands in his pockets and a wide grin on his face.
“How?” Wolf demanded.
He was looking at me when he said it, but I couldn’t get any words out around the lump in my throat.
“Well, we didn’t finish that story… about when she jumped in the Pit,” Sam said, raising a hand to scratch his head.
“You said she was fine,” Wolf growled. “Sounds finished to me.”
“She was … eventually.”
A muscle jumped in Wolf’s jaw.
“I’d get to the part where you finish it, then,” Lee muttered.
“Well, uh, Brimstone kinda beat the shit out of her. Broke her arm, and what was that thing that happened to your lung?” Sam turned to me.
“It collapsed,” I mumbled, eyeing Wolf’s darkening expression warily.
“Yeah, that. Her lung collapsed, and she couldn’t breathe. She was dying on the clinic table, so I took a gamble and asked her to direct her power through me to heal herself. And it worked,” Sam grinned again, but I could see it for the mask that it was, “because I am a motherfuckin’ genius.”
Wolf turned his furious gaze to me, but for a moment, I saw a flash of worry and fear so deep it took my breath away.
“So what, it made you sick? Her power?” Lee asked.
“Not sure,” Sam shrugged like it was just a minor inconvenience, and my anger surged.
“Yes,” I snapped, “it did. It sucked the fuckin’ life out of him, which is why it’s never happening again.”
“Shortcake—” Sam tried to interject, but I ignored him, turning to my brother.
“That never happened with Dune, so I know it’s not the same thing.”
Wolf studied me, his jaw still tight. “You don’t think it could’ve happened, and you were too young to remember it?”
I hesitated. I’d never thought about that, but then I remembered how it’d felt when I tried to heal Dune.
“It felt completely different. When I tried to heal Sam… after… it felt like hitting a wall, and I couldn’t get through it.
With Dune,” my voice grew hoarse as I tried to control my emotion, “it felt like I was just pouring everything into him, and none of it was… was sticking.”
“Sticking?” Wolf repeated.
“Usually I can… feel it… the injury or the sickness. My power goes right to it, and it feels… contained. But with Dune…” I struggled to find the words to convey how it felt. “With Dune, it felt like pouring something into a bucket only to find out it was actually a sieve.”
They all studied me silently. The grief for Dune ached in my chest, right next to my grief for Trey.
“But it hurt Dune,” Wolf finally said roughly.
I nodded, but then Lee spoke.
“Did it hurt when she tried to heal you?” he asked Sam.
“It didn’t hurt me, but it hurt her,” Sam answered quietly.
“I healed Dune lots of times before,” I added, surprising myself. “Anytime he had a scrape or a cut… I never had a problem healing him.”
Not until it really mattered, anyway.
“Will you tell me what happened?” Wolf asked.
I glanced up at him, familiar fear twisting in my gut, but there wasn’t rage or anger lurking in his eyes like every time he’d questioned me before. His expression was calm, though all the muscles in his face were pulled tight.
“With Dune?” he added, even quieter.
Maybe it was because he was clearly trying, or because this wasn’t planned and I didn’t have time to work myself up about it, or because we were outside under the budding apple trees in the fresh air. Whatever the reason, the words came. They were shaky, but they came.
“He wanted me to try healing bigger wounds, but I was scared. We’d been arguin’ about it for weeks.
He came and found me after you left to go hunting and was…
was being so strange. He wouldn’t let it go.
He’d never been so… intense.” I hesitated briefly, then decided to be honest. “He reminded me of you .”
Wolf winced.
“It made me mad. I told him to leave me alone, and I started walking away. He yelled my name, and when I turned back, he had the knife.” My voice grew shakier.
“I didn’t think he’d hurt himself, but he said somethin’ about how he was doin’ this for me.
I started runnin’ back, but before I reached him, he stabbed himself.
I panicked and tried to heal him, but it just…
did nothing. And he started screamin’ that I was hurtin’ him, but I couldn’t stop tryin’ to heal him ’cause there was so much…
so much blood, and I knew if I didn’t save him with my power, he’d d-die. ”
Wolf’s expression looked like it’d been carved from solid rock while my eyes filled with tears.