Chapter Twenty-Eight #2
Instead, an officer stood at the door. Weapon raised. “Police! Police! Stay where you are! Hands in the air.”
Rocas. That was her name.
“Bad guys are gone, Rocas,” a familiar voice said, “or dead.” Villetti. He’d followed us after all.
His warm brown eyes were suddenly in front of me. “Angie?”
“Don’t touch her, Lee. She’s full of power,” EJ said. Awkwardly, my brother got to his feet and stumbled to me. Villetti stepped to the side, out of EJ’s way, as if he thought EJ was dangerous or something.
EJ said, “Your stasis won’t hold Nyoka for long, Ange. We have to kill her and take the demon into a vessel.”
“Not just stasis,” I croaked, my voice sounding as if it were coated with ground glass. “Superpowered stasis. We have time to find another way.”
EJ knelt in front of me and said, “Ange. Your hands.”
I looked at them. I had avoided doing that until now. The flesh had a pearly sheen. Kinda glowy.
I opened my mouth. My lips cracked, and I tasted blood. “Huh. How ’bout that.”
“You have to release the ley line energies. Understand? They’re burning you up inside. You have to let them go or you’ll lose control and kill us all. Or burn yourself up. Either would really suck.” He chuckled, the sound pained, raspy.
I could let it go. All the possessed were down. But it was warm inside me. And my hands didn’t ache right now.
“Can you drop the power, Ange?” EJ asked.
“I don’t know,” I grated, my bloody lips cracking. “It seems to…It likes it here. It likes being used.”
“Power always wants to do something,” he said, clearing his throat, trying to find a voice. “Raw power doesn’t care how it’s used. Power isn’t a moral being. It isn’t sentient or conscious. It’s just power, like lightning. And the one who has it has to use it properly. Morally.”
“Or it…” I licked blood off my lips. “It tends to corrupt, absolutely.”
EJ smiled, sadly. “Let it go, Ange.”
I studied my hands. The glow grew brighter.
My palms were white and shimmering, as if the sun shone through the frostbitten flesh.
Too much power. I frowned. The maths were fading.
The…the solutions were disappearing. I had to try to figure out how to release the energy without blowing the mission church and all the people and bodies into dust. It’d be nice to heal everyone and myself while I was at it.
I directed some of the power into my hands. Healing. Stasis, something. I sent a burst of healing out. My hands glowed brighter as it looped back into me.
“Too late,” I whispered, talking about healing.
“Let it trickle away,” EJ said, his words begging, not understanding my statement. “Let it go, slowly.”
I remembered the thin thread of white-blue magic, bright as the sun, that was part of my own gifts.
I found it. That strand of power had twined its might with the ley line.
Gently, I teased it free of the power deep in the earth, and as I unraveled it from my own, I released the energies, letting them flow through the narrow thread and into the deeps.
When the last of the energy had drained away, I tugged the thread of my magic.
It snapped back into me.
I fell.
Villetti caught me. “I’ve got you, amore. I have you.” He folded me into his arms, and when my legs gave way totally, he lifted me and carried me out into the night.
EJ
EJ popped two painkillers and drank them down with a hot espresso. Drank it, not sipped it. His body was cold, reacting to the fight, the use of magic, the blood, guts, and gore that he had left behind. Except, it seemed he hadn’t left it behind it all. A caffeine kick would be good.
He placed the mug on a table and eased his head back on the chair, staring at his sister’s bloodless glowing hands.
They sang with magic. Magic that might be toxic.
He’d seen some things like that in the war.
He didn’t know what the energies had done to her skin, muscles, bones.
Angie didn’t seem to be in pain, just exhausted. But her hands…
“They feel heavy. Kin’a weird,” she slurred, as if she heard his concern. She cleared her throat in surprise. Her voice had gotten stronger.
“Weird,” Walter repeated. He was stretched out on one of her puffy sofas, feet dangling off the armrest. “Young people are dreadfully nonspecific.” The sun was rising. Walter had to get to his quarters.
Shiloh was standing, speaking to the queen on the wall screen. No. Speaking to their godmother, not the queen, or she would have been set down for her tone. Her words lashed like whips, spat like snakes. Shiloh’s unglamoured face snarled, her fangs down, eyes blacker than night. Vamped out.
“You will get an infermieri here, now,” she demanded, “to heal my stupid cousin before she loses her hands. She saved the entire blasted city. Now your city. She saved your reign. You will get someone here if my aunts have to fly them on a fucking broom.”
“I don’ need a’ be healed,” Angie mumbled, her eyes closed, her limbs slack. “I’ll be fine. Pro’lly. Mos’ like’y. The fu-trs say so.”
Futures. Her gift was still going, even though she had released the power back into the deeps.
PeeWee turned her head to Angie and chuffed laughter, sounding like a cat.
The cats looked at PeeWee, on the floor, her feet up on a stool, cat heads moving in concert, then they jumped onto Angie. The nonfamiliar felines were unusually interested in her singing hands.
The other members of the team—the ones not in a hospital—were curled or stretched out on her apartment floor, healing amulets all over them.
EJ was sitting in an absurdly soft chair, beneath an afghan crocheted by one of his doting aunts.
He looked ridiculous with a tiara on his head, but he hadn’t slept in days, running Delta too long, too hard, without full recupe.
He’d drained Delta and his personal energies during the battle.
Delta was tattered, burned, bent, and frayed.
He figured he’d heal eventually but it would be a while before he opened it again.
Delta waves were for short-term battle, not intended for prolonged use.
Shiloh snarled again and EJ opened his eyes at the sound. He must have fallen asleep.
“Walter and I are both fucking dangerously low on energy and blood,” she said.
“Language,” Aunt Jane snapped.
“Language my ass,” Shiloh snapped back. “We had to feed all the wounded, keep ’em alive until ambulances came, and talk to the cops. But nobody thought about us needing blood and we’re fucking hungry.”
EJ felt a smile twitch his lips. Cousin Wacko was a young Mithran. They weren’t known for control when starving and depleted.
“Language, Shiloh,” Aunt Jane said again, her expression more weary than angry.
Shiloh went silent, but EJ could hear her fury like a live wire spitting into the room.
“An infermieri has lifted off from Knoxville in Lincoln Shaddock’s flying casket,” the Consort said, from off-screen. “Amy Lynn Brown’s helo is ten minutes out.”
A flying casket, or dead-box, or a half-dozen other pejorative names, were slang for a long narrow box sealed against light, in which a vampire could be transported from place to place by day.
Infermieris were vampire healers. They could heal anything, or so it was said. They were rarer than rubies and way more valuable. Their services were also freaking expensive.
Amy Lynn Brown was the most valuable, and most expensive, infermieri of them all, having acquired her doctorate at VCOM medical school. She was also part of Grampa Shaddock’s blood family in Knoxville. Everhart-Trueblood family and political relationships were as twisted as any vampire’s.
EJ liked Amy Lynn. He raised his pounding head and shoved up with his elbows, so he could see the screen. Aunt Jane was in her office. So was Mama. She frowned at him. EJ tilted his head to the side in a modified shrug and instantly wished he hadn’t. He adjusted the tiara and rosemary sprigs.
Her tone stiff, Aunt Jane continued, “Your subject, Ivyanna Holmes, will be transported to the Everharts for healing and de-possession, if that proves to be possible.
“Four blood servants are being transported in a second helo to feed you and Walter. The helos will land in the street and the flying casket will be transported into Walter’s apartment for safety.
We,” she said, her words growing sharp with the royal pronoun, “are not without understanding or resources, Shiloh Everhart Stone.”
Shiloh snarled again, but the sound was lower, less vicious.
Aunt Jane’s tone gentled. “The children’s grandfather and I made the arrangements the moment the vid of the battle came in. You did well, Shiloh. I’m proud of you.”
Shiloh deflated and sat on the floor, landing hard, her head bowed. The soft click of her fangs schnicking back into the roof of her mouth sounded loud in the quiet room. “Well, hell.”
The queen’s mouth twitched before she turned her focus from Shiloh to Walter.
“You did well, also, Walter. We thank you for keeping them all together and alive, alone in their skins. The helo will bring Nyoka back here, to be treated by our people and the Everharts. They are hopeful, as are we, they can use the recipe for the elixir to reverse engineer the working Konstantin the Rus used, and free your friend from the demon.”
Walter fluttered his fingers from the floor. Aunt Jane smiled.
“You haven’t mentioned your brand. May we…May I inquire about your face? And about our offer?”
She was mixing the personal with the royal, and Walter touched his face.
The flesh had begun to draw together, but hadn’t healed as it should.
It was puckered and rough. He was too low on blood for anything more.
“It seemed…” He frowned. “It seemed the right time to remove it.
Perhaps your Amy Lynn Brown can heal it fully.
“As to the Master of the City position.” He drooped and dropped his hand from his face. “Perhaps tomorrow night when I wake and am fed I will be more clearheaded. I am…unsettled just now, and do not feel that I can provide a thoughtful and articulate response.”