“No. We’re dealing with it.” Warden stopped pacing and stared down at the body. Ragged Edge put a hand on her shoulder. He glanced up past her and caught sight of an open window in the warehouse opposite the museum. He pointed up at it.
“I thought that building was vacant.”
“It is.” Warden turned and looked up at the window. The two of them exchanged wide-eyed glances before bolting for the door. Ragged Edge tried it and it was unlocked. He opened the door and the pair of them filed inside. It was dark and empty. He went straight to the metal staircase leading up to a gallery landing running along the front side of the building. He climbed them two at a time and went over to the open window. Warden followed him more slowly. She looked ghostly pale.
“There’s nothing here.” He looked around at the floor and saw a small notebook just under the window, hidden in the shadows. He stooped and picked it up. Leafing through the pages, Ragged Edge saw lines of messy handwriting.
Eleanor = “Warden” - in charge, the men call her “Alpha”
Mjolnir - Norse myth? WTF?
Many more notes documented their comings and goings over the last few days. His address was noted at the top of one page.
“What’s that?” Warden asked.
“Notes on us. A lot of nothing much. Names, locations, nothing too important. But not bad for a human.” He drew the notebook to his nose and sniffed. All he smelled was the musty scent of paper. “The demon hiding him is thorough. I can’t get a scent of the man on this.”
“How is he hidden by a demon?”
“Maybe something he picked up in Hepethia? A hitch-hiker taking advantage of the situation?” He looked back down at the floor. There were scuff marks in the dust. He looked over at the metal railing, there were scratches in the green paintwork. He went over and ran his fingers over the jagged, loose paint. It crumbled off at his touch. He peered over the edge and saw a broken chair on the warehouse floor below. “Someone lost their temper here.” He went back to the window and looked down into the street. He had a clear view of the fire door at the back of the museum. “Good vantage point.” He sniffed the air and caught a faint whiff of gunpowder. “I think he took the first shot from here. Then he went down into the street to finish the job.” His jaw clenched. Doors had been young and green, but he didn’t deserve to die like that.
“Doors was right. He said the shooter was a threat. I didn’t take him seriously.”
“Find him. I don’t care what it takes. I can’t have a human running around out there with silver bullets, picking off shifters one by one.”
“Of course, Alpha.” Ragged Edge nodded sagely. He didn’t know how he would accomplish such a thing. He understood why Warden was giving the order, but he knew that given a little time and distance, assuming the shooter caused them no more direct problems, Warden would move on from this.
Ragged Edge had lived long enough to see dozens of pack mates come and go. Dying young was all too common. He often thought that he had got lucky too many times and one of these days there would be a fight he didn't get up from. Warden was comparatively young. She still felt that keen thirst for vengeance.
He looked down into the street at Doors' body with a swell of regret for the loss of his young pack mate, but desperately searching for a needle in a haystack wouldn't bring Doors back.
They had a much bigger mystery to solve. St. Catherine’s may have returned, but the Bone Anchor was gone and someone was responsible for that. Then there was the pressing matter of their missing ally. Warden would soon remember and adjust the priorities for the pack. This hidden human gunman was a mystery they may never solve.
Felix didn’t stop running until he was back in his flat. He leaned against the door and dragged in shaking breaths. He had done it; he’d shot one of them. Killed him. He had proved he could do it.
He closed his eyes and let out a nervous laugh. The dead kid’s young face stared back at him. He opened his eyes again and shook the image away. He moved away from the door and dropped his weapons onto the sofa.
“You did well, Felix,” Maxwell said, a purr to his voice.
“It was easy. Too easy.”
“You want more of a challenge?”
“I want more catharsis.”
“You want to hunt them?”
“Yes.”
“There are so many more of them right here in Caerton. And then there are all the others in the world. Shapeshifters, human-killers. Don’t get me started on the vampires, ghouls, and all of the other monsters of the world.”
“We’ll deal with them all.”
Felix stared down at the guns. He was going to need more silver bullets.
We leave Felix here for now, but you can read more about my shapeshifter inhabitants of Caerton in Shifters of Caerton, my complete four-novel series: http://hblyne.com/mainsite/books/shiftersofcaerton/
About the Author
H. B. Lyne lives in Yorkshire with her husband, two children, and cat. When not juggling family commitments, she writes dark urban fantasy novels, purging her imagination of its demons. Inspired by the King of Horror himself, Holly aspires to be at least half as prolific and successful and promises to limit herself to only one tome of The Stand-like proportions in her career. Other interests and idols include Joss Whedon and Robert Kirkman, and she is often spotted wearing Firefly™ or The Walking Dead™ apparel. Find out more at www.hblyne.com
Aamira
Letting Go
Barbara Letson
The little girl who promised herself she would never enter a hospital again has grown into a talented and dedicated young physician specializing in children’s care, hiding her use of the Forgotten Magic that might save so many lives. But stealing kids from the jaws of death comes at a price: a messenger of death wants to steal them back. He might settle for taking Aamira instead.
Barbara Letson
How do you appeal for the life of a child to an ageless, supremely powerful entity you now need... when you've just insulted him to the max? All Aamira knows is, you should never annoy anyone with that much power.
Letting Go
ICU held many patients in need of individualized, constant care but Dr. Aamira Rayan’s latest patient was special; he was hers. She planned to watch over him until he was out of danger and had stabilized. Hers was a delicate balance of actions: her job was supervising her patient with medical knowledge and surgical skill, but there was more to it than that. Aamira was supporting her patient with both quiet words and a different kind of physicks; she was a Healer.
“C’mon, child, you can do it. We can do it, just keep breathing, keep reaching.” She made a mistake tonight, possibly a dangerous one. Not with her surgical skills, but with her hidden healing art.
The story had come to her of her current patient, a twelve-year-old boy who, along with his family, had gotten in the way of a reckless driver at a traffic light. The driver had slipped into the empty right turn lane, intending to jump back in line of the straightaway and be the first one through the intersection when the light turned green. What he hadn’t counted on was the woman waiting at the curb to cross that particular intersection with her three young children. The results had been devastating.
Once the nurses had settled the boy into ICU, Aamira stopped in to see his chart, checking his vital signs and acknowledging the nurses overseeing his care. Surgery had been long and tedious, so many injuries in one child that had to be quickly patched or practically ignored while she concentrated on the life-threatening traumas. The average trauma surgeon would’ve now considered their job done, stepped back and gotten some rest, and let the nurses do their thing: not Aamira.
The diminutive physician pulled a chair beside the boy and sat quietly, watching his face and holding his hand without giving herself away. She didn’t intend to intrude on the nurses’ domain of caring for critical patients or cause them to feel she didn’t trust anyone but herself to watch over their charges; she depended upon the nursing staff as
much as any surgeon yet couldn’t give them any clues as to what she was truly doing.
Quieting her mind, Aamira reached out to the boy, offering a bit of her own life’s energy through their physical connection. It was a sort of sugar water to supplement his own depleted life source. To Aamira, it was a pleasant sensation, akin to turning your face to the sun on a soft spring day. Of course, he accepted it, working on the same instinctual level as a newborn rooting for nourishment when someone touches their cheek. It was only a gentle introduction, a small pull on her psyche, yet it was encouraging, as it meant there was enough of the child still in there to hunger; he wasn’t giving up. This first grab always seemed to be on an ethereal level rather than the body’s physical needs.
Aamira was tuning in to him on another level of being. She could see the boy’s aura, his body a jumble of muddled browns and dull greys with bright sparks of color indicating injury that called out for help from the cosmos. She likened it to when a sudden blow to the head had a person seeing stars; your life force instinctively knew it needed help. These bits of unsettling brightness were concentrated in the areas where the most injury had occurred; muddied green around a head injury, sickly yellow at his broken clavicle, darker yellow surrounding two broken ribs, angry red cradle encompassing his shattered pelvis, and a veritable fireworks of flashing colors in his abdominal cavity. This was indicative both of his injuries and of Aamira’s surgical intervention, sewing and gluing and cauterizing and wiring him back together to assist the body’s natural ability to heal itself. After he had stabilized, there would be more surgeries to follow, patching together the lesser damage his young body had sustained.
But Aamira was not satisfied with what the medical profession could offer, not when she could help that healing process along. She went deeper now, bringing forward her own life force in a gentle dribble and offering it to the child. It always seemed to be based on love and compassion; she felt a warmth in her core which she projected outward as a gentle hug, hoping for acceptance. She was prepared for his reaction as he turned his spirit toward hers and greedily demanded whatever she would offer but had underestimated his desperation for sustenance for his severely damaged body.
The sudden draw of the child’s pull upon her own health elicited a small gasp as she adjusted her own determination to not be overwhelmed by his need. Two of the monitors blipped, as they were meant to do with any sudden change in the body. The sound called the attention of his nurse, who checked numbers, outputs, and connections, then finally departed after noting the minor improvement to his condition. Those simple blips were subtly dangerous for Aamira, as it meant the monitors were calling attention to something which might not be explainable under conventional terms.
Hers was strictly a pass-fail ability where passing meant somebody lived and failing meant somebody just might die. Aamira was as stubborn as they came, and she wouldn’t allow any patient to die, not if she could improve their chances by absorbing some of their injuries, even though it meant taking on some of their pain. She had first established her impressive gift of healing when she was a child and had since spent years testing her limits and improving her skills.
Aamira had excellent hearing, especially in the quiet of night in ICU. The nurses were off in the corner where they thought she couldn’t hear.
“What’s she doing? She must be exhausted. She should get some rest and let us do our job.”
“Praying, maybe. Or just talking to him; maybe she thinks they hear on a subconscious level. Whatever she does, it works. Dr. Rayan has the best survival stats in the hospital, and if she wants to hold her patient’s hand all night, I’m not going to complain. That kid needs all the help he can get.”
The other nurse nodded acceptance. She was well qualified, as they all were on this wing, but she was relatively new to this floor. “Poor kid. I heard his brother was DOA and the sister went into surgery for a lower limb crush injury and belly pain. Doctors Kellogg and Reitz worked on her in tandem, and the six hours of surgery was easy, compared to this kid. Dr. Rayan could have taken her instead, but she wanted this one.”
“Of course, she did; she always asks the most serious cases. I don’t know if she feels she has something to prove, but she takes the ones that need the most help.”
“Challenging herself, maybe? God complex? Death fetish? We’ll see what happens at shift change.”
“Rayan will still be here; I’ve seen it before. We need to keep moving. Full house tonight.”
“Full moon, too. Isn’t that the way?”
Aamira had to smile. Some doctors on this floor were referred to as “MDs”, better known as having succumbed to “Major Deity Syndrome”. It wasn’t a polite honorific. She respected the nurses, in the trenches overseeing the needs of their patients for long hours, but if being known for chatting with her unconscious patients, sitting with them all night, or having a god complex got her the results she needed, she was content. Such idiosyncrasies served her well.
Quietly, imperceptibly as far as the machines were concerned, Aamira’s particular healing magic continued, her dark hand in his; she offered him sustenance laced with love, and he was responding. She noted the aural colors around him changed slightly as her fierce protectiveness surrounded them both with golden light pulled down from somewhere above.
Soon after, the boy’s mother was admitted, as was her right to see her child as soon as he was settled. Mrs. Granger walked with a limp and cradled her newly-cast arm against her body, paying them no mind; her child was lying in intensive care with wires and tubes invading his twelve-year-old body, and she would hold herself together.
Wires on his chest led to the heart monitor that watched every beat for irregularities. A blood pressure cuff self-inflated at automatic intervals and a pulse oximeter on his toe measured oxygen saturation. Below the bed, a foley catheter drained away urine, which output and color was noted to ensure the kidneys were functioning. Several intravenous drips were attached to electronic pumps, never adjusted manually, allowing the medications to be given precisely, as even the simple saline IV on a child in the Intensive Care Unit had the potential of causing a catastrophic fluid overload. The most shocking of all was a bandage covering most of his head, from which a small tube emerged and ran down to what looked like a thermometer; immediately upon arrival, a small hole had been drilled into his skull to prevent pressure buildup due to head trauma.
For a family member uninitiated to the invasive ways of modern medicine, the sight of a loved one’s pale face and unmoving body covered with tubes and wires was shocking.
“What happens now?” she asked, a tremor in her voice.
Aamira responded honestly, giving the information she knew the mother was seeking. “He’ll likely be unconscious for a few hours yet, then we’ll see. If he makes it through the night, he’ll have a fighting chance. He’s a strong boy to get this far.” Aamira sat quietly, watching the mother but still holding the boy’s hand as she helped him along.
A nurse placed a chair behind the woman. “Why don’t you stay a little while and talk to him? It’s always good to hear your mother’s voice.” The mother did so, reaching for her child’s other hand and speaking simple words made intimate by their mother-child bond.
Aamira shifted in her seat, her bones and abdomen sore from slowly draining her charge of the worst of his internal injuries and taking the bits into her own body, knitting him back together a piece at a time. It was extremely unpleasant but over the years she had become accustomed to it, that feeling of wading through mud and tasting sharp iron on her tongue. Healing her patients’ injuries had become a slow process these days; she had long ago realized that when she joined with someone, she could cause an immediate spike in their heart rate and blood pressure, bringing them somewhat closer to normal that would definitely be noticed by the machines and reported to the surrounding nurses. She needed to avoid that notice at all costs for fear she would one day be questioned and found out; she had never relinquish
ed the idea that she would be stolen away and studied like a lab rat if her ability to heal was ever discovered.
Another person touching the one she was communing with had never been a problem before, but due to the depth of Aamira’s connection of support, and the even deeper emotions of the mother, something was different this time. Within her mind, she heard him stir.
Mommm? Mama?
Aamira’s eyes widened and she looked at the boy, the mother, the monitors. Both her heartbeat and his jumped for a moment. Although he was unconscious, she couldn’t be sure if he had been heard on a deeper level; at that moment the woman gave her own small gasp and choked back her tears. Perhaps she had heard but hadn’t understood or perhaps it was simply her normal reaction to being reunited with her son, but he was there. The nurse checked the monitors again but said nothing.
Inside her head, Aamira was seeing visions she was sure weren’t her own. A car coming toward her, speeding up instead of stopping behind the other cars waiting at a red light. Her mother crying out and pulling her back from the curb, the car’s engine impossibly loud and too close. A collision. She flew bodily into the road, first the impact of the car and then the shock of landing on hard asphalt, the world upside down and making no sense. A moment more of tremendous pain and bewilderment as her body accordioned in on itself, and then mercifully, nothing.
She had never experienced anything like it. Aamira was somehow invading the boy’s mind on a deeper level than she ever had accomplished before. It was unsettling. Intrusive. Almost indecent to be peeking at his last conscious moments. Connected as she was, she had felt the pain of the double impact, his confusion as his body crumpled, his fear, his mother’s screams. The connection, this unexpected insight of his memories, shocked Aamira as she absorbed more of the boy's pain than was prudent. She released his hand and pulled back out of self-preservation, disconnecting herself psychically, but the shock was incredible. She worked hard to clamp down on her alarm, to not panic and release all she had gathered right then and there, causing havoc and chaos and destruction in the middle of the ICU.
Magic Underground: The Complete Collection (Magic Underground Anthologies Book 4) Page 198