I stared at her in disbelief, not knowing what to say or what to even ask. Rather than a question, I thought about Ryuu’s personalized explanation for his sword. “Like the pond,” I said, indicating the nearby healing pool. “The old is born anew. It suits him,” I said, smiling faintly. “But how did he come to acquire—”
She was shaking her head adamantly. “I have probably already said more than I should. Ask Ryuu. I’m sure he will tell you, of all people, the story,” she said, apologetically.
I smiled, nodding. “I understand. I wasn’t trying to get you to break his confidence,” I assured her. Questions were zipping through my mind, though. Was he bonded to it? Where had he gotten it? What was it really made of? Was it like my Spear of Destiny? Which only made me realize that it really was time for me to wrap this up.
“I’d really like to get this over with. I feel fine, so is this really necessary?” I asked, careful to not sound unappreciative. “I have very pressing concerns to deal with in Kansas City.”
She nodded. “From what I can see, you are a ticking time bomb. You could keep going for either a year or for another five minutes, but at some point, you’re going to have a major problem that will require major psychic surgery and extended recovery. Rather than that, I recommend a preventative realignment. I can do it now, and it will not put you in a figurative sickbed.”
I leaned forward, staring into her eyes. “You are certain? Millions of lives will depend on your answer, and that is not an exaggeration,” I told her, imagining the population of Kansas City stuck between the Seven Sins and the archangels. “Will it weaken or incapacitate me? I need to be at fighting strength.”
“If I do my job right, which Ryuu trusted me to do, you should end up being a hell of a lot stronger,” she said with a smug smirk. “But you might suffer mild side effects. Your magic could be more potent as a result of me streamlining your chakras. Things like that. Drink plenty of water and think twice before you cut loose.”
Knowing that I was going to be confronting archdemons and archangels, I realized now wasn’t the time to risk a breakdown, and it might be exactly the right time to put some nitrous in my veins. Ryuu trusted her, and Xuanwu and Qinglong trusted Ryuu. “Okay,” I said.
She dipped her chin and smiled reassuringly. Then she drew a deep breath and closed her eyes, centering herself for the task ahead.
At some point in our talk, I had lifted my knees to hug to my chest as a sort of barrier between us, wrapping my arms around my ankles for added protection down low. I returned to my seated, cross-legged position, forcing myself to remain calm rather than fretting over my current nudity, but it was hard. Clothes were a sort of armor that allowed you to hide your most vulnerable bits from prying eyes. The only consolation was that she was equally as indisposed, yet she wasn’t letting it hold her back. I could at least be as confident as her.
After a few moments, she opened her eyes and I noticed that faraway, almost dazed look to them. She scooted closer and knelt an inch or two in front of me, our knees almost touching. Then she lifted her hands and set the pads of her fingers down on my mid thighs.
The moment her fingers touched my skin, I gasped involuntarily, feeling as if she’d punched me in the soul. I sucked in a breath and realized I was entirely unable to move away from her, as if she’d anchored my ass to the ground, or put it to sleep. Electric tingles raced down my bones and ignited the blood in my veins.
I opened my mouth to ask what she had just done, and her fingers darted out like Mr. Miyagi catching a fly with chopsticks. Except my lower lip was the fly in this case. I stared at her incredulously, unable to move or speak for fear of her ripping it off with some chakra ninjitsu.
“Do not talk,” she murmured distractedly, rising up on her knees to loom closer to me. “It disturbs your aura, and this is going to be difficult enough as is.” Finally, she released my lip and I let out a breath of relief.
She lifted her hands and then trailed her fingers down the sides of my ribcage from top to bottom with a thoughtful frown on her face—as if she was using a stethoscope. I sucked in a breath as faint pops reverberated in my soul, as if she was a chiropractor adjusting each rib back into place, one-by-one. But the pads of her fingers were like hot velvet, both ticklish and euphoric, and exerted no physical pressure. Tension I hadn’t known I carried cascaded down to my hips like water released by a dam.
She reached up to pinch my earlobe in a gentle but firm grip. She set her lips, looking on the verge of anger. Then she squeezed and I sucked in a breath, my eyes instantly watering at the sharp pain.
But…my mind spun with confusion as I felt an unpleasant fiery sensation rapidly building up within my right shoulder. The woman growled and immediately grabbed the shoulder with her other hand—in the exact location of the fiery pain—and squeezed her fingers in a tight grip.
Then she pinched my earlobe again—harder.
The fire instantly shot to my shoulder again—hotter than the first time—but immediately exploded outwards as if her other hand had dispersed it elsewhere. And…that painful heat dissipated with faint popping sounds in my shoulder blades, my left kneecap, and my right pinky toe.
I was shaking, blinking back tears of both pain and relief. What the hell was that all about?
“You will require more work than I thought, White Rose,” she said, sounding almost offended about it.
I opened my mouth to demand an explanation, but all I managed to do was squawk as I was lifted into the air on unseen tendrils of power. I tried to scream but my voice did not work. I found myself hovering horizontal to the ground, staring up at the underside of the cherry blossom tree with my head hanging free and my limbs splayed out like a starfish.
My earlier guess that she was powerful had been spot on.
20
I sucked in a breath, reaching for my magic.
“That is just going to get in my way,” she growled as she snapped her fingers. My power evaporated so completely that I momentarily wondered if I had ever had any magic at all. I wasn’t shielded—she’d simply ripped my wizard’s gift out of me and set it down on the grass like some bothersome, inconveniently-placed organ during a surgery.
Then she began to work. Dozens, upon dozens, upon dozens of unseen fingers suddenly poked and prodded me, caressed and pressed, pinched and pulled, at the unlikeliest of points across my body.
And I lit up like a switchboard as the woman calmly walked from my head to my feet, her hands clasped behind her back as she occasionally loomed over me with a studious look. Those unseen spiritual fingers continued their work despite her actual fingers not physically touching me anymore. Almost like she was using magic to keep up her poking and prodding, but I felt no magic from her.
I began to shake and tremble as ice, fire, pleasure, pain, numbness, heaviness, weightlessness, and electricity raced from my nose to my elbows. From my shoulders to my shins. Metaphysical touches that caused seemingly random sensations: flicking my forehead caused my hip to tingle, pinching my index finger caused my tongue to grow numb, squeezing my right hand caused my body to spasm in agony, brushing my collarbone caused the back of my knee to tickle.
But even as I tried to catalog these bizarre connections, she diverted them elsewhere. The second time she brushed my collarbone, my breasts grew painfully tight. The woman cursed, firmly grabbed my hips—with her actual hands this time—and then the next spirit finger caress to my collarbone released the pressure in my chest. The woman let out a satisfied murmur and released my hips. Then she loomed over me and used her finger to brush my collarbone—to check her work—and…
I felt it only on my collarbone.
Except it was more noticeable and rawer than anything I’d ever felt before. As if I’d never truly felt someone tickle that spot before. I let out a faint, unbidden whimper of relief. Dozens more interactions like that happened in the span of mere minutes, as if she was trying to set a speed record or something.
And all the whil
e, my soul felt like it was roaring—angry and joyful—and growing, expanding to the point where it felt like it extended past my flesh.
At one point, my vision rapidly tunneled to darkness.
The woman was suddenly beneath me, and I felt her fingers playing the piano down my spine like a madwoman. My vision snapped back, blindingly bright, and my soul let out a sigh of relief as it shrunk back within my body, seeming to amass in the center of my chest in a tight, turbulent, glowing green knot of…
Well, not like a painful muscle knot.
This…well, it was slightly embarrassing. I’ll admit that it gave me a smile, though. A huge one.
Although similar to a growing climax, it was spiritual rather than sexual, because I felt it reverberating throughout my entire soul like an echo. It felt like a harmonious hum that was resonating with the rest of my body, as if I was being tuned up. I tried not to think about it, knowing the mad doctor was just going to do something else to change it into a different sensation entirely.
She touched the base of my neck with her fingers and my Sanguina-vision exploded into action, making me gasp and arch my back as the world abruptly shifted to chromatic shades of gray.
I glanced down to see hundreds of golden lines crisscrossing my body in a crazy web of light—the only color in existence with my Beast vision activated. The woman chuckled. “Clever, clever, clever. But if I move this back over here…” she murmured to herself, sounding out of breath. She was sweating and seemed to be faintly glowing herself. The golden lines of light were bright enough to make me squint, although I was devoting all my energy to sucking in breaths.
She did something with the erogenous zone on my neck and Silver spikes exploded out of me, peppering the branches above and shredding millions of petals to send them floating down like rain over us. I cried out as a great weight suddenly slipped from my neck and shoulders. What felt like a steaming washcloth suddenly pressed over my upper back and face, making my toes curl, and my body go slack as my vision returned to normal.
The petals continued to fall, looking like fat, apocalyptic pink snowflakes. My ears popped and then seemed to open up for the first time, letting me hear the petals falling as if in stereo, and I’m not talking about them hitting branches.
I could feel the wind brushing their surface as they fell, as if my vision had been intensified on an entirely inhuman level. Something beyond even any supernatural senses I’d heard of.
I stared, stunned, unable to move anything but my eyelids. I could see each individual Silver needle that had exploded out of me. They coated the tree like quills on a porcupine, and then I watched as they slowly sunk into the glowing tree as if being consumed. I felt no fear, somehow knowing she hadn’t stolen my powers or anything. The woman had removed some block on my Silvers, because I suddenly felt that my bond with Sanguina had strengthened.
I was no stranger to pressure points—on how to use them in combat, to relieve pain, to cause pleasure, or cause any other number of sensations. I knew many of these strange connections from Roland’s teachings on chakras. If you had a headache, you could apply firm, almost painful pressure to the web of skin between the index finger and thumb to eliminate the headache. I knew how to wall away my pain so I could continue fighting—both in a mental practice and from a pressure point application. I could make my opponent’s arm go numb or his leg not work properly. All that esoteric knowledge I’d acquired…
Apparently, I had only been a poorly trained field medic—the woman who the real surgeons cursed and hated for attempting such crude, detrimental, battlefield surgeries that only put the victim in greater harm, long-term. Who cared that the patient didn’t have gangrene? I’d amputated his foot.
But magic spirit finger lady? She was the world’s most esteemed neurosurgeon.
My eyes bulged as the resonating, pleasurable sensation returned with a vengeance. My whole body hummed in tune with it, more strongly condensed in my navel than anywhere else. It felt like I had one of those rubber hot water bottles on my stomach for particularly painful cramps, but no larger than a grapefruit and beneath my skin. It was yellow. I don’t know how I knew that, but it definitely was.
And I began to panic as that almost forgotten, green knot of pleasure in the center of my chest condensed into a green ball of light, and slowly began to drift down like a falling feather, quivering more intensely as it drew closer to the yellow orb of heat beneath my navel. My panic grew stronger as the full-body humming grew more intense, because although the orb wasn’t hopping the fence to take a detour to my happy place, I had a feeling that my body’s response was going to be close enough for it to qualify.
It simply didn’t know what else to do with the stimulus package.
I sucked in a breath, shaking my head in both frustration and embarrassment, knowing that if the green orb touched the yellow orb, I might die of shame.
It continued to fall lower, closing the distance.
I found myself panting, no longer feeling the woman’s touches—spiritual or physical. The blood began to roar in my ears and my tongue swelled, salivating double-time. My toes curled and the insides of my elbows, the back of my neck, and my shoulder blades all grew uncomfortably hot.
The green orb touched the yellow orb in the exact right spot beneath my navel, emitting a faint chime that heralded the presence of God.
Reality exploded, and I became a supernova of euphoria, creating my own pocket universe. My full-body chakra-gasm knocked me unconscious.
Immediately.
21
I came to, opening my eyes languidly. I lay on the bed of petals again and I was wearing a black silk robe like the one the healer had been wearing when I first met her. Speaking of the healer, she knelt at my side, brushing my hair with a jade comb. She had donned her old robe, and was smiling down at me. “How are you feeling?” she whispered with a warm smile.
“I’m…exhausted,” I admitted. My cheeks flushed darker upon remembering my encore departure. “And embarrassed.” I sat upright, trying to mask my reaction.
She frowned. “Why would you be embarrassed for passing out? Everything went smoothly as rain.”
I blinked. “Oh. I…guess I thought I screamed. It was all fuzzy at the end,” I lied. If she didn’t know about my chakra-gasm, I wasn’t going to bring it up.
“You did scream, but that is a typical response when everything falls back into harmony. A cry of celebration.” She studied me thoughtfully. “In fact, most patients cry after they wake up.”
I grunted. “I cry on the inside,” I said, smirking. Xylo had taught me that one. Accidentally. “Thank you for the robe,” I said, studying it with a smile. “It’s very well made.”
She nodded. “Healers must have a deft touch with a needle. Sewing things back together again is a hobby of mine,” she said, smiling. “Like I did with you.”
I arched an eyebrow. “That sounds…concerning. I thought you were just realigning my chakras?”
She nodded. “A wound which required stitching afterwards. Especially to heal the wound left behind by tearing out Excalibur,” she said. “I used love to stitch it back together, since I sensed maternal love where the sword had been,” she said, softly. “Your mother must have cared for you very, very much. I sensed sorrow in that love. It was a parting gift, wasn’t it?”
I blinked rapidly, not having realized she would have been able to see something so personal. “Yes.”
She smiled, reaching out to touch my forearm with her fingers. “That is why I used love for the thread, so the wound would not be forgotten. Love is very powerful. There is a reason mankind has always called a lover a soulmate, or a cherished friend a kindred spirit. In both cases, love is the thread that binds these souls together to become something greater than the sum of the parts.”
“So, did you put everything back?” I asked, recalling how she had plucked out my wizard’s magic.
She smiled, nodding. “Your power is fine. You are fine. With plenty of w
ater and physical activity, you will hardly notice a difference. But your magic might be…more explosive as your body adapts. Not uncontrollable or anything. Just more potent.”
I let out a sigh, rolling my shoulders. That wasn’t a bad thing. I experimentally reached out for my magic and let out an internal sigh to feel it back where it belonged. It did seem to respond quicker than usual, confirming her comment. It almost seemed hungry and eager.
My skin felt energized and I was as refreshed as if I had taken a long nap, but I wasn’t hearing a huddle of monks chanting in my head, nor was I overcome by an aura of zen serenity. Harmonious Callie was kind of identical to hot-mess Callie.
“I’m actually relieved we didn’t wait to address the imbalance,” she said, eyeing me nervously. “Once I began working, I realized you had also bonded a Mask, and that you were harboring a Beast. Furthermore, that your Beast is somehow a biological part of you—something I’ve never seen before,” she said meaningfully. “That unique bond was the only thing holding your aura together. If not for your Beast, you would have been comatose weeks ago.”
I shuddered at the thought. I wouldn’t have even known what was wrong with me. “Thank you,” I said meekly. “Forgot to mention those.” She watched me thoughtfully, obviously wanting to pry. “Now that you’ve had a closer look, any idea what the Spear actually is? You said it is not a weapon, and Ryuu said it was made for healing, not harming.”
She pondered that in silence, seeming to compare it to her own mental notes. Finally, she nodded. “That sounds accurate. It was not intended to be used as a weapon. Although it does have a sharp point, so…” she shrugged, smiling playfully. “Technically, it could be both.”
Anghellic: Feathers and Fire Book 8 Page 12