by Ophelia Bell
I had to suppress a sigh because I knew what was coming.
“We do, to varying degrees,” I said. I was using at least two of them already, just to interpret his true desires. Not only did my dragon nature give me the ability to read his aura for secrets about his state of mind, but I had the innate ability to hear the truth in people’s spoken words—a trait inherited by my turul side.
“My grandma’s sick. The doctors don’t have a clue what it is, but it started the same day the message came. It has to be linked. There must be something you can do.”
“I can try,” I said with a slight nod. I swallowed the knot of helplessness and stood. While I did have some abilities, what I was born with were woefully inadequate to do fuck-all for his grandmother. I hadn’t spent the last three weeks in hospitals for my health, after all, or for the health of the victims I observed. Bodhi’s grandma was not the first to fall victim to some mysterious creature that only seemed interested in members of the bloodline, and chances were that Bodhi himself would eventually become a target. And there wasn’t a damn thing I could do about it.
But I could sure as hell try, and having an invitation from him to actually see his grandmother was the first break I’d had since this all began.
He grabbed both our trays and dumped the remnants of our midnight lunches in the trash, stacking the trays on top, then held the door open for me to follow.
“It’s this way,” he said, leading the way across a lit courtyard through another set of doors with an elevator on the other side. I could’ve found the way in my sleep.
When his grandmother had arrived I was already here, having just watched a man fall into a coma as his soul fell prey to the beasts that had come for the bloodline. Before him, all the victims had died before I could see what had happened to them, but over the last few weeks they seemed to last longer, though I was beginning to lose hope that I’d be able to figure out how to actually heal them.
The two most recent victims were afflicted by a weakening of spirit that drained all will until there was nothing left but a husk barely hanging on by a thread. The doctors had conducted every test imaginable but they couldn’t see what I could see.
I braced myself when we exited the elevator by the fifth-floor nurses station. The beasts were there, lurking in the shadows.
I glared at the creatures I’d taken to calling soul hounds as we passed through the door into Bodhi’s grandmother’s room. A pair of shimmering, violet mirages that seemed to disappear when I looked directly at them, they inexplicably seemed to perk up whenever I arrived. One had a yellow blaze down its face and the other had glowing, booted paws. Both shadowy heads followed my passage. It was as if they were just biding their time until the woman died, but I’d be damned if I let that happen. The hounds spent their evenings pacing between the two victims, their fox-like ruffs shimmering with pale cascades of power from the energy they drained. Everything I’d tried to get them to leave only seemed to encourage them.
At least it wasn’t a constant thing. They’d arrive in the dead of night when the place was quietest, their dim glows gradually brightening toward dawn as they absorbed the power from the souls of the afflicted, then leave at daybreak. I had no idea where they went. They seemed completely disinterested in the normal humans who staffed the hospital, the only people they cared about were the pair whose life forces reached out with a shimmering magical tether to each of the hounds. What would happen if and when one of the victims died I had no idea—I’d only felt the prior deaths, not witnessed them—but I suspected they would move onto someone else in the bloodline judging from how they sniffed around the family members who came and went, including Bodhi and another woman who I believed was his mother.
Bodhi’s grandmother would be the first one I was able to actually see in person. I’d tried and failed on several occasions to talk my way in. The night nurse eyeballed me as I strolled by and I gave her an exaggeratedly sweet smile when Bodhi opened his grandmother’s door and motioned for me to enter. Hopefully I could learn something new by seeing one of the victims up close for a change.
2
Deva
The woman asleep in the bed had almost no aura, which was the most troubling detail, but when we entered, she astounded me by opening her eyes and smiling. Bodhi immediately went to her side and clasped her outstretched hand, lifting it to his lips.
“Grandma, this is Deva Rainsong. She might be able to help. Deva, this is my grandmother, Susannah Dylan.”
The door opened and closed again behind us while I was still recovering from the shock of one of the victims actually being conscious. I turned to see a strikingly lovely woman enter, with black hair cropped close to her scalp and a complexion the same warm brown as Susannah’s and Bodhi’s. She reminded me a little of my own mother in her coloring and her confident bearing. Her face was weary but her gray-green eyes sharp. “Bodhi, Mom needs her rest.”
“I’ll rest when I’m dead, Maddie. Let me spend time with my grandson while I still draw breath.” Susannah pushed herself up to a seated position, surprising me with her alertness. She had been attacked by a soul hound three weeks ago just like the other victim I’d tried to see, but the other one, an older man, had fallen into a coma within a day and had yet to be revived. I’d fully expected her to be unconscious too.
“Why don’t you bring your guitar over and play for me, Bodhi?” Susannah said. “Do you like music, Miss Deva?”
“I love music,” I said, already enamored of this woman.
“It’s after midnight, Mom. I’m sure the hospital would rather we not make a ruckus,” Maddie said, walking over to the bed and adjusting Susannah’s pillows behind her.
“Pshaw, we’re in the ICU. Everyone else here is in a coma and the people who aren’t probably wish they were so they’d avoid the boredom.” She motioned to Bodhi who obediently opened up a guitar case and pulled out a lovely mahogany colored instrument. He sat down and quietly tuned the guitar, then started playing a sweet ballad that had me completely enthralled. It was a song I’d heard repeated on the human radio stations and faintly filtering through the hospital elevator’s speakers, but it had never sounded quite the way it did coming from him. I mouthed the words to myself and lightly tapped my foot to the beat.
I felt two sets of eyes on me and stilled, turning to see both Bodhi’s mother and grandmother watching me with interest.
“You want to sing, girl, you sing,” Susannah said.
I shook my head, my face heating. “I don’t sing.”
“With a name like Deva Rainsong, that is a crying shame.” Bodhi’s grandmother tutted. Maddie shook her head and a second later opened her mouth, closed her eyes, and added her own rich, melodic voice.
The music wasn’t loud, but the effect was impossible to ignore. Susannah’s aura brightened and within the center of her chest a new light flared and began to glow warmly. I studied the familiar shape of her soul, my adrenaline spiking at the chance to finally get a closer look at it. It was an egg shape, about the size of a fist, and pulsed with the same cadence of the music Susannah’s daughter sang beside her. Only there were very visible punctures of darkness along the sides that looked like . . . teeth marks?
I turned abruptly at the warbling growl that came from the corner of the room. One of the soul hounds stood there, its hackles raised. It was upset, and I could see why. The tether that linked it to the glowing orb in Susannah’s abdomen had weakened with the strengthening of her aura. Her soul was absorbing strength and energy from the music, which in turn fortified her aura like a shield around her. The beast wasn’t happy.
I held up my hand to them and made a shushing motion, curious what would happen if the music stopped. Bodhi’s hand stilled on the strings and the three of them quieted. The soul hound settled as well, it’s tether to Susannah flaring to full force once again. She slumped back against her pillow looking depleted, and for good reason. Her soul was literally being drained by the beast.
“
What is it?” Bodhi asked. “Do you really have that bad an aversion for music?”
“No . . . I just . . . something . . .” I stammered, trying to find a way to explain the things I saw without alarming them.
“You see the shadow that’s making me sick, don’t you?” Susannah said. “It doesn’t care for the music, does it?”
“You know about it?” I asked, glancing between her and the hound.
She slowly shook her head. “All I see is a shadow. Thought it was the angel of death, waiting for me to expire so it could take my soul all the way. If the damn thing wants to kill me, I wish it would get on with it and stop with this halfway shit. I feel sick in my soul, girl.” She pressed a fist to her abdomen, directly over the spot where feathery threads of violet energy seeped from her and traveled to the soul hound. “Music’s the only thing that lifts me up anymore.”
“I don’t think it’s an angel of death,” I said. “For one thing it doesn’t have wings. But it definitely wants something with your soul. The music keeps it from getting what it wants, though. Bodhi, start playing again.”
Bodhi plucked at the strings once more, this time playing a slightly more energetic tune. Within seconds, Susannah’s aura brightened, her soul flared with fresh energy, and the hound’s link weakened.
How do you like that, you little shit? I crossed my arms and glared at the beast.
A sense of relief washed over me at having made so much headway within such a short span. It had been three weeks since I arrived and discovered these strange beasts somehow leaching the life out of two members of the bloodline. I agonized for the first week over returning home with this discovery and asking for help, despite the fact that I really didn’t want to face my family again after all that had happened. But I knew if someone else actually died because of my lack of action, I’d have never forgiven myself. I couldn’t have helped the earlier victims. These beasts had been active for a lot longer than the last three weeks, but until we sent the message to the bloodline, no one had been aware of any danger.
The fact that only two humans had been afflicted since the message was a bit of a saving grace. I could easily keep track of them. If I could figure out how to handle this on my own, maybe I could earn some long overdue respect from my family.
Well, now I’d found a way to defend these poor people, and it seemed music was the key. If only I could figure out a way to control the hounds themselves. To get them the hell away from the bloodline entirely.
There was one thing I needed to try, though I was loath to do it. I had lied to Susannah. I did sing. I loved to sing, but I hadn’t so much as hummed a bar since I left home three weeks ago. I had a complicated relationship with music. More accurately, I’d had a couple relationships that were complicated by my music. Singing to a man tended to get me in trouble, and after the spark I’d felt with Bodhi in the cafeteria, I hesitated to belt out a song with him in the room.
But this woman’s life might depend on me flexing my vocal cords again.
At the refrain, I took a breath and joined in, picking up the female lines of the duet Bodhi was singing with his mother while his grandmother listened. Maddie trailed off, smiling and letting me take over. Bodhi’s eyes brightened, his voice picking up more energy and his big shoulders swaying in time while he played the last verse. These two people didn’t deserve this heartache. They deserved love, and freedom from pain, just as much as I did.
Out of the corner of my eye I watched the edge of the room for any change in the soul hound’s behavior.
Despite the interruption in its link to Susannah, it wasn’t growling and irate the way it had been. Instead, its glowing violet eyes were fixed on me. Outside the sliding glass door of Susannah’s room, the other hound stood, its shadowy form unmoving as it stared at me. A shiver passed down my spine under their intense scrutiny and I feared what would happen now that the song was coming to an end.
Susannah’s tether to the beast had all but disappeared when Bodhi coaxed the last few notes from his guitar, but when the last bit of air left my lungs, I heard the growls.
The second before they leapt I yelled a warning, but there was no way for Maddie or Bodhi to defend themselves. They couldn’t see the hounds, much less fight them off. I stretched my hands out, willing my minuscule powers to do something to protect these two people who now had shadowy beasts on top of them.
The guitar fell to the floor with a dissonant clatter as Bodhi’s body arched back in the chair in a violent seizure. Beneath the hound’s flared ruff and the yellow blaze on its snout, its teeth had sunk into the center of Bodhi’s abdomen, the sharp purple incisors puncturing the glowing orb of his soul. His mother had fallen over on the bed, Susannah’s arms wrapped around her while the other beast attacked.
The older woman was pale and stricken, holding tight to her daughter with one hand and trying her best to sing the song that had refortified her own energy earlier.
I pushed with all my might, willing power through my limbs, but only ineffectual sparks flickered at my fingertips, and waving my hands around did nothing to fend off the attacking beasts. I found myself shoved aside suddenly by several nurses who went to work, completely oblivious to the attack as they checked vitals of Maddie and Bodhi, but the damage had been done.
One of the nurses backed me unceremoniously out the door and closed it behind me. I stood in shock, staring through the window at their inert bodies and the vibrant trails of energy linking them both to the pair of soul hounds that now stood on either side of me having completed their deed. One of them made a melodic warbling sound that vibrated in its chest and looked up at me, its gaze bright and its blaze flickering as though seeking my approval.
“You are not my friend,” I snapped at it. “And as soon as I figure out how to get rid of you both, you’re gone.”
The door opened and a nurse rushed out. I stepped aside to make way for a gurney that was being rolled in. Together, a pair of orderlies carefully lifted Maddie up and then rolled her away, then a second gurney appeared and Bodhi was hoisted onto it. The doctor on call had arrived and was barking orders to the nurses to have tests done.
“You should leave,” the head nurse said, giving me a cold stare. I swallowed and nodded, quietly making my way across the ICU toward the exit.
I paused just outside the room of the man who had been brought in shortly after Susannah, the one I’d as yet been unable to visit. The hound with the boots who had marked him trotted in and hopped up onto the bed, made its familiar warbling, resonant growl and pressed its nose into the center of the man’s chest as though checking on the marks it had left there. I could clearly see the man’s damaged soul, the same glowing egg-shaped orb as the others, but the bites no longer seeped energy. The beast’s tongue curled as it lapped at the wound, then it made a snuffling noise and lifted its nose into the air.
“Get the fuck off him,” I muttered under my breath. The beast’s head whipped around and it huddled over the man, baring its teeth and growling at me as though protecting its kill.
“It’s got to him too, hasn’t it?”
I turned, surprised to see Susannah at my elbow, hanging onto her IV stand for support. She was staring at the spot where the hound stood, as if she could see something, though I knew there was no way it was visible to her. The hound spied Susannah and blinked, made an odd purring noise that sounded like satisfaction, and hopped off the bed. It paused once to look back before trotting off in the direction Bodhi and his mother had been taken.
I glanced back at the man in the hospital bed. He didn’t move, his chest rising and falling in the artificial rhythm dictated by the machines that kept him alive. I’d been able to learn that he had no next of kin who were local, yet in my mind’s eye, my link to the bloodline told me he at least had children somewhere in the world. I said a silent prayer of gratitude that they were far enough away to be safe from these beasts, unlike Bodhi and his mother.
Looking back down at Susannah, I saw that, just
like the man, the glow of her soul had been restored. The bite marks were clearly visible but no longer leaking soul juice. I glanced behind her but didn’t see the other hound and my stomach lurched. They’d moved onto two new victims.
“There are two of them, Susannah,” I said. “I need to go find Bodhi.”
“The doctors will take care of him until I get my strength back and can get him and his mother out of here. No sense staying when they can’t fix us.”
“They can’t fix him either,” I said softly, looking in at the man. He had ashen skin that could have been a dark golden color had he been healthy, and thick salt and pepper hair and an unkempt beard that matched. The name on his chart had read “John Doe” which I’d come to learn only meant they had no idea of his true identity. Despite the link being severed from the hound, he hadn’t woken up.
Susannah gripped my hand and squeezed. “You’ve got soul, girl. You’ll figure it out.”
My spine tingled at her statement. If she only knew. I shook my head, weary of my self-imposed solitude and grateful for her acceptance and her faith. I squeezed her hand back and looked at her. “That’s just the thing, though. I don’t actually have a soul at all. But you do . . . You and Bodhi and Maddie and this poor man all have souls, and they’re beautiful things and they need to be protected from these creatures.”
Susannah let out a little huff and shook her head. “I don’t believe for a second that you don’t have one. Not with a voice like the one you’ve got. Something happened when you sang. Something that made those things powerfully pissed off, and that’s a good thing, because it means they’re afraid of you. Now you go find my girl and her boy. Thanks to you, I have an idea how to help that man in there. I have a feeling you’re not finished with trying to fix us all. Come back soon when you figure it out, yeah?”