by Sadie Jacks
Leaning against the counter like she didn’t have a care in the world, I didn’t know if I could do what she asked. Let her in. Let her rummage around in my brain and heart.
With a sinking feeling, I shook my head.
I couldn’t do it.
No one got that close.
Not anymore.
Chapter 5 – Kiema
Well, there goes the ten days. I hoped my contact could move up the schedule. Of all the contingencies I’d thought through, I hadn’t foreseen this happening.
Nodding, I emptied the glass once more. Turning, I set the glass in the sink and turned toward my suite. “I’ll call the front gate and let them kno—”
A feral, pain-filled sound had me whirling around so fast I had to grab the back of a chair to keep from falling over.
Ransom was leaning on the kitchen island. Arms locked, muscled rigid and twitching. Head thrown back as pain etched a grimace on his face. His legs shook like limbs on a tree in a tornado.
I tried to harden myself against his suffering, his anguish. I turned back to my rooms. He’d chosen to walk away from the ritual. From the healing. I was now free to do the same. I made it two more steps before another yell sounded from behind me.
Sneaking a look over my shoulder, the severe angle of his body, arched backwards in torment, clamped its sweaty fist around my heart. I felt the keen edge of understanding. I knew pain. Knew how mind-consuming it could be. Until every breath became a knife through the throat, every heartbeat a spike through the chest. Close enough to death to feel its sting, but without its sweet release.
I couldn’t walk away, not when I had the ability to help him. To ease his torture.
Not that the little shit deserved it. But he didn’t deserve this pain as a life sentence either.
Another quake of his body, another raw-throated scream shot to the ceiling. I hurried over. Before I could stop myself or even attempt any of my own rituals, I touched him.
Just one hand against the trembling steel of his arm.
Shit, shit, shit. Kiema, you idiot.
Immediately I was pulled into his body. Kiema Rosalinda Feuer was gone. No body. No self. No thoughts. I was a being of senses and magic.
His body was a morass of pain I’d never before experienced. It ripped through every muscle, seared every nerve, thrashed every tendon. Bones ached and ground to dust, only to rebuild themselves and start the process all over again.
Organs twisted and rolled into shapes that reminded me of a turning kaleidoscope. With every shift of the wheel, his insides morphed into another cringing shape that tore through his body.
Something new washed through the magic that was me. Colors danced and spun in ever-tightening circles. The magical landscape had always been a muted gray, much like the life I lived.
Ransom’s spirit was every imaginable color and some I’d never thought to envision. Threaded through each color was a throbbing fiber of black.
Pulsing.
Beating.
Pumping.
Even though I had no lungs and no breath, I stilled.
That pulsating black felt like it was breathing. Like it was sucking the life from Ransom and feeding itself from his spirit.
Not knowing what else to do, I encased the black with my spirit. Like dipping my hands into hot sand, it pulled and tugged, sucking me deeper into its center.
The fucker has magic of his own. I’m going to kill him.
Shit! Shit! Shit!
Chapter 6 – Ransom
“Shit! Shit! Shit!” The words whispered through my pain-wracked mind, even though I’m pretty sure I wasn’t the one who said them.
Hell, I was having a hard time focusing on anything outside of my own body. Over the last couple of months, the pain had been building, but this was something I hadn’t been prepared for. The pain was incandescent as it washed in and through my body like a nuclear bomb.
As I felt my stomach bunch up with the need to vomit, a chilling sensation washed through me. Like a cool breeze swirling through the trees on a bright Fall morning.
The cessation of pain was so unexpected, I felt tears build behind my eyes.
Fuck.
I was almost afraid to trust it. To believe that my pain could just be swept away with a light wind. I pulled a deep breath in through my nose, slowly—so slowly—filling my lungs. When I was able to exhale without pain, I felt like crying like a newborn baby thrust into the cold, hard world.
For the first time since this stupid illness had settled in my body over twenty-five years ago, I could breathe without aching. I no longer felt like an elephant was sitting on my chest. My body straightened to my full height, something I hadn’t been able to achieve for the last year.
My insides were finally calm. Heart, lungs, stomach, hell, even my kidneys didn’t ache or burn. My legs didn’t feel on the verge of giving out on me with every breath. Even the soles of my feet didn’t have that icy pins and scalding needles feeling anymore. My head wasn’t swimming as if I had just stepped off a Tilt-a-Whirl. I could see without any tunnel vision.
Speaking of vision, I lowered my head. Kiema was standing next to me, still as a statue. I wasn’t even sure she was breathing. Her hand was laying on my arm. Not that I could feel it. I wouldn’t have known she was touching me had I not seen it with my own eyes.
I laid my other hand over hers. Her body trembled. The faintest hint of pain slid through me like the sharpest blade through flesh. So clean, a person didn’t feel it at first.
The hope that had built inside me crashed and burned near my feet.
As close to tears of frustration as I’ve ever been in my life, I pulled my hand away from her arm.
The pain washed away on another breath. Peace and health settled over me once again.
She was the cool breeze inside me.
“Fuck!” I was so fucking screwed.
Chapter 7 – Kiema
Finally, the pulsing black magic of Ransom’s spirit was encased in my own. All around me, the brilliant flashes of pain died down to the normal bland stillness of the magical landscape. The myriad of colors faded as if bleached by the sun.
I felt my magical essence shudder and waver as if a spectral hand had shifted through my physical form. I stilled. That had never happened to me either. Everything about this stupid ritual was fucked: upward, backward, and sideways.
The fading colors flared to life once more. Like the blinding sun had slipped behind a cloud, the colors seeped back into Ransom’s spirit.
Just as quickly as it started, the colors died away again.
The vast field of gray filled my vision once more. If I’d had shoulders in this form, they would’ve settled down into their normal position. If my heart still beat in this form, it would have slowed.
This was familiar. This I could do while sleeping.
I inspected the rest of Ransom’s body. The same slightly sickly gray of every person I’d ever healed stretched before me. But for the life of me, I couldn’t find what might have been causing his illness.
Oh well. I’d try again later.
Readying myself to pay the price for being a healer, I performed the ritual and began the process of returning to my own body.
One body, one spirit.
One body, one spirit.
One body, one spirit.
My body, my spirit.
My body, my spirit.
Thank you, Gaia.
My body, my spirit.
Like shoving a foot into a shoe that’s two sizes too small, I blinked as I settled back into my physical form. Opening my eyes, I was still standing next to Ransom, my hand on his arm.
Turning, I ran toward the closest bathroom.
I scarcely knelt before the toilet before I emptied my stomach into its porcelain depths.
Chapter 8 – Ransom
I raced after the woman who’d settled the torture of my body with one touch. My shoes slammed against the floor in a sharp drum beat that matched my pou
nding heart.
“Kiema! Wait!”
I almost shot past the door she’d escaped through. The sounds of violent retching reached my ears, pulled me to an abrupt halt.
She was hunched over the toilet. Her hair had fallen from her messy topknot. Now it hung around her head, a dark curtain shielding her face.
I winced in sympathy as her rib cage expanded and contracted heavily. Heavy splattering followed the guttural groans.
Let it out, sweetheart.
Stepping around her bowed form, I pulled open drawers. One after the other until they all stood open like the gaping mouths of dazzled spectators. On the wall, a rack held a huge collection of matching towels. Sitting on the top of the mound, I found the smallest washrag known to mankind.
Shaking my head, I turned on the faucet, and shoved the rag under the cold water. Barely wringing it out, I set it on the side of the sink.
I leaned down, one hand reaching out to scrape her hair up off her neck.
“NO!” She wrenched away before I touched her. Her shuddering body slammed against the far wall. “You can’t touch me.”
Never had I felt so helpless in my life. And considering I’d been a throwaway child because of my illness, I felt like royal fucking shit right now.
I frantically glanced around the small bathroom. With nothing better to do, I grabbed one of the towels from the rack.
I cringed as Kiema shrank back from my touch once more. “I’m not going to touch you. Just hold still.” I couldn’t help the bite in my voice. This woman who’d done what no one had been able to do was suffering agony and I could do nothing to help her.
I was actively causing her more fear and anxiety. I shook my head. I had to push those thoughts away or I wouldn’t be any help to her. And as much as she might not like it, I was the only one around.
As I watched, her body seemed to shrink in on itself. Like a terrified animal trying to make itself imperceptible to a predator. My heart wrenched in my chest at the sight.
Clenching my teeth, I grabbed the corners of the towel. Laying it longwise across her body, I pulled it up, catching her hair under its length.
As soon as the honey tones of her skin peeked into view, I laid the cold wet washrag down on her neck. Careful to keep my skin away from hers.
“Is that better?” I asked, my voice a strangled whisper.
Her body wasn’t writhing in pain anymore, but I didn’t put much stock in that single fact.
Without warning, her back arched like a cat whose tail had been caught under a rocker. A scream that would haunt my nightmares cascaded through the room, spilling out into the hall where it echoed into the gigantic house.
Face still covered by black, sweaty hair and a dark blue towel, I heard what sounded like a water balloon drop into the vomit-filled toilet with a thick bloop.
Between one breath and the next, Kiema’s body went limp and listed to the side. Her chin slammed into the edge of the bowl loudly enough I winced. She crashed into the wall at an awkward angle, passed out cold.
“Fuck!”
Chapter 9 – Ransom
My heart in my throat, I watched Kiema’s chest for the longest minutes of my life. Completely ignoring the shape of her breasts, I just needed to know if she was even fucking breathing.
“Kiema?” I called softly. I didn’t recognize the soft tone that came from my own mouth. Women had never been anything more than convenience and novelty to me before this one. But damned if she hadn’t made a big impression on me in a short amount of time.
Her chest rose and fell in an even, if slow, tempo.
Out cold.
Her petrified warning not to touch her filled my mind again. I couldn’t fucking leave her like this. Not after she’d saved me.
Left with nothing else in the small room, I finally ripped the shower curtain down. Rod and all. Throwing the rod into the bathtub, I kept one eye on the unconscious woman.
Not even a twitch to indicate she’d heard the crash.
I was out of patience; I had to get her off the floor. My entire being was screaming at me to get her moved.
I shook the curtain out and then spent the next ten minutes trying to figure out how to move her onto it without touching her directly. Sweat dripping from my temples, I wrapped my hands and arms in the remaining towels from the wall rack. I finally managed to lift her torso and roll her body onto the curtain. I made a mental note to make sure to check her head later. It had slammed against the door frame pretty hard.
I winced remembering the sharp crack of her teeth together followed quickly by the smash of her jaw into the toilet bowl. I needed to check her chin as well. I shook off the towels.
Stepping over her prone legs, I hopscotched my way through the door and grabbed the far ends of the shower curtain. Clutching the corners tightly, I began the slowest walk down a hallway in my entire memory. After every step, I paused to make sure she was okay, that she was still breathing.
Just as I entered the turn for the corner, her body stiffened as if someone had zapped her with a live electrical wire. I dropped the curtain corners like they were on fire and stepped onto the makeshift gurney. Cursing the inability to touch her once more, I nudged her leg with my shoed foot.
“Kiema?”
Nothing.
“Sweetheart?” Her body was bowed back, her lips pulled back, teeth bared in a tight grimace. The elegant neck I wanted to nuzzle was distorted with distended muscles as her head pulled back at a grotesque angle.
Why the fuck didn’t anyone tell me she has a problem with seizures? Fuck!
I knelt down next to her. Close enough to feel her body heat. She felt like a fucking furnace. She pumped body heat like she was trying to single handedly warm the cabin during the harshest winter on record.
“Kiema.” A slight quaver caught at the end of her name. I cleared my throat.
A choked moan slid from her throat as her eyelids opened the slightest degree.
I got down as close to her as I thought safe and got right in her eye line. “What can I do to help you?”
Breath heaved through her clenched lips, puffing gently against my cheeks.
Another low moan slithered between her lips.
“Fuck. Sweetheart, I can’t understand you.” I punched my hands into the floor next to her body. “I’ve got you on the shower curtain. Can I pick you up and move you to your bed? I swear not one inch of my skin will touch yours.”
Another incoherent moan.
“Can you blink?”
Moan.
“Blink once for yes, twice for no.”
She blinked once.
“Thank Gaia. Can I pick you up with the shower curtain?”
Another single blink.
Within seconds, she was in my arms. My racing heart slowed as soon as she was cradled against my chest. I felt like I could fucking breathe again.
I started across the living room. The keycode panel standing guard at her door stared at me with its steady red eye.
Fuck. “I’m going to take you to the couch. I don’t know the codes to your suite.”
I looked down and saw her blink again.
“Okay.” Five steps to the couch big enough to hold a small sports team, I was loath to let her go.
Her body was still taut, head and legs thrust behind her, hands clenched tight by her sides. I angled her to lay on her side. If she started puking again, I didn’t want her to choke on it.
“What can I do?” I asked again as I made sure she wouldn’t fall off the couch. I pushed the last pillow under her belly, tilting her up the smallest fraction.
She said nothing. Didn’t moan.
Silence greeted me.
I looked at her face. Her eyes were completely closed.
After a couple minutes of fear-wrenched breathing, I watched as her body finally seemed to dissolve into the furniture. Like snow melting in the sun, she defrosted before my eyes.
Wrapping the edge of the curtain around my hand, I brush
ed the hair off her face. With a wrinkle of her nose, she turned her head to the side.
I smiled at the purely feminine motion.
Batting at my hand, Kiema turned her face into the cushion and sank deeper into oblivion.
Satisfied that she was going to be okay, at least for a little bit, I got up and moved back to the bathroom. I didn’t want her to have any bad reminders waiting for her when she woke up.
Crossing the threshold into the hallway bathroom, I looked into the toilet. Expecting to find the typical vomit, I was horrified to find what looked like an organ floating in the pinkish water of the bowl.
I had to cover my own mouth and dart for the trashcan before I emptied my own stomach.
Chapter 10 – Kiema
I was stuck. My body was full of cement and I was stuck at the bottom of a well. Opening my eyes, I could see a wavery slice of light, but it was so far away.
My mind reeled as I tried to make sense of what was happening to me. I remembered the ritual. That was normal.
Wait. Something about the ritual had gone wrong. Horribly wrong.
A zing of electricity flashed through my tired and aching body.
Tasting the coppery flavor of fear, my mind cleared in an instant.
I’d touched him.
Without precaution.
Without ritual.
Without safeguards in place.
And the biggest issue of all: the fucker had magic of his own.
I was so screwed. So freaking screwed.
Damn it! I’d known this was going to be a big, fat failure. From the changed duration of the ritual, to him not playing by the rules. Hell, he hadn’t even known what was going to happen. How the fuck did Mother and Father think this was going to be okay?
They might have broken their golden goose. A harsh bark of laughter sounded in my brain at the very idea. That was something I knew they would never allow to happen.
I pulled at the weight suffusing my body. Pushing and shoving, using everything I could think of to get my leaden body to move, shift, twitch. Anything!