Demonhome

by Michael G. Manning

  The pain between his eyes grew intense as he reconnected the veins and sealed the skin, but he refused to stop until he had fixed the slash on her forearm as well as the minor cut to her neck. He examined her eyes, but they seemed to be all right, aside from the blood crusted around them. Whatever had happened to them was too small for him to try to figure out in his current condition. He was liable to do more harm than good.

  She needed water more than anything else. Her body has to replace the lost blood volume.

  First, he straightened her leg and moved her arms into a more comfortable position. With a reminder from the twinges in his own back, he also checked beneath her and removed a few small rocks. Then he opened the pack and began searching. He wasn’t sure the river water was potable, so he hoped there might be a water bottle inside.

  “What the hell?” he swore, as he began dragging out the collection of miscellaneous items he found inside. One package was so large he could barely get it through the opening. Beyond that he found pots and pans, a few bowls, boxes, clothes—an endless plethora of junk. “I know all this wasn’t in there earlier,” he muttered. “What happened while I was out?” he asked the unconscious woman. “It’s like you went to a market and bought everything in sight.”

  Eventually, he discovered four large plastic jugs filled with water, along with a box-like collection of many clear bottles similarly containing the vital fluid. He removed one of the small bottles and opened the top. Thankfully, over the past couple of weeks he had become somewhat familiar with the strange packaging of the new world he was in, otherwise it might have taken him longer.

  Matthew carefully lifted her head and eased his other arm behind her shoulders so he could lift her into a reclining position. Bracing her upright with his body, he spoke into her ear, “Karen, can you hear me? I need you to wake up for a minute.”

  She groaned.

  He took that as a good sign. “You have to drink for me.”

  Her face scrunched up. “Can’t see.”

  “Your eyes are closed,” he told her. “Don’t bother trying to open them right now. You need to drink.” He pressed the bottle against her lips.

  Karen managed a small sip before turning her head to the side. “Why’m I in a freezer?”

  “It isn’t a freezer. We’re in a desert—I think. It’s night and the temperature’s dropping, plus you’ve lost some blood. Here, drink some more.”

  She took two more sips and then a large mouthful before choking.

  “Go slowly,” he warned.

  “Grand Canyon,” she muttered.

  “Huh?”

  “Canyon,” she repeated. “Came on a trip, with Dad. God, I’m thirsty.”

  He held the bottle up so she could drink again. He didn’t know where the Grand Canyon was, but he could worry about that later.

  After another swallow, she asked, “Is the water staying in? I’m still thirsty.”

  He frowned, “Yeah.”

  “It’s probably running out the hole in my neck,” she muttered. “From when they blew me up.”

  “You’re confused,” he said soothingly. “You had a cut, but it’s better now. The water is going where it should.”

  “Everybody wants me dead,” she mumbled. “I think it’s working.”

  “They’ll be disappointed when they find out it didn’t,” he chuckled.

  “Me too,” she sighed.

  He didn’t know what to say to that.

  “Dad, did I tell you? I met a wizard. A real one.”

  She’s definitely delirious, he observed mentally. “A wizard, huh?”

  “Yeah,” she whispered. “I probably shouldn’t tell you, since you’re dead. You probably see wizards all the time.”

  “Not as many as you might think,” he answered dryly.

  “He’s cute,” she added, “and nice sometimes, but he’s an asshole too.”

  Matt struggled to keep from laughing. Cute huh?

  “I probably shouldn’t have slept with him, ‘cuz where he’s from that means you’re a slut. He didn’t really want to, but I talked him into it. He doesn’t know how much I actually like him.

  “I’m a wizard too. A peasant wizard, pizzard for short,” she giggled slightly.

  He stared down at her, his throat constricting, “I’m sure he doesn’t think of you that way.”

  “Dad?”

  Matt blinked to clear his vision, “Yeah?”

  “Will you tell Aunt Roberta I’m sorry?”

  “No need for that,” he told her, his voice thick. “She understands.”

  “They killed Annie.”

  “She’s fine, she’s here too,” he managed.

  “Okay,” said Karen, and then her heart stopped. A faint sigh escaped her lips as her head sagged to the side.

  Chapter 24

  A feeling of cold shock passed over Matthew as the woman in his arms died. “No!” he yelled, denying the reality in front of him.

  Frantically he began running through everything his father had ever taught him about healing, but none of it had covered a situation like this. He knew how to close wounds, fuse bones, and repair blood vessels, but there had been no mention of what to do for a stopped heart.

  But that didn’t mean he was ready to give up.

  Hastily he eased her back down to the ground. For a moment, he started delving into what knowledge the She’Har had possessed, but it was so foreign and esoteric he immediately abandoned the attempt. There might be something there, but he would never find it in time, and most of it relied on the ability to spellweave. If he did discover something, he wouldn’t be able to adapt it in time.

  He placed his hand over her chest and reached within her, until his power had wound itself around her heart, and then gently he squeezed. He repeated the process, forcing her heart to beat. Her eyelids fluttered and then her breathing resumed, but as soon as he started to withdraw, her heart went still. It was working, but her heart wasn’t beating on its own.

  How long can I keep her alive like this? he wondered.

  Minutes passed, and Matthew felt a wind pass through the canyon. Glancing upward he saw the stars shining brightly above, as cold and distant as any possibility of help was. He was completely and utterly alone.

  It wasn’t the sort of solitude he cherished when he was at home, working on one of his projects. It was the desolate isolation a child could feel lost in a crowd, hopelessly searching strangers’ faces for the sight of a parent.

  Gritting his teeth, he pushed the feeling away and kept going. He couldn’t think of anything else to do.

  Maybe there’s something in the pack, he thought suddenly.

  Searching it required him to get up and move away slightly, which made concentrating on her heart a difficult task. “You’re an Illeniel, dammit,” he told himself. “You were juggling fruit with your power before you ever learned to dance. You can do this.”

  He focused intently on her heart as he crawled over to the backpack. Opening it, he began dumping everything it contained onto the ground, heedless of the chaos and clutter. Most of it was completely useless to him, but then he spotted a gray box with a red cross across the lid.

  Matthew fumbled with the latch for a few seconds and almost lost track of Karen’s heart, but he managed it after a minute. Inside was a collection of plastic and paper-wrapped goods, bandages, gauze, scissors, ointment, and other less recognizable items. None of it would do her any good.

  He fought down a wave of despair and kept going. Amongst the various items of camping gear, he spotted a duffel that held the clothes and toiletries she had used while hiking. He upended it on the ground and stared at the useless contents. What am I doing? he thought. I know none of this junk is going to help. I’m just acting the fool.

  Then he noticed a carved wooden box. It held a set of quartz cubes etched with runes. He knew, since he had made it himself. The cubes were designed to create a stasis field, a smaller version of what his father had once done to an entire c
ity. Hope sprang anew in his chest.

  Until reality set in. Using the enchanted stasis cubes would take several minutes and would require all his concentration. He couldn’t use them without letting Karen’s heart stop. He’d just be preserving a corpse if he attempted it.

  Frustration almost made him lose his focus on Karen’s heart. “I’m so close!” he growled to himself. A blinking light caught his attention. A small black square was the source, one of the items that had fallen out of her toiletry bag. Matt bent down and picked it up.

  He had seen enough of the world’s technology to recognize it as an electronic device of some kind. The shiny glass side was probably a screen. Next to the flashing green light was a raised rectangle that might be a button. He had a moment’s hesitation; Karen had told him that any of her electronic devices might be tracked by the military. But then again, if this thing already had power, they might already be tracking it.

  The screen lit up as soon as he pressed the button, a message in English displayed there. He couldn’t read it, but the red icon that appeared beneath it seemed to indicate he had done something wrong. He pressed the button again but still had no luck.

  Just as he was about to give up the screen cleared and a face appeared; Gary, Karen’s virtual father. “Who is this?”

  Startled, Matt lost his link to Karen’s heart. Scrambling, he returned to her side and gently reestablished it. He kept the device with him and laid it on the ground in front of him. “This is Matthew Illeniel. We met before. Don’t you recognize me?”

  “I can’t see you,” said the AGI, “the PM’s camera isn’t activated. Hang on.” After a few seconds, he spoke again, “Now I have a lovely view of nothing. The view is utterly black.” A brilliant white light began shining from the upper corner of the device. “Still nothing. Are you holding the PM in front of you?”

  In point of fact, he wasn’t. Matthew picked it up with one hand and looked directly into the screen.

  “Ah, there you are!” said Gary.

  “Why couldn’t you see me before?” asked Matthew.

  “The camera on these things only points in one direction,” Gary informed him. “It isn’t like an eyeball that can swivel or a head that can turn. You take your basic physiology for granted. Devices like this are far more limited.”

  “We’re in trouble,” announced Matthew, anxious to get to the point.

  “You’re lucky I was monitoring her spare PM,” said Gary. “And that I was able to disable its security features. It’s not supposed to be accessible to anyone other than her. I almost didn’t activate it, thinking you might be a hostile actor.”

  “She’s dying,” said Matthew, ignoring the AGI’s exposition.

  Gary’s face on the display grew deadly serious, “What’s happened? Never mind. What’s wrong with her?”

  “She was wounded while I was unconscious. We’re in an isolated position, somewhere, but she lost a lot of blood before I woke. She passed out, and now her heart has stopped beating on its own.”

  “How long?”

  “Ten minutes, maybe.”

  “Then it’s too late,” said Gary sadly.

  Matthew shook his head, “No, I’m making it beat. She’s still alive, but I can’t keep this up forever.”

  Hope blossomed on the face in the display. “You can do that? Is she still bleeding?”

  “The bleeding stopped on its own, before I woke up. I closed the wound and she woke up, but her heart was beating rapidly and weakly. After she passed out, it stopped. Now I’m stuck keeping her alive, and I don’t know what to do. I’ve searched through all the gear we have. There was a medical kit of some sort, but bandages aren’t going to do any good at this point,” explained Matthew.

  “Show her to me,” said Gary.

  Matt held the rectangle up, pointing the screen toward Karen’s body.

  “Get her feet up,” said the AGI. “Her head and torso need to be the lowest part of her body. Elevate the legs, and it will help keep more of her blood where it needs to be.”

  Matthew dragged one of the larger bags over with his aythar and put it beneath her knees. “Is this going to make her heart start working again?” he questioned.

  “No,” snapped Gary. “But it will make what you’re doing more effective. Was she sitting up when her heart stopped?”

  Matthew nodded. “I was holding her.”

  “Killing her is more like it,” observed Gary in a harsh tone. “That made it harder for her heart to keep up and lowered her blood pressure.”

  “I didn’t know that,” said Matthew defensively. “I was just trying to get some water into her. I knew if she had lost a lot of blood she would need fluids.”

  “We’re way past that,” Gary replied. “She’s in hypovolemic shock. Worse, actually, since her heart is no longer pumping on its own. If you don’t get her to a hospital she’ll be dead soon. She needs intravenous fluids, or even a blood transfusion. How long can you keep doing whatever you’re doing to her heart?”

  Matthew’s aythar reserve was as full as it could possibly be, thanks to Desacus, but his head was throbbing with pain. “I have feedback sickness,” he responded. “If I keep using my power it will get worse. I might even pass out. I don’t know how long I can keep going.”

  Gary answered immediately. “Then she’s dead. The GPS on this unit shows you’re in northern Arizona—the Grand Canyon. There are no organics living within a hundred miles of there and the nearest medical facility is hours away, even if I commandeer someone’s pert to fly you there.”

  “I can keep her alive indefinitely, if I can just get her heart to beat on its own,” said Matthew, exasperation filling his voice.

  “I’m not sure how your magic works,” said Gary doubtfully, “but without a defibrillator, there’s no way to restart her heart rhythm.”

  “What’s a defibrillator?” asked Matt.

  “A device that delivers an electric shock,” explained the AGI, flashing several pictures on the screen. “The current passes through the heart tissue and stimulates it to begin beating again.”

  “Current?”

  “You don’t even understand the basics of electricity,” said Gary. “There’s no point in trying to explain it now.”

  Gary’s tone annoyed him. “I know enough to fry that little box you’re in,” he snapped. Lifting it, he turned it to face away and with his other hand he sent a small stroke of lighting to strike the ground in the direction of the river. Unfortunately, he also lost his connection to Karen’s heart, and he was forced to pause and reestablish his link again.

  “Can you do something less dramatic?” asked the AGI. “Preferably something that won’t crisp and burn flesh.”

  Matthew was staring down at Karen, but he nodded. “I used to shock my sister now and then.”

  “And she was okay with that?”

  “No, one time she reacted by lifting me up and tossing me all the way over the house. She has a tendency to overreact,” he replied with a faint chuckle.

  “It’s a wonder either of you survived to adulthood,” noted Gary.

  “I learned how to use my power to break a fall pretty early on,” said Matthew, “and my parents were pretty mad about that particular occasion. She had to wash dishes for a week by herself.”

  Gary looked thoughtful. “Do you think you could deliver a small shock like that to her heart?”

  “I could,” said Matthew, “but it might be too small. I’ve had some practice with shocks at the small and big end of the spectrum. I don’t know exactly how much of a charge I should use. I might kill her.”

  “Start small,” advised Gary. “As though you were playing a prank on your sister. If that’s not enough, you can work your way up. Can you make an arc between your hands?”

  “Yeah,” said Matthew. “I used to scare Conall that way.”

  “I think I’ve heard enough about your violent familial tactics,” said the AGI. “You’ll want something weaker than that. A spark powerf
ul enough to pass through the air between your hands would burn the flesh, assuming you were talking about a foot or more of distance. You’re going to put your left hand on her chest, beneath the middle of her clavicle, above her right breast and a little bit toward the center. You’ll put your right hand just beneath her left breast.”

  “What about her shirt?”

  “Open it up. You’ll want skin to skin contact to minimize resistance,” answered Gary.

  He did as he was instructed, feeling a little odd about being asked to undress Karen by her virtual father. Once his hands were in place, he announced, “I’m ready.”

  “Try the smallest charge you can manage.”

  Fighting down his fear, Matthew release his grasp on Karen’s heart, letting it go still. In the first few seconds he realized he wasn’t sure how to do what he wanted. When his father had first taught him to create lightning, it had involved visualizing the air itself, coaxing the aythar to rip parts of the atoms it consisted of apart. Doing the same thing to flesh seemed foolish, so he withdrew his hands from her skin to allow a little air between them.

  His first attempted created small sparks that caused her skin to twitch but did little else. Dammit!

  “Have you tried yet?” asked the AGI.

  Matt used more power the second time, ignoring the voice of the computer. More sparks, and this time he saw couple of small burns appear on her skin. He described what had happened to Gary, struggling to keep the panic from his voice.

  “You have to make skin contact,” said the AGI. “You aren’t trying to make the same sort of discharge you did before. You want the current to pass between your hands, so that it crosses her heart muscle—like a spark in the air, except it will flow through the tissue instead. It should take less energy to create, since flesh is a better conductor than air.”

  Matthew put his hands on her skin and visualized the atoms coming apart, the charge flowing from one hand to the other and then he put his will into it. Karen’s body spasmed beneath him and smoke rose from her skin beneath his right hand. Lifting it, he saw a small place where the skin had been scorched. He clenched his eyes shut, struggling to contain tears. “I’m so sorry, Karen.”