“I’m taking you to Maya,” Touray said to his brother as he keyed the engine over.
“We need a dreamer for Josh,” Price said. “The sooner the better. He’s in worse shape than I am.”
“He can wait. I want you looked after.”
“Go to Cass first. You can travel to fetch Maya.”
“Can I? My magic doesn’t seem to be working at the moment.”
Touray glanced meaningfully over his shoulder at me. I shivered at the greed and speculation in the look. Like he was shopping and had just found a Picasso in a thrift store. Not that he’d be caught dead in a thrift store, but you get the point.
Sometime in the fight I’d swallowed the quarter. It was fast reaching its limits. I shrugged at Touray because I had no idea when it would run out and when he’d get his powers back. They could sort out what they wanted to do. I was just along for the ride at this point.
I leaned my head back against the headrest and closed my eyes. Royal mistake. I instantly became all too aware of my injuries. My entire body throbbed like Yosemite Sam’s thumb after Bugs Bunny whacks it with a hammer. Fifty times the size it ought to be and pulsing like a puffer fish on crack.
Touray made a frustrated sound. “Fine. We’ll go to Cass. Where is she?”
“Midtown.”
“Maya’s closer. I’ll travel for Cass as soon as I can.”
I felt his eyes on me again.
“She won’t like that,” Price warned.
His voice was a little louder. He’d turned his head to look at me, too. My fingers twitched, and I clenched them together.
“Too damned bad,” Touray said. “I’m not wasting time driving in this storm if I don’t have to.”
They started talking about the attack on the building and how the FBI had come to work with Morrell and the others. Pretty quick I drifted off to sleep. No dreams, thank goodness. Apparently my mind needed to rest as much as my body.
I woke up awhile later. It could have been all of five minutes for all I knew. We were still driving—if you could call it that. We inched along. Snow whirled around us. The headlights showed nothing but a wall of white. I wondered how Touray was even staying on the road. Maybe he’d drive over the edge of the caldera and solve all my problems in one quick plunge.
“Finally,” Touray muttered. He started to glow around the edges of his body, and the rest of him thinned so I could see through him. He began to speed up, following some sort of path his magic opened up to him.
The quarter null had sputtered out. That must’ve been what woke me. I looked at Josh. His head hung like he was asleep, but I could see the gleam of his eyes, and his lips moved.
I closed my eyes again, but sleep wouldn’t come again. I’m not sure how long we drove before Touray pulled up and stopped. I looked out the window, but all I saw was snow and darkness. Touray shut off the engine and the lights.
He opened the door and stepped out. The overhead lights blinked on and Josh’s head jerked up. His hands were sausages. I wondered if any of the bones in his hand were still whole.
Touray went around to open Price’s door and help him out. Cold air and snow gusted inside. A chill splashed over me. I didn’t have a coat. Neither did Josh. Touray at least had on long sleeves.
I fumbled open my door and stepped into snow up to my knees. Cold instantly soaked into my feet. The cold felt heavenly on my fiery feet. Getting around the back of the SUV took a few minutes. I was almost too tired to make it. Freezing to death was starting to feel like a pleasant option.
By the time I got to the other side, Touray and Price stood outside the car. Price had his arm over his brother’s shoulder, and Touray held him tight around his waist.
“Let’s get you inside,” Touray said, pulling his brother forward and past me.
I wouldn’t lose them. I had their trace to follow. All the same, I wasn’t sure I could manage Josh on my own.
“We’ll wait for them,” Price said.
“She can follow our trace,” his brother argued. “Let’s get Maya looking at you.”
“I can wait,” Price said stubbornly.
I unbuckled Josh. He hadn’t moved since we stopped. His head still dangled down as he spoke silently to himself.
“Come on, Josh. We’re here.” I pushed the seat belt out of the way and took his arm to pull him out.
He made a snarling sound and smashed me in the mouth. My lip split, and I tasted blood. I staggered backward, and he leaped on top of me. I landed on my back in deep snow and couldn’t move. His knees drove into the pit of my stomach. He punched the side of my head. Pain fractured my skull and snow clogged my eyes and mouth as I twisted to the side, unable to breathe. I tried to push him off, but my arms were buried in the snow.
Another punch, this time on the other side of my mouth. I pushed myself downward, hoping to burrow away. Abruptly his weight was flung away.
“Riley? Riley! Are you all right?”
Price grabbed my shoulders and sat me up. I made a whining sound and pressed my forehead against my knees, trying to breathe away the pain. It didn’t work. I took stock of myself. My head whirled, and my face hurt. My ears rang. I couldn’t hardly hear anything. I touched my tongue to the cuts in my mouth where my teeth had sliced. I was crying. I couldn’t stop. Josh did this to me. Josh. I knew it wasn’t his fault. I knew it, but the worst of my hurts was the sense of betrayal. Like he should somehow have known me; like I should have been the exception somehow because I’d come for him when no one else had.
What if he’d attacked Taylor?
I wanted to curl up and stay on the ground forever. I wanted to go back home and lock the doors and never come out again. I wanted none of this to ever have happened.
“Riley? Talk to me, baby. Are you okay?”
Price smoothed my hair, and I flinched away. It hurt to be touched.
He swore. “I’m going to kill the mother-fucking bastard.”
“Not his fault,” I muttered, and the words came out slurred. My lips were too swollen to work properly. “Your fault. You and your brother. All of you Tyet people.”
I could feel his recoil. But it was true.
He didn’t get a chance to reply. His brother joined us. “Come on. Let’s get inside. Maya will take care of her.”
He and Price lifted me to my feet. My knees instantly buckled.
Touray swung me up in his arms. “I’ll come back for Josh,” he told Price.
I shuddered. Touray was built like a Mack truck. I was pretty sure he’d knocked Josh cold. Irrational though it was, that pissed me off. I know Josh had been out of control and attacking me, but Josh’s issues were Touray’s fault as much as or more than the fault of Savannah Morrell and her friends. Josh had been through hell. Touray could obviously have called in Cass anytime he’d wanted. He didn’t. He let Josh suffer. Then Touray clocked Josh and dumped him in the snow. I started to struggle and Touray’s arms clamped tight.
“What the hell are you doing?”
“I can walk,” I said. Lisped, really. “I don’t need your help.”
“Yes, you do, so shut up, stay still, and deal with it.”
“Or you’ll punch me, too?”
“Don’t tempt me.”
“Gregg,” Price growled warningly behind us.
“She’s a pain in the ass, Clay.”
“I know,” Price agreed.
Asshole. When had that become more endearment than insult?
I closed my eyes because the snow was getting in my eyes. It fell thickly over me, soaking me to the skin. I didn’t have a coat. Cold sank inside me. If I hadn’t been so exhausted and hurt, I’d have complained. As it was, I just wanted to sleep and forget.
Things got fuzzy for a while. I stopped paying much attention. I was
safe enough for the moment, and there wasn’t much that Touray and Price were going to let me do, so I might as well just roll with it. At some point we went inside and warmth surrounded me. I was set down on something soft with a pillow, and I snuggled into it as someone put a blanket over me. I heard a woman’s voice and Price and Touray both talking. Arguing, actually, but I didn’t pay any attention to what they were saying. I was happy to be ignored.
I woke up quick when someone pulled my boots off. I let out a scream and tried to squirm away.
“Sonovabitch!” Price swore. Then, “I’m going to kill Gregg.”
I lay panting with pain as I stared up at a green ceiling. “Why?” I asked.
He loomed into view, his expression twisted with fury. The lump and bruise on his head were gone. “Why didn’t you say something about your feet?”
“What was there to say? It’s not like anybody could help me.”
“You shouldn’t have been walking on them!”
“Did I have a choice?” The last came out with a yelp as someone tugged the other boot off.
“Impressive,” a woman said, somewhere in the vicinity of my throbbing feet. Her voice was rich and husky, with a Spanish accent. “She couldn’t have hurt herself worse if she’d been trying. These are going to take me awhile to mend. Let me have a look at the rest of her, though, and see if anything’s more pressing.”
A round, dark-haired woman in a blue and yellow Hawaiian print dress came around to nudge Price out of the way. She bent over me, running her fingertips lightly over my forehead.
“Ow,” I said, trying to twist away.
“Don’t be a baby,” she said, her eyes clouding white.
Her magic tickled as it spread over my skin, then began to feel like worms squirming through my flesh. I tried batting her away, but Price grabbed my hands.
“Idiot,” he said, and I made the mistake of looking at him.
All those feeling I’d been working so hard to dam up and ignore came crashing back down. My heart thudded rapid fire against my ribs.
“You’re okay?” I whispered, needing to hear him confirm what I saw.
“I’m fine. But you—” His mouth twisted, and his throat jerked as he swallowed. “This shouldn’t have happened to you. None of it.” He let go of one of my hands and started to touch my face, but pulled back. “I’m afraid I’ll hurt you.”
“Too bad you don’t have some of those heal-alls that fixed me before.”
“He has me, and I’m much better,” came the woman’s tart voice—Maya, I supposed. The wormy feeling subsided, thankfully.
I turned to look at her. She was probably in her midforties or early fifties. Her eyes were still white.
“My name is Maya. I’m a medical tinker. You’ve got loose teeth, a fractured jaw and cheekbone, dozens of bruises, cuts from head to toe, and feet that look like they’ve been through a meat grinder. You lost a fair bit of blood from all the cuts, and I suppose from that barely healed bullet wound I felt, so you may be dizzy. There’s some infection trying to set in, but nothing too hard to fix. Once I work on you, you’ll need to eat and drink and rest. You’ll want to stay off your feet as much as possible for a week at least.”
“Right,” I said, like it was anywhere near a possibility.
“She’ll do it,” Price said with an arrogant smile at me. “I guarantee it.”
I raised my eyebrow at him, despite the fact that it hurt like hell. “How do you intend to do that?”
“With duct tape and rope, if I have to. Though I can think of better ways to keep you in bed.”
The look he gave me was scorching. My insides melted. My hand tightened on his, and my mind went blank.
“All right, then. This is going to be uncomfortable. Try not to move. I’m going to start at the top and move my way down. Your feet will be hardest. Have you had tinkering before?”
“A couple times. Had a broken arm when I was little. My tonsils when I was ten, and then I got stabbed a few years back.”
“Good, then you know what to expect. I’ll deaden what I can, but it’s still not going to be easy. Hold still, now.”
She pulled up a chair beside me and settled her ample body into it. She smelled of curry and cinnamon. She took my hand between hers and heat wrapped it like a glove. Needles sank into my flesh. Ow. Then the heat burned away the pain. More of that wormy feeling wriggled up my arm and neck into my head. I took a long breath and let it out slowly. Sweat broke out on my forehead. Next would come the feeling of things nibbling and stitching inside me. There would be sharp pressure, stretching, and squeezing. The worst of it was the feeling of someone working inside of me. It was like being the star of my own personal horror film.
Price still had ahold of my other hand. He sat down on the edge of the bed. “You were stabbed. Who did it?” In an instant, he’d turned back into the Tyet enforcer—cold, ruthless, and brutal. If the guy who’d attacked me was here, he’d be dead on the floor. “How bad did he hurt you?
“Bad enough,” I said, remembering. I’d been on a cheating spouse trace. I was reporting to the wife when the husband came home. She was supposed to talk to a lawyer and get the divorce going before she told him anything. Instead, she flipped out at him. Things got out of hand pretty quick, and he’d found himself a butcher knife. The wife locked herself in their bedroom, and he opted to take his fury out on me. I’d started for my car, and he’d stuck a knife in me. He’d been going for my heart, but he hit a rib and got a lung and an artery instead. I nearly died all the same. Luckily, Patti had come with me, and she got me to a tinker in time.
“What happened?”
“I got between an angry wife and a cheating husband.” I shifted as a chewing sensation erupted under my scalp and traveled over my skull and into my eyes.
“Easy, now, sweetling,” Maya said. “Stay still. This is a bit like surgery, but with magic. Moving about makes things tricky.”
I forced myself to remain motionless, even though the sensation was enough to make me want to throw up. Again. I’d been doing that a lot lately. So attractive in a woman. Especially with the vomit breath. Speaking of which, I really could have used a toothbrush.
“What did the police do?” Price asked, still fixed on the subject.
“I didn’t report it. Guy probably had the cops in his pocket, anyhow. He’s got money and influence.”
“Tell me who he is.”
“Not a chance,” I said, scrunching my face as the activity beneath my skin grew more intense. I could actually hear the gritting sound of bone mending.
“Why not?”
“Not your problem.”
“He hurt you. That makes it my problem,” Price said, and there was an edge of violence in his voice that raised the hairs on the back of my neck.
“It was a long time ago. I can take care of myself.”
“I don’t care.”
Price stunned me then by bending and pressing a hard kiss against the palm of my hand. “No one touches you. No one hurts you, and gets away with it,” he said roughly.
I sighed. “Next you’ll be asking about the boy in kindergarten who pulled my hair and the girl in eighth grade who gave me a black eye.”
That made him chuckle.
“Where’s Josh?”
Price’s expression went flat. I’d blamed him for Josh attacking me. I couldn’t take it back. The truth sucks sometimes.
“I tied Josh up. Gregg went for Cass. I’m surprised he’s not back.”
“Stop talking now,” Maya ordered. “I can’t work on your lower face if you’re moving.”
I didn’t have much to say at the moment, so shutting up wasn’t all that hard. I looked up at the ceiling, not wanting to meet the hurt or resentment or whatever else might be in Price’s eyes at the m
oment. Especially not that whatever else. I was ready to curl up in his lap like a cat and never leave. Neither did I want to think about what was going to happen next, but I couldn’t seem to stop myself.
What was I going to do? Touray would want me to work for him, whether I wanted to or not. Savannah Morrell and Anderson Briandi would be looking for me, too, though whether they would want to use me or just take me out of the picture so Touray couldn’t use me was the question. Then there was Price. What exactly did he want? More importantly, what did I want?
My instant kneejerk answer was that I wanted everything to go back to the way it was a week ago, before Price or his brother or the Tyet knew I existed, before Josh had been driven insane, before I’d been stupid enough to fall in love.
But resetting the clock wasn’t possible. And in truth, I didn’t want to go back. I was tired of hiding me, and what I could do. I was tired of scuttling around in the shadows like a cockroach. Until this moment, I hadn’t realized how much I resented the secrecy.
All that brought me back to the question, what was I going to do? One thing was certain: I wasn’t going to become anybody’s puppet, and I wasn’t going to let myself get killed. I also wasn’t going to let anyone have Josh again. I sighed and closed my eyes. That was a whole lot of what I wasn’t going to do, but it still begged the question—what exactly was I going to do? And just how did Price fit in?
Chapter 24
CASS AND TOURAY returned and disappeared in a room with Josh, while Maya finished tinkering away my wounds. When she was done and had shooed me to the dining room to eat, I still hadn’t answered those questions. A doorway led into the kitchen. Maya had been bringing out all kinds of food. Enough to feed an army. I wondered where it all came from. Then I hoped she had enough.
“You’re doing it again,” Price said.
Trace of Magic: 1 (The Diamond City Magic Novels) Page 30