“I’m coming too,” Kayla said. “I can help.”
There was no time to argue. Eric headed for the door. Where was Greystone? Why hadn’t he warned them that Jimmie had been hurt?
The three of them reached the front steps just as Ria was pulling up in the Rolls.
“What’s wrong?” she demanded, seeing their faces. The elvensteed was waiting at the curb, quivering with urgency.
“Jimmie’s hurt. We have to get to Gotham General as fast as we can,” Eric told her. Lady Day was already sitting at the curb.
“We’ll take the car,” Ria said. “It’ll be as fast as an elvensteed at this time of night.”
“You go with Kayla. Hosea and I will meet you there,” Eric said. The two men turned toward the bike. There was no time to bother with helmets, and Lady Day would keep them from harm if she had to jump through a Gate to do it. Hosea climbed on behind him without a word.
“Go fast,” Eric whispered to his ’steed.
The world vanished in a gray blur of absolute speed. Eric felt Hosea clutch at him, but almost before he’d adjusted to the sensation of flying, the trip was over. Lady Day was standing at the front door of Gotham General, kickstand down.
“Hey! You can’t park there!” someone said as Eric was climbing off. :Go home:, he Sent to the ’steed. :Wait there.: He turned to help Hosea off, steadying the big man as he staggered, ignoring the speaker.
“Hey . . . !” the voice trailed off weakly as the elvensteed drove off, eliminating the problem.
Eric turned to face the speaker—it was a man in surgical scrubs, obviously out for a quick smoke. “How do I get to the—”
:Burn Trauma Unit: Greystone’s voice came in his head. :Paul will take you. Brace yourself, laddybuck. It’s bad.:
Paul Kern was coming down the steps. He’d obviously been waiting for them. His face was haggard with grief.
“Eric—Hosea. Come with me. Hurry. I don’t think there’s much time.”
“But what happened?” Eric asked, as soon as they were in the elevator. Gotham General covered several city blocks; getting where they were going couldn’t be done quickly.
“Someone . . . burned Jimmie,” Paul said starkly. “Maybe gasoline. The officers who brought her in didn’t know. Thank God she listed Toni as next of kin—they aren’t letting anyone else in to see her, and we didn’t want to push without more information.”
“You said she’s asking for Hosea,” Eric said.
“When she’s conscious,” Paul said tightly.
“Burn Trauma” . . . he said something burned her.
Eric looked at Hosea. The tall man’s face was grim.
And she asked for Hosea.
José was waiting at the elevator. An expression of relief crossed his features when he saw them. “Hosea! Hurry!” he turned back to the floor. “She’s this way.”
“Won’t they stop us?” Hosea said, following the others. The Burn Trauma floor was quiet, without the usual noise and bustle of a big city hospital. There were signs on the walls reminding nursing staff to follow sterile procedure and restricting visitors, and several of the doors had signs on them prohibiting entry without Clean Room protocols.
“They won’t know we’re here,” Paul said. “Greystone and I are making sure of that.”
And in fact no one did stop them. There was a nurse in the room as they entered, but she didn’t even look up.
There were bags of saline and whole blood—and a morphine drip—hung around the head of the bed like a flock of toy balloons. A sheet concealed the body in the bed—Jimmie—tented up on a framework to keep any part of it from touching her. All Eric could see was her head, swathed in dressings, even the eyes bandaged. It was warm in the room—burn victims lost the ability to regulate their own body temperature, and a chill could be fatal.
The room was filled with the smell of cooked meat, which puzzled him. Finally Eric realized that what he was smelling was Jimmie, and had to fight hard to keep from gagging. He heard a strangled gasp from Hosea as his companion realized this as well.
Toni looked up. She was sitting on a chair beside the bed, bent toward Jimmie. “She was asking for you, before,” she said to Hosea. “We don’t know why.” She got to her feet and came over to the others. “Would you sit with her awhile, Hosea? She might wake up.”
Hosea nodded. His face was very white. But his steps were steady as he crossed to the bed and took Toni’s place in the chair.
Eric had known it was bad before, when Toni called, but at the back of his mind there’d been the certainty that Jimmie would be getting better. Now, looking at Toni’s face and the still figure in the floatation bed, he no longer thought so.
Jimmie Youngblood was dying. His friend was dying. And there was nothing he could do about it.
Bardic magic could work wonders. It could summon the power to allow creatures of magic—such as the Sidhe—to heal themselves. It could hasten the healing process for something that was going to heal anyway. But Jimmie wasn’t going to heal. If he listened, Eric could hear the song of her life slowly slipping out of key, growing slower and more distorted by the minute, with nothing he could do to draw it back in tune. And if he could hear it, the Guardians certainly could, too.
But Kayla’s a Healer! She can fix it! he thought desperately.
As if he’d summoned her with his thoughts, Eric heard a disturbance in the hall, and then felt a cold wash of Power soothing it ruthlessly away.
Ria.
The door opened, and Kayla walked in alone. Her black lace and glitter was even more jarringly out of place in the harsh dull light of the hospital room than it had been in his apartment.
“She’s a Healer,” Eric said, as the others turned toward this new intruder.
“Can you help her?” Toni asked Kayla. Eric heard the naked pleading in her voice, and knew what it cost Toni Hernandez to beg.
“I can try,” Kayla said. Her face was pale and still beneath the mask of makeup, and the neon-bright streaks in her hair looked flat and unreal.
She walked over to the bed—slowly, as if moving through deep water. No matter how good her shields were, a hospital was no place for an Empath. She hesitated at the side of the bed, looking from Hosea to Toni.
“I have to touch her.”
“I reckon you’d best do what you can.” It was Hosea who answered. “You can’t hurt her any worse than she’s been hurt.”
“What’s her name? Jimmie?” If Kayla had other questions, she didn’t ask them. Ultimately, they weren’t important.
Jimmie. Dumb name for a girl. Go on, stupid. You can do it. Kayla spoke loudly in her own head to cover her own fear and Jimmie’s pain. She could feel it even without touching her, even through the morphine, agony radiating like waves of heat from the summer streets. Damage, slow and deep. Trauma that the body couldn’t handle. Pain, whether emotional or physical, was a cry for help—always. Elizabet had taught her that.
Her hand was shaking in anticipation of pain to come. Kayla forced herself to reach out—slowly, gently, until her fingertips barely touched the bandages on Jimmie’s forehead. Contact! Blue light crackled over her hand, like a spark jumping a gap. Like heat—lightning—fire.
Fire!
It filled Jimmie’s body-memory: fire, its first chill wash, then pain, building on itself, melting Kevlar, searing her body as the metal she wore turned molten and sank into burning flesh, burning, burning . . .
Everywhere Kayla looked there was ruin—fluids seeping into tissues, running over bared muscle where the skin was cooked away, veins and arteries ripped open by boiling blood, tendons heated and shriveled, nerves blackened and twisted, or screaming endlessly for help that never came. Every time she fixed something, something somewhere else broke. There was no way she could be everywhere at once, no way she could give this ruined body what it needed, no matter how much of herself she spent. She felt herself sinking, dissolving into the fire, but somehow she was cold, so cold . . .
&nb
sp; Suddenly the link dissolved. Kayla felt someone grab her, wrenching her away. She fought for a few seconds—desperate to help, to heal—
Hosea slapped her.
Not hard, but it made her open her eyes and draw a deep breath, safe behind her shields once more. She stared up at him, for a moment too stunned to realize what had just happened. Tears welled up in her eyes and spilled down her face, though she had no sense that she was crying, and she was shuddering with cold. Worse than any of that was the knowledge that she’d failed. There was nothing she could do to heal Jimmie—she could spend her entire life-force, drain herself to death, and she could not save Jimmie Youngblood. She stood in Hosea’s arms, panting as if she’d run for miles.
“Kayla . . . ?” Eric asked.
She shook her head, closing her eyes. “It will take weeks,” she mumbled, barely aware of what she was saying. “Weeks of pain. And she’ll die anyway.”
Think, you stupid cow! There’s always something you can do.
To comfort the dying . . .
“Then there’s nothing you can do,” Toni said, grief in her voice.
“No. There’s something I can do.” Kayla pushed herself away from Hosea and took a deep breath. She hesitated, as if to say what she would say next would make it more real than it already was, create a single defined future from a fan of other outcomes.
But there was no other outcome.
“There’s something I can do,” she repeated. “I can make it quick. I can block the pain. I can let her go now, while she’s still Jimmie,” Kayla said.
She was able to look at them now that the worst had been said. Eric looked shocked, still not quite able to believe that Jimmie was hurt. Hosea looked sad but determined. Of the other three, whose names she didn’t even know, the woman looked angry, as if Death were something you could hit. The two men looked stunned, so closed off their auras were impossible for her to read.
“You can kill her, you mean,” the woman said harshly.
“I can give her the choice. Hey, chica, it’s more than you can do for her, isn’t it?” Kayla snapped. She blinked, and felt more tears slide down her cheeks. Ruined my makeup, dammit, she thought distractedly.
The woman lunged for her, but Hosea stepped between them.
“No,” was all he said.
“You said something about a choice, Kayla, is it? I’m Paul Kern, and these are my associates, Toni and José. I only wish we’d met under happier circumstances.”
I wish we’d never met at all, Kayla thought mutinously. She gave Paul points for not offering to shake hands, though. He must have met people like her before.
“And I think Jimmie would like to have the choice you’re offering her. What would you have to do?”
“I need to block what she’s feeling, so that she can wake up. I can’t do something like this without her consent. That’d be murder.” Kayla ran her hands through her hair. “Can any of you tell me anything that will help?” she asked, her voice quivering slightly. “Jimmie . . . she’s not normal, is she?”
Of the three of them, it was Paul who understood the question Kayla asked.
“If she can do anything to aid you, she will; Jimmie is no stranger to magic. She is a formidable magician in her own right, A Guardian, as we are, so perhaps in that sense she is not ‘normal.’ She, like us, is sworn to defend ordinary humanity from magical assaults.”
“Only this wasn’t magical. This was just a stupid, random, thing—done by one of those people we’re supposed to serve and protect! And all her power couldn’t save her from it,” Toni said bitterly. “It isn’t fair!”
Hosea retreated to sit at Jimmie’s side again. Paul put an arm around Toni’s shoulders and Toni leaned her face into his neck. Kayla made a conscious effort to shut them out, block their grief and pain so she could concentrate on Jimmie. For a moment it seemed almost impossible to do, then she felt a calming touch at the very edge of her shields, felt new strength and certainty flow into her. She looked up and met Hosea’s eyes across the bed.
Of course. Stands to reason I’d land in the middle of a bunch of Gifted. Banyon said Hosea was a Bard, but he’s not quite the same thing as Eric. . . .
“What can I do to help?” Eric asked quietly from behind her.
She tried to smile at him, to look more confident than she felt. Kayla hadn’t expected anything like this to happen quite this fast. Just this morning she’d been in Los Angeles, and all of a sudden she was at St. Elsewhere, playing for all the marbles. Elizabet’s gonna freak.
“Just make sure I get back, okay?”
“You got it,” Eric said soberly.
Kayla rubbed her hands over her arms, the lace mitts scratchy against her bare skin. She took a deep breath and turned back to Jimmie. This wasn’t going to get any easier, and she owed it to Jimmie to do it as fast as possible. She focused her energy and her will, and let her fingers drift down to touch Jimmie once more. This time there was no crackle, no spark, just a cold blue glow, almost invisible in the harsh fluorescence that lit the room.
She worked quickly, deftly, with a control and precision she couldn’t even have imagined a few years before. All the body’s nerves led to the spine; Kayla climbed that column slowly, closing off the neural nexuses, keeping their messages from reaching Jimmie’s brain.
It was more than dangerous. Close off the wrong nerves and she would stop Jimmie’s heart, keep her lungs from drawing breath. Close down the neural pathways on a healthy person, and they’d lose all touch with their bodies, becoming capable of doing shattering damage without pain to warn them.
But Jimmie no longer needed warning.
Jimmie? Jimmie Youngblood? Where are you? Kayla Sent urgently.
:Here.:
A power as great as her own but far different swept through Kayla, and suddenly she was somewhere else.
A living room, its walls painted a cool blue. Packing boxes were everywhere, as if someone were moving.
Yeah. Moving out.
She turned around and saw Jimmie. The uniform was a surprise. They’d told her Jimmie was a magician. They hadn’t told her Jimmie was a cop.
“Hi. I’m Kayla.”
Jimmie smiled. “Nice to meet you, but the circumstances suck. Pardon the mess. I wasn’t expecting visitors. You’re not the new tenant, are you?”
It was hard to remember that all of this was an illusion, a metaphor for dying constructed from both their memories, lent its reality by Jimmie’s trained will. Kayla clung to that knowledge—if she believed in the reality of what she saw, she might die along with her hostess.
But Eric won’t let that happen.
“Is Hosea here?” Jimmie asked suddenly. “He’s the one I was expecting.”
“Sort of. He’s in the hospital room with you.”
“Hospital?” Jimmie asked blankly. “Who’s hurt?”
This was common enough; a sort of partial amnesia that made dying a little easier. It was a pity they couldn’t afford to let her go on dreaming.
“You are,” Kayla said bluntly. “Something bad happened to you tonight. You’re dying.”
“Oh, my God.” Jimmie put a hand to her forehead trying to remember, and for a moment the light dimmed to red, and Kayla smelled smoke. Something was burning.
“I’ve got to talk to Hosea!” Jimmie’s voice was frantic. “It’s important. There’s something I have to tell him.”
“It’s okay. You’ll have time for that,” Kayla said soothingly, willing Jimmie to trust her, to believe. “That’s why I’m here. Are you ready to hear the rest?”
Jimmie composed herself with an effort. She wasn’t wearing her uniform any more. Now she was wearing armor, armor the brilliant blue of the fire in the heart of a sapphire. There was a helmet on her head, and a sword belted at her side. She glanced past Kayla to the door, as if there was somewhere she had to go, and soon.
And there was, but it wasn’t a journey Kayla wanted to accompany her on.
“Go on,” Jimmie s
aid steadily.
“You’re going to die. I guess that’s the door you see. I can help you get through it. Without my help, you’ll still die, but it might take a week, maybe more, and you’ll be in agony the whole time, I won’t lie about that. But if you want, I can help you go now. Tonight. I’m a Healer, but that’s all the help I can give you. You’re too badly burned for anything more.”
She watched as Jimmie accepted that, weighing it in her mind. This was beyond creepy, Kayla decided, like talking to a ghost . . . only Jimmie wasn’t dead yet.
“Yes. That would be the best way. But can you wake me up first?” Jimmie asked, her voice crisp and decisive. “I have a few things to say to the living before I go.” Her mouth quirked in an ironic smile, and Kayla felt a pang of grief. This was a woman she would never get the chance to know.
“Yes. But not for long, so if there’s anything I can tell the others for you, you’d better pass it on now.”
Jimmie hesitated. “I don’t remember. I must have reported for shift and gone on patrol. But I don’t remember what happened then.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Kayla said soothingly. Whether it did or not, it would be pointless cruelty to say it did.
:Kayla.:
Eric’s voice, a thin whisper of sound from her outward ears.
“I have to go.”
“Sure,” Jimmie said vaguely. “How did I ever get so much stuff? I’ll never get it all packed in time.”
“You will.” They always do. Kayla closed her eyes—
—and opened them in the hospital room. She didn’t know how long she’d been gone, or what happened while she was gone, but when she opened her eyes again Ria was there, standing close beside Eric, looking furious and worried.
Kayla felt cold and tired, and as if she was going to throw up. She had an absurd impulse to say, I saw Jimmie. Don’t worry about her; she’s fine, and stifled it. She wasn’t finished yet.
“She’s agreed to go. She wants to talk to you first, Hosea. She didn’t say why. I think she thought she had. I’ve got to clean the morphine out of her system to wake her up, and it’d be nice if someone turned off that damned drip.” Her voice came out in an angry rasp; she was stretched thinner than she thought.
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