by C. E. Murphy
“How bad is he?”
“His brains are leaking out the back of his head,” Kelly said with an unfortunate degree of truthfulness. “I’ve got a girlfriend on the nursing staff, but even she can’t get me in to see him. All she can tell me is he hasn’t woken up and half of the medical community on the Eastern seaboard has come in to look at him. The papers are sticking with the extreme surgery story, but people are talking about alien invasions.” She herded everyone into her apartment as she spoke, Dafydd translating her tumble of words for Aerin.
Four days was enough to have turned Kelly’s apartment from relatively tidy into a minor disaster area. She darted around the living room, scooping up empty pint cartons of ice cream and blankets and socks and dumping them into trash cans and closets. Lara counted seven ice cream cartons before they were swept away, and caught Kelly’s hand to stop her whirlwind cleaning.
There was no diamond on her ring finger. Lara said “Oh, no, Kel,” and Kelly went still, eyes cast downward.
“He’s been at the hospital all week,” she mumbled. “Sitting by Reg’s bedside when he can, sleeping in the lobby when he’s not allowed to. The only time he’s left, pretty much, was to come see me in the ER when I came in bleeding like a stuck pig. He made sure I was more or less okay, and then he broke up with me. Said he didn’t know who I was anymore, that maybe he never did. I blew it, Lara. I mean I really, really blew it.”
“No.” Unexpectedly, it was Dafydd who interrupted, voice low but confident. “No, Kelly, if anyone is to blame, it’s me. Dickon was my cameraman and close friend for years, and he had no reason to suspect I was anything other than human. Though in most ways I neither would nor could change that, I should have found a way to tell him the truth immediately after I returned from the Barrow-lands without Lara. He deserved better than the friendship I offered him, and you deserved far better than the disaster I imparted upon your relationship.”
“I could have picked him,” Kelly whispered. Tears trembled down her cheeks and she pressed a finger above the cut on her face, giving the saltwater another path to travel than into the wound. “I could’ve done something else instead of turning into a criminal mastermind and spiriting us all away from a crime scene.”
Lara slipped an arm around Kelly’s waist, offering her a tentative smile. “Will it make you feel any better if I say no, you really couldn’t have?”
Kelly sniffled. “Couldn’t I?”
“Not from what I hear in your voice,” Lara said. “The truth is, helping Dafydd get away was the only thing you were ever going to do that day, Kelly. You weren’t going to let him die on a lab table, no matter how high the cost somewhere else might be. If Dickon can’t appreciate the strength of character that shows, then he doesn’t deserve you.”
Kelly laughed, a shaky wet sound. “That’s not fair. I have to believe it when you say it, Lara. I don’t have to believe me when I say it, but I have to believe you.” She wiped her eyes again, then hugged Lara hard. “Thank you. You might have to tell me five thousand times so I remember I have to believe you, but thanks.”
“You’re welcome.” Lara hugged her back, then sighed. “How’s Detective Washington doing, anyway?”
Kelly sank down into an armchair. “He’s not out of the woods yet. We got stupid lucky with that mess at the courthouse garage, Lara. I mean, Dickon doesn’t care, because he was there and he knows we left Reg behind, but David’s lightning fried the whole security system. All the digital backups for the whole week got wiped out. There’s no footage anywhere that proves who was in the garage, and the only one who could identify us is Reg. He’s still unconscious, which is probably why I’m not in jail right now. They’ve got him at the same hospital Ioan’s at. If we could get in there, could you help him?” Her gaze went to Dafydd and Aerin, beseeching, and Dafydd once more translated before spreading his hands uncertainly.
“Neither of us has a talent for healing, Kelly. If Reginald Washington is indeed still in danger, if they’re still uncertain as to his recovery, the truth is we might best help him by bringing him to the Barrow-lands where he can be tended to by the other side of the magic that did him harm.”
Kelly flashed a sharp, bright smile. “Fantastic. I’ve always wanted to visit fairyland. Let’s go.”
“There is too much iron in this world.” Aerin spoke through her teeth, a grimace pulling her striking features out of line. “The glamour is almost impossible to hold.”
Dafydd touched the small of her back, a small soothing gesture that had little visible effect. Lara made an apologetic face, but had to look away again: the glamours dancing in place around all of them jangled her nerves. Managing forward motion was enough of a task without trying to offer sympathy to an ill-tempered elf.
Of the four, only Kelly was clearly enjoying herself as they hurried through hospital corridors. Then again, of the four, she was the only one virtually undisguised. A costume shop had provided high-quality lab coats for all of them, and Kelly had found green hospital scrubs with a V-neck that displayed her considerable assets to good advantage. Half a week’s diet of ice cream and potato chips hadn’t visibly damaged her waistline and the shirt’s tucked-in waist emphasizer her curvaceous figure. The only glamour Dafydd had worked on her was transforming a driver’s license into a hospital ID, and the result was a soap opera–style nurse, all curves and quick smiles.
Lara, much more recognizable as a recent news-story kidnap victim, was hidden behind a glamour she couldn’t even see without making herself sick. A glimpse had suggested she was taller and more physically imposing than usual, with less delicacy in her heart-shaped face and drab lowlights in her blond hair. Dafydd swore the long white lab coat she wore made the illusion more effective and easier to maintain, and she only hoped the quick job would hold.
Aerin was almost as lightly glamoured as Kelly. She looked slightly more human than Ioan, but their fine bone structure and pointed ears were of a kind. A calculated risk, Dafydd called it, and swept into the secured corridor Ioan’s room was in as if he had every right to be there. Unlike any of the women, he’d added breadth to his own glamour, giving himself a far more intimidating air, though none of the suit-clad security looked even slightly intimidated.
“Doctor Aerin Cragen?” he said impatiently to one of the guards. “She’s flown all the way from—Don’t tell me the paperwork didn’t come through. If you could impress upon these gentlemen—?” He gestured to Lara, who stepped forward already hating what she had to do.
“The patient is from Ms. Cragen’s ethnic group, as I’m sure you can see. She’s come a long way to provide the help he needs. We must be allowed to see him.” Each statement was true enough. Aerin, sullenly, as though confessing something private, had allowed that her mother’s name was Cragen, and the closest thing she had to a last name was the matronym. Lara put strain into the words, making them impossible to disbelieve. It hurt her throat, hurt her skin to make truth heard, the task no easier than it had been in a human courtroom when it had been Dafydd’s freedom she was trying to achieve. It was easier by far in the Barrow-lands, so much more receptive to magic.
One of the guards, a tall man whose width of shoulder made him seem twice Lara’s size, removed his sunglasses to look first at her, then for a long time at Aerin, and finally back to Lara. “Sorry, miss. We can’t. Not without the appropriate paperwork.” He did, though, jerk his chin at Aerin to say, “I’ve never seen anybody who looks like you two. Where’re you from?”
Aerin looked without comprehension at Dafydd, who translated. Exasperation slid across Aerin’s face and she answered abruptly, cool expression locked on the guard. “An isolated area in Wales,” Dafydd said blithely.
Chills ran down Lara’s spine, not quite outraged protest at the lie, but not happy with the half-truth, either. The guard didn’t look any happier, an eyebrow cocked at Aerin. “I thought the Welsh spoke English.”
“I doubt your guest in there has spoken any,” Dafydd said. “This
group has long since eschewed any but their native tongue. It’s a matter of cultural support and propagation.”
The guards exchanged looks again before the self-appointed spokesman sighed. “I can call it in for permission. It’s going to take a while. There’s a lot of paperwork to go through, and if you,” he pointed at Aerin, “weren’t obviously like him,” a thumb over the shoulder, indicating down the corridor, “I’d never bother trying. What kind of doctor are you, anyway? They’ve had the best brain surgeons in the country in there and they’re all afraid to even give it a shot because his physiology’s so bizarre.” He took out a phone, not waiting for an answer from Aerin, and after a few seconds said, “Yeah, we’ve got a doctor from the patient’s ethnic group down here, I thought you might want to come down and have a talk with her.”
Warning tones shot over Lara’s skin. She stepped forward and put out a hand, trying to imbue the gesture with some of Emyr’s imperious expectation. The guard snorted and she drew a sharp breath, driving it into sharper words: “You will give me the phone.”
Anger slid over the guard’s face as he handed her the phone, his own free will clearly countermanded by her order. Lara, trying not to tremble, kept her eyes on the guard. A truthseeker at the height of her power could say a thing and make it true. Determined, sick to her stomach, desperate, she said into the phone, “You will give permission to let us through to see the patient, and you will do it now.”
Hesitation came down the line, an inhalation that went nowhere. “Who is this?” a woman finally asked.
Lara clenched her fingers around the phone, headache spiking. Magic use could wear even the Seelie out, and humans were far less built for it than the elfin race was. For a painful moment she sympathized with Emyr, unable to work his magics smoothly with mortal interference in the area. Her own truthseeking was easier to manage if she wasn’t already hidden behind the veil of power that kept them all from easy recognition. “This is the only person who can keep your patient alive. I assume your interest in his autopsy is secondary to the possibility of speaking with him.”
“Perhaps,” the woman on the other end said cautiously. “We can learn a great deal from an autopsy.”
“I have no doubt that your patient’s return to health now would impinge upon a convenient autopsy later,” Lara said bitterly. “You will give us permission to see him.”
“Who is this?” the woman demanded again.
Lara shut her eyes briefly. “Someone who answers to a much higher power than you do. Now let us through.” She handed the phone back. The guard listened for a moment, nodded, nodded a second time, then stepped out of the way as he snapped the phone shut. Lara stalked by with a scant nod of thanks, aware that the others fell in line behind her. Not until they’d reached the safety of Ioan’s room and Dafydd had authoritatively ordered the nurses out did Lara sag against the wall, hands buried in her hair.
Sour music faded as Dafydd released the glamour hiding her true features. Despite Ioan’s prone form on the bed a few feet away, he crouched by Lara, a hand light on her shoulder. “Are you all right?”
“The only reason they let us through is because Aerin’s so much like Ioan. I could hear it in the guard’s voice, the way he said she was like him.” Lara’s voice felt rough, as if her magic had torn her throat up. “Believe me, Dafydd, they’re not letting us in, they’re trapping us. Or they’re trying to.”
“Well, we can get out of here, right?” Kelly demanded. “Except it’s just your guy here, not Reg. We’ve got to get him, too.”
“We have to sneak out,” Dafydd said cheerfully. Lara gave him a dire look from behind her arms, and he chuckled, though his humor faded away under the weight of her glare. “Even at my weakest I’ve been able to hold a glamour that makes us effectively invisible, Lara, and we rode out of plain sight on the Common not three hours ago. The task of getting Ioan out of this ward is hardly insurmountable.”
“What have they done to him?” Aerin’s horror broke over their conversation. Lara dropped her hands to look at Ioan, who was riddled with IVs and monitor patches. His skin was scaly and blackening where the needles slipped into his arms, the veins spreading beneath his skin in a dangerous fiery red.
Sick dismay crashed over Lara. “It’s stainless steel. It’s all steel. They’re killing him!”
“Aerin!” Dafydd leapt to his feet and caught her wrist just before she bodily yanked the first needle from Ioan’s veins. “You can’t rip them upward, it’ll tear his skin even more badly, and he doesn’t need the damage. Like this.” He slipped a needle free with expert skill, shrugging as Kelly gaped in astonishment. “I had a century of lifetimes in your world, Miss Richards. I spent some time as a medic, among my many other professions. Aerin—yes, good,” he said as she put pressure on another spot where she’d withdrawn a needle with the same confident motion Dafydd had used.
“No wonder he’s remained unconscious.” Lara pushed to her feet so she could see the sallow Unseelie more clearly. “They’ve been poisoning him. Not deliberately,” she said as Aerin’s expression darkened. “They just couldn’t have known the needles would do him damage. They don’t, usually. Not to humans.”
“How could any fool think him human when they looked at him?”
Kelly, obviously understanding the sentiment if not the actual words, retorted, “Because there’s no other option. We don’t have humanoid alien species as far as anybody on Earth knows. Besides, they’re probably dying for him to die so they can cut him up.”
Aerin shot Lara a frustrated look. “When will your truthseeker’s gifts burgeon enough to permit comprehension between worlds?”
“I don’t know, Aerin. I don’t know if it’ll ever work that way. I think we’re doing well in that you and I can communicate.”
“Lara?” Ioan’s voice scraped below theirs, rendering the bickering silent. “Truthseeker? Is it possible?”
“Tsha.” Dafydd put a hand on his brother’s forehead, no longer as distressed by Ioan’s changes as he’d been. “We’ve come for you, Ioan. Aerin, Lara, myself. Even a mortal woman has ventured to your rescue.”
Ioan opened his eyes, barely focused gaze lingering on each of them until he found Kelly, and chuckled roughly. “I remember you. You fought well. But you’ve sustained a wound. A shame, to scar that lovely face. Dafydd, we must …” His eyes rolled back, unconsciousness claiming him.
Kelly whispered “You weren’t too shabby yourself,” and pressed her knuckles against her mouth, eyes large as she looked to Lara.
“I think he’s all right.” The agonies of inaccuracy in that phrase almost made Lara laugh. Instead she clutched her head a moment, then made herself straighten and pay attention to Dafydd. “There must be back ways out of here, fire doors or something. If we take one of those and come in the front again to find Detective Washington, we can avoid trying to sneak past the contingent of government guards at the head of the ward.”
“Do you really think they’re government?”
“I think city or state police would be in blue uniforms, not black suits. If they’re not government they’re—”
“Something worse,” Kelly supplied. “Corporations, maybe. Either way it’s not good for the home team. Tell you what.” She exhaled noisily, then glanced down at herself. “The big guy out there, the one who did the talking, is kind of my type, and I’m all Nurse Richards here. Should I go play distraction while you guys make a break for it?”
Dafydd lit up, but Lara shook her head. “If we were car shopping, I’d say yes, but it might backfire here. He might fall for it, or he might realize immediately it’s a ruse. No matter how good the glamours are, I think if someone’s really suspicious they might fail under scrutiny. We’re better off being sneaky as a unit. The problem is, how are we going to get Ioan out of here? On the bed, like it’s a gurney?”
“I’ll carry him.” Challenge sparked in Aerin’s gaze as Lara blinked at her. “Do you think me too weak?”
Lara
studied the slender Seelie woman, remembering more the ease and speed with which she wielded a sword than her apparently fragile form. “No. It just wouldn’t have occurred to me to even try. The only way I could carry him at all would be in a fireman’s carry, and that’s probably bad for people with head injuries.”
Aerin slipped her arms under Ioan’s back and knees. Dafydd adjusted his brother’s head so it lay against Aerin’s shoulder, and Aerin straightened with apparent ease, a curious gaze on Lara. “What is a ‘fireman’s carry’?”
“God damn,” Kelly said in admiration. “I want her personal trainer.”
Lara, drily, said, “You really don’t,” and a moment later the gut-sickening magic of glamours enveloped them all.
A fingerful of Dafydd’s lightning shorted out the emergency door’s alarm system, and in moments they were free of the hospital building. Even with the jangling shards of misplaced light and shadow brought on by the glamours, Lara could see that Ioan’s color improved beyond the hospital walls: the elfin races were simply not suited for the concrete and rebar buildings that so much of humanity hid within.
“Can the human be brought forth the same way?” Aerin stood with Ioan’s weight in her arms as if it was nothing, unconcerned with what would be, to Lara, a staggering burden. Unconcerned for his weight, at least: her concern for the man himself was visible, which Lara found curious, given Aerin’s enmity toward the Unseelie. “It would be best if he was not subjected again to your iron-filled walls.”
“I know.” Lara passed a guilty hand over her eyes, but shook her head. “I think he has to go back in, though. He only has a couple of injuries. They’re bad, but a head wound and that cut he took to the thigh aren’t on the same scale as what Detective Washington suffered. His torso was punctured repeatedly. Moving Ioan like this is a risk, but I think moving Washington the same way would be homicide. Dafydd’s going to have to open the worldwalking spell right there in his hospital room and we’re going to have to wheel him through, bed and all. Can you choose where we arrive? Could you bring us straight to the healers?”