“Shut up…!” Nev growled petulantly, deciding it might indeed be a good idea to forget Percy for a moment and tend to Godfrey’s wounds. “Oh, God; it’s everywhere…” She breathed in horror, realising for the first time exactly how much blood had soaked the entire front of his tunic. “What do I do…?”
“Need to take that bloody arrow out first, I’d think… no pun intended…” Percy shrugged, being purposefully annoying.
“I said ‘shut up’…!” She snapped in return, her hands hovering over the embedded crossbow bolt in Godfrey’s shoulder as she worked up the courage to even think about doing exactly that. “I’ll need some bandages…” she added, glancing desperately around for something of use. “Something like those ‘shell dressings’ they always go on about in Dad’s war movies…”
“There’s an artery in there…” Godfrey croaked, knowing all too well how bad the placement was. “I’ve lost too much already… The bolt’s the only thing stopping me from bleeding out: pull that out and I’ll be dead in minutes…”
“No…” Nev moaned softly, as the magnitude of what he’d just said sunk in. “You’ll bleed to death anyway if we don’t take that out and put pressure on the wound.”
“Aye, lass…” He nodded weakly, empty acceptance in his eyes as he met her gaze then. “I know that...”
Nev fell backward into a sitting position as her strength abandoned her, part of her soul dying in that awful moment. It wasn’t possible… it couldn’t be...!
“It’s all right…” he whispered, face so pale now he was almost blue. “None of us get to choose… but I met you, at least…” he added, struggling for the strength to lift a hand and place it gently on hers, resting on her knee. “I’ll be at peace…”
“But I won’t…!” She breathed softly, tears filling her eyes now as the inevitable came rushing toward her.
“‘Nevaeh’…” Godfrey mumbled, fighting to keep his eyes open now as he forced a faint smile. “That’s your name…?” His smile widened as she could only nod jerkily in agreement, feeling useless as the tears streamed down her face.
“Yes…” she croaked, her voice thick with emotion as she clasped his hand in hers, not knowing what else she could do.
“It’s Heaven spelt backwards…” Percy interjected, sounding a little bored already “…it was her mum’s idea…”
“I like that…” he decided, closing his eyes now and ready to accept his fate as his head fell gently back against the door. “Much better than Neville…”
He couldn’t help himself. Even as his life slipped away, Godfrey couldn’t resist one last joke and the smirk that flickered fleetingly across his features drew a momentary cough of choked laughter from Nev despite her grief, leaving her completely and utterly conflicted as sobs began to wrack her body.
“Oh, for goodness sake…!” Percy exclaimed, sickened to the point of nausea by what she considered to be a pathetic display of drama. “Will you do us all a favour and just save him already?”
“I can’t do anything…!” Nev moaned despairingly.
“You’ve got one of the crystals, haven’t you?” Percy asked pointedly, knowing the answer to that question already. “Don’t even bother denying it – I can almost smell it on you!”
“Why…?” Nev asked nervously, suspicion instantly filling her mind. “What do you want it for?”
“Oh, give it a rest…” Percy shot back, rolling her eyes. “I’m hardly going to start chasing you around the room, screaming ‘My Precious…!’… Have you used it yet?”
“It helped me break the ropes… helped us break free, ” Nev explained cautiously, barely able to make sense of what had happened herself, let alone to explain it to anyone else. “It showed me what to do… it showed me how to squeeze an old man’s heart with my own mind… how to kill him…”
“Bet you didn’t do it though, did you? Percy offered dryly (guessing who Nev was talking about and adding ‘more’s the pity’ under her breath) then raising an eyebrow as Godfrey groaned faintly and slid a little lower. “It can show you how to heal too… although I’d not leave it much longer, if I were you…”
“What…? What do I do…?” Nev asked, suddenly filled with desperate urgency as hope rekindled faintly in her heart.
“Just hold the thing over his shoulder and think hard about the wound getting better,” Percy directed condescendingly with an exaggerated sigh. “Don’t mess about though – you’ll need to pull that bolt out first, and I doubt he’ll last long when that happens. I’d offer to help, but… eww…!” She added, shrugging and making a face.
“Okay… okay…” Nev muttered, steeling herself as her right hand slipped inside her pocket and withdrew the pendant. “I can do this… I can do this…”
“I’d bloody do it quickly…” Percy suggested, not particularly caring about Godfrey in the slightest but very interested to see what Nev could actually do. “Be careful not to let it take control, though…” she added, not at all helpfully “…I’ve seen what one o’ them can do… they can burn a mind to ash...”
Nev ignored her as she transferred the crystal to her left hand then reached out gingerly with her right to grasp the rear section of the crossbow bolt, protruding from his shoulder. Only semi-conscious, Godfrey moaned softly and shuddered from the pain as she took hold of the iron shaft and tensed her muscles in preparation.
Okay… on three… she told herself silently. One… two… “…three…!”
With eyes closed and teeth clenched, she tightened her grip and wrenched on the crossbow bolt as hard as she could. It resisted at first, threatening to pull Godfrey’s shoulder with it as he groaned even louder, then came free with a wet, sucking sound that was followed by a sickening spurt of arterial blood that left a half-metre spray across the door by his arm.
“Oh, eww…!” She grimaced, desperately fighting the urge to vomit as she shakily stretched out her left hand and lowered it over the wound, which was now bleeding profusely.
Closing her eyes, she tried to open her mind instead, concentrating hard on the crystal dangling beneath her down-turned palm and searching for the same sensation she’d felt earlier when she’d threatened to use it against Silas. In her concentration, Nev never noticed that Percy had also closed her eyes at that point, a frown of concentration creasing her forehead as she too reached out with her mind. She could feel the power of the pendant simmering nearby and although she couldn’t control it from that distance, Percy could at least nudge Nev gently in the right direction.
Nev felt nothing for a few seconds, desperation rising as each passed with agonising slowness, before a single pinprick of bright blue light flared in her thoughts and a connection with the crystal came rushing toward her. Her eyes flew open wide and she stared down at her hand and the wound beneath it as discharges of static lightning crackled and coursed up and down the length of her arm from elbow to fingertips.
Her focus shifted to Godfrey now – on the damage wrought on his punctured shoulder – and suddenly she could see everything beneath his tunic and skin: see torn flesh and muscle around the puncture; the fracture in the shoulder blade where the bolt’s tip had come to rest and, more importantly, the ragged tear in his axillary artery and the stream of rich, oxygenated blood that was still pumping out at a rate of over a hundred bursts per minute.
Nev was neither a doctor nor a surgeon, but she could ‘see’ clearly enough that what was there looked about as wrong as anything could possibly be. She had no reason to trust Percy (she was far too inexperienced to realise that the girl was at least partially aiding her mental picture of what needed to be done) but there really was no alternative at that moment, and all Nev could do was close her eyes once more and concentrate clearly and completely on one single thought: fix whatever’s wrong…
The chill that rippled through Nev was tangible, drawing from her a soft, shuddering gasp as the crystal’s intensity flared to uncomfortable levels, the light bright enough to show faintly through her
closed eyelids. Almost immediately, she could see everything happening inside her mind as the tear in Godfrey’s artery folded and sealed itself together again in a second, ending the outpouring of the boy’s life blood. Behind the wound, the crack in his scapula fused and sealed, leaving a faint scar but now as strong as it ever was, while directly beneath the hole punched through his tunic, the ragged edges of his flesh began to knit carefully back together until – after just thirty seconds or so – there was nothing more than a livid, coin-sized scar surrounded by a large, livid bruise.
The crystal’s glow began to fade then, its job clearly done for the time being, and it was only as Nev allowed herself to finally relax and sit back on her own haunches once more that she realised she still held the bloody crossbow bolt in her other hand. She cast it aside with a groan of disgust, returning her gaze to Godfrey to find him staring weakly up at her, his expression an exhausted mixture of surprise and happiness.
“Hello, you…” she breathed softly, not able to think of anything more eloquent that could possibly have conveyed the same amount of raw emotion.
“Hello, yourself…” he replied with equal intensity, considering the idea of trying to sit up for a moment but quickly deciding against it. “That was you, wasn’t it…” he added, glancing down at the fading light of the pendant in her left hand.
“I…” she began, then faltered as she fought to hold back tears again, this time out of joy. “I don’t know what that was…”
“My God, you really can use it, can’t you…!” Percy exclaimed in disbelief. “What happened…? It took months for me to manage anything even close to that… what did they do to you…?”
“They were torturing them…Godfrey and Lester…” Nev mumbled, unable to take her eyes of Godfrey as they stared deeply into each other’s eyes, transfixed and barely hearing Percy’s words. “The old priest – Silas – tried to hurt me with it…” She managed a faint shrug. “That didn’t work out too well for him... The voice – the one in my head – it warned him not to, but he tried it anyway… I – I’m not really sure what happened after that…”
“He touched you with it… tried to burn you…?” Percy almost gasped as Nev nodded dumbly. She’d seen the damage an experienced brother like Silas could do with one of those pendants, and there was real excitement in her voice now. “What did you see…?”
“There – there was nothing… lots of nothing, to start with… and then I had a vision of something from when I was a kid… some random memory of Dad and Grandpa fighting… After that, it simply said ‘interesting’ and I was back in the real world again, but somehow I was holding the crystal instead… like I’d somehow gotten myself free and taken it from him without even knowing it.” She shrugged again. “I used it to break free and we got out of there… I still don’t know exactly how I did it…”
“Well, it worked, so I don’t really care…” Godfrey decided, forcing himself to sit up now as he stretched out an arm and braced against the doorway. It was at that moment that an almighty crash beyond the other side of the wall gave a fairly clear indication that the doors at the other end of the hallway had just been smashed in.
“That door should hold them a bit longer…” Percy observed airily from her position in the shadows, “…but I’d not leave it too long in making my escape…”
“And how exactly do you suggest we do that?” Nev growled darkly, anger returning to her now as the immediate danger of Godfrey’s demise had now passed, and she was able to concentrate more on her own betrayals of the last few days.
“There’s a trapdoor behind the chair there,” she answered without hesitation, giving an unseen nod toward the desk at which Lester still lay slumped. “Far as I can tell, it leads down to a small boat hidden below in the… the stern, is it…? When I checked earlier, it looked like there was fresh water and food too: I don’t think that prince trusts his own men much…” she suggested, echoing Godfrey’s words from moments before.
“Making deals with Harald the Black, I’m not surprised…” He muttered, grunting with exertion as he struggled unsteadily to his feet upon hearing that news, Nev rising with him. “Why tell us about it?” He demanded more sharply, taking a step toward her now with one hand still resting against the wall as he voiced a question that had also occurred to Nev.
“Do you want to still be here when they break through that door?” She asked bluntly, at the same moment that the first crash of something heavy battered against the other side of the thick door to their makeshift refuge. “That door’s a bit tougher than the other one, but I’d not want to push my luck.”
“I want to know why you’d help us,” Godfrey countered, taking another step and resting his hand on his sword now, trying to look as threatening as he was able in his extremely weakened state and not managing it very well at all. “It’s no secret you’ve betrayed close friends already, and I’ve seen you using witchcraft of your own in that clearing, these last few months. What do you get out of helping us get away, eh…?”
“Been stalking me, have you? I’d not let this one near Instagram, old mate…” Percy quipped at an increasingly-infuriated Nev, almost giggling at her own joke as Godfrey tried to draw his sword a few centimetres from its scabbard. “Oh, take your hand off that thing before you fall over…!” She shot back in a far darker tone and as she turned her head in the darkness, just for a fraction of a second, Nev thought she’d caught the faint flash of red from Percy’s retinas, reflecting the glow of the lantern on the desk behind them. It couldn’t possibly have been intentional, yet it gave the girl the aura of something demonic all the same.
“I don’t get anything from helping you two escape,” Percy answered eventually, being completely honest. “Not immediately, anyway, but I definitely get nothing out of seeing Nevaeh caught by that filth outside.”
“That doesn’t answer anything…!” Nev snapped in frustration as a second crash thudded against the door and they heard the frame creak slightly. “Why help us? Are you their prisoner or their guest…?”
“Do I look like a guest to you…?” Percy snarled angrily as she took several long strides forward, stepping fully into the light for the first time and drawing close enough to reveal to reveal a trio of livid wounds torn across her left cheek at a rakish angle. The sight of her damaged face silenced Nev for a moment, her next words catching in her throat as she instead released a shocked gasp.
“Not pretty, is it…?” Percy asked bitterly, a mirthless sneer forming. “Is it…?” She barked again, loud enough this time to make Nev flinch. “No more ‘pretty face’ for poor old Percy… poor Perce, who only wanted to share a little excitement and adventure with a friend… her best friend who abandoned her and left her to suffer at the hands of these morons…!”
“I abandoned you…?” Nev almost roared incredulously as her building rage finally overflowed. “You brought me here…! You betrayed me, lured me to that bloody clearing and nearly got me killed in the process!”
“Oh, puh-lease…! That sleaze told Cragelen to kill me too!” Percy shot back immediately, her words laced with bitterness. “I’d have never let them do anything…”
“You chased me… you all chased me…!” Nev spat in accusation, taking an angry step forward as Godfrey held fast, taking in the exchange with great interest. “You tricked me into ditching school just so you could lure me to that clearing, kidnap me and bring me here… here to this hellhole of a world! We were friends, Perce… you were my best friend… how could you? How could you…?”
“Of course I tricked you: you’ve never have come if I’d told you the truth. I did it because we were friends…” Percy croaked, emotion filling her words. “Do you have any idea of the power they have? Of what they promised me… promised us…?” There was real loss and disappointment in her tone now. “We could’ve been queens… could’ve ruled this world like no others! I could’ve smoothed things over with the Shard! All you had to do was just go along with it, and we’d both have
been powerful beyond our wildest dreams!”
“I don’t want to be powerful… I don’t want to be a queen!” Nev shouted, Godfrey’s earlier insult about acting like a princess flaring in her mind for a moment. “I just want to go home…!”
“Well, that’s not going to happen…” Percy muttered dryly, showing surprisingly little sympathy in Nev’s considered opinion as she nodded scornfully at the crystal in her hand. “You’d never have the power to do it yourself with that pathetic little thing: they alone control access between worlds and they’ll never let you back through… you’re far too dangerous for that…”
“But why, Perce…why…?” Nev pleaded now, not understanding a word of what she was saying as her mind continually came back to the same unanswered question. “Why me… why me…?”
“Because I was nothing without you…!” Percy bellowed in return, her shouted words punctuated by another crash against the door that this time produced an audible cracking sound. “Oh, boo hoo…! ‘Why me… why me…?’ They came looking for someone useful… someone smart…” she continued, the very uncharacteristic sound of sorrow and insecurity seeping into her voice now as she explained further. “Instead, they got me, and my only purpose was to act as bait to lure in someone else that they really could use…”
“But… but… why…?” Nev moaned, unable to move past the overwhelming feelings of betrayal.
“Because you’re smart…” she repeated “…the smartest person I know. They needed science and technology and help with how to make things, and you know all of that crap…”
“I’m just a kid… we’re just kids…”
“And I don’t know any bloody scientists…!” Percy almost shrieked. “I know schoolkids and farmers and country people, and most of them are barely literate! And then there’s you…” she added, her sneer laced with a deep, irrational envy “…you, who could sleep through every class for the entire year and still come home with high distinctions.
Dragonfire Page 31