Spirits White as Lightning

by Mercedes Lackey

  "But Ria's a busy girl, yadda," Kayla said. "Glad you kids are getting along," she added absently, drifting over to the wall of CDs.

  "You know you look like Tinkerbell on drugs, don't you?" Eric said to her back.

  Kayla turned and flashed him a smile. "Gotta blend in with the natives, right?"

  Eric didn't really expect Ria any time soon, so after checking with Kayla about her preferences—he already knew Hosea's—Eric phoned down to the pizza place for three large pies with everything. The three of them sat and ate pizza while listening to Kayla's music selections. Her taste was more eclectic than Eric had anticipated, everything from salsa and classic rock to grand opera.

  "I'll try anything once—twice if I like it," she said, in answer to his quizzical look. "So, Hosea, how'd you find out you were a Bard?"

  "Eric told me," Hosea said, swallowing a mouthful of pizza. "I just thought I had a little shine, but I guess there's a name for everything. And you?"

  "Oh, I brought somebody back from the dead, and things went on from there."

  * * *

  As soon as the Portal closed, sanity returned. The geas that Aerune had placed upon him along with the silver antlers was gone; Elkanah's mind was clearer than it had been in weeks. He saw it all now. The Sidhe lord had used him as a Judas goat—let him think he'd escaped, let him think that searching out Campbell was his own idea, though it had been Aerune's magic that had led him to her and then led him back here, to a place Aerune could claim her easily.

  He'd been a fool. A pawn.

  And to top it all off, the bitch had poisoned him. Elkanah could feel the T-Stroke burning through his system. In a few hours, he'd be dead.

  But there was something he had to do first. Not for Campbell's sake. But because there were innocents in the line of fire, and because those innocents had to be saved . . . or at least warned. He staggered toward the van, fighting the wave of drug-fuelled oblivion.

  He did not reach it before he fell.

  * * *

  Another Monday night in Paradise, Jimmie Youngblood thought, piloting her blue-and-white through the traffic snarls of Lower Midtown. She felt better than she had in weeks—hell, months—as if the wave of Impending Doom had finally broken, or at least as if some part of her mind had finally reached an accommodation with whatever unspoken warning had disturbed her for so long. She felt released, but unsettled. Maybe Eric had been right: some problems just went away, and you never knew afterward exactly what they'd been.

  Her radio woke to life, spitting out a jumble of ten-codes: someone had set a van on fire near the Lincoln Tunnel, local units please assist. She checked and confirmed she was the closest unit, turning her vehicle in that direction. The dispatcher would alert the fire department, but she'd get there first.

  As soon as Jimmie saw the smoke, she could feel something tangled up with it, like an astral riptide undercutting reality. Power. Someone down here was using magic—bad magic. It brought all her uneasy feelings rushing back—and worst of all, there was something oddly familiar about the source.

  Bomb? Phosphorus grenade? Salamander? Someone isn't having a lucky night.

  She barely remembered to give her 10-20 when she arrived. Traffic was already snarled behind the charred wreckage—even at ten o'clock at night the Lincoln Tunnel was busy. She pulled her unit around to block the tunnel completely, hearing the wail of other sirens in the distance. Fire Department and Traffic Control, right on schedule. But she was the first on the scene.

  She climbed out of her unit, staring at what was left of the van. It wasn't just burning. It had been torched—the tires were melted pools of rubber on the blacktop and the van itself was too charred for her to know what its original color had been. No need to worry about the gas tank exploding—from the looks of things, it already had.

  Or else whatever brought it here didn't need gas to make the engine run. . . .

  Worst of all, she knew that something had gotten out of it alive. She could see puddled footsteps where the blacktop had melted in the street, as though something very hot had just . . . walked away. Something that reeked with Power like a spill of fresh blood.

  No time to call the others in on this. She had to find that thing before it hurt anyone else. That there were no casualties already was a minor miracle. She grabbed her nightstick and her vest and followed.

  The blocks around the Tunnel were a wasteland of urban decay spawned by the new Conference Center, which was a mixed blessing. With the Javits Center empty, there were few pedestrians around to get in her way, but a lot of empty lots, parking garages, and derelict cars to provide cover for her wandering perp. The tracks stopped at the edge of the concrete pavement, but she could still see signs of his handiwork.

  Here, a charred stump that had been a living tree. There, a half-melted basket full of trash, still burning. A smear of cinder on the side of a building, just where a tall man might rest his hand. And all around, the reek of baneful magic like a choking cloud—magic born of pain and death and suffering.

  She stopped long enough to shrug into her Kevlar vest, though she doubted that something that would stop a bullet would stop whatever she followed. She had the sense that what she followed was wounded and in pain, but no less a danger for all that. She reached down to shut off the radio on her belt—no point in alerting her quarry, and no help she could summon in time would be able to face down what she followed. She'd made that mistake once. Never again.

  Oh, Davey. You shouldn't have had to die for me to figure that out. She spared a brief thought for the other Guardians, but it would take too long to summon them as well. She had to contain what she followed before innocent civilians met the same fate as the charred van. She could smell the burning on the air.

  Ahead of her was an alleyway, leading between two derelict buildings. Behind them was an empty lot, the building it had once contained gone to bricks and rubble—a favorite hangout for junkies and rent-boys. The alley was the only exit. Whoever it was—whatever it was, she had it cornered now.

  There were no lights on the street. The only illumination came from the last dregs of summer twilight, and the sky glow from the city itself. She hesitated. Stupid to go in without backup. That's why they call it Tombstone Courage. . . . She forced herself to stop, to use her radio, tell them her position, tell them she was in hot pursuit of the arson suspect. It didn't matter now. By the time her backup got here, it would be over, one way or another. The dispatcher told her to wait, of course, but even as she heard that rational, sensible counsel, Jemima Youngblood knew she couldn't wait. Lives depended on her. She could already smell smoke.

  She drew her gun and stepped into the alley, letting out her breath in a long sigh as she saw it was empty. But the fire glow painting the far end told her she was right. The empty lot was burning.

  She hesitated, thinking again of warning Toni and the others that magic was afoot once more. She was reaching for her cell phone when the scream came, a scream of primal agony, of someone being burned alive.

  She ran toward it, cursing her luck.

  The screamer pirouetted like a top in the middle of the empty lot, wrapped in a shroud of flame, howling out his fear and pain to the night. He was burned past saving—she knew that already, from the black and ruined skin she could see through the flames that covered him—but she had to try. She knocked the shrieking dervish to the ground, beating at the flames with her bare hands while his skin flaked away like charcoal from a half-burnt log. His blood boiled on the surface of his skin, and before the flames were gone, the screaming stopped. He was dead.

  "Jimmie."

  A familiar voice, filled with pain and sorrow. A voice she had never expected to hear again. She looked up slowly, not wanting to see. Her searching hand closed over empty air—she'd dropped her weapon trying to put out the fire. She had a backup strapped to her ankle. Still kneeling, she reached for it, slowly, burned palms stinging and tearing.

  "Jimmie. Little sister. What are you doing
here?"

  Her fingers touched the metal of the gunbutt.

  "I'm a cop, Elk. Like you were, once." She held her voice steady by a great effort.

  Elkanah Youngblood stood a few feet away. He was naked, his bronze skin covered with soot and fresh burns. Power radiated from him like light from the noonday sun, but he wasn't another victim. He was the source. All around him, everything that could burn was burning—weeds, garbage, wood.

  Pyrokinesis. Without control, the fires that he set were burning him as well, eating him alive.

  But that shows up early, in childhood, and Elk never—

  "I have to tell you—" he said. "I have to tell—" He staggered toward her. His eyes were white, blind with heat. "You have to stop—" He moaned, a long sound of agony and despair.

  "Don't come any closer!" She felt blisters break as her fingers closed over the gun. A .38 snubnose—useless at a distance, but not against a naked man at nearly point-blank range.

  "You have to stop him!" Elkanah howled. "Jimmie—please Campbell—Aerune—Stop—"

  He fell to his knees, reaching out to her as he died. Her scream melded with his own as the fire consuming him from within burst forth from mouth, eyes, ears . . . from his outstretched hand, still reaching toward her.

  Burning everything he touched.

  Burning the world.

  * * *

  The phone had rung about fifteen minutes ago. Ria was finally out of her meeting and on her way to Eric's. When it rang again, Eric thought it was Ria calling back, saying something else had delayed her.

  "Banyon."

  "Eric." Toni's voice, so hoarse and distorted that at first he didn't recognize it. "Is Hosea there?"

  "Toni?" Something was horribly wrong—but what? He'd had no warning. He could hear the ragged sobs around the edges of her voice every time she inhaled. "Yeah, he's here, but—"

  "Jimmie's . . . in Gotham General. It's bad. She's asking for him. How soon can he get here?"

  "We're on our way."

  The others were already on their feet, alerted by his face and voice.

  "Jimmie's in the hospital. She's asking for you," Eric said to Hosea. Lady Day would get them there fastest. He sent a call to the elvensteed and felt her worried reply. "C'mon."

  "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 T
oni 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 . . .

  Suddenly the link dissolved. Kayla felt someone grab her, wrenching her away. She fought for a few seconds—desperate to help, to heal—