rescue returned, the disjointed ambulance ride, the complications. For a minute it seemed less real than the dreams. I curled my hand into a fist and writhed.
“Are you awake?” The voice was familiar, yet I didn't immediately put a name to his face. Everything was confused and I thought I might return to the meadhall again. The cloudiness passed and I knew where I was.
“Nicholas?” I blinked, discovered I couldn't turn my head. He sat behind me. The mental image of his shoulder-length hair and green eyes made me relax. “I saw you in the meadhall.”
“Did Thaimon jar loose some memories?” He tucked a stray strand of blond hair behind my ear, paused, then traced a knuckle along my jawline. “Ask me later.”
“I'm confused. I thought Charlotte was Victorian.”
“Shhh.” Wraithbane leaned close to whisper, so close I smelled the musky spice of his aftershave. “For some people, this is their first life. Others have two. Still others have more. Don't ask right now. If they hear you speaking of meadhalls and archers again, they're going to keep you longer.” He eased away and spoke normally. “You're in the Marina Containment Center under observation.”
Alright, so I'd been wrong about where I was. I'd thought hospital. Containment Center did not bode well. I groaned.
Wraithbane laughed gently, not the way I'd grown to know his laughter. “It isn't so bad. Life leeches deserve low-rank safety levels. An infestation is easy to pass from one host to another, but they got it cleared in time. It was a matter of minutes which saved you. You can thank the van driver for that. Not many are brave enough to plough through a portal. Shh, don't talk. Let me do the work. You haven't heard of life leeches before. They do what you would guess, but their appearance is tropical-slug with nasty rows of teeth. If you have a gallon or so of Bliss, you can buy a single Amazonian Life Leech off the black market. You had thirteen mature leeches embedded, if that gives you an indication about the caliber of your opponents.”
He showed me all thirteen locations by circling the bandaged areas on my back and shoulders. It was one continuous trail, his finger skimming along my skin in a way which made me hold my breath. Once he was done, he didn't stop touching, instead drawing lazy swirls on my undamaged skin.
“You wouldn't have felt them. Unless someone searched for them, they wouldn't have been noticed. Victims usually die due to delayed treatment. No doubt you were expected to perish as a backup plan should you manage an escape. We've been speaking with the White Wizard Council, and they have been evasive in their responses. I happen to know our contact person, and she's not playing coy with us. She doesn't know the answers to our questions, which worries her, I'm certain. That is all I can tell you for now. There's another thing I have to tell you, and I want to be the one to say it.
“Life leeches drain magic. Without a certain balance in your body, you can die. It's the same as anything else related to your health. This is why doing too big of a spell can kill some spell-casters, it drains them completely. Think of it like losing all your blood. You can expend a fair deal without irreversible damage, but there comes a point when too much is gone. The leeches drained you to a critical range, and your body was preoccupied with healing itself. It's possible you could have lived without intervention, but Doc Mike didn't want to risk it.
“They tried giving you basic donor goop, but your body wouldn't absorb it. Guess it didn't like the cheap stuff after it'd had a taste of Bliss. They recruited me to take Bliss to donor for you. You've been doing well, but don't get greedy. I'm still recovering myself.”
How I wished I could see his face now. “You're Blissed?”
“I am.” He sounded pretty happy about it. I still remembered how it felt to share magic with another person, the elation associated with it. No doubt he hungered for another kind of contact, something better than this chaste touching. I certainly had, after we'd kissed. That euphoria was addictive. Wonderfully and terribly so.
“Bliss transfers through contact.”
“Yes, I've had to keep a hand on you nonstop for hours. They drew a boundary line on your back. It's the implied consent box.” He stroked my shoulder slowly, as if savoring the feel of me underneath him. He added, “I just went outside of it.”
I grinned. “I'll tell.”
“If that's how you're going to be, I'll have to resort to my alternative plan for amusement.”
“Which is what?”
He removed his hand completely, and I felt the void as if it had been replaced with a block of ice. My muscles contracted and I started to shiver. There was the rustle of a plastic sack, then the sound of fingers grasping a book, the flip of pages. Warmth as his fingertips touched the slope of my neck. In a lower, more melodic voice than his conversational tone, Wraithbane began to read.
“Then wear the gold hat, if that will move her;
If you can bounce high, bounce high for her too,
Till she cry 'Lover, gold-hatted, high-bouncing lover, I must have you!'”
“Are you reading me poetry?” I asked.
“It's a classic book,” he said, sounding defensive. “It was this or Pride and Prejudice, and I can't stomach Austen.”
“Which book?” I strained against my straps to see.
“If you don't know yet, you won't find out by asking me. Shush, or the healers will make you sleep. That poem,” he said it like a distasteful word, “was by Thomas Parke D'Invilliers and it appears in the lines above Chapter One.” He resumed reading. “In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I've been turning over in my mind ever since. 'Whenever you feel like criticizing any one,' he told me, 'just remember that all the people in this world haven't had the advantages that you've had.'”
I listened as he continued, mesmerized by his voice, puzzling over the identity of this book. Self-reflective, philosophical, narrator separate from the main character. The name wasn't coming to me, nor had I read those words recently. I was going about this all wrong. What kind of classic book would Wraithbane feel drawn to share aloud?
“...it came about that in college I was unjustly accused of being a politician, because I was privy to the secret griefs of wild, unknown men—”
“The Great Gatsby!” I said. I wanted to dance a little in triumph, but the straps wouldn't let me even wriggle.
His hand stopped moving on my shoulder. “I haven't gotten to that part yet. If you're going to jump ahead, I'm going to go back to the implied consent box.”
“Mmm, can't have that,” I said and held still. I was enjoying the thrum of his voice and the absent-minded stroking of his thumb in the dip of my neck.
“Thank you. I'm bored of the box, too,” he said. There was the rustle of clothes and the creak of a chair. “Good, they're gone. You spoke of the lodge. Do you remember the oath? It'd be easier if you did. It went fine until Thaimon...” Wraithbane sighed and his voice held a hint of an older self peeked through, a thinner and harder version which had seen things he'd sooner forget.
I tried to catch up with the sudden change in topic. I repeated, “It went fine until Thaimon—what?”
“Until Thaimon became Thaimon.”
“I thought he'd always been...” I trailed off.
“His old name has been lost, but I remember who he had once been. He's not so different now, on those days when he isn't mad.”
“Thaimon and you, you used to be bonded somehow?” I asked.
“He was part of the Vanguard then, and had not yet taken his current name. We were brothers in arms, adventurers, merry-makers. Not all of it is clear, but I know how it felt. Thrilling, dangerous, but we didn't torment people unless they tormented us. He and I together were a force to be reckoned with, but you made us stable and gave us direction.” He smoothed hair out of my face with an expression undeniably admiring, all roving eyes and luminous smile. “I knew for certain I'd found you again once you tricked Sit Tight and bungled your escape, but I had suspected that we were bonded somehow when we first kissed.”
“You're muddling the story,” I said. “I don't really understand anything.”
“Very well, from the beginning. The very, very beginning a long time ago. I'll call Thaimon the short name for Vanguard. It's what he was then, and I don't know his true name any longer. The story of meeting you starts with Van seeing a maiden rinsing woad out of a tunic and me stealing her turnshoes. How the fire burned behind eyes violent as water and deep as the sky, how she used her walking-stick as a sword and her tongue to throw words as sharp as daggers. How she was fearless, indomitable, a spirit which burned through the dark.
“It was before the Veil separated our world from the Otherworld. It was easy to slip from one place or time to another. There were long periods of day and dark. It wasn't called night. Nights came after the Veil tamed the darkness. Creatures passed swiftly through the dark and rarely through the day. Today how long it remains light or dark is predictable; then it was not. Darkness may last several hours or several weeks. Mankind and their animals huddled within firelight, but at times that was not enough to keep the creatures at bay.
“That was the first world I can remember, the world I was created for. The dark grew things which could withstand the light and walk amongst the daykind. To compensate there were others like me, who could walk in the shadows. The dark was thrill and danger, I did not fear what was within it. I hunted and
Episode 9 Hex-Breaker Page 2