by Lucy Auburn
All to save her. The woman I thought I’d never see again.
Selena, who was pale and getting paler by the second. Sarah frowned at the handheld heart monitor she’d hooked up to her. “Pulse is thready.”
“Let’s get right on it, then.”
We pushed the gurney into my lab, which was twice the size now that I’d gotten the requisitioned supplies and staff approved. It was amazing what an epidemic of demon possession did to cut through bureaucratic dead tape. Counting to three, we carefully pulled her onto one of the sterile surgical tables set up in the room. As soon as she was in position I rushed to the hand washing station to get myself scrubbed clean, while Sarah set up her IV and a more permanent monitoring station.
“BP is 60 over 40.” She pressed a stethoscope to her chest as I finished scrubbing up and pulled my surgical gloves and mask on. “Right lung is struggling, left is... wheezing, full of liquid from the sounds of it.”
“Get her oxygen.” I moved to the wound on her neck, carefully pulling out the gauze I’d padded there at the scene. The flesh was pale and blackening; Selena’s chest hitched with every breath. Sarah fixed the oxygen mask to Selena’s face, but I could tell it wouldn’t be enough. The infection was causing blood poisoning and filling her chest with fluid, and intubating her damaged neck would be extremely risky. “You ever performed thoracentesis before?”
“Twice.” Sarah hesitantly added, “Both under supervision.”
“Today’s your lucky day. Get the ultrasound and needles. Take care of that while I see to this wound.”
We had three problems, I observed dispassionately: the patient was struggling to get oxygen to her lungs, she’d lost a lot of blood—though thankfully the wound hadn’t nicked an artery—and a poison of unknown origin was moving through her flesh. The first two I could solve with traditional medicine, but the last was purely fae business.
I’d learned in medical school to tackle one problem at a time. Sarah had the sterilized needle ready and was rolling the ultrasound machine up to Selena’s side, but I could tell she was nervous. So I stepped in, knowing the wound was beyond me at the moment.
“I’ve got this,” I told her, seeing relief pass across her face. “Bag her and repack the wound.”
“You’re not stitching it up yet?”
“Not yet.” I grimaced; Selena would lose more blood with the wound open, but the risk of the poison was too great. “I’ll have to remove the dead tissue and treat the poison first.”
Pushing up a layer of Selena’s ripped silk gown, I grabbed the ultrasound wand and quickly pressed it across the left side of her chest. The fluid was dark and spreading, filling up her lung causing her to have difficulty breathing. Once I was sure I’d found the most concentrated place, I sanitized her skin and quickly injected the area with a local anesthetic. Then, with an apologetic grimace to her unconscious face, I inserted the needle between two of her ribs until I saw blood bubble up inside it. I slowly lifted the plunger until the needle was full.
Within a few seconds she began to breathe more easily. Meanwhile, Sarah had refilled the blood bag feeding into her IV, along with the saline solution and a pain reliever. She checked Selena’s blood pressure while I went through the motions of pulling liquid from her other lung.
“BP is now 85 over 60. Pulse still thready.”
“We have to get this poison figured out,” I said, discarding the second needle along with my gloves. “It’ll keep the flesh from knitting together safely. Go find Detective Hardwick—he has the thing that did this under lock and key. Radio me when you find him and let me know what you can figure out from a cursory examination.”
Sarah nodded. “Got it.” Her steps were confident as she headed out of the operating room. Epidemiology had been one of her minors in school, so no doubt she looked forward to figuring out what had done this.
But I hadn’t sent her out of the room to find out what the poison was.
I’d sent her out so that I could do something more than a little unusual—and unethical, according to human standards—to get our patient back to fighting form.
Because while Selena had no healing abilities, I did, from the Elders who saved me when I was a child. They gave me some of their fae powers when they did so—inadvertently or on purpose, I’d never known—and now I could summon them whenever I needed to.
If I could get Selena to feed off me, she would take on some of my powers. That was one of the new skills she’d displayed, as I found out from Leon and Naomi after Selena used her borrowed powers during an investigation. And while Petyr’s healing skills only let him heal others, my own inner nine-tailed fox fae made me practically impervious to infections and minor wounds. I’d even been bit by a Copperhead snake once, only to show no symptoms.
I wouldn’t be able to just make her feed on me while she was unconscious. In order to get my powers into her, I would need something more. It felt wrong to do, but I reminded myself: I was a doctor. This was all about the patient. It was no different than mouth-to-mouth CPR.
Pulling the oxygen mask off her, I stared down into her pale, wan face and felt a twinge of regret. “If only I were fully fae,” I wondered aloud as I leaned down towards her, “maybe they would’ve chosen me to pair you with.”
But the Elders had chosen Elah, the knight with the horse and demon-slaying experience. I couldn’t compete with that—I wasn’t even in the running.
Putting my fingers on the side of Selena’s mouth, I gently encouraged her lips to part and sealed my mouth against hers. As I did so I gathered my fae skills inside me, hearing the trickster’s distant chuckle inside my head.
My nine-tailed fox was no beautiful shifter out of Hollywood movies. He was a kumiho, a creature that, in Korean folklore, ate human livers. But he posed no threat to Selena, and if she drained away a part of his spirit it could save her life.
As I woke her lips with my mouth against hers, I felt a twinge of regret that this would be the only time I ever got to kiss her—not including our disastrous first appointment. But if it was going to be a rare event, the least I could do was make it count. Pressing my hand against the uninjured side of her neck, I licked her lips until her mouth opened to mine and I felt the instinctual stirring of her succubus side.
The draining began almost at once, as soon as she had a taste of me. Her unconscious moan was almost enough to send heat pooling to my groin, but I reminded myself to remain professional and in control. Responding to her lips, I worked my mouth against her until I felt her lust quicken and grow. The lull of her glamour pulled on me, feeding off the fae that lived inside my body.
I savored the kiss as long as I could, nipping gently on her lower lip, tasting the strength of her mouth. I would’ve sunk into her and let myself get more than a little foolish if not for the crackle of Sarah’s voice over the radio. “The thing that bit her is a half-demon demigod,” my intern said, words rapid and high-pitched. “I’m pretty sure the poison is an a-neurotoxin most closely resembling the paralytic effects of a cobratoxin. I’ve got a theoretical antidote and I’m on my way!”
“Got it.”
I could hear my intern’s doubt in her voice; there was a good chance that a snake antidote wouldn’t work perfectly on a demigod’s poison. As I pulled back from Selena’s mouth and replaced the oxygen mask, I checked her neck and saw that it wouldn’t even be necessary; the blackness in her wound was already receding.
When Sarah skidded into the room with the antivenom at the ready, I flashed her a relieved smile and had her push the contents into the IV bag. She watched and assisted as I pulled the gauze from the wound, cleaned it, then stitched it up again. As the toxin left Selena’s body and she began to breathe more easily, Sarah smiled at me.
“BP is almost normal. Looks like she’ll be waking up soon.”
I smiled back, “The antivenom worked,” I said, hiding what else had happened.
Inside me, the nine-tailed fox laughed, and I rubbed at a spot on my left arm, h
idden by my long sleeves. Little did Sarah know I was training her up for more than one reason: not just to help me in my work, but quite possibly to replace me one day very soon.
Because I didn’t know what I would be when my transformation was complete.
13
Elah
“There there, my darling.” I pet my mare’s fuzzy nose, holding up the oat bucket for her to eat from. “It’ll all be better soon.”
The beast of a thing that slashed her neck was imprisoned now, thanks to Leon. I felt a rush of hot rage when I thought of the way he’d grabbed Selena in his leathery wings and held onto her. Though I’d burned the edges of his wings to a crisp, he hadn’t let go until Selena drank his spirit half dry—and by then there was blood pouring down from her wound.
Though the doctor had insisted he would heal her, I was antsy. The recovery room was no place for me, and there was nothing I could do, but I felt an urgent call to go to her, just to see if she was still alive.
First, though, I had to make sure my beloved Fira was okay. I’d already checked her wounds; they were shallow, her neck easily cleaned of blood and treated with a compress. But it was clear she was still spooked, from the way her sides still twitched and her eyes rolled whenever another mount in the stable made a sound. Once she’d eaten her fill of oats, I curried her sides with a brush until her head drooped forward, and threw a heavy blanket over her back to keep her warm.
“I’ll return soon,” I told her, pressing my forehead against her soft nose. She whuffed into my face, blowing hot breath on my chest. “Don’t worry, I won’t forget you, girl.”
Fira had been with me since I was a boy and she was a filly, sleek black and skinny as a beanpole. We’d grown together, my fire coming to me as her hooves grew strong and sharp, and we’d faced countless demonic enemies as a single unit. More than once I’d taken her back to the stable and cleaned dried demon blood from her hooves, knowing she was the only thing that stood between me and death when my enemy was at my back.
Some people didn’t understand a blackfyre knight’s love for their horse. They usually got it the instant they saw one of our black mounts fade into shadow, run through fire, or kick a demon’s head off with a well-placed hoof. When Fira died, decades from now, she would be cremated by my own fire, her ashes spread over the Havaala land next to my father’s fallen mounts and my sister’s young stallion who died in a Wild Hunt.
Putting Fira out of my mind, I walked through the labyrinthine hallways of the fae Collective towards the doctor’s abode. Tae Min was an odd man, a human with hybrid fae powers who seemed to always speak until he ran out of thoughts, which took a while. But I’d seen him in action, curing the strange illnesses that fell on humans after long demon possessions took hold of their body. If anyone could save Selena, it was him.
I ran into the detective on the way there, coming from the ambassador’s office. “How’s our prisoner?”
“Locked away in a pocket realm. Maggie is laying extra protective spells over him just in case he tries to escape,” Leon said. “Your mare?”
His attention towards the little things was part of what had made it easy to transition into my new, Elder-ordered life on Earth. “Fira is recovering well. The wound was shallow, though I think she was a little shaken up. We weren’t expecting battle today.”
“Neither were we.” Leon stretched his shoulder and winced; there were scrapes and abrasions up his arms and along one side of the face, but walker fae healed quickly, in my experience. “Have you seen Petyr or Naomi?”
“Not yet. I just came out of the stables and was headed to check up on Selena.”
“Same here,” he murmured. “There was so much blood. I wish... that damn thing was just so tough.”
I hadn’t been alone in my fight against Beelzebub to remove Selena from his arms; Leon had taken more than a few of his current scraps from clawing and biting his way up the thing’s back only to be whipped away by that heavy power of his.
“She’s strong,” I pointed out. We approached the medical bay, the surgical room doors lit with a red light that let us know not to enter. “I’m sure she’ll recover.”
“I barely even got to say hello to her,” he murmured wistfully.
I kept to myself that I hadn’t gotten to say hello at all, swallowing my brief moment of envy. The detective was no one to get territorial with; on this subject, more than any other, we’d come to an agreement.
The basis of our friendship was a shared affection for the injured succubus on the other side of those doors. As soon as I met the detective, then heard him say her name, I knew that he felt that same dizzying cliff’s-edge feeling as me when he thought of her. We’d searched for her together, put down demons side-by-side across the Realm of Light, and joined each other in partnership when the Elders ordered us to get to the bottom of the rising demon possessions across Earth.
Fighting over Selena would’ve been the work of foolish human men, whose lives were like gnats compared to the fae. Leon and I could each have her for a century or more without even blinking, and I couldn’t imagine sharing her with a better man—assuming that she took to him.
I only hoped that when she woke up and we had a chance to speak, she would agree that it had been a mistake to end our engagement, born of whatever upsetting discoveries she’d made that caused her to run away.
Because while I could share Selena easily, I would walk into the heart of my own flames before I gave her up for good.
Selena
I came out of the fog slowly, a dull ache radiating from the side of my neck. Plastic pressed around my mouth and all the way up to the tops of my cheeks, fogging with every breath that I took. Getting my eyes to focus took some difficulty; whatever was pumping through my veins, it had relaxed every muscle.
After several seconds, I realized I wasn’t in the Underworld anymore. The ceiling tiles above me were stark white and not at all like Hell.
Several more seconds passed before I realized that someone was holding my right hand. Turning my head, I fluttered my eyes up to a very familiar face.
Maggie.
I reached up to try to pull the oxygen mask from my mouth, but she shook her head and pushed my hand down. “Dr. Lee says you won’t be fit to talk for a little while longer. Just stay there.” Her hand squeezed mine, and if I hadn’t been so thoroughly drugged I might’ve teared up a little. “We can talk later, when you’re done healing.”
Healing from Beelzebub’s bite wound, I realized. She must have sensed my discomfort, because Maggie added, “We put him away. Beelzebub is in a cell he’ll never get out of. He can’t hurt you again.”
Shuddering, I turned my head away from my foster mother’s face, guilt and memories churning in my chest. When I saw someone out of my peripheral vision and tried to turn the other way, pain shot up my neck.
“Your wound is still healing.” This was Tae Min. Careful, cool hands reached out to press the bandage on my neck back down. “There’s no reason to look over that way when I can just tell you who’s there: Naomi and her sister, Iva.” A spike of fear for Naomi went through me before he added, “Iva was... hurt in the battle, but Petyr healed her and her body is recovering.”
Unmentioned was her mind, which I sensed might not be fully up to the task based on the expression on Tae Min’s face. I wanted to reach out to Naomi, to ask her forgiveness for her sister’s current state, but when I tried to speak even a little the pain was unbearable. My voice came out a creak, barely audible.
Maggie muttered, “Stubborn girl. I told you not to speak.”
Naomi swam into view then, looking shockingly tired and not at all her usual self. She shot me a wan smile. “Hey Suck. Glad to see you’re not dead.” Pushing a lock of filthy hair away from her face, she studied me. “You need a bath though.” I wanted to tell her she did too, but it must’ve shown in my face because she cracked a smile. “I’m not very clean-looking myself. When you’re better you’ll have to tell us where you went.
Hardwick said you told him something about Hell, but I’m not buying it until the succubus sings.”
I sighed, wincing as pain radiated out from the motion. Maggie pushed my hair back from my forehead and looked up at Tae Min. “I think she’s due for more sedatives and pain killer.”
He picked up my chart from somewhere I couldn’t see, tapping his finger against the screen of his tablet. “She does indeed. Sarah?” I couldn’t see what they did, but a moment later a cool, relaxing feeling radiated out from my chest. “There, that’s better.”
I looked up into Maggie’s eyes, desperate to beg her forgiveness before I slipped away. She leaned down to kiss my forehead, and murmured in my ear, “I love you, Silly.”
When I slipped away this time, it wasn’t oblivion that greeted me.
It was the memories of the demon-blooded demigod’s terrible and cursed life.
Petyr
I stared at the imprisoned demigod, feeling uneasy. We had him in a wing of the Collective devoted entirely to keeping fae prisoners when human bars couldn’t hold them. Most of the dangerous dark fae here were kept in a kind of stasis sleep until a viable prison in the Shadow Realm could be found for them, but there were a few light fae serving their sentences as well.
The cell Maggie put Beelzebub into was a good one, I had to admit. Driving across the city had taken long enough that by the time Naomi and I arrived with her sister in tow, decisions had been made without me. Thankfully Maggie, who was no doubt the top witch in all of Baton Rouge, made all those decisions correctly. She’d put the demigod in one of our few cells that was also a pocket dimension—a ripple in space and time that developed as remnants of Lightblood architecture. He floated in the middle of it like a statue in an exhibit. The time stone that kept the dimension running was set beneath his feet. His eyes were closed, his arms crossed serenely against his chest, wings folded at his back.