All Wounds

by Dina James

  Armaros snarled at her.

  “Oh, please. I am so done being afraid, of you or anything else. Now go away before you really piss me off. And if you ever, ever even think of coming after a Healer again—”

  Armaros ignored her and moved faster than anything Rebecca had ever seen.

  Before she could ready another concentrated bolt of energy, Rebecca felt the familiar nauseous sensation of being jerked from one place to another.

  She blinked rapidly, clearing her vision. It was a familiar room, lit only with a single candle. She and the other captive Healers, as well as Syd, were standing back in the enclave, facing a very large, very angry man-wolf.

  chApter seventeen

  Ryan looked even more livid than Billy did. No wonder he always got in trouble, if he looked at any of his teachers the way he was glaring at them.

  “What—?” Syd looked from being to being, totally confused.

  “Out of the way, ladies,” Billy snarled before he shoved the entire group aside with a sweep of his large furry arm. He took the mirror portal into his huge paws. He ripped it from its stand and broke it over his knee like a piece of kindling. He threw the pieces to the floor and growled at them.

  Syd eyed the large anubi standing over the pieces of the shattered mirror. “Billy, what do you think you’re doing?!”

  “Protecting my Little Bit,” Billy rumbled. He turned to Rebecca. “You all right?”

  Rebecca nodded then looked at Syd. “How did you get us back? I thought they said they’d shielded the...” She couldn’t bear to think about the altar she’d been tied to just moments before, let alone name it. “. .that place. “

  “They did,” Syd said. “We were aided from outside.” Syd looked at Ryan.

  Rebecca gaped at Ryan. He could hardly stand up on his own! How did he manage...? She couldn’t help but ask. “But you...how did you...?”

  “You have to ask?” Ryan replied, raising an eyebrow. “Those...things used me like a surveillance camera. Works both ways. I could see you the whole time. It took me a while to figure out how to get to you. Besides that, I’ve been fed on nothing but a Healer’s blood since the moment I turned.

  You honestly think that didn’t have an effect? I’ve had some time to figure out what I can and can’t do, and believe me, I’m just as surprised as Syd that it worked.”

  “What worked?” Rebecca asked, still confused.

  “He summoned you to his side,” Syd replied for Ryan, looking at him intently. Rebecca could tell he was impressed. “A Master can do such with his thralls. I’ve never heard of a thrall being able to do such.”

  “Most thralls aren’t fed from a Healer,” Ryan said. He looked over at Rebecca. “Maybe I am special.”

  Rebecca laughed and shook her head. “Supervamp.” Ryan’s lips twitched in a half-smile. “You were worth it.” Before she could ask what she meant, his eyes rolled back in his head.

  He swayed forward and fell to the floor in a fit of violent convulsions as he began heaving. He wrapped his arms around his middle, holding his sides as black liquid left his mouth and nose.

  “Ryan!” Rebecca broke free from Syd’s grasp and ran to her classmate’s side. Or she would have, had a strong hand on her arm stopped her.

  “No!” Syd shook his head and grasped her by the shoulders.

  Rebecca stared at him, open-mouthed. She struggled against Syd’s hold.

  “What are you doing?! Let me go! Can’t you see he needs help?!”

  “It’s too late,” Syd said. He pulled Rebecca closer and held her tight against his chest. “He’s used the whole of his power at the cost of his own existence. He sacrificed himself for you. Those are death throes. You can’t help him. He’ll rip you apart!”

  “No!” Rebecca protested. Ryan braced himself against the floor with one hand as he heaved again. Rebecca pulled against Syd’s iron grip. “Let me go! I have to do something!”

  The older woman Rebecca hadn’t noticed beside her took Rebecca’s hand. “Sydney is right. There’s nothing to do, cher.”

  “Nothin’ but leave. Let’s get out of here before the stink starts,” Billy growled. “Sabine, you’re bleeding. Punk’s gonna go nutso before he kicks and that’s the last thing he needs to smell.”

  The older woman nodded. She let go of Rebecca’s hand and moved toward the anubi.

  “The rest of you gals, too, let’s go,” Billy said, gesturing to the enclave door.Murmurs and gasps echoed in the small room as the rescued Healers left the enclave with Billy.

  Rebecca just watched in open-mouthed horror as they skirted the bed and the convulsing boy on the floor. Didn’t anyone besides her care that Ryan was dying?

  She resisted Syd as he pulled her toward the enclave door. “I’m not leaving! Let me go! I can help him!”

  Syd turned her around in his arms and stared directly into her eyes.

  “Listen! I said no! I won’t let you! My thrall I will lose, and I will mourn, but I can’t lose you, Rebecca!”

  It was the first time he’d ever called her by her name.

  Rebecca realized he was looking into her eyes without the compulsion of his Master’s power behind them. What did that mean? She’d never heard Syd speak that way.

  He was touching her. Touch.

  She brought her thoughts into focus and let what he knew sink into her skin. It was then she knew he was afraid.

  Of what? Of...?

  Rebecca.

  No. No, it wasn’t like that. He’d said... He just—

  She looked to Ryan over her shoulder before she turned back to Syd.

  “It’s okay,” Rebecca said. “You said—you told me—I can’t be drained here. I’m in my own enclave—a Healer can’t be harmed here. You said...”

  “I’ve said a lot of things. What if I’m wrong?” Syd asked, his eyes narrowing as he reached for her shoulder again. He brought her closer to him, possessive and strong, though Rebecca knew he was using only a fraction of his strength to keep her by his side.

  “What if you are?” Rebecca replied. She looked to the Ryan again.

  “You taught me to do this. You’re the one teaching me to be what I am. You have to let me help him.”

  “You’re powerful, beyond anyone’s reckoning, but even if you could help him, his existence doesn’t mean nearly as much to me as yours does,” Syd argued, shaking his head.

  “His means something to me,” Rebecca replied in a gentle whisper. “I can feel him dying right in front of me, and it hurts, Syd. You brought him to me the first time he was about to die, and now you’re killing him, every moment you hold me.”

  Syd looked over Rebecca’s shoulder at the form of his dying thrall.

  He shook his head.

  “Rebecca...no...” Syd lowered his Master’s gaze to the floor in the ultimate gesture of vampiric submission. “I beg of you. Please...don’t do this.”

  “I have to,” she whispered. “He saved me, and you, and...and all of us.

  I’ll be okay. I trust you. I’ve always trusted you. Trust me now.” Syd didn’t reply in words. He simply nodded and let his arms fall, releasing her.

  Rebecca stepped away from him and went to Ryan.

  The dark-haired boy turned his head toward her, arms clutched tight to his sides. Dark liquid—the blood he’d taken from her and used in place of his own—coated his mouth and chin. Rebecca knew there was nothing of Ryan behind the black eyes that looked at her, but that didn’t stop her from taking the dying vampire’s shoulders and forcing him to sit back against the bed.

  She leaned forward and spoke Ryan’s name.

  The vampire attacked.

  w x

  Rebecca opened her eyes and blinked a few times. She was so tired!

  It felt like she’d...

  Like she’d had the life drained out of her. She turned her head and saw Ryan lying beside her on the bed, blue eyes open and staring at the ceiling.

  He was still there, and sleeping like a vampire.
>
  “I did it,” she murmured, smiling as she closed her eyes again.

  “You did indeed,” she heard Syd say. “I would never have thought it possible, even for a Healer as powerful as you are.” She felt the bed beside her sink under weight and her hand being taken.

  Warm lips brushed against her knuckles, and she smiled more.

  “My gratitude for the restored life of my thrall.”

  “You’re not going to be like this all the time now, are you?” she asked.

  “Like what?”

  “You know ‘like what’,” Rebecca said as she took a deep, deep breath.

  She could feel her strength returning to her—her blood coursing through her veins, her heart beating against her ribcage, her Healer’s mark tingling and pulsing with warmth. “All protective and hovering.”

  “I assure you, I am not ‘hovering’,” Syd replied. Rebecca could hear the amusement in his tone. She felt the heavy weight of sleep start to descend upon her.

  “Are so. Go ‘way. Want to sleep a bit.”

  “And so you shall.”

  w x

  Rebecca really thought her need to recover would have made getting up in the morning hard, but she woke up feeling absolutely fine. Ready to start the day.

  To start her birth day. Her seventeenth birthday.

  The room was a shade of light gray made by the barely-risen morning sun. She looked up at the ceiling, thinking. She didn’t feel any different. In fact, all she felt was really good. Not tired, not strange.

  Strange. Stranger.

  Rebecca shook her head at herself and rolled her eyes. She sighed and was really glad it was the weekend, and she could go back to sleep if she wanted to.

  No one should have to go to school on their birthday, she thought and looked over at her bedside clock.

  Her brow furrowed. She couldn’t read the red digital numbers. There were parts of them visible, and those were fuzzy. Maybe she was tired, after all. It had been a late and scary night last night.

  Rebecca blinked a few times and rubbed her eyes before she switched on her lamp and looked at the clock again.

  “WAH!” she cried, flinching back from her night-table and the thing—

  things—that were glommed onto the face of her clock.

  A chorus of what sounded like giggling greeted her.

  “Festive being born!” three little voices sang out.

  One of the slug-looking things—the tallest one at about four inches—

  detached from the clock face and wriggled toward her bed.

  Rebecca tried hard not to cringe away even further, but she really hated snakes, and whatever this three-eyed thing was, it looked far too much like a slimy snake for her.

  “Is us before others?” it asked, blinking at her.

  “W-what?” she stammered.

  “Us wants greet the Mistress Healer festive-being-born day before the others! Us is?” the thing asked again.

  Rebecca somehow understood what it wanted to know.

  “Yes, you...uh...all are the very first to wish me a happy birthday,” she said. The creature beamed and turned back to the others it was with. It said something in a language Rebecca didn’t know, and the other beings cheered and waved their...tentacles...or whatever they were.

  “Uh, my gratitude,” Rebecca managed to stammer. She gave them a big smile.

  “Festive, festive-being-born Mistress Healer!” the creature said again.

  Then it bowed to her and went back to the other slug-snakes. The others bowed as well, and with a wiggle that looked like they were dancing, all disappeared.

  Rebecca collapsed back down into her bedcovers, face first into her pillow. Was it always going to be like this? Were little...things—or maybe big things—going to just pop up out of nowhere at her, and then pop back to wherever?

  She raised her head again and looked at her slug-snake-free clock. There was no way she was going back to sleep after that wake-up.

  Rebecca left her bedroom and padded down the hall in the pre-dawn light. She smiled at the sight in the living room. Sleeping Healers of every age and ethnicity took up almost the entire space. A large brown furry lump snored in the middle of them.

  A warm mug was pressed against her hand.

  “Oh!” Rebecca said, startled.

  The older Frenchwoman—Sabine, she remembered Billy calling her—smiled at her. “It pleases me that they can sleep,” Sabine said. “When I cannot. You, however...”

  Rebecca blushed at the awed look the older woman gave her.

  “I have never...heard...nor seen... I knew the line of Panacea was the most powerful—descended from the goddess of healing herself. An ancient line, with gifts unknown. But you...”

  Sabine said something in French Rebecca didn’t understand.

  Rebecca rolled her eyes. “Yeah, if I’m so great, why can’t I even heal a hellhound bite? Speaking of, I’d better go check on Ryan—”

  “He is resting well,” Sabine assured her. “Most of us have examined him. Now that he’s rid of the demon taint—”

  “The what?” Rebecca interrupted.

  “He was tainted,” Sabine said. Rebecca’s confusion must have shown on her face, because the older Healer went on. “His wound. Dark magic was forced into him, and as he had no blood of his own to taint, it consumed yours, and made of him a vessel attached to only you. He was made a puppet of those...monsters that abducted us.”

  “But he’s all right now?” Rebecca asked.

  Sabine nodded. “He...you freed him.”

  “But I didn’t do anything!” Rebecca protested.

  “Did you or did you not stake him?” Sabine asked.

  Rebecca blushed. “Not...not really. He was...he wasn’t himself, and I just...reacted.”

  Sabine smiled. “Your ‘reaction’ saved his life.”

  “Still, I should see him,” Rebecca said.

  “You should,” Sabine said.

  Rebecca climbed the stairs to the enclave, wondering.

  You were worth it.

  He had been willing to die to save her. Had almost died to save her.

  He said he’d noticed her. Hot Stuff.

  Rebecca entered the enclave. A petite dark-skinned woman stood, bowed her head to Rebecca and left Ryan’s beside.

  “Hey,” she greeted her former classmate.

  “Hey.”

  Rebecca couldn’t help but smile at Ryan’s greeting. He really seemed to be all right. “How do you feel?”

  “Good,” Ryan replied.

  A strange, uncomfortable silence hung between them.

  “You must be tired,” she said finally.

  “A bit,” Ryan answered. “I’d really like to get out of here. Go home.”

  “I could bring up the phone, and you could call your mom,” Rebecca offered.

  “Not that home,” said Ryan. “The lair. That’s where I consider ‘home’.

  Have for awhile now. A few years, since I fell in with Syd and the Cardozians.”

  “Where is Syd?”

  “At the lair,” Ryan replied.

  Rebecca nodded. He’d said she wouldn’t need him after she turned seventeen. She just hadn’t figured on him being gone the moment after.

  “Thirsty?”

  “A little.”

  “Feel well enough to eat something?” Rebecca asked, rolling up her pajama sleeve.

  Ryan nodded a little.

  Rebecca smiled and sat down beside him. He looked so down that she couldn’t help but slide her hand up his back and stroke his neck with her fingers, playing with the hair that curled up at its nape.

  Ryan laughed a little. “Quit it.”

  “Sorry,” Rebecca said, but she continued for a moment longer, teasing him.

  “I didn’t hurt you, did I?”

  Rebecca knew he was referring to his attack on her. To when she’d staked him. She shook her head. “Uh-uh.”

  “Good,” Ryan said.

  Her eyes went to his
chest. “I’m glad I didn’t hurt you that much,” she said.

  “Hey. It’s my lucky pencil.”

  She giggled and he grinned at her. She held out her wrist.

  He rolled his eyes and cupped the back of her neck and pulled her close. He nibbled at the mark on her neck, making her giggle again.

  “Stop it!”

  “Sorry,” Ryan murmured, not sounding sorry at all. “I just really love that mark.”

  He bit down, and Rebecca closed her eyes.

  No pain.

  All she felt this time was warmth, like she had the first time. She felt exceptionally wonderful and...what was the word Syd used? Nurturing.

  It didn’t hurt at all. This was more like what Syd did, only it was warmer.

  Lighter. Where what Syd did was—she didn’t know how to think of them, other than “formal,” Ryan’s bite was kind of... friendly, if that made any kind of sense at all.

  It was certainly nicer than any other time she’d fed him. Ryan seemed to be getting the hang of it.

  The best part of it was that she didn’t see horrible things behind her eyes. She was only partly aware that he’d finished when she felt him seal the wound he’d made.

  He rested his head on her shoulder. Rebecca couldn’t help but stroke his neck with her fingers again.

  Ryan laughed a little. His voice was muffled by her shirt.

  She tried to pull back to look at him and realized his own arms were tight around her waist. He was hugging her—holding her close.

  Syd did the same thing when he drank from her neck. It didn’t mean anything.

  Ryan seemed to realize how tightly he was holding her and relaxed, letting her pull away as he sat back.

  “Thanks,” he said.

  Rebecca nodded, and reached to pull her hair back over her neck to hide her mark.

  She smiled and stopped herself. She wasn’t ashamed of it anymore.

  “I know you probably don’t want anything to do with mirrors for a good long while, but you really should have a look at your eyes,” Ryan said.

  “Why?” Rebecca asked with a nervous giggle. “What’s wrong with my eyes?”

  “Nothing,” Ryan said. “They’re just...different. Brighter. No one who doesn’t know you would notice.”

  “Well, you’d notice then, wouldn’t you? Stalker,” Rebecca teased.