by Ann Gimpel
“If someone plans to sabotage this airplane, we will either switch to our dragon forms right away or skip that part and teleport back to Konstantin and the others as we are.”
“Sounds simple enough,” he ventured.
“Because it is simple. Talk to me about what makes this”—she patted an armrest—“not fall out of the sky.” No longer needing telepathy, she let it go. Johan had done well. His private mind speech wasn’t perfect, but at least it wouldn’t broadcast to every magic-wielder within a half-kilometer radius.
“Not so different from dragon wings.” He stuck with telepathy. “All wings are airfoils, which means air flows faster over the lower edge than the upper one. It is how anything with wings remains airborne. Obviously, this craft uses engines to provide propulsion. Dragons use magic and muscles.”
Katya chuckled. “Magic and muscles. My dragon liked that. A lot.”
“Actually, mine did too.”
The man sitting next to Erin groaned. Erin had been slumped against the window shade, but her eyes snapped open.
“Oh-oh,” Johan mumbled.
“What?” Katya cast a thread of seeking magic toward Erin’s seatmate. He writhed in his seat, and a fine sheen of perspiration formed on his brow.
“I recognize the expression on Erin’s face. It’s the same way she looked at me right before she told me she was going to fix my broken leg. Kind of an ‘I won’t take no for an answer’ attitude.”
Erin was indeed poking and prodding. The man didn’t react to her touch. “Crap on a cracker,” she muttered and basically crawled over him and loped toward the front of the plane.
“Do you know what she’s doing?” Katya asked Johan.
He shrugged. “If I had to guess, she is trolling for medical gear.”
Katya continued to probe with magic. She hadn’t forgotten Erin was a doctor, but magic was so much better at healing everything, she discounted whatever Erin might or might not have in the way of skills. It had been her, Katya, who’d fixed Johan’s broken leg. In minutes, not months.
As she dug deeper examining Erin’s seatmate, what she found wasn’t promising. An illness, not unlike the Black Death, was ripping through the man’s organs. Blood was everywhere, not nicely encased in vessels where it should be. Sure enough, it started leaking out of his mouth and eyes and ears. Purplish blotches were forming on his face from blood pooling beneath his skin.
Erin raced back, a box with a red cross painted on it clutched in one hand.
“Do you know what is wrong with him?” Johan asked.
“Of course, without lab tests, it’s difficult to know for certain—” she began.
“Never mind,” Johan broke in. “What do you think it is?”
Erin glanced at the people seated closest. About that time, a dark-haired woman dressed in a black uniform skirt and jacket joined her. A name tag identified her as Lupe Morales. “What can I do to help, Doctor?”
Before she had a chance to answer, the man started gagging. Erin twisted his head forward about the time bloody bile spewed from his mouth. “Move the two rows around him to another location,” she told the cabin attendant.
“But we have no other seats,” Lupe protested. “It isn’t safe for them to—”
Erin leaned close to the uniformed woman. Katya had no difficulty hearing her whisper, “I believe this man has a type of viral hemorrhagic fever. If I’m correct, it’s very contagious.”
The woman’s dark eyes widened, but she didn’t hesitate before she clapped her hands smartly and started herding people as far from the sick man as she could move them “We will remain where we are,” Katya told Lupe.
“But the doctor said—”
“I am a doctor too.” Katya sharpened her tone. “Dr. Ryan will have a difficult time managing this patient on her own.”
“As you will.” Lupe’s tone clearly intimated it was Katya’s funeral. Johan’s too.
Katya switched back to telepathy, this time directed at Erin. “This sickness, is it like the Black Death?”
“Only insofar as it has a high mortality rate,” Erin replied in kind. “The plague was caused by a bacterium. This disease is caused by a virus. It’s actually far more contagious than the plague ever dreamed of being.”
Johan must have been listening, at least to Erin, because he asked, “Will everyone aboard die?”
Erin looked up from where she’d been catching more bloody vomit in a plastic bag. “Um, it’s likely, yes.”
Something crackled annoyingly loudly before an accented male voice filled the cabin. “This is your captain speaking. We have illness aboard. Everyone will don masks handed out by the cabin crew. We will land in Ushuaia in approximately forty-five minutes. The plane will be quarantined until medical personnel can clear each of you. Do not worry. All your needs will be attended to.”
Katya craned her neck around and saw Lupe and two other women dressed just like her passing out paper masks. Many of the passengers were agitated. A few were crying. A man jumped from his seat and shook a fist at Lupe. “I will leave this aircraft. Do you understand me?”
“Yes, sir. Certainly, sir.” Apparently well trained in dealing with abrasive passengers, Lupe tried to press a mask into his fisted hand.
“I’ll make all of you sorry as hell if you try to hold me.” His face was splotched an angry red.
Katya had had enough of his attitude. A judicious shot of magic sent him sprawling back into his seat. His mouth opened and closed as he gasped like a landed fish. Too bad. He was lucky she hadn’t killed him and been done with it. Although if Erin was right, the disease mowing through the man half a meter away would make short work of the others too.
The cabin filled with a foul odor as the man’s bowels turned to a watery mix of blood and shit that sluiced across the seat covering and onto the floor. Erin straightened, muttering, “This man needs to be in a hospital. I have nothing to give him.”
Something about her words struck a chord in Katya. She got to her feet and stood next to Erin. “We should leave while we can,” she suggested, seeding her words with the tiniest bit of compulsion.
“But he’s sick,” Erin protested. “If I go, he’ll have no one.”
Katya nodded, fully understanding why her twin had fallen in love with Erin. She had a compassionate side that shone through, and a selfless nature that was almost antithetical to being a dragon.
“Is there anything you can do with magic?” Erin turned to her, entreaty in her blue eyes with their thick golden rims. Katya had no idea why no one had noticed how otherworldly their eyes were, but no one had said a word.
Katya considered it. She didn’t want to lie to Erin. As she thought through what she’d have to do to pull this man’s life out of the unfortunate place it hovered circling a cosmic sewer, she checked other passengers who huddled nearby.
No one had said much of anything, but it was as if they already knew they were goners.
Katya hooked a hand beneath Erin’s forearm. “Yes, I could probably reverse the illness. In him. But every single person I checked has the same thing. We do not have time to cure everyone. Never mind all the questions we’d end up having to answer. Medical miracles. Phenomenal cures. We’d be stuck in Ushuaia—or worse, Buenos Aires—for weeks.”
“It would knock a big hole in our original plan to slip in and out unnoticed,” Erin muttered.
Katya had already suggested they leave. Right now. Before the stupid plane landed and officials quarantined it. Erin was a doctor. Katya had lied about being one. She had no doubt both of them would be pressed into service. No one would split hairs verifying her credentials.
Unfortunately, there wasn’t an unobtrusive way to teleport out of the plane. Their presence would be sorely missed. No reason to waste extra magic on wards to hide them before they vanished.
Before she could generate more arguments in favor of leaving, Erin went on, “It feels wrong to desert these people. They’re sick. I took an oath to help the sic
k as best I’m able…”
“Even if you know they’re all as good as dead?” Katya pressed.
Johan materialized by her side. “This discussion looks serious,” he said in a low voice.
“You have no idea,” Katya mumbled.
“Katya thinks we should teleport out of here now,” Erin said.
“I happen to agree with her,” Johan replied.
Katya’s eyes widened. Apparently, engineers weren’t suckers for lost causes like doctors were.
“We do not want to get in the middle of being quarantined,” Johan continued. “I have been there. It was not pleasant. Especially for us since we will not sicken. Some do-gooder researcher will decide we are immune, and they will turn us into pin cushions taking blood to attempt to fashion a vaccine.”
Erin turned curious eyes his way, not bothering with telepathy. “What and when?”
“Yellow fever. The Belgian Congo ten years ago. I had a natural immunity since I had never been vaccinated.”
Katya tightened her hold on Erin’s forearm. Below them, the man moaned piteously and vomited more blood. His face had turned into a mass of blood-filled pustules. Even from where she stood, Katya could feel heat pouring off him as his fever spiked.
“I can end his suffering,” she told Erin, “but then, so could you. Simply reach inward and stop his heart.”
Erin jerked her arm out of Katya’s grasp and whirled to face her, features contorted in fury. Katya met her gaze calmly. The human world was changing. Soon, not much recognizable would remain. Erin needed to grow a tougher skin.
“Tell her how fortunate she is to be a dragon,” Katya’s beast urged.
“Not the time. She has some decisions to make,” Katya replied.
Johan had moved to Erin’s other side and placed his mouth right next to her ear. “We must go,” he urged.
“But I can’t,” she protested. “Don’t you see?”
“Of course, I do.” His voice was rough. “We have a far more pressing obligation than this plane.” He switched back to telepathy. “Erin. Even if you had a full-blown trauma center, what would you do for these people?”
“Treat their symptoms and hope they make it,” she admitted, looking as if she wanted to kill Johan for making her face facts.
The man’s body started to shake as he seized. Katya closed on him, intent on ending his travail. “My patient,” Erin snarled and placed a hand on his head and another on a shoulder. A clean white slice of magic cleaved right to his heart. It shuddered, and then stopped beating.
Katya was inside Erin’s mind and heard her silent entreaty. May God forgive me.
She wanted to tell Erin that the only god who mattered a whit was Y Ddraigh Goch—and that he could give a fuck less about humans—but wisely remained silent. Instead, she harnessed magic as unobtrusively as possible. Most of the other passengers were off in their own private worlds, no doubt wondering if they’d be next to start puking blood.
She wove her teleport spell around Johan and Erin as surely as she’d once woven various colors of wool into patterns on her loom. When she was certain everything was in place, she kindled her casting. Brilliant light blazed around them to the accompaniment of screams and pounding feet as Lupe and her fellow cabin attendants ran toward them.
Katya poured more magic into the mix. The cabin slipped away along with hands making a grab for her. Good. She didn’t want to have to kill anyone. If the sickness that had afflicted the man was as virulent as she suspected, they’d all succumb before long.
She inserted a course alteration and brought them out on a deserted spit of land toward the southern end of the Beagle Channel. They’d talk through this before returning to Kon and the others.
“Where are we?” Johan scanned a small group of falling-down buildings with corrugated roofs as her magic cleared.
“An abandoned whaling station.”
Erin planted herself in front of Katya and crossed her arms under her breasts. “We could have saved those people. All of them. Using magic.”
Katya stood taller, grateful she’d had the foresight not to drag this quarrel into the midst of the other shifters, who were probably deep into crafting battle plans. “Yes,” she agreed, keeping her tone mild, “we could have.”
Erin shook her head until blonde hair danced around her shoulders. “Look. I get the part about the serpents being a danger to all life on Earth, but we played god up there.” She jerked her chin upward.
“How so?” Katya asked, genuinely curious and wanting to understand Erin’s reasoning.
“We—rather, you—made a field decision and jettisoned the men and women on that plane. That man had Ebola. Or maybe Marburg. Those diseases have something like a 95 percent mortality rate.”
“How long an incubation period?” Johan spoke up.
“Two to twenty-one days,” Erin replied dully. “Researchers are of two minds about this, but I believe people can be contagious the whole time.”
He nodded. “What, exactly, does that tell you?”
Erin’s eyes widened. “Oh my fucking God. The entire ship is infected.”
“And everyone at Arctowski,” Johan pointed out.
“So we made the right choice,” Katya said, and then could have kicked herself.
“Your interpretation, not mine,” Erin spat out through gritted teeth. “We could have leveraged magic and cured all those people. The plane wasn’t going anywhere. Certainly not back to Arctowski to pick up another batch of passengers.”
“Not that particular plane,” Johan agreed in a decidedly neutral tone, “but what about the next aircraft? If they even send another one, which is far from certain. Had we remained, the local infectious disease control team would have ascertained the three of us were not ill from an examination of lab tests.”
He stopped there, letting his words sink in. Katya offered him credit for being a better diplomat than she was.
“How much magic would it burn through to cure several hundred people?” Erin asked.
“A lot,” Katya said. “And time too. We would have gone through several cycles where we would have had to rest and replenish our ability.” She narrowed her eyes to slits. “This is assuming we could fling power about. Such is not allowed. Humans must not know about us, or about the existence of magic.”
“So it’s fine to kill someone with magic, but not acceptable to cure them with it?” Erin’s tone held a glacial edge.
“What you did was hidden within the man’s body,” Katya pointed out. “For us to have had a fighting chance to help any of the rest of those people would have required visible displays of power.” She blew out a breath. “I’m sorry I was so obvious about the way we left the airplane, but I didn’t have much of a choice. If I’d fashioned warding first, we’d have vanished from sight. It would have created as much of a stir as the flash of brilliance that presaged our departure. And wasted magic. For nothing.”
Katya ground her teeth, annoyed at having been backed into an impossible corner. No choice would have netted her the anonymity she wished for. “Most of those people will die,” she muttered, “but not before they tell a whole lot of somebodies what they saw.”
Erin’s harsh expression crumpled; her eyes sheened with tears. “This is difficult.”
“It is,” Johan agreed. “Nothing is the same.”
“My instincts haven’t changed,” Erin murmured. “Healing is my life. Or it was.” Steam puffed from her mouth. Solace from her bondmate.
Her mouth twisted downward. “My dragon knows.”
“Knows what?” Katya asked.
“Everything.” Erin’s nostrils flared. “In this particular instance, she knows this is far from the first patient I’ve edged across the veil when there was no hope of recovery and they were suffering.”
“Is that a common practice?” Johan angled a dark brow upward.
Erin nodded. “We all do it from time to time. It’s a kindness when no hope remains.” She stood straight. “
I’m ready to join the others.”
“They’re not far,” Katya said. She wanted to hug Erin but sensed the other woman was holding onto her dignity by a thread. Sometimes composure was more important than solace. Besides, Konstantin would sense her distress and console her.
“I can take us back,” Johan offered. “I need practice.”
“You both do,” Katya said. “Before we leave, there are a couple of things I want to say. Things for you to think about. I have no idea what will be left of this world, mostly because I don’t have a way of judging how much damage the serpents will do.
“Regardless, Earth will be changed from the world you knew. Changed so greatly as to be virtually unrecognizable. You will be called upon to make decisions—difficult ones such as Erin faced today. You cannot base those choices on who you used to be.”
Erin nodded, looking sad. “My dragon said exactly the same thing. She would have spirited us out of the airplane the moment the man started looking bad, long before I determined he had a terminal illness. Once I understood he was a dead man walking, my bondmate became almost uncontrollable. She was screaming at me so loud, it was hard to think.”
“She would,” Katya said. “Her job is to ensure your safety.”
“But the man didn’t pose a threat to me,” Erin pointed out.
“No, but your place is in the magical world, not the human one.”
“I have our spell ready to roll,” Johan said.
When Katya glanced his way, power shimmered around him. Damn, he was beautiful, as if he’d been born to wield the magic jumping to his call. Perhaps he was. She remembered a wise dragon shaman—the one who’d nurtured her seer magic—saying there were no coincidences.
She’d noticed Johan—and Erin—and been drawn to them in ways she didn’t understand. She hadn’t questioned her intuition, though. Nor had she fought her twin very hard when he’d floated the idea of drawing the two humans into their realm. Maybe somewhere an old dragon matchmaker was rubbing her hands together, having finally come up with bait that jolted Katya off her perpetually single pedestal.
Muffling a smile, she slipped in next to Johan and motioned Erin to his other side. Once they were in place, she said, “You said you wanted to control this casting. Take us home.”