Magic Breaks

10

ONCE THE MSDU took over the scene, they found the Order’s petition and released us. The last I saw of Nick Feldman, he was surrounded by soldiers. There was no getting to him. We had convinced the National Guard to give us a lift to one of the Pack offices. From there Robert and I had loaded Desandra, Derek, and Ascanio into a Pack vehicle and driven to the Keep. None of the three moved. They were still breathing, but we needed to get them to Doolittle.

I walked into the Keep two hours before dawn, covered in drying blood and limping. My face must’ve been terrible, because people moved out of my way.

The Keep was crowded. Every shapeshifter in the city who didn’t evacuate had traveled here.

Barabas came running down the stairs.

“Curran?”

“No word yet.”

“Julie?”

“Should be in Virginia by now.”

I turned around. The Keep had gone quiet around me. People stood in the hallways and on the stairs, waiting. I was the Consort. I was their alpha.

My voice rang out in the sudden silence. “Bring me Dorie Davis! Bring her to me alive!”

Everyone moved. People dashed in all directions, some human, some furry. The Keep sprang to life.

Behind me Robert roared, “We need a medic!”

Jim appeared as if by magic.

“I need to tell you some things. Come upstairs.”

I marched upstairs into one of the conference rooms and landed in a chair. Some time ago I had gone to a place where pain didn’t matter, but now it was coming back again, gnawing at me. Everything hurt. Jim followed me.

Thirty minutes later I finished talking.

Jim leaned forward and flashed his teeth. “Hugh fucked up.”

“Yes. He’d had the advantage, what with us being the guilty party, and he pissed it away by attacking the Order. He’ll still bring the People here, but now the city won’t help him.”

“We can use this,” Jim said. I could almost see the wheels in his head spinning.

“We need Dorie Davis.”

“I’ll find her,” Jim promised. “We can work with this, Kate. The MSDU and PAD were staying neutral, but this just changed the game.”

“Maxine called Nick the crusader Nikolas Feldman,” I said.

“Interesting last name,” Jim said.

“Is he related to Greg Feldman?”

“I don’t know,” Jim said.

“Nick showed up right after Greg was killed, he involved himself in the investigation, and he has the same last name. When this is over, I need you to find out if Greg Feldman had a younger brother or a son.” Because that would just be the cherry on the bloody sundae of the past twenty-four hours.

“Likely a brother. Greg was about forty when he died,” Jim said.

“No, Greg looked about forty. He looked like that for the last fifteen years I knew him. Who did you send to North Carolina?”

“A unit with three renders and our two best trackers. They’ll find him, Kate. No worries.”

If they didn’t, I would. I would look for Curran and I would not stop.

“I’ve got this from here,” Jim said. “Rest. I’ll send Doolittle up.”

Last time I checked, the good doctor was still in a wheelchair. It would be a lot easier for me to go down the stairs than for him to come up. “Not now. There are three sick people downstairs. He’ll be busy for a bit anyway.”

I still didn’t know if they would live or die.

Jim rose and leaned on the table, closing the distance between me and him. “You look like hell.”

“Thanks.” I felt like hell. I felt like I had walked through it, wading through blood and dragging a giant rock behind me.

“Go upstairs, take a shower, and sleep. You pulled us out of the quicksand. We’ve got a fighting chance now. You earned an hour of sleep.”

I forced the words out. My voice was hoarse. “A whole hour, oh boy!”

“An hour, then I’m sending Doolittle up. I need you to be at the top of your game. Go,” Jim said. “I’ll wake you up if the sky starts falling.”

He left.

I sat alone in the chair. I felt completely empty, like someone had drained me of all anxiety, fear, and anger. It was still there, simmering under the surface, but fatigue had taken over.

I was so tired. My God, I was so, so tired.

I covered my face and waited for the tears. I’d brought this on us. It would’ve happened eventually. The Pack had grown and Roland wanted to limit its power. But my presence had accelerated the process. I had watched as the entire Atlanta chapter of the Order was slaughtered. I wanted to cry just to let the pain bleed out of me, but my eyes were dry.

I would’ve given anything to have Curran walk through the door behind me. I could imagine him doing it. He would walk in, put his arms around me, and it would all be better.

I stared at the door.

Please walk through it. Please.

The door remained shut.

This wasn’t the way it was supposed to be. When we prepared to fight d’Ambray, we always assumed we’d be together. We would be a team. I hadn’t realized how much stronger that belief had made me and how much I had leaned on it until he was gone. Now I felt like my crutch had been jerked out from under me. Well, fate had once again confirmed that when you assume, you make an ass of you and me.

I leaned back and rested my head on the chair’s back. It’d been twenty-four hours since I slept. My side hurt. My left arm was going numb. Breaking Hugh’s ward had cost me. My ribs hurt.

So tired . . .

The Keep would hold against anything Hugh would muster. Of course, it would hold. Even if Hugh had brought every vampire in the People’s stable, it would hold.

I needed to drag myself up and go down to the third floor to see if Doolittle had an update. Just another minute to rest and I would get up . . .

• • •

THE PLAIN ROLLED out before me, far into the distance. It looked like some magical giant had cut the world in half: the bottom was a vast field, the blades of dried grass frosted white with snow, and above it, endless, painted with the pink and orange of sunrise, the sky soared. A colossal tower rose from the grass, silhouetted against the sky, impossibly tall.

The wind stirred my hair. It smelled of wheat.

The clouds churned above the tower.

Anxiety drowned me. I gritted my teeth.

A man strode toward me through the grass. He wore black pants and a fisherman’s sweater of undyed gray wool. Ice crunched under his shoes. Magic shrouded his face. It emanated from him, controlled, but too powerful to be hidden, folded around him the way a condor might fold his wings when not in flight.

A voice rolled through the field, lifting the dead grass. “Child . . .”

I jerked upright.

The door of the room swung open and Doolittle rolled in. He looked the way he usually looked, a black man in his midfifties, his hair touched by gray, his eyes intelligent and kind.

“I told Jim not to bother you.”

“First, it’s not a bother, it’s my job. And with you, young lady, it’s also a challenge. Every time you return to the Keep I wonder what new and inventive way you’ve found to injure yourself.” Doolittle looked at me. “Unless you’re implying that my chair is somehow preventing me from doing my work. In that case, I can . . .”

“No, it’s not what I meant. I just thought stairs would be inconvenient.”

“That’s why I have interns. They carried me up here. I thought of commissioning a palanquin. Something understated.”

“With silk and crimson velvet?”

“And golden tassels.” Doolittle rolled forward. “Then I could be transported in a manner appropriate to my vast experience and wisdom. Off with the shirt.”

Arguing with Doolittle was like trying to block the tide from coming in. I pulled off the sweater the witches had given me. Ow. Ow. “It was the guards, wasn’t it?”

“In all fairness, they let you sleep for two hours before they became concerned and called for help.”

I stripped down to my sports bra.

Doolittle sighed.

I looked down. My entire left side had gone blue and purple. “I think I have a cracked rib.”

He examined my side, whispering under his breath. “I think you have three.”

Ow.

I couldn’t avoid the question any longer. “How are they?”

“Derek and Desandra will live,” Doolittle said. “They lost their teeth, nails, and hair and had to have several blood transfusions, but now the poison is out of their bodies. They’re weak, but that’s nothing a few good meals and some rest won’t fix.”

“Ascanio?”

“He’s eating soup downstairs.”

I blinked. “You’re kidding me.”

“No. And trust me, right now he has much bigger problems. His alpha and his mother are both in the Keep, so he’s getting chewed out in stereo. It’s quite frightening. No more questions until I’m done.”

Doolittle put two fingers into his mouth and whistled. The door swung open and Agatha, one of Curran’s and my guards, stuck her head into the room.

“Wheel my cart in, please. I need water, and the Consort needs a fresh change of clothes.”

• • •

I PULLED ON my T-shirt. Agatha and I had a mild argument over Evdokia’s sweater. I wanted to put it back on and she pointed out that it was filthy and smelled of unnatural and very noxious things. We reached a compromise. She would have it washed and dried to get the wendigo guts off it and then I would put it back on. The witches told me to wear it. I saw no reason not to. My side still hurt, but the pain had subsided to a dull ache. I sat next to Doolittle. Agatha had brought us some iced tea and honey. The guards had made the tea, so for once I was safe from falling asleep immediately after medical treatment. Doolittle had a bad habit of lacing his tea with sedatives. According to him, it saved him from arguing with hard cases about taking their prescribed rest.

We sipped our tea. This was the calm before the storm, and I welcomed it. It was selfish, but there was something about Doolittle’s presence that steadied me.

“Who healed Ascanio?” Doolittle asked quietly.

“Hugh d’Ambray.”

“The same man who healed me when my neck was broken?”

“Yes.” The injury had left Doolittle’s legs paralyzed, but without Hugh he would’ve died. I never knew why Hugh did it. He asked me if I wanted Doolittle to live, I said yes, and he pulled Doolittle back from the brink of death.

Doolittle frowned and drank his tea. “Ascanio is seven pounds lighter than his last weigh-in, which was less than a week ago. Hugh didn’t just mend bones. He forced Ascanio’s body to absorb the bone matrix and build entirely new tissue.”

“Could you do that?”

“Yes, but it would take me hours. Possibly days. How long did you say he worked on him?”

“Maybe six or seven minutes.”

Doolittle’s face turned serious. “Let me show you something.”

He looked down. I looked down too, at his feet in white socks.

Doolittle made fists with his toes. I blinked to make sure I wasn’t seeing things. No, he was making fists with his toes.

“You’re getting better.” The relief washed over me. I was drowning in grief and I had no defenses against it.

“It appears to be so. It is possible that in a few years I may even walk again.”

I hugged him.

He hugged me back gently.

Something hot and wet slid over my cheeks. I realized I was crying.

“Oh no,” Doolittle murmured and patted my hair. “No, no, none of that now. If you do that, I’m going to tear up and I’m too old for that.”

I let him go and sat down. He cleared his throat.

“This chair, Kate, it isn’t a bad thing.”

“But you can’t walk.”

He raised his hand. “Hear me out. Before this injury, I had never been seriously ill. I’m a physician who understood what it’s like to be sick but had never personally felt the impact of a life-threatening disease or experienced a significant injury. This chair made me a better physician. It has given me a new perspective. Tell me, when you see me rolling toward you in the hall, do you see me or do you see the chair?”

“I see you.” Of course I saw him. He was still Doolittle.

He smiled. “My point exactly. I’ve come to believe that the word ‘disabled’ is a misnomer. ‘Disabled’ implies that you are broken beyond use. No longer functional. I’m quite abled. I may no longer participate in field operations, but I’m a better teacher now. I require additional arrangements to negotiate a flight of stairs, but I stop to smell the proverbial roses more often. I’m fortunate to have bowel control, and while my bladder requires occasional use of a catheter, I refuse to be defined by which functions my body can or cannot perform well. Quite frankly, I’m more than the sum of my physical parts. I’ve come to terms with my new life and achieved personal happiness. Whether or not I will recover pales in comparison. Does that make sense?”

“It does.”

I poured him more tea and poured myself some.

“I should’ve been dead,” he said. “I have no prior experience with this specific injury on which to base my judgment, so I don’t know if this partial recovery comes because Lyc-V is repairing my body or if this is the result of what Hugh did, an extended residual healing. I believe that every time the magic wave comes, it heals me a little more, but it’s not something I can measure. Ascanio should be dead as well.”

“But he isn’t.” I still couldn’t quite believe it. As soon as I had a free minute, I’d go down to the med ward and beat the shit out of Ascanio for his wendigo heroics. Assuming there was anything left of him after Andrea and Martina were done with him.

Maybe I was dreaming. Maybe all this was just wishful thinking.

“He’s remarkable,” Doolittle said.

“Hugh?”

“Yes. I’m a powerful medmage, but he is truly gifted.” Doolittle looked at me. “He’s a miracle worker.”

“Sometimes. Mostly he’s a butcher.”

“I’m trying to understand why.”

I sighed. “Voron, my adoptive father, found Hugh on the street in England. Hugh was seven years old. His mother died when he was four and somehow he ended up begging instead of being sent through the system. The homeless fed him, because he could cure them. When Voron found him, he was borderline feral.

“Voron took the boy to Roland, who determined that Hugh had an enormous magic reservoir at his disposal. His raw power is staggering, and Roland saw an opportunity. At the time Voron served as Roland’s warlord, but Roland knew he would need a replacement. Voron had no magic power. He was a supreme swordsman and strategist, but his time was at an end. Magic was growing stronger and stronger and Roland realized he would need someone who could use it. Hugh was in the right place at the right time. Roland gave him to Voron and my adoptive father forged him into a general the way one would forge a sword. He did an excellent job and that’s how Hugh became the lovely psychopath we all know and want to kill.”

Doolittle’s eyes widened. “He could’ve been anything. He could’ve saved thousands over his lifetime. The amount of good he could’ve done. What kind of twisted mind would look at that miracle child and make him into a killer?”

“That’s how Roland works. He sees the hidden potential in people.”

Doolittle drew back. “That’s not potential.”

“Yes, it is. Hugh enjoys what he does. He’s frighteningly good at it.”

Doolittle shook his head.

I rose. “Look out the window.”

Doolittle rolled his chair up to the window and looked down at the courtyard for a moment.

“What did you see?”

“People working.”

I turned to the window, glanced down briefly, and then turned my back to it. “Left tower, four people, two men on top working on the scorpio, a woman in the second-floor window with a crossbow, a man on the balcony. Courtyard left to right: two women in the far left corner working on a Jeep; Jim, talking to Yolanda and Colin, who are his trackers; a man and two teenagers carrying beams, probably to reinforce the gate. The man has a knee injury and favors his left leg.”

“Three teenagers,” Doolittle said. “One caught up while you were talking.”

“This is how I was trained. It’s part of the skill set I needed to survive. This is what I do. If I had to, I could go through that courtyard with a sword and cut my way through them. It would cost me, but at the end I would kill or maim all of them and on some deep level I would enjoy it, because I would be doing what I’m good at, what I’ve been trained to do. Hugh is like me. You look at him and see the special child who was diverted from his path. I look at him and see a man who revels in what he does. Hugh could’ve healed thousands, but he would’ve never been as happy as when he slaughtered the Order’s knights in their own chapterhouse.”

“It’s not always about one’s personal happiness. Sometimes it has to be about the obligation we have to others. A duty to pay back for the gift you were given.”

“Is that why you became a physician?”

Doolittle sighed. “I was already a physician, a very freshly minted one, but still a physician, when I realized I had medical magic. It came together with the shapeshifting. That last bit I had kept to myself. I wasn’t sure what to think or how to handle it. At that point, medical magic was new, and to have someone with the capability who already had medical knowledge was very rare. I was one of two physicians with medmage abilities in our graduating class. Jim’s father, Eric Shrapshire, was the other. We both found ourselves in a delicate position. There was a lot of pressure to go into research. We both received offers to go private, catering to a single family on an exclusive basis. A lot of the offers were very lucrative and I was seriously considering some of them.”

“So why didn’t you take them?”

“One night Eric called me and told me that he’d made up his mind. He’d watched a documentary on loupism. It affected him deeply and he realized this was his calling. In the chaos of post-Shift Atlanta, he realized that shapeshifters, with their regeneration and resistance to diseases, would be overlooked. The attention of the medical community would center on human diseases, because regular humans would be the most vulnerable. Normal people saw shapeshifters as monsters, and monsters would be the last on the list no matter how much they needed help. He felt he could make a real difference by working to aid shapeshifters.” Doolittle looked up at me. “He didn’t know I was one of the ‘monsters.’ He saw people in need being neglected and he chose to help them. He felt it was his duty, while I was selfishly trying to select the best combination of benefits and money. I decided then that I could do no less.”

Jim’s father had died for what he believed in. One day he was brought a child who’d gone loup and committed multiple murders. Despite this, he had hidden her rather than euthanizing her, as required by law. The crime was discovered, he was convicted, and in the first week of his jail sentence, another inmate stabbed him to death. Years later Jim had tracked down his father’s killer and made him pay.

“I had joined the Pack,” Doolittle said. “Took a new name. Beatrice, Aunt B, had vouched for me. She and my wife had been best friends.”

“I didn’t know you were married.”

“She passed away a long time ago. In another life.”

“If you hadn’t become the monster doctor, would you still practice medicine?” I asked.

“Yes.”

“Hugh and I would still practice murder. We’re two sides of the same coin.”

“Exactly,” Doolittle said. “The opposite sides. Why did you choose to work for the Guild?”

“Partially because I was hiding in plain sight.”

“And?”

It was my turn to sigh. “Because I wanted to be happy with what I did with my life. I had done some things when I was a child. I don’t blame myself for them. I did them because the adult in my life directed me to do them and praised me when I succeeded. But when I grew up, looking back at what I had done became difficult. I wanted to help someone for a change. The Guild let me choose which jobs I took, and I got to be ‘the good guy,’ if only for a while.”

“And that’s the crucial difference between you and Hugh. He’s an aggressor, and you’re the protector.” Doolittle leaned forward. “You could’ve been a hired killer or someone’s private weapon. Instead you chose to protect everyone around you. It’s as natural to you as breathing and I selfishly count myself to be very lucky to benefit from that, even if that urge sometimes takes you too far.”

The way he said “too far” threw me right back to a few months ago, when he had come to after Hugh had healed him. I sat down so we would be on the same level. This had to be said. I just didn’t know how to say it. I decided to just barrel right through it. “You don’t have to worry. I know how you feel about my particular brand of magic. I hope it never comes to that, but if it does, I won’t pull you back from death like I did Julie.”

What I had done to Julie wasn’t healing. She didn’t know it, but it made her unable to refuse a direct order from me. I remembered the fear in Doolittle’s eyes when he regained consciousness and thought I had taken away his free will with my magic. Sometimes I dreamed about that, too.

Doolittle froze for a painful second. His voice was quiet. “Was I that easy to read?”

“You had just come back from death,” I said.

“I meant no offense. When I spoke about going too far, I meant that your urge to protect sometimes ends with you being hurt. You take on too much. But we might as well get this out in the open. I appreciate everything you’re willing to do, but I won’t live as anyone’s slave. My family has been legally free since 1865 and I won’t surrender my freedom no matter how benevolent of a master I’ll get. I would rather be dead.”

“I understand,” I told him.

We sat quietly for a few long moments.

Doolittle reached over and touched my hand. “Your brand of magic is . . .”

“Evil?”

“I was going to say frightening. I don’t fear you. I don’t fear who you want to be. I do fear who you might become in spite of yourself. But you don’t need to be defined by your magic or an old man’s fears. There is a good word for the kind of person you are—honorable. It might be old-fashioned, but it fits. I’m glad I have the privilege of knowing you.”

I forced a smile. “Even if I don’t follow your prescriptions and you have to drug me with your iced tea to keep me off my feet?”

Doolittle smiled. “Even so. Speaking of prescriptions, you are to stay off your feet for as long as you can.”

“Absolutely.” I got up. “I’ll open the door for you.”

Doolittle growled. “At least have the decency to wait to ignore me until I leave.”

“Ehh, sorry.” I held the door open for him.

“My life would be much easier without so many hard cases in it,” he grumbled.

“You love us, Doc. You know you do. We keep you busy. Without us, there’s no guessing what sort of trouble your idle hands would lead you into.”