Shadows of Falling Night

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

Brotherhood safe house, Kars, Turkey

“I don’t want to live without a body!” Ellen said.

Or thought she said; the words came out as a very faint croak, and she wanted to scream with the sheer pain they caused. For a while she was mostly conscious of pain, an infinite number of different kinds. After a while the general weakness and the feeling she was made out of hollow straws and the ache in her head and the savage sore throat gave way to panic at the way her sight was blurred. The sword had hit her in the neck, razor-sharp and driven by skilled, hate-filled strength. Her throat must have been cut almost to the spine, maybe through it, instant massive exsanguination and death within a second. How could it have damaged her eyes and left her alive?

“You have a body, my darling,” Adrian’s voice said. “Just…not the same one. But a body of flesh and bone.”

Wait a minute, that must be true. If I was in Adrian’s memory palace, I’d feel fine. Perfect. I feel like absolute verge-of-death crap. And…disconnected? As if I were wearing something too tight?

Infinitely gentle hands eased a tube into her mouth. “Here, take some water. Sleep.”

When she woke again her first thought was: Oh, shit.

Cheba was sitting beside her bed, watching a telenovela on her tablet. When she saw wakefulness, she turned and called: “Jefe!”

Adrian came in, smiling at her with a constraint in it. She could see better this time, though her eyes felt grainy and dry.

“Oh, Adrian,” she said. “Did you do what I think you did?”

The voice came out; it was a hoarse rasping whisper, as if her vocal cords had been idle for months…which they had, she suspected. She couldn’t move; an attempt to raise her hand merely made her fingers flutter for a little. But she was conscious of her body in a way she never had been before, as if she could feel the cells dividing and dividing again; as if she was riding in a car, and the car was her, and the stalled engine was just beginning to turn over again. The room around her was plain institutional beige, but it glowed with potentiality. She could feel, feel…everything.

“This is weird,” she whispered. “I’m weaker than a kitten, but I feel…I feel as if I could squeeze the world like putty.”

Adrian sat beside the bed and raised her head again. This time there was lukewarm chicken soup in the feeder he put between her lips; she tried to suck (and why did she move her tongue so carefully around her incisors?), and some of it dribbled down the side of her mouth. The rest went into her throat, and it tasted inexpressibly good. She could feel it all the way down, as if it were warming up her very being.

“Let…me see,” she said, the rasp a little less painful.

“Very well,” he said, not trying to argue.

He reached to the bedside table and held up the mirror for her to see. The face looked…

Like a concentration camp survivor, she thought. No, like someone on life support since I…killed her. Well, victor and the spoils. God, this is…Do I want this? But consider the alternative…

And underneath the damage of months in coma, it was a perfectly good face. Not the mostly North European one she’d been born with; smaller-boned, high cheeks and tilted eyes, small delicate nose and lips, raven hair cropped close in a hospital cut and skin the color of ivory just touched with amber.

And eyes black-dark, with tiny yellow flecks swimming in them.

“It’s a good thing I’m so feeble. I can’t freak out, I’m too tired. Later.”

Adrian laid her head back down and took her hand between his; strength seemed to pour from it.

“We won,” he said, leaning close so that she could meet his eyes. “You did. We saved Tbilisi; a million and a half men and women and children live because of you. You deserve this new chance.”

Standing behind him, Cheba said dubiously:

“Is it really her, jefe?”

“Yes. Her persona, her memories and all they made of her. The body…carries it. I didn’t know if it would work, there was not time to do anything but…hurl her, throw her essence, hoping that Arnaud had remembered rightly. But it worked.”

“Well, there’s a massive oversimplification,” Ellen croaked, and closed her eyes, trying to feel around the interior of herself.

It was a jumble. She could remember everything up until the sword hit, even her last thoughts. But she felt not merely ill, but odd. As if she were seeing the sensation of touch, or as if sensations she had no names for were crowding in, demanding attention, or as if she had grown two new arms and ears on her feet. When she opened those slanted, gold-flecked eyes again she motioned towards the door with a glance. The Mexican girl smiled at her, nodded, and slipped out. She closed the door behind her gently.

But it isn’t just that I want some privacy with my husband, Cheba, though I do. I could smell you. Smell your blood.

And Cheba smelled so good.