Bonds That Break (The Havoc Chronicles Book 3) (15 page)

Thuanar roared, the severed leg falling from his mouth and once again began running away.

It was a testament to just how much gross stuff I had experienced in the past year that the sight of a severed leg didn’t make me pass out.

Now I was faced with a choice. Did I chase after Thuanar, or try to help Josiah keep from bleeding out and what would be almost certain death? Duty told me that I should chase after Thuanar, but my conscience wouldn’t let me leave a friend to die.

But hadn’t I just left my dad to die?

This was clearly different. With my dad there wasn’t anything I could do. He was unconscious and nothing I did would have made any difference. With Josiah I might still be able to save him. It was a slim chance, but with Berserker healing anything was possible.

I couldn’t leave him to die.

With one last frustrated look at the disappearing Thuanar, I ran over to Josiah. His ‘zerk was gone, and he looked strangely fragile and vulnerable in a heap on the ground. I pulled him straight and laid him on his back. Blood continued to spurt from the severed artery. I needed something to stop the bleeding.

Like all good cowboys, Josiah had been wearing a belt with a big buckle. I pulled the belt out and cinched it around his thigh attempting to slow down the flow of blood and give it a chance to clot.

And then I had a sudden idea. I knew Berserkers couldn’t regrow a lost limb, but maybe the healing powers would allow it to reattach?

I shot out a snare and used it to pick up his severed leg. It still had his shoe on and his mangled pant leg around it. I tried not to look at the jagged pieces of bone sticking out of the top as I brought it over.

I pulled off the ripped piece of his jeans and set his leg next to the stump it had once been attached to. Taking a deep breath, I attempted to line up the pieces of bone together as best I could, making sure they were touching. I could almost feel pain myself as the pieces of bone scraped together while I tried to align them as best I could. I used several more tendrils of snare to wrap around his leg and hold the splintered bones in place. When I was done, I loosened the belt on Josiah’s leg.

At first nothing seemed to happen. Blood began to flow from the wound, but that was to be expected. Then bits of white began form around the broken bones. I held my breath as tiny threads began to form around the muscles, slowly growing and knitting together.

It was working! His body was accepting the severed leg as still part of it. I had seen Berserkers – including myself – heal from wounds before. It had always been pretty quick – the magic healed the damage in a matter of minutes. This time the healing was much slower. Apparently this wound was taxing his healing abilities to their very limit and they were just able to make it work. It reminded me of a toy train I had as a child. When the batteries started to die, the train had difficulty making it up the hills on the tracks. Gradually the train grew slower and slower until it could no longer make it up the hills and got stuck.

I just hoped Josiah’s healing had enough left to get him over this last hill and fix his leg. I didn’t dare move him for fear of his leg falling off. The tissues were growing together, but the connection looked tenuous at best.

After five more minutes, the muscles had grown completely around the bone and I could no longer see it. That seemed like a good sign. I reached out my hand and felt for some veins on his ankle. It took me a minute, but I did feel a pulse. That meant that at least some of the blood vessels had been repaired.

Definitely a good sign.

I used my snare to lift him off the ground and took extra care to keep his wounded leg wrapped and supported. I’d worked too hard to have his leg just fall off now.

The journey back to the cathedral took a lot longer than it had taken us to get to Thuanar. With Josiah’s leg still healing, I didn’t want to risk the kinds of pressure and force that a full run would generate so I had to walk.

With each step, Josiah’s leg continued to heal a little bit at a time. It was different from how normal people healed – and much better. There was no scabbing or bruising, the skin and muscles simply regenerated layer by layer. By the time I was halfway back, the skin had completely grown over the muscle. His leg was still emaciated and it looked like he hadn’t used it in years, but it did seem strong enough that I could run without damaging him.

Once I was able to run again, in a matter of minutes I was back to the cathedral.

Shing and Miguel had laid Rhys and my dad side by side. I was extremely relieved to see that Rhys was awake and most of the large chunks of flesh taken out of his face and arms seemed to have filled in and healed.

But my dad wasn’t moving.

I gently set Josiah down and then knelt by my dad. I reached out and grabbed his hand. I had never really touched a dead person before and his skin felt warmer than I had expected.

Then I noticed his chest moving.

“He – he’s...” I couldn’t finish the sentence. I so badly wanted him to be okay that I could hardly get the words out of my mouth.

“He’s still alive,” said Rhys. He reached out a hand and I took it.

“How much longer does he have?” I asked.

Rhys squeezed my hand. “By all rights he should already be dead.”

“So maybe he’ll be okay?” I asked.

"Maybe," said Shing. "There's no way of knowing yet."

“He seems to be stable,” said Onaona, “but he’s unconscious and not responding.”

"We need to get him to a hospital," I said. "He needs a doctor."

Rhys nodded at Josiah. "It seems like more than one of us does. What happened to him?"

"Thuanar bit his leg off."

Rhys looked at both of Josiah's legs. At this point the severed leg had almost completely healed and with the exception of it being a bit thinner and paler, didn't look much different than the other leg.

He turned back to me and raised a questioning eyebrow.

I didn't feel like going into detail and reliving the grossness of reattaching his severed leg. There would be time for that later. For now I shrugged and simply said, "It got better."

Chapter 9

Loyalties and Priorities

The next several hours were a whirlwind of activity and emotion. The creepy-hoodie-guy assassin had woken up and snuck away while Josiah and I had been chasing down Thuanar. Given the fact that no one seemed to think I should track him down, I suspected that the others had let him go for fear of what I might do when I got back.

I guess after what I had done I couldn't really blame them. Besides, I was pretty sure hoodie-guy was just a hired gun who didn't know who was paying him or why they wanted me dead. Chasing after him would be purely for vengeance and would delay getting my dad the medical attention he needed.

We rushed back to Mexico City where Miguel helped us get dad into a hospital. The doctors were able to stitch up his shoulder without much difficulty. They ran a series of blood tests to see what kind of substance had been on the knife, but when the results came back the doctors were just as baffled as before. They had never come across this particular chemical, and were at a loss to explain what it did or how to stop its effects.

We couldn't exactly tell them what we knew, so there wasn't much they could do besides fix his shoulder. Once Dad was stable, we arranged to fly him back home.

I breathed a deep sigh when we landed in the Portland airport. It felt great to be back home again. I had spent so much time traveling over the past few months that I was really looking forward to spending some time sleeping in my own bed for a change.

To explain to my Mom why Dad was unconscious, we told her Dad had contracted some sort of parasite while we were traveling. I felt awful lying to her, and feeling her body shake as she sobbed into my shoulder only made the guilt worse. I had to remind myself that we were protecting her and that telling her the truth wouldn't change the outcome or help Dad.

We checked Dad into the hospital even though we knew there was very little the doctors could do for him besides keep him on an IV and make sure his basic bodily needs were taken care of. That would have to be enough for now.

Through it all, Rhys stood by me. I honestly wasn't sure how I would have gotten through this without him. He had completely recovered from his wounds within a few hours, but he was still not feeling quite himself and continued to get repeated headaches. I was also worried that he seemed more tired than usual. It was only a few months ago that he was this endless source of energy, but now he seemed exhausted all the time.

What, exactly, was wrong with him? It was hard for me to tell the extent of the problem because Rhys was so darn noble or stubborn – I hadn't decided which it actually was – that he would never let me know when he didn't feel good. Sometimes I could tell by watching him, but it was still mostly guesswork on my part.

Was he sick? Or maybe sick of me? Either option struck genuine horror into my heart. I had come to depend on Rhys. He was my best friend and my one love. I know it sounds like a ridiculous school-girl fantasy, but I really felt like he was my soul mate. He was what got me through the tough times and kept me grounded while I tried to navigate this new world of power, uncertainty, and death.

I also needed to do something about the state of my relationship with Amy. Over the summer while I had been hunting Margil, she had sent me many texts, emails, and left voicemail telling me all about what she had been doing over the summer and how much she missed having me around. I, however, had a difficult time talking with her since I really couldn't tell her much of what we were doing. I had to make it sound like we were traveling for fun when most of it had been tracking down Thuanar. Not exactly best-friend discussion fodder.

The situation was awkward and made me feel extremely uncomfortable. Amy was a perceptive girl and pretty good at knowing when I was lying to her. So over the summer I had let more time go between returning calls and texts and my comments became more vague as well.

I was certain Amy could feel something was wrong, and I was afraid that she was taking it personally. I was so afraid that I avoided the situation and let even more time pass without talking to her. Which of course just made everything worse.

Sometimes I even amazed myself with my genius self-sabotaging behavior.

Sigh.

So, I wasn't surprised when on the second day we had been back Amy sent me a rather snotty text asking if I was ever going to let her know I was back in town.

That was the problem of living in a small community – people talked. A lot.

Clearly someone I knew had spotted me over the past two days and mentioned something to Amy. I had fully intended to call her, but with the way things had been going, it just never seemed like the right time.

I texted her back and tried to soothe her hurt feelings, by explaining that my dad was having health problems. I couldn't blame her for being upset. I had been a pretty crappy friend over the past few months. It's kind of hard to keep friendships going while you are in the middle of trying to save the world from monsters they don't even know exist.

We set up a time to meet at my house later that afternoon. Dad was obviously still in the hospital and Mom didn't want to leave his side, so I would have the house to myself for several hours. A perfect place to rekindle my friendship with Amy.

I left Rhys and Shing at the hospital watching my dad while I went back home to meet Amy. Rhys understood that I needed some time with Amy, and Shing refused to leave my father's side. There was something going on there that I didn't quite understand. It seems that there was a time when my Dad had saved Shing's life and he felt indebted to him. That was several hundred years ago, but now that Dad's life was in jeopardy, Shing was honor-bound to return the favor.

I had just finished eating lunch when the doorbell rang. It was a half hour before Amy was supposed to arrive. I opened the door and instead of finding Amy, Josiah stood on the porch.

What was he doing here?

He held his cowboy hat in one hand, his head slightly bowed and a semi-embarrassed look on his face.

"Can we talk for a minute?" he asked.

"Uh, sure," I said. "My friend Amy is supposed to come by, but I've got a few minutes before she gets here."

I didn't feel comfortable bringing him in the house when no one was home so I stepped out on the porch and we sat down on the front steps.

"I, uh, just wanted to say thank-you," he said. He stared at his hands, and seemed rather nervous. "If it wasn't for you, I wouldn't have both my legs."

"No problem," I said. "It's no big deal. I've done this kind of thing before."

Josiah looked up at me, an expression of surprise on his face. Then he saw the grin on mine and realized I was joking. He grinned back.

"Yeah, that's the life of a Berserker," he said. "Reattaching limbs and slaughtering hordes of monsters."

"Well, it's not quite the Hollywood A-list celebrity lifestyle," I said, "but on the plus side we get to save the world and don't have to worry about critics panning our work."

"True."

Josiah took in a deep breath and turned to face me. When I saw the look in his eyes, I realized what was going on.

He liked me.

I guess I should have expected this. Let's face it, I really am the only potentially lasting relationship in the entire world for a Berserker. Josiah had about as close of a near death experience as a Berserker can have without actually, you know, dying. It is only natural that would examine his life and priorities and wonder if there was something more out there.

Which meant me.

I did my best not to let out an exasperated sigh. Rhys and I were together. Not because I was the only girl who would live long enough to be with him, but because we really loved each other. We had built a relationship and strengthened it through all the shared experiences we've had together.