Healing Hands (The Queen of the Night series Book 2) (24 page)

“Not much…but I’ve seen the two of you dancing in the grass. You’ve got flowers in your hair, and he’s wearing those horns on his head.”

“Horns?”

“You know, from the night of the mothers…” His voice didn’t catch when he mentioned that night.
Maybe we were getting stronger, moving on…maybe
.

“You mean the buck’s antlers,” I clarified.

“Yeah, he’s wearing those things, and you’re laughing and he’s chasing you.”

“When, I mean, am I like, fifty?”

“No, it’s soon…real soon.” 

I brightened a little.

“Listen, I need your help. I found one of those spies. It’s a gnome.”

“Okay…”

“I didn’t tell Fiona. What’s she gonna do, yell at it?  Dariene said her power to break the compulsion doesn’t work on gnomes. It overheard Fiona talking to me. It knows I have magic. You know what has to be done, but only you, Evan and I understand what I can do. I don’t think we can tell anyone else…not yet, anyway.” 

“Are you sure there’s no other way?  With Mooney we knew he was evil. He’d confessed to murder and his skin melted when you put the silver chain around his neck. We don’t know anything about this gnome.”

“We only have until nightfall to figure it out. The gnome will call her as soon as the moon rises. What if we put a silver chain on him?  If his skin melts, will you help me?”

I considered this. He was right. We’d all agreed not to start another clan-wide panic by keeping Corey’s magical status and his terrifying power a secret. We figured Fiona would want to tell Duncan, Rose would tell Pat, and they might tell someone…  If too many people knew, in a town like this, soon everyone would find out. Then there’d be panic, and Arianrhod demanding his head on a platter.

Corey continued, “I need help. I can’t do it alone. First, I need to get there.”

“Where is it?”

“It’s in Fiona’s backyard. It’s in her personal garden. I figure Arianrhod placed one here and one there to spy on everything the MacDougall family does. She probably used to have more spies, but now there are so few of us left, she only needs the two.”

“Okay, so you want me to get in trouble again by driving with just my learner’s permit.”

“It’s for a good cause.”

“It’s not like I have any social life to lose by being grounded.” 

I’d hoped Evan would be back for the May Day celebration, but it was a mere week away. “Okay, what else do you need?”

“If we go through with it, I’ll need help with the body.”

“Oh yeah, I guess you will. All right, then. Let’s go before it gets dark.”

***

I distracted the gnome behind the sugar snap trellis. Corey threw a silver chain around his neck. Instantly his skin smoldered under the thin chain. The smell of burning chemicals emanated from his neck.

“What’s this about?” the gnome yelled at us.

“You work for Arianrhod,” I stated simply. “Have you killed for her?”

“Well, I talked that Fiona woman into jumping into the river, but that was ages ago,” he shrugged.

I nodded to Corey.

He touched the gnome on the forehead. It was over that quickly.

I healed his hand and went to the shed to get a couple of shovels. I hoped we could bury the body deep behind the corn, but Corey was scratching his neck.

“What is it?”

“It’s the necklace. It itches when I get sweaty and dirty.”

“Well, take it off. There’s no one out here to see you and I want to get back by nightfall. Your scratching is slowing us down.” 

He nodded, put it in his pocket and we got to work. We were nearly done, when someone slipped in the nearby woods. We looked toward them. Dusk had started to set and I couldn’t see anything under the tree line. We both dropped our shovels and ran over there, searching for a full ten minutes, but we couldn’t find a trace of whom or what had seen us.

Chapter Thirty-One

Vengeance

We returned to the garden and finished packing in the dirt. I put the shovels back in the shed and we headed back to the car. I wasn’t worried about running into Fiona; she’d be working at the store for several more hours, but we’d wasted time wandering the woods. Officially twilight, the sun had disappeared behind the western mountains but there was still enough light to get back. In a half hour, the light would be gone, though. I didn’t want to be out after dark, and not just because my learner’s permit was only valid during the day. Motioning for Corey to get into the passenger side of the car, I started to fish the keys out of my pocket. That’s when I spotted, out of the corner of my eye, a shadowy figure oozing suspiciously off the cabin’s front porch. My stomach plummeted.

Madison swayed with confidence and maybe a bit of mania as she walked toward us. My eyes didn’t register the expression on her face. They were riveted on the semi-automatic pistol in her right hand. The firm voices of Officer Sophie and Officer Dave echoed in my head.
Do the math
. You can move at least as fast as your opponent. If they’re brandishing a knife or similar weapon, the weapon will only move as fast as they can swing their arm. Besides, it’s much less likely you would die of a stab wound than a bullet wound.

You will never outrun a speeding bullet. If faced with an enemy armed with a firearm, quit. Don’t fight back and hope against all hope you survive the ordeal. I couldn’t fathom Madison’s intentions, but I knew what my response would be. Corey needed to understood, too.

He’d started inching closer to me as soon as he saw the gun. We had both instinctively put the car between us and Madison. It wouldn’t protect us, but we’d both been compelled to move behind it anyway.

I whispered to him, since he now stood next to me, shoulder to shoulder. “Remember what Officer Dave said…do what she says.”

“But…” he started to argue.

I cut him off, hissing, “No!  She might be hypnotized again. Besides, you can’t kill a human, or you’d be no better than them.”  Madison had reached us and there was no opportunity to say anything else.

“Let’s go for a ride, shall we?”  She definitely had a crazed look about her.

“Where are we going?”  I didn’t get in the car…not yet.

“…To visit a friend, she’s been waiting to meet
him
for a long time.” 

Madison had been the creature lurking in the woods, but while we ran toward them, she ran away and hid on the porch. She knew Fiona’s work schedule as well as I did. We were completely isolated out here, and she wanted us to go to the sacred meadow, where we’d be even more alone.

“Corey, get in the back seat…and don’t fidget.”  It was the only instruction I could give him without openly revealing the mysterious power in his hands. As soon as we were all crammed into the sub-compact vehicle, he’d have a hard time refraining from placing hands on her and microwaving off her face. If microwaving was what his hands did, I still wasn’t sure. Until I believed she wasn’t being compelled to behave this way, I wouldn’t bear the responsibility of taking her life.

Besides, she’d seen his aura without the stone bracelets, but she might not have seen what he did to the gnome. It happened so very fast. Corey hesitated for a moment, but then flipped the passenger seat forward and climbed into the back seat. Madison pushed the seat back and got in the car, so I did, too. I drove it to the parking lot we always used. Still being urged by the gun in her hand, we all got out and started to walk along the path toward the sacred temple.

It occurred to me that anything I said might send her off the deep end, but when the opening for the clearing was just ahead, I had to ask. “Madison, the curse Arianrhod placed on you was lifted. Why are you doing this?”

She cackled. Her big toothy grin made her look even more insane. “I don’t need to be compelled by her Grace to kill
you
, Margaret MacDougall.” She shook her head at the idea. “You ruined any hope I had of improving my pathetic life. Before he met you, I had a chance with him. The Queen urged me to pursue a union with the Great Seer. She said my genes would complement his and create a powerful new line of Great Seers in the clan. All I had to do was get him into bed; the Queen would make sure our union bore fruit. Once you came to town, I lost my chance. Buach told me about the two of you. Perfect Harmony, as if!  He could have had perfect harmony with me. I went to the Queen and told her what the two of you had done. Do you know what she said?”

I shook my head.

“She said she didn’t care. She said the continuation of the Stewart line was just as good as a merger between Keach and McLoed!  It’s all about the gene pool with her. Then I saw what
he
did today.” She indicated Corey. “He really is the Destroyer. I realized a way to salvage my plans. She wants his head more than anything else. She’s been trying to keep him from being born for over a hundred years!  Of course, she’s been around for more than 5,000 so…”  Madison started to rant in a shrieking, maniacal voice. “So I’ll make a deal. If I give her your brother’s corpse, she’ll grant me what I want.”

“What is that?” I hated to ask because I really didn’t want to know how her mind worked.

“She’ll compel Evan to come back. She’ll make him want to be with me, and when I carry the next generation of the Great Seer line, everyone will respect me. They’ll care for me. I’ll have status in this dump…the biggest fish in the tiniest pond. Eventually I’ll even have a child to love me. All I have to do is get rid of you two…”

I scanned her aura one more time to make sure no dark walnut brown haze existed.
Nope, Madison really was this crazy
.
Now what?
I certainly couldn’t mention how Brandon would father the next line of Great Seers, not Evan. She’d really go off the deep end if I recited clan law about how the Great Seer couldn’t have children, and how his oldest sibling would father the next generation. We emerged into the clearing and she skipped behind us, waving the gun around her head.

“We’re here!  We’re here!” she exclaimed in a sing-song voice.

She pulled an amulet out from under her shirt. She clasped it with the hand which didn’t hold the gun, and started to chant.
She’s calling the goddess, it’s now or never
.

She stopped chanting. “She’s on her way. There’s only one thing left to do.”  She raised the gun up to shoulder height. She aimed it directly at me. I had no brilliant ideas for escape, so I faced death instead. I raised my chin in defiance, but then, at the last second, she turned the gun on Corey, and all thoughts flew out of my head.

“NNNOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!”  I threw my body sideways to place it between my brother and the trajectory of the fired bullet. Before I could reach him, something else reached me. It felt like being smashed by a truck. In a classic football tackle, Evan had come running from out of thin air to tackle both Corey and me, simultaneously. I landed awkwardly on Corey and the breath whooshed out of me. For a moment, my lungs wouldn’t expand. Dark spots grew in front of me, but mercifully, I gasped a breath, vaguely aware of Madison shrieking and screaming as if she’d been the one shot.

She smacked both sides of her head with flat palms in a vicious self-attack and screamed, “No…not you!” She’d stopped firing the gun and that was all I needed.

I checked on Corey first. He started to move around on his own so he was okay. I looked to discover what had knocked me to the ground.

My heart shattered into a million pieces. I refused to take another breath.

Gravity pulled Evan off me, because he couldn’t move under his own power. He’d saved us both. From the amount of blood gushing from his chest, he’d clearly given his own life to do it, and suddenly, Madison’s screams echoed in my head, as if they’d come from my mouth. One of the millions of thoughts bombarding me in that fraction of a second wanted to scream at him for not contacting me for two weeks. Another one wanted to yell at him for always running to my rescue. A lot of them just wanted me to hold him in my arms. Thankfully, the thought which won my internal battle was the one that wanted, no, needed, to heal him.

I pushed Corey the rest of the way away from me to scramble over to where Evan lay and assess the situation. The bullet had missed the heart but had torn a major artery. Blood spewed out of the wound like a fountain. The bullet had entered the body at a weird angle, probably because Evan was in motion at the time of impact. After tearing the artery and traveling through the right lung it had lodged itself under the right collarbone. Unfortunately, it nicked the jugular vein and was still there, forcing the tear to remain open.

I’d never studied anything remotely like this. Whenever new blood needed to be generated, Fiona took over the case. Blood regeneration was such a complicated process: white cells, red cells, platelets, plasma, proteins, clotting agents and other things I couldn’t even name make up blood cells. I might be able to force the torn flesh to repair itself, but would that be enough?  He’d already lost so much blood. He’d fallen into unconsciousness and his face was drained of color.
Don’t think about that
, I scolded myself.
Get to work
, I ordered.
Do what you can
.

Corey will undoubtedly be calling Fiona as soon as he extricates himself from the grass
. I needed to calm down and focus.
What had the three ancestors told me
? 
Sing
, a little voice said…a
nd love
, said another. I drew a deep breath and began to sing. As I did I used my gift to save my mate. I was the eagle, soaring on the wind of the music in my head and clasping onto him for all I was worth.

“Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound, that saved a wretch like me.” 
Start with the artery closest to the heart. Save my heart first.
“I once was lost, but now am found. Was blind, but now I see…” 
Is it possible to build a new tube of flesh to go around the bullet so the circulatory network remains intact?
  “…was blind, but now I see…Amazing Grace…” 
Don’t think about how bad this is, just keep singing.

***

Corey was up on his feet.
Thank Goddess.
Instead of pulling out his phone, he issued a primal battle scream and charged the still frantic Madison. She took off running. He followed her.
Okay, I’ve got no support. I’m gonna have to do this by myself.
I couldn’t stop to make the call, or even stop to shout at Corey, Evan was too critical.

***

I had no idea how much time had passed. Shaking with the effort, and feeling like I could lie down next to Evan and sleep for a week, I’d stopped the bleeding and repaired the lung. He was taking shallow breaths on his own. Darkness had settled over the meadow. I reached for my phone and called Fiona, explaining the situation in detail, one Healer to another.

“He needs a transfusion.”

“I think that’s the only way,” I concurred, settling his head on my lap and brushing the hair out of his closed eyes.
Would I ever see them again
?  He hadn’t regained consciousness and I figured that was just as well, without any way to give him blood.

“I’m on my way.”

***

There was movement up ahead. My head snapped up to face the noise. I hadn’t given a thought to the danger of remaining unprotected in the meadow after dark. It didn’t matter; Evan couldn’t be moved right now.

Within moments, Corey emerged from the trees and into the meadow. He was surrounded by Sidhelas, looking as tired as I felt. He came over to me and plopped down in the grass. I smelled burning flesh again. I took his hands, one at a time, and healed the palms.

“What did you do?”

He shrugged. “It doesn’t matter, she got away.”

“Madison ran away, you say?”

“No, Arianrhod flew away. I couldn’t catch her,” he grumbled.

“So what happened to Madison?”

“She died. She tripped on a root and tumbled over the mountainside. I couldn’t catch her either.”

“How’d you hurt your hands, then?”

“Well, I got one good grab at Arianrhod, but she twisted out of my grasp and, like I said, she flew away.”

“How come you didn’t get killed?” I asked, incredulous that he’d attacked the goddess.

“These guys saved me,” he waved a hand to indicate the fairy lights. “Plus Dariene was the one who really made a difference. She challenged Arianrhod head-to-head. This probably isn’t the time for the story, though. How’s he doing?”

“It’s too soon to say,” I choked back a sob.

Corey took hold of my hand and squeezed it. He had
seen
Evan and me together in the future, but that was before Evan had taken a bullet for me.
The future can always be changed
. I had to accept that we might never dance in the grass.

***

When Fiona arrived she was all business. The fairy lights helped us get Evan on the altar so she could use it as a treatment table. I lay down next to him on it with my feet pointing toward his head. I already knew we were the same blood-type, O positive. I wanted to be his donor. Fiona hooked up the tubes. Within minutes, I had joined him in unconsciousness.