Keir (6 page)

“Quin, it isn’t your fault. It’s a miracle he’s survived this long. There’s so much scar tissue under his skin, and every bone in his body seems to have been broken at least once. He should’ve died a long time ago and I think he’s had enough now. He’s ready to go.”

“He’s so young.”

“Quin.” Surei placed a hand on her shoulder. “I know it doesn’t seem fair, but you can’t save everyone. Let him go.” Surei glanced up at the monitor and Quin followed her gaze. The heartbeat had started to falter and brain activity was almost nonexistent. “It won’t be long now. You can stay with him, if you want to. I’ll be back in a moment.”

Alone at his bedside, molten fury rose within her at the injustice of it all. The surge of anger sent sparks dancing across her skin and she clenched her fists, forcing the flickers of energy back under control. Anger was pointless. The medical team had done all they could. Only a miracle could save him now.

Grief and remorse dispersed her initial rage, and she threaded her fingers through his, willing him to hold on, to fight one last time. Nothing stirred the deathly composure of his expression and his fingers lay limp within her own.

She had a sudden, startling memory of Gethyon, of seeing her son laid out on a hospital bed, so still it seemed life had already fled. He had been just six years old then, lost in a coma. But she had been able to bring him back from that.

“I’m so sorry, Keir.”

Bowing her head, she touched his face, intent on making her farewells. Instead she felt something stir within him, a flicker so faint it barely registered. She glanced at the monitors–they scarcely showed a glimmer of life. Seeking validation, she brushed her fingers over his forehead and reached once more for his mind. At the contact, there was a trace of reaction on the monitor. Hope flared in her chest, set her heart racing. Maybe she could still save him, maybe she could create the miracle he needed. It would be an act of insanity but she had to try. She would face the consequences. If she survived.

Shivering in apprehension, she took a deep breath to compose herself. She stood at Keir’s head, smoothing his brow for a moment before placing her hands on either side of his face.

Please let me be doing the right thing
.

She closed her eyes and released her mind, intending to sink gradually into his thoughts. Instead, she was snatched into a maelstrom of pain and darkness that swamped her in an instant, a cry of agony catching in her throat as she was sucked down.

* * * *

A scream fractured the serenity of the medical facility and yanked Surei back into the center with her junior medic at her heels. She froze at the door and grabbed Taler as the girl tried to enter.

The moment Surei saw Quin locked in place with her hands cradling Keir’s head, she knew what Quin was attempting. “Don’t touch her! Whatever happens, don’t touch either of them!”

“What is she trying to do?” Taler stared in wide-eyed fascination, not moving other than to show her fangs.

“Something brave,” Surei said. “Incredibly stupid, of course, but brave.”

Surei gestured to the purple-haired haemovore to follow. Removing a scanner from storage, Surei circled Quin at a distance, passing the instrument over both patients.

Taler bent low over Keir and sniffed, her spiked purple hair falling into her face. “Still living,” she lisped.

Surei frowned, her white feathers rising into a crest. “Not for long,” she muttered irritably, then sighed. “I hope she has the sense to come out when he dies, but I doubt it.”

“Come out of where?”

“She’s sharing her mind with him, trying to bring him back. It’s dangerous, it’s difficult, and she’s risking her life for nothing.”

“And if we touch…?”

“We get dragged in too. The psychic forces involved are cataclysmic, pulling everyone in, like a black hole.” She met Taler’s wondering gaze, her pale-blue eyes full of youthful amazement. “All we can do is wait, and hope.”

Taler nodded and stepped back, a picture of serenity with her hands clasped together in front of her and her attention fixed on Quin’s tortured expression. Surei sat opposite, on the edge of a free bed, her white feathers still ruffled and a deep frown on her dark face.

“You’re an idiot,” she told the woman held in mind lock. “But I wish you luck.”

* * * *

Quin plunged deeper into his mind, drowning in blackness. She screamed in the tumult, her hands clutching at wisps of his consciousness that dissipated in her fingers, leaving her to drift.

Memories spiraled past, flashes of color that sliced across her vision. Keir, scrabbling through garbage in the hope of finding food. Hiding in a dark alleyway, fear hammering in his chest as a gang of youths hunted him for sport in the slums of Adalucien. The taste of blood and bile in his mouth when they caught and beat him. Nights spent shivering in damp, dark corners. Eyes full of hatred and fear which followed him wherever he ventured. The despair and hunger that knotted his stomach every morning when he woke to another dawn, alone and with no hope of redemption.

Suddenly she struck a memory so strong it blazed like a diamond caught in sunlight, bright and sharp. Keir sat at a long wooden table, a sturdy child six or seven years old in a plush black velvet tunic with a solemn expression on his young face. A book lay open before him and he read aloud in soft, even tones. Large cream candles set on the table gave a steady light, gleaming from his crown of black curls and filling the room with the honeyed scent of beeswax. He spoke quietly but with confidence, watched by a woman dressed in an elaborate gown of blue velvet embroidered with silver thread, her luxuriant black hair held back by fine silver combs. Her expression seemed a mixture of motherly pride and an underlying anxiety that knotted the elegant brows and laid fine creases around her eyes.

Beside the fire, a man brooded in the depths of his chair, one leg thrown over the arm and a cup of wine in hand. His face, painted in shadows and fiery highlights, creased into a mask of ill-concealed fury and resentment. Keir hesitated, then turned to cast a nervous glance over his shoulder as if he had sensed the baleful glare searing into his back, but his mother tapped the book before him with a rebuking finger.

“To the end of the passage, Keirlan,” she insisted.

He resumed his litany.

A snort sounded from the confines of the carved chair, before the man took another deep draught from his cup, the unsteadiness of his hand betraying his drunken state.

“You waste your time giving him an education, Serena,” he slurred, before ordering brusquely, “Get to bed, boy.”

Keir’s voice faltered as he sought his mother’s permission with a wide-eyed stare. She nodded and he rose, kissing her on the cheek before closing his book. With greater reluctance, he turned to the man by the fire and bowed his head with a nervous twitch before scurrying off to his bedroom.

As the door thudded shut behind him, Keir turned and leaned against the rough surface, pressing an ear to it.

“Must you treat him like that?” his mother demanded in bitter tones.

“How would you have me treat him? Perhaps if you had given birth to a son I could be proud of, a daughter even, things might have been different.”

“He is only a child, Rialto, not a monster. It is not his fault.”

“Then whose fault is it?” There was the sound of wood scraping across flagstones– Rialto’s great chair shifting as he levered himself out of it. Uneven footsteps limped across the floor. “The boy is a curse upon us, upon our Family. How long do you believe they will continue to shield him? Since the day of his birth there have been rumors in the city of a demon child born to the Corizi. His existence will ruin us.”

“He is our son.” Her voice broke, and Keir squeezed his eyes shut, refused the tears. His pain washed over Quin, a pale, cold shadow of what his six-year-old self had felt.

“He is a freak!” A crash and clatter told of something thrown across the room in rage, and Keir flinched, clenching his hands into fists. Should he go back in? Would his father’s anger drive him to more than violence against mere objects?

“Only death awaits that boy, my love,” Rialto continued, his voice calmer now, colder. “Sooner or later.”

A thunder of knocks sounded abruptly at the apartment door, and Keir pushed himself backward as if stung.

“Who could that be at this hour?” Serena asked, her voice high in surprise.

With a sense of foreboding, Quin watched Keir back away until he stumbled against his bed and was forced to sit. As footsteps approached his room, his breath snagged in his throat and his pulse quickened. The door swung open and a host of strangers entered his room. Anonymous figures, masked and hooded, they came in ominous silence. Two seized his arms and yanked him upright.

“No.” He dragged his heels, but they were stronger and lifted him from his feet. “No, let me go!”

Keir fought, lashing out in frantic desperation until one grabbed his wrists and looped cord around them. Another threw Keir effortlessly over his shoulder.

“No, please!” Panic flooded his voice, sickening terror paralyzing him.

The ground spun beneath him as his captor turned and carried him from his room. Not a word was spoken. There was no sound other than his own cries as he struggled. He caught a last glimpse of his mother as he was taken, her face bleached white as she stood frozen in his father’s grip. Then they were passing through the door and out into the night beyond.

He screamed for help as they took him through shadowy streets to an unknown place, but no one came. In a room lit only by glowing coals in metal baskets, and far below the level of the city’s streets, the hooded men strapped him to a metal frame with leather restrains that tore the skin from his wrists and ankles. They stripped him of his Corizi finery to leave him shivering and naked. The chill sound of metal sliding from leather scabbards filled the silence as they unsheathed their knives. Then they cut him. Again and again the bright blades flashed crimson as they carved mystic symbols into his young flesh.

No one spoke to him. No one touched him except to slash his skin. He begged until his throat seized and he choked on his own pleas for mercy. The pain etched his skin like streams of hot acid and lasted an eternity, broken only by blessed fragments of lost consciousness.

The memory abruptly shattered, to be replaced by a stream of splintered memories. The alien sound of his voice shrieking that his skin was burning. His mother’s tear-stained face transfigured by guilt. Writhing in a fever, begging for help as his mother tried to soothe his agony with soft words and expensive balms that brought little relief.

The chaos stilled and focused.

Keir gazed at his naked form in a mirror, the wounds healed to a twisted network of black scars that disfigured every part of his body. In a sudden frenzy, he shredded bedding and wrapped himself from head to toe in every fragment of cloth he could scavenge before running from the house into the night.

Quin grasped at the memory as it faded into nothingness, calling for Keir, but he had melted away again. Subject to the torrent of nightmares and memories sweeping over her, all his thoughts and feelings laid bare, she was losing herself. She needed to gain some control, but she couldn’t hold onto anything, couldn’t anchor herself. Instead she was plummeting into his death, falling into eternal darkness with the man she had hoped to save.

* * * *

As Quin sank to her knees, Surei pushed off the bed and snatched up the scanner. Quin’s breathing had become labored and her head sagged forward until it rested against Keir’s. Taler glanced inquiringly at the senior medic, who shook her head. There was nothing they could do. Quin’s life signs had fallen as low as Keir’s, as if synchronizing. They were losing them both.

* * * *

She was drowning. The blackness of the water closed around her, filled her mouth. Her body screamed for air. The cold seeped through her, stealing her life with icy fingers. She sank deeper, too tired to fight the fear that bound her in chains of steel.

So this is how you choose to die? After all you’ve been through, after all you’ve survived, a little water is going to kill you?
Her own thoughts mocked her, and raged surged over the fear.
Hell, no!

Sudden strength filled her and she kicked out. With desperate arm strokes she fought her way up to erupt from the surface with a painful gasp. A shake of her head cleared the salt water from her eyes. They were back on the Salusian beach–or a semblance of it–overshadowed by a steel-gray sky. Between waves, she glimpsed a solitary figure in the grayness, standing chest-deep in the water and not moving. She struck out toward it as best she could until her feet touched bottom. Sand shifted beneath her toes and undercurrents tugged at her legs.

“Keir!”

Bogged down by her sodden clothing, she splashed and struggled toward him, calling out, but her voice was too weak to be heard over the sound of the surf. Reaching him finally, she put out her hand to touch his shoulder but recoiled at the contact. He was cold as a marble figurine, and as responsive. As she faced him, he looked straight through her, as if his blue eyes were fixed on some unseen horizon far beyond their world.

“Keir?”

Trembling, she cupped his head in her hands, trying to reach him, but he was a hollow shell, all that had been Keir lost in the void. Only the rising sea remained, cold and cruel. Quin struggled to keep her balance as the water rose higher, but the waves were relentless, tugging her down. As the sea swallowed them she put her arms around Keir, fighting to hold onto him as they plummeted into the depths. He slipped from her arms into the sudden abyss opening below them, leaving her to drown alone. Refusing to surrender, Quin swam down and grabbed his hand. His fingers closed abruptly on her own but he was too heavy and she couldn’t pull them back to safety. The blackness closed around them.