I looked up, expecting to see Tarah.
It was Mike.
I turned up the light on the lantern and waved him in.
He entered, looking up and around him for a few seconds. “You’ve gotten a lot done in here.” His tone sounded as dead as I felt.
Sighing, I rubbed the back of my neck where the muscles constantly burned now. “Yeah, I guess so.” But was it fast enough? Something inside me kept telling me to keep working, to move faster, to skip anything not immediately needed to make the place livable for Tarah. “I don’t guess you’d happen to know how to put together a wood burning stove, would you?”
Mike glanced at the cast iron contraption in front of me. “Uh, not really. Listen, I came to tell you, we had another death.”
I stared at the stove. “I was afraid that was going to happen. Anyone I know?”
“Harvey Lansing. I think he was—”
“One of the loggers I worked with.” Yeah, I remembered him and how he’d liked to kid around, no matter how tired he was. In fact, it had seemed like the more tired Harvey had gotten, the more he’d needed to tell a joke.
“And Pamela’s sick now too,” Mike added.
My insides knotted up. If the healers were getting sick now, maybe it was time to rethink that idea of tying Tarah up and dragging her out of here against her will. Grandma Letty might even approve of keeping Tarah a captive for her own good. When the whole village got sick and died, she wouldn’t have much of a story to write about anymore anyways. Then she’d understand.
With the healers going down for the count, how much faster might the virus spread?
Mike shuffled his feet a bit. I glanced up at him.
At my questioning look, he quit fidgeting and murmured, “Tarah’s sick too.”
It felt like I was paralyzed while the entire world fell out from underneath me. “Tarah’s sick?”
He nodded, staring at me. Waiting for my reaction.
My time was up.
I grabbed the lantern and thrust it at Mike. “Here, hold this up so I can see better.”
He took the lantern out of instinct, his mouth opening like he wanted to say something else.
“How long?” I asked as I grabbed the instruction booklet.
“Huh?”
“How long as she been sick?”
“Pamela or—”
“Tarah! How long?” I pawed through the stove’s sections and pieces on the floor.
“An hour, maybe two, but that’s just a guess. You know Tarah. She was probably running a fever for awhile and just didn’t say anything. One of the healers noticed she was sweating real bad and made her lie down.”
I started connecting the chimney pipe sections. “Hand me that wrench over there.”
Silence.
I held out a hand. “Mike!”
I looked up at him. He was standing there staring at me like an idiot. Growling, I reached past him for the wrench.
“Aren’t you even going to go see her?” he asked, his voice cracking.
“I’ve got to get this done first.” My wrist popped in protest as I screwed the connector cuff’s bolt into place on the chimney pipe.
“Everyone’s right. You have gone nuts.” Muttering a curse, Mike set the lantern on the floor then barreled out of the house, slamming the door so hard behind him that its window pane cracked.
I worked as quickly as I could to get the stove set up. But it still took too long before I could get a fire going in it and check to make sure it was safe. Then I had to go to one of the houses for sleeping bags, sheets, a pillow, an iron pot, and a bucket. It took several trips to get everything I needed into my house, and too long to get it all set up even though I pushed my exhausted body to run every step I took.
No time, no time, my heart beat out with each pulse.
Then I ran for the infirmary, finally allowing my feet to carry me to the one place I’d wanted to go right from the start.
“Hayden,” Tarah whispered as I knelt beside her pallet in what used to be the house’s living room area. Her hair, once so beautiful and wild, the black curls shiny and bouncy with life, now clung to her forehead and the sides of her sunburn red cheeks in sweat-soaked clumps.
Nearby, Steve sat beside his wife. We shared a brief look, his eyes haunted and bleak.
I peeled the damp covers off of Tarah.
“What are you doing?” Mike cried out as he returned from the master bedroom. He grabbed my shoulder.
But I’d forgotten how to be human or polite. Some part of me, the logical, sane side, watched as if from a distance while I growled at him and jerked my shoulder free. “Back off.”
I slipped my arms under Tarah’s wet back and bare knees. They’d stripped her down to just an oversized t-shirt and her underwear. As soon as I lifted her up, I could feel her whole body shivering.
She was too light in my arms, impossibly fragile. How could this small body house a spirit as big as Tarah’s?
“Open the door,” I told Mike, who continued to stare at me in shock. “Now, dammit!”
When he still refused to move, I was forced to use the hand under Tarah’s back to awkwardly turn the handle on the storm door enough to get it unlatched. Then I kicked it the rest of the way open.
Tarah whimpered as the cold air hit us.
“I know, honey,” I muttered, only half aware of what I was even saying as I eased us down the cement steps. “Almost there. Hang on.”
By the time we reached the tiny house, her teeth were chattering so hard I was worried she’d bite her own tongue off. I got her inside and onto the thick pallet I’d made for her a few feet away from the stove. As soon as she was down, I covered her with layer after layer of blankets and sheets.
“I’ve got to get more firewood,” I muttered, brushing the clumps of hair back from her face. “I’ll be right back.”
I ran outside, came back with all the firewood I could carry in one trip, added another log to the fire. Then I poured some water into the pot and set it on top of the stove to heat.
Someone came bursting into the house behind me while I was wringing out the first washcloth. A healer maybe. I didn’t know, didn’t care.
“Mr. Shepherd,” the stout sounding woman began.
I ignored her, washing Tarah’s face before folding the cloth and laying it over her forehead. Her lips were starting to crack. Maybe I had some chapstick somewhere in my truck? Once I got Tarah settled in, I’d go look.
Then I realized the woman was still standing there. “Shut the door. You’re letting out all the heat.”
“You can’t just come barging in and steal a patient—”
“It’s not a hospital. Tarah’s not yours to keep. And it doesn’t sound like you healers were doing any better than I can with her anyway. Now shut the damn door please.” I stood up, my hands clenching at my sides, hoping the woman wouldn’t keep pushing me. I’d been raised never to hit a woman, and I sure didn’t want to start now.
She gasped, apparently at a loss for words as she took a nervous step backwards onto the porch.
Then I remembered they might need new herbs or something from town. But I wasn’t going to be able to go that far away from Tarah. I dug the truck keys out of my jeans pocket and tossed them to her. She barely managed to catch them against her ample chest.
“There's my truck keys if anyone needs anything from town.”
She was looking down at the keys as I slammed the door shut in front of her.
She had the nerve to start to open the door again. Without looking, I slammed it shut for the last time then locked it. Then I turned and checked the temperature of the water on the stove. After a few seconds, the sound of footsteps faded off my porch.
Good. I had work to do.
“Well, you sure told her,” Tarah murmured, her teeth still chattering.
I crouched down beside her. “Had to. I wanted you all for myself.” I forced a smile for her, even as her trembling tried its best to break my heart.
Tarah’s eyes rolled around in their sockets. For a few seconds, I panicked, thinking she was going into convulsions or something. But then her gaze locked back onto mine and she smiled. “It’s kind of dark in here. But f-from what I can see, it looks really g-good.”
She’d been checking out her new home. I let the breath of relief ease out of me. “Not done with it yet. But it should be good enough for now. Get well for me and I might even let you do the interior decorating.”
“Yeah?” She clutched the blankets up to her chin as a fresh round of shivering wracked her body. “Resorting to b-bribery now?”
I couldn’t talk for a minute as my throat choked up. I took her hand, swallowed hard, and finally managed to say, “Whatever it takes. Now rest while I go see what meds I can find, all right?”
I waited for her nod before I rushed out, the cold burning my already stinging eyes.
I had to search the infirmary’s kitchen cabinets to find the acetaminophen; the dragon ladies now running the show there refused to speak to me when I asked for some. Apparently they’d decided they couldn’t fight me over Tarah, but they sure weren’t going to help me none either.
They still had several bottles of meds, so I went ahead and took a mostly empty bottle plus a ceramic cup sitting on the drainboard. I also got some more firewood, which I left on my porch by the door for later. Finally, I found a tube of cherry flavored chapstick in the backseat of my truck.
Tarah’s eyes were closed when I returned, and she was murmuring something I couldn’t make out.
“Hey, Tarah, I’m back,” I told her, holding her hand. With my free hand I managed to twist and then pop the cap off the medicine. I shook out a few pills on the blanket by her.
She didn’t respond.
CHAPTER 23
Fighting the rising panic, I dipped the cup from the infirmary into the water, now hot, on the stove. I had to blow it a little to cool it off. Then I slid a hand under Tarah’s head, lifting her up as I pressed the cup to her lips. “Take a sip, Tarah. I need you to take some medicine now.”
She seemed to hear me this time, dutifully swallowing the pills after I slid them past her lips. Then I applied the chapstick to her lips, doing a crap job of getting it on straight. Not that Tarah seemed to care about a little smeared lip product.
It was beyond nightmarish how quickly the virus gained a hold over her. She didn’t speak again over the next few hours other than to make the occasional whimper, her head tossing and turning in her sleep like she was having bad dreams.
But they couldn’t be nearly as bad as the real life memories I was making with her right now.
I alternated between washing her face and neck, getting her to take sips of water or more pills, and holding her hand, wanting her to know at all times that I was there. When she slept more peacefully, though her fever was still high, I ran out to the truck for the spellbook, waiting till I was back by her side before rereading the chapter on healing. I also tried to remember what Mike had told me about how to heal.
Again and again, I followed both his and the spellbook’s instructions, trying to make my conscious mind relax and somehow mystically enter Tarah’s body, hunt down the sickness and eradicate it.
Over and over again, I failed.
In frustration, I sat there on the floor, hands buried in my hair, tugging at it, using the pain on my scalp to keep me from going nuts. I stood up with the urge to pace then stopped myself just in time. I couldn’t risk shaking the floor and disturbing Tarah. Her body probably needed this rest to help heal itself.
At least she was sleeping peacefully now. But her fever climbed ever higher with each passing hour.
She was like a flame, burning brighter and brighter, so beautiful and brilliant to look at even as her body tried to burn itself out as fast as it could.
And I was completely powerless to stop it.
“Please, Tarah,” I whispered, sinking to my knees beside her, her hand limp and far too hot when I picked it up again. “Tarah, you’ve got to fight! I can’t do it for you. You’ve got to do it. I know you can still hear me. Fight!”
Hot liquid scalded my eyes, my nose and cheeks as I kissed her hand, her body just a shell, her mind and soul so far out of my reach now.
Closing my eyes, I rested my forehead against her hand. I looked at her face, serene now, like that day when she’d seemed like an otherworldly queen, calm and accepting. She’d asked me to believe in the impossible that day. To have faith that the dark would end.
She wouldn’t like my panicking like this.
“You've got to get well, Tarah,” I whispered to her, watching her face for some response, any response at all. “What about that story you wanted to finish writing about this place? Who's going to finish it if you don't? Not me. You know I can't write nothing worth crap.”
No response from her, no flicker from her closed eyes.
She was the only person who really knew me, all of me, and still accepted me as I was. She wasn’t just the first girl I’d fallen in love with. She was also my first and only true best friend other than my brother, and the only person I’d been completely honest with. If I lost her, there wasn’t another person on this planet who would know who I really was.
I couldn’t lose her.
I wouldn’t. If she went, she’d have to take me with her.
I closed my eyes, pressed my lips to the back of her hand, and whispered, “Tell me what I have to do, and I swear I’ll do it. Just please...don’t die.”
“You have to let go of yourself and what you want,” Mike had told me during our one and only tutorial on healing. The useless spellbook said the same thing. “You have to learn how to let go of who you are.”
Just let go, I could hear Tarah whisper to me.
And just like that, it clicked.
It was like falling asleep. Or maybe I really did fall asleep, because it sure seemed like a dream.
I was outside my body, a thin silver thread holding my spirit to my body at my stomach. I saw Tarah’s body just below me, and my spirit growing smaller, floating down, the cord that bound me to my body stretching like infinite elastic as I seemed to sink right through Tarah’s skin, through her tissues and muscles, into her veins that appeared all around me then like a maze of red tunnels. Beyond, I could feel her organs throbbing and pulsing.
Something bumped into me. I turned to look. It was a strangely shapeless black blob. And there, another black orb.
“Tarah, I’m yours,” I whispered, embracing those evil shapes, not willing them to come to me, but simply allowing them to attack me if they wanted to. Because I didn’t care if I got sick now. If that was what it took to save Tarah, if I had to take the virus out of her and into my own body, even if I got sick in the process, even if I died, it would be worth it. Up to now, my life on earth hadn’t really been all that spectacular. But Tarah...she deserved to live. She had a story to tell. Hers. Mine. These people’s. She had to live and tell that story so it wouldn't all be a big pointless waste.
But the black masses raced away.
“No!” I shouted. “No, it’s me you want, not her!”
The virus didn’t listen, and I could see it through the semi transparent walls of her veins, rushing off to attack her heart now, surrounding the desperately beating organ as if it were the last fortress in the virus’s war on humanity and it must be brought down tonight.
And as always, I couldn’t save her. I seemed destined to love her and lose her. I had no sword, no Clann skills, no medicine, no weapon at all to fight the virus with. Nothing. If only the virus would attack the both of us at once, then at least I could die with her and maybe it would be all right. But I could not face being the survivor. I didn’t want to survive Tarah.
“Hayden,” I heard Tarah murmur, her voice all around me at once.
“I’m failing you,” I confessed in a whisper to her.
“No. Don’t you see? This is not some ordinary virus. It thinks and reacts to us,” s
he whispered back, her voice coaxing me not to give up. To have hope, as she always did, just one more time.
Somehow I found the strength to listen, to think about her words. “Then what is it? How do we beat it?”
“You must find its source.”
Its source? What was she talking about?
As I began to get angry and frustrated, I felt myself slipping away, being pulled backward toward my own body again. And the more I fought it, the more strongly I was pulled away.
Because I was being negative?
I tried a different strategy, giving up resisting the pull. “Okay, Tarah. You win. What is its source?”
“Not what. Who.”
My spirit eased back into my own body again, and I woke up, needing the deep breath of air I took as if I’d just surfaced after being underwater too long.
A dream? Or had I truly connected with Tarah’s unconscious mind?
She was still asleep, her fever as high as before. And her pulse... I felt it beneath my fingertips at her wrist, its every beat more feeble than the last.
As if her heart really was now under attack. Just like in my dream.
She’d said the virus wasn’t normal, that someone was creating it. But who? Who would want to hurt a bunch of outcasts hidden away in the woods?
The government? My dad?
I’d heard of experimental programs in the past where they’d used psychics to help them with government projects. And my father had said the government was working with scientists now, trying to suppress the genes that caused Clann abilities. What if they had changed tactics and were trying to wipe us out completely from a distance now, using Clann abilities to attack us with a fake illness that would cause us to die one by one?
If so, they sure were taking their time about it. Shouldn’t the government have been killing us off much faster, if that was their intention?
What if they didn’t want to kill all of us? What if they still wanted to capture us for some reason? The illness could be sent to try and flush us out of hiding and into nearby hospitals.
“Tarah, I’ll be right back,” I promised, kissing her burning cheek before I stumbled to my feet and out the door on wobbly legs to the infirmary.