She was already shaking her head in vehement negativity. The defiant stubbornness it signaled simply floored him. What was she thinking? She spoke truth of logic, that from her perspective she had no way of knowing which of the fighting males had been the more just and honorable, that she was likely setting herself up for trouble. She was plainly scared to death to be near him and wanted absolutely nothing to do with his bloody, gored body, and yet she would not take the surcease he offered to her. She wouldn’t leave him.
The woman was clearly an idiot.
Chapter 2
Ashla was completely convinced of her own stupidity as she remained firmly by the injured man’s side. On the plus side, his kind attempt to release her from obligation had helped her to control her remaining weeping, ratcheting the infernal weakness down to a series of sniffles. As she did so, she began to think more clearly. Ashla slid carefully to Trace’s side and bit her lip a moment as she inspected her choices.
“I have to roll you over to see your back. It’s going to hurt.”
“Yeah. It is. Look, I already told you…”
“Well, just humor me! It’s not as if you’re late for a date or something.”
Trace watched her shove at her hair in her pique, her fingers streaking blood through the fair gold strands. He didn’t point it out to her, not wishing to potentially bring back her nausea, and simply braced up a knee to help her roll him onto his right side. He didn’t need to hear her gasp to confirm what he could already feel. She peeled off the remainder of his shirt to see a river of blood oozing in swift, pulsing rushes down the span of his back. The hole Baylor had left behind was probably an inch or better in width. While the other ’Dweller had been only a fair swordfighter, with his weapon of choice, the dagger, he had always been an absolute killer. The proof being that six inches of steel in Baylor’s hand had killed Trace long before Trace had managed to kill Baylor in return.
Ashla bit her lip hard, trying not to react to what she was seeing any more than she already had. The knifing was bad, it was true. It poured out his life in rapid pulses. But just as shocking was the evidence on his back that this had been far from his first such fight or injury. She had uncovered a canvas of scars. Or what should have been scars. They looked strangely smoothed and without texture where they should have been jagged and ridged. They were scars nonetheless, ripped bright pink and pale through the palette of his dark skin, tearing a path up the length of his spine as if some animal had clawed him over and over again. There were other marks as well, a testament to the abuse he had subjected himself to.
But she had to ignore all of that dramatic history and focus completely on the most recent damage. Ashla probed the bloody wound with unsure fingers, gritting her teeth against the feel of the fluid that so quickly became tacky to her touch. She drew a shuddering breath as she realized he was not exaggerating. The wound was horribly mortal. Just the amount of blood he was losing in those few moments told her as much. No medical degree required. She could even feel the warmth of his skin fading beneath her touch as the chill of impending death crept over him.
Something about that struck a fire to a store of anger Ashla hadn’t even realized she’d been harboring. Ever since she had awakened to this dark version of the world, she had been unable to escape the feeling of being chilled through. His body warmth was the most comforting sensation she’d experienced in…so very long a time. Even in her terror as she had been trapped beneath him for those few minutes, she had wanted to cry with relief just to feel any kind of human contact again. Perhaps it had helped that his had been a powerful and vital contact, a heated energy and dominance that had soaked right through her.
Her instinctive fury was only fueled by the logic of knowing that, just her damn luck, he was going to end up dying on her. She would be left all alone again. Not just lonely as it had often been the case in her lifetime, but well and truly alone. Devastatingly alone.
Ashla had learned to be afraid of a great many things in the world, perhaps even to a degree beyond reason, but the idea of being abandoned in this place again for months or longer…the thought of it propelled her beyond a lifetime of cautions and concern like nothing else could possibly have done.
She could help him. She knew she could. Or at least she hoped she could. There were so many factors to consider, not the least of which was that so many things didn’t work here as they were supposed to. But how could she not try? How could she allow doubt and questions to stack against the possibility of saving a life?
Ashla spread her palms against the section of his broad back that housed the wound. Her fingers framed the ugly hole, the nails she had painted a ridiculous violet in her previous boredom looking morbid and garish in that moment.
Then she closed her eyes and propelled herself back twenty-two years. She couldn’t seem to help herself. It happened every time she did this. She was instantly transported to the very first time she had discovered she could heal with the touch of her hands…
…and how it had been one of the most horrific experiences of her life, just like every time she had dared to exercise the ability since. The first time, though, that was the one that would never shake free.
She had been only five years old. It was actually one of those cute stories of childhood. Everyone had them, didn’t they? A story about a child finding a poor, injured animal and that child’s desire to make it better. This in spite of her parents’ blunt warnings that the small baby bunny the family dog had dropped triumphantly at her feet would never survive the shock and fear of being mouthed by the retriever. This was to say nothing of the bloody wound in its foot caused by either a canine tooth or the process of the chase. But like any child in that position, she had simply wanted to fix it. She had wanted it with all of her heart. So she had held the rabbit in her hands, against that heart that wanted so badly to help, and felt the small creature go from a distressed ball of limp, shuddering fur to a warm, living animal full of energy and life. It had been an utterly amazing transformation to her.
It was the work of the devil to her family.
Her mother had called her Satan, screamed and wailed as if she was dead, and they had…
Ashla closed off the memory, her breath rasping and coming short as if metal was closing around her throat to choke her again. She shut it all away, because if she took the time to think about what this man would do to her when he realized what she could do, she would completely lose her nerve. But her life, her pain, all meant nothing when the only other option was to allow herself to become a murderer by neglect. If she didn’t do what she could to save him, she might as well have stuck him with the blade herself.
Trace lay surprisingly quiet. It was surprising to him because he was in a great deal of pain, and while he was known for his patience in most things, agony wasn’t one of those things. It was probably his curiosity getting the better of him. He was trying to figure out what she was up to as he listened to her mutter under her breath. To him, it sounded like she kept telling herself to stop thinking.
“Don’t think. Don’t think. Don’t think.” A litany. Over and over again. Then, aloud to him, “Listen, this is going to hurt, but you have to trust me, okay?”
Frankly, Trace didn’t see a point to any of it, whatever “it” was. However, he couldn’t put up much of a protest with his back to her and weakness weighing down his whole body. All he could manage was a listless, unimpressed shrug of his exposed shoulder. What did it matter? Hell, she could strip naked and tap-dance for all the good it was going to do. At least he’d get some entertainment out of it.
Or so he thought until she stabbed her finger deep into the wound Baylor had created. Trace bellowed in agony and tried to haul himself off the floor and out of her sadistic reach, but all of a sudden the little blond mouse who shook at every word he spoke had found the strength of a dozen Demons and kept him forcefully in place as she wriggled her finger down as far as she could into his body.
“By the Dark, are you in
sane?” he roared, fumbling at his back for her hand. Before he could reach her, however, she yanked it out and shoved him hard onto his back again. He was so heavily occupied with his pained shouts that she climbed up over him without any argument from him that didn’t come in the form of curses she probably didn’t understand. Not unless she had happened to learn Shadese, the Shadowdwellers’ native tongue, in the past five minutes or so.
On a visual-sensory delay of sorts as information filtered through the haze of his hurt, Trace absorbed her actions as she yanked up the long skirt she was wearing, soaking it with bloody handprints while she threw her leg over his hips and settled herself over him as if she were about to ride him into the ground. The fact that he was in too much pain at first to protest, despite the image she made in her strange, pale sort of beauty, only made him angrier.
“Get off!” he gasped at last, reaching for the waif with his jellied arms. He was as weak as a kitten, but he would be damned if he couldn’t throw off a sadist bitch no bigger than a ten-year-old.
When she swatted him away as if he were a pesky fly, Trace was ready to explode with frustrated fury.
And then she did the oddest thing, the mere shock of it cutting off his torrential emotions at the knees. The peculiar little blonde ran her splayed hands slowly up his bared belly and chest as she leaned fully forward, just until her eyes were gazing down into his, and her lips were touching his mouth by the space of a hair. Trace caught his breath, holding back his reaction merely by the power of his surprise. He stared up into eyes of blue, so unique to someone like him, and felt her breath and its incongruous warmth as it spilled in rapid rushes over his face. He became aware of her scent again, but this was probably because it was everywhere, warm and weighty and pervasively sweet.
“Trust me,” she demanded of him as all of her weight came to lie against him. “This will help.”
Trace couldn’t even conceive of how to argue with her about that. Old instincts cursed him for ever turning his back on a woman, even if he was about to die. But older instincts than that were shifting the focus of his attention, helping to curb the lance of pain constantly running through him. As if he had his father’s perceptions and could sense the truth on a higher level, Trace knew that she believed what she was doing could actually help. Ashla was as gentle now as she had been seemingly cruel a moment ago, and the softness of her caressing touch left him off balance and raw with vacillating focuses.
Wraith or not, she had an intriguing little body tucked into that dress, he realized as she slowly began to reach and glide over him; moving like liquid poured over a polished path, she simply flowed. She stroked, she touched. She found every bit of exposed skin she could and painted it with her special brand of delicate attention. All the while she laid herself along his body, warming him in more ways than one.
Trace was left with the inane thought that while he’d never been overly fond of the scent of flowers, he might be persuaded to think otherwise in the future…provided he even had a future after this.
The Lost woman continued running her hands all along his bare skin and Trace was struck by how very much it was like a seduction. Her eyes slid closed now and again, her expression one of deep concentration, while at the same time it seemed as though she were experiencing a focused pleasure. It radiated into all her increasingly delicious movements, but it was most reflected in the soft, unthinking sounds she made. She moved in slight rocking motions as she reached to touch his arms, hands, and the tips of his fingers where they lay passively at his sides. Then she reversed her direction, her slightly sticky fingers climbing up Trace’s throat and head until they were in his hair. Simultaneously, she sprawled out over him, her full weight, such as it was, resting on him as her legs slid down along the length of his.
“It’s all right,” she whispered as her lips trailed down his jawline until her cheek was stroking against his.
Trace’s confusion and any last remaining instincts to rebel faded. He lifted a hand to the back of her small head, the silky-soft texture of her feathery hair sliding under his fingertips.
“You know,” he said hoarsely, “there are easier ways to get a date.” But even as he made the facetious remark, Trace felt his entire body shift in sensation. It took him a moment to comprehend that what he was feeling was an actual rush of relief. As the pain bled from him in earnest, he took hold of Ashla by the back of her head and neck and pulled her back until he could see her eyes again. She looked flushed and uncomfortable now, her body stiff all of a sudden as she refused to look directly at him.
“What are you?” he asked on a whisper as he studied her carefully for Nightwalker attributes.
The Nightwalkers were the supernatural races, the night races, those who held the sun in dread and thrived in the darkness and moonlight. His race, the Shadowdwellers, was the epitome of that description. All of the Nightwalker breeds were the caretakers of strange and wondrous powers, rather like the power to heal with a touch.
She was no ’Dweller, of that he was certain. Not with that fair coloring and tiny body structure. She was also far too pale to be a Demon, a race that ran to tan themselves. And Vampires, while pale, were not able to heal anyone but themselves…unless a bite was involved. He eliminated Mistrals and Lycanthropes for similar reasons. Besides, only two creatures on Earth that he knew of could enter Shadowscape.
Shadowdwellers and humans.
Specifically, comatose humans.
Shadowscape was a lightless dimension just a step out of phase with Realscape. It was only a step, but it was enough to make the entire ’scape completely absent of the world’s population to the perception of anyone there. With concentration, a powerful Shadowdweller like Trace could Fade into the dark of Shadowscape, and Unfade to return to Realscape at will. For ’Dwellers, Shadowscape was the ultimate world away from the painful sear of light that rampantly littered a human-dominated world. The human need for illumination, coupled with the natural course of the sun, had made most of the planet completely unlivable, and often suicidal, for Trace’s people. As it was, they spent most of their lives chasing the darkness to places like Alaska and New Zealand, the Arctic and the Antarctic lands where night would fall seasonally without end for months at a time.
Humans were the second occupants of Shadowscape; what Trace’s people referred to as the Lost. Trace looked into Ashla’s eyes, surprised at the depths of light and emotion within the sky blue pools. Previously, his experiences with the Lost had been chillingly flat. They weren’t supposed to be able to see the ’Dwellers—or each other, for that matter—so they never seemed to react to anything around them. To look into their faces was to look into a vacant place, an expression of haunted bewilderment as they tried to solve the puzzle of where they were, how they had gotten there, and how they could possibly get back to the life they had known before. They didn’t realize that somewhere in Realscape their bodies had become blanks, empty of soul and consciousness, some illness or trauma having stolen away the tether that tied the Lost part of the person to their now blank body.
The Lost were merely spirits, mental manifestations of the wandering soul. In essence, they were wraiths, images projected by the Lost’s own memory of themselves. They had no warmth. No scent. No awareness of the Shadowdwellers and the truths of the dimensional landscape they were now trapped in.
But this one did, he thought as he stared at her.
And this one healed with her touch.
Could humans really do such things? Trace’s society existed on the same planet as humans, but their interactions were minimal due to the issues of light and its harmful nature. Shadowdwellers, like most Nightwalkers, had no real contact with the dominant species on the planet. They weren’t completely ignorant of them, of course. They couldn’t afford to be. Humans could be quite deadly as they went about their daily lives, routines, negotiations, bickerings, and wars. Trace was as highly aware of human nature and its capability as anyone because of his position in the Shadowdweller
government.
As far as he knew, the ability this woman had just shown was a significant abnormality. Just like everything else about her so far, he realized. Was her unusual talent the explanation to all of the anomalies she represented, all the rules of Shadowscape that she was able to break? Even supposing it was possible for a human woman to heal with her bare hands in the real world, how could that ever be taken across the veil and into Shadowscape, where humans were a manifestation of spirit more than body?
Trace had not meant any insult by his last question to her. He had genuinely wanted to know what she was—what genus, breed, or species of Nightwalker, to be specific, because to his mind no human could possibly have the power she had wielded.
Just the same, his query visibly took her aback, as if he had landed a smarting slap across her face. There was no mistaking the rush of hurt and horror that flew over her features and now-rigid body. Ashla ripped herself out of Trace’s grasp violently, tumbling and stumbling across the floor away from him. Glass crunched and skidded beneath her, making Trace acutely aware of her bare feet, hands, and limbs as she scrambled over the minefield of shards. Trace tried to haul himself up, wanting to stop her, but she was fueled by internal demons he couldn’t possibly have understood, and he was still severely weakened by blood loss.
But he was also the man who had defeated an enemy above his own class in weight and strength with a mortal wound in his back all the while they had fought. He wasn’t known for accepting weaknesses in himself or others.
In that respect, it baffled him why it was so damn important to him to chase after such a touchy, temperamental creature. But chase her was exactly what he did, after a fashion. It was hardly a chase when it took him so long to get to his feet and then to the door she had bolted through. By the time he managed it, the street was empty in all visible directions, and there wasn’t a single hint of sound to help direct him after her.