“How roughed up am I?” It was getting easier to form complete sentences. My tongue seemed to be working better and even though my jaw ached, using it loosened up the bruised muscles. I tried to sit, but she gently pushed me back by one shoulder.
“Not yet. I want to make certain you’re ready. Your face took a lot of damage.” She grimaced. “You’re lucky, given the beating you took. I didn’t find any broken bones, but I’m pretty sure that’s because you’re a Theosian. If you were human, my dear, you would be as dead as the bodies you found out in that graveyard.” She pulled back my blanket and I shivered. The room felt chilly, and I wanted the warm back.
“I’ll just be a moment. I’m going to check out your heart again and see how the All-Heal is working on your bruises.” She placed a Vita-Chek directly over my heart and then tapped away on her tablet. At least medical software had come a long way over the past decades. She left it there for a minute and stared at her tablet.
“All right, then. Your heart and lungs are all right, though you do have a severely bruised rib and that’s what is causing your difficulty in taking a deep breath. But the bone isn’t fractured, so if we wrap you up tight, you should be all right until it heals. I’m not seeing any concussion, which surprises me, but your black eye is a mess. I can speed the healing but it’s going to be quite the shiner for a few days.”
“I wish Tam was here,” I said, my throat on fire. “He could drain some of this out of me.” Among his other attributes was the ability to heal with a kiss. Oh, he couldn’t bring anybody back from the dead, and he wouldn’t be able to save a dying man, but he could heal up a lot of bumps and bruises, as well as diffuse energy drain. In fact, that’s how we got started—with a kiss to help me out. The energy had been comforting and had ignited the chemistry that now flared between us.
“Let’s sit you up now, so I can wrap those ribs.” Sarinka gently shouldered me into a sitting position, with Jason helping her from the other side. I was naked. She had obviously needed to examine me, but I still broke out in a full blush.
Hans winked at me. “Don’t be so shy. You’re gorgeous, bruises and all.” But he turned away to give me privacy, as did Jason, after I managed to hold myself upright.
First Sarinka scrubbed me down so there wasn’t a speck of dirt on me, then she bound my ribs tightly with a thin layer of verathane. Verathane was a thin bandage that compressed tightly without adding bulk. “You can take off the bandage as soon as you get into your corsets. They’ll provide you with a better layer of constriction. And no lifting anything. I don’t want you touching your sword.”
I groaned. “What if I need to use it?”
“Use your whip, since you wield it with your right hand. Most damage is on the left side. But I warn you: Using that whip’s going to hurt like hell. I’d rather see you off your feet and in bed for at least a week to give those muscles a chance to heal up. I put All-Heal on you, which drastically cuts down on recuperation time, but seriously, girl. You need to lay low for a bit. Especially since it seems you were specifically targeted and this isn’t some random act of violence.”
I grumbled under my breath.
“What did you say?”
Feeling chastised, I shrugged. “Nothing. Just, I wish I knew who those assholes were.” I closed my eyes, trying to picture them. Everything right before the attack was muddy. But a few things stood out. One, the words echoed through my head.
“They told me ‘Lesson one: Stop sticking your nose in where it doesn’t belong.’ So it’s somebody I pissed off. I think I asked who they were. They told me to figure it out.” Squinting through my one good eye, I frowned. There was something else. Something I had noticed during the fight. Or rather, attack. They fought. I didn’t have a chance to defend myself. “I remember something, but I’m not sure what it is.”
“Lie back and close your eyes.” Sarinka helped me ease back against the pillow. I wanted to protest that I was okay, that I could sit up without a problem, but the truth was lying down felt good and eased the pain in my head. I let out a soft sigh as I settled back beneath the covers, elevated enough to where my breathing was easier.
Sarinka removed the cloth from my swollen eye, replacing it with another one. “These are soaked with All-Heal and will reduce the swelling in your eye enough so you’ll be able to see out of it tomorrow. You’ll still look like a major mess, but you’ll feel a lot better.”
“Good to hear.” I leaned my head back and closed both eyes, resting them from the light. I was trying not to freak out, to remain as professional as possible. I had been hurt before but by Aboms. This was different. This reminded me all too much of the Carver and what he had done to my mother. Those men had enjoyed hurting me. And that’s what had frightened me. They hadn’t just been doing their job. They had enjoyed every punch and kick.
“We need to know more about who did this.” Sarinka brushed the bangs off my forehead, smoothing them back. “Here, you are safe. So let yourself drift back to the fight. Try to remain detached and tell us everything you notice.”
I resisted at first, not wanting to dredge up the memories that I already wanted to bury, but this was important. So I took a slow, easy breath, trying not to disturb my ribs, and then softly exhaled in a long stream, willing the images to flow freely.
Then, I was there on the ground again, and the blows were coming fast and thick. I wanted to shout, to beg them to stop. But I tried to calm myself as I remembered that I was safe. These were just images. Just memories.
I examined the men as they were hitting me, looking for any marks that might identify them. They were wearing hooded shirts and loose jeans. It was impossible to see their hair color beneath the hoods. But something caught my eye. I looked past the fists and saw a mark on the chest of each shirt. It was a white circle on black, and inside the white circle were concentric half-circles that were off kilter just enough to confuse the eye, in shades of black, blue, red, and white. It was hard to describe, though there was something terribly familiar about it.
As I opened my eyes, out of the good one I could see Jason tapping away on his tablet. All of a sudden, he let out a curse under his breath.
“Did it look like this?” he asked, holding the tablet up so I could see the crisp design. It was jarring to the eye, precise and yet skewed.
“Yes, that’s it. All three of them had that symbol on their shirts. Who is it linked to?”
“The Order of the Black Mist. Lyon sent those men to find you.” His voice was raspy.
I did sit up then, forcing my way up and propping myself on my elbows.
“I wondered if that was the case.” And then, another memory hit me. “The Abomination. It was doing something in the graveyard. I’m not sure what, but I remember wanting to ask you to check out what it had buried there. But I fainted before I could do so. I was hoping Queet would have told you.”
“Queet vanished after he led us to where you were.”
I was about to say that he’d been having a rough time lately, but the familiar, raucous strains of my ringtone for Hecate interrupted. Hans silently handed me my purse and I fumbled out my phone. Punching the Talk button, I held it to my ear.
“Hello? Hecate?”
“Fury, where are you? I’ve been texting you since yesterday.”
I paused. So Queet hadn’t told her yet? Was he okay? Distracted by all the thoughts running through my mind, I started to shake my head to clear it but that was a big mistake and I let out a groan as a jolt of pain stabbed through my forehead over my left eye.
“Fury, are you all right?” She sounded calm, but I knew her well enough by now to recognize the sound of worry beneath the surface.
“Not entirely. I’ll tell you in a moment. What’s up?” I wanted to glance at her texts but that would entail putting her on speakerphone and right now, I didn’t want to chance anybody overhearing anything that might give me grief.
“I found out what happened to Tam,
Fury. I know where he is.”
My heart slowed, as I began to battle with a rising flood of fear and worry. “Where is he? Is he alive?”
Her voice bleak, she said, “Yes, he’s alive but, Fury, the Devani sent him out on the Tremble. He’s been sentenced to a year’s exile there.”
And, once again, everything went black.
Apparently I wasn’t over my shock because when I opened my eyes, I realized that I had passed out. Jason was on my phone, and I could guess who he was talking to. Hans was standing behind the table, watching over me as Sarinka waved a wretched-smelling cloth under my nose.
I managed to sit, the pain in my body a distant cousin compared to the pain in my heart. Jason turned around to look at me. Then, after a few mumbled words, he tossed my phone on the table.
“I had a talk with Hecate. She told me what happened, and I made sure she knew what was going on with you. Queet just showed up in her office. He faded again, whatever that’s about, and wasn’t able to reach her.” His expression was bleak as he turned to Hans. “Tam was arrested by the Devani and sentenced to a year’s exile. They chipped him and dropped him out on the Tremble.”
The Tremble.
The Tremble was a geologically and magically unstable piece of land, where the impossible became reality, and where normal was a word too distant to understand. Out on the Tremble, it looked as though all the jumbled leftovers of the world had been tossed together by a great whirlwind, reality twisting in on itself. The resulting landscape was a mishmash of optical illusions that were anything but illusion. Nobody lasted out there long without going mad. Not even shifters or Fae were immune to the discord that laced the entire district.
“We have to find him. We have to bring him back.” I stared at Jason, willing him to agree. If I had any semblance of a charm spell, I’d be using it now. But I didn’t need one.
Jason straightened up. “No question about it. Hans and I will start out tonight.”
“No, you won’t. I’m going with you.” I struggled to stand up, wincing as my ribs let me know they weren’t happy at all. But I didn’t care. “You aren’t going after him without me.” I turned to Sarinka. “Is there anything you can give me to help me with the pain that won’t cloud my mind?”
She nodded. “Yes, but take it too long and it’s habit-forming. Try to hold out for as long as you can before taking the pills. I’ll get them for you. I can see that there’s no use in ordering you not to go.” She vanished into another room.
I turned back to Jason. “I know you’re going to try to stop me, but don’t. Don’t you dare. Tam pushed me out of the way. He distracted the Devani so I could escape. He’s my… I think…” I paused. I hadn’t used the words with Tam yet, nor he with me, but the feelings were there, coiling in my heart, and I knew that they were real. So I simply said, “He’s my love.”
Hans held up his hand as Jason started to protest. “Let her come. She’s Hecate’s guard. She’s a Theosian. And she’s loyal to those she loves.” He turned to me. “You’d make Thor proud, Fury. I’d ask Greta to join us, but she has temple duties.”
Jason let out an exasperated sigh. “Very well. I can’t stop you and I guess I shouldn’t. But perhaps we should stop at UnderBarrow before we head out to the Tremble. Maybe his people can give us some help. And we’re not starting out till tonight. You need more time to rest. You may have been out of it most of the day and all night, but every hour of rest that you get will help.”
Cautiously holding my side, I eased back onto the bed. “All right. We start tonight. First, we’ll head to UnderBarrow, and then, we go rescue Tam.”
“I have to get back to the shop. I can make us some talismans and charms that may help us deal with the Tremble.” Jason pressed his lips together and I could tell he was worried. He had good reason to be.
“Fury can stay here the rest of the day. Pick her up around four.” Sarinka returned, handing me a bottle of pills. “Take one every six hours, at the most. Try to avoid taking them back-to-back. It only takes a few days of regular doses to cause a raging addiction, even among Theosians. But for what you want to attempt, this is the only thing I can suggest.”
I stared at the bottle, then set them on the table next to the nightstand. “Do you have some Sleep-Eze? The deeper I sleep before tonight, the better. I need about five hours’ worth. So, two and a half tabs.”
“I’ll get them.” She disappeared again.
“I’ll stay here, just in case those freaks decide to try a Trace on Fury. Call me if there are any developments,” Hans said.
Jason nodded. “Oh, by the way. Hecate told me to tell you to call her before you leave to go after Tam. Apparently, she knows you better than any of us.” And with that, he reluctantly headed out the door.
Sarinka gave me the sleeping meds and I stared at them. “Hans, if anything happens, wake me up. Promise?”
He nodded. “I’m here, Fury. And I’ll keep watch over you. Sleep now, and rest.”
With that, I popped the pills and drifted back to sleep.
Chapter 9
Sarinka had helped me as much as she could. Jason had stopped off at my house and brought me one of my more flexible corsets, and now, I grimaced as I slipped the busks closed. The metal fasteners held the corset snug, and even though at first it made me catch my breath, it also helped to ease the pain.
I felt better. My eye was less swollen and I could see out of it. But Sarinka was right. I wouldn’t be using Xan for the next week or two. I’d have to make do with my dagger and my whip, although reaching over my head wasn’t going to be a picnic, either. The corset helped, but I was going to hurt like a son of a bitch for quite a while.
“You have to be careful. You’re so beat up that if you end up in another scuffle, you might break something. Bruised bones break easier.” She stood back, eyeing me closely. “I still think you’re daft to go running off to the Tremble, but if you have no choice, you’re about as healed up as you’re going to get for the next few days.”
“I have to. Every time I think of Tam up there…” I couldn’t finish the thought. I knew what happened to people dumped out on the Tremble. A year’s exile was as good as a death sentence.
Reaching out, she brushed my hair back away from my bruised eye. “I know. I see it in your eyes. Well, your eye. Your other eye isn’t so pretty right now, but you’re not entering a beauty contest. I fixed a small container of All-Heal for you. Rub it on your ribs at night and in the morning. And here’s another one of AntiBruise. Use this on your face around your eye. It will help keep infection away. Try to avoid any more blows to the head, or you may end up with impaired vision. You came close this time.”
“I know. Trust me, I’m going to try to stay away from any fighting.” At least till I heal up, I thought. I took the medicines, tucking them into my purse. Truth was, I was scared. Sarinka had convinced me just how close I came to permanent damage this time. The scars didn’t bother me so much, but the beating I took—and the joy the men had taken in it—left me somber. Lyon hadn’t been joking around, though why he hadn’t let them finish me off, I wasn’t sure. Maybe he had told them to kill me, but something interfered. I couldn’t remember.
Turning to Hans, I slid my arms through the heavy jacket he held for me. Jason had brought me my long leather duster. The coat would help keep the chill off my legs. My regular jacket had been torn up during the fight. Jason also remembered to bring me clean underwear, a clean pair of leather shorts, and a button-up sweater that would keep my arms and chest warm, but that wasn’t too hard to get into.
I slid Xan in her scabbard. “I’m taking her anyway. I may not be able to use her very effectively, but I feel naked without her.” Except this time, I slung the scabbard over my right shoulder.
“Let me carry her for you,” Hans offered. His weapon of choice was a battle-hammer that hung from his belt.
“Are you sure?”
“I offered, Fury.” Wi
th a smile belying his size and fierceness, he took the sword from me and slid it over his back. While I missed having easy access to her, the truth was that any lightening of my load was a relief at this point.
Jason handed us each a tiny bag of charms. “I don’t know if these will do any good, but they’re to ward off madness.”
“I have a bad feeling we’re going to need it,” Hans said, draping his over his neck.
I followed suit. “We’d better get moving if we’re going to stop in UnderBarrow.”
I dreaded facing Tam’s people and telling them what happened. It hadn’t been my fault, but being the messenger was never easy. No matter how little you had to do with a situation, bearing bad news always left the messenger with a taint around them. They were forever connected with the misfortune.
“Let’s go. Queet around?” Jason asked. He handed Hans a bag. “I brought some of your things from the store, too. We need to book it. Tam has been out on the Tremble for around two days now.” He didn’t say it, but we all knew how short of a time it took to drive someone over the line.
I’m here. Queet swirled around me.
“Then I guess, we start out.” As I thanked Sarinka and said good-bye, I hoped we’d see her again. And I prayed that, in trying to rescue Tam, we wouldn’t need rescuing ourselves.
An hour later, we were at the edge of the Sandspit. Readerboards warned against going in, especially pregnant women. Patches of rogue magic were hiding all over the Sandspit, and passing through one could be deadly.
Marlene had been pregnant with me when she crossed through the Sandspit, too tired to go around it. The result? My DNA shifted and boom—one minor goddess coming up. There were rumors of women being paid to wander around there until they came to a patch. Some idiots wanted to adopt a god or goddess for a child for their own ego. Even darker, some slave traders were looking to pay for children with “talent,” as they called it. And of course, the Conglomerate looked the other way if the payoffs were big names in the business world.