Rachel Caine - Firestorm

We went in through the front door, just another concerned little family crowded together for support. All hospitals look pretty much the same; this one had a lived-in feel despite the constant application of astringents and floor wax. Lots of people in scrubs walking the halls, which were decorated with soothing framed prints. I barely noticed. I was too busy thinking about whether or not, since I was in a hospital, I should start shouting for help. The fact that the knife was still in Eamon's possession was a cause for concern, though. He could hurt innocent bystanders.

And would.

"Easy," Eamon whispered in my hear, as if he'd sensed my inner debate. "Let's not get tricky, love. On the elevator, please. And push six."

A long, slow ride. It was just the three of us. I calculated the odds of whether or not Imara could take him before he could stab me, and I could see she was doing the same math problem. She slowly shook her head. Not that she couldn't take him—she could—but that she didn't think it was a good idea.

Neither did I.

The doors dinged open at the sixth floor, and there was another long, clean hallway. Deathly still. We moved down it, and as we came even with an inset nurse's station, the woman on duty looked up and smiled.

"Eamon!" She looked ridiculously happy to see him. Did she not have any idea? No, of course she didn't. He was turning on the charm for her. "You're coming kind of late. Visiting hours just finished."

"Sorry," he said. "My cousin and her daughter got held up at Logan. Is it all right—?"

"Logan? That figures. Sure. Just don't stay too long, okay?" The nurse gave us an impersonal smile, half the wattage she'd reserved for Eamon. She focused in on me, and frowned a bit. "Poor thing, you look done in. Long flight?"

"The red-eye from hell," I said. Before I could say anything else, like Call the police, you idiot , Eamon hustled me onward. "All right, what is this?" I hissed. "Why are you taking us to a hospital?"

"Shut up." He pressed the magazine in my side. Sometime when I'd been distracted he'd slid the knife free, and it pressed a sharp reminder of his intentions into me. "Six doors down on the right side."

Some of the doors were shut, with medical charts in the holders out front. The sixth one was propped open. Eamon gestured the two of us to go first, outwardly polite, inwardly measuring the distance to my kidneys. I stepped in, wondering what kind of trick he was about to play.

None, apparently. No gang of scary people lurking in the corners—not that they'd have been able to do so, in such a small, clean, brightly lit room. Nothing to hide behind. Just some built-in cabinets along the walls, a hospital bed, and the woman lying in it.

Eamon closed the door behind us. We stood in silence for a. few seconds, and I stared at the woman. She was maybe twenty-five—it should have been a pretty, vital age, but she was pallid and loose and limp, her skin a terrible sickly color. Her hair looked clean, and carefully brushed; it was a medium brown, shot through with blond. Her eyelids looked thin and delicate and blue, veins showing through.

I waited, but she didn't move. IV liquids dripped. There was a tube down her throat, and a machine hissed and chuffed and breathed on her behalf.

I opened my mouth.

"You're about to ask me who she is. Don't." Eamon gave me a bitter, thin smile. "Just fix her. You don't need to know anything else."

"Pardon? Do what?"

The smile, thin and bitter as it was, faded. "Fix her. Now." He enunciated it with scary clarity. He transferred his stare to Imara, who frowned and glanced at me. "Don't even think about saying no, love, or I'll do things to your mum here that not even a hospital full of surgeons can fix." He grabbed me with his forearm around my throat, pulling my chin up, and set the knife to my exposed neck. I stood on tiptoe, fighting for balance. Fear gave me a sudden bolt of clarity, but there was nothing I could do or say, not like this. Too risky.

I had to trust Imara.

She slowly extended her hand toward him. Graceful and supplicating. "Sir, please understand," she said. "You didn't have to do it this way. If my mother had known what you wanted, she would have tried to help you without the threats."

"Maybe. Couldn't take that chance, though, could I? But still, here we are, and since you're suddenly taken all warm and fuzzy, go on. Do your good deed of the day."

Imara slowly shook her head. "I'm not—like that. I can do only a few things. I can't heal. Certainly not something as grievous as this."

His arm tightened, compressing my throat. I made a muffled sound of protest and teetered on my toes.

"Please! If I could save this woman, I would, but I'm not capable , don't you see?"

"Then go get someone who can."

"There isn't anyone who can, not among the Djinn or the Wardens. There are rules, and they're larger than your desires or your needs. I'm sorry."

I couldn't see Eamon's face, but I couldn't imagine that cold, crazy man was letting that be the last word. He didn't have a ready comeback, though. I felt a tremble go through him, and the knife dug just a bit deeper into my skin.

"All right!" Imara said sharply. "Don't hurt her! I'll try."

She put her hands on the woman's face, turning it gently to one side so that it faced toward me and Eamon. I thought I saw the translucent eyelids flutter, but nothing else happened. The frail chest rose and fell under the pale nightgown. IV fluids dripped.

And then, with the suddenness of a horror movie, the eyes flew open. Blank and clouded, but open.

The eyes of the living dead, nothing in them at all.

I felt Eamon's reaction through the connection of his arm, a shudder that might have sent him reeling if he hadn't kept hold of me. Which he did, for a blank second, and then he shoved me away and lurched to the bed. The knife fell to the floor, forgotten, and Eamon bent over the woman. "Liz? Can you hear me?"

Her eyes rolled back in her head, and Imara let go as the woman's body went into a galvanic spasm, practically leaping off the bed. Convulsions. Bad ones. I looked at Imara, speechless, and she looked as shocked as I did.

"I told you," she said. "It's forbidden."

Eamon turned on her with the speed of a cobra. "No. You're holding back. Wake her up."

"I can't."

"Wake her up!" he shouted, and turned to pick up his knife. "I need five bloody minutes! Five!"

"I can't give it to you. I'm sorry."

"You're going to be!"

He rounded on me, and Imara reached out and knocked the knife out of his hand. It skidded across the floor in a hiss of metal, and bumped into a pair of shoes that had just manifested out of thin air.

I blinked away confusion and focused. Even then, it took me a few long seconds to recognize that David had come to our aid.

He bent down and picked up the knife. "Looking for this?" David's voice was reduced to a velvet-soft purr. The shine of the knife turned restlessly in his hand, over and over. "It has Joanne's blood on it, I see. Do you really think that was a good idea?"

Eamon froze. The woman on the bed stopped her galvanic spasms and went completely still again. Her eyes were half-shut.

"Yours?" David asked, and pointed at the bed with the tip of the knife. He looked—cold. Perfect and cold and furious, but absolutely self-contained. Rage in a bottle.

"Mine?" Eamon sketched a mad sort of laugh. "What the hell would I do with a girl in a coma? Other than the obvious, I mean."

I remembered Eamon's taunts and hints, dropped all the way back when he'd revealed himself to me as the bastard he truly was. Drugging my sister. I like my women a little less talkative and more compliant, in general , he'd said. The possibilities nauseated me, together with the fact that the nurse outside had recognized him by name, as a regular visitor.