Demon in My View

and little else. He hadn't even bothered to replace the shirt Dominique's knife had bloodied, but had simply tossed it in the trash somewhere.

Now Aubrey paced in Fala's room, waiting for her to return, all the while envisioning the new forms of pain he could introduce her to if she had killed Jessica.

When Fala finally did enter the room, she looked quite a bit worse for wear. Her arm had been sliced open, and blood was still dripping from the slowly healing wound. She was trembling, though Aubrey couldn't tell whether the cause was pain, chill, or rage.

'Damn both of you to Hell and back!' she growled when she saw him. 'Get out of my room or I'll tear out your heart and feed it to Ahemait myself.'

Judging by her mood, she might very well try. Ahemait was the Egyptian devourer of the dead. When Fala brought up the mythology of her human background, she was best avoided.

Instead, Aubrey's anger responded to hers.

He slammed her against the wall, his hand around her throat, and heard the crunch as her windpipe broke. The injury would heal quickly, but he could tell that, despite her high tolerance for it, Fala did not appreciate the pain.

She threw a bolt of her power at him and he stumbled back a step. Dodging quickly, he barely avoided his own knife when she threw it at him. The blade stuck in the wall.

'What did you do to her?' he demanded.

'Only what you should have done a week ago!' Fala snapped.

This time it was Fala's turn to stumble as Aubrey lashed out, his anger making the blow even harder. 'Where is she? ' he said quietly, his voice cold.

Fala laughed. 'You honestly expect me to tell you?'

Meeting her gaze, Aubrey paused before answering. He saw her expression change as she recognized the complete, smoldering rage in his eyes. 'Yes.'

'She's somewhere on the river,' Fala spat, wise enough to recognize that fighting him at this moment was a dangerous idea. 'I hope the crows have gotten to her by now.'

Aubrey disappeared, bringing himself to the edge of New Mayhem, where the river passed by.

Once again he changed himself into a wolf, a creature that could move faster and more surely through the woods. Following the river, he covered a mile in only a few minutes. Finally, less than two miles from New Mayhem, in the thick of the forest, he caught Jessica's scent and brought himself instantly to her side.

Jessica was pasty white, her breathing was wet and shallow, and her heart alternated between racing and threatening to stop.

She was alive, but not for long, and he knew no way to help her. Three thousand years of killing had taught him nothing about undoing this kind of damage.

After a moment of hesitation in which he swallowed his pride, he left Jessica's side and brought himself to the home of Hasana and Caryn Smoke. He could sense Caryn s magic, stronger than her mother's, even outside the house.

Had he not killed all his gods long ago, Aubrey would have prayed that Caryn would be willing to help. Anxiously he brought himself to her side.

CHAPTER 30

CARYN HAD NEARLY FAINTED from fright when Aubrey first appeared in her room, but his rapid explanation had shoved all personal concerns out of the way, making room for the disciplined healer to come forth. She had been working now for nearly an hour.

She was from the oldest known line of healers on Earth, but even her abilities had limits.

She felt weak from fatigue. Her clothing was soaking wet from when she had accidentally fallen in the river, and her heart was beating twice as fast as normal. Her face was stained with worried tears as she chanted and held her left hand, palm down, over Jessica's heart, channeling much-needed energy into the dying girl. Her other hand was constantly moving—soothing Jessica's brow, holding her hand, or drawing power from the earth.

Jessica's heart had been beating evenly for several minutes, but now it skipped once and Caryn gasped in pain, her chant stopping.

'I can't do this.' Fresh tears rolled down her face.

'Should I get Hasana?' Aubrey suggested. 'Maybe she — '

'She won't,' Caryn interrupted, remembering her mother's anger when Jessica had left the house the day before. 'She hates your kind and calls Jessica a traitor to the human race. Monica would have helped; she could have done it. But I just can't. I can't save her, and I could kill myself trying.'

'Is there anyone else?' Aubrey asked, sounding frantic.

'Vida would kill her,' Caryn answered, 'and Light's dead.' She cast Aubrey a sharp glance, knowing that his kind had murdered Lila, the last in the Light line. 'All the others are too weak. Whoever did this broke one of her ribs, and now there's blood in one of her lungs; she's going to start drowning in it soon. Besides that, she's just about drained. It's amazing I can even keep her heart beating at all. Plus, she's got at least a dozen other injuries … I don't know of anything in science or magic that can heal her.'

Caryn looked beseechingly at Aubrey, hoping he knew something she did not.

He knew nothing she wanted to hear. 'I can kill — I can't heal,' he sighed.

'I've been channeling my own … I don't know what to call it… life into her, but if I keep doing it we're both going to die. No witch short of an Arun could survive this, and they're part vampire …'

Caryn trailed off, defeated.

'I could.'

She looked at Aubrey blankly for a moment after he spoke those words.

'Unless Fala decided to tear her heart out, her injuries are really rather insignificant to my kind,' he clarified.

Finally Caryn understood. She had channeled from other witches in the past. If she could take energy from a vampire and give it to Jessica… would that heal her?

It might.

'I could kill you accidentally,' she warned him.

'I've lived a long time.'

'This is very definitely going to get me disowned,' she muttered, hoping her mother would find some way to forgive her. 'I need you on my right,' she told Aubrey.

After he had shifted position, Caryn placed her right hand just above Jessica's heart, one of the three strongest energy centers. For healing, the heart center was best.

There were no words to accurately describe what she did next. Her own energy centers were open, forming a path from Aubrey to Jessica, and now as she tapped into Aubrey's —

She gasped as the power flowed through her. That was all it could possibly be called. Not life, not chi as Hasana called it or simply energy as Monica had taught her, but pure, unrestricted power. No wonder his mind was so strong …

Caryn forced herself to control the power, which required all her years of practice, and then focused on channeling it into Jessica.

Jessica's own aura was strong, and Caryn wasn't surprised to note vampiric traces in it. She directed Aubrey's power to the areas of Jessica's injuries, where the girl's aura was weakest.

First she focused on the crack in Jessica's skull. It knitted itself together within seconds, and the blood that had pooled inside was reabsorbed into the veins as they repaired themselves.

The lung came next. The organ collapsed into itself and then regrew—small like a child's at first, but quickly expanding to full size. The rib mended in moments.

The rest of Jessica's body healed just as quickly, simply from the overflow of power. Caryn was grateful, since she was becoming sleepy. How could she be so exhausted with all this power running through her?