Firestorm

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.

I took a step backward, until the wall was at my back. Felt good, the wall. I needed the support. My legs had gone cold, pins-and-needles cold. My balance insisted that the room was pitching and rolling like the deck of a sinking ship.

David exchanged a look with Imara, a nod, and she dropped her gaze and moved out of his way. Nothing standing between him and Eamon now. I saw Eamon register that, and lick his suddenly pale lips.

'Hang on a minute, mate,' he said. 'I know it looks bad, but the truth is, I only need to wake her up for a couple of minutes. Less, even. Just long enough to say my good-byes and—'

'Don't lie,' David interrupted. The knife kept turning in his hand, drawing my eyes as well as Eamon's. 'You have a reason, and it isn't anything so sentimental.'

Eamon's eyes narrowed, and I could see him trying to decide whether or not he'd be able to take the knife. He couldn't, but there was no way he'd be able to judge that for himself. I hoped he'd try. I really did.

'All right,' he said. 'Nothing so saccharine. We were partners. She took possession of a certain payment, and she didn't want to share. I need to make her tell me where she hid the money.'

'Still not true,' David said. His eyes were terrifying—flames swirling around narrowed pupils. 'I want you to speak the truth, just once before you die.'

'You don't want to kill me, old son. I'm the one with the antidote for your girl's poison, and unless you want to see her in a hospital bed next to my beloved Liz here—'

David moved in a streak of light, and suddenly he was pressed against the other man, chest to chest, bending him over the hospital bed in a backbreaking curve. His right hand was locked around Eamon's throat, and his left…

… his left held the hilt of the knife he'd buried deep in Eamon's side.

Eamon's eyes widened soundlessly.

'That,' David said, 'is a fatal wound. Feel it?' He moved the knife helpfully. Eamon tried to scream, but