“Perhaps,” the woman on the other end said cautiously. “We can learn a great deal from an autopsy.”
“I have no doubt that your patient’s return to health now would impinge upon a convenient autopsy later,” Lara said bitterly. “You will give us permission to see him.”
“Who
Lara shut her eyes briefly. “Someone who answers to a much higher power than you do. Now let us through.” She handed the phone back. The guard listened for a moment, nodded, nodded a second time, then stepped out of the way as he snapped the phone shut. Lara stalked by with a scant nod of thanks, aware that the others fell in line behind her. Not until they’d reached the safety of Ioan’s room and Dafydd had authoritatively ordered the nurses out did Lara sag against the wall, hands buried in her hair.
Sour music faded as Dafydd released the glamour hiding her true features. Despite Ioan’s prone form on the bed a few feet away, he crouched by Lara, a hand light on her shoulder. “Are you all right?”
“The only reason they let us through is because Aerin’s so much like Ioan. I could hear it in the guard’s voice, the way he said she was like him.” Lara’s voice felt rough, as if her magic had torn her throat up. “Believe me, Dafydd, they’re not letting us in, they’re trapping us. Or they’re trying to.”
“Well, we can get out of here, right?” Kelly demanded. “Except it’s just your guy here, not Reg. We’ve got to get him, too.”
“We have to sneak out,” Dafydd said cheerfully. Lara gave him a dire look from behind her arms, and he chuckled, though his humor faded away under the weight of her glare. “Even at my weakest I’ve been able to hold a glamour that makes us effectively invisible, Lara, and we rode out of plain sight on the Common not three hours ago. The task of getting Ioan out of this ward is hardly insurmountable.”
“What have they done to him?” Aerin’s horror broke over their conversation. Lara dropped her hands to look at Ioan, who was riddled with IVs and monitor patches. His skin was scaly and blackening where the needles slipped into his arms, the veins spreading beneath his skin in a dangerous fiery red.
Sick dismay crashed over Lara. “It’s stainless steel. It’s all steel. They’re killing him!”
“Aerin!” Dafydd leapt to his feet and caught her wrist just before she bodily yanked the first needle from Ioan’s veins. “You can’t rip them upward, it’ll tear his skin even more badly, and he doesn’t need the damage. Like this.” He slipped a needle free with expert skill, shrugging as Kelly gaped in astonishment. “I had a century of lifetimes in your world, Miss Richards. I spent some time as a medic, among my many other professions. Aerin— yes, good,” he said as she put pressure on another spot where she’d withdrawn a needle with the same confident motion Dafydd had used.
“No wonder he’s remained unconscious.” Lara pushed to her feet so she could see the sallow Unseelie more clearly. “They’ve been poisoning him. Not deliberately,” she said as Aerin’s expression darkened. “They just couldn’t have known the needles would do him damage. They don’t, usually. Not to humans.”
“How could any fool think him human when they looked at him?”
Kelly, obviously understanding the sentiment if not the actual words, retorted, “Because there’s no other option. We don’t have humanoid alien species as far as anybody on Earth knows. Besides, they’re probably dying for him to die so they can cut him up.”
Aerin shot Lara a frustrated look. “When will your truthseeker’s gifts burgeon enough to permit comprehension between worlds?”
“I don’t know, Aerin. I don’t know if it’ll ever work that way. I think we’re doing well in that you and I can communicate.”
“Lara?” Ioan’s voice scraped below theirs, rendering the bickering silent. “Truthseeker? Is it possible?”
“Tsha.” Dafydd put a hand on his brother’s forehead, no longer as distressed by Ioan’s changes as he’d been. “We’ve come for you, Ioan. Aerin, Lara, myself. Even a mortal woman has ventured to your rescue.”
Ioan opened his eyes, barely focused gaze lingering on each of them until he found Kelly, and chuckled roughly. “I remember you. You fought well. But you’ve sustained a wound. A shame, to scar that lovely face. Dafydd, we must …” His eyes rolled back, unconsciousness claiming him.
Kelly whispered “You weren’t too shabby yourself,” and pressed her knuckles against her mouth, eyes large as she looked to Lara.
“I think he’s all right.” The agonies of inaccuracy in that phrase almost made Lara laugh. Instead she clutched her head a moment, then made herself straighten and pay attention to Dafydd. “There must be back ways out of here, fire doors or something. If we take one of those and come in the front again to find Detective Washington, we can avoid trying to sneak past the contingent of government guards at the head of the ward.”
“Do you really think they’re government?”
“I think city or state police would be in blue uniforms, not black suits. If they’re not government they’re —”
“Something worse,” Kelly supplied. “Corporations, maybe. Either way it’s not good for the home team. Tell you what.” She exhaled noisily, then glanced down at herself. “The big guy out there, the one who did the talking, is kind of my type, and I’m all Nurse Richards here. Should I go play distraction while you guys make a break for it?”
Dafydd lit up, but Lara shook her head. “If we were car shopping, I’d say yes, but it might backfire here. He might fall for it, or he might realize immediately it’s a ruse. No matter how good the glamours are, I think if someone’s really suspicious they might fail under scrutiny. We’re better off being sneaky as a unit. The problem is, how are we going to get Ioan out of here? On the bed, like it’s a gurney?”
“I’ll carry him.” Challenge sparked in Aerin’s gaze as Lara blinked at her. “Do you think me too weak?”
Lara studied the slender Seelie woman, remembering more the ease and speed with which she wielded a sword than her apparently fragile form. “No. It just wouldn’t have occurred to me to even try. The only way I could carry him at all would be in a fireman’s carry, and that’s probably bad for people with head injuries.”
Aerin slipped her arms under Ioan’s back and knees. Dafydd adjusted his brother’s head so it lay against Aerin’s shoulder, and Aerin straightened with apparent ease, a curious gaze on Lara. “What is a ‘fireman’s carry’?”
“God damn,” Kelly said in admiration. “I want her personal trainer.”
Lara, drily, said, “You really don’t,” and a moment later the gut-sickening magic of glamours enveloped them all.
A fingerful of Dafydd’s lightning shorted out the emergency door’s alarm system, and in moments they were free of the hospital building. Even with the jangling shards of misplaced light and shadow brought on by the glamours, Lara could see that Ioan’s color improved beyond the hospital walls: the elfin races were simply not suited for the concrete and rebar buildings that so much of humanity hid within.
“Can the human be brought forth the same way?” Aerin stood with Ioan’s weight in her arms as if it was nothing, unconcerned with what would be, to Lara, a staggering burden. Unconcerned for his weight, at least: her concern for the man himself was visible, which Lara found curious, given Aerin’s enmity toward the Unseelie. “It would be best if he was not subjected again to your iron-filled walls.”
“I know.” Lara passed a guilty hand over her eyes, but shook her head. “I think he has to go back in, though. He only has a couple of injuries. They’re bad, but a head wound and that cut he took to the thigh aren’t on the same scale as what Detective Washington suffered. His torso was punctured repeatedly. Moving Ioan like this is a risk, but I think moving Washington the same way would be homicide. Dafydd’s going to have to open the worldwalking spell right there in his hospital room and we’re going to have to wheel him through, bed and all. Can you choose where we arrive? Could you bring us straight to the healers?”
“If I knew precisely where they would be, yes, but with a war going on, it’s possible none of them remain within the citadel.” Dafydd looked apologetic. “It’s less risky to bring him there, and ride for a healer, than to bring him onto the battlefield.”
Lara whispered a curse, but nodded. “And the spell itself? Can you work it inside a human building?”
“I prepared it while you rented our costumes. It only needs to be triggered within the building, and that’s easy enough. I did it at your apartment,” he reminded her. “We only need be bold a little while longer, and then all will be well.”
She scowled at him. “I don’t believe there’s any definition of ‘well’ that encompasses ‘two men are in desperate need of healing, a traitor needs to be found in the midst of an army before he destroys two kings and claims their crowns, and ancient rivals have to be found, brought together, and made to remember a history neither
