Unforsaken

time I felt the force within me summon itself and gather and strengthen as the voices murmured and swelled, I grew stronger.

And it wasn’t just my skill that was growing. There was something else-something tied to my deepest understanding of who I was. The emotions that had defined me before I’d discovered my gift-fear, insecurity, hopelessness-were slipping away. In their place was a growing conviction that I could do the things that had been ordained for me, that I was a true and rightful Healer, and that my gift was meant to be used, and used well.

“We know you’ve been helping Prentiss reconstruct your work, but we need you to help us destroy it,” Kaz said. “All the backups, everything.”

“But it will take too long if we have to talk this way,” I added. “I need to heal you.”

“Nnnnn nnn nnn,” Bryce gasped as tears formed at the corners of his eyes, welling up and then coursing down his ruined face. He didn’t want me to try to heal him, was terrified that I might bring him only partway back, forcing him to live like this indefinitely.

But there was no other way.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I have to touch you.”

I closed my eyes and let the voices come, let the ancient rhythms spin and unfurl. The voices built until they reached my lips, and my need to say the words overwhelmed me. I tried to ignore Bryce’s frantic, terrified mewling as I laid my shaking hand against his chest.

I was as gentle as I knew how to be, but my touch made him scream, the most horrible sound I had ever heard, pure pain compressed into a wail. I felt my own tears come as the words whispered forth from my lips and my blood danced and rushed with a stronger force than I’d ever felt.

This was different from any healing I’d done before. I could sense my gift’s being drawn from further and further within the depths of my soul, stretched and taxed almost unbearably as I struggled to meet the challenge of Bryce’s terrible wounds.

It was too much.

Under my hands, Bryce’s flesh thrummed once, weakly, but then I felt the healing change course and excruciating pain shot backward into me, into the nerves of my fingers and along my arms into my very core, an agony so exquisite it was unlike anything I had known, anything I had imagined.

I wavered on the brink of consciousness. All I had to do was let go, take my hands off Bryce, and the pain would abate; it would slip back into the shadows like a rubber band released, like a wave racing back to the ocean. As I hesitated, the pain intensified, a burning raw rasp along every nerve ending in my body. Black spots danced in front of my eyes, and I heard nothing except for my own screams, but even they were locked inside. Since the pain was greater than my will, the pain ruled me, preventing me from making a sound.

I felt my fingers tremble against Bryce’s body and I knew that the pain was going to win, that it was going to beat me. I can’t, I said, or dreamed I said; I couldn’t be sure. The voices were fading, the lyrical syllables chasing themselves into the darkness, a whisper, and then a sigh, almost gone, almost forgotten.

“Hailey.” I heard Kaz’s worried voice, but it was far away, so far away.

All I had to do was let go. There was no reason to be afraid. I would let go. I would send the pain hurtling back to the source, to Bryce. It would leave my body and seek its host, the burned and melted flesh of the man who had once sought to imprison me and use me to make zombies.

Bryce deserved the pain. He had brought it on himself.

He deserves this…

I almost gave in. I nearly convinced myself to turn away. The voices had faded to a faint hum, and it was all I could do to keep from passing out. The black spots in my mind bloomed and ran together like a nightmare played at high speed.

But then something shifted.

I hadn’t come this far, fought so hard, lost so much only to give up when I was tested. I might have questioned and even despised my gift; I might have wished it away. But it was as much a part of me as the heart that beat in my chest. It wasn’t merely chance that had brought me together with the damaged and the wounded: I was meant to heal them. I was meant to use my gift.

“Ta me mol seo draiocht,” I whispered, my lips trembling with the ancient words, and before I could draw another breath, the voices joined in, stronger than before, a chorus that wound up and down a beautiful dark scale, a harmony that only I could hear.

I gave in to the voices, but not before I tightened my fingers on Bryce’s ruined flesh. I felt his body spasm with agony, but I held on.

“Na anam an corp cara ar comhoibri…”

I saw nothing. The room fell away, and we were alone, me and Bryce and the ancients, my ancestors whose voices encouraged and strengthened me. Misgiving left me first, and then doubt, and finally pain; I felt nothing at all except for the energy flowing between my fingertips and Bryce. Other voices twined with the chant, speaking words I did not know: a man’s voice, sure and gentle, and a woman’s soft murmur in answer. I understood that they were the most ancient, the ones who had been there at the beginning. The original Banished were beside me, within me, guiding me, and in that moment I knew that they would be with me for the rest of my life.

And then I felt Bryce respond.

Just a tiny little tic, a blip in the flow of energy, but I’d felt it. I started the chant one last time, from the beginning, and as I spoke the words clear and strong, the other voices faded away, one by one, until the only one left was mine. I felt sorrow for their absence as my body returned to me. My vision flickered and I was aware of Kaz next to me, and there was a part of me that longed to follow the voices into the past, into a place that time and death could not reach, where I would be with my ancestors forever.

Then I heard Kaz whisper my name and I returned. I finished the verse and lifted my hands from Bryce, letting my exhausted body fall into Kaz’s arms. As my vision cleared, I saw Bryce tremble and then go still. His flesh crackled with energy, his body sealing over the fissures on its own, repairing the cracked and blackened tissues, bursting forth with new cells.

I had done it. I had healed the man who’d tried to kill me and Prairie, the man who’d come closer to pure evil than anyone else I had met. Our struggles were far from over, and we were still in great danger.

But I had used my gift and used it well.

36

I FELT STRONG ARMS AROUND ME and I knew that Kaz would not let me falter. He held me as I watched Bryce’s tremors slowly subsiding. I couldn’t judge how far Bryce had come, but he was better. His eyes no longer quivered in their sockets; he licked his restored lips; his exposed neck showed pink areas where healing appeared in the sheen of the flesh.

“Are you all right?” Kaz demanded.

I nodded. I felt fine-better, in fact, than I had before I touched Bryce. “We need to go.”

“Yeah. Look, Safian, we’re out of here. It’s gonna hurt like hell and we can’t be dragging all this crap along, so you’re just going to have to hope that what Hailey did was enough.”

I pushed Kaz gently away. I could stand on my own, and I was ready to run on my own, and fast. I had no idea how much longer we had before someone figured out what we were up to and came after us.

“We need a laptop.”

“You heard her,” Kaz said to Dr. Grace, who had been watching with a combination of fascination and horror. He handed me the gun and started shoving the equipment away from Bryce’s bed, yanking out the tubes and peeling back the gauze from his body to free the IVs in his arms.

I kept the gun pointed at Dr. Grace while I scanned the room, spotting a laptop sitting on a desk crowded with papers. The program open on the screen made no sense to me, a chart with dozens of data points and a lot of scientific language along the bottom-but that didn’t matter.

“I’m guessing this is password protected, right?” I asked Dr. Grace. “But I bet you have an override.”