Mom's hand felt cold. Her fingernails were blue-tinged, almost like a corpse. The nurse had said there was nothing wrong with her heart and lungs, but that sometimes the body just started to shut down when things went seriously wrong. Mom still lived somewhere down underneath that husk. Maybe she'd just decided to quit. Prayed to her God to take her home.
Jo wondered if faith helped when you ended up like this. If she'd still believed in God, she would have been pissed off at the old bastard. Hospitals sure made you question the concept of a loving deity.
Hospitals and men like Dad. He was staring at her again, and she had to fight the automatic cringe he was expecting. He wanted evidence of her fear. She could feel the hunger in him, could see it in his eyes. Some of Maureen's problems had roots far older than Buddy Johnson.
Jo shuddered. She'd learned a few things in her visit to the Summer Country. If Dad tried anything, he'd find out that the rules had changed.
But she'd learned other uses for her power, bright gifts of the Old Blood as well as dark. She closed her eyes and let her mind settle into the calm pool of her breathing, relaxing, slowing her own heartbeat and cutting loose from the world. Cutting loose from the ugliness of hospital and unemployment and Dad.
She let the room fall away from her, silencing the intercom and the gurneys in the hall, washing the disinfectant and vomit and bedpans from the air, pulling on the clear warmth and crystal air of the Summer Country, flowing the yellow glow of her thoughts down her arms and through her hands into the cold hand of her mother. She let her glow beat with the pulse she found there, weak and reluctant, and spread the warmth of her light through blood and veins flowing back to the heart and lungs and brain.
{I'm here, Mom.}
Something stirred. It slid away from her, confused and fearful. It refused to trust her.
{It's Jo, Mom. I might be able to help you.}
The reluctance strengthened. {Evil.} It turned from her. {Hail Mary, full of grace . . .}
Jo pushed herself against the wall of prayer. It resisted and then retreated rather than breaking. Jo backed off, afraid of chasing this timid strength, afraid of frightening it rather than soothing it. It puzzled her for a moment, and then she remembered something Brian had told her. Power was inherited. The Old Blood was inherited. Mom knew about witches. And feared them.
She reached out again, offering a vision of herself holding a cool damp cloth on Mom's head, vision of herself taking Mom's hand, vision of herself lifting Mom to stand beside the hospital bed and then walk and dress and leave the hospital smiling and healthy.
{Witch blood! Demon blood! Get thee behind me, Satan!} The Mom-figure turned away, fingering a rosary so hard Jo expected to see smoke curling up from the beads. {Our Father, Who art in heaven . . .}
Jo blinked and stared at the Mom in the hospital bed. It showed no change. Then, slowly, jerkily, the head turned towards Jo and away from Dad. Sweat beaded its face. The eyes focused. The lips trembled on the right side, tongue licked, stuttering consonants and vowels tumbled over each other, vainly trying to give meaning. The brow furrowed in frustration.
Mom's right hand twitched, and Jo took it gently in hers. The fingers pressed against hers, warmer than they had been, and Jo closed her eyes and let her soul flow down her arm again to seek her mother and give healing.
{Demon-spawn!}
A vision exploded in Jo's face, flashing views of a goat-man standing on his hind legs, penis rampant, with Dad's face crowned by the classic devil's horns. The choking reek of brimstone filled the air. She staggered back, shielding her eyes.
Shit. So this was what you got when you mixed a rigid Catholic upbringing with the Old Blood, and then topped it off with Dad. The girls finally grew up and escaped, but Mom wouldn't find refuge short of the grave. No divorce. Jo swallowed bitterness and took a deep breath.
Back into her center, back into the calm. Send gentle waves of hope and love through the bond of touch between them. Think warm, think peace, think healing. Ride the pale yellow flow up past the walls and into Mom's inner sanctuary, gently, gently, through onion-layer after onion-layer of defenses and evasions.
Aftermath of blood clot and swelling. Dead tissue. Marks of surgery. Spread soothing. Touch the thoughts cowering deep inside the bunker.
Dad's face, red with rage, breath reeking of whisky. Shouted words. A woman's face, painted and street-wise. The fist. Sudden red pain, and falling, and terror, and blessed darkness.
Jo staggered back, shoved away by the force of her mother's will slamming the door on this intrusion. She leaned against the wall of the hospital room, panting, sickened by what she'd found in her vain attempt at healing. It hadn't been a stroke. Mom's brain had been damaged, yes, but not by stroke or fall. She didn't want to come out and face the world. Not that world.
She caught her breath and straightened up. Dad's rat-face stared at her from across the bed, crafty, nervous, too aware of what had happened. Old Blood. Brian had said they must have inherited it from both sides.
So that was how he controlled us.
Jo took another breath, deep and slow, feeling the power building within her like a lighting charge. Hair rose on her head like that time she'd drawn on the magic of the Summer Country and her blood to blast two slugs from a pistol that defied the laws of faery.
