Complex poisons tainted his blood, and she lacked understanding of how they worked. Fuck this, and she broke the chains of molecules as she'd broken the binding vines. The molecules no longer killed. Her power swept the tattered remnants into his liver and left them there for cleansing. Brandy oozed from his pores, undigested alcohol cooling her patient's fever as it evaporated.
He shuddered and lay still.
Jo rocked back on her heels, exhausted, head spinning. Dead flesh peeled from the wounds as she watched, dry, falling as black flakes and harmless dust. They left deep pits behind, shiny with scar tissue. She didn't know if he'd ever use that arm again, with so much muscle damage. Call in the rehab therapists. Different specialty.
{He will live. He will work again. The Stone embraces you and protects you.}
The cat licked her fingers, wet cold rasping tongue soothing the burn where Power had flowed stronger than her flesh could bear. It had left her limp, the same wrung-out dishrag feeling she remembered from her killing rage, but this time a man lived because of her.
This time she felt clean. She'd healed someone.
She couldn't make sense of what she'd done. By all she knew, that concentration of alcohol should have killed the man. Embalmed him. Instead, it had cured him. Maybe it had been metaphor, her brain turning the magic into forms it could understand. But the tower reeked of brandy, and all the wine bottles lay empty on the floor. Still sealed.
{Do not try to fit magic into the framework of human medicine. Results matter, not methodology.}
Five-syllable words from a cat? But the message rang clear, whether it came from her own subconscious or the broad flat head of an orange tomcat or from the stones around her and the glowing heart she'd sensed in that pattern of fire buried in the man's fevered dreams. Results mattered.
She remembered the old Naskeag's words about magic. "Nothing to be ashamed of, child. Nothing bad. Just how you use it, that's all that matters."
Jo could use her Power to heal.
Ease flowed into her. Killing Sean, killing Daddy, those had been a form of healing. Those men had been pathogens, just as much as the bacteria she'd banished from this patient sleeping under her hand. Daddy had been an overgrown form of the AIDS bug, killing his family slowly across decades. Look what he'd done to Mom and Maureen.
Look what he did to you, for Chrissakes, thirty-two years old and just groping your way into your first healthy relationship with a man. You think what you did with Buddy and all the others was any less sick than Maureen's fear?
Jo shivered. David was the first lover she'd ever had, lover as opposed to sex toy. She gritted her teeth as pieces fell into place and the puzzle formed a picture. Most of the others had been modeled on Daddy, one way or another, starting out with Buddy. She'd only met David because Maureen had brought him home . . . .
Her heart froze. Jesus Christ and all the angels, David. She'd been so busy running away from herself, she'd left David behind. And he couldn't come here by himself. She had to go back.
{The Tree has spoken to the Stone. There are other paths between the worlds. Your mate comes.}
Relief flooded through her. If she was going to fuck up that badly, she was sure as hell glad to have a safety net she could trust. "The Tree" must be Maureen's Father Oak. She felt his strong rough bark again, smelled his bitter tannin and damp moss. His Power touched her for an instant, instantly familiar.
{Few understand the Power hidden within trust. You and your blood bring a new thing to this world. Believe in it. Trust defends you now.}
She couldn't decide whether that was Father Oak speaking, or the Stone, or the cat warm in her lap. Or all of them combined.
{Come.}
The orange tom flowed off her lap again and stretched from end to end and marched to the door, tail up. He sat down and stared up at the bar. Apparently he wasn't going to walk through the wall while anyone was watching.
"I thought I was done. You said this man would live."
{Others suffer.}
She staggered to her feet, woozy from the flow of Power and exhaustion. Her shirt stuck to her shoulder blades and she stank of sweat. Didn't Maureen have a hot-tub somewhere in this pile of rocks? A good long soak, waiting for David to show up . . .
{You have work to do.}
Insistent little bastard. Persistent. Whatever. Words tangled up in her head, a symptom of exhaustion. Or maybe all that alcohol hadn't burned away. She unbarred the door and stepped out into the stairwell, to face two more cats. They wanted her to go down. She followed them, hand on the wall and careful of her footing, fingertips drawing strength and clarity from the rough stone as she went. By the time they reached the bottom, she felt almost human. Or whatever.
The cats led her into the great hall and the stink of sickness. A compound of vomit, piss, shit, rot, rancid fever-sweat, all the sickroom stench they'd kept under control at the nursing home -- it roared in her nose and wiped questions of her own need for a bath off the slate. Dozens of bodies lay swathed on the floor, thrashing in pain and fever or lying ominously still. Drifts of straw padded the floor and soaked up the worst of the fluids, but the scene looked more like a pigsty than a hospital. At least she was wearing boots . . .
Maureen had mentioned some refugees, humans fleeing an attack. She hadn't mentioned this. God above, even the stones felt the pain and mourning.
Or maybe Jo just hadn't heard. She
