He swallowed, shut his eyes a second and felt sweat roll down his face.
Being weak and useless at a time like this was rending him apart. His legs still wouldn’t work properly, though he was thankful to be able to cradle Po. She was what had sustained him—the thought of seeing her, speaking to her, loving her.
Moping was worse than being weak.
“Hey. John.”
John looked up from examining Po’s back, where he’d torn open her shirt.
“What did you do? And why are your eyes purple? And…” He gulped again, brushed hair from Po’s face. “Is she going to live?”
John didn’t answer immediately but he guessed it wasn’t simple to figure that out. He’d done something good, somehow, that much was clear.
“Fucking magic?” John stared at his palms, bloody though they were. “Yes, she feels like she will live. I can sense it, see inside her in a way. The damage is lessening. I don’t know how long this will last but that reverso door, or whatever it is, it took away my perfect killing, made me good at healing.” His lips twitched upward. “Gave me purple eyes too, I suppose.”
“Okay.” He nodded, watching Po breathe, the stir of her chest, the pulse at her neck. She was pinker when she’d been going rapidly white. “Magic.” He snorted softly, looked around the room, taking it all in. The people still alive and the dead. “That Storyteller had some, but the bad stuff. Your friends look shaken, but we should leave when Po is okay to be moved. I don’t like it down here.”
The faraway ceiling, the eerie line of doors, and the battle carnage, that would unsettle anyone. Bodies were piled on bodies. And he really did not put it past the Storyteller to spring back to life, even if his head was almost severed.
He frowned, wondering how they would move Po.
“I think we can go now.” John looked around at Ruth and Shades. “Are you two okay to get out of here? Po is going to live, but we should leave.”
“Sure.” Ruth was hand in hand with Shades and did not let go.
Neither did he let go of hers. “I’m ready. I don’t think we need anything from here but us?”
“No.” John straightened. “We’ll have to go slow as Xander still can’t walk?”
“Sorry. My legs are still part jelly. We can search their pockets.” He grimaced then nodded at the bodies. “For more antidote. But time will fix me. Can I ask you, Shades, how you resisted the Storyteller? I thought only I could do that.”
“Sure. It was easy, once I was told how his voice worked.” With Ruth, he headed for Xander. “I’ll carry you and Ruth can take Po. I really want to leave soon.” Shades shuddered, looking about. He waited for Ruth to gently take Po from Xander then moved in. “Awful place. How did I do it?”
Hand extended, he hauled Xander to his feet and steadied him.
“I turned down the volume on my synthetic ear, and my real one is deaf from an old battle wound.”
“Excellent thinking then. Good man.” He put out his hand for Shades to shake. “Give me a second to breathe before we set off.”
Pain was lancing through his ribs. His chest had been lying down on the job for over a week, and he surely needed to get exercising. Tomorrow, though. No more poisons from now on.
When he saw how Po’s arm flopped limp by her side, dangling there, as she lay in Ruth’s arms, his chest hurt some more.
The blood she’d left on the floor pained him too.
Damn this day. But he was free, so were they all. He jump-shifted on his pins and needles feet. “Let’s go.”
As Shades picked him up, he spotted the white creature, Ruff, glide-hopping near the reverso door, as John had termed it. He was no longer white.
He pointed. “We need to clean the blood off that thing. Be on the alert for a bathtub.”
Ruff shot him what seemed an all-too-intelligent stare.
“You going to dunk him in water?” Shades grunted, realigned his hold on Xander. “I am not going within a yard of that event.”
“The smartest thing anyone has said all day.” Ruth grinned.
They did find a bathtub though, on the tower’s tenth floor, on their way to the airship the Storyteller had brought and left anchored. There was enough water in a nearby tank. Ruff was not happy.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
airship they found moored to the top of the tower proved a fast runner. The black balloon above was taut, though the lozenge-shaped cabin roped beneath became cold and icy if they reached too high an altitude. With the help of Shades measuring air pressure and various other necessary things, and he wasn’t sure as to precisely what those were, John managed to steer it on a good, low course toward Bitzocoin.
Pearbottom and Rocky had been left with a farmer after they’d tried loading them aboard then realized two horses and them, for days, together in this cabin was going to be hazardous, as well as too heavy. He’d have to tell Po, once she was in better health. Knowing her, she’d want to send for them. Though Ruth had her bluebirds fluttering about the cabin, they’d also left her backpack stall with the farmer.
She woke, once, long enough to be startled at the appearance of Ruff. Though clean and white, the critter had not been brushed after being washed. His hair poked out in clumps and he resembled a hairbrush that’d been ravaged by a pack
