42

I WOKE UP SMELLING sage incense. Sage for cleansing and ridding you of negativity, or so my teacher Marianne was fond of telling me when I complained about the smell. Sage incense always gave me a headache. Was I in Tennessee with Marianne? I didn't remember going there. I opened my eyes to see where I was, and it was a hospital room. If you wake up in enough of them, you recognize the signs.

I lay there blinking into the light, happy to be awake. Happy to be alive. A woman came to stand by the bed. She was smiling. She had shoulder-length black hair, cut blunt around a strong face. Her eyes seemed too small for the rest of her face, but those eyes stared down at me like she knew things I didn't, and they were good things or at least important ones. She was wearing something long and flowing, violet with a hint of red in the pattern.

I tried to talk, cleared my throat. The woman got a glass from the small bedside table, her many necklaces clinking as she moved. She bent the straw so I could drink. One of the necklaces was a pentagram.

"Not a nurse," I said. My voice still sounded rough. She offered the water again, and I took it. I tried again, and this time my voice sounded more like me. "You're not a nurse."

She smiled, and the smile turned an ordinary face into something lovely, just as the burning intelligence in her eyes made her striking. "What was your first clue?" She had a soft rolling accent that I couldn't place; Mexican, Spanish, but not.

"You're too well dressed for one thing, and the pentagram." I tried to point at the necklace, but my arm was taped to a board with an IV running into my skin. The hand was bandaged, and I remembered the corpse biting me. I finished the gesture with my right hand, which seemed unharmed. My left arm seemed to have a sign over it that said cut here, bite here, whatever here. I moved the fingers of my left hand to see if I could. I could. It didn't even really hurt, just tight, as if the skin needed to stretch a little.

The woman was watching me with those eyes of hers. "I am Leonora Evans. I believe you've met my husband."

"You're Doctor Evans' wife?"

She nodded.

"He mentioned you were a witch."

She nodded, again. "I arrived at the hospital in the ... how do you say, nick of time, for you." Her accent thickened when she said, how do you say.

"What do you mean?" I asked.

She sat down in the chair beside the bed, and I wondered how long she'd been sitting there, watching me. "They restarted your heart, but they couldn't keep life in your body."

I shook my head, and the beginnings of a headache was starting behind my eyes. "Can you put out the incense? Sage always gives me a headache."

She didn't question it, just got up and moved to one of those little folding tables on wheels that they have in hospitals. There was incense stuck in a small brazier, a long wooden wand, a small knife, and two candles burning. It was an altar, her altar, or a portable version of it.

"Don't take this wrong, but why are you here and a nurse isn't?"

She spoke with her back to me as she quenched the incense. "Because if the creature that attacked you tried to kill you a second time, the nurse would probably not even notice it was happening until it was too late." She came and sat back down by the bed.

I stared at her. "I think the nurse would notice if a flesh-eating corpse came into the room."

She smiled and it was patient, even condescending. "You and I both know that as horrible as its servants are, the true danger is in the master."

My eyes widened. I couldn't help it. Fear thudded in my throat. "How did you ... know that?"

"I touched his power when I helped cast him out of you. I heard his voice, felt his presence. He was willing you to die, Anita, draining you of life."

I swallowed, my pulse still too fast. "I'd like a nurse now, please."

"You're afraid of me?" She smiled when she said it.

I started to say no, but then ... "Yeah, but it's not personal. Let's just say after my brush with death, I'm not sure who to trust, magically speaking."

"Are you saying I saved you because this master allowed me to save you?"

"I don't know."

She frowned for the first time. "Trust me on this, Anita. It was not easy to save you. I had to encircle you with protection, and some of that protection was my own power, my own essence. If I had not been strong enough, if the names I called on for aid had not been strong enough, I would have died with you."

I looked up at her and wanted to believe her, but ... "Thank you."

She sighed, settling the skirt of her dress with fingers aglitter with rings. "Very well, I will fetch you a familiar face, but then we must talk. Your friend Ted told me of the marks that bind you to the werewolf and the vampire."

Something must have shown on my face because she said, "I needed to know in order to help you. I'd saved your life by the time he arrived here, but I was trying to fix your aura, and I couldn't." She passed a hand just above my body and I felt that trail of warmth that was her power caressing over mine. She hesitated over my chest, over my heart. "There is a hole here as if there is a piece of yourself missing." Her hands slid further down my body and hesitated low on my stomach, or high on my abdomen depending on how you looked at it. "Here is another hole. They are both chakra points, important energy points for your body. Bad places to have no ability to shield from magical attack."

My heart was back to beating faster than it should have. "They are closed. I've worked for the last six months to close them up."

Leonora shook her head, taking her hands gently back from me. "If I understand what your friend told me of this triumvirate of power you are a part of, then these spaces are like electrical sockets in the wall of your aura, your body. The two creatures have the plugs that fit their respective sockets."

"They aren't creatures," I said.

"Ted painted a very unflattering picture of them."

I frowned. It sounded like something Edward would do. "Ted doesn't like the fact that I'm ... intimate with monsters."

"You are lovers with both then?"

"No. I mean ... " I tried to think of a quick version. "I was sleeping with them at separate times. I mean for a little while I was ... dating them both at the same time, but it didn't work out."

"Why did it not work?"

"We were invading each other's dreams. Thinking each other's thoughts. Every time we had sex, it was worse, as if the sex was tying the knots tighter and tighter," I stopped talking, not because I was finished, but because the words weren't enough. I started over. "One night the three of us were alone, just talking, trying to work things out. A thought popped into my head, and it wasn't mine, or I didn't think it was mine, but I didn't know whose thought it was." I looked up at her, trying to will her to understand the moment of sheer terror that had been for me.

She nodded, as if she did, but her next words said she'd missed the point. "That frightened you."

"Yeah," I said, making the word two syllables so she'd catch the sarcasm.

"The lack of control," she said.

"Yes."

"The lack of individual privacy."

"Yes," I said.

"Why did you take on these marks?"

"They would have died if I hadn't done it. We might all have died."

"So you did it to save your own life." She sat there, hands crossed in her lap, perfectly at ease while she probed my psychic wounds. I hate people who are at peace with themselves.

"No, I couldn't lose them both. I might have survived losing one, but not both, not if I could save them."

"The marks gave you all enough power to overcome your enemies."

"Yes."

"If the thought of sharing your life with them is so terrifying, then why did their deaths loom so large?"

I opened my mouth, closed it, tried again. "I loved them, I guess."

"Past tense, loved, not love?"

I was suddenly tired. "I don't know anymore. I just don't know."

"If you love someone, then your freedom is curtailed. If you love someone, you give up much of your privacy. If you love someone, then you are no longer merely one person but half of couple. To think or behave any other way is to risk losing that love."

"It's not like having to share the bathroom, or argue over which side of the bed you get to sleep on. They're trying to share my mind, my soul."

"Do you really believe that last about your soul?"

I settled into the pillow, and closed my eyes. "I don't know. I guess not, but it ... " I opened my eyes. "Thank you for saving my life. If I can ever return the favor, I will, but I don't owe you an explanation of my personal life."

"You're quite right." She straightened her shoulders as if pulling herself back, and suddenly she seemed less intrusive, more businesslike. "Let's return to my analogy of the holes being like light sockets, and the men being the plugs that fit them. What you did was spackle over the holes, cover them with plaster. When the master attacked you, his power tore off the plaster and reopened the holes. You cannot close these holes with your own aura. I cannot imagine the amount of effort it took to put patches over them. Ted said you were learning ritual from a witch."

I shook my head. "She's more psychic than witch. It's not a religion, just natural ability."

Leonora nodded. "Did she approve of you closing the holes the way you did?"

"I told her I wanted to learn how to shield myself from them, and she helped me do that."

"Did she tell you it was a temporary repair?"

I frowned at her. "No."

"Your hostility flares every time we approach the fact that you have given these two men in effect the keys to your soul. You cannot block them permanently, and by trying to you weaken yourself, and probably them as well."

"We'll all just have to live with it," I said.

"You almost didn't live with it."

She had my attention now. "Are you saying that the reason the master was able to almost kill me was the weakness in my aura?"

"He would have hurt you badly, even without them, but I believe the holes made you unable to resist him, especially with them freshly opened as they were. Think of them, perhaps, as wounds, freshly opened wounds that any preternatural infection can enter you through."

I thought about what she was saying. I believed it. "What can I do?"

"The holes are meant to be filled by only one thing, the auras of the men you loved. Your auras must now be like jigsaw puzzles with pieces missing, and only the three of you together are a whole now."

"I can't accept that."

She shrugged. "Accept it or not, but it is still the truth."

"I'm not ready to give up the fight just yet. Thanks anyway."

She stood, frowning. "Do as you will, but remember that if you come up against other preternatural powers, then you will not be able to protect yourself from them."

"I've been like this for a year. I think I can manage."

"Are you that arrogant, orjust that determined not to talk about it any more?" She looked down at me as if she expected an answer.

I gave her the only one I had. "I don't want to talk about it anymore."

She nodded. "Then I will get your friend, and I'm sure the doctor will want to speak with you." She turned and walked out.

The room was very quiet, full of that hush that hospitals are so fond of. I looked at her makeshift altar and wondered what she'd had to do to save me. Of course, I only had her word for that. The moment I thought it, I was sorry. Why was I so distrustful of her? Because she was a witch, the way Marks hated me because I was a necromancer? Or was it just that I didn't like the truth she was telling me? That I couldn't shield myself from magical critters until the holes in my "aura" had been filled in. It had taken me most of the last six months to fill up those holes. Six months of effort, and they were raw again. Shit.

But if they were open, why didn't I sense Jean-Claude and Richard? If the marks were truly unshielded again, then why wasn't there a burst of closeness? I needed to call my teacher Marianne. I trusted her to tell me the truth. She'd warned me that simply blocking off the marks was only temporary. But she helped me do it because she felt I needed some time to adjust, to accept. I wasn't sure I had another six months of meditative prayer, psychic visualization, and celibacy in me. It had taken all that and power, energy. Hers and mine.

Of course, Marianne had taught me other things, and one of those meant I could check myself. I could run my hand down my own aura and see if the holes were there. The trouble was I needed my left hand for that, and it was wrapped in bandages, strapped to a hoard with a tube in it.

Now that I was alone and not being pestered with hard questions, I began to feel my body. It hurt. Every time I moved my back, it hurt. Some of it was the dull ache of bruises, but there were two spots that had the sharp bite of things that had bled. I tried to remember how I could have cut my back. The glass in the window when the corpse took us back through it, that had to be it.

My face ached in a line from jaw to forehead. I remembered the corpse hitting me backhand. It had been almost casual, but it had knocked me half-senseless. Just once I'd like to meet a type of walking dead that wasn't stronger than a living person.

I lifted the loose neck of my hospital gown and found little round pads stuck to my chest. I glanced at the heart monitor beside the bed, giving that reassuring sound that said my heart was still working. I had a sudden memory of the moment when my heart had stopped, when the master had willed it to stop. I was suddenly cold, and it wasn't the overly ambitious air conditioner. I'd come very close to dying yesterday ... today? I didn't know what day it was. Only the sunshine pressing against the drawn blinds let me know it was day and not night.

There were red patches on the skin of my upper body like bad sunburns. I touched one, gently. It hurt. How the hell had I gotten burns? I lifted the gown until it made a cave and I could see down the line of my body, at least until mid-thigh where the weight of the covers hid me from view. There was abandage just below my rib cage. I remembered the thing's mouth opening over my skin while he cradled me, gently. The moment when he bit down ... I pushed the memory away. Later, much, much later. I checked my left shoulder, but the scrape marks from teeth had already scabbed over.

Scabbed over? How long had I been out?

A man came into the room. He seemed familiar, but I knew I did not know him. He was tall with blond hair and silver-framed glasses. "I'm Doctor Cunningham, and I am very glad to see you awake."

"Me, too," I said.

He smiled and started checking me over. He used a penlight and made me follow the light, his finger, and kept staring into my eyes so long, he had me worried. "Did I have a concussion?"

"No," he said. "Why? Does your head hurt?"

"A little but I think it's from the sage incense."

He looked embarrassed. "I am sorry about that, Ms. Blake, but she seemed to think all this was very important, and frankly I don't know why you almost died to begin with, or why you didn't just keep on dying, I let her do what she wanted."

"I thought my heart stopped," I said.

He tucked his stethoscope into his ears and pressed it to my chest. "Technically, yes." He stopped talking, listening to my heart. He asked me to breathe deeply a couple of times, then made some notes on the chart at the foot of my bed. "Yes, your heart did stop, but I don't know why it stopped. None of your injuries were that serious, or for that matter, that kind of injury," He shook his head and came back to stand by me.

"How did I get the burns on my chest?"

"We used the defibrillator to start your heart. It can leave mild burns,"

"How long have I been here?"

"Two days. This is your third day with us."

I took a deep breath and tried not to panic. I'd lost two days. "Have there been any more murders?"

The smile wilted on his face, leaving his, eyes even more serious than they had been. "You mean the mutilation murders?"

I nodded.

"No, no new bodies."

I let out the breath. "Good."

He was frowning now. "No more questions about your health? Just about the murders?"

"You said you don't know why I almost died, or why I didn't go ahead and die. I assume that means Leonora Evans saved me."

He looked even more uncomfortable. "All I know is that once we allowed her to lay hands on you, your blood pressure started to go back up, your heart rhythm steadied out." He shook his head. "I simply don't know what happened, and if you knew how hard it is for a doctor, any doctor, to admit ignorance, you'd be much more impressed with me saying that."

I smiled. "Actually, I've been in the hospital before. I appreciate you telling me the truth and not trying to claim credit for my miraculous recovery."

"Miraculous is a good word for it." He touched the one thin knife scar on my right forearm. "You have quite a collection of war injuries, Ms. Blake. I believe you have seen a lot of hospitals."

"Yeah," I said.

He shook his head. "You're what, twenty-two, twenty-three?"

"Twenty-six," I said.

"You look younger," he said.

"It's being short," I said.

"No," he said, "it isn't. But still to have these kinds of scars at twenty-six is not a good sign, Ms. Blake. I did my residency in a very bad section of a very big city. We used to get a lot of gang members. If they lived to see twenty-six, their bodies looked like yours. Knife scars ... " He leaned across the bed and raised the sleeve of the gown enough to touch the healed bullet wound on my upper arm. " ... bullet wounds. We even had a shapeshifter gang, so I've seen the claw marks and bites, too."

"You must have been in New York," I said.

He blinked. "How did you know?"

"It's illegal to purposefully give lycanthropy to a minor even with their permission, so the gang leaders were put under a death sentence. They sent in special forces along with New York's finest to wipe them out."

He nodded. "I left the city just before they did that. I'd treated a lot of those kids." His eyes were distant with remembering. "We had two of them shapechange during treatment. Then they wouldn't let them in the hospital anymore. If you wore their colors, you were left to die."

"Most of them probably lived anyway, Doctor Cunningham. If the initial wound doesn't kill them immediately, they probably aren't going to die."

"Are you trying to comfort me?" he asked.

"Maybe."

He looked down at me. "Then I'll tell you what I told all of them. Get out. Get out of this line of work or you will not live to see forty."

"I was actually wondering if I was going to make it to thirty," I said.

"Was that a joke?"

"I think so."

"You know the old saying, half in jest, all in seriousness?" he asked.

"Can't say I've heard that one."

"Listen to yourself, Ms. Blake. Take it to heart and find something a little safer to be doing."

"If I was a cop, you wouldn't be saying this."

"I have never treated a policeman that had this many scars. The closest I've ever seen outside the gangs was a marine."

"Did you tell him to quit his job?"

"The war was over, Ms. Blake. Normal military duty just isn't that dangerous."

He looked at me, all serious. I looked back, blank-faced, giving him nothing. He sighed. "You'll do what you want to do, and it's none of my business anyway." He turned and walked towards the door.

I called after him. "I do appreciate the concern, Doctor. Honestly, I do."

He nodded, one hand on either side of his stethoscope like it was a towel. "You appreciate my concern, but you're going to ignore my advice."

"Actually, if I live through this case, I'm planning to take some time off. It's not the injury rate, doctor. It's the erosion of the ethics that's beginning to get to me."

He tugged on the stethoscope. "Are you telling me that if I think you look bad, I should see the other guy?"

I gazed down, sort of taking it all in. "I execute people, Doctor Cunningham. There are no bodies to look at."

"Don't you mean you execute vampires?" he said.

"Once upon a time, that's what I meant."

We had another long moment of looking at each other, then he said, "Are you saying you kill humans?"

"No, I'm saying that there's not as much difference between vamps and humans as I used to tell myself."

"A moral dilemma," he said.

"Yeah," I said.

"I don't envy you the problem, Ms. Blake, but try to stay out of the line of fire until you figure out the answer to it."

"I always try and stay out of the line of fire, Doctor."

"Try harder," he said and walked out.