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I was so angry with this man.
All he did was breathe.
“Crap.”
Happy wasn’t rating.
By three AM I was ready to try the bad half of the city.
Fine. I was no wilting fucking daisy.
Where to. Biker houses? Crack houses? For starters, yes.
A small riot outside the dance club area. Check.
A rundown street where the drug gangs supposedly gathered and men wandered past my car looking in. My Ruger ended up being waved once or twice, but three guys tried to knife another man a few yards from my car. Things were looking up.
Val was breathing faster.
On the road nearby, police were shepherding an entire street party of drunk people, except the party-goers decided tossing bottles down the road was fun. Tear gas was fired and a small team of well-armed cops did mass arrests. Houston law enforcement wasn’t playing around anymore. You did bad, you got taken down.
I swore when I lifted the bandage over Val’s arm and found patches of pink skin.
It was working.
The old myths said you paid for magic like this. Wish for long life and you turned into a wrinkled corpse but stayed alive, wheezing and blinded. What might this do to Val if it succeeded?
I didn’t know, was past stopping. Maybe not past caring but I wasn’t going to stop. I could give him death, or a life with possible side effects. We’d deal with it.
Roll on.
Flames reflecting in the sky took me to an industrial area where a warehouse burned. Something there fed a jolt of energy into Val. It was like jump-starting him with cables. He jerked several times. Now I was cooking. Were there arsonists in the crowd radiating evil? Who knew?
Drive on. I had it figured. Police sirens drew me to a murder scene. The blazing headlights and area being cordoned off, the bodies lying on a front lawn—Val’s breathing was softer, normal. He looked relaxed, at peace.
Peeking under the bandages, I could see tattoos being re-inked, my own work rising from the murk of destroyed skin.
Every bandage I unpeeled showed the same results.
This was probably where I should freak out.
Except that race in my pulse was because I was excited.
I drove around more—drug deals, prostitutes and their john in an alley, the homeless.
Violence was curing him.
Eerie.
Amazing.
This was justified, no matter what evil I left unavenged. I was afraid to interfere lest doing so disrupted whatever link there existed between Val and...it. Magic ley lines, or...or whatever.
Val didn’t stir.
His body healed. His brain stayed checked out. Did he have brain damage? Maybe this was useless after all...
I slumped my shoulder against the back of the driver’s seat and massaged my forehead. What to do. I set out for the port.
