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The lord’s gaze went to the dying man, eyes narrowing at the severity of the injury. “I do not know,” he replied and went to one knee beside Thatcher as he said something in demon to Eilahn. He removed the blood-soaked shirt from the wound and laid his own hands over it, face hardening with intense focus.
Eilahn crouched nearby, naked to the waist, and obviously completely unconcerned by it. Zack remained at a distance, face expressionless and arms folded over his chest. Paul shifted back as Mzatal knelt, then looked up at him and went still, mouth dropping open. I had to control a smile. Yeah, Mzatal had that effect on people.
“I will need your assistance, zharkat,” Mzatal told me, voice tight. “He is very nearly gone.”
I’d never worked with him during a healing before, and I struggled for several precious seconds while I sought the best way to support. The lords didn’t heal with sigils and wards. As far as I could tell from all I’d witnessed, they healed by drawing damaged flesh together with elegant sutures of potency and then “reminding” the body of its proper form in order to restore itself—encouraging the tissues to heal a thousand times faster than naturally.
But no matter the method, it still required potency, and I could at least help collect and prepare the patterned strands.
Mzatal drew from me and through me the instant I touched the pattern. I sucked in a sharp breath while I sought to maintain the balance of the flow of power. Through the support connection I felt his struggle to hold a spark of life in Thatcher’s body. Sweat broke out on Mzatal’s brow, though he remained motionless. The strands burned away as he tapped them, and I was hard pressed to keep up with the drain and help control the integrity of the structure.
Thatcher coughed up a gout of blood and drew a gurgling breath. Paul surged forward to seize his hand again.
“Bryce, oh god, come on,” he pleaded, eyes on his friend’s face. “You can do it. Don’t leave.”
With the initial heavy drain past, I balanced the flow to Mzatal to fuel his effort. Like a shadow seen through a sheer curtain, I watched him locate critical bleeding and weave repairs, felt him urge Thatcher’s body to remember its healthy state and form.
Again Thatcher coughed, but this time he followed it with a clearer breath. Through Mzatal, I felt his tenuous connection to life strengthen as the sense of drowning in his own blood decreased. Paul gripped Thatcher’s hand, yet his gaze remained on Mzatal, an almost worshipful expression on his face. He knew Mzatal was doing something miraculous to save his friend.
Thatcher’s face twisted in pain. “God . . . Oh, god,” he rasped, breath noisy, but without the horrible death-rattle gurgle of before. “P-Paul . . . okay?”
Tears spilled down the young man’s face as he gave his friend a tremulous smile. “I’m okay. You saved me.”
Even my cynical ass could appreciate the poignancy of the moment, but I didn’t have much chance to do so as a movement by the back door yanked my attention. At first I thought that perhaps it was emergency services, summoned by the damn security guard. It would be a bit of a pain to deal with cops or EMS right now, but—
I stared, mind in denial for several precious seconds as, impossibly, Katashi’s senior summoner strode into a warehouse on the outskirts of a small town in south Louisiana. Tsuneo, the treacherous asshole who bore a tattoo of Jesral’s mark on his hip, and who had performed a hostile summoning of Gestamar several months back. Beside him loomed another man I recognized from my brief time as Katashi’s student: Tito, not a summoner, more of a thug type with a sensitivity to the arcane.
Anger flared. “You!” I shot to my feet and moved to get in front of Mzatal and the others. I drew my gun even as Tito pulled his to put us into a great little standoff.
Tsuneo’s gaze hardened at the sight of me, but in the next instant his face went slack with shock as he not only saw Mzatal but felt his aura.
What the hell was Tsuneo doing here? For that matter, what were Thatcher and a computer nerd doing here? Was everyone here for a frickin’ arcane flash mob?
Moreover, was Thatcher also a summoner? Was Paul? Even more vital for Thatcher to live through this so we can question the hell out of him, I thought grimly.
I heard a hiss-growl from behind me, and the hair on the back of my neck lifted as Mzatal’s aura flared, dark with fury. He stood and stepped forward with hands still dripping blood, radiating Bad Mojo like a sun about to go supernova as he faced the traitorous summoner. His left fist remained clenched at his side as his right opened in a stance I recognized all too well. Lowering his head, he moved toward the interlopers.
Shit! I kept my gun leveled on Tito and risked a quick glance back at Thatcher. He still breathed, but I knew he was far from stable.
As Mzatal advanced, Tsuneo took a stumbling step back and looked around wildly as if trying to come up with a miraculous defense. He apparently concluded there was none because his next move was to run like hell for the exit.
Mzatal lifted his right hand and called scintillating blue-white potency to it even as Tsuneo darted through the door and out. Tito frowned, apparently balanced upon a razor’s edge decision of whether to fire or run.
Mzatal rendered the decision moot. Face stone-hard and focused, he hurled the potency at Tito like a lightning strike. The man screamed and dropped the gun as the burst impacted his belly and spread over him in a rippling cascade of light. He jerked heavily for several seconds, then crumpled to lie twisted and utterly still.
The deadly potency flickered and died as Mzatal continued forward. Behind me I heard Thatcher’s struggle for breath, and Paul’s agonized entreaties for him to hold on, to stay.
“Boss!” I yelled, holstering my gun. “You’re losing Thatcher. Let Tsuneo go! We’ll track his ass down later.”
Mzatal took two more steps then stopped, his hands clenched at his sides, violently seething potency boiling off of him. Yet he still didn’t turn back toward me and the man dying on the floor. I knew he wanted to pursue Tsuneo, exact revenge for the injury to Gestamar and the insult of the summoner’s betrayal and allegiance to the Mraztur.
“Boss,” I urged. “Mzatal, please! We need Thatcher alive.” Behind me, the wounded man’s breath grew more labored.
Mzatal remained lord-still for several more agonizing seconds while I fought the urge to grab him and pull him back to finish the healing. Finally he turned, met my eyes for a powerful instant before striding back to Thatcher. I let out a ragged sigh of relief as he knelt and placed his hands back on the mess of the chest wound.
I quickly resumed balancing the pattern and the flows, then looked back at the crumpled body of Tito. No doubt he was dead.
Shit. This was a mess.
