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I ground my palm into the rest, then mixed it all together until both my palms and fingers were coated in the grimy, black mixture. It stung, which made sense considering it was wolfsbane.
I crossed over to Mad Dog and slid into the space between Kai and Maddox. I had to brace myself, knowing things were about to get violent. In order to save my friend, I had to kill him, and this was a particularly tricky technique.
“Maddox, I don’t know if you can hear me, but I need you to trust me on this. I promise, I’d never hurt you for no reason.”
He gave no response, not so much as a flutter of an eyelid, but I didn’t expect one.
No more procrastinating. It was time to dive in headfirst.
One last deep breath, then I opened Mad Dog’s mouth with my clean hand, making sure to wedge my thumb between his molars. Once I was sure it wouldn’t be able to close, I slid my ashen, oil-covered fingers across his tongue, leaving a thick, black streak in his mouth.
The reaction was immediate. His jaw tried to clamp shut on me while his limbs flailed, an unearthly shriek leaving his mouth. It was inhuman, terrifying even, but that was because it wasn’t him, it was the sickness, fighting against the poison I’d just introduced.
“Hold him down,” I said. I genuinely hadn’t expected him to react so quickly and so physically, so I was grateful for the other healers who rushed forward. All hands on deck, so to speak.
Yanking my hands away from his mouth, I then streaked the mixture on my hand across his forehead before letting my fingers settle at either of his temples. I felt the sickness try to push me away, crackling out in sharp, lashing vines. But I just pressed my fingers harder against his skin and summoned my magic as a biting barrier.
I had to go in with teeth and claws until I managed to rip out every single bit of the illness. Then, and only then, would I be able to bring Mad Dog back from the precipice I was pushing him toward.
I drove my power into him, spreading it all through him in a blaze. I channeled all the famine, the drought, the inferno, and gripped those vines with all of my might.
“Get! Out!” I cried, all poise, all composure fleeing me. Although I wasn’t on a battlefield, it felt like one, screams surrounding me while my senses were filled with ash and sweat.
The vines tried to fight me, even diving into my skin to infect me. I still felt awful, stabbing, shocking pain from them, yet they didn’t make it far before my magic met them in kind, incinerating them to ash.
I could feel the poison of my concoction spreading quickly through Mad Dog’s blood as it stained his veins with its own unending appetite for death. It was as if I could feel the vines pulling away, desperately scrambling to avoid the toxin.
That was my cue. I redirected my own magic, encouraging it to combine with the poison. To make it grow. Faster. Stronger.Meaner.It chewed through Mad Dog ravenously, eating everything that could possibly promote growth. Could feed the sickness.
“His heart has stopped,” I heard a voice echo beside me. “As a shifter, he has maybe fifteen minutes after his blood stills before brain death. Do you want me to start chest compressions?”
“Not yet,” I growled, human words coming out strangely around my elongated teeth. Oh, was I shifting? I wassoclose. Me and the poison chased the illness, gripping onto it whenever it tried to curl through me and send more death, more pestilence through it.
It withered, screaming and hissing, as I pushed it farther and farther back in Mad Dog’s body.
“His heart has stopped. Starting timer now.”
I hated the voice drawing me away from my intense concentration but did need the update. I had fifteen minutes before everything was for nothing.
I was beginning to run on empty, my body trembling, and I tapped into Kai again. His energy was less of a flowing torrent as it was the first time, but it helped, filling me with a second wave.
It was with that wave that I pushed. Pushed.Pushed.Until finally, I’d completely cleared Mad Dog’s body of every drop of the sickness and its vines.
Except for his heart.
That was the center of everything, the wellspring of life fueling Mad Dog’s body, and where the sickness took root. As long as his heart was beating, it would always come back.
But it wasn’t beating, was it?
It was our last stand; I knew it. The illness knew it. Mycurseknew it. I felt the air crackle around with our three energies, two against one.
Today, they’d learn what I could do.
“Breathe deep, Kai,” I murmured before drawing everything he had available into me. I heard his sharp gasp, but his hands never left my waist, his strong fingers biting into the rough spun fabric of my uniform.
He was my anchor during this whole battle, holding me in the present so I wasn’t lost in the mire. I’d spent so long honing my healing ability that it was like I was entirely someone else now. Someone with blood in their teeth and violence in their soul.
It was with him that I pushed for a final confrontation. I surrounded Mad Dog’s still heart, ripping and tearing at the spikes through it, the burning vines. They tried to grab hold somewhere, to regrow twice as strong and twice as thick, but there was nothing for them to draw from. I’d poisoned Mad Dog in every sense of the word, and all that was good in him, all that was life, was sealed within my pestilent magic.
