Dark apprentice, p.34
Dark Apprentice, page 34
Was the spirit really so weak it couldn’t perform such magic itself? Nikolai focused on the couple and cast Gust. Confined in such a small space, the wind swirled around, tugging at the curtains and sending the child’s chart flying across the room.
“Fool!” cried Nikolai, pointing an accusing finger at Stuart. “You’ve angered Yoxtl by attributing his gift to someone else.”
“What? I . . .” Stuart ducked as everything caught in the wind flew at his face.
“Take back what you said,” said Nikolai. “Take it back quickly before Yoxtl undoes the boon he’s granted you.”
Cheryl covered her son with one hand and jabbed her husband with the other. “Take it back, Stu!”
“I’m sorry! I’m sorry! I take it back.” Stuart fell to his knees. “We bow to your greatness, oh, Yox . . . er . . .”
“Yoxtl,” said Nikolai.
“Yoxtl!”
Nikolai stopped channeling Gust, and the room settled. He glared at Stuart. “Never do that again. You’ve seen the power my god holds. Our god. He’s yours now too. But you must forsake this Christian god of yours, or he may deem you unworthy and take back what he has given you.”
Stuart nodded and went to embrace his wife. He kissed her, then looked up at Nikolai. “Thank you. I didn’t believe it first but—well, thank you.”
Unseen, Yoxtl flew onto the bed and locked eyes with the boy. “I’m not as bad as all that,” it said. “I just need your parents to understand—need you to understand—you’re mine now. I’d like to check on you from time to time, if that’s alright. Make sure you’re doing well. Unlike the Christian god, I do care about my followers.”
Yoxtl sniffed the dried blood caking the boy’s head and took one long lick. “Now I can find you wherever you are. If you ever have need of me, call my name: Yoxtl.”
The spirit leapt from the bed and walked out the door. Nikolai gathered up the jade stone and bid the parents farewell. They searched the rest of the hospital but only found one more target soul to bind.
Afternoon sun peeked out of fluffy clouds as they trekked back from the hospital. The trees on either side of the road had already lost most of their leaves. A gentle breeze did its best to detach the stragglers and send them down in a flutter of yellow and orange. Nikolai inhaled the crisp autumn air, his feet crunching over the carpet of fallen leaves. Yoxtl ghosted over them without a sound.
“Two souls! Terrible.”
“Two more than you had before, and three potentials on the way.”
“Potential doesn’t do me any good, but I can work on the kid. With a little more power, I can make him god-touched.” The spirit grinned up at Nikolai. “I could have a real priest again.”
“How’s that blood thing work? Tracking spell?”
“It’s called a blood binding, and yes. Spirits can teleport with ease. Unlike you humans, we have no true physical form to break down and recreate, but we need something to latch on to, a person or a place.”
“Can you teleport off the island then? Even with the wards?”
“Yes, though I don’t know if they’d let me return. I’ll have to get Medea to identify me to them before we do this again.”
Nikolai stopped walking. “Again? I don’t think so. I fulfilled my end of the bargain. Tell me how I get rid of this curse.”
“You don’t. You’re not skilled enough.”
“You lying little—” He aimed a kick at the spirit. All that work for nothing!
“Ah-ah-ah!” The spirit danced out of range, then spun and walked up the road backward. It grinned. “I said I would help you, not cure it. The effects can be mitigated. All you need is a dapper frog.”
“A dapper frog? What kind of help is that?”
“The indirect kind. If Medea did curse you—”
“Of course she did!” Nikolai snarled.
“Then helping you directly would violate the geas she placed on me.”
Coward. “You said it’s only supposed to work on souls. Why are you worried about it?”
“I felt it. Like a hundred hooks digging into my essence.” The spirit shuddered. “A human shouldn’t be able to do that.”
They came to a bridge. Yoxtl vaulted onto the railing and sat on its haunches, tail twitching. Light glinted off the creek below. A heron took one careful step at a time as it stalked prey in the reeds.
“If I can figure out how to remove the geas,” asked Nikolai, “will you give me a straight answer?”
Yoxtl shook its head. “A geas can only be removed by the one who cast it. Soul magic is the most powerful and complicated magic there is.”
No wonder Medea kept it locked up. Unlike telepathy and everything else he wanted to study, which she kept promising to make available “after he’d learned the basics,” soul magic could only be learned by those above master rank—the rank at which apprentices normally left. Maybe that’s why Thomas stuck around. What had he found in that section of the library, and was it the reason they’d had a falling out? Odds were, immortality lay in that direction. As Nikolai had done with his dueling partners, Medea kept the best magic for herself.
Thankfully, he didn’t need to get into that section of the library—Yoxtl seemed to know all about soul magic. Most spirits probably did, given their obsession with souls. No wonder Medea forbade the spirits on her island from talking to him.
He leaned on the railing and mimicked Yoxtl’s stare over the water. The heron made a stab. Its beak came back with a wriggling silver fish, which it gulped down before resuming its search for prey.
He needed to control Yoxtl. Soul magic aside, the spirit could be Useful, what with its ability to detect spells invisible to Magic Sight; Yoxtl had noticed his curse with ease. He could have it search the island for hidden magic. The blocked-off cave would be no trouble for a creature that could walk through walls. What he needed was something to leverage the spirit into obeying his commands.
“When I have those souls,” said Yoxtl wistfully, “I can make myself more convincing. People on the brink of death are easy. They’re scared, and they long for something. The young, the healthy, the well-to-do—they’re harder to persuade.”
Delicious desperation tinged the spirit’s voice, the hunger there a siren’s call. Yoxtl might be weak now, but given enough followers, who knew what kind of powers it might possess?
He kept his tone casual. “Then don’t persuade them. Focus on the downtrodden. ‘Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature . . . It is the opium of the people.’ I can’t remember the full quote by Marx, but he saw it. Focus your efforts on those who have the most to gain. There are far more of them.”
“YHWH has those souls locked up tight.”
“Yeah, well, YHWH isn’t out performing miracles. He’s operating on goodwill earned nearly two thousand years ago. I think he could use some competition, don’t you?”
Yoxtl seemed to wither in on itself. “I don’t know—he doesn’t take kindly to spirits who steal from him.”
No wonder Yoxtl’s people died out. The spirit thought small and took no unnecessary risks. How fortunate that it had Nikolai to make decisions for it.
Nikolai put his back to the water. He couldn’t sell the idea too hard, nor seem too interested. “How did YHWH get followers to begin with? Performing miracles, right? Burning bush, curing leprosy—all that?”
“He had prophets—mages of extraordinary ability for their time, who he coaxed into spreading his message. That way he didn’t have to expend any of his own magic. They did it all for him. The kid—I could give the kid magic—”
“But he’d need mana from you,” Nikolai pointed out. “I had several witches in my dueling club. Always having to ask permission before casting spells.” He chuckled and shook his head. “Quite sad, really. Nothing compared to a real Magi. Well, we best be heading back.”
Before he could withdraw his arm from the railing, Yoxtl placed a paw on top, eyes pleading. “You could help. With your magic, you could perform all kinds of miracles for me.”
“Casting spells in front of Mundanes is illegal. Why should I stick out my neck for you?”
“I can give you your heart’s desire.”
He arched an eyebrow in feigned disbelief and let the silence stretch.
Yoxtl’s paw pressed more firmly against his arm. “I can give you immortality.”
“And how exactly do you plan to accomplish that?”
“With your soul—”
“No. I didn’t consider it before. What makes you think I’d consider it now, given what I saw today? You promise things you can’t deliver—eternal paradise, rejoining loved ones. Don’t insult my intelligence. Are the souls you collect even sentient once you take them? From what I can tell, you cast aside their consciousness and drain them for power.”
“I can choose whether my souls remain separate entities within me or dissolve into raw ethereal power. But that’s not what I meant. I speak of soul magic. Help me collect enough, and I can bring you back from the dead if ever you are slain. It would be my blessing to you for helping me.”
He maintained his air of disinterest. “I see. And why didn’t you bestow this ‘blessing’ on any of your followers?”
The foxish face was unreadable, but it paused before answering. “Resurrection is taboo. When YHWH did it . . .” Yoxtl shook its head. “It goes against all our rules. You break the rules for me, I’ll break the rules for you.”
Interesting. He had considered spirits to be independent agents, dissociated from one another. This made it sound like they had their own form of governance. Did Medea know?
“I’ll consider it.” His tone made it clear he wouldn’t. He extracted his arm from under Yoxtl’s paw and started up the road.
The spirit darted in front of him. “Help me, mortal.”
“After the ‘help’ I just received? No thanks. I need something a lot better than ‘dapper frog’ to trust you.”
“What do you want? I can’t do any advanced magic in my current state.”
He made a show of thinking it over. “Information. First, I want to know what really happened to all of Medea’s apprentices. Did she drain them to keep herself young?”
“And second?”
“I want to know where she’s hidden magic. Books, artifacts, spells—anything she doesn’t want found. There’s a cave on the beach she’s blocked off, you can start there.”
“I can do that,” Yoxtl said brightly.
The spirit moved to trot alongside him, obedient as a dog. Nikolai couldn’t help but smile. They crossed over the gateway threshold. In the common room a stone-faced Medea awaited them.
31
DIGITS
A jolt ran through Medea’s body, the interruption like fingernails on the slate board of her soul. The stones she’d been hovering above the gravel pit pattered to the ground. Bad enough to be interrupted, but the ward told her one of the test subjects was near death, making it all the more irritating. Years ago, after a suicide attempt, she’d put health tracking wards on the test subjects. Not that she cared about their well-being; she just didn’t come across people who met the criteria very often, and such encounters were distressing. She’d be damned if she was going to let one of them die and force her to restock.
She floated over the low wall and touched down lightly. The sensation of homey earth and grass against her bare feet after levitating offered no pleasure to her today. She took a deep breath and headed for the dungeon, reaching along the thread of magic to see what healing she’d have to perform, and recoiled at the puffy, sweltering body.
Bacteria flooded the circulatory system. Fever wracked the brain. The liver and kidneys fought valiantly to keep functioning despite the overwhelming inflammation and lack of blood flow. Though she knew bacteria couldn’t follow her through the ward, she still shuddered and wiped her hands on her dress.
How the hell did he become septic? Where did it start? She pulled back, checking the exterior. The skin on one arm swelled tight, pus oozing from open sores. Even through the ward, the stench was so thick she could almost taste it. She held her breath—not that it would help, as it was all in her head—and followed the damage down. There! A missing finger, and the remaining digits were necrotic. Nikolai had taken a finger after all.
She spun halfway through the common room and headed for his door. If he thought he could get away with this, he’d soon learn that actions had consequences.
“Nikolai!” She pounded on his door, mentally increasing his punishment every second he didn’t answer. She should take his hand. No—his arm, or better yet, his tongue. He talked far too much anyway. “Come out this instant!” She banged again. Where was he?
Fuck, it was Nikolai’s day off. He might not be home for hours, and the test subject would likely die in that time. Either she’d have to endure cleaning up Nikolai’s mess or she’d be inconvenienced with finding a test subject.
She slammed through the outer doors. The cheery sun and perfect weather mocked her. Today was supposed to be peaceful. A time for meditation and relaxation. All ruined. She unleashed her rage on the garden beds, tearing up weeds root and stem with her bare hands and flinging them toward the ocean. There was something soothing about physical exertion, something she used to get with magic, back when she could still reach the point of mana exhaustion—no longer. She worked until her fingers were mottled green and brown.
The ward jolted her again. Fuck. She had to stabilize the test subject.
NO. The dungeon didn’t have to be kept at capacity. She would not clean up Nikolai’s mess. He needed to see what he’d done. He needed to fix it. And he needed to learn some goddamned healing spells!
Didn’t he realize that tearing apart an opponent required intimate knowledge of how the healthy body functioned? Without the ability to heal, he’d never survive a real duel, let alone be immortal. Why couldn’t he see that? Was it a gender thing? Some cultures devalued what they saw as “woman’s work.” Was it like that in Russia? His superiority complex appeared to extend equally to both sexes, but then people were rarely aware of their own biases.
She swore as another magical wave rippled through her. No, this was a good notification—Nikolai had returned. She flung the last of her weeds aside and stormed into the hovel.
“Where have you been?” demanded Medea as soon as they entered the room.
She stood with her hands on her hips, cheeks flushed and hair disheveled. Streaks of earth clung to her dress at knee-height, and her chest rose seductively as she tried to catch her breath. The whole picture put him in mind of the last time he’d fucked Shailyn—on a grassy hill under a burning tree. Shailyn had been in a similar state when they’d finished, dirt stains and all, and it was easy to imagine Medea in her place, begging for more. Nikolai shelved the fantasy fodder for later. What the hell was she upset about now?
At the sight of Yoxtl, her eyes narrowed. Would she forbid the spirit from talking to him?
“Uh, I should be going,” said Yoxtl. The spirit scampered across the common room and through the door.
Medea watched it go and returned her glare to him. “Where were you?”
He crossed his arms. The woman had some nerve. “It’s none of your business what I do on my days off.”
“It matters when you’re needed here. Did you or did you not remove a finger from one of the test subjects?”
Shit. Had he messed up the regrowth spell? But he’d tested the finger! Something must have happened, or she wouldn’t be asking. Time for a half truth.
“I cut one of them,” he said, “but I didn’t think I could regrow the finger, so I gave him a healing potion.”
“You expect me to believe you started to cut off a finger and immediately changed your mind?”
She had a point. That didn’t sound like him at all. “It occurred to me you might take something of mine in retribution. Like my hand.”
Medea scoffed. “You’re not wrong. Come with me.” She led him to the dungeon.
A putrid stench wafted up the stairwell, as though something had died below and begun to rot. He raised a sleeve to cover his nose. With each step, the olfactory assault increased. Medea shot him a knowing look before striding toward the cells. At the tables he hung back, as if by standing apart he could distance himself from blame.
“Come here,” she snapped.
He joined her beside the cell and fought the urge to retch. Even breathing through his mouth didn’t help. The prisoner slumped in a corner against the wall, skin puffy. One arm curled across his lap; the other, blackened and purple, hung loose at his side. The finger he had painstakingly regrown had fallen off. The remaining fingers looked as though they would soon follow suit.
He opened the cell and entered, searching for the lost finger. “Here!” he exclaimed, holding it up for Medea to see. “I told you, I didn’t take his finger, and I did heal him. I have no idea why he’s like this.”
Medea approached the prisoner and held a hand to his forehead, bidding him do the same. “Feel that?” she asked.
“He’s burning up.”
“See how the skin is discolored? Not just the arm. See how the lips are bluish? That’s called cyanosis. It happens when there is poor blood flow—in this case, sepsis. Do you know what that means?”
“Uh, the root is Greek for ‘putrefaction.’ His body is rotting, but why?”
“Look at where it started, and you tell me.” She crossed her arms and waited, her frown extra bitchy.
What was she fishing for? They both knew it started with the finger. Had a blood vessel not connected properly? Had it bled out under the skin? But that wouldn’t explain an infection.
When he didn’t answer, she prompted, “What did you do, prior to cutting his finger?”
“I took him out of his cell and strapped him to the—”
“Before that. Before you came down here.”
“I practiced on corpses in the graveyar—” Oh, shit. He hadn’t cleaned the cleaver. It would have been swimming with bacteria from all those test cuts.
“Fool!” cried Nikolai, pointing an accusing finger at Stuart. “You’ve angered Yoxtl by attributing his gift to someone else.”
“What? I . . .” Stuart ducked as everything caught in the wind flew at his face.
“Take back what you said,” said Nikolai. “Take it back quickly before Yoxtl undoes the boon he’s granted you.”
Cheryl covered her son with one hand and jabbed her husband with the other. “Take it back, Stu!”
“I’m sorry! I’m sorry! I take it back.” Stuart fell to his knees. “We bow to your greatness, oh, Yox . . . er . . .”
“Yoxtl,” said Nikolai.
“Yoxtl!”
Nikolai stopped channeling Gust, and the room settled. He glared at Stuart. “Never do that again. You’ve seen the power my god holds. Our god. He’s yours now too. But you must forsake this Christian god of yours, or he may deem you unworthy and take back what he has given you.”
Stuart nodded and went to embrace his wife. He kissed her, then looked up at Nikolai. “Thank you. I didn’t believe it first but—well, thank you.”
Unseen, Yoxtl flew onto the bed and locked eyes with the boy. “I’m not as bad as all that,” it said. “I just need your parents to understand—need you to understand—you’re mine now. I’d like to check on you from time to time, if that’s alright. Make sure you’re doing well. Unlike the Christian god, I do care about my followers.”
Yoxtl sniffed the dried blood caking the boy’s head and took one long lick. “Now I can find you wherever you are. If you ever have need of me, call my name: Yoxtl.”
The spirit leapt from the bed and walked out the door. Nikolai gathered up the jade stone and bid the parents farewell. They searched the rest of the hospital but only found one more target soul to bind.
Afternoon sun peeked out of fluffy clouds as they trekked back from the hospital. The trees on either side of the road had already lost most of their leaves. A gentle breeze did its best to detach the stragglers and send them down in a flutter of yellow and orange. Nikolai inhaled the crisp autumn air, his feet crunching over the carpet of fallen leaves. Yoxtl ghosted over them without a sound.
“Two souls! Terrible.”
“Two more than you had before, and three potentials on the way.”
“Potential doesn’t do me any good, but I can work on the kid. With a little more power, I can make him god-touched.” The spirit grinned up at Nikolai. “I could have a real priest again.”
“How’s that blood thing work? Tracking spell?”
“It’s called a blood binding, and yes. Spirits can teleport with ease. Unlike you humans, we have no true physical form to break down and recreate, but we need something to latch on to, a person or a place.”
“Can you teleport off the island then? Even with the wards?”
“Yes, though I don’t know if they’d let me return. I’ll have to get Medea to identify me to them before we do this again.”
Nikolai stopped walking. “Again? I don’t think so. I fulfilled my end of the bargain. Tell me how I get rid of this curse.”
“You don’t. You’re not skilled enough.”
“You lying little—” He aimed a kick at the spirit. All that work for nothing!
“Ah-ah-ah!” The spirit danced out of range, then spun and walked up the road backward. It grinned. “I said I would help you, not cure it. The effects can be mitigated. All you need is a dapper frog.”
“A dapper frog? What kind of help is that?”
“The indirect kind. If Medea did curse you—”
“Of course she did!” Nikolai snarled.
“Then helping you directly would violate the geas she placed on me.”
Coward. “You said it’s only supposed to work on souls. Why are you worried about it?”
“I felt it. Like a hundred hooks digging into my essence.” The spirit shuddered. “A human shouldn’t be able to do that.”
They came to a bridge. Yoxtl vaulted onto the railing and sat on its haunches, tail twitching. Light glinted off the creek below. A heron took one careful step at a time as it stalked prey in the reeds.
“If I can figure out how to remove the geas,” asked Nikolai, “will you give me a straight answer?”
Yoxtl shook its head. “A geas can only be removed by the one who cast it. Soul magic is the most powerful and complicated magic there is.”
No wonder Medea kept it locked up. Unlike telepathy and everything else he wanted to study, which she kept promising to make available “after he’d learned the basics,” soul magic could only be learned by those above master rank—the rank at which apprentices normally left. Maybe that’s why Thomas stuck around. What had he found in that section of the library, and was it the reason they’d had a falling out? Odds were, immortality lay in that direction. As Nikolai had done with his dueling partners, Medea kept the best magic for herself.
Thankfully, he didn’t need to get into that section of the library—Yoxtl seemed to know all about soul magic. Most spirits probably did, given their obsession with souls. No wonder Medea forbade the spirits on her island from talking to him.
He leaned on the railing and mimicked Yoxtl’s stare over the water. The heron made a stab. Its beak came back with a wriggling silver fish, which it gulped down before resuming its search for prey.
He needed to control Yoxtl. Soul magic aside, the spirit could be Useful, what with its ability to detect spells invisible to Magic Sight; Yoxtl had noticed his curse with ease. He could have it search the island for hidden magic. The blocked-off cave would be no trouble for a creature that could walk through walls. What he needed was something to leverage the spirit into obeying his commands.
“When I have those souls,” said Yoxtl wistfully, “I can make myself more convincing. People on the brink of death are easy. They’re scared, and they long for something. The young, the healthy, the well-to-do—they’re harder to persuade.”
Delicious desperation tinged the spirit’s voice, the hunger there a siren’s call. Yoxtl might be weak now, but given enough followers, who knew what kind of powers it might possess?
He kept his tone casual. “Then don’t persuade them. Focus on the downtrodden. ‘Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature . . . It is the opium of the people.’ I can’t remember the full quote by Marx, but he saw it. Focus your efforts on those who have the most to gain. There are far more of them.”
“YHWH has those souls locked up tight.”
“Yeah, well, YHWH isn’t out performing miracles. He’s operating on goodwill earned nearly two thousand years ago. I think he could use some competition, don’t you?”
Yoxtl seemed to wither in on itself. “I don’t know—he doesn’t take kindly to spirits who steal from him.”
No wonder Yoxtl’s people died out. The spirit thought small and took no unnecessary risks. How fortunate that it had Nikolai to make decisions for it.
Nikolai put his back to the water. He couldn’t sell the idea too hard, nor seem too interested. “How did YHWH get followers to begin with? Performing miracles, right? Burning bush, curing leprosy—all that?”
“He had prophets—mages of extraordinary ability for their time, who he coaxed into spreading his message. That way he didn’t have to expend any of his own magic. They did it all for him. The kid—I could give the kid magic—”
“But he’d need mana from you,” Nikolai pointed out. “I had several witches in my dueling club. Always having to ask permission before casting spells.” He chuckled and shook his head. “Quite sad, really. Nothing compared to a real Magi. Well, we best be heading back.”
Before he could withdraw his arm from the railing, Yoxtl placed a paw on top, eyes pleading. “You could help. With your magic, you could perform all kinds of miracles for me.”
“Casting spells in front of Mundanes is illegal. Why should I stick out my neck for you?”
“I can give you your heart’s desire.”
He arched an eyebrow in feigned disbelief and let the silence stretch.
Yoxtl’s paw pressed more firmly against his arm. “I can give you immortality.”
“And how exactly do you plan to accomplish that?”
“With your soul—”
“No. I didn’t consider it before. What makes you think I’d consider it now, given what I saw today? You promise things you can’t deliver—eternal paradise, rejoining loved ones. Don’t insult my intelligence. Are the souls you collect even sentient once you take them? From what I can tell, you cast aside their consciousness and drain them for power.”
“I can choose whether my souls remain separate entities within me or dissolve into raw ethereal power. But that’s not what I meant. I speak of soul magic. Help me collect enough, and I can bring you back from the dead if ever you are slain. It would be my blessing to you for helping me.”
He maintained his air of disinterest. “I see. And why didn’t you bestow this ‘blessing’ on any of your followers?”
The foxish face was unreadable, but it paused before answering. “Resurrection is taboo. When YHWH did it . . .” Yoxtl shook its head. “It goes against all our rules. You break the rules for me, I’ll break the rules for you.”
Interesting. He had considered spirits to be independent agents, dissociated from one another. This made it sound like they had their own form of governance. Did Medea know?
“I’ll consider it.” His tone made it clear he wouldn’t. He extracted his arm from under Yoxtl’s paw and started up the road.
The spirit darted in front of him. “Help me, mortal.”
“After the ‘help’ I just received? No thanks. I need something a lot better than ‘dapper frog’ to trust you.”
“What do you want? I can’t do any advanced magic in my current state.”
He made a show of thinking it over. “Information. First, I want to know what really happened to all of Medea’s apprentices. Did she drain them to keep herself young?”
“And second?”
“I want to know where she’s hidden magic. Books, artifacts, spells—anything she doesn’t want found. There’s a cave on the beach she’s blocked off, you can start there.”
“I can do that,” Yoxtl said brightly.
The spirit moved to trot alongside him, obedient as a dog. Nikolai couldn’t help but smile. They crossed over the gateway threshold. In the common room a stone-faced Medea awaited them.
31
DIGITS
A jolt ran through Medea’s body, the interruption like fingernails on the slate board of her soul. The stones she’d been hovering above the gravel pit pattered to the ground. Bad enough to be interrupted, but the ward told her one of the test subjects was near death, making it all the more irritating. Years ago, after a suicide attempt, she’d put health tracking wards on the test subjects. Not that she cared about their well-being; she just didn’t come across people who met the criteria very often, and such encounters were distressing. She’d be damned if she was going to let one of them die and force her to restock.
She floated over the low wall and touched down lightly. The sensation of homey earth and grass against her bare feet after levitating offered no pleasure to her today. She took a deep breath and headed for the dungeon, reaching along the thread of magic to see what healing she’d have to perform, and recoiled at the puffy, sweltering body.
Bacteria flooded the circulatory system. Fever wracked the brain. The liver and kidneys fought valiantly to keep functioning despite the overwhelming inflammation and lack of blood flow. Though she knew bacteria couldn’t follow her through the ward, she still shuddered and wiped her hands on her dress.
How the hell did he become septic? Where did it start? She pulled back, checking the exterior. The skin on one arm swelled tight, pus oozing from open sores. Even through the ward, the stench was so thick she could almost taste it. She held her breath—not that it would help, as it was all in her head—and followed the damage down. There! A missing finger, and the remaining digits were necrotic. Nikolai had taken a finger after all.
She spun halfway through the common room and headed for his door. If he thought he could get away with this, he’d soon learn that actions had consequences.
“Nikolai!” She pounded on his door, mentally increasing his punishment every second he didn’t answer. She should take his hand. No—his arm, or better yet, his tongue. He talked far too much anyway. “Come out this instant!” She banged again. Where was he?
Fuck, it was Nikolai’s day off. He might not be home for hours, and the test subject would likely die in that time. Either she’d have to endure cleaning up Nikolai’s mess or she’d be inconvenienced with finding a test subject.
She slammed through the outer doors. The cheery sun and perfect weather mocked her. Today was supposed to be peaceful. A time for meditation and relaxation. All ruined. She unleashed her rage on the garden beds, tearing up weeds root and stem with her bare hands and flinging them toward the ocean. There was something soothing about physical exertion, something she used to get with magic, back when she could still reach the point of mana exhaustion—no longer. She worked until her fingers were mottled green and brown.
The ward jolted her again. Fuck. She had to stabilize the test subject.
NO. The dungeon didn’t have to be kept at capacity. She would not clean up Nikolai’s mess. He needed to see what he’d done. He needed to fix it. And he needed to learn some goddamned healing spells!
Didn’t he realize that tearing apart an opponent required intimate knowledge of how the healthy body functioned? Without the ability to heal, he’d never survive a real duel, let alone be immortal. Why couldn’t he see that? Was it a gender thing? Some cultures devalued what they saw as “woman’s work.” Was it like that in Russia? His superiority complex appeared to extend equally to both sexes, but then people were rarely aware of their own biases.
She swore as another magical wave rippled through her. No, this was a good notification—Nikolai had returned. She flung the last of her weeds aside and stormed into the hovel.
“Where have you been?” demanded Medea as soon as they entered the room.
She stood with her hands on her hips, cheeks flushed and hair disheveled. Streaks of earth clung to her dress at knee-height, and her chest rose seductively as she tried to catch her breath. The whole picture put him in mind of the last time he’d fucked Shailyn—on a grassy hill under a burning tree. Shailyn had been in a similar state when they’d finished, dirt stains and all, and it was easy to imagine Medea in her place, begging for more. Nikolai shelved the fantasy fodder for later. What the hell was she upset about now?
At the sight of Yoxtl, her eyes narrowed. Would she forbid the spirit from talking to him?
“Uh, I should be going,” said Yoxtl. The spirit scampered across the common room and through the door.
Medea watched it go and returned her glare to him. “Where were you?”
He crossed his arms. The woman had some nerve. “It’s none of your business what I do on my days off.”
“It matters when you’re needed here. Did you or did you not remove a finger from one of the test subjects?”
Shit. Had he messed up the regrowth spell? But he’d tested the finger! Something must have happened, or she wouldn’t be asking. Time for a half truth.
“I cut one of them,” he said, “but I didn’t think I could regrow the finger, so I gave him a healing potion.”
“You expect me to believe you started to cut off a finger and immediately changed your mind?”
She had a point. That didn’t sound like him at all. “It occurred to me you might take something of mine in retribution. Like my hand.”
Medea scoffed. “You’re not wrong. Come with me.” She led him to the dungeon.
A putrid stench wafted up the stairwell, as though something had died below and begun to rot. He raised a sleeve to cover his nose. With each step, the olfactory assault increased. Medea shot him a knowing look before striding toward the cells. At the tables he hung back, as if by standing apart he could distance himself from blame.
“Come here,” she snapped.
He joined her beside the cell and fought the urge to retch. Even breathing through his mouth didn’t help. The prisoner slumped in a corner against the wall, skin puffy. One arm curled across his lap; the other, blackened and purple, hung loose at his side. The finger he had painstakingly regrown had fallen off. The remaining fingers looked as though they would soon follow suit.
He opened the cell and entered, searching for the lost finger. “Here!” he exclaimed, holding it up for Medea to see. “I told you, I didn’t take his finger, and I did heal him. I have no idea why he’s like this.”
Medea approached the prisoner and held a hand to his forehead, bidding him do the same. “Feel that?” she asked.
“He’s burning up.”
“See how the skin is discolored? Not just the arm. See how the lips are bluish? That’s called cyanosis. It happens when there is poor blood flow—in this case, sepsis. Do you know what that means?”
“Uh, the root is Greek for ‘putrefaction.’ His body is rotting, but why?”
“Look at where it started, and you tell me.” She crossed her arms and waited, her frown extra bitchy.
What was she fishing for? They both knew it started with the finger. Had a blood vessel not connected properly? Had it bled out under the skin? But that wouldn’t explain an infection.
When he didn’t answer, she prompted, “What did you do, prior to cutting his finger?”
“I took him out of his cell and strapped him to the—”
“Before that. Before you came down here.”
“I practiced on corpses in the graveyar—” Oh, shit. He hadn’t cleaned the cleaver. It would have been swimming with bacteria from all those test cuts.
