“I don’t know if you’re in time,” he said quietly, even though he clearly wished he could say anything else. “He’s grown pale and cold. He may be without one or both of his souls already, his body only lingering.”
Grey moved around the bed, and as he approached Jackson’s side of it Marissa came awake. She sat up in a wobble of confusion, forcing herself out of the depths of her exhausted sleep.
“Is he gone?” she demanded, her hands clutching at her lover’s shirt. “Did he leave me while I slept?”
The panic bordering on the edge of despair rang through her voice. She looked at the stranger approaching the bed and out of some innate instinct she threw her body over Jackson, protecting him from this unknown element.
“Who are you?” she demanded of him.
“My name is Grey and I am a high-level Marid Djynn. I come with the magic necessary to repair your loved one’s souls.”
“H-how do we know w-we can trust him?” she needed to know, looking helplessly at Ram. “What if he’s here to hurt him further?”
“There is nothing worse that can be done to him that time isn’t already doing,” Ram pointed out. “He’s dead if we don’t extend our trust and dead if we do and the Marid’s motives are untrue. But he will have to keep in mind what I will do to him if he does kill Jackson.” There was even more threat in his tone than there was in his words. If the Djynn was cowed by it in any way, he certainly didn’t show it. Probably because when it came right down to it, Grey’s power could be endless, and Ram’s, significant as it was, could probably do very little to countermand that power.
“Madame, if I may?” Grey asked with politesse before reaching out with a hand, leaving it to hover over Jackson. He waited until she moved past her hesitation and gave him a permissive nod before letting his graceful, long-fingered hand lower to touch Jackson on his broad bare chest. Somewhere along the line, Faith realized, Marissa or someone had stripped Jackson, bathed him clean of the mess Apep had made of him, and redressed him in a simple pair of fleece drawstring pajama pants. Jackson had grown paler in color, his lips almost porcelain beige, his eyes looking like twin bruises in the face of his sickly pallor.
“It’s not too late. I can still reattach his souls,” Grey said quietly. “But they will be injured and the attachment will be tender and raw at its best. I need an outsider, someone with a single soul who is close to him, to act as a surrogate. I will attach the surrogate aura to his weakened one and the healthy aura will keep him energized and strong while his souls continue the healing process. It will also fortify his aura against any further injury.” He let his eyes sweep the room, taking in the plethora of single-souled Gargoyles and humans. “Volunteers?”
Leo stepped forward a heartbeat before anyone else could react, putting himself directly in front of the Djynn’s sight. “I’ll do it,” he said quietly. “You need a soul to ground him? Someone close to him? That’s me. There’s no one closer to Jackson than I am.”
Grey seemed to absorb that for a moment, his head tilting to the side a little as he debated within himself.
“No. I’m sorry, but for these purposes the volunteer must stay close to his side for almost a month. Perhaps this human”—he indicated Max—“is the better choice, considering your desire to leave this place in the dust. I can’t attach him to someone who might walk out on him at the drop of a hat or when they find themselves so uncomfortable they think taking off is the only solution.”
“Are you calling me a coward or something?” Leo demanded, his entire aura bristling with his outrage. “Are you saying I would just walk out and leave my friend—my brother—to die? Because if you are I’m going to have to remind you pretty freakin’ fast that you don’t know a damn thing about who I am and what this man means to me!”
“If anyone would be there for Jackson,” Marissa said, grabbing Leo’s hand and drawing him even closer to the bed, “it would be Leo. They have been through so much together. Jackson has always saved Leo, and Leo has always saved Jackson. That’s just how it is.”
Grey smiled with a small measure of satisfaction lighting his eyes, and Leo drew in a tight breath as a tide of understanding washed over him. It didn’t matter what had happened to Jackson, his feelings toward him, his loyalty, would never change. And the reverse was also true. Perhaps that had been the crux of his fear. Perhaps he had been afraid that Jackson would no longer be there for him as his life and new world began to take up a place of importance. Where would Leo stand in all of that?
Right here. Beside his friend. Always.
“Very well. All you need to do is come closer to the bed. I will begin.”
Everyone seemed to hold their breath for a twofold reason. One, to make sure Jackson was still breathing. Two, to wait and see if the Djynn could pull off a miracle they were in desperate need of.
Grey drew a breath, closed his eyes, and leaned his weight forward on his hand, pressing Jackson down hard into the bed. It was as if he were trying to snap Jackson’s breastbone in two. Grey began to tremble from the exertion, as though a great battle was being fought where he and Jackson were connected. It went on for a minute…two…then three. Grey broke a sweat, his handsome face coloring red under his dark complexion. Then suddenly he dropped, his hand plunging into Jackson’s chest, through skin and bone and muscle, but not a drop of blood to be seen. Grey pushed harder, as though feeling around inside of the man, the very idea of it making Leo cringe inside from memory. But this, he tried to remind himself, was for healing. That had been for torment. All he could do was pray Grey wouldn’t need to put his hand inside of him as well, because frankly, while he wanted to be there for Jackson, he didn’t know if he had it in him.
Grey’s other hand came to join the first, it too struggling to breach Jackson’s outer surfaces.
Elbow deep inside of Jackson, he continued to search and fight. Faith could see the severe concentration in him, and she could see he was grabbing at the twin scrolls inside of Jackson. Normally the scroll of a person was a single bright cone of light that began at the feet and streamed upward in a cylindrical shape toward the heavens. Jackson had two scrolls, one for each soul, and they had been bouncing about in the confines of his body, trapped in his repaired aura. An aura she could see had thinned greatly. It was because of that thinning that the Djynn had been able to gain entrance. Now he held each soul by the tail, as it were, and was holding them in place as he poured healing magic into them. He was murmuring something, the words a tumble of exotic inflections, clearly his native tongue that was quite similar to those of Indian or Pakistani bent. Neither, and yet similar.
Faith could see the scrolls slowly settling in, reattaching and beaming widely in the proper direction. By the time Grey withdrew, everything was perfect. Exactly as it should be…except the hole in his aura left by Grey’s intrusion. Grey then rested a hand atop Jackson’s chest once more and beckoned to Leo.
“Take off your shirt,” he commanded.
Leo and Faith both froze, their breath locking in their chests. Faith watched as Leo hesitated, his eyes sweeping the crowded room with a current of sheer anxiety emanating from him. But then he looked down at Jackson, grabbed his shirt, and whipped it off his back.
If he was waiting for a reaction, he was sorely disappointed. But it took only a moment for her to realize that their lack of shock at the sight of his gouged chest was like telling him they did not pity him, did not think him too weak or too subpar for the task he’d volunteered for. He exhaled, dropped his shirt to the ground, and lifted a brow toward Grey.
“Your surrogate guinea pig awaits,” he invited.
Grey smiled and without hesitation or a tremor of concern that the contact might cause him pain, he used his free hand and pressed it against Leo’s chest.
“Jesus,” Leo said, his breath coming fast, reminding Faith of when she had been in the Wraith house, sounding loud and frightened to her own ears.
“Night Angel, if you will?” Grey nodded toward Jackson and she quickly moved forward to repair his aura while Grey attached Leo for the surrogacy.
“Don’t worry,” Grey said to Leo when he saw the man had broken a sweat. “I don’t need to go fishing for your soul. It’s already where I can find it. I won’t need to breach your body, merely connect you at your aura.” Grey took Leo’s hand and brought it into contact with Jackson’s, then returned his hand to Leo’s chest.
Faith suspected Grey could have done the aura repair on Jackson himself, but wisely, after such a tremendous expenditure of magical energy, he was delegating the task to her so he wouldn’t burn himself out completely.
The moment his aura became intact and reinforced, Jackson woke up, sucking in a startled breath, as though someone had been holding him under water all of this time. It was very likely that was what it had felt like. He had been slowly suffocating to death without access to the souls that gave him life.
Marissa and Docia both cried out, and flung themselves against him, heedlessly knocking Grey and Leo out of the way. Jackson automatically caught them up against him. He was confused and didn’t know what to make of all of the attention and tears. He looked up and met Ram’s eyes first but in the end it was Leo whom he turned to for clarity. Leo reached out and put his hand on his friend’s shoulder.
“It’s very good to see you, brother,” Leo said.
Jackson tilted his head and said, “Brother? I thought the last time we spoke I wasn’t your friend any longer.”
“Well, I wasn’t quite myself,” Leo said sheepishly. “But I’m better now. And you are better now, too. You suffered a lot of damage in the attack by that thing.”
“That god,” Grey said. “And that god is going to be a lot of trouble. More trouble than it has already been.”
“I know that.” It was Faith who said that. “That’s the whole reason that I came in the first place. I suppose one reason was to protect Jackson and the other was to warn you all about the trouble that was coming. Not just for the Bodywalkers, but for all of us. All the Nightwalkers. My father sent me,” Faith said, “when a prophet saw some terrible futures ahead of us should we lose Jackson or Menes. I was sent to help divert that possible future from happening. And I can see now that I’ve done exactly that.” Faith smiled, her teeth brilliant against the blackness of her skin and the violet of her lips. Leo looked at her and saw just how beautiful she was when she smiled, just how beautiful she was period.
Leo backed off from the gathering of weeping, laughing women, watching them from a distance. He couldn’t help himself from joining in with their smiles.
That is, until Kamenwati walked into the room, drawn by the commotion. Kamen stood in the doorway, his tall, dark presence a strong, overpowering source of hatred for Leo, and he found himself swamped once again by the negative emotions and state of mind that had been crippling him since Kamenwati had “rescued” him from Chatha’s demented mutilations. But Kamen had not rescued him out of any sense of right and wrong. He had only done so in order to have a bargaining chip to convince Jackson that his intention was to defect from the Templars and join his side.
But what he was, what he would always be in Leo’s eyes, is a sick f**king son of a bitch. He would always be the reason why he had come into Chatha’s hands in the first place. He would always be the reason why he couldn’t find it in himself to trust anyone any longer.
Including Faith.
Leo’s attention swung to Faith, who was still laughing and celebrating with the others. An awkward jumble of feelings washed over him and he simply couldn’t cope. He couldn’t bear it all. The joy of Jackson’s revival, the hatred of Kamen’s arrival, the vastness of possibility that he felt whenever he looked at Faith.
Leo turned and escaped from the room, shoving angrily past Kamenwati, slamming the other man into the doorjamb on purpose as he passed. Kamen could have taken umbrage, but he did not. Leo was unimpressed by his show of hands.
Leo was such a powerful force of negativity and he knew it, just as he knew it had no place among the celebrations going on in that room. He would just drag everyone else back down into the hole he had found himself in once more.
He threw himself out of the house, suddenly feeling like there wasn’t enough air in the entire world to help him breathe. The New Mexico night was sharp and cold, the cold of a desert gone dark. He walked out into it, letting it penetrate his skin, letting it remind him that he was still, somehow, alive. But that had been the problem all along, hadn’t it? He had never died. Chatha had mutilated him again and again, each time bringing him to the very edge of death’s door, and then using his power to heal to drag him back and ready him for the next bout.
Grey moved around the bed, and as he approached Jackson’s side of it Marissa came awake. She sat up in a wobble of confusion, forcing herself out of the depths of her exhausted sleep.
“Is he gone?” she demanded, her hands clutching at her lover’s shirt. “Did he leave me while I slept?”
The panic bordering on the edge of despair rang through her voice. She looked at the stranger approaching the bed and out of some innate instinct she threw her body over Jackson, protecting him from this unknown element.
“Who are you?” she demanded of him.
“My name is Grey and I am a high-level Marid Djynn. I come with the magic necessary to repair your loved one’s souls.”
“H-how do we know w-we can trust him?” she needed to know, looking helplessly at Ram. “What if he’s here to hurt him further?”
“There is nothing worse that can be done to him that time isn’t already doing,” Ram pointed out. “He’s dead if we don’t extend our trust and dead if we do and the Marid’s motives are untrue. But he will have to keep in mind what I will do to him if he does kill Jackson.” There was even more threat in his tone than there was in his words. If the Djynn was cowed by it in any way, he certainly didn’t show it. Probably because when it came right down to it, Grey’s power could be endless, and Ram’s, significant as it was, could probably do very little to countermand that power.
“Madame, if I may?” Grey asked with politesse before reaching out with a hand, leaving it to hover over Jackson. He waited until she moved past her hesitation and gave him a permissive nod before letting his graceful, long-fingered hand lower to touch Jackson on his broad bare chest. Somewhere along the line, Faith realized, Marissa or someone had stripped Jackson, bathed him clean of the mess Apep had made of him, and redressed him in a simple pair of fleece drawstring pajama pants. Jackson had grown paler in color, his lips almost porcelain beige, his eyes looking like twin bruises in the face of his sickly pallor.
“It’s not too late. I can still reattach his souls,” Grey said quietly. “But they will be injured and the attachment will be tender and raw at its best. I need an outsider, someone with a single soul who is close to him, to act as a surrogate. I will attach the surrogate aura to his weakened one and the healthy aura will keep him energized and strong while his souls continue the healing process. It will also fortify his aura against any further injury.” He let his eyes sweep the room, taking in the plethora of single-souled Gargoyles and humans. “Volunteers?”
Leo stepped forward a heartbeat before anyone else could react, putting himself directly in front of the Djynn’s sight. “I’ll do it,” he said quietly. “You need a soul to ground him? Someone close to him? That’s me. There’s no one closer to Jackson than I am.”
Grey seemed to absorb that for a moment, his head tilting to the side a little as he debated within himself.
“No. I’m sorry, but for these purposes the volunteer must stay close to his side for almost a month. Perhaps this human”—he indicated Max—“is the better choice, considering your desire to leave this place in the dust. I can’t attach him to someone who might walk out on him at the drop of a hat or when they find themselves so uncomfortable they think taking off is the only solution.”
“Are you calling me a coward or something?” Leo demanded, his entire aura bristling with his outrage. “Are you saying I would just walk out and leave my friend—my brother—to die? Because if you are I’m going to have to remind you pretty freakin’ fast that you don’t know a damn thing about who I am and what this man means to me!”
“If anyone would be there for Jackson,” Marissa said, grabbing Leo’s hand and drawing him even closer to the bed, “it would be Leo. They have been through so much together. Jackson has always saved Leo, and Leo has always saved Jackson. That’s just how it is.”
Grey smiled with a small measure of satisfaction lighting his eyes, and Leo drew in a tight breath as a tide of understanding washed over him. It didn’t matter what had happened to Jackson, his feelings toward him, his loyalty, would never change. And the reverse was also true. Perhaps that had been the crux of his fear. Perhaps he had been afraid that Jackson would no longer be there for him as his life and new world began to take up a place of importance. Where would Leo stand in all of that?
Right here. Beside his friend. Always.
“Very well. All you need to do is come closer to the bed. I will begin.”
Everyone seemed to hold their breath for a twofold reason. One, to make sure Jackson was still breathing. Two, to wait and see if the Djynn could pull off a miracle they were in desperate need of.
Grey drew a breath, closed his eyes, and leaned his weight forward on his hand, pressing Jackson down hard into the bed. It was as if he were trying to snap Jackson’s breastbone in two. Grey began to tremble from the exertion, as though a great battle was being fought where he and Jackson were connected. It went on for a minute…two…then three. Grey broke a sweat, his handsome face coloring red under his dark complexion. Then suddenly he dropped, his hand plunging into Jackson’s chest, through skin and bone and muscle, but not a drop of blood to be seen. Grey pushed harder, as though feeling around inside of the man, the very idea of it making Leo cringe inside from memory. But this, he tried to remind himself, was for healing. That had been for torment. All he could do was pray Grey wouldn’t need to put his hand inside of him as well, because frankly, while he wanted to be there for Jackson, he didn’t know if he had it in him.
Grey’s other hand came to join the first, it too struggling to breach Jackson’s outer surfaces.
Elbow deep inside of Jackson, he continued to search and fight. Faith could see the severe concentration in him, and she could see he was grabbing at the twin scrolls inside of Jackson. Normally the scroll of a person was a single bright cone of light that began at the feet and streamed upward in a cylindrical shape toward the heavens. Jackson had two scrolls, one for each soul, and they had been bouncing about in the confines of his body, trapped in his repaired aura. An aura she could see had thinned greatly. It was because of that thinning that the Djynn had been able to gain entrance. Now he held each soul by the tail, as it were, and was holding them in place as he poured healing magic into them. He was murmuring something, the words a tumble of exotic inflections, clearly his native tongue that was quite similar to those of Indian or Pakistani bent. Neither, and yet similar.
Faith could see the scrolls slowly settling in, reattaching and beaming widely in the proper direction. By the time Grey withdrew, everything was perfect. Exactly as it should be…except the hole in his aura left by Grey’s intrusion. Grey then rested a hand atop Jackson’s chest once more and beckoned to Leo.
“Take off your shirt,” he commanded.
Leo and Faith both froze, their breath locking in their chests. Faith watched as Leo hesitated, his eyes sweeping the crowded room with a current of sheer anxiety emanating from him. But then he looked down at Jackson, grabbed his shirt, and whipped it off his back.
If he was waiting for a reaction, he was sorely disappointed. But it took only a moment for her to realize that their lack of shock at the sight of his gouged chest was like telling him they did not pity him, did not think him too weak or too subpar for the task he’d volunteered for. He exhaled, dropped his shirt to the ground, and lifted a brow toward Grey.
“Your surrogate guinea pig awaits,” he invited.
Grey smiled and without hesitation or a tremor of concern that the contact might cause him pain, he used his free hand and pressed it against Leo’s chest.
“Jesus,” Leo said, his breath coming fast, reminding Faith of when she had been in the Wraith house, sounding loud and frightened to her own ears.
“Night Angel, if you will?” Grey nodded toward Jackson and she quickly moved forward to repair his aura while Grey attached Leo for the surrogacy.
“Don’t worry,” Grey said to Leo when he saw the man had broken a sweat. “I don’t need to go fishing for your soul. It’s already where I can find it. I won’t need to breach your body, merely connect you at your aura.” Grey took Leo’s hand and brought it into contact with Jackson’s, then returned his hand to Leo’s chest.
Faith suspected Grey could have done the aura repair on Jackson himself, but wisely, after such a tremendous expenditure of magical energy, he was delegating the task to her so he wouldn’t burn himself out completely.
The moment his aura became intact and reinforced, Jackson woke up, sucking in a startled breath, as though someone had been holding him under water all of this time. It was very likely that was what it had felt like. He had been slowly suffocating to death without access to the souls that gave him life.
Marissa and Docia both cried out, and flung themselves against him, heedlessly knocking Grey and Leo out of the way. Jackson automatically caught them up against him. He was confused and didn’t know what to make of all of the attention and tears. He looked up and met Ram’s eyes first but in the end it was Leo whom he turned to for clarity. Leo reached out and put his hand on his friend’s shoulder.
“It’s very good to see you, brother,” Leo said.
Jackson tilted his head and said, “Brother? I thought the last time we spoke I wasn’t your friend any longer.”
“Well, I wasn’t quite myself,” Leo said sheepishly. “But I’m better now. And you are better now, too. You suffered a lot of damage in the attack by that thing.”
“That god,” Grey said. “And that god is going to be a lot of trouble. More trouble than it has already been.”
“I know that.” It was Faith who said that. “That’s the whole reason that I came in the first place. I suppose one reason was to protect Jackson and the other was to warn you all about the trouble that was coming. Not just for the Bodywalkers, but for all of us. All the Nightwalkers. My father sent me,” Faith said, “when a prophet saw some terrible futures ahead of us should we lose Jackson or Menes. I was sent to help divert that possible future from happening. And I can see now that I’ve done exactly that.” Faith smiled, her teeth brilliant against the blackness of her skin and the violet of her lips. Leo looked at her and saw just how beautiful she was when she smiled, just how beautiful she was period.
Leo backed off from the gathering of weeping, laughing women, watching them from a distance. He couldn’t help himself from joining in with their smiles.
That is, until Kamenwati walked into the room, drawn by the commotion. Kamen stood in the doorway, his tall, dark presence a strong, overpowering source of hatred for Leo, and he found himself swamped once again by the negative emotions and state of mind that had been crippling him since Kamenwati had “rescued” him from Chatha’s demented mutilations. But Kamen had not rescued him out of any sense of right and wrong. He had only done so in order to have a bargaining chip to convince Jackson that his intention was to defect from the Templars and join his side.
But what he was, what he would always be in Leo’s eyes, is a sick f**king son of a bitch. He would always be the reason why he had come into Chatha’s hands in the first place. He would always be the reason why he couldn’t find it in himself to trust anyone any longer.
Including Faith.
Leo’s attention swung to Faith, who was still laughing and celebrating with the others. An awkward jumble of feelings washed over him and he simply couldn’t cope. He couldn’t bear it all. The joy of Jackson’s revival, the hatred of Kamen’s arrival, the vastness of possibility that he felt whenever he looked at Faith.
Leo turned and escaped from the room, shoving angrily past Kamenwati, slamming the other man into the doorjamb on purpose as he passed. Kamen could have taken umbrage, but he did not. Leo was unimpressed by his show of hands.
Leo was such a powerful force of negativity and he knew it, just as he knew it had no place among the celebrations going on in that room. He would just drag everyone else back down into the hole he had found himself in once more.
He threw himself out of the house, suddenly feeling like there wasn’t enough air in the entire world to help him breathe. The New Mexico night was sharp and cold, the cold of a desert gone dark. He walked out into it, letting it penetrate his skin, letting it remind him that he was still, somehow, alive. But that had been the problem all along, hadn’t it? He had never died. Chatha had mutilated him again and again, each time bringing him to the very edge of death’s door, and then using his power to heal to drag him back and ready him for the next bout.
