Bedlam Boyz(61)

"Please . . ."

Kayla stopped, looking down at the source of the whisper. The T-Man boy, sprawled on the dirty floor, staring up at her with terrified eyes. "Please, don't . . ." he whispered again, his voice failing.

"You would've killed me," she whispered. "I'm sorry, I didn't want to hurt you that way, but . . . I need to get away from here, I can't . . . I can't . . ."

His dark eyes stared at her, filled with pain.

I can't leave him like this. I can't.

She knelt beside him and rested her hand on his forehead, closing her eyes. Her other vision kicked in a moment later, and she was horrified to see what she'd done to him—pulling out the energy that his body needs, the energy of the cells themselves.

She reached into herself, for the heat of magic within her, and poured it back into him. She could feel his body changing beneath her hand, grasping desperately for life, and willing itself to live. When she opened her eyes, he was unconscious, but alive.

Now I'd definitely better get my ass out of here. . . .

"There she is!"

"Oh, shit!" Kayla looked up at the three T-Men in the broken doorway and saw the leader raise a pistol to fire. . . .

She closed her eyes and called the magic.

Blinding light filled the room, light and a warmth that felt like sunlight on Kayla's face. It was too bright to see, so bright that the light imprinted itself on her closed eyes. Kayla blindly leaped for the doorway, crashing into someone who fell out of her way and half-falling, halfrolling down the stairs. On the landing, she managed to open her eyes, though the world was still filled with glowing afterimages. She scrambled down the remaining stairs and paused at the bottom, listening closely, and then reaching out with that other sight.

She could feel the light of human lives around her: two just beyond the apartment wall that she was leaning against, close to a third life that was fading to nothingness even as she touched it. There were two others outside, beyond the building walls.

She took a deep breath and leaped out the door. The two T-Men standing at the car reacted a half second too late as she dashed past them and into the alley. She heard a gunshot ricochet off the wall just behind her, and a window just ahead of her shattered, splinters of glass flying past her.

"Stop her!" she heard someone yell from behind her. She ran without looking back, her legs pounding against the uneven pavement, her heart thudding in her chest.

She didn't bother to stop for traffic at the next street, just ran across the intersection and dodged the cars, which screeched to a halt around her. She heard another squeal of tires off to one side and glanced up to see the Mercedes tear around the corner, barely missing a collision with a truck. Kayla dashed into the next alley, too crowded with boxes and trash cans for a car to pass through, then around a corner and into a wide empty parking lot, next to a desolate-looking area of warehouse buildings and parked trucks.

Keep running . . . keep running . . .

I don't know what I'll do if they catch me. I can't do whatever it was that I did to that guy, not again. If they find me, I don't know what I'll do.

She paused long enough to catch her breath, gasping as she leaned against a graffiti-covered wall. She thought for a moment that maybe she'd lost them, and then she saw the Mercedes turn into the parking lot ahead of her, moving silently like a gliding shark.

She ducked into the shadow of the closest building, but heard the roar of the Mercedes' engine accelerating and knew that they'd seen her. Kayla ran further into the shadows between the tall warehouses, plain flat walls without any place to hide, nowhere else to go.

Suddenly, ahead of her in the shadows, she saw a light glittering from a warehouse window. She ran for it, half-blinded with the sweat dripping in her eyes, her lungs aching.

Beside the lit window was a closed door. Kayla shoved at it; to her surprise, it opened, apparently unlocked.

She slipped inside and shut it quietly behind her. She looked around quickly to find a light switch, planning to hide herself in the darkness, and found herself face-to-face with a short, wrinkled old woman dressed in tattered, filthy rags, looking at her with an odd smile on her face.

"My, my," the old woman murmured, in a voice thick with a foreign accent, "what have we here?"

"Two guys, chasing me," Kayla gasped. "They're . . ."

"I know," the old woman said. Kayla could recognize the accent now as Irish, but a heavy, slow Irish accent, not like what she'd always heard on television. "But they won't dare to enter here," the old woman added.

"B-but, they're . . . they're . . ."

The old woman smiled, showing several pointed, yellow teeth. "You're not very observant, for one who bubbles with magic like Bridget's Well," the woman said. "Can't you see it? Can't you feel it?"