Magic Strikes(35)

Two fractures scarred Derek's right arm, above the elbow and at the wrist. Identical breaks

marked his left arm. The inhuman precision of the mind that would conceive the need for breaking

both arms in exactly the same places made me grind my teeth.

My heartbeat slowed. My head grew hot, my fingertips cold. Breath rolled around my lungs like

a clump of ice. This wasn't just a beating. This was an exhibition. A purposeful demonstration of

cruelty and hate. They had mangled him, broken him so completely, as if they sought to obliterate

what he was. It made me furious and I clenched my hands until my nails dug into my palms.

Deep purple streaked with gray stained Derek's chest, outlining his rib cage and creeping up to

his throat, where gray pooled at the base of the neck caught in a brace. An open gash sliced across

his torso from his left side up onto his chest, to his right shoulder. The wound was black. Not gray,

not bloody-black.

I looked at his face. He no longer had one. A mishmash of broken bones stared back at me, the

flesh raw and seeded with gray, as if someone had attempted to sculpt a face out of ground beef and

left it in the open air to rot.

Rage shook me. I'll find you. I'll find you, you fucker, and I'll make you pay. I'll rip you apart

with my bare hands.

All rational thought fled from my head. The room shrank, as though I'd gone blind, while inside

me fury built and howled. I wanted to scream, to kick, to punch something, but my body refused to

move. I felt helpless. It was a most terrible feeling.

Minutes stretched by, long and viscous like honey dripping from a spoon. Derek still lay there,

dying quietly in the vat of green liquid. His chest rose ever so slightly, but aside from that small

movement, he might as well have been dead already. If he were a normal human, he would've

departed long before his beating had been finished. Sometimes greater regeneration just meant

greater suffering.

Someone's hand came to rest on my shoulder. I looked up. Doolittle's kind face greeted me.

«Come on now,» he murmured and pulled me up. «Come on up. Let's have some tea.»





CHAPTER 13



WE WERE IN A SMALL KITCHEN. DOOLITTLE TOOK a plastic ice tray from the freezer,

twisted it with his dark hands, and sent the cubes clattering into a glass. He poured iced tea from a

pitcher and set the glass in front of me.

«Tea will help,» he said.

I drank out of respect for him. It was shockingly sweet, more syrup than drink. Ice crunched

between my teeth.

«Why isn't he healing?» My voice came out flat, a one-note gathering of words with no

inflection.

Doolittle sat opposite me. He had a genteel manner about him that instantly put one at ease.

Usually I found myself relaxing slowly in his company. Merely being in the presence of the Pack's

physician proved soothing. Not today. I searched his eyes for reassurance of Derek's survival, but

they offered me no comfort: dark and mournful, they contained none of the humor I was

accustomed to seeing. Today he just seemed tired, an old black man bent over his glass of iced tea.

«Lyc-V can do many miraculous things,» Doolittle said. «But it has its limits. The gray color on

his body shows the places where the virus died in great numbers. There isn't enough Lyc-V left in

his tissues to heal him. What little remains is keeping him alive, but for how long nobody can say.»

He looked into his cup. «They beat him very badly. The bones are shattered and crushed in so many

places, I can't remember them all. And when they were done breaking him, they poured molten

silver onto his body. Into his chest.»

I clenched my hands.

«And on his face. And then they dumped him to die in the middle of the street from a moving

cart, four blocks from our southern office.»

Doolittle reached behind him and handed me a cotton kitchen towel.

I took it and looked at him.

He gave me a small, kind smile. «It helps to wipe them off,» he said.

I touched my cheek and realized it was wet. I pressed the towel against my face.

«It's good to cry. No shame in it.»

«Can he be helped?» My voice sounded normal. I just couldn't stop crying. The pain kept

leaking out of my eyes.

Doolittle shook his head.

My brain started slowly, like an old clock after years of disrepair. The Reapers had discovered

Derek at the Red Roof Inn, beaten him, and dumped him by the Pack's office. Jim's crew found

him and tracked the scent back to the location where the beating had taken place.

«He hasn't turned,» I said.

Doolittle's face voiced a silent question.

«There were no signs of a wolf at the scene. Pints of blood, too many for one person, so he had

to have fought and injured them, but no fur. No claw scratches. He killed a vamp in a warrior form.