Davis: Blood Brotherhood (15 page)

They looked at the town in general. The only place that had been destroyed was his home. Ward had asked to see his, but there was not enough range for him to do that, and Ward said that he thought perhaps his would be fine. Dolin was doubtful that things were ever going to be fine again, but said nothing. It was going to be a long year if he had to keep biting his tongue this way.

Chapter 13

Leo was in the middle of his exercise when he felt it. He wasn’t sure what it was, but the rumble in his body made him think that someone was giving him more magic than he’d had before. He was going to be pissed if they did that again. As far as he was concerned, he had all he could handle right now. When nothing more happened, he went back to lifting the barbells that he was using.

The pain was there. Not like before, but he still hurt from the things she’d said to him before she’d tossed the ring he’d given her on his lap. CarolAnn Rivas had been his one and only true love. She’d been his world.

“I’m not going to be able to handle this, Leonard.” She would never call him Leo, no matter how much he’d asked her to. “I know that if we were married now, I’d pretty much have to stay at your side, but we’re not and I’m really glad that we found out now.”

“Found out what? What are you not going to be able to handle? The job? I assure you that once I’m gone, you’ll have enough to not work again. I have….” She was shaking her head at him. “Then what is it?”

“You.” He had still been confused. “I looked it up, you know, what I was going to have to go through once you were really sick. Christ, couldn’t you have gotten something that would have been easier to handle?”

“The next time I get a fatal disease, I’ll see if they’ll give me something that will make me go quicker for you.” He was joking, sort of, but she was nodding. “CarolAnn, I was joking. You do know that I have no control over what I have? That I was sick more than likely with this for a long time before they found it.”

“That’s what I’m trying to tell you. It was as if someone didn’t think we should get married.” He shook his head, more out of disbelief than that he didn’t understand. “Don’t tell me no, Leonard. I’ve been thinking about this a lot. And you’re going to be dead soon. Why should I have to wait and suffer too?”

“Yes, we can’t have you suffering, now can we?” He was hurt and his temper seemed to show it. But she only kissed him on the nose and stood up. “CarolAnn, we’re supposed to get married in a few weeks. What the hell am I supposed to tell people? That you didn’t want to be with a dying man?”

“Of course not. Do you want them to think that I’m callus?” He wanted to point out that that was just what she was, but she continued before he could. “I’ll just tell people that you decided that things were going to be too hard on me, and you told me you didn’t want to bring me down. It’s not like you’re going to be around long to tell them any different anyway. And once you’re dead…you don’t have to change your insurance policy, do you?”

“I don’t have to, but I will.” She asked him why. It wasn’t as if he had anyone to leave his money to. “I would rather leave it to a man on the street than to let you have a dime of it.”

“Now you’re just being mean. I’ve done nothing that any other woman of my station wouldn’t have done too. You’re just being cruel to take me out of the policy. That’s a lot of money, and I have had to suffer taking you to the doctor that one time.” He only stared at her as she continued berating him for his not taking care of her once he was dead. “I’ll just have to talk to a lawyer, I guess. Once you’re dead, I won’t—”

“Will you stop saying that?” CarolAnn backed away from him when he stood up. He hadn’t been weak then, not like he was a few days later, but it had caused him to lose his temper. “Get out. Get out of my place and don’t you dare return.”

Two days later, he’d gotten a letter from her attorney telling him that he wasn’t able to take her name off the policy. Which, he supposed, was fine by him, as he’d never put her on it anyway. Leo had been meaning to. For several days it had been on the top of his list of things to do, but he’d put it off. And right then, he was glad that he had.

Leo didn’t even bother replying to the firm. He was finished with them anyway. He was dying, and soon. When he’d gone to the doctor, the one and only time that CarolAnn had taken him, he’d been told that he had less than a month to live. That the cancer had taken over and he was lucky to be up and around now. The day after the letter came, he’d been put in the hospital when he’d passed out at the grocery store. The next day, the man in black—Hector, he knew now—had come to see him.

“I have a job for you.” Leo had laughed. He was well beyond working at anything other than staying alive. “You will have more power than you’ve ever had, and you will work harder than you ever did at teaching.”

“I don’t know if you’ve been told, but I have only a few days, less really, to live.” Hector had only nodded. “I’d really like it if you got the fuck out of here, buddy. If CarolAnn sent you, tell her to fuck off too. I’m as good as dead.”

“You’ll work with a brilliant man. He is very…old, I would say, but he is a good man.” Leo didn’t bother answering him. His body was used up, just lying there. “You’re going to be well, never to be sick again. Your life will be long; forever, should you choose.”

“CarolAnn would hate that.” Hector asked him who that was. “The woman that was supposed to be with me until death we do part. Or until I do the death thing and she takes my insurance money and runs. Just go away. I’m very tired.”

“Leo, you should know that once you die, I cannot bring you back. You’ll have to agree to help us now, while there is still time.” Leo had told him again to fuck off, but he was falling into the tar of darkness again and wasn’t sure that he’d answered him.

The pain in his arm made him look at Hector. He was touching the place where the IV was feeding into his arm, and the burn made him think that the man had given him something to make his death quicker. Right then Leo didn’t care, and closed his eyes again. It was then that he saw the dragon.

He was huge, and his wings made him thing of King Arthur’s Court and the Knights of the Round Table…swords and magic, as well as damsels in distress, and hot sweaty nights being thanked by the same woman.

The dragon seemed to know him, he remembered thinking. It spoke to him, breathing fire over his body and telling him that he’d be fine in the morning. At the time, Leo thought it was the burn from whatever Hector had been giving him and he wanted to say that. But the dragon continued to tell him that he’d care for him, and Leo wanted to believe him. Still did as a matter of fact.

When he opened his eyes, he’d been alone in the dark room. There were noises going on down the hall, an intercom telling them that there was a code in room nine sixty-four. Leo had lain there, listening to the machines at his back and sides make their sounds. The squeak, squeak of shoes on the floors as someone went by his room, and he felt…well, he felt really good.

Leo had thought for sure that he’d died. That this good feeling he was having wasn’t because he was better, but because as a dead person there was no more pain. He was only lying there until someone, or even something, came to take him away. But when the nurse came in to take his vitals just as the sun was cresting his window, he asked her if she could see him.

“Of course I can see you, Mr. Earl. You have some color in your cheeks, and your lips are not as dry. You’re using that stuff like I told you, aren’t you?” Leo watched her as she took his blood pressure and his temp. She took it a second, then a third time before she went out and came back again. “There was something wrong with that one. It said you were off the chart.”

He put the thermometer under his tongue this time. The one that had touched his forehead was laying on his bed. When the alarm went off that signaled that the reading was finished, she stared at him, then at the machine. He asked her what it said.

“That your temp is one hundred and forty-seven and rising.” He knew that the regular temp should have been less than one hundred, but she didn’t seem to be overly concerned, so he didn’t worry either. “They’re coming to draw some of your blood soon, so you’ll have to wait on your breakfast. It’s still only liquids, but I can get you some more juice if you want it.”

Leo had been starved. Not hungry, but actually starved. Like he’d not eaten…well, he’d not eaten in two days, and now he wanted it all. He asked her if he could have something more, and she only shook her head at him. When the nurse came in to take his blood, he’d been ready to steal the candy bar that he could see in her lab coat.

The doctors had come and gone before he got up. He was stronger too. His body felt like he could lift a car. When he was alone in his room, he’d lifted the chair and then the little dresser. Before he was finished, he’d put the dresser on the chair and lifted it. Leo had never ever felt this great. And that feeling had nearly gotten him put away. Smiling, he thought of the doctor that he’d lifted up with one hand when he tried to tell Leo that he was too weak to be released.

“Good memories?” Leo turned to look at Vicki when she spoke. “You were smiling. I assumed you were having good memories.”

“I was.” Getting up from the bench, he realized that he’d been lifting weights for nearly two hours and he was sore. “Did you want something from me?”

Leo knew that he’d made a mistake the moment she stood up. Vicki was one of the nicest people that he knew, but she was very touchy about things. And she was mean when she was pissed off. Bracing himself for whatever she might blast at him, he was surprised when she turned and left him. And for some reason, it hurt him a great deal.

~~~

Master moved about his cave. He wasn’t getting any better, and he was reasonably sure that he was dying. The stones had been used up almost the first hour of him returning to his new home, and now he had nothing. Also, when he tried to reach Dolin or Ward, he hit nothing but a hard wall.

The fire blazed hot, but he was still so very cold. He had no idea what kept the flame running all the time without wood, but he assumed it was magic. It was why he’d picked this particular cave. There had been a hum about it that he’d not been able to ignore. Looking down at his abused body, he sobbed again.

“Why? Why did they do this to me?” Master no longer blamed the women. Nor did he even think that Rembrandt had anything to do with what was going on now. Sure, they’d harmed him, but they’d not forsaken him. Dolin and Ward had done that to him. They’d promised him so much and had left him to die.

Master moved to the fire, close enough that he could feel the little sparks of it touching his skin. His body, no longer able to shift, was weakening daily. He knew that it wasn’t just a matter of if he was going to die, but when. Whatever he’d been hit with, it had been pure and it had entered his heart and damaged it. Taking away the cloth that was as much a part of his clothing as his pants or shirt, he looked at the wound.

It was a gaping hole. Ragged, of course, but he could see his ribs that held his chest together, as well as a part of his lung that had also been affected. The blackened part that was showing smelled pretty bad now, but there was little he could do with it. But his heart was what had been hurt the worst.

The place where his stone had been was now a cavity. When he’d first made it back to the cave, he’d shoved all but one of the stones he’d had left into himself to try and help. It had for a time, but that hadn’t lasted long enough. The pain, the terrible overwhelming pain, brought him to his knees more and more daily. Master lay down on his pallet, unable to go to the bed that he’d had brought here so long ago.

“I should return to the other realm. If there, I know that I could heal myself. The magic there is—” The noise behind him made him curl tighter into a ball and lay still. Whatever was coming could kill him or not. There was no fight in him any longer.

“Benton?” He didn’t know the voice, so he waited. “Benton? Come on out. I want you to show me how to use this fucking magic.”

Magic? Master didn’t move. He was terrified it was a trick. It would be like them, the blood brotherhood he’d been calling them because they were banded together like a group of vampires. When a shadow fell over him, he only looked up at the beast before whimpering.

“They did a job on you, didn’t they?” The man or beast of a man was having trouble keeping his shape, changing from monster to man repeatedly. Master had to look away. The movement was making him ill. “You have to show me how to use this shit. I left before the lessons began.”

“I don’t have it in me to help you.” The pinch of something in his leg had him lifting his head, but he felt the burning before he could ask what the man had done.

“That’ll help you, I think. It sure did me.” The needle was just being pulled from his body when Master felt himself…well, he was himself. His body felt energized; his heart started to pound in his chest. For the first time in days he could take a deep breath. And when he did, Master stood up. “There you go. Works better than a hit of coke. Christ, I feel fucking good when I take a hit of this shit.”

Standing up, he let his beast take him. The amount of energy that he got from the simple shot was making him feel as if he could take on the world and win. Looking at the man/beast standing next to him, Master had the most uncontrollable urge to hug him, then rip his throat out. The rage that was slowly taking over his body was making him ill with it.

“What is that?” The man only shrugged. “You gave me something that you’ve no idea what it is? Are you insane?”

“You’re not dying now, are you, fuck balls?” He had a point, but the rage, the anger was making him take a step toward him. “You try it and I won’t ever give you any more of it.”

That stopped him. “It’s not forever?” The man shook his head and said it would only last about a day before he needed more. “How much do we have? Enough to live out a long time?”