Shaman, Healer, Heretic (17 page)

She ventured out into the plaza, pulling her jacket collar up around her neck. She’d never felt so cold in the Underworld. Each time seemed to get colder.

“Mitch!” she yelled, her hands cupped around her mouth, hoping to gain enough volume to overcome the wind. “Mitch, are you there?”

“Yeah,” said a voice behind her. “Right here.”

She whirled around in time for her peripheral vision to tell her that something was moving toward her head. As she ducked, she backed up.

Mitch stood there in his hospital gown hefting a chunk of concrete in his hand. The wind caused the gown to flap around, but he ignored it, smiling at her.

“Mitch,” said Livvy, straightening up. “What are you doing?”

“What are
you
doing?” he yelled. “I told you last time I didn’t want to go back.”

He advanced on her and swung the concrete in a wide arc but Livvy simply caught his wrist in mid-air and held it there. No client was a match for a shaman in the Underworld.

“Drop it, Mitch. You don’t need it. If you don’t want to go back, then that’s the way it’ll be.”

“Oh right. Just like last time.”

“You didn’t really want to stay last time,” she said, squeezing his wrist. “You hesitated.”

“Like hell,” he said, dropping the concrete.

Livvy let him go and he was rubbing his wrist when, without warning, the ground rumbled and a piercing screech filled the air. Mitch teetered wildly, trying to keep his balance. Livvy crouched low and looked in every direction, trying to figure out where Tiamat was. She checked the location of the fountain. It was right behind her, only two steps away.

“Mitch–” she was saying as she turned back, but he lunged toward her and in seconds they tangled up and were rolling on the ground.

“Stop it,” he screamed. Another screech filled the air, closer and louder this time. The ground thudded beneath them. “Stop it!”

She grabbed his shoulders.

“Mitch, it’s not me! I’m not doing this!” The ground thudded again. “We’ve got to get out of here!”

“Ha!” he said with a wild look in his eyes. “You expect me to believe that?”

“Mitch!” she yelled, easily pushing him off. “We’ve got to get out of here!”

A long shadow covered them and Mitch looked up. Tiamat’s head had blotted out the sun and she had paused. He squinted at the dark backlit shape.

“What is that?” he asked, not sounding scared enough, not understanding what was about to happen.

Tiamat turned toward them and screeched. Mitch tumbled away from Livvy and the ground thudded. Livvy rolled into a kneeling position and stayed on all fours to keep her balance.

“Mitch, we have to leave now!” she yelled. He looked at her confused. She pointed to the fountain. “Now!”

The ground thudded repeatedly as Tiamat moved more quickly, closing the distance faster than Livvy thought possible for such a leviathan. Mitch froze, mesmerized by her growing enormity. Tiamat would be on them in seconds.

“We have to go,” she yelled as she reached for his arm, but he squirmed away at the last second.

“No!” he yelled, but Livvy couldn’t hear him.

The buildings in the vicinity started to tremble as rubble began to rain down. The glass was gone, shattered long ago. Livvy wanted to yell to Mitch but she knew he’d never hear her. As she started to crawl toward him, a circle of light appeared between them. Livvy hurled herself backward and hit the edge of the fountain.

Tiamat screamed, raising her open beak to the sky, while her massive tail lashed the buildings to either side.

“Mitch!” Livvy yelled.

He had managed to get up but was lurching away from her, away from the fountain. As Livvy watched in horror, Tiamat swiftly curved her long neck and lowered her head. Mitch never even saw her as he ran directly beneath the descending jaws. She snapped them shut on his torso, cutting him in half.

Livvy tipped backwards into the fountain, closing her eyes to the horrific sight, willing it out of her vision as she heard the jaws snap again.
 

• • • • •

In the real world, a high-pitched whine replaced the sound of crunching bones. Livvy took off her goggles and saw Diana and Saul looking frantically at the monitors. Mitch’s heart rate had flatlined and the emergency klaxon was sounding.

The door burst open and two nurses moved quickly to the bedside as Diana and Saul stepped back. Livvy got up and watched from near the chair, knowing what the nurses were seeing. Mitch was dead.

As one of the nurses turned off the alarm, the other checked for a pulse at his wrist and then his jugular. The first nurse looked at the intravenous drip and the peripheral insertion line.

“There’s no morphine?” she asked the other nurse.

“No, we were still waiting for doctor’s orders.”

The nurses had been expecting Mitch to die, had been waiting for the morphine. They had rushed in but they already knew that resuscitation wasn’t an option.

Livvy watched them in a daze. Her client was dead–the man who, not one minute ago, had been talking to her in the Multiverse, struggling with her, then screaming…she closed her eyes against those last moments.

“Is he…” asked Diana, unable to finish the question.

The second nurse turned to her. “There’s no pulse,” she said, quietly.

Livvy opened her eyes to see the first nurse look at her watch and note the time. She turned the monitors off and the room was quiet.

“Oh no, no, no,” Diana whispered as Saul came around and took her by the shoulders.

She turned to him and they hugged, both of them crying uncontrollably. Livvy looked away and pressed a hand to her mouth to stifle the sob that was rising. One of the nurses left as the other waited patiently. She glanced at Livvy but didn’t take much notice.

Finally, Diana and Saul quieted down and Diana stroked Mitch’s hand. The nurse passed her the tissue box and she took one, passing it to Saul. Then, as if he remembered that they weren’t alone in the room, Saul turned to Livvy.

“What happened?” he asked.

The nurse opened her mouth to speak but then realized that Saul wasn’t talking to her. Surprised, she looked at Livvy. Diana turned around to look at her as well.

Oh gods
, Livvy thought, as she looked at them. What could she say? Diana and Saul looked so tired and defeated, as though the hope that Mitch would survive was the only thing that had kept them going. She knew they wouldn’t understand the truth, and that they didn’t want to hear that Mitch had not wanted to return.

“He was…already gone,” she barely managed to get out.

Diana nodded and turned back to look at Mitch, as did Saul. The nurse, however, was looking at Livvy, although she didn’t say anything. The second nurse came back into the room, probably wanting to unhook the monitors and start the paperwork, but she hesitated.

Saul looked at both the nurses.

“Could we just have some time alone please?”

“Of course,” said the first nurse. “I’ll check back.”

The nurses left, the first one eyeing Livvy again on her way out.

Saul reached for his wallet.

“Oh no,” said Livvy, as she wiped her eyes. She picked up her bag and stowed the gear.

“No,” said Saul, removing some money. “We called you here.”

Livvy had already passed him on the way to the door before he realized what she was doing. He had to turn around to hold out the money.

“I can’t,” Livvy blurted out. “I’m…I’m sorry I couldn’t help.”

Diana was still staring at Mitch. As Livvy opened the door, Saul let his hands fall to his sides.

“And I’m sorry for your loss,” Livvy whispered in a hoarse voice. “So sorry.”
 

BY THE TIME the second vodka was down, Livvy knew it wasn’t going to help. Really she’d known it from the beginning, but she simply didn’t care. The bus ride home had been extra long, caught in rush hour traffic and a burst water main that forced a detour. As the second hour ticked by, she knew she wasn’t going to make it home by dark. She had remembered the punks in the alley. In fact, she had thought of little else when she wasn’t thinking of Mitch’s death.

At the bus stop, she had tried to find a group of people that were going in her direction, but in minutes she was by herself. She had run the last two blocks, trying to look into every shadow all at once. It wasn’t until she’d heard the lock click, after she’d slammed the wrought iron gate closed, that she calmed down. Once she’d gotten home, she’d gone straight to the freezer. The bottle of mandarin vodka was in the back, behind the packages of frozen corn.

As she looked around the apartment, she realized how bleak and shabby it was. Everything in it had once been new. She had bought all of it, never once thinking that she’d never be able to afford furniture again. After several moves to cheaper and cheaper apartments, she’d abandoned most of it, piece by piece, as though it were being jettisoned off a plane with sputtering engines. What remained was banged up, scratched, and dirty.

She poured another shot and took it over to the sagging couch, sinking into the end and spilling a little.
If I’d stayed in school, I’d be a doctor by now
. She laughed out loud, snorting as she took a sip.
Yep, a real doctor and not some freak shaman
. She leaned her head back against the wall.

Not some freak shaman that gets beat up in their crappy neighborhood. Not some freak shaman who watches clients die
. She rubbed at the lingering redness on her chest.
Not some freak shaman who probably can’t work any more with the Multiverse dominated by that monster.
There was no way she’d make the rent next month, let alone get her mother’s ring back.

She thought of her mother then and that last awful time together. Her vision blurred, and she sniffed as the first teardrop rolled down her cheek.
What a life
, she thought, wiping her face with the back of her sleeve. She took another sip. Better that her parents weren’t here to see what she’d become.

As she lowered the glass, she saw her bag on the card table. She stood up, wobbling, and went over to it. She set the glass down hard, opened the bag, and took out the goggles.
I need a real job, with a real paycheck
.
What I don’t need is punks beating me up, clients who want to die, and no life.

“I’m done with this!” she slurred as she threw the goggles at the front door.

As they crashed into it, she saw the batteries pop loose and scatter. Small pieces of plastic came down as well and disappeared into the ratty carpet. She poured another shot and downed it in one gulp. Although the couch was only a few steps away, she barely managed to flop onto it before the room started to spin.
 

IN THE CLEAR light of morning, her hangover felt like a vise on the sides of her head. As Livvy drank more water and took another couple of aspirin, she looked at the broken remains of her goggles on the floor.

Dumb
, she thought.
It’s not like I have another job
. She took what remained of the vodka and poured it down the sink, running the water to take away the sickly smell. Finally, she went over to the door and gingerly gathered up the pieces of the goggles. If the optics weren’t scratched, she might be able to do something with them.

She carefully laid out and separated the pieces on the anti-static grounding pad on the table. A few of the wires had pulled loose and the black plastic housing had cracked wide open about a third of the way around. Inside, she could see the small mirrors and lenses. She went to the closet and brought out a canvas tote bag. With no money to buy new goggles, she’d gotten pretty good at making repairs. The canvas bag had all the tools she’d need: soldering iron, magnifying glass, wires, and wire cutters. It also had the remains of her first pair of goggles.

Her phone chimed with a text message. It was Min, checking in. She texted back.

After arranging all of the pieces on the table, it looked like the chips on the boards weren’t damaged and that she’d probably have enough parts from the two pairs of goggles to put together one working version. She set up the magnifying glass on its snake neck and set to work with the jewelers’ screwdrivers. She took apart the broken pair and then the spare pair, laying them both open in semi-circular halves that were held together by the small wires that went between them.

The aluminum foil that lined the interior of her goggles was her own customization. She had discovered that it was enough to prevent her static discharges from damaging the delicate electronic components. It was the reason that she had learned about the interior workings of the goggles in the first place.

As she worked, she thought about the types of jobs that she might qualify for. She could work in a hospital but she’d only be an orderly. In fact, she didn’t have the right credentials or degrees for any medical job that dealt with patients despite her years of medical school.

She plugged in the soldering iron and took the small sponge from the holder over to the sink and got it wet. Squeezing out the extra water, she thought of what happened at hospital last night and shuddered. The last place she wanted to work was a hospital.