Wilder (5 page)

Chapter 6

G
uardian stared at Charisma where she lay lax with fatigue in a thin cotton nightgown, resting in a hollow in the earth. In the days since the attack, she’d lost weight, leaving her painfully thin. Her tan had faded and she’d grown pale. Her black hair had grown out to show strawberry blond roots, and in her delirium, she’d dug herself into the hard-packed ground, pushing dirt under her nails and into the creases of her knuckles.

Yet . . . yet he liked to look at her. He liked to think about who and what she was. He had grown fond of her.

Eleven days ago, Taurean had come running to him with a report that one of the Aboves had lost her way in the tunnels. She’d been down a long time, watched by a hunting pack of demons who waited for her strength to fail before they tore her apart.

Although Guardian feared a trap, Taurean’s urgency had sent him out after her.

Taurean had led the way, loping along while informing Guardian that this was one of the
good
Aboves. Charisma Fangorn had been kind to Taurean. She even listened when Taurean told her about the terrors that stalked the night . . . terrors no one perceived but Taurean. Charisma didn’t call Taurean crazy; she said Taurean was gifted, and she thanked her with offerings of food and blankets.

Taurean had told him that Charisma saw what nobody else above wanted to see, and she fought for the lost children, and poor families, and for people like Taurean.

Guardian hadn’t necessarily believed everything Taurean said. Taurean was . . . special. Different. But he patted Taurean on the shoulder and promised to save her friend.

Guardian had reached Charisma barely in time . . . and still he had been too late.

Dr. King spoke from the door behind him. “She came to consciousness?”

Guardian swiveled to face his friend. “She did.”

“She was aware? Coherent?” As always, Dr. King was impeccably dressed in a suit, white shirt, and tie. His wingtips shone with polish, and his Breguet pocket watch was a work of art.

“She ate,” Guardian told him. “She drank. She went to the bathroom. She abused me verbally. She tried to kill me. Considering what she’s been through, she is doing well.”

Dr. King laughed, a deep, contagious laugh that made Guardian smile despite himself. “That is better than I ever dared to hope.” He walked forward, his bag on one shoulder, his other arm swinging awkwardly. He knelt on the floor beside Charisma and studied her relaxed face, then placed a hand on her forehead and nodded. “Almost no fever. Good.” Holding her wrist in his hand, he took her pulse. “She’s a lucky girl. If it hadn’t been for you, we would have lost her.”

Dr. King was like everyone else who worked below ground—he didn’t fit in among the Aboves.

He worked with the poor and disabled. He was African-American. He was a dwarf, the smallest man on earth.

He probably could have gotten along with the Aboves, but he didn’t fit their profile for a dwarf. He had trouble sidling up to an examining room table, not just because of his height, but because of the constant ridicule by his peers.

Worse, his IQ was off the charts. Guardian could only imagine what it had taken Dr. King to get through medical school, working the long hours and battling his colleagues’ overweening egos. But he kept his diplomas framed on the wall in his underground office to reassure those who doubted his medical qualifications.

Dr. King opened his bag, donned sterile latex gloves, turned back the collar on Charisma’s nightgown, and examined the demon’s bite.

After the attack, it was an hour before Guardian got her back to safety, another hour before Dr. King arrived, and in that time, the poison had invaded her system and the wound had turned septic. Dark red streaks ran under her skin, down her arm, and up her neck. Froth bubbled at the edges of the open wound, and a sickly sweet stench rose from it.

Guardian and Dr. King had worked through the night, opening the wound to cut away the dead tissue, disinfecting and cleaning, applying heat and cold. . . .

The bite was closed now, resulting in a hard blue mark that looked as if she’d been branded by evil. And perhaps she had.

“That’s probably as good as it’s going to get,” Dr. King said, and closed her nightgown tightly at her throat.

Guardian squatted beside her and stroked her hair back from her forehead. “She freaked out about having her eyes covered.”

“Of course she did. Wouldn’t you?” Dr. King pulled off his gloves and put them in the trash.

“Yes. But I think I convinced her of the danger of taking off the blindfold.” Guardian looked around his lair. The massive stone cave extended three football fields in length and rose six stories. Golden stalagmite pillars lifted their arms to support the weight of the earth above. Elaborate primeval buildings, like multistory palaces, now in ruin, had been shaped out of the walls, complete with windows and turrets and stairways. A small, pure shallow brook gushed from a hidden grotto in the far wall, cascaded over a waterfall and through a riverbed, and disappeared through a hole in the opposite wall. Here and there, high in the ceiling, sunshine beamed down through hidden skylights. . . .

For all the time that Guardian had lived down here, he had never seen a hint of who had constructed this immense underground chamber, or when, or how the ancient builders directed the sunshine from the city so far above down to this place. But he couldn’t argue with their success—where the sunshine touched the ground, crimson flowers bloomed.

He liked this place, halfway between the corruption of the city above and the fires of hell below. As best as he could tell, this was where he belonged. Among the Belows, this place was a legend . . . and so, now, was he. They had seen something in his deformity and his madness. They had brought him here to heal. They called him
Guardian
, and depended on him to protect them from the demons below and the cruelty above.

He did his best.

He could spend the rest of his life here. If things continued as they were, he would. If he never remembered who he was and what he was, he would be here forever.

Forever.

Forever.

The word echoed in his brain, bouncing back and forth against the metal plate that formed the back of his skull.

Dr. King patted Guardian’s knee. “How about you? Still having nightmares?”

Guardian fought back his terror. Opening his eyes, he saw Dr. King watching him with that world-weary concern he so often showed. “I don’t sleep much,” Guardian said.

“Not sleeping will make you crazy faster than anything.”

“I’ll take my chances. The real demons scare me less than . . .”

“Than the phantoms in your mind. I know. I’ve heard you scream in your sleep. Raises the hair on the back of my neck.” Dr. King rubbed his bald head. “Not easy to do.”

“Ruffles my fur, too,” Guardian joked, “and that’s a lot of fur to ruffle.”

Dr. King didn’t laugh. “You are so—and I use this word rarely—normal.”

Guardian rudely snorted.

“No, it’s true.” Dr. King shook his finger at Guardian. “You have a sense of humor. You seldom get angry. Nor do you pity yourself much. You react like a man who is used to being treated kindly. Fairly. There was no abuse in your childhood, not from your parents or from your schoolmates. You weren’t born this way.”

Guardian lifted his hands and showed them to the doctor. “Are these the hands of a man?”

Rough blond fur covered the backs of his hands. His pale palms were bare, but on his right hand the skin looked artificial. On this hand, he had no fingerprints, and that added a dimension of science fiction to his deformity. He flexed his fingers; they worked well, although the two in the middle were stiff in the joints.

Bitterly he said, “I don’t even need to look in the mirror to see what I am.”

Chapter 7

“Y
ou take your appearance too seriously. It doesn’t define who you are.” Dr. King patted Guardian’s knee again. “Leave the easy judgments to everyone else, concentrate on the work you have to do, and be thankful that somehow you were given the weapons to do it.”

“Right.”
No point in complaining to
me, Dr. King meant. Dr. King faced his own, more serious challenges. “How much longer will she have to wear the bandage?” Guardian asked.

“A week. A month. I wish I knew for sure.” Dr. King donned another pair of gloves, eased the blindfold away from her left eye, then her right, lifted the lid and checked the pupils, and shook his head. “The bomb flash burned her retina, but the poison is what did the damage, and I don’t know how that poison works.”

“Demon poison? No, I don’t suppose you do. I don’t suppose anyone does.” Tests needed to be run, but what hospital would run tests on a poison they didn’t believe existed?

“That she’s recovered at all is because you recognized the one thing that would heal her.”

“Her connection to the earth. I don’t know what gave me the clue. . . .” Guardian realized Dr. King was looking at him carefully, considering him again, judging him again. He snapped, “I don’t!”

“You don’t remember any more than you did?”

Guardian shook his head. “I don’t even know whether recognizing her gift is something I knew before, or if it was simply good observation skills. Down here, I have had to develop
those
.”

Wearily, Dr. King loosened his tie. “I think when you remember, what you remember will be extraordinary.”

“Then why, whenever I try to remember, do I feel sick with anticipation and dread?” Thinking about the past made Guardian want to run away, farther than he had ever run before, away from everyone and everything . . . but how could he run away from himself?

“An extraordinary life doesn’t necessarily mean an easy life. Sometimes the events that shape us are extraordinarily difficult.” Dr. King stripped off the gloves again and trashed them. “With you looking like you do, I think that’s a safe assumption.”

“How do you know I wasn’t born this way?”

“It would have been in the papers.”

“The ones at the check stands!”

“At the very least. No, someone fooled around with your brain. Hurt you terribly. Made you look like a monster.”

With what he considered formidable restraint, Guardian said, “I don’t believe a man can
think
himself hairy.”

Dr. King waved him to silence. “The human brain is God’s most powerful creation. Nothing man has done has ever come close to the glories of a man’s mind. Or a woman’s. We haven’t begun to tap the potential hidden within, and most researchers are afraid to try, for whom do we experiment on? Only the most morally decrepit would dream of using a human guinea pig. Unfortunately, I have more than once met the morally decrepit, and it seems to me their numbers are growing exponentially.”

Guardian’s mind roamed the miles of dark corridors beneath the city where horror lurked. “Are we calling the demons morally decrepit now?”

“No.” Dr. King might be small, but he stated his opinions definitively. “The demons are exactly what they seem—beings forever damned to hell until there’s nothing left of humanity inside them, until they’re just distilled drops of pure malevolence. No, I’m talking about the people in this city who deliberately market drugs to children, who terrorize already miserable prostitutes, who spread disease and pain and filth, and take pleasure in holding power over others. . . .” His small fists clenched. “I’m talking about Osgood and his minions, and all those who take their example from him.”

Yes. Yes. Osgood hadn’t brought evil to New York, but he had tightened its grip on the city. He had made evil impossible to escape. Guardian felt sorry for Dr. King, on the front line of the battle. “You see too many of the wounded.”

Dr. King shrugged. “Who else will treat them? God gave me hands, however small, to help, and I will. But you, my friend, show the classic signs of amnesia. That mind of yours is not damaged; it’s as sharp as a tack.” Dr. King waved a hand at the books that lined the shelves in the library alcove. “You remember the real world.” He chuckled. “You remember the kind of magazines at the grocery store checkouts.”

“
That
I wish I could forget.”

“You don’t remember your past because you don’t want to remember. I think someday you’ll see something or do something that peels back the first layer, and then it’ll be like peeling the dead skin off a burn—each layer will be agony, but it must be done before you can heal.”

“Once again, Doctor, you’ve given me something to look forward to.” Guardian hadn’t realized he was watching Charisma, but when she shivered in her sleep, he pulled the covers up to her neck.

Her sweetly round face with its flashing dimples implied an artless disposition and a character that had never viewed the ugly part of life. A rose tattoo climbed her spine and blossomed behind her left ear, and, asleep like this, she looked young. So young.

But only a fool would ignore the calluses on her hands formed from hours of self-defense classes, the scars that slashed the creamy skin, the well-toned muscles, and the stubborn tilt of her chin. She trusted no one, certainly not
him
.

He told himself Charisma had earned his fierce dedication; he had met no other seasoned warrior who would face the dread forces of hell, could fight and defeat them, and then fight another battle against pain and poison to live and fight again.

Yet his primal need to protect and defend her was more than admiration. When he looked at her, he didn’t feel like a monster. For the first time in a long time, he felt like a man, a young man who dreamed of one woman who saw past his beastly form and loved him.

“How pathetic is that?” he murmured, then glanced up and away, hoping he’d revealed nothing of his longing to the good doctor.

If he had, Dr. King gave no indication. “Guardian, when I think of what you have done to survive, and the monsters you’ve faced down here, I know you’ll come through just fine.” In a voice grave and sad, he said, “Which is more than I can say about this poor soul. I’ve never seen anyone survive the demon’s venom. I suspect . . . Well. We’ll see.”

Guardian, too, had seen the results of the demon’s bite. But during the days and nights he’d cared for Charisma, her fierce battle against death had given him hope. “All she needs is a miracle to remain alive.”

“Exactly right. And we can all use one of those, I suppose.” King picked up his bag. “I’ll check in tomorrow. When she wakes again, you know the drill. Give her fluids; feed her; try to keep her as quiet as possible. She can bathe if she feels up to it. Don’t let her take that bandage off.”

“I’ll do my best. It should all be doable, as long as she doesn’t kill me.” Guardian watched Dr. King walk toward the door.

Dr. King said, “Call if you need me, but I think the worst of the crisis is over.”

“What will happen to her now?” Guardian waited, hung on a hook of hope and fear.

“I can’t say for sure, but she’s a fighter.”

“She’ll get better; then she’ll leave and return to her life above.”

“Yes.” The doctor viewed Guardian with something that looked like pity.

So maybe Guardian hadn’t been as discreet about his emotions as he had hoped.

Dr. King continued. “I know it’s hard, but try not to take it to heart.”

It was far too late for that.