Impervious (City of Eldrich Book 1) (28 page)

Chapter 50

M
eagh
an screamed. More
loud gasps and cries from the crowd. She heard Jamie shouting.

She ran to Sid and dropped to the ground next to him, shaking his body. “Can you hear me?”

No response. She had no idea where to feel for a pulse so she placed her hand on his chest, in the middle of his Hello Kitty T-shirt. She felt his lungs rise and fall and rise again.

Meaghan sagged with relief. At least Sid was still alive. “He’s breathing,” she shouted loud enough for John and Jamie to hear.

John nodded, then glared at V’hren. “You are even more stupid than my brother. You hexed him. Like a wizard. Now they all know you’re not one of us.”

The mood of the crowd was audibly shifting. Meaghan could hear the angry buzzing, like a swarm, their fear giving way to anger. V’hren tried to attack John but stumbled and fell to one knee.

John turned to the crowd and spoke to them in Fahrayan.

Meaghan took advantage of V’hren’s distress to move closer to Jamie. He was conscious, his breath loud and ragged. But he was so exhausted his legs could no longer hold him up. His hands were stark bluish white, the blood cut off by the unsupported weight of his body hanging from his wrists.

Meaghan rifled through the pack for Matthew’s old clasp knife. Russ had added it to the pack “just in case.” She found it, dropped the pack, and ran to Jamie. He was too tall for her to stand at ground level and reach the leather thongs binding him.

She gripped the folded knife between her teeth and with adrenaline-fueled strength, she scrambled up one of the outcrops. She slipped and felt a sharp stab in her knee and the skin scrape off her right palm. She ignored the pain. If she didn’t get those thongs cut, Jamie could lose the use of his hands.

Finally, high enough to reach him, she opened the knife and cut the thong binding his right hand, leaving all his weight on his left wrist. Meaghan slid down the outcrop, her hands slick with blood, and her legs shaking. She knew she wouldn’t have the strength to climb the other one.

Wrapping her arms around him, she tried to hold him up enough to take the strain off his still-bound left hand. “I can’t make that climb again. I’m sorry.”

“You kissed my father,” he rasped. “What the hell was that?”

Struggling to support his weight, she said, “I had to get that thing out of his head. You can yell at me when we get home. Right now, we got bigger problems.”

He stared at her a moment, then said, “Give me the knife.”

Meaghan used her shirt to wipe off the blood from her torn palm and pressed the knife into Jamie’s freed hand. Leaning on Meaghan, panting with the effort, his fingers numb and clumsy, Jamie sawed at the thong until it snapped. He and Meaghan fell to the ground in a heap.

She held him close for a long moment. “I’ve got you,” she whispered in his ear. “I won’t let him hurt you anymore.” She felt his body shudder against her. “I’ve got you.”

Pulling away from him, she cradled his battered face in her hands. “Can you translate for your father? I need to know what he’s saying.”

Jamie nodded. “I’ll try. My Fahrayan’s pretty rusty. He was repeating what Sid translated before . . .” He swallowed hard. “What V’hren just said. And he’s telling them that something evil has infected V’hren. Something that’s been in charge of him for a long time.”

“How are they taking it? Do they believe what John’s saying?”

“They saw V’hren hex Sid.” Jamie’s eyes filled with tears. “Is he okay? It’s my fault he’s here and—”

Meaghan cut him off. “He’s okay for now. He’s here because he’s your friend and wanted to help.” She pulled Jamie closer. “None of this is your fault. None of it. I know you’re tired and hurt and want to go home, but we—me, your dad, and Sid—need you to keep it together for a little while longer. Can you do that?”

Jamie nodded.

V’hren regained his feet and began speaking to the crowd.

Jamie tried to translate as V’hren spoke. “Um . . . the giant she brings evil magic and tries to make you see things that aren’t there. I’m your king. Would you believe the . . . wingless one over me?” Jamie stopped, exhausted with the effort. “They hit me hard a few times on my ear and I think they messed it up. There’s a lot of ringing and it’s hard to hear. I need to get closer.”

Meaghan nodded. “Can you stand?”

“If you help me.” With a grimace and a few pained grunts, Jamie got to his feet. Supported by Meaghan, he hobbled closer, then sank to the ground.

She grabbed her backpack and pulled out her remaining water bottle, uncapped it, and handed it to him.

With shaking hands, he held the bottle to his mouth and drained it. “Better,” he said.

Meaghan surveyed the crowd. Most were transfixed by V’hren and John, but a few were staring at Jamie. She realized she couldn’t feel their emotions anymore. The drugs had worn off. She was alone in her head for the first time in hours. She had to know what V’hren was saying.

She sat down on the ground behind Jamie, supporting him with her body, arms around him like she’d hold a small child on her lap. She could feel the blood from the stumps of his wings soaking through her shirt and bra, but if he couldn’t lean back on her, he’d collapse. “I need you to keep translating.”

He slumped against her, wincing as her shirt rubbed the raw wounds on his back, and nodded. “Um . . . liar, false king, he tries to steal back what he lost by consorting with the giants . . . oh shit, he noticed you cut me down. He’s calling the guards.”

Meaghan felt Jamie tense and curl into her. The shaking became shuddering and she didn’t need a head full of mystic mushrooms to feel his terror. She wrapped her arms around him and held him tight, feeling that fierce maternal protectiveness sweep through her again. If the guards came, she’d fight for him to her last gasp.

But the guards didn’t move. They wore the same narrow-eyed scowl she’d seen on John’s face when V’hren has first spoken to her in English.

“Look,” she said to Jamie. “They aren’t obeying him.”

Jamie didn’t respond. He was unravelling in front of her eyes. The pain and terror of the previous day and night, combined with the physical toll on his body from injury and blood loss, were overwhelming him. That he was still functional at all was testament to his extraordinary strength, but he was at the far reaches of that strength. She hated having to ask him to give more, but without Sid, and without her drug-induced extra sense, Jamie was her only link to the battle of wills going on between John and V’hren.

“Honey, I know you’re exhausted and in pain and it’s not fair of me to ask, but I need you to keep going. I know it’s hard, but I need to know what they’re saying.”

With a moan, Jamie lifted his head and nodded. “My father is telling them why he went to Eldrich in the first place. Better life, food, water. He’s telling them that I didn’t want to come back here. He’s telling them about . . . he met Patrice and my kids?” Jamie looked up at her, shocked.

“After you got grabbed. They hid out at his house while I tried to stop the wizards at the gateway. They’re at my house now. The kids love him and he really helped Patrice keep it together after they took you. He stepped up. I’ll tell you more later, but now I need to know what he’s saying.”

“He says he doesn’t want to be their king either, knows he can’t because he’s not a Fahrayan man anymore. But there’s another . . . Jhoro? My cousin? He’s still alive?”

Meaghan nodded. “Yeah. He helped save my life after a scorpion attacked me. He’s close, watching and waiting for his moment.”

“This would be a good moment,” Jamie murmured.

V’hren glared at Meaghan and Jamie.

Meaghan glared right back. You don’t scare me, she repeated like a mantra. You don’t scare me.

But he scared Jamie, who buried his face in Meaghan’s shoulder and began to sob. V’hren’s face screwed up into that rictus of a smile as Jamie’s terror flowed into him. He’d found a new food source.

Meaghan felt hatred for V’hren flare in her chest. This was a different anger than she’d felt earlier. Before it had been pure, fueled by her desire to protect Jamie. This was darker and revolved around her sudden desire for revenge, to hurt V’hren like he’d hurt Jamie, who now clung to her like a terrified child.

V’hren stood taller, a gleam in his eye.

He enjoyed the taste of hatred too.

Jamie, she thought. She had to focus on protecting Jamie. The anger that surprised and weakened V’hren had come from a place of protection and love, not hate and fear. The thing inhabiting V’hren had mentioned how much it enjoyed the original V’hren’s bitterness and cruelty, and John’s shame. And now her hate.

If negative emotions fueled him . . . In a sudden flash of understanding, she let all the pent-up maternal desire, all the longing she’d stuffed so deep inside her since she’d lost her chance to be a mother, rush over the young man weeping in her arms. A fierce love for Jamie swept through her and she rocked him like a baby.

“Shh. I won’t let him hurt you anymore.” Now she was weeping too, overcome by the feeling rushing through her. She looked up at V’hren and saw the shock on his face.

Meaghan thought about the suffering the thing controlling V’hren continued to inflict on what remained of the actual man. V’hren, who felt abandoned and passed over, who had only wanted what he thought belonged to him, who had enforced against John’s family what John conceded was valid law. V’hren, who even now writhed in torment deep within this creature who wore his skin. V’hren, who, even in the depth of his bitterness and despair, with a monster whispering in his ear, had spared the woman he once loved not from death but at least from the more hideous aspects of the fate to which her husband’s actions had consigned her.

Meaghan knew firsthand how loss could twist a person. In her case, she’d closed herself off from human contact and spent ten long lonely years refusing even to feel her pain, growing colder and harder with each day. She could have chosen to channel her longing into another course, she could have given that love to a child who needed it, she could have given it to friends, to family. Instead she grasped her hurt close like a bitter treasure to be protected at all costs, the highest cost being her loss of a functioning heart.

She felt a flicker of compassion for V’hren. What he’d done had been monstrous, but he had paid for it, continued to pay in unimaginable torment as a prisoner inside his own body. He had done terrible things, not because it amused him, like the creature now controlling him, but out of fear and pain and loss, manipulated by a monster. And he’d been denied any chance at all to atone for what he’d done. Maybe if this thing hadn’t been whispering in V’hren’s ear, darkening his thoughts, maybe none of this would have happened.

Meaghan looked V’hren in the eye and let the compassion grow into a warm flame.

V’hren shrieked with rage.

“Don’t hate him,” she shouted to John. “It makes him stronger.”

“I don’t hate him,” John answered. “I pity him, at least what is left of him. He was not always bad. Not as a boy. And this
thing
, that wears him.” He gestured dismissively at V’hren. “Hating it is like hating a disease. It can’t help what it is.”

V’hren whirled on John, desperate now. “I can give them back to you,” he said in English. “I can give you back your wings and make you a man again. All you have to do is ask. I have the magic to do it.”

John wavered. “My wings?” His eyes narrowed. “What is . . . how do you say . . . the catch?”

“Give me your son. His life for your wings. Let me finish the ritual. They won’t even have to know you agreed to it. You can be king again.”

Meaghan felt Jamie stiffen in her arms.

John said nothing, staring at V’hren, his expression unreadable.

Jamie moaned in fear.

Meaghan held him close. “Don’t you dare even think it,” she said. “He’d never do that to you. He loves you. You’re worth a lot more to him than wings.” She hated herself for it, but she felt a tiny trickle of doubt as John’s silence continued. He wouldn’t, she thought, feeling sick. He couldn’t, could he?

Finally, John shook his head, a sad smile on his face. “That’s not worth even an answer. How can you ask me such a thing? What father would do this to his son? I would not give him to you even to save my own life. If I let you have him, I will have no life even if I still live.” He snorted. “Wings. You’re a fool. Like my brother. There is more to being a man than wings. Better a wingless freak than the twisted thing you would make me. A thing like you.”

John now gazed on Meaghan and Jamie, huddled together. “I think, brother, I understand you now. I came here to offer my life for my boy to go free. And you laughed at me, made the people laugh at me, and you crawled inside my mind, burying me in my shame. And I let you do this to me, because I thought it was what I deserved. But now I know why you wouldn’t kill me in his place. You can’t let me give myself to die for him because it’s a good death. It has honor. It gives you no way into me, no way to take me like you did my brother. But, if you can get me to trade my son, let you hurt him more and kill him, for my wings? This act is so evil it would let you enter me and have a way into the human world. I think this is your plan. To use Fahraya to get to the human world.”