StrategicSurrender (15 page)

“Not. Throwing. Up,” he panted, though the effort of
speaking clearly was making him ill. Hayden’s face was an unnatural gray,
soaked in sweat and Kiera made a snap decision right there and then.

Assisting Hayden to limp painfully back out onto the street,
Kiera looked up and down and silently apologized to the owners of the truck she
found parked on the road. With her elbow she broke the driver’s side window,
reached her hand in to unlock the door, opened it and all but poured Hayden
inside and over to the passenger seat.

Some of his color returned as he sat and caught his breath,
though his face was still scarily white and sweating profusely. His shirt had
been soaked a dark red from his blood. Kiera lifted Hayden’s hand and pressed
it against the wound in his shoulder.

“You press that as hard as you can,” she insisted firmly.
“The bleeding has slowed, but if it hasn’t stopped in a minute or two we are
going to the hospital and that is the end of it.”

Hayden grunted, speech still beyond him as Kiera looked
behind the visor and found the keys in the unused ashtray along with a few
dollars in change.

Climbing up, she pulled Hayden’s seat belt on, clicked her
own on, started the truck and pulled away a little faster than she had planned
but determinedly sticking to the speed limit. Hayden had one eye cracked open
and weakly he pointed out with a few grunts the directions she needed to get
them both to his cabin.

Earlier he had said it was only ten minutes away, and Kiera
prayed he was right. Healing magic was not her forte and she certainly had
never removed a bullet before, but she was all Hayden currently had and damned
if she would sit idly by and let her lover bleed to death, from sheer stubborn
will.

Only now that the worst of the danger had passed did the
true overwhelming nature of her fear shudder through her and for a moment Kiera
feared she would be ill. Driving helped keep her from melting into a puddle of
tears, however, and she quickly pulled herself together.

Hayden needed her, would certainly bleed out if she didn’t
keep herself in order and get her ass into gear. She could fall apart later in
a long hot shower once Hayden was patched up and healed.

Kiera sucked in a deep breath and focused on the road as her
lover gave her silent directions to his cabin.

Kiera came to a halt out front of a small log cabin after
what felt like driving forever. A brief glance at the dashboard clock proved it
had, indeed, only been fifteen minutes since she had stolen the truck and
considering Hayden passed in and out of consciousness and she had gotten lost
twice, Kiera believed they had made remarkably good time.

The second time she had become disorientated—she refused to
admit to being lost, she had known where they were, sort of—Kiera had checked
Hayden’s gunshot. It still seeped lightly, but the worst of the flow had
stopped and he no longer appeared in immediate danger. As she had searched for
the cabin along their road she had debated within herself whether she should
heal him out here in the car or risk taking him inside.

Hayden groaned, clearly uncomfortable and in pain. Kiera had
already decided to risk getting him into the cabin and in bed before healing
him, but this just solidified her decision.

“Okay, my love,” she started nervously, “I really need your
help here. I am many things, independent, smart and a brilliant Strategist, but
I am not all-powerful. I can’t carry you alone and I think it would be best if
you were relaxed and in your own bed before I get that bullet out and patch you
up. So this is going to hurt us both, but we need to get you inside.”

“Are you trying to convince me or yourself?” Hayden joked
weakly, his face still covered in sweat though he at least appeared to have
recovered his breath during the drive.

“I think I’m trying to convince both of us,” Kiera admitted.

“The spare key is under a loose tile on the windowsill,”
Hayden informed her. “It’s the third or fourth along.”

“Okay, I’m going to open the door so we don’t have to juggle
the keys and keep you upright. Don’t pass out on me again or else you’ll be
stuck in the car while I fix you up. I’ll only be a moment,” Kiera promised.

“I ain’t going nowhere,” Hayden reassured her as he pressed
down with a wince on his wound, apparently not pleased with the damage as he
assessed it.

Kiera ran from the car, found the loose tile and opened the
screen and wooden doors, using two thick tomes of magic she found on the
entryway table to hold both doors open. Quickly she ran back to the car and
gently eased the door open on the passenger side.

Hayden looked at her, his face damp and drawn and slightly gray.
His dark eyes seemed slightly glazed though he was obviously conscious and with
his stubble and scruffy black hair he looked a sight.

“You realize you’d scare small children if you were able to
walk down the street right now,” Kiera said half teasingly, her nerves and
overwhelming worry for her lover causing her to prod him verbally.

“It’s one of the things I do best,” Hayden joked back with
only a slight wheeze. “Surely you’ve heard that about us Special Operatives? We
kick puppies, steal kids’ candy, destroy holidays and gatecrash all the good parties.”

Kiera laughed as she bore the brunt of Hayden’s weight to
help get him to his feet. They both wobbled slightly, Hayden leaning heavily on
her as he tried to get his balance. Slowly they both walked the short distance
to the cabin, Kiera kicking the tomes flat so the doors would slam shut behind
them.

“Down here, last door on the left,” Hayden panted, his back
and neck sweating from the exertion once again.

“Almost there,” Kiera replied encouragingly. “Just think,
you can be my first ever patch-up job. Isn’t that going to be fun?”

Hayden cast her a brief, inscrutable look.

“You’ve never done a healing ritual?” he asked, his tone of
voice incredulous.

“Well,” Kiera hedged, “I’ve done a number of classes and
castings for practice. I have the basic field course of closing wounds,
cleansing and removing embedded objects. But if you want to be technical and
are asking if I have ever actually performed the ritual on a real, live person,
then no. I haven’t. Though it appears I have my chance to try it all out right
now, doesn’t it?”

“Circe protect me,” Hayden muttered and grunted as he half
collapsed, half lowered himself onto his bed.

“If you’re going to be picky about it you can always pull
that bullet out yourself, or I can get some tweezers,” Kiera replied, more
scared than truly indignant. Arguing, however, made her feel stronger and
better about it all. Hayden chuckled and shook his head, waving to an adjoining
bathroom.

“You should find everything in there,” he replied.

Kiera left him trying to pull off his shoes with thick,
fumbling fingers and hurried into the bathroom. She first poured Hayden a glass
of water and set it on the edge of the sink and then rummaged around through
toiletries and other assorted bits and pieces until she found a small kit.

Taking the whole thing, she picked up the glass and returned
to her lover, handing him the water, which he gratefully accepted and drank. As
he did this she quickly opened the kit and sorted through the items within.
Removing bandages, a large thick pad to help put pressure on the wound when she
was done as well as a few crystals, some ionized salt and a couple of packaged
herbs, Kiera assembled everything in front of her as if she were in class.

Her stomach tied in knots and she tried to push aside the
feeling of being sick. Removing scissors, she helped ease Hayden out of his
battered leather jacket and quickly cut his shirt away from his chest.

“I loved this shirt,” he complained. Kiera snorted.

“With a bullet hole and literally soaked in blood I don’t
think it likes you any longer. It’s well and truly destroyed,” she insisted.
Hayden grumbled but it seemed more for show than genuine complaint.

When Kiera had removed the material and laid bare her
lover’s chest she had no more reason to defer from staring at his wound. Her
stomach rolled queasily at the blood, ruined skin and tissue and the smell.

“Ugh,” she let slip before getting a hold on herself again.
Kiera pressed her lips together determinedly and averted her eyes as she once
again fiddled with the healing items. Breathing as shallowly as possible and
reminding herself she needed to work fast and do it right now, Kiera tried to
pull herself together.

Hayden laid a hand on her arm gently and she met his eyes.

“Are you all right?” he asked gently. Kiera trembled and
finally picked up a gauze pad, wet it in the salt water solution and dabbed it
around the gun wound as gently as possible. She had to clean the exterior of
the wound before drawing the metal of the bullet out and closing the wound.
Healing him without sanitizing the area would simply cause an infection as
dangerous as the injury itself.

“I think I’m going to be sick,” she finally admitted as she
tossed aside the soiled gauze and prepared herself to remove the bullet.

“I really can try to do this myself,” Hayden insisted but
Kiera shook her head firmly.

“No, I know enough to understand self-treatment is a last
option,” she informed him. “You might be my first patient and I might be most
vilely unwell later when this is done, and I probably will have a good cry in
the shower too when this all actually hits me and the adrenaline fades, but I’m
not a wimp and I refuse to let you down and suffer for my weak stomach. I can
do this, Hayden. I promise.”

“I love you, sweetheart,” Hayden said weakly as the last of
his energy drained out of him. Kiera met her lover’s eyes and held his gaze for
an all-too-brief, silent moment. Hayden’s lashes fluttered as he struggled to
hold on to his consciousness. Thinking that maybe his not being aware while she
did this might be for the best, Kiera bent forward and kissed his lips softly.

“I love you too, Hayden,” she whispered, her soft dark curls
brushing Hayden’s face as she leaned over him.

“I’ll take care of you, get some rest,” Kiera finished
firmly. As if he only had needed her permission to do so, Hayden’s eyes fell
shut and he passed out once more.

Determined to get this over with quickly, both for Hayden’s
sake as well as her own, Kiera grit her teeth, focused her attention inside
herself and gathered her magic. Chanting slightly and getting into the groove
as the healer had instructed in the class, Kiera began the casting to draw out
the foreign metal from inside Hayden’s shoulder.

She crushed the ionized sea salt in her left hand as she
focused the casting’s magical energy in her right hand and held it over the
raw, still slightly seeping wound. Her hand grew uncomfortably warm, but having
been warned of this in her class Kiera pushed the pain from her mind and
focused only on the ritual itself.

Her chanting grew louder as she could feel the energy seep
into Hayden’s skin and join with his own innate essence. The casting was a
simple but generally effective one, it resonated with the patient and almost
sifted through their body and repelled anything not native to the Mage. Foreign
objects, like shrapnel, bullets, splinters or other unnatural objects were
dispelled from the body.

This ritual was perfect for small objects that had been
lodged in the body. It was painful when they were expelled, often tearing skin
or tissue on their ejection, but overall it was far easier to perform for a
novice, like Kiera, rather than trying to remove the bullet with a scalpel or
other tool.

After a moment or two even though she could feel her magic
permeating her lover she worried it wasn’t doing anything. When Hayden’s injury
once more began to seep a bright red bloody trickle Kiera almost stopped again
until she realized his flesh was bulging slightly upward, the bullet coming
out.

Pushing a bit more magic out of her hands, she once again
began to crush the salt around the outer edges of the wound, wincing slightly
as she knew the salt would hurt Hayden but needing to be certain it would also
sterilize the affected area. Kiera’s voice wobbled as she continued the chant,
speaking louder and louder as her stomach churned uneasily and the flesh around
Hayden’s shoulder seemed to almost lift out as the bullet slowly expelled
itself.

Tears leaked from her eyes and only the knowledge that if
she stopped now the metal would sink back down into Hayden’s shoulder and need
to be properly removed kept her going. With a meaty, sickening ripping sound
the bullet came out of the hole already torn in his shoulder. In a swift motion
she turned and dropped it with a clatter onto the bedside table.

Sobbing a little, breathing hard and with tears running down
her cheeks, Kiera quickly grabbed the gauze pad and after sprinkling the
crushed, purified salt onto Hayden’s wound pressed down to stop the fresh flow
of blood.

“I am so sorry, Hayden,” she pleaded with him. “I know this
will sting, and I know your shoulder will ache terribly. I did my best, I
swear. Circe but I am going to be sick. Let’s not ever do this again, okay? I
don’t think my heart or stomach could possibly bear it. Gods but that was just
awful
.”

Muttering more to herself than her unconscious lover, Kiera
pressed down hard to stop the flow and breathed as deeply as she could without
gagging at the smell of blood on the air. Every few minutes she lifted the
gauze pad slightly, checked the wound and changed to a fresh compression when
the blood soaked the old one. After going through three pads it came back with
only a small stain on it and the injury appeared to mostly have stopped
seeping.

Kiera climbed tenderly from the bed, crossed over to open
the window, breathed deeply of the fresh air and gather her courage for the
next step. Closing the wound would take energy from her, essence she was more
than prepared to give, but she needed to find a serene, peaceful place inside
herself to calm down or she would not be much help to her lover.

“You’re not going to be taking nursing classes any time
soon, are you, love?” Hayden croaked in obvious pain.

Kiera whirled around and hurried back to the bed, sitting on
the edge and taking Hayden’s hand in hers.

“Not a chance,” she replied with a small smile, though
inside she felt drained, stressed and more than a bit frazzled. “You’re lucky I
haven’t puked into your toilet and made a huge mess. I know you must be aching
something fierce, but this isn’t exactly all sunshine and lollipops on my end
either.”

“Actually it doesn’t feel too bad,” Hayden said in what she
thought was a very brave manner. He winced as he tried to rotate his shoulder
around and check it, but Hayden did give her a wicked grin.

“The salt stings,” he continued honestly. “But I can tell
you’ve removed the bullet. Are you up for closing it or do you want me to try?”

“No, I can do it,” Kiera assured him. “I was just trying to
calm down a bit before I did it.”

“It takes a lot of energy,” Hayden warned her gently. Kiera
smiled and nodded before kicking off her shoes and sitting cross-legged on the
bed.

“I know,” she replied. “But I still think it would be
smarter for me to do it and not you. Just don’t move, I want to close my eyes to
help focus.”

Kiera tore some of the herbs she had gathered from the
healing kit in Hayden’s bathroom and crushed them onto a small saucer. Lighting
a match, she set them on fire, blew lightly on them until they were smoldering
and releasing a pleasant, healing scent and then she once again placed both her
hands directly over Hayden’s shoulder, closed her eyes and focused her energy.

It took her a minute of shutting out her concerns, worries,
fears and all the other distractions, but as they all fell away Kiera could
draw on her energy and as her hands grew warmer and tingled she knew she had
found the right focus. Drawing in a deep breath, Kiera slowly let the casting
occur. Energy sang out of her hand and she willed her essence to enter Hayden
and heal him from the inside out.

Flesh knitted together, muscles, veins and nerves were
repaired with a healing heat of energy and magic. Kiera could feel her body
shake, sweat as an immense amount of energy was expended, but she forced this
knowledge to the back of her mind as well.