Promises to Keep

chapter 20


NOW IS PROBABLY not the time to argue, Jay thought, biting back a retort. Maybe the Shantel had sold their sakkri into Midnight, and maybe they hadn’t. Jay didn’t know for sure.

“They sold her to Daryl?”

Idiot! You weren’t going to discuss it—or him!

Brina flinched from her brother’s name but approached the question. “A Shantel witch is too valuable to go to anyone but Jeshickah’s chosen. If we could find the trainer who worked with her, he would know more about her magic. He would have studied it before accepting her.”

He. Brina said he with more distaste and slightly less fear, but she was speaking of the same he Pet was terrified of. “Even if one of them was willing to help us, I’m not sure they could,” Jay replied. “Rikai said Xeke was violent, with an insatiable need to feed, and he’s a good guy. I don’t want to know what—”

“He’s not human?” Brina broke in. “Like me?” Before Jay could respond, she said, “Then the trainers aren’t human. Or Jeshickah. It’s just me?” She had barely been able to manage them when she was a vampire, with Daryl breathing down the neck of anyone who dared offend her, and Kaleo defending her simply because she was his. Now she would have no such protection.

“Lovely world you lived in,” Jay commented, unable to screen out Brina’s anxiety about those whom she’d once called associates, if not friends.

“It was lovely,” she retorted. “There were ugly parts to it, but the same can be said of any civilization, even today.”

“I don’t think enslaving and torturing helpless humans, shapeshifters, and witches compares to anything we have today.”

Many times in his life, Jay had been stared at by someone thinking, Are you really this dense? This might have been the worst, since it was coming from a woman famous for being so oblivious that she starved her slaves when she lost track of time.

“You live comfortably in one of the wealthiest nations in the world,” Brina said, voice clipped. “You live on the bones of your own ancestors, who were eradicated by the expanding white populations. The food you eat, the clothes you wear, and the toys you buy are often made across the oceans by nameless, faceless workers living in conditions you would find intolerable.”

“I try …”

Her glare silenced him.

“For years I was one of the poor, starving on the streets,” she said flatly. “Then I was offered a chance to be immortal, and a lady. If you have never needed to sell your body just to get out of the rain for an hour, do not think to judge me—or my brother—for what we chose.”

But you … and they … and we don’t … No words came. Jay liked to think that no matter how bad things got, he would never turn into the kind of vicious creature Daryl had been. But he couldn’t say for sure that he would have made a choice different from Brina’s, which had been to take the good and ignore the rest.

He said the only honest thing he could think to say. “I am sorry you had to go through such hardship.”

Unfortunately, he knew instantly that Brina had taken his words as more of the same mocking she had often received in her life. She bristled, and snapped, “The Shantel elemental may be justified in killing us all, but I for one intend to put my survival first, regardless. Are we in accord on that point?”

“I don’t agree that she is justified in killing my family,” Jay answered. “But I do agree that we need to stop her. The best idea I have is to talk to a parabiologist here at SingleEarth,” he added, thinking of the video he had seen at Xeke’s apartment. “She talked about elementals fighting back when the serpiente were made. If she’s not sick, she might be able to help us.” Jay quashed a twinge of guilt as he refused Brina’s request to come with him to the library, where a brief search of the archaeology and anthology sections revealed the name of the researcher Jay had recalled. He returned to Brina’s quarantine room as soon as he had tracked down the woman’s phone number, and then he put the conversation on speaker-phone.

They quickly discovered that archaeologist Paula Epsilon was human, and had been sequestered in her office, unaware of any problems at SingleEarth, while she revised her next paper. Jay and Brina huddled around the phone as they both described the events of recent days in halting phrases.

“My god,” Paula whispered for perhaps the hundredth time as Jay wrapped up.

“So, we need advice on handling an elemental,” Jay said. “Do you know anything?”

“My god.” Jay and Brina exchanged a frustrated glance as the human went silent for several seconds. “I mean, I wrote my dissertation on elementals and their influence on history,” Paula said, “so I know plenty, but academic knowledge isn’t going to help you much. You need a sorcerer, at the least, to have any chance of controlling an elemental.”

“Great!” Jay said, latching on to the suggestion. “Do you know any?”

“A few. They tend to be pretty cranky,” Paula said. “What I don’t understand is how this other elemental can possibly be strong enough to even spit at Leona. I mean, when people say humanity discovered fire, they mean we discovered Leona. The Epsilon theory states that Leona is directly responsible for the sudden shift in our evolutionary development, for our starting to use tools and—”

“And yet the Shantel elemental is challenging her,” Jay interrupted, thinking, She named a theory after herself. That’s special.

“The Shantel elemental is an earth elemental,” Paula said, “and your friend said the Shantel protected a certain area of land, right? She is probably still bound to that land. You might find answers there.”

“If we can get a sorcerer to help us, can you find Shantel territory?” Jay asked Brina.

“I think so.” Turning back to the phone, Brina asked, “Do you know why she made me human?” Jay had heard the desperate question in Brina’s mind since the start of the conversation. “Why would she protect me?”

“She didn’t protect you. Humans are mortal,” Paula answered. “Elementals aren’t. A mortal life span is nothing to a creature who will exist as long as time itself. Given the vindictive nature of this particular elemental, I might theorize that she didn’t kill you outright because she wanted you to see what she would do.”

I will give you time, the elemental had said.

Time to watch everyone else die?

Before getting off the phone, Paula gave them contact information for a handful of sorcerers she knew, but it didn’t make a difference; none of them was willing or able to come to the phone. Jay had just hung up from a short and frustrating conversation with some assistant named Cooper, when Jeremy knocked on the door.

“He’s okay,” Jay said to Brina, before he had even finished processing her thoughts to Jeremy, which was intense, to say the least.

“I’m sorry about before,” Jeremy said, “but I didn’t know what kind of danger you could be in, or could put other people in. You don’t seem to have any symptoms, but as a precaution I’ve prescribed you a course of antibiotics. You got the first dose intravenously while you were out. I would like you to stay in isolation at least another day, though.”

“You attacked and drugged me.”

“I wasn’t thinking clearly enough to be tactful,” Jeremy said. “I was scared.” I’m still scared. “How are you feeling?”

“We’re both fine,” Jay said, cutting off another angry reply from Brina. He knew why she was so scared. He had her memories of being under medieval quarantine, locked in a house to die. He also knew Jeremy probably hadn’t had any choice. “How is Caryn?”

“Stable,” Jeremy answered. “What you did helped a lot. How are you feeling?”

It would be an overstatement to say Jay was feeling well, after everything that had happened, but he wasn’t sick. “I … think I may be immune.” The Shantel elemental might have made Brina mortal as punishment, but it had seemed sincere in its offer to protect Jay.

“Then we need you out here,” Jeremy said bluntly. “We’re doing all we can with human medicine, and we’re transferring the more advanced cases to hospitals outside SingleEarth as fast as we can, but we could use a witch.”

“He isn’t available,” Brina barked.

“With all due respect, my lady,” Jeremy said, as his last thread of patience snapped, “some of us have responsibilities beyond catering to you. The kitchen staff is preparing a meal for you, but that’s as much time as we can devote to the apparently healthy right now.”

Jay watched them without comment. What could he say? Jeremy was right. Brina was also right. Jay was one of the only people with a prayer of fixing what he had done … but all he had was a prayer, and a list of sorcerers who refused to come to the phone. Would he be more useful helping the sick?

“We left messages for everyone Paula suggested,” Jay said to Brina. “Maybe someone will call us back. In the meantime, I should try to do some good here.”

“Don’t exhaust yourself, witch,” Brina cautioned him. “You are too valuable to waste.”

“I’m not comfortable with your concept of ‘value,’ ” he replied, his mind on Midnight. He tossed his phone to Brina, who let it fall to the bed. “If any of our sorcerer friends call back, you can come get me. If we don’t hear from anyone in, let’s say an hour, we’ll try something different.”

An hour would be enough time for him to see what, if anything, he could do for the sick. It would also be more than enough time for him to think about every other option they had, which was, let’s see … nothing.

Jay had never been good at intentionally shielding against emotion and other empathic impressions. He had no idea how much he had instinctively screened out, until he walked into the gym-turned-sick-ward and felt the weight of emotion pressing on him. His stomach turned—or was that someone else’s sensation? The air was thick and cloying, rank with chemicals, sweat, and despair. Percussive coughs broke through the constant rattle of pneumonic breathing.

“Jay,” Jeremy asked, “where do you want to start? Does it make more sense to start with the sickest, or to work with those who aren’t as far gone, so they don’t reach that point, and then we can devote more medical resources to the critical cases? You know your power’s limits better than I do.”

My limits … I’m going to be sick.

Jay leaned back against the cold wall, closed his eyes, and drew his knife, seeking the thrum of ancestral magic and the comfort and focus it always brought.

He dropped the knife with a yelp as, instead of providing a peaceful pulse of soothing magic, it spiked him with a shock of raw power, as if he had put his hand in an electric outlet. The blade narrowly missed his foot, but all he could do was stare as the weight of a hundred sick and frightened minds crashed past his defenses.

—going to die here.

Never told her that—

—wonder if he will ever—

Who will take care of them when—

What did I do to deserve this?

“Jay?” What happened to him?

I need to get out of here.

Jay wasn’t sure if that last thought was his or not, but it sounded good. Blindly, he shouldered Jeremy and at least one other solicitous body out of the way as he raced toward the front door. He stumbled out into drifting snow, dry-heaving as his stomach tried to give up what little food he had eaten too long ago.

He lay in the snow, feeling it soak through his clothes as he tried to just be still and—

“Go away!” he shouted at Jeremy when that anxious mind drew near. “I can’t help you.” I can’t help anyone. I’d just screw up even more.

I told you not to go in there, Lynx chastised him from farther off in the woods. Do you need me?

I don’t know what I need.

He wasn’t the only one feeling hopeless. “It is not our responsibility to risk our lives for a fool’s errand,” a voice was saying. “We have the resources to keep our own people safe. We should be focused on that.”

Jay could hear the words but couldn’t feel the mind behind them. That should have told him who was speaking even before Xeke’s voice responded.

“That has always been the big difference between you and me, Rikai,” he said, the exasperation in his voice sufficient to make it clear that they had been arguing for a while. “I’ve never been willing to give up on the entire planet just because they’re not my people. You— Jay? Is that you?”

Well, at least I didn’t actually throw up in front of him, Jay thought. He was about to tell the vampire to go to hell anyway, because he didn’t relish the idea of being miserable in front of him, when he processed what Xeke was saying. He was trying to convince Rikai to help.

Maybe they did still have a snow angel’s chance in hell to fix this thing.