Eilahn shifted her attention to Paul. “Give me your shirt.”
“Wh-what?” He gave her a baffled look, too rattled to understand her intent. She growled low in her throat as she stripped off her own shirt, packed the wound with it and held pressure.
“We need Mzatal,” I said.
Eilahn’s mouth tightened. “Yes, I cannot hold him long.” I didn’t need othersight to see her weave the potency strands for healing but I could tell it was rudimentary compared to a lord’s. “Three minutes,” she added. “Perhaps a minute more.”
Even EMS can’t help him at this point, I thought with grim certainty. I hit Zack’s number on speed dial, then stood and moved a short distance away, far enough to be out of earshot of Paul and the dazed guard.
Thatcher coughed up blood and frantically struggled to breathe. Paul groped for his hand, clung to it. “No—no! You can’t die.”
I turned away from the scene as Zack answered.
“Garner here.”
“Zack, I need Mzatal where I am—Tracy Gordon’s warehouse—as soon as possible,” I said, voice low and urgent. “There’s a man here who might hold some answers to the Mraztur’s plans, and he’s been shot. He’s close to death.”
I expected an I’ll get right on it or something like that. Instead there was only silence on the line. Dread curdled in my gut. While Eilahn’s ability to arcanely travel was drastically compromised on Earth, Zack was demahnk and didn’t have the same limitations. I knew he had the ability to get Mzatal here before Thatcher died. Why hesitate?
“Please,” I said. “I know you can do this. It’s important.” I glanced back at the trio. Eilahn’s face remained clenched in a rictus of concentration. Paul clutched at Thatcher’s hand as if holding him back from the jaws of death.
My dismay rose as Zack remained silent. “If he agrees,” he finally said, voice oddly taut.
If he agrees? My annoyance flared at his hesitation. “If Mzatal doesn’t agree, let me talk to him. This is important!”
“If he doesn’t agree, I’ll call back,” he replied, then disconnected.
I stared at the phone as shock and anger battled it out for precedence in my skull then jammed the phone into my pocket and returned to crouch beside Eilahn. “Zack was hesitant about coming,” I said in a low voice, “but he said he’d bring Mzatal if he agreed.” And if Mzatal didn’t agree, there would be some words between us. Oh, hell yeah.
She gave me a tight nod, then narrowed her eyes and focused on Thatcher. “You must stay here,” Eilahn told him. “Do not go. Stay here.”
“Yes, god, Bryce,” Paul wept openly. “You can’t leave me. Please. I . . . I can’t take it there without you!”
Thatcher’s hand spasmed in his. Blood bubbled in his mouth as his eyes sought Paul’s. The attachment between the two was clear. Though Paul looked to be around twenty, he radiated an innocence that made me think of him as younger. Thatcher might have been Paul’s bodyguard, but there was something deeper as well.
“Please. Please,” Paul continued, voice choked with barely restrained sobs. “I can’t stay there without you. I can’t do it. I’ll die. You’re all I have. You have to live!”
Out of the corner of my eye I saw the guard stagger to his feet, then stumble toward the door. I briefly entertained the notion of chasing him down and securing him, then discarded it. I doubted he was going to run and tell anyone he’d just shot a guy. If charges needed to be pressed later, I could track him down through the security company.
Thatcher’s hand clenched on the kid’s again, then his head lolled to the side. Dead, I thought in dismay, then saw that blood still bubbled at his mouth. No. Not dead. Yet.
A ripple of arcane touched me. I turned to see Zack and Mzatal by the front entrance.
I stood as Mzatal strode toward us. “Boss, he’s in bad shape. Can you save him?”
The lord’s gaze went to the dying man, eyes narrowing at the severity of the injury. “I do not know,” he replied and went to one knee beside Thatcher as he said something in demon to Eilahn. He removed the blood-soaked shirt from the wound and laid his own hands over it, face hardening with intense focus.
Eilahn crouched nearby, naked to the waist, and obviously completely unconcerned by it. Zack remained at a distance, face expressionless and arms folded over his chest. Paul shifted back as Mzatal knelt, then looked up at him and went still, mouth dropping open. I had to control a smile. Yeah, Mzatal had that effect on people.
“I will need your assistance, zharkat,” Mzatal told me, voice tight. “He is very nearly gone.”
I’d never worked with him during a healing before, and I struggled for several precious seconds while I sought the best way to support. The lords didn’t heal with sigils and wards. As far as I could tell from all I’d witnessed, they healed by drawing damaged flesh together with elegant sutures of potency and then “reminding” the body of its proper form in order to restore itself—encouraging the tissues to heal a thousand times faster than naturally.
But no matter the method, it still required potency, and I could at least help collect and prepare the patterned strands.
Mzatal drew from me and through me the instant I touched the pattern. I sucked in a sharp breath while I sought to maintain the balance of the flow of power. Through the support connection I felt his struggle to hold a spark of life in Thatcher’s body. Sweat broke out on Mzatal’s brow, though he remained motionless. The strands burned away as he tapped them, and I was hard pressed to keep up with the drain and help control the integrity of the structure.
Thatcher coughed up a gout of blood and drew a gurgling breath. Paul surged forward to seize his hand again. “Bryce, oh god, come on,” he pleaded, eyes on his friend’s face. “You can do it. Don’t leave.”
With the initial heavy drain past, I balanced the flow to Mzatal to fuel his effort. Like a shadow seen through a sheer curtain, I watched him locate critical bleeding and weave repairs, felt him urge Thatcher’s body to remember its healthy state and form.
Again Thatcher coughed, but this time he followed it with a clearer breath. Through Mzatal, I felt his tenuous connection to life strengthen as the sense of drowning in his own blood decreased. Paul gripped Thatcher’s hand, yet his gaze remained on Mzatal, an almost worshipful expression on his face. He knew Mzatal was doing something miraculous to save his friend.
Thatcher’s face twisted in pain. “God . . . Oh, god,” he rasped, breath noisy, but without the horrible death-rattle gurgle of before. “P-Paul . . . okay?”
Tears spilled down the young man’s face as he gave his friend a tremulous smile. “I’m okay. You saved me.”
Even my cynical ass could appreciate the poignancy of the moment, but I didn’t have much chance to do so as a movement by the back door yanked my attention. At first I thought that perhaps it was emergency services, summoned by the damn security guard. It would be a bit of a pain to deal with cops or EMS right now, but—
I stared, mind in denial for several precious seconds as, impossibly, Katashi’s senior summoner strode into a warehouse on the outskirts of a small town in south Louisiana. Tsuneo, the treacherous asshole who bore a tattoo of Jesral’s mark on his hip, and who had performed a hostile summoning of Gestamar several months back. Beside him loomed another man I recognized from my brief time as Katashi’s student: Tito, not a summoner, more of a thug type with a sensitivity to the arcane.