Mindhealer

  None of the Watchers had made any noises about taking his knives. In fact, Oliver had clapped him on the shoulder and said good work, which was as much of a compliment as a Watcher could hope for. Drake, his scorpion tattoo writhing visibly through a hole torn in the shoulder of his blood-soaked coat, had nodded, dark eyes alight. Merrick’s scars still burned with shame, fiery stripes down his face and chest.

  The Samhain celebration would be tinged with sadness this year. Four witches had died in the attack, and two Watchers. The shock of an attack that could pierce a safehouse’s walls was still reverberating. The High Council was sending reinforcements and investigators. Merrick had missed and would continue to miss most of the investigating. His responsibility was the witch who sat staring and chewing her fingernails, refusing to leave the Council witch’s bedside. In the busy slew of activity, nobody had approached him to strip him of his knives yet.

  He was grateful for that. It gave him time to think. Of course, he wished it was over. The silence gave him . . . too much time to think.

  The Crusade Master was alive, tended by Lightbringers and under heavy guard. So was Brennan, the one Caro said was innocent, or at least hadn’t willingly become a parasite-driven killing machine. He couldn’t speak yet to defend himself, but a Lightbringer’s word was almost as good. Then again, Caro wouldn’t lie, but she might interpret the evidence in the best possible light for the wounded man. Time would tell.

  I’ve had about enough of this. She needed sleep and food, and perhaps a crying fit. This numb, silent grieving was not healthy.

  Merrick moved forward. He closed his hand over her delicate shoulder. “Time to get some rest, love.” He had to work for the right tone, soft but inflexible, one equal to another. If this didn’t work he was going to pick her up and drag her.

  Caro shook her head slowly, as if trying to dislodge a particularly ugly thought. His heart ached for her. No witch should have to see what she’d seen.

  “Did you get hold of Mari?” She gathered herself up out of the chair slowly. Like an old woman.

  “Not yet,” Trev said. “Her home phone just rings and her cell puts me over to voicemail. I left a message on her cell and another one at the Rowangrove. Emmie at the safehouse is supposed to give me a call when she hears something.”

  Trev sighed. “There’s been a lot of activity there, too. The last Emmie heard, the Guardians swear the borders haven’t been breached, but there have been attempts that look like the Crusade. They’re probably holed up somewhere safe, working. You know how Dante and Hanson are, they like everything played close to the vest.” He scrubbed at his eyes with his palms, skinny dark-haired boy in a red sweater and a leather cuff closed around his right wrist. His aura was just as thin and drawn as his sister’s. “The tech witches are still working. They just sent out a request for a new kind of hardware and more coffee. Looks like the Crusade’s gotten better firewalls since last time.”

  Caro’s shoulders slumped as she looked down at Fran. “Dominion.” Her tone was dull. “What do we know about them?”

  “Nothing yet.” Trev looked relieved. At least Caro was talking, that was a step up. And it was apparent she’d been listening to the snippets of information being thrown from mouth to mouth. “Tech witches working on it.”

  “The Watchers?”

  Trev glanced at Merrick, whose hand had fallen back down to his side. Caro barely reached his shoulder. It was amazing, once again, to see how small she was. “Nothing yet, they’re squeezing all their contacts for information. But it’s slow.”

  She nodded, her tangled hair moving, pleading for his fingers to straighten it. Or at least, touch. Offer some comfort, anything. The suffering printed on her face was enough to make him want to find where they were keeping the two Crusaders and kill them both. Slowly. Then start tracking the one that had gone out the window, the one that had almost shot her. “All right. Come wake me up if anything happens, okay?”

  Trev nodded, didn’t dare give Merrick a grateful look until Caro had turned away, her head down, starting for the end of the bed where the Council witch was drawing her smooth breaths, no longer tortured. The damage wasn’t as bad as Merrick had feared, and with healers visiting every hour and pouring Power, antibiotics, and pain meds into her, the witch would probably pull through and be little the worse for wear. If you had to be attacked and beaten, inside a safehouse was hardly the worst place.

  Still, this is a safehouse. They should have never gotten inside. We should have done something, seen something, stopped it somehow. The voice of responsibility spoke up insistently. It hadn’t gone away for hours. Caro should never have seen this, should have never been in danger. I should have done something more, known something.

  The waiting was killing him, too. Each moment he expected to turn around and see a pair of Watchers, solemn-faced, and hear the words, We’re here to take your knives, Merrick. Don’t make a scene. Don’t embarrass yourself.

  Caro stopped. She sighed, her shoulders slumping even further. “Trevor? Thank you. I . . . thank you.”

  Her brother nodded, his hair sticking wildly up in every direction, his small gold earring winking in the clear light. His aura scraped against Merrick’s freshly healed wounds, Caro’s glow providing comfort he didn’t deserve. When would she remember his disobedience? Would her stubbornness flare up again?

  She threaded through the infirmary, head down, wanting to be ignored. He followed, steps silent after hers. Out into the hall, up the stairs, and in the stairwell’s dimness, she stopped, rubbing at her temples. Merrick eased closer to her, as close as he could, hoping his silent bulk wouldn’t be a reminder of all the hideousness she had been forced to endure.

  When she turned back, standing on the step above him, and looked up, all he could think was, Here it comes. Brace yourself.

  Caroline studied him, thoughts he could almost decipher moving behind her dark blue eyes. The high arches of her cheekbones, the soft, lush print of her mouth, the bruise-dark circles under her beautiful, beautiful eyes, the pulse in her fragile throat—it was a continual surprise to see, again, just how lovely she was. It wasn’t just the flawlessness of her skin or the architecture of her bones; it was the light shining out from her core. The light, and the indomitable will you could see in the lift of her chin, the flash of her eyes.

  Finally, she spoke. “Merrick.”

  As if reminding herself of something. Who he was? What he was? What she intended to do with him?

  He simply watched her. His scars were alive with pain, almost seeming to writhe on his skin. Burrowing deeper. Just let me look at you. Please, just let me stay near you.

  She took a deep breath, gathering her courage. Merrick, I’ll take your knives now. Don’t let me see you again.

  “Thank you.” Her voice broke. “For—for everything. I should have stayed where you told me to. I was stupid, I was careless and thoughtless, and I could have gotten you killed. Or both of us killed. I’m so sorry.”

  Huh? If she had informed him that the moon was made of green cheese and she intended to go up in a cracker-filled rocket and have a slice, he might have been less surprised. As it was, he stared at her, truly speechless for once instead of simply refraining from opening his big mouth.

  She didn’t seem to care, because she went on, the words spilling helplessly out. “Trev was right, damn him. Vince would have been very disappointed in the way I’ve behaved. I just . . . I don’t want anyone else to get hurt. But I could have killed us both, I wasn’t even watching where I was going and I could have run right into that ward and Fran would be dead now, too, because you would have been busy trying to take care of me.” Her sweet, husky, tired voice bounced off the wooden stairs with their strips of sandpapery anti-slip and the smooth white-painted walls. Claustrophobia was probably affecting her right now, but she spoke even faster. “I’ve been an idiot, and a royal pain, and I’m sorry. I just hope—I mean, I don’t want you to feel . . . obligated.”

  Obliga
ted? What the bloody blue hell? “Obligated?” I sound like I’m choking. Again. What is it about this woman that reduces me to slack-jawed dimwittedness?

  She shrugged, color rising in her pale cheeks. “You really don’t have any control,” she said quietly, her voice a sweet purr in the echoing well of the stairs. He should get her moving, up to the third floor and then through the halls to the room they’d moved her to—down the hall from the blue room with the Cezanne that had been broken into twice. Caro hadn’t protested, just nodded wearily when Trev told her they were moving her luggage. That had filled Merrick with an uneasy wariness. “What you feel when I touch you, I mean,” she continued. “You can’t be sure if it’s me, or if it’s just the fact that I don’t make you . . . hurt.”

  He had to work it around silently inside his head for a few moments before comprehension struck. Women and their convoluted brains, I will never understand females. I will never understand this female in particular. She thinks I just fell into bed with her because it doesn’t hurt me to touch her, is that it? Christ. Well, I’ve been a big dumb idiot in interacting with her anyway; I can see why she’d think I was a brainless pudding when it came to that too. “Ah. Well, Caro—”

  “You don’t have to say anything,” she interrupted, chin high and shoulders drawn back. But her eyes were soft, and just possibly wounded. Hurt. Hiding her fear again. What did she think he was going to do? “I won’t ask you for anything. If you want to, you can go back on patrol. Or we can find some way for you to live a normal—”

  That did it. His long-abused patience snapped. He lunged forward and caught her midsentence, helped by the fact that he was on the stair below her. She went over his shoulder in a trice, and he was up the stairs and into the deserted third-story hall before she collected her wits and began to struggle.

  “Merrick!” She sounded, thank God, furious. Not wounded and broken, but absolutely incensed. He felt a hard delighted smile tilt his lips as she began pounding on his lower back.

  He found the room Trevor and Keenan had moved all her luggage to, opened the door with a quick twist of his wrist and a palm flat against the heavy wood. Everyone was in the infirmary or doing something else. The suites up here were quiet as a mouse. He carried her into the twilit darkness of another room that smelled of disturbed dust and the faint rich smell of fabric softener, beeswax, and vanilla. The light was dying in the gray, rainy sky, another winter storm sweeping in.

  This room was done in spring greens and soft yellow touches, a reproduction of a pre-Raphaelite Sleeping Beauty hung over the fireplace where sunlight would catch it in the early afternoon. Merrick kicked the door shut, locked it, and proceeded across the thick green carpet to dump her on the bed, a queen-size four-poster with a quilt worked in sunflowers. Rain slapped the windows, the storm gathering strength. Thunder rattled in the far-off distance. This city isn’t a good place to live if you like sunlight, he thought, and looked down at his witch, who pushed herself up to sit on the bed and glare at him, all but sparkling with indignation.

  “You drive me to absolute distraction,” he informed her before she could catch her breath. “I have never in my life met a more stubborn, infuriating, absolutely charming female. Are you going to take my knives or not, Caro? I’d counsel you not to, since I plan on protecting you one way or another. But you’re my witch, you do what you like. Just understand this—you are stuck with me. I am not leaving you under any circumstances, and you can rant and rave about it all you like. I’ll listen. I’ll even help you along when you run out of words.”

  He had to take a breath, dried blood crackling on his clothes. He hadn’t had a quiet moment to clean up and repair anything yet. “And don’t worry yourself over whether or not I feel obligated.” His hands had curled into fists to keep from reaching out and cupping her face, holding her still so he could kiss the smooth arch of her forehead or the soft lushness of her mouth. “Obligated isn’t the word.”

  “What’s the word, then?” She tossed it at him like a challenge, and relief bloomed inside his chest.

  “Infuriated,” he supplied immediately. “Awestruck. Bloody out of my mind with fear. And completely, utterly mad for a witch who doesn’t have the sense to let a brick wall win in a contest with her head.”

  There. I can’t get any plainer, can I? Can I, Caro?

  “Oh.” A small, hurt little word. She sagged back against her arms as if too exhausted to hold herself up. She probably was. Thunder bloomed, slid through the sky, and taunted Merrick’s ears. “Well.”

  “You’re my witch,” he said, as softly as he could. Still, the glass in the window rattled, and the floorboards groaned as if something heavy had come to rest on them.

  “He shot you twice.” The same small, hurt little voice, the voice of a child. Her aura sparked, ran with pinwheels of golden light. Merrick slid his coat off his shoulders, watching her face. “Because I didn’t stay where you told me to.”

  He let his coat drop, heard the clinking metal of gear shifting inside it. His hands moved easily, naturally, unbuckling the weapons harness just like he’d done hundreds of times since he’d become a Watcher. But his hands were trembling. “It’s all right. I’m hard to kill, love. You don’t know how hard.”

  “What were you? Before?” She bit her lower lip as he carefully, gently, let the harness settle atop his coat. The slim length of the sword, the knives, the guns, the leather straps. It was the question every witch asked her Watcher sooner or later, and it was never easy to answer.

  “I killed people for a living.” It didn’t get any simpler. “I started out in the army. Rifles, knives, bare hands. Anything to get the job done. Track the target and take them out. Then I went into the private sector after my own government cut me loose. They tried to kill me, thought I knew too much. I kept one step ahead of everyone until the day I accepted a job—kill a woman with a rifle. Fee was enough that I could retire.” He let his hands dangle at his sides. “They didn’t tell me the woman was a witch, and she had a Watcher. He was good, really good. Inhumanly good. Damn near killed me, but she told him to stop. I was just a dogsbody anyway.”

  “Oh.” Comprehension colored her tone. “The Crusade.”

  Might as well tell her, Merrick. Not like you have anything left to lose. “The bloody Crusade. It was one of their attempts to see if a mercenary with a long-range assault rifle could do what Seekers couldn’t. She told the Watcher to let me go. She was so goddamn naïve she didn’t know I was liable if I didn’t finish the job. Nothing left to do but beg to be a Watcher. They wouldn’t take me.”

  “Until?” And, wonder of wonders, she patted the bed next to her. He lowered himself down cautiously, the mattress making slight sounds as it accepted his weight. And then, completing the cycle of impossible events, she leaned against him, resting her head on his shoulder.

  “Until they were sure I was serious.” The words stuck in his throat. “I ran foul of a belrakan while I was trailing a witch. That’s how I got the scars.” They were throbbing and twisting with shameful warmth even now, reacting to her nearness. He wanted to put his arm around her, stroke her hair, pull her back down on the bed and get her out of that skirt. Wanted to comfort her, too.

  “You weren’t a Watcher?” She rubbed her temple against his ripped shirt, against his shoulder. He had to fight down the flare of sugared heat that went through him. Her breathing slowed, evened out. She was sleepy. No wonder.

  “Not then, no. They brought me in, fixed me up, and let me take the training.” He swallowed against the dustiness in his throat. He couldn’t tell her the rest of it. Please, God, don’t make her ask. What do you say? Let me be lucky for once.

  “Are you sorry you did?” At least she didn’t sound numb or frightened. She leaned heavily against him, and he found his arm settling around her naturally, easily, as if it had just fallen into place.

  “Not now.” Isn’t that strange. That’s the truth.

  “Oh.” She yawned. “I’m tired,” she an
nounced, as if he couldn’t tell. “I have to sleep. Don’t go anywhere.”

  “Of course not.”

  “I mean, really. Stay here. With me. Right here. We still have things to talk about.” Her words slowed, almost slurred. He wasn’t surprised; she must be worn out.

  Like what? “Like?” Cautious, the word hung in the air. I thought I was clear enough for even you to understand, you obstinate little witch.

  “Like the exact meaning of the word foreplay,” she said, in a heavy, I’m-almost-asleep voice.

  By the time Merrick had finished wrestling down the desire to laugh like a lunatic, Caro was asleep against his shoulder. He didn’t want to move, but he laid her down and got the covers over her. Then he worked his boots off and settled himself, bloody clothes and all, on top of the quilt. So he wouldn’t be tempted. And he willed himself into the dark mind-resting trance a Watcher could use to repair his mental acuity, listening to her breathe while the tanak continued its patient careful repair of his scarred flesh and broken bones.

  Seventeen

  She woke slowly, in stages, warm and feeling somehow cleansed. More peaceful. She lay on her side, snuggled against something warm and wrapped in blankets, her cheek against something hard and her arm thrown over another something hard. Her nose wrinkled. She smelled smoke and the copper of dried blood, as well as her own unwashed hair. Thunder rumbled, she heard the muted pounding of rain.

  Where am I now?

  Memory returned, and she jolted into full wakefulness, jerking herself upright, her breath coming hard and fast and her heart suddenly pounding.

  Merrick curled up gracefully to sit as well. He was lying on top of the quilt.

  What the hell?

  “Easy, Caro.” His voice was a soothing rumble, deep in his chest. “You’ve only been out a few hours. Nothing’s happened.”