Burden of Solace Read online

  Cassie clamped her hands over the wound, pressing hard to stop the crimson flow. She looked deep, her new ability showing her the depth of the cut. The blade had not only opened the artery, but completely severed it, along with a lot of lesser vessels. There was also a decent sized notch in her jugular vein.

  First things first - The brain will starve without flow from the carotid.

  She summoned her power and pulled the edges of the artery together. Fibers reached across the borders and knitted them together, sealing the artery. Blood flow returned to the brain.

  “What’s wrong with your eyes?” Their attacker’s voice seemed far away. Cassie ignored it.

  She turned her attention to the vein, and it sealed with little thought on her part. It was as if the power didn’t need her conscious direction. It drew on her knowledge and did what was needed without detailed control, like a well-trained staff of magical physicians. She only had to decide that the smaller vessels came next, and they immediately started to regrow and close. The last job was repairing the surrounding area - skin, muscle and connective tissue. Cassie finally removed her hands from Tina’s throat, wiping away blood to reveal unmarred skin as if nothing had ever happened. Her heartbeat was strong. Cassie cast her vision into the nurse’s head, looking for brain damage from the period of oxygen deprivation. There was none. She would be fine.

  “Oh my God! You’re one of those monsters. You’re like a, a Mourn Knight or something!”

  Cassie had all but forgotten about their attacker. As she turned her head toward the woman, she caught a reflection of herself in a glass cabinet door. Her eyes glowed a soft green.

  The woman dropped the scalpel and grabbed up the cop’s gun. She raised the pistol in two fear-palsied hands.

  Cassie’s hands flew up, as if they would shield her from hurtling metal. She felt the anger pouring from the woman, and the fear underneath. She actually felt it, the way you could feel heat radiating from a fire. The crazed woman was like an animal, backed into a corner. The pistol cracked.

  “No!”

  She didn’t think. What happened next came from pure instinct and reaction.

  White-hot light roared from Cassie’s palms, striking her attacker and smashing her into a wall. She slid down, her face burned to a crisp. The gun dropped from nerveless fingers.

  Cassie cried out in pain and shock, but not from any injury. Tears streamed down her face and she shuddered. She had taken a vow - to do no harm - and now she had killed this woman. She was a killer. She didn’t even know what she had done or how. What was happening to her? She hugged herself and sobbed over Tina’s unconscious form.

  She reached out a hand toward the smoking form. She remembered what her hand had done and withdrew it. Then she heard the woman draw a ragged breath, weak and gasping.

  Not dead, she thought. There’s still time. Please let there be time...

  Cassie struggled to her feet and staggered to the burned woman. Her fingers flinched as she reached out to touch her, afraid that she might summon the white fire again. But Cassie closed her eyes and slipped into her new inner senses.

  “I can do this.”

  Cassie heard someone outside the locked door as the green glow flowed from her, moving in waves. Her senses extended into the charred body, examining the burns. The outer dermal layers were practically charcoal and would have to be regrown. She directed her energy into them. First, she cooled the tissues, draining off residual thermal energy. Ruptured cell membranes reformed under her mental touch, and she restored the proper sodium/potassium balance so the tissue could properly rehydrate. All this and more happened in the blink of an eye, and she found she didn’t really have to consciously perform all of these myriad acts; they simply happened, flowing from her subconscious. She let it happen.

  Finally, it was done, and Cassie opened her eyes, returning to the outer world. The woman was still unconscious, but she breathed steadily, and her heartbeat was strong. There was no trace of her burns.

  CHAPTER 14

  Cassie huddled in a hard plastic chair, pulling close the blanket someone had draped over her shoulders. She felt small and alone. There was a cup of coffee in her hands, but no memory of how it got there. All around her, police and other responders moved in purposeful ways in and out of the ER. Somehow, a lone, hushed voice reached her ears.

  “Of course, Little Miss Legacy comes out without a scratch”

  Overhearing the snark was bad enough. Now Cassie could actually feel the resentment behind the words, and it cut even deeper.

  It turned out that during the course of healing her, Cassie must have flushed whatever drug or chemical imbalance caused the woman’s descent into madness out of her system. No one questioned the rapid recovery - just another whacked out druggie that had snapped out of it. The police had wanted to take her into custody, but Cassie insisted she be held for observation, under doubled guard. She could tell Zacharias wanted to overrule her, but she was the woman’s physician of record, so the decision was Cassie’s.

  There were more questions about the blood covering Tina and Cassie, but Cassie had managed to cover Tina's neck with a bandage before the SWAT team burst into the room. She had explained it was only a minor cut, one of those surface wounds that bled much worse than one would expect. None of the staff questioned her insistence on treating Tina herself, so the story went unchallenged. Most people tended to accept whatever explanation was offered as long as it didn't cause problems.

  Unfortunately, Guardian 175 wasn't most people.

  The exo had arrived hot on the heels of the SWAT team, rushing into the room broadcasting deep anxiety to her senses. After assuring himself that everyone was okay and the threat was contained, he had spent an unusual amount of time looking around. It was said that his helmet contained an array of sensors and scanners, and Cassie could only imagine what kind of trace evidence she had left behind in her haste. After the dust had settled and the ER returned to normal, he had come to talk with her.

  "I'm glad you're okay."

  His simple statement was underscored by the deep concern she could sense in him. He genuinely cared about her welfare. Caring for others was probably part of what made him one of the good guys, someone who used his great power to protect others instead of becoming a criminal. But under that concern she detected an edge of suspicion.

  "Lot of blood in there. Hard to believe no one was badly hurt."

  "That happens a lot. Hands, feet, head - they have a lot of capillaries. Minor cuts bleed like crazy, but they aren't serious once you do a little compression and bandage them up. I doubt Tina will even have a scar after it's had a chance to heal.”

  She could feel his eyes locked onto hers as the mirrored visor reflected her face. Her teeth nipped at her lower lip, convinced that he could sense her lie. She could definitely feel his suspicion growing deeper.

  “I see.”

  She tried not to squirm. Before today, she wouldn’t have felt the need to hide her new abilities, at least not from him. This new, destructive side of her had changed all that. She weighed the good she could do against the damage she could cause. What if she couldn’t control it? No, she needed time to think.

  “By the way, we’re still looking for whoever engineered the murder of Marissa’s father. That Frenchman turned out to be a dead end. He claims he’s not an exohuman. Even if he is, we can’t hold a foreign national without cause. If he were a citizen, he’d be in deep trouble. The penalties for US exohumans failing to register have gotten pretty severe in recent years. The consequences for someone like me for failing to report a suspected new exo are pretty bad too.”

  She felt his concern rising in him, not for himself, but for her.

  “Fucking harsh. How do you live with all those restrictions?”

  “Whether or not I agree with the laws that govern us, I understand why they exist. There’ve been a lot of bad exos in the past – Hitler, Rasputin, that Hauptmann Krieger guy who killed The Raven in WWI… And even
if they aren’t evil, sheer inexperience can make new exos a danger to themselves. And others.”

  He held her eyes for a moment before standing and walking away without another word.

  Cassie wanted to chase after him, to tell him the truth - that she was like him now. But she knew that she wasn’t. In that room, she couldn’t bring herself to take Tina’s place, something Nate Gorman would probably have done even without his invulnerability. He was a hero. She was just a woman with powers.

  She watched him walk down the hallway. Martin Ballantine had to dodge around the Guardian as he rushed to her side, only a quick, disdainful cut of his eyes betraying his dislike for the exohuman.

  “Are you alright? I was upstairs in a meeting when I heard.”

  She could sense his concern. It was tangibly different from the worry she felt from Nate. Martin’s was less complex; his feelings weren’t as entangled in other emotions. She wondered if his feelings might change if he knew she shared the very thing he despised in the Guardian.

  “Is… Is that blood?” Oddly, his eyes didn’t convey shock or dismay.

  “I’m fine,” she said. “We get this kind of thing sometimes. It’s just part of the job.”

  Martin gave her an odd look. She was hard pressed to say what it meant.

  “I hope you won’t think this an inopportune time, but, well…”

  Martin sat close beside her, pressing near where Nate had kept his distance. She couldn’t help contrasting these two men and the way they affected her. One made her ashamed and unsure - demanding a decision from her that she wasn’t ready to make. The other…

  “I was hoping you would join me for dinner. Tomorrow, at my place?”

  The other let her pretend that she was normal. It was only a momentary respite from her problems, but right now she was willing to take what she could get. She knew she had a decision to make, but there were far too many questions that needed answering first. She didn’t fully trust Nate not to turn her in if she confided in him, and he was the only exohuman – the only other exohuman, she corrected herself – that she knew. Or was he?

  CHAPTER 15

  Dropping Martin Ballantine’s name, along with the implication that she was meeting him there, gained Cassie access to the Persephone Lounge well before show time. The blonde waitress recognized her and flashed a wry smile when Cassie asked if it would be possible for her to meet the mysterious Monsieur Leclair.

  “Privately. In his dressing room, if possible.”

  “Honey, I know exactly what you’re thinking,” the blonde laughed. “There has been a steady parade of ladies through here since his act opened, all hoping to catch that boy’s eye. All I can say is, ‘good luck’ because every one so far, myself included, have struck out. But, who knows? Maybe he has a thing for redheads?”

  Cassie had thought quite a bit about The Warlock since that bizarre evening, but it was Nate’s reference to unregistered exohumans that had brought him to the forefront of her mind.

  She had questions about what she was, and what she should do now. The obvious thing, what Nate had been alluding to, was for her to register as a Newly-Emerged Exo. Since the early twentieth century, the US government had required registration - ‘for the common good.’ That fact hadn’t bothered her much, at least it hadn’t seemed important to her before now. Sure, she’d heard the Free-Exo activists railing against the inherent unfairness of the laws. She’d also heard the anti-exo extremists, the so-called Army of Man, who wanted to round up all exos and herd them into confinement camps. But she didn’t speak out, because she wasn’t an exo, so it didn’t concern her. Never before had she felt the shame behind Martin Niemöller’s words about the persecutions of Jews and socialists under the boot-heel of Nazi Germany.

  Then they came for me – and there was no one left to speak for me.

  She wanted to talk about it, this new thing she had become. More than anything, she wanted to talk with the Guardian. No, what she wanted was to talk with the man inside the helmet - Nate. But his tacit warning told her that he was a guy who followed the rules. He enforced the law. The thought of admitting to him that she didn’t want what he had embraced - a life of service - was more than she could bear. Even shielded from his eyes by that reflective visor, she would feel his disappointment in her - the shattering of whatever image he might have of her as a good person. She couldn’t face that.

  So, she came here, to speak her dark truths to a virtual stranger. If her suspicions were right, this stranger might be one of those exohumans who lived outside the strict confines of their society. He might offer solutions that the law-abiding Guardian couldn’t - or wouldn’t.

  She was led backstage, or what passed for a backstage area in such a small club. The waitress knocked softly on a black-painted door before leaving Cassie alone. The Frenchman opened it, not yet dressed to take the stage, still in ordinary blue jeans and a black muscle tee, the kind sometimes called a “wife-beater.” Somehow it looked more sexy than crude on him. He greeted her warmly, waving her into his dressing room, which was actually quite spacious in comparison to the rest of the club.

  “Bonsoir, Docteur Whelan. What a delightful surprise. What brings you here tonight, to my final performance?”

  “I should think you would know that without asking, monsieur.”

  The Warlock smiled, grabbing up a pile of clothes to free up a chair for her. He tossed them in the general direction of a large open trunk.

  “Ah, this is a common misconception about what I do. I am not, how do you say, omniscient. I do not read minds uninvited, at least not without good cause. That would be dishonorable, you see.”

  Cassie took the proffered seat, willing herself to stop nipping at her lower lip. “But you read me and the others as part of your act.”

  He spread his hands, seesawing back and forth, a gesture that suggested balance.

  “You were all there for a show, to see my performance. The permission was implicit in your presence.”

  She was willing to concede the point. One didn’t go to a Halloween haunted house and then complain about being frightened.

  “Performance? Is that all it is? A show trick? Or is it something else?”

  He sat down facing her, elbows on knees as he leaned close to her. His shirt gapped open, offering her an ample view of his smooth, muscled chest. The scent of leather, cardamom and chocolate crept into her awareness. It was one thing to appraise his level of sex appeal from the safety of an audience; experiencing it like this, laser-focused on herself at close range, was almost intoxicating. She looked into his eyes and they narrowed, with just a hint of humor. She sensed his enjoyment in this flirtation, but there was a taste of concern behind it.

  “You want it to be something else?” he smiled. Cassie swore the temperature in the room had risen in the space of a few heartbeats, which were becoming quite rapid now. “You want something mysterious and arcane?” he teased. “A fantasy.”

  “I want to know if you’re an exohuman.” There, she’d gotten it out.

  That knocked him off point, at least for a second. His eyes darted to the closed door and she picked up a spike of something that bordered on fear. Then he regained his composure and a soft laugh rolled from him. He sat back and steepled his fingers in front of his chin.

  “Chéri, I take that as a compliment. My skill in the art of illusion must be beyond my own dreams to lead you to such a question.”

  “A question you haven’t answered,” she countered.

  “How could I be, as you say, an exohuman, when I obviously— “

  I’M AN EXOHUMAN TOO, she screamed inside her head.

  His head snapped back, and she saw him wince. Cassie knew immediately that she was right. He regarded her for a moment, an eyebrow slowly arching. Then he held out a hand.

  “Perhaps this is a conversation best held in private. Would you care to step inside?”

  Cassie considered what he was saying without actually saying it. If he was an exohuman
, with powers of the mind, then what he was offering was a telepathic link. It made sense. Such a conversation was immune to eavesdropping. She imagined that joining minds with someone was a very intimate thing, shedding all pretexts and illusions. Was she really ready to bare herself in that way? She had her secrets, her shames. And she had no reason to trust this man, handsome though he might be. On the other hand, they needed to talk about things that shouldn’t be overheard. She looked at his hand, still extended palm up, then nodded and placed hers in his. She immediately found herself sitting at a street-side café. In the near distance, the unmistakable dome of Sacré-Cœur peeked over nearer buildings - Paris. The Warlock was sitting across from her, pouring a glass of red wine.

  “This is a comfortable place to chat, no? Private and relaxing. I hope you don’t mind.”

  Cassie lifted the glass and took a sip. It was wonderful, orders of magnitude beyond the cheap crap she guzzled by the liter. A loaf of bread in a basket appeared on the table as he poured himself a glass.

  “This is a 2005 Chateau Lafite Rothschild, the famed Pauillac. Very hard to obtain in the real world. Here? My treat.”

  She savored the wine as the smell of the fresh-baked bread wound around her. In the distance, music played softly, a perfect background for conversation. The street was deserted - no cars or people to be seen.

  “Have you ever been to Paris?” he asked. “I’m afraid the reality isn’t as idyllic as this. If you remember, there is a criminal element there.”

  His boyish smile reminded her of the story he had told in his act, of his youth on the streets. She could almost believe that part of his tale was true.

  “The stench of cars and scooters is everywhere, ruining even the finest of meals now,” he continued. “But one day I will return, with the woman of my dreams, and we will share a real bottle of this fine wine. I have seen it."