THE FLASH CAME FIRST, a white-yellow blink, followed a second later by a boom that shook the earth and blasted through my skull. I felt Kaz frantically trying to cover me with his body but I pushed him off, twisting to see the little house burst, shingles flying and foundations splintering, a cloud of yellow flame blooming from within. A piece of window sash sailed into the yard and crashed inches from where we lay, its jagged edge impaling a fat hosta plant. Glass splintered from the window and rained down along with charred and smoking debris. My head echoed with the force of the blast, and though I could see Kaz’s lips moving as he screamed at me, all I could hear was a dull roar.
I let him pull me to my feet and only when I stood did I notice that he was bleeding. Bright, pulsing blood was literally pouring from his forehead and he stumbled, never letting go of my hand, and touched his skull, his fingers coming away glistening red. He swayed and I tried to catch him in my arms, but he staggered backward and we both fell into the shadow of the shed, coming down hard on the packed dirt, his wounded head bouncing on the grass.
“Kaz!” I screamed as his eyes fluttered and rolled up in their sockets. I could hear my own voice but it was as though it was coming from a distance, as though someone else was screaming as I ran my fingers lightly along the jagged tear in Kaz’s skull and felt broken shards of bone.
No. No. This couldn’t be happening, not to Kaz. My knee pressed into something sharp and I realized that debris thrown from the explosion had hit the garden pots and cracked them into dozens of sharp-edged pieces. Whether it was a piece of pot or something from the house that had struck Kaz didn’t matter now. I felt my heart seize with fear and shock but I forced myself to brush Kaz’s hair out of the way and gently check his wound.
The urge to heal grew within me, a longing so powerful it was as if my body itself transformed from flesh into pure need. The words filled my brain, an ageless whispering chant, and they were on my lips and I had to clamp my mouth shut, biting my tongue, to stop myself from saying them. My fingers thrummed with the electric desire to touch Kaz as a Healer, to knit together his broken skull, his torn flesh, to still the blood flow and repair the tissues.
But I couldn’t let myself. Not yet.
Not until I knew if Kaz was too far gone.
Because if I healed him after the life left his body, he would not come back as the boy I loved. He would become just like the thing in the house, the thing that had come on an errand of destruction and now was torn to bits by the blast, shreds of bone and skin whose soul had long since left. If Kaz passed on before I tried to heal him, I would create a zombie.
“Kaz, Kaz,” I screamed. “Can you hear me?”
For long seconds, he lay motionless, his eyes unseeing. My soul shattered with grief at the thought of losing him, of losing the one person besides Prairie who really saw me when he looked at me, who understood who I was and loved me anyway. I felt my eyes fill with tears, hot and stinging, and as I blinked, one fell on his forehead and trailed into his blood and mixed with it. Where it had fallen, the ragged torn skin blurred and skimmed over.
Even my tears were a Healer’s.
I seized Kaz’s hands and squeezed them. “You have to show me now,” I said, choking back my sobs. “If you’re alive, you have to show me, I can’t, I can’t…”
But he said nothing at all, and I couldn’t feel his pulse, couldn’t find the thread of his life, and the unfairness of it nearly cleaved me in two.
I’d come so far only to lose everything. Chub had been stolen from the streets where we’d finally thought he was safe. Prairie had been taken too. And now Kaz lay broken on the hard-packed earth of the miserable town I’d fought so hard to leave.
I couldn’t escape them all on my own, Rattler and Prentiss and his men. I needed Kaz. Together we were more than a couple of scared kids; together our history and our gifts made us strong. I lowered my face to Kaz’s and kissed his bloodied forehead, his parted lips.
And he stirred. Just a little, a tremor, a twitch-but I knew. He was still there.
“Hailey,” he breathed, licking his cracked lips. His eyes flickered and the life came back to them and he sought me with his gaze. I felt him squeeze my hands in return. “Is there… anyone…”
“It’s just me and you, Kaz,” I said. I didn’t want to upset him further, but I knew he needed the truth. “Derek couldn’t have survived that.”
He shook his head with effort. “No… I mean… anyone out front…”
But I had seen enough; now that I knew that Kaz still lived, I gave myself over to the powerful pull of my gift. I let my eyes drift shut and touched my fingertips very gently to the edges of Kaz’s wound, feeling him wince in pain. The voices in my head swelled and rushed through in a current of near-melodic phrases and I spoke the words, murmuring softly while the gift gathered strength and my hands moved of their own volition.
Under my fingertips I felt the flesh knitting, the shattered skull fragments melding together. Heat and energy and power were all focused into the touch. As I chanted the ancient words, the energy flowed from within me to him. Take what you need of me, I willed the forces at work on his wounds. Use me, use me up.
I had healed Kaz once before, when fire and bullets had threatened to take him from me. Then my gift was new, and I was unsure and afraid. But each time I healed, my touch grew more assured, and the words came more easily to my lips. When the last broken bits of his skull had smoothed back together, when I felt only his sweet, regular breath against my wrists, I laid my head on his chest and rested, feeling the reassuring rise and fall, and slowly my other senses returned.
First I noticed the smell: a horrible combination of char and chemicals and smoke. I blinked several times, my vision momentarily blurry, as it always was after a healing, but as it cleared, I made out the house behind the wall of flame and smoke pouring from its center. The trees that lined the drive were unharmed, their branches waving in the billowing smoke. On the ground a few feet away lay a shred of flowered fabric that I recognized as part of the curtains that had hung in the kitchen. Farther away were broken dishes, the face of a clock, half a splintered chair, all spread out as though a giant had sprinkled the ruins of the house from his hand.
My hearing was returning quickly. Healers were stronger than other people; we never got sick, and though we couldn’t heal each other, wounds that would kill ordinary people were nothing to us. I was grateful for my strength and resilience now; though I had healed Kaz, I knew we would both need our strength for what lay ahead. We needed to get away from here, before Prentiss sent someone to make sure his zombie had carried out its task. We’d been dealt an incredible stroke of luck in that no one had seen Rattler bring us here last evening; darkness had surely helped. But we couldn’t count on that luck lasting.
I felt Kaz tense up, his muscles going rigid. My heartbeat quickened with fear. “What is it? Are you all right?” But before he could speak, something pressed into the small of my back.
“Stand up slowly, hands where I can see them,” a hard, clipped voice said. “You first, Hailey.”
I didn’t know the voice. But I knew that we were in big trouble.