KAZ HERDED US INSIDE and pushed the door closed behind us, then took my arm and pulled me close.
I pressed my face against his chest, not wanting to go any closer to the thing in the bed. It was like the scene on the monitor, only real. In person, Bryce’s body was even more horrifying, the scabbed flesh red and black, his face a nightmare of agony.
After a moment I regained my composure and forced myself to step closer. “Can you see us?” I asked, my voice shaking.
Bryce’s eyes rolled in his head, but then they focused on me.
“Do you know who we are?” I asked, swallowing my revulsion and forcing myself to approach the edge of the bed. I was close enough that if I wanted to, I could touch his ruined skin. Instead I worked hard to focus my gaze on his eyes.
“Hehh…,” he said, a terrible, rasping moan issuing from deep in his throat. “Heeehhhlie.”
Hailey.
“That’s right. And Kaz is here too. And Dr. Grace.”
He looked at them, moving his head only the tiniest bit, his body racked with painful convulsions by the effort.
Suddenly the hatred I had stored up against him withered, and I felt only pity.
“Mr. Safian, can you help us destroy the data?”
He stared at me with a question in his eyes, a need, a hunger, and as much as I longed to shrink away from him, into Kaz’s strong arms, I forced myself to stay where I was.
“Yehhhh… ihhh you kihhhh eee.”
I glanced at Kaz, unable to understand Bryce’s words. His lips had split and peeled and burnt away and he could barely move his tongue.
Kaz shrugged, but I saw in his eyes a reflection of my own horror that anyone, even someone as evil as Bryce, was forced to remain alive in this condition. For weeks now, his every moment had been agony; I was surprised that he hadn’t gone insane.
“I’m sorry,” I said, my voice softening. “I don’t understand. You’ll help us… right? Just nod if you can.”
He ducked his chin a fraction of an inch but his gaping mouth worked, spittle forming at the corners, and he tried again. “Kihhh eee. Kihhh eee.”
“He’s saying ‘kill me,’ ” Kaz said. “Is that right?”
Bryce managed a nod.
He wanted us to kill him. To put him out of his misery. I rested my trembling hands gently on the starched white linens of the bed. There was no way I could do what he asked, even if it was the humane choice.
But I could offer him something else.
“I can heal you,” I whispered. “I don’t know if I can… bring you all the way back. I’ve never-Your injuries are too… but I might be able to heal you enough.”
It would be the greatest challenge I had faced as a Healer. I would not have attempted it a month earlier, or even a few days earlier. But I had healed Jess. I had healed Kaz. And each time I laid my hands on a wound, each time I felt the force within me summon itself and gather and strengthen as the voices murmured and swelled, I grew stronger.
And it wasn’t just my skill that was growing. There was something else-something tied to my deepest understanding of who I was. The emotions that had defined me before I’d discovered my gift-fear, insecurity, hopelessness-were slipping away. In their place was a growing conviction that I could do the things that had been ordained for me, that I was a true and rightful Healer, and that my gift was meant to be used, and used well.
“We know you’ve been helping Prentiss reconstruct your work, but we need you to help us destroy it,” Kaz said. “All the backups, everything.”
“But it will take too long if we have to talk this way,” I added. “I need to heal you.”
“Nnnnn nnn nnn,” Bryce gasped as tears formed at the corners of his eyes, welling up and then coursing down his ruined face. He didn’t want me to try to heal him, was terrified that I might bring him only partway back, forcing him to live like this indefinitely.
But there was no other way.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I have to touch you.”
I closed my eyes and let the voices come, let the ancient rhythms spin and unfurl. The voices built until they reached my lips, and my need to say the words overwhelmed me. I tried to ignore Bryce’s frantic, terrified mewling as I laid my shaking hand against his chest.
I was as gentle as I knew how to be, but my touch made him scream, the most horrible sound I had ever heard, pure pain compressed into a wail. I felt my own tears come as the words whispered forth from my lips and my blood danced and rushed with a stronger force than I’d ever felt.
This was different from any healing I’d done before. I could sense my gift’s being drawn from further and further within the depths of my soul, stretched and taxed almost unbearably as I struggled to meet the challenge of Bryce’s terrible wounds.
It was too much.
Under my hands, Bryce’s flesh thrummed once, weakly, but then I felt the healing change course and excruciating pain shot backward into me, into the nerves of my fingers and along my arms into my very core, an agony so exquisite it was unlike anything I had known, anything I had imagined.
I wavered on the brink of consciousness. All I had to do was let go, take my hands off Bryce, and the pain would abate; it would slip back into the shadows like a rubber band released, like a wave racing back to the ocean. As I hesitated, the pain intensified, a burning raw rasp along every nerve ending in my body. Black spots danced in front of my eyes, and I heard nothing except for my own screams, but even they were locked inside. Since the pain was greater than my will, the pain ruled me, preventing me from making a sound.
I felt my fingers tremble against Bryce’s body and I knew that the pain was going to win, that it was going to beat me. I can’t, I said, or dreamed I said; I couldn’t be sure. The voices were fading, the lyrical syllables chasing themselves into the darkness, a whisper, and then a sigh, almost gone, almost forgotten.
“Hailey.” I heard Kaz’s worried voice, but it was far away, so far away.
All I had to do was let go. There was no reason to be afraid. I would let go. I would send the pain hurtling back to the source, to Bryce. It would leave my body and seek its host, the burned and melted flesh of the man who had once sought to imprison me and use me to make zombies.
Bryce deserved the pain. He had brought it on himself.
He deserves this…
I almost gave in. I nearly convinced myself to turn away. The voices had faded to a faint hum, and it was all I could do to keep from passing out. The black spots in my mind bloomed and ran together like a nightmare played at high speed.
But then something shifted.
I hadn’t come this far, fought so hard, lost so much only to give up when I was tested. I might have questioned and even despised my gift; I might have wished it away. But it was as much a part of me as the heart that beat in my chest. It wasn’t merely chance that had brought me together with the damaged and the wounded: I was meant to heal them. I was meant to use my gift.
“Tá mé mol seo draíocht,” I whispered, my lips trembling with the ancient words, and before I could draw another breath, the voices joined in, stronger than before, a chorus that wound up and down a beautiful dark scale, a harmony that only I could hear.
I gave in to the voices, but not before I tightened my fingers on Bryce’s ruined flesh. I felt his body spasm with agony, but I held on.
“Na anam an corp cara ár comhoibrí…”
I saw nothing. The room fell away, and we were alone, me and Bryce and the ancients, my ancestors whose voices encouraged and strengthened me. Misgiving left me first, and then doubt, and finally pain; I felt nothing at all except for the energy flowing between my fingertips and Bryce. Other voices twined with the chant, speaking words I did not know: a man’s voice, sure and gentle, and a woman’s soft murmur in answer. I understood that they were the most ancient, the ones who had been there at the beginning. The original Banished were beside me, within me, guiding me, and in that moment I knew that they would be with me for the rest of my life.
And then I felt Bryce respond.
Just a tiny little tic, a blip in the flow of energy, but I’d felt it. I started the chant one last time, from the beginning, and as I spoke the words clear and strong, the other voices faded away, one by one, until the only one left was mine. I felt sorrow for their absence as my body returned to me. My vision flickered and I was aware of Kaz next to me, and there was a part of me that longed to follow the voices into the past, into a place that time and death could not reach, where I would be with my ancestors forever.
Then I heard Kaz whisper my name and I returned. I finished the verse and lifted my hands from Bryce, letting my exhausted body fall into Kaz’s arms. As my vision cleared, I saw Bryce tremble and then go still. His flesh crackled with energy, his body sealing over the fissures on its own, repairing the cracked and blackened tissues, bursting forth with new cells.
I had done it. I had healed the man who’d tried to kill me and Prairie, the man who’d come closer to pure evil than anyone else I had met. Our struggles were far from over, and we were still in great danger.
But I had used my gift and used it well.