Under Witch Curse (Moon Shadow Series) (16 page)

“Yeah, I’ll say.”

“Well, I’m not that good yet at pushing it away from me. I’ve never had to do anything like this either. Your Mom taught me all the enhancements for first aid. Stopping blood flow was the first. But she said I’d need a different teacher to learn to knit skin, bone or muscles properly. OhmyGod this is such a mess. Your mom would totally freak out at the mess I made.”

The dragon had made the mess, not Tara, but when White Feather groaned, the thought fled. We both reached for him at the same time. I grabbed his hand and Tara soothed hers over the wound.

“I mashed things back together, but we’d better take him to the doctor.”

Doctors weren’t my favorite, but she was the healer. If she said he needed one, he’d get one. There was no need to check the dead man’s pulse, but once White Feather was sitting up, I did it anyway.

Gordon arrived just in time to escort Mom in ahead of the ambulance.

Chapter 22

White Feather was not an ideal patient. He was tense, moody and downright threatening as we prepared to transport him to a safe place. Since Mom would likely be more help than most doctors, we hustled out and left Gordon to deal with the ambulance and the dead guy. Besides, it would be impossible to explain to medical personnel that White Feather needed antibiotics for a dog bite. Tara had closed the punctures. And how would we explain the deep claw marks? Yes, sir, he’s been attacked by a giant chicken?

Tara went from saving the day to a ball of weep. My mother drove her to the house, while I drove White Feather and myself.

As we shuffled in the door, Mom said, “Healing is very emotional. Earth is excellent to draw from, but it doesn’t take emotion or human pain.”

Watching Tara sniffle and tremble, I wasn’t sure who was in worse shape, her or White Feather. White Feather was still in agony, and even though Tara wasn’t standing next to him, she was not only reacting to his pain, but the residual effects from the healing and the emotional baggage because he was her brother. “She’s a mess.”

“The healing, it tears you up inside. The pain is gone, but the after effects drain.” She turned to Tara. “Remember what I taught you. Take the emotions and transfer them to strength and happiness. Convert them.” She gave her a pat on her hand and bustled over to examine White Feather’s wound.

It didn’t take Mom long to deliver the bad news. “There is a spell here.”

“Aztec curses.” None of the spells we’d seen at the salon had been benevolent ones.

Tara let loose an agonized moan as if she were caught in the bad spell herself.

I lost patience. “Tara, get your act together. Transfer all that emotion into something useful.”

My mother shot her best witch’s glare at me for my attitude. We rarely clashed, but this was White Feather! We didn’t have time to stop and train Tara.

“Tara,” she said gently, “remember your exercises.”

Tara blubbered, “Ceeenter. Feeel. Bloock.”

It was painful to watch her hiccup and sob around the mantra. She was trying, I’d give her that, but the girl had enough emotional energy for an elephant, and she wasn’t the only one in the room panicking.

“Oh, for pity’s sake.” Since I couldn’t heal, my only usefulness was teaching Tara to ground. “Go somewhere else, like you did when we practiced the witching fork.”

“I can’t ground on my own!” she wailed.

“That doesn’t mean you can’t find a partial way to disperse the emotion. And just think, if it doesn’t work, I’ll ground for you. Then we can both hop to the hospital in case there’s anything left of us that can be saved.”

She sucked in a huge gulp of air, and it came out a half laugh. “You’re so stupid.”

“Only sometimes.”

“Hang onto it,” Mom said softly. “Keep the laugh. Channel the rest there.”

As soon as she concentrated, Tara lost it again.

White Feather opened one eye balefully. His stress was as deep as my own; I didn’t even need the ring to feel it.

That jolted me. “The angst.” He was in pain physically and still angry about the attack. “Mom, can you soak up some of his emotion? Tara’s super-sensitive to him.” I positioned myself so that Tara’s view of him was blocked and asked her, “Where can you go that is calm? Take a deep breath and go there.”

“I can’t! My room is too boring! That barely worked for the witching sticks!”

People not tied to the earth and its huge pool of peace confounded me. Mother Earth was such a natural link for me, I couldn’t imagine being without her. If not earth, what?

Something to tame emotions...water. Mountains. Whoops. I was back to earth. “You’ve got to redirect. Think of your favorite book. Or a movie that makes you laugh.”

She hiccuped two quick breaths, filtering my suggestions. “Okay. But I hated Harry Potter. Everyone knows magic doesn’t work like that.”

“She always blames other people for stressing her out,” White Feather grumbled. He glanced her way and then sighed deeply, winced and grounded.

The vibes from him hadn’t particularly bothered me, but as soon as he settled himself, the difference was a breath of fresh air. My bracelet cooled. My ring had been tingling, but I hadn’t even noticed, maybe because I knew the source or was stressed myself.

I scooped up his hand. He squeezed my fingers. Emotional grounding wasn’t just for healers. The calm between us was a loop of comfort. Maybe we could help Tara if we understood it better, but the mere thought of dealing with her made my nerves ratchet up a notch.

Mom smiled. “Better.” She completed her examination, but was less than pleased. “He needs surgery to have the tainted skin removed. It’s not right. There are pieces from a nasty spell. The magic glows black.”

“Can we unspell it? Use some herbs?”

She traced a finger across his rib. “Did you rinse it with holy water?”

I nodded.

“Good, good. But there’s an odd blue tint embedded in the skin. His body, the white blood cells, are attacking the bits and pieces in his blood and muscles. Those are surrounded and being beaten. But those left in the skin cells sit there in fragments. I don’t know what it is.”

“Tattoo ink!”

She blinked. “He had a tattoo?”

“No.” I explained about the dragons. “It bit him. The construct was formed from a tattoo.”

She groaned softly. “Tattoo ink is impossible to remove. Most things in the skin are.” She chewed her lip. “Your father could burn it.”

“Why not cut it out?” White Feather asked through clenched teeth.

“What about lasers? Wouldn’t that be safer?” Last time Dad used fire around one of my boyfriends, the result hadn’t been pretty. Sure, no one was hurt. But that didn’t mean the idea was a good one.

Mom tapped her forefinger against her thumb as though itching for the right balm. “Lasers work by opposite light, but it would only make the pieces smaller. You don’t want this stuff absorbed by the body. It needs to be expelled.”

“Is he stable?” I demanded.

“For now. But that ink has to come out. The tattoo ink won’t spread, but it’s still a spell that the owner can activate depending on the witch and what the spell does.”

“Someone already used that ink to suck a victim dry,” I mumbled, rummaging in my pack.

White Feather said, “I’ll block anything that tries for me.”

We really needed a sample of the ink in a spell that blocked and protected against it. Then again, the ink might be drawn right to the ink in his side. “I’ll be back. I need to research something.”

“Lynx can do it,” Tara said suddenly.

“Do what?” I asked.

“Expel things. He does it when he changes. It’s a shifter thing.”

If Lynx could teach us to do it, that might work. Otherwise what good was it to White Feather?

Before I could continue to the lab, Mom caught my attention with a question of her own. “Can you see what Lynx does?”

Tara nodded. “Sure. Like when you tell me to focus beneath the skin and see the blood and muscles. It’s like that.”

“Can you channel it through you?”

Now, doubt and emotion contorted her face again. “I don’t think so.”

“Can you do it, Mom?”

She shook her head. “No. It’s why most healers are no good against cancers. We can help, but not find every bad cell or correct the things that caused the bad cells in the first place. We can knit. We can stop blood flow. If we learn to control our emotions, we can heal the spirit and that helps heal much that is physical. But expelling every single cell that has become embedded in the layers of skin would be impossible.” She shook her head. “It is easier to build a strong barrier than it is to cut something out, especially something this fragmented.”

I turned on my heel, lest anyone read the fear in me. “Research. Be back.” I headed to the bedroom to use White Feather’s computer.

Mom followed me. She extracted a jar from her purse. “You need some salve on that burn. This has aloe in it.” She talked as she spread the salve, which told me she was worried. I googled “removing tattoos” while she inspected the blister that had formed under my bracelet. She may not be able to remove tattoos, but she did a darn good job on burns.

“Certain lasers break up tattoo particles. The color of the light has to be right and hot enough to break apart the particles. The pulse has to be fast enough that it doesn’t burn everything else. That tattoo was mostly the standard blue with some black and maybe purple.” I scanned more text. “Moonlight madness, why would anyone want a tattoo? The ink is full of toxic minerals, paint and even blood to create specific colors!”

“It is possible that Tara can help if she is able to team up with Lynx,” my mother said softly.

My fingers froze on the keyboard. “Really?” The idea was preposterous. Lynx wasn’t all that cooperative with people he liked. And Tara was a mess. Setting the logistical problems aside, there were other barriers. “Can she possibly heal that way? Technically, I mean?”

Mom shrugged. “She is more talented than I am in many ways. She hasn’t trained so she doesn’t have the set notions I have either. I would never have dared examine a shifter with my sight.”

“Mom, you don’t know any shifters to examine!”

“This is what I mean. In my day, we wouldn’t admit to knowing any if we did know them. She doesn’t have this notion.”

“How can she shift tattoo ink?”

“That is something I would like to witness. And if she and Lynx can’t do that part between the two of them, maybe I can figure it out by studying the shifting. Although I’ll need to use either White Feather or Lynx to ground unless we invite your father.”

It was a new experience for me to work deeply with the witch side of my mother. She was my mother. First and always. And sure, she did healing now and then, but she wasn’t a witch, not to me. She didn’t have a craft that she studied and excelled at...only she did. And more openly since Tara had entered the picture. Maybe Mom realized she didn’t have to stay quite so hidden, quite so old school.

“I guess we better call Lynx then. Only he’s a cat. He’ll be thrilled to hear that you and Tara want to run an experiment. And that we’re all planning on watching. Oh yeah. He’ll be one happy cat.”

My mom sighed. “You let me know when he agrees, mija. In the meantime, we can look into this laser thing. There is probably a doctor who will do it.”

“Or a witch who manipulates light. Do you know any?”

Her head tilted. “Not right this instant. But that doesn’t mean we can’t locate one.”

And if her network didn’t know of one, one didn’t exist. At least we had the right people on the job.

Mom smiled and kissed my cheek. “I will teach Tara a few more tricks. She needs to practice transferring and channeling. Meanwhile, we will have to watch White Feather’s wound carefully.”

Mom emptied her purse, leaving me with enough salves to cure several people of various ailments. Sadly, none would fix the tattoo.

I added a few ingredients to the burn salve to block black magic and smeared more on my arm. Even though it wouldn’t help, I dabbed some on White Feather’s side.

There wasn’t any food prepared, but we settled for the next best thing: scrambled eggs and bacon. Having a mother-in-law who raised chickens was coming in handy. White Feather never ran out of eggs. Of course, if he had cooked, he’d have made a nice, neat omelet. Since it was up to me, I diced crispy bacon, tossed it in with eggs and cheese and stirred the mess until it was cooked through.

Fed and showered, you’d think we could sleep, but White Feather was restless, unable to find a comfortable position. “You should never have been at the scene of the crime.”

I raised up on one elbow. “You’re right. I should be living at home, probably with a vampire feeding on me.” I nodded sagely. “I never get into any trouble on my own.”

He glared at me. “I’m not taking any painkillers.”

“I know. You can’t fight if you’re drugged up.”

He struggled to sit up. “If this thing in my side turns into a dragon and attacks you, how the hell will we stop it?”

I laid back down so that maybe he would. “Hmm. You attract dragons, and I attract insane vampires. We’d better stick together. How else will we survive?”

He fell back against the pillows. “Quiet, you. I need to concentrate. I was trying to make a point.”

“Maybe you need to sleep instead. Tonight, I play bodyguard.” I rested my head against his arm.

He didn’t say anything for a while. Then, after I thought he’d fallen asleep he asked, “When do I get to be your bodyguard?”

“Seems like you’ve been doing that all the other nights. Moving me in here. Moving my furniture without even letting me remove the protection spells. I’d say you were doing your level best to protect me. It’s my turn now.”

He grunted. “Moving the furniture without asking may not have been my best idea.”

“It could have used some finessing.”

“I didn’t like you stopping over there with Patrick showing up all the time.”

“Him showing up all the time is definitely a bad idea. You overprotecting me and trying to run things won’t work either.”

“I might have been worried you’d decide to move back in there if I didn’t get you moved in here.”