Heart Secret (11 page)

His eyes narrowed. “I wasn't aware I gave blood to anyone other than Opul.”

She was angry enough to put mockery in her gaze. “We Healers have our ways.”

Moving impatiently, his coins dropping and his snatch at them too slow, he said thickly, “I guess you do.”

She regretted snapping at him.

His breath came on a ragged cough.

“Here.” She handed him a water tube with floating green bits.

“What is it?”

“NewBalm mixture and spearmint.” Her smile was quick and compassionate. “It will soothe your throat.”

He frowned at his trembling hand, wrapped all his fingers around the cylinder, and drank it all. She took the tube away.

He closed his eyes. “Yeah. The throat. I'd forgotten that.” One of his shoulders lifted and fell. “It was minor. Nobody was talkin'.”

“You don't have to talk, now, either.”

“Good,” he said. His eyelids cracked, too narrow for her to see the color of his pupils. “I ain't gonna.” His fingers scrabbled, found the coins, fisted around them. “Gotta fight.”

“No, relax . . .” she soothed.

He jerked upright, eyes open. “No! I. Must. Fight. That's wha',
what
, saved me before. Fighting to save . . .”

“I understand.”

“No. You don't,” he croaked, then flicked the coins and the rest of his magic paraphernalia into his bag, coughed, and grimaced, subsiding back onto his pillows. His dark amber gaze met hers, then he set his arm over his eyes. “You don't understand. But you will.”

She was afraid of that.

Ten

A
s the minutes passed, his great strength faded and his eyes dulled as
sickness marched through his body. She laid her fingers over one of his fists, compelled to reassure him. “You're safe. I won't let anything harm you.”

That he was hurting now caused a twisting ache inside her. She was too close to this case, this patient, this man.

He jerked. “No!”

She flinched back. He grabbed her hand, hung on hard. “I didn't stop fighting the first time. I won't now.” He blinked, as if trying to keep heavy lids from shuttering his vision. “Have to fight.”

“All right.”

He breathed unsteadily, his eyes glinted at her. “Aren't you afraid?”

“Yes, I don't want the Iasc to . . . I don't want you to succumb.”

He barked a laugh. “Aren't you afraid for
yourself
? Bad sickness. Lot of people died.” His face set into a mask covering deep hurt. “Epi . . . epi—”

“Epidemic,” she finished for him.

“Tha's right. Afraid?”

She
could
die. Hurt her Family with her passing. Not do all the things she wanted—forge a family of her own, have a child or two. Despite their religion, despite her mother's cross-folk faith, no one knew what came after death, and death itself could be hard. She'd seen that.

“You are afraid,” he whispered roughly.

She couldn't deny it when her body quivered. “Yes.” Even with all the precautions, all the knowledge and Healing skill, even with TQ's help, she could die. As could he.

His eyes were wide now, bright amber. Feverish.

“You look hot,” she said.

“Hot. Sweating.” He shuddered. His lashes closed and his hand fell from hers as if he needed to fight alone.

Her breath trapped inside her chest, knowing she was losing him to fever dreams.

“Have to fight. Have to drive this bus,” he said, grabbing the linens, thrashing, entangling himself in them.

She yanked with hands and Flair to free him. Sweat slid from his body, suffusing the room with sickness and his determination. His hands opened and closed, curving around an imaginary steering stick. “Have to fight. Have to get Dinni and the baby to the clinic.”

Who was Dinni? Probably a woman that Primross cared for. Artemisia should think of him as
Primross
or
patient
now, not Garrett. He'd been healthy when they'd met and worked together in TQ's HouseHeart, but now he was sick and dependent on her. Put away any tendrils of attraction. Strictly forbidden to fall for a patient, to encourage any patient who might be aware of her as a woman instead of a Healer. So dishonorable. Until he walked from TQ, she'd be strictly professional.

Her hands had been checking his temperature, the fluids belt, wiping away his sweat, while she scolded herself. Time to draw blood again, make notations to her own report.

“I have the time of 10.29.46 as when the Iasc sickness overtook GentleSir Primross,” TQ said softly.

“That's right.”

*  *  *

P
rickles of heat bloomed on his body, from scalp to soles. He moaned.
No! He didn't want to experience this again! Too late. Sweat slicked, turned steamy, and tormenting visions began.

He walked toward the looming one-story medical clinic in Gael City that stretched tall and fearsome, made of sickly yellow blocks. All his muscles tightened in horror. This was how it started. He'd gotten an emergency call from Dinni on his perscry that she needed him.

Of course he'd gone.

No. He would
not
go into that clinic. He would not see Dinni holding her sick baby son and others from the Smallage estate where he'd grown up.

He dug in his heels before the double white doors. He would not press the latch. He would not open the door. He would not go in and agree to help Old Grisc drive the quarantine bus to the mountain clinic.

He refused to budge.

The world revolved around him in a slow swoop. He coughed, retched, spewed. Low and monstrous roaring pierced with garbled words hit his ears and he curled. Hands punched his sensitized skin and he yelled.

He flopped, spun, saw the clinic with an open door gaping at him and set to run
backward.
Again reality looped, narrowed into a pinpoint tunnel of darkness that squeezed him through. Blessed dimness and quiet enveloped him. As he drew in a breath, the room lightened and he sat once more in FirstLevel Healer Ura Heather's office.

She frowned at him; her writestick tapped on the desk like a hammer. “We must hear of every moment of your journey,” she said in that priggish demanding voice of hers.
Tap-pound-tap-pound-tap-POUND!

“No,” he muttered. But she'd gotten him in her clutches,
forced
him into the past.

He was in the clinic with the Healers and Dinni and Old Grisc and the refugees from Smallage. Again. Nausea inundated him.

Ura Heather stared at him, writestick lifted, lip curled. Lark Holly's violet eyes were wide with compassion as she shook her head mournfully.

And the gorgeous woman, who was the HeartMate he'd avoided, had an expression full of pity. They watched.

Watched. Judged. Saw
everything
that he'd never told.

He fought, as he'd fought every moment, but memories tore into his brain . . . to rip him to pieces again.

Dinni cradled her crying two-month-old son. She begged Garrett to take the job, to go with them. In her eyes was the utmost faith that he would save her child, all of them.

He'd looked at Old Grisc, the others, and agreed.

The HealingHall loaded every one of those twenty-three into the vehicle, even the sickest. The first died only a half septhour into the journey. An old man who'd been hot but shivering. The first death smell. Even in the cab with doors closed to the main compartment, Garrett and Old Grisc could smell it. They shared a bleak glance, wondering if they'd fall ill.

The quarantine bus was separated into three parts: the drivers' cab, seats in the main compartment for the living, and the refrigerated back compartment with corpse shelves for the dead.

Garrett had moved the man to the chill dead area, cleansed in the sanitation tube, figured it wouldn't help.

People deteriorated and a lot of them died. The stench rose around him.

He moved bodies to the back, but there wasn't enough room for them all. He had to raise the shelves against the wall, stack bodies.

Old Grisc, the driver, succumbed to fever eight septhours in. Garrett had to stop. The road was bad, the weather got bad—sleet and mud. People were dying, and he'd never driven such a vehicle.

The very worst memory rose like a ghost. Vivid and horrifying. Icy pellets had battered the windshield. It was full dark, and the console in front of him was lit, but the timer was nothing but a blur. Night was deep and dark, no bright twinmoons or stars, but they were finally off the mountain.

An eternity of time had passed. He thought he'd been in the hellbox forever. He stopped the bus and rested his throbbing head on the steering bar, felt the cool press of padded metal against his hot forehead.

A time later he'd lifted his aching bones from the driver's chair and moved into the main compartment. No reason to keep the doors shut.

Old Grisc trembled and sweated in a front seat. Another old woman had died. Garrett picked her up and shuffled down the broad aisle. There were few enough now—eight? ten?—that everyone slumped across a row.

He glanced at Dinni. She was pale with a gleam of sweat. He nodded, but she didn't look at him or the woman he carried. He opened the door and put the shell of the person atop her husband. They'd been bonded HeartMates, so there'd been no hope for her. HeartBonded died within a year of each other. That hadn't helped the grief of loss. He'd known the pair. The little town he'd grown up in, Dinni had grown up in, was attached to the Smallage estate.

The dead section of the bus was colder than outside and a relief to Garrett. Cold to preserve the lost for study.

After a while he got his feet moving and went into the main compartment.

Dinni was crooning a little sleep song to the baby that mothers sang. He moved to her and everything in him simply stopped.

The baby was dead.

Dinni didn't seem to understand or acknowledge that.

Garrett's knees gave out and he fell into the seat next to her. “Dinni,” he said and his lips cracked and he tasted blood-salt.

She lifted big blue eyes to him, smiled sweetly. “You'll get us to the safe place, Garrett.” Her voice was barely a rasping whisper.

“I love you,” he said.

“I know you do,” she said.

He closed his fingers over her upper arm. “Don't leave me. Stay with me. Stay alive. Please. Please, Dinni.”

She nodded solemnly. “We will.” Her lips cracked, too. “When will we get there?”

He levered himself away from the horror, back into duty that would force him to the driver's seat, to the clinic, to more of this hell. He wanted to stay with her, hold her. But he couldn't face the dead child.

“Stay with me,” he demanded as he had before.

Unlike when she'd left him, this time Dinni said she would.

“Stay alive.”

“We will.”

Didn't matter if he thought she lied. Didn't matter that she'd never love him as he loved her, would never be his wife. He only wanted her alive. If he could get her to the clinic, they would help her.

His steps back to the cab dragged as if chained weights were attached to his ankles. His hands whitened around the steering bar. He could set the autonav now. They were close enough for that. Nothing else on this road and only a couple of septhours to the HealingHall. He would make it. So would Dinni.

He had to. He
had
to save Dinni, so he couldn't give up.

And he didn't. He jolted from a daze as they pulled into the clinic yard. Healers rushed out, spellshields surrounding them in lovely colors, seeming to pick up the light of the dawn. He moved back into the bus. Old Grisc was dead. So were most of the others.

Dinni wasn't and Garrett prayed and prayed. “We're here. Stay with me.”

“We will,” she croaked.

He'd helped her out, and the other three.

Healers took her away, but after a moment he heard screams.

Then time passed as he fell into nightmares. Felt cool hands and sipped liquids. They took care of him. For a while.

He fought to stay alive for Dinni, passed out, revived, succumbed. His head finally cleared enough for him to smell his own filth days later.

He was the only one alive in the entire clinic. That had been another horror he'd dealt with, cleaned up.

He yelled, “Dinni!”

And the bright light of the mountain clinic glared on and on, revealing only death.

It dimmed and he was in Heather's office again. That FirstLevel Healer continued to tap her writestick and judge. Lark Holly was no longer there.

Artemisia Mugwort Panax held out her hands and wept.

He didn't want her; he turned away.

*  *  *

G
arrett had quieted except for the fever tremors. Artemisia didn't know
whether that was good or bad. She sensed he fought.

For the first time in two septhours, she took a deep breath, wiping her sleeve across her forehead. She was sticky with perspiration. TQ had adjusted the atmosphere of the room for Garrett's comfort and she'd suffered through the changes.

“He seems to be resting more easily,” TQ said.

“For now,” Artemisia agreed, standing and shaking out her limbs.

TQ creaked.

“Yes?” she asked.

“I reviewed my records. Dinni Spurge Flixweed and her two-month-old son died at the mountain clinic. She had recommended and requested Garrett be a driver for the quarantine bus. Dinni had a prior personal relationship with Garrett.”

Artemisia's heart gave a large, dull thud. “The child wasn't Primross's?”

“No, the child's father was one of those who found the fish and contracted the disease first. He died and left Dinni Flixweed a widow.”

Artemisia put a hand to her chest. How horrible that must have been for the woman, for her husband to die fast of an unknown sickness, for her baby to contract the same illness. To leave her home for sanctuary—and be turned away. What a terrible situation. Artemisia's throat closed at the pity of it. She swallowed tears.

No one at the mountain quarantine clinic had survived except Garrett. So Dinni and her baby had died.

So sad. Tragic.

“Shouldn't you take a blood sample?” TQ reminded gently.

Artemisia shook off the bleakness of the past. “Yes.”

Again she automatically did what needed to be done. But Dinni's story haunted her, and after she took Garrett's blood and stored it, she found herself in the dressing room, shivering with effort to suppress fear. She could die. Worse, the epidemic could arise, mutate, kill off every single being of Earthan origin—human, Fam, and animal—on Celta. They could be a dead race.