Out of Nowhere (The Immortal Vagabond Healer Book 1) (21 page)

A man stood in the corner, flesh and blood, scanning the room. A naked blade shone in his right hand. I must have moved when I saw him, because he suddenly focused on me, his eyes locking on mine.

Well, his being there was impossible, but the knife looked real enough. As he started toward me, I swung my weapon to bear on him and fired.

He vanished.

Absolutely vanished. My mind jolted to a stunned halt.

Fortunately, a deep, subconscious instinct stepped in for the absent higher brain function. I twisted and flopped down on my back, looking frantically around the room. Not two feet away, a form was coalescing into being, an arm thrusting out above me. I pointed the .45 at the center of the rapidly resolving shape and pulled the trigger. The swirling darkness solidified into a human body twisting and falling to the floor.

Juan’s words about the guy that jumped Tiffany came back to me.
He said the guy just vanished into thin air.

The sound of the steel door banging open yanked my attention from the man writhing on the floor next to me.

A man stuck his head and shoulders around the jamb, pointing a pistol into the room. I snapped off a shot and he replied in kind, shrinking back behind the cover of the wall, firing blind.

After a few rounds, I realized that trying to hit the disembodied gun hand was beyond me in my current injured and agitated state, so I switched my aim to the wall that the rest of him had to be behind. I fired twice and the hand dropped the gun and jerked back.

I released a shaky breath, waiting for more movement from the door, thinking that any more foes out there might digest the lesson that sheetrock is no defense against bullets.

I heard urgent whispers, but no advance.

Beside me, my first victim moaned. I twisted painfully around to get a look at him. As I did, my elbow knocked something sliding away. I looked over and saw one of the ubiquitous daggers on the floor a few feet from me.

Shaking with adrenaline and my injuries, I had an urge to put another round in the man, but I restrained myself. There were too many questions.

Most important was: how do I get out of this mess? Most intriguing was: how did this guy do that? It was impossible, but I didn’t get hung up on that for several reasons. One was that I could do the impossible myself, so who was I to judge? And a second was that, impossible or not, I’d seen it happen and lacked the all-too-common ability to ignore concrete fact.

Slowly, or slower than I’d have liked, anyway, I realized that the second question might contain the answer to the first.

‘You want to live?’ I addressed the man.

He groaned in reply. I dragged myself over to him, put a hand on him and sensed his wound. He had a hole in his liver, which bled like mad and hurt like hell. Out of pragmatism, and against my inclination, I sent a little energy through to dull the pain and slow the bleeding.

‘I asked if you want to live,’ I repeated.

‘I swear blood oath,’ he grunted.

‘You want to die, that’s your choice. But if you want a pass on this one, I’m willing to deal.’ I saw uncertainty through the agony etched on his face. ‘Say the word and the pain can go away.’

He nodded.

‘OK, can you get me out of here?’

‘You can’t escape,’ he said. ‘Save me and it will go easy for you.’

I had no idea what he was offering, but it sounded like a very bad deal. ‘Look,’ I said, ‘without your help, those thugs eventually get me. Without my help, you bleed out.’ I shrugged. ‘Your call.’

If he kept arguing, I could tell I was going to shoot him again fairly soon. Obstinacy strains my patience on a good day, and I was not at my best.

‘If I get you out, you fix my wound?’

‘That’s still the offer.’

‘And then?’

‘We walk away. I don’t shoot you, you don’t stab me, and we live to fight another day.’

‘I agree.’

‘How far can we go?’

‘A kilometer, perhaps,’ he replied. ‘I’m not pureblood.’

That was supposed to mean something to me. I nodded like it did. ‘Outside this building, across the river and away from the lights will do.’

‘Heal me and I get you out,’ he grunted.

I didn’t waste more breath on speech. I gave a quick glance at the doorway to make sure the guys outside weren’t making a rush, then reached out and touched the wounded man, doing my thing. The bullet had torn a good sized hole through his liver. A .45 is a big, heavy round, so it took some effort to plug it, to stop all the little vessels from leaking and convince the tissues to knit. Fortunately, the liver is more predisposed to heal than many organs, which helps. I kept my word and repaired the worst damage, got him out of danger; but remembering how they treated Sarah, and Tiffany still lying in that hospital bed, I left him some tattered abdominal muscles. Petty, maybe, but I wanted him to have something to remember me by.

Maybe I was being a bit trusting, patching him up first, but I didn’t know if he could work his magic with a half-inch hole in his gut, and he wasn’t all that keen on helping me anyway, so I figured a little gesture might be called for. Besides, if he tried anything, I still had one more pistol than he did.

So I guess the moral is trust your fellow man, so long as you’re better armed than he is.

‘OK,’ I told him, ‘Let’s get going.’

He looked in awe at the knitted flesh, touched the new scar over the wound, and registered that the pain was mostly gone. He gave me a long, conflicted look. I’d seen it before, the look of an uneasy truce. He had some grudge, some reason he felt he should hate me, but he was feeling reluctant gratitude for the man who took his pain away and gave him a stay of execution.

He shut his eyes, made that face people do when they concentrate hard, and suddenly the world twisted. My stomach lurched and my senses reeled as the dry, musty, dusty warmth of the custodian’s office was replaced by the cold, misty, almost-clean air of Philips Mills in winter. We were at the bus station, but this late, it was deserted.

We looked at one another uncertainly. He wasn’t the same man whose ankle I’d healed, but he could have been his younger brother. Tall and muscular, his blonde hair cut short, his face all sharp angles, strong chin, no fat to speak of. The eyes were blue and cold. Hard eyes. Eyes that had seen terrible things without blinking. But now, they held a flicker of doubt, of hesitation.

I felt the same conflicted emotions, the wave of unwelcome gratitude. Without his help, I don’t think I’d have made it out of there, any more than he’d have survived that wound without me.

Of course, he wouldn’t have gotten it without me, and I wouldn’t have been in danger in the first place without...

But, there we go. Try to trace blame far enough back and you start sounding like an idiot.

And who knew? With any luck, we might still wind up having to kill one another.

‘OK,’ I said, ‘get out of here.’ I tried not to let the pain from my ankle or my wrist or my ribs show on my face or in my voice. I didn’t know how much he knew about me or my power, whether he expected me to heal myself or not. If he didn’t know my limits, there was no way I was going to enlighten him.

‘This is not over,’ he said. ‘I cannot thank you.’

‘We’re even,’ I replied. ‘We both get to live for now. Worry about later when it comes.’

He made a few attempts to say something, then nodded curtly and set off, leaving by the South entrance. When I was sure he was gone, I limped out the North entrance, ducked down the first alley I could find, leaned back against some Latin Kings graffiti and spent some quality time being sweaty and shaky and nauseous until the screaming agony in my wrist and ankle ebbed. I thumbed the safety on my pistol, slipped it into my waistband and hauled out my cell phone.

I called a taxi to meet me in front of a nearby Spanish nightclub. Doors and his gang might know my car by sight, and maybe Sarah’s, but a guy stumbling into a taxi in front of a club was nothing anyone would notice.

I set to wait, feeling secure in the dark, gang-tagged alley in the middle of the night. I knew the city, I knew the gangs. I had my command of Spanish, my natural charm and, if all that failed, a large caliber handgun. Plus, there were no white guys in expensive trenchcoats anywhere to be seen.

I’d gotten some info from Doors’ computer, I hoped, and I’d discovered a disturbing capability of the enemy. How many of them could just teleport around? The guy I’d just met seemed to feel insecure about only jumping a half mile or so. How far could a “pureblood” teleport?

I thought back to what Juan had said of Tiffany’s attacker.

He said the guy just vanished.

And the young gang banger Juan and Pete brought in.

Said some dude just come out of nowhere and cut him.

Crap. Should I have picked up on that? I didn’t see how. I assumed that it was just a figure of speech. I’m sure everyone else, even the guys who said it, did as well.

I hobbled out as a taxi pulled up, and more fell than climbed into the seat. I gave the driver the address of a bar on Tower Hill, nowhere near my apartment. When he let me out, I started to the door until he was well out of sight, then limped two streets over and called a different cab company to take me home. Maybe I was being overly cautious, but if my Eurotrash buddies somehow did discover the cab I took, let them come to the wrong side of town looking for me.

Chapter 22

BY THE TIME I GOT TO MY APARTMENT, I had just enough energy to stagger to the elevator and call ahead for Sarah to unbolt the door. She managed to get me into the apartment and into bed. For once, it was a struggle.

Once the lightheadedness passed and the sweating abated, I was able to talk her through some treatment. Like anyone with a physical job, I’d acquired an assortment of braces, splints and ACE bandages. Once they were on, limiting movement of the injured joints, the pain was much less. Coupled with a handful of ibuprofen, a mug of tea with whisky in it, and the tender concerns of an attractive blonde, I started to feel pretty good.

‘You’re sure you’ll be OK?’ she asked.

‘Should be,’ I replied. ‘Nothing too bad. Nothing that won’t heal. You should see the other guy.’

She was quiet for a moment. ‘Did you kill anybody?’

I started to shrug, but winced and abandoned the idea. ‘Probably. I choked a guy out. Shot at least one guy. Shot at a few others. Probably hit some of them. Dragged a guy down the stairs. That could have worked out better. He was at least unconscious. Wounded another guy, but I patched him up in exchange for getting me out. So I may have killed as many as four or five.’

‘Plus the three at my apartment.’

‘Not much choice.’

She rested her head on my shoulder. ‘Does it bother you? I mean, you spend so much time trying to save lives, does it get to you when you end one?’

‘Not all that much, as far as these guys go,’ I answered. ‘It’s not something I do lightly, and I’d be thrilled if I never have to again, but to protect you, or my friends or myself, I won’t lose sleep over it. Like the Bard said, it ain’t no sin to be glad you’re alive.’

‘Shakespeare said that?’ She frowned.

‘Springsteen,’ I corrected.

‘You might actually be too old for me.’ She kissed me gently. ‘Try to get some rest and I’ll see what I can dig up in these files.’

‘Bolt the door,’ I said.

‘OK. Get some sleep.’

‘And put my gun on the table. No. Other side.’

‘Here?’

I checked that I could reach it. ‘Perfect.’

‘Now, get some sleep.’

‘Check the windows.’

‘Sure. Get some sleep.’

‘Don’t open the door to anybody unless you get me up.’

‘Get some sleep.’ She walked out of the bedroom and closed the door.

Of course, they could just teleport into the room. But if they knew where I lived, they’d have already done that, so I had a few hours to rest before worrying too much.

Feeling somewhat secure and very exhausted, I slipped into a deep, heavy slumber.

I woke some time later to a chorus of aches and pains. Probably the painkillers had worn off. I lay still for a few moments, debating whether or not I should move. My body was pretty unanimously against it, except for my bladder, which made a persuasive case for getting up. Stifling a groan, I heaved myself up into a sitting position and swung my feet over the side of the bed.

A wave of agony washed over me. I took some deep breaths and after a few seconds it settled down to just a background hum of pain with the occasional jarring stab if I moved wrong.

Or much. Or at all.

All things considered, it could have been worse. The ribs had settled down to where they barely hurt if I took shallow breaths and didn’t move. With the brace on my ankle, I could rest my foot flat on the floor with just a twinge. The wrist hurt. I’m sure if I tried to do anything with the hand, it would hurt much, much more, but at least it was my left.

I grit my teeth and stood.

The ankle wasn’t as bad as I’d feared. Oh, it was bad, but it held me up, which is, after all, what one asks of an ankle.