Chapter Thirty

I screamed, raw and pained, and it was real. My agony was joined by a woman's startled cry and the sudden wailing of a baby. My face plowed into a tile floor, and my arms and legs went askew. Flat on my stomach, I lay on cold tile and burned, the salt-laden air cauterizing my skin. Above me, the drafts from Bis's wing beats burned across my shoulders, and I moaned. Make it stop. Please.

"Help her!" the gargoyle cried out, and I sobbed with relief when he settled beside me and it was only the salt in the air that burned my skin. I was on fire, and I tried to move, the slippery sheen sliding under me.

"My God. Rachel?"

It was Trent, and I started to cry. Bis had found me and taken me to Trent. I couldn't get up. Every breath hurt. Someone was having hysterics, and Lucy-it had to be Lucy-was crying at the top of her lungs, frightened by the noise.

"She's burned!" Bis was saying, and my body started to shake as I curled into a ball. "She was in the lines. I felt her burning, and it woke me up. I found her. Got her out. Please pick her up. She needs help."

I sucked in the air in giant heaves, recognizing the sound of surf over the unmistakable commotion of a frightened woman being ushered out. I was with Trent. Where were we?

"Ms. Morgan!" Bis babbled, and a spasm shook me when his clawed hand touched me and the broken lines of San Francisco exploded in me.

"Bis! Don't touch her!" Trent shouted, and a door shut. The crying baby and the woman were gone.

"Her aura is gone," Bis said, and I sobbed in relief when his fingers fell away. Oh God, it hurt. "Someone needs to hold her, give her an aura. That's why I brought her to you. I saw your aura in the kitchen. It's the same as hers. Her mind might not know the difference. She really hurts, Mr. Kalamack. Please!"

I slowly began to realize that I was out of the lines. Bis had found me and pulled me out. But I was raw. My soul was leaking. I had no aura to protect it. I was dying. But at least I was in the sun. I was in the sun? With Bis?

I tried to open my eyes a crack, seeing green tile and the soft movement of a white curtain. Bis had found me when no one else knew I was in danger. He was awake in the sun. And as I lay on the floor of the seaside patio, my heart seemed to break. He'd bonded with me, and now I was going to die. It was so unfair.

The air shifted, and the breath in me hissed over my teeth as the salt in it burned. My sweat had gone cold, and I shivered as Trent's black slippers scuffed to a halt and he dropped to his knees before me, his hands outstretched but afraid to touch me. There was a bloody stick beside me, and horror trickled through me as I realized it was my arm. I wasn't soaking in sweat but blood.

"Please make it stop hurting," I whispered, then gasped when Trent turned me over and lifted me into his arms. The twin sensations of fire and ice flashed like a cracked whip over my skin, and I clenched my body, gasping as his aura-Trent's aura, golden and hazy-came between me and the world.

The burning eased, and I looked up at him, lungs heaving. The air hurt, but I couldn't get enough in me. Ku'Sox was going to win. I was going to die. I felt it.

"Is she going to be okay?" Bis said, and I smelled cinnamon and wine, warm from the sun. Trent's aura wasn't enough, and I felt bits of me flaking off, but it gave me enough relief so that I could breathe. "It's better, right, Ms. Morgan?" the gargoyle asked, shifting from foot to foot just inside my narrow range of vision. His red eyes turned to Trent. "Can you fix her?"

"I don't know." The arms under me shifted, and a blissful coolness sifted over me like shaded sand. I hissed at the scraping sensation, my eyes closing. He smelled like hot wine, and all my muscles relaxed. I was leaking more than blood. My thoughts and memories were flaking from me every time the wind blew.

"But you have to," Bis said, and I heard a bird crying far away. My eyes were burning, and the trails of tears were like fire on my cheeks. "You simply have to. That's why I brought her here."

Trent shifted, and I stifled a groan. "She's lost a lot of it," he said. "Mine can't keep her alive until she starts to make her own again."

It. He meant my aura, and I began shuddering in earnest, unable to stop. My muscles were seizing, and everything was going cold, even the fire licking what was left of my soul. My body was shutting down. I couldn't stop it.

"But you made her do this!" Bis exclaimed. "You made her believe she could! You can't just let her die!"

There was silence, and I felt Trent's grip on me tighten.

"Rachel? Rachel!"

It was the silence that got my attention, and I managed to open an eye a bit. "What?" I breathed, glad the pain had eased. No one should die in pain. The blessing of angels.

Trent looked worried, a smear of blood on his face. I almost smiled. He was worried about me.

He grimaced, and my vision narrowed to almost nothing. "Hold on," he said, his voice sounding like he was in cotton. "I have to set you down for a second. I'll be right back."

The beautiful haze I was in vanished and agony split between my thought and reason. I gasped as he shifted me to the floor. He was leaving, and my heart thudded wildly. Eyes open, I frantically looked for him, seeing Bis staring down at me, his eyes as big as saucers. His wings and ears were pinned back. His tail was wrapped around his clawed feet, and he was as black as midnight, scared to death. I smiled at him, and he turned to Trent, fear in his eyes.

"Mr. Kalamack!" he exclaimed, and then Trent was back, frowning as he knelt beside me. I could feel his aura, and I wanted to roll into it, but I couldn't make anything move.

"Foolish witch," Trent was muttering as he kneeled by me. There was a little cap on his head, and he was arranging a thin ribbon to drape around his neck and down his front. He was wearing an odd shirt, red in front, white in back-very unlike him. And then I realized it wasn't red-it was soaked in my blood. "Why didn't you just give him the curse and banish him?" he finished.

"I did." My hand stretched out, and though it burned as if a dog was chewing on it, I managed to edge it into his aura. Bliss slipped into my fingers, and I started to cry. I wanted it, and it was so close, smelling of cinnamon and the shadows under trees. "He dragged me into a line with him," I said, the tears burning me. "He was eating my soul." Pick me up. Oh God, just pick me up again.

"That would account for its shredded look."

The soggy warmth under me was getting cold, and I moaned in relief as Trent gathered me back to him, pulling me into his lap and setting my back to his front, almost covering my entire body with his aura. My eyes opened a bit, and I felt my heart slowing as his aura lapped about me. He was reading from something, his lips moving. I could feel elven magic seeping out of the earth and into me, but it didn't matter. It was too late.

"What did you want to be when you grew up?" I asked. We were innocent once. How could it have gone so bad?

Trent's attention flicked to me, his worried frown becoming one of shock. "A tailor. They were the only men who could order my father around. Rachel, listen to me."

"I think I'm dying," I whispered, and Trent shifted my weight closer to him.

"You are," he said, no emotion at all in his words.

Heavy and hot, the tears slid down my face. "I know," I said. For all the agony, for all the heartache, I wasn't ready to go yet. But I couldn't stop it. There was just nothing left to hold me together. Trent's aura wasn't enough.

"I'm sorry," Trent was saying, but I wasn't really listening, I was trying to blink the tears away enough so that I could see the wind moving the fabric of the sun shelter hanging between me and the sky. "I can't fix you. Not like this. Your soul isn't sending out enough of an aura to convince your mind that you are still alive, and mine isn't making enough of an impression. Your body is shutting down."

"Yeah, I know," I said breathily, staring up at the blue and white. My God, it was beautiful, those colors up there.

Bis was crying, I could hear him, and I pulled my attention from the sky, wanting to tell him it was okay. My gaze found Trent's instead, and he grimaced, grabbing my chin with a hand and forcing me to look at him when my focus slid away. "Pay attention," he said, and I thought it rather rude. "I'm going to put your soul in a bottle until it heals."

Bis's sobs hesitated, and I blinked. With that little hat and ribbon around his neck, he looked vulnerable and scholarly. Like a priest and a rabbi all mixed up and all the better for it. It was kind of cute. "Whhaaat?" I slurred, and then fear hit me as his words took on meaning. He wanted to put my soul in a bottle. Like the one Al had. The soul had been in there so long, it had gone insane. Elves could do that, too? Why not? They would have to be smart to survive a war with the demons, even if they were almost extinct. The demons were on the verge of extinction themselves.

Trent turned away, watching his hand as he dumped the milk out of a nearby baby bottle. His head lifted as the door opened. Someone gasped, and Trent's lips pressed into a thin line. "Get out!" he shouted, then, "Wait! Call 911. Tell them she's gone into cardiac arrest and isn't breathing."

"Yes, sir," the cool, masculine voice said, and the door shut. A baby was crying in the distance. Or maybe that was me. At least the burning had stopped. I couldn't feel a thing.

"But I'm still breathing," I said. It was taking forever for anything to make sense.

I winced as Trent shifted me farther up into his arms so he could see the little book he was holding in front of us. "You won't be in a minute," he said, and Bis took a breath in alarm. "As soon as your soul leaves it, your body is going to shut down."

I thought about that as Trent started to hum, the sound going deep into my psyche and setting my blood to slow. Elven magic stirred, rising like fog in a dusky meadow, tingling and heavy. It didn't hurt like the ley lines did, and my muscles grew slack. Suddenly my eyes opened wide. "You're going to kill me!" I exclaimed, and the magic faltered as Trent's humming cut off.

"I'll keep it alive. Get it on life support. Your soul needs to regain its strength. It can do that in a bottle, and when it does, I'll put it back in."

He began humming again, rocking me. The prick of wild magic tingled across me, heady and slow. Until a thought pinged against the muzzy softness and shredded it into pinpricks. "You can do that?" I asked, and the magic broke. "You want to put me in a baby bottle?"

The humming stopped. "You're going to have to trust me. I've been practicing this, but I need your consent. I'm not good enough to do this without it."

I blinked up at him, trying to understand. My breath came in and out, and Trent waited, impatience in his eyes. "How many times have you done this?" I asked.

"And had it work? Never. But I've only tried it with birds, and they are rather stupid. Be quiet. I've got to concentrate."

I felt like I was floating. "You want my permission to kill me?"

He sighed, and Bis shifted his wings nervously. "Yes," Trent said.

I was numb, his magic already having taken hold. It was either that or I was dying in his arms. "Okay," I said, closing my eyes, and he sighed again, but it was different-as if he finally believed I trusted him. The world got spongy and black as the humming evolved into words I couldn't understand, the vowels deep in his throat and the pitch rising and falling in unexpected beauty. It was the wind in the leaves given voice, and the movement of the stars in the heavens, and I started to cry again as I remembered the elf under the arch singing me to sleep.

"Tislan, tislan. Ta na shay, cooreen na da," he sang, the words circling, going around and around in my head, pulling energy into existence from his soul, not a ley line, and giving my thoughts something to hide behind from the pain. His voice coated me in soothing darkness. My heart slowed until it decided to stop, but I didn't care. I didn't hurt anymore, and Trent's aura was warm.

So very warm.