Tortus Bay

2.28: Consequences, part 2

The blunt force of a thousand thoughts hit Henry all at once. He scrambled up onto his hands and knees, unsure which he was about to voice, and shouted "Diane!"

Jamal was already at his side. "Staying at her sister's. Can you stand?"

Henry grabbed Jamal's arm and pulled himself upright. The world spun. The wreckage of the Tortoise Shell Inn warped and blurred together. It looked like a plane crash. It looked like a lumberyard. "It was just the three of us?"

But the bartender wasn't at his side any longer. "I'm going to get help! Don't move!"

He took that advice seriously. He would not move. He tried to stop swaying. He tried not to throw up. The unfocused eyes of Clint swiveled generally in his direction, and blinked.

Henry raced forward and fell to his knees in front of the old man. An entire section of wall had fallen on him. "Can you hear me?" He set his hands on the wreckage. Clint gurgled something. He focused on his arms—on having the strength. He thought of the charms on his neck connecting him to Kara, connecting him to a world of magic. They responded with a pulse of warmth against his chest.

Moving the collapsed wall was not easy, regardless. The boards split as he applied force, so he had to peel the wood away in sections. In the end he had constructed a sort of cocoon, shielding Clint's shuddering body within. The man's chest was a swamp of exposed bone and running blood. His skin was pale as paper. He twitched, staring up at nothing.

Henry felt the magic of the village still pulsing through his body. He placed his hands in the mess of Clint's body. There was nothing else to be done. There was no time to wait for help. He laid his palms flat, and the voice of Teresa Bramble sounded in his head: There are stories of those who could heal with the touch of their hand.

What had begun as a pulsing warmth, the force of electricity he'd felt building over the last few days, finally spilled over, boiling out of his gut through his body—snaking down his arms, and out through the tips of his gore-soaked fingers. Clint gasped. His eyes focused. A nauseating pain radiated from Henry's shoulder. His arm grew numb. Under his hands, skin was beginning to knit back together. Bone fused. The process continued until Henry lost sensation in the arm altogether, and it limply fell away from Clint's body. Their connection was severed.

The world was quiet and still. Nothing moved. Then after a moment, Clint sat up. His bare chest was still a mess of blood, but it was drying against healed skin. "What the fuck was that?"

Henry didn't answer. He sat, exhausted, and stripped his shirt off. The black rot around his wound had run in streaks down the length of his arm, purple and pale like watery grape jelly. He could not move it at all.

The old man grumbled a few more incoherent words, then lapsed once more into unconsciousness. His breathing was stable, but strained. Henry stood and loped for the exit, before remembering that it had been lost in the rubble. Instead he wandered through the rubble into the street, and found himself in the middle of a tense scene.

Sheriff Leia Thao stood where she had before, her gun held aloft in her hand. Her eyes were wild. Her arms shook. At her side stood one of her deputies, his own gun leveled at Emmaline Cass. The woman (corpse? skeleton?) stood on a smooth island between two long lines of broken pavement.

Somebody was talking. It took Henry a moment to tell where the voice was coming from, but eventually he zeroed in on the form of Sofia Bramble. The girl stood on the other side of the rubble. Her clothes were stained red. Fresh gore dripped down her arms. "Don't shoot," she was saying. "Whatever you do, don't antagonize her."