Lethal Game (GhostWalkers 16)
She indicated for him to pull up his loose track pants. He did so, reluctant for her to see his leg, getting them just above his knee. The shots had ripped into him from the side, tearing up his leg as if trying to open a zipper into muscle and bone. The scars were raw and ugly, going all the way up to his hip.
Amaryllis gasped when she saw the raw, shiny wounds. “Malichai. How did you survive this?”
He shrugged. “I was bleeding pretty bad and slapped field dressings on the worst of the wounds to slow them down. My brother Rubin carried me to the helicopter. He worked on me the entire time. I was lucky the doctors were there with blood and whatever else they needed to keep me alive until they could land. Ezekiel, my oldest brother, operated on me. He was able to keep me from bleeding out until we got the orthopedic surgeon. Even then, it was a bit of a fight.”
He downplayed it but had the feeling she knew that was what he was doing. If Rubin hadn’t been a psychic surgeon, he would have been dead. Had they not had his blood on hand, he wouldn’t have made it. There were a million things that could have gone wrong for him. He’d been lucky.
Her hand hovered over his leg and he immediately felt warmth that quickly turned to a raw blazing heat. More than once he’d experienced this same kind of thing when Joe helped him. He watched her face, not her hand. At once he could see her eyes, the difference. Those blue, blue eyes that turned inward. He’d only seen that once before, with Joe. Amaryllis was a psychic healer, and they were very rare. If Whitney knew she had that gift, she would have had no option but to escape if she didn’t want to spend the rest of her life being taken apart or in his breeding program.
His leg suddenly felt on fire, as if flames licked up his bone from his calf to his hip. It was a flash-fire. Hot and fast burning. It took every ounce of discipline he had not to react, to not drag his leg away, out from under that terrible heat.
She suddenly pulled her palm away from his leg and sat abruptly on the lounger as if her legs had given out. It took a few minutes with Amaryllis first staring down at her hands and rocking back and forth, breathing deeply and then looking out to the ocean and the surfers there.
Malichai waited patiently for the verdict. When she turned to look at him, he didn’t like what he saw on her face. He rubbed his hand down the leg. The fire had slowly subsided, but he still felt the aftereffects.
“I’m pretty fucked, aren’t I?” He tried to be realistic.
“I think it can be fixed, but, Malichai, something chewed that bone up. It’s still doing damage. Either there was something chemical in the bullets that hit you, or you reacted very poorly with those field dressings you used. You could have been highly allergic to one of the compounds used. Whatever it is, it’s trying to eat through your bone.”
He rested the back of his head against the lounger. “Can you fix it? I don’t think a doctor can. If they could have, they already would have. I’ve had three operations already.” He forced his voice to be matter of fact when inside he was screaming. He couldn’t lose his leg.
He had to contact Joe fast. Even if Amaryllis thought she could fix it, why hadn’t it worked when Joe had worked on him? But even more so, Rubin? Rubin’s gift was so powerful, they literally hid him from everyone. There could be no whisper of what he was capable of or every faction would be after him. There would be no way to protect him. Rubin had worked on him on more than one occasion. Why hadn’t it worked? Now, he was past worry and on to terrified.
“I discovered that weird little ability I just showed you when I was around fourteen and one of the girls was very sick.”
“Girls?” He ventured the question cautiously, mostly because if he didn’t and she realized what she’d just said, she would wonder why he hadn’t asked.
There was the briefest of hesitations. “I’m sorry, didn’t I tell you? I grew up in an orphanage. My parents abandoned me when I was first born. Those of us who weren’t perfect babies grew up and went to school there.”
“I had no idea orphanages still raised children. I suppose they must. Was it difficult? Or did you like it?” He didn’t bother to keep the curiosity out of his voice.
“I liked it. Two of the girls didn’t. They felt . . . less because of it. There were six of us raised there, although not really together. I was lucky and spent a lot of time in the kitchen with the cook. It was fun and I picked up things fast. In that respect, I was able to excel in school and just about anything I chose to do.”