— Alik —

The Hellhound nodded at Mishka, who opened the door and talked to someone, and threw the car keys, sending them for the errant.

“I need to see all the wounds it inflicted and where the blight as settled,” I said.

The Hellhound rose from his chair along with me and took some of the blankets off of her, then rolled her sleeves, and raise her pyjama shirt off her midriff to show her stomach. Most of the wound had been bandaged.

“We will have to take the bandages off.”

He nodded at Mishka again, who opened the door and said something to a nurse who came in an instant later.

It took maybe a minute, and two nurses were taking off all the bandages and showing me the wounds, then the blighted areas. It was on the fingers and toes, which are generally some of the first places for it to settle. Around the wounds, which is one of the best ways for blight to get in, but also inside her mouth, on the inside part of her lips, a bit on her gum and tongue, which was a lot more worrisome.

When the once-over was done, my stuff was brought in.

They gave me my bag but hesitated with my staff.

“Put it in the corner there, if it makes you feel more comfortable,” I told the man.

He looked at his Alpha who nodded, then put my staff in the corner and left.

I pulled one of those hospital’s rolling bed table closer, dumped my bag on the chair I had been sitting in, and started to pull stuff out and onto the table.

All of them were looking curiously at what I was doing.

“Does she need to be plugged up on the machine?” I asked.

“It’s precautions mostly,” said one of the nurses. They had both stepped aside and were waiting for orders. It was a good idea to keep the nurses in here, in case anything happened.

“We will have to unplug her for a little while and pull the bed off the wall,” I told them.

The nursed looked at their Alpha who nodded, then complied.

I get that there must be days when this level of discipline and obedience must be useful. Though, I’m not sure I’d ever get used to something like that.

“Why?” asked the Hellhound.

“To make a circle around the bed,” I said. “It’s better if nothing crosses the circle, that includes wires.”

He nodded. “Why a circle?”

He wasn’t being obstreperous with his questioned and mostly just looked like someone genuinely curious.

And I love to talk about magic, I could go on for hours, so I didn’t really mind.

“Circles are used to focus magical energy. They make it easier to concentrate it. Plus I can use it as a tool to make it harder for the Other to notice what I’m doing. If I’m really careful and we’re lucky, it won’t see a thing and we’ll be in the clear.”

“If not?”

“If not then it’s going to suck for us. There will be a fight and it’ll be bad.”

He sighed. “Is there any other way?”

“Not with the time limit we have. The blight is getting internal. She doesn’t have a lot of option time-wise before it is irreversible.”

“How long?” he asked looking at her worryingly.

“I’d say somewhere between twelve hours to a couple of days. Setting traps and wards solid enough to block an Other that as a link to her will take us much longer than this.”

My little table was getting crowded.

“Is it possible to have a few more like these?” I asked pointing at the table.

One of the nurses left instantly.

I must say, there are days when it’s nice to have people at your beck and call.

It didn’t take long until I had a full set up on six rolling table. Three long, two wide, which gave me a great working surface.

I had taken a few burners out and placed my ingredients in vials.

Every time I asked if I could get something, someone would go and fetch it instantly. If I asked for something not available in the hospital, someone that I didn’t even see would go and fetch it in town. I must say, this town is not doing too bad in the magical ingredients department. And no matter how costly what I asked for was, not a single objection was emitted.

I guess it’s nice to have lots of money too.

I answered more questions about what I was doing, which was one potion for her to drink, and a salve to put on the wounds.

Once the two burners were cooking their respecting mixture. I took a big black non-permanent marker, and did a big circle around her bed.

I got up and looked around to make sure it was round enough, and once satisfied, I went down on my knees and started to scribble markings.

I put one of the nurses in charge of watching the mixture to tell me when they would reach certain stages. Then I’d get up, did the next steps required, told her new instructions and went back to my scribbling.

Once I was done, I did a second circle around the first with the markings in between. Once that was done, I did a second row of markings. The first had been of healing, the second of protection. Once those were done—occasionally intersected by working on the cooking blends—I did a third circle, then started scribbling symbols of warding.

It took me hours.

I wanted to be sure I was doing it right. I just needed to mess it up once to make it all fall apart.

During that time, one of the nurses would stay within the circle, looking at the girl’s vitals every few minutes, checking the wounds and progression of the blight.

It was not increasing as quickly as I could have, but it could have progressed slower too.

If my calculations were correct she had less than twenty-four hours, well eighteen now, I thought as I got up on my feet once the last circle around the third ring of symbols was finally done.

My knees were painful.

Someone rolled in a table full of food, and my stomach gurgled loudly.

There was a rotation of nurses to look at the girl, giving a break to the one that was doing it. We had to be careful not to damage my circles as we got her out of there.

It took a little contorting, but we managed.

Then Mishka, the Hellhound and I went to the sofas to stuff our face.

I was starving, and doing two concoctions at once, plus that circle had been demanding magically speaking, and I welcomed the break.

At first, we ate in silence. It had been awhile since I’d had a meal with such a strange combination of compatriots. I still had difficulty imagining Mishka dropping out the merc business. He had always seemed to thrive on it.

The Hellhound, on the other hand, I had no idea what to think of him yet.

We kept the chitchat to a minimum after that. As the day was well underway and we needed to get it all done before nightfall, or it could be an additional risk that we could not afford. And waiting for tomorrow would cut things really short, if anything went wrong and there were delays, we could find ouselves out of time for her.

Once the potion and salve were done, I instructed the nurses on how to use them and to do so once I was done, and every hour until they reached the end of the supply, which should last around three days, give or take.

Then I took my bag of spirit dust, walked next to the circle and prepared for one of the most complex summoning I would ever do. Because I would not be summoning some creature, as I was summoning something vaguer and more abstract. I would gather energy, magic, life force, and reality in a big ball, infuse it in spirit dust and bath her in it.

We cleared the room of all none essentials, cleared the tables too, and all furniture that could be in the way, in case of an attack, or anything that could go wrong.

I had a ceremonial obsidian knife that I lend the Hellhound.

“Break it and I’ll be really pissed,” I told him.

It was a genuine article, really hard to find, historical, and it had been used in magic ceremonies for centuries by all sorts of wizards. The kind of magic it had absorbed throughout its existence was significant. It could give him an edge if the Other attacked. Giving him a chance to do something.

That simple gesture seemed to have made a big difference with him.

He took the dagger carefully, nodded his thanks and put himself into position.

Two nurses were still on standby by my orders, just in case.

“What is her name?” I asked.

“Elaeya,” said the Hellhound.

I might as well know whose life was in my hands.

I walked to the circle and began my chanting. It was a long one, the syllables rolling on my tongue with a familiarity. Sweat pearled on my forehead as I concentrated, making sure to control the energy very carefully, moving it slowly so that no magical movement was too brusque and would attract the Other’s attention.

Has the pitch of the chanting rose, I kept my voice as low as I could, as if I was trying to whisper screams.

The words found their cadence. I felt the movement of the energy on my skin, my mind-eye looking at the colours of magic, shifting them delicately. I thought I saw a black rip on the corner of my eye, but if I faltered now to focus on it, it could be disastrous, it was like playing with nuclear fission, you don’t do it carelessly or you risk another Chernobyl, and Elaeya would be ground zero.

Not only wasn’t I fond of that idea, but I’m sure the Hellhound would not be very kind to me after such a fuckup. If I survived it, that is.

I really, really hoped it was not what I was thinking it was.

I kept my eyes on the ball, in this case quite literally as I was rolling everything I’d gathered in a gigantic ball of multicoloured energy.

The others in the room were probably not seeing anything, as it took quite a lot of skills and practice to learn to see magic.

I saw it again, in my peripheral, something long and black, maybe a foot long.

I threw the spirit dust—which had for main ingredient crystal dust—in a wide arc above her. The energy infused it and then I released it, letting it fall on her in a multicolour shimmering rain. It’s not always that I get to do magic this beautiful. And that part, I knew they could all see.

I heard one of the nurses utters a reverend ‘wow’.

Once it had properly settled on her, I jump inside the circle next to her, raised my right hand, the one than summons energy and with an uttered word, my staff flew from its corner and into my hand. I turned on the dark rip where a long crooked clawed hand was crawling out of. I slammed the bottom of my staff on the floor and a ringing ‘thud’, raised my left hand, the one for protection, and dug inside the workings on the circles for protection and warding. Using it to my advantage. I pointed the tip of my staff at the arm, out all the way to the shoulder now, and screamed in defiance, putting all the energy I had left in it.

When it hit, I saw in my peripheral the other shift around. They could see it now. Good.

Before I had the time to push harder. The Hellhound was already there, swiped the dagger at the arm and severed it right under the elbow.

Damn!

That worked even better than I thought it would.

The Other recoiled in pain.

The Hellhound grabbed the arm with his bare hand—which was probably a really bad idea— and threw the limb back inside the tear.

I used this instant, when nothing was blocking me, to put all my energy into closing the rift.

It took more out of me that I would have wanted. The Other pulling it wider with its sheer will. But I’m a stubborn motherfucker and I didn’t let go.

It went inch by inch, but goddamnit I closed the damn thing.

Once it was over, I just crumbled on my ass in pure exhaustion.

“Done?” the Hellhound asked.

“Done,” I said.

“He waved his hand at the nurses and they came to put the salves on Elaeya’s wounds and used a little blue sponge on a plastic stick, dipped it in the potion, and put it inside her mouth to give her the first dose progressively as she was still unconscious.

The Hellhound marched to me, flipped casually the knife in the air, catching it by the blade and presented it to me, hilt first.

I nodded my thanks and took it, and wrapped it inside a blessed handkerchief. I’m going to have to purify it later.

“Now we have to treat your hand or you’re going to be next on that bed,” I told him.

He looked at the hand that had grabbed the severed limb, the skin had little darkened patches.

Damn this is going to be a long night, I thought, using my staff to pull my ass off the floor.