Page 19 of Brother's Keeper

Everyone was talking, but their words crackled like static in my brain.

“Fitch.” Holland’s voice came through. “Can you open his mouth?”

Such things were easily done with a clear head but became mammoth tasks when distractions derailed my train of thought.

I didn’t get a word in before Vesper stepped up and reached toward my face. “Let me.” She grinned in a slyway that made me immediately suspicious. “I’ve been dying to try this.”

I squirmed to evade her, but Jax’s bite prevented much struggle as the investigator’s fingers pressed against my temple. Fresh pain sparked like a wasp sting, and I grunted complaint.

Vesper withdrew. She stretched out her arms and tested her fingers as though feeling them for the first time. Her smile took on a devious slant as she said, “Damn, Farrow, you’ve got juice.”

The meaning of her words, combined with Holland’s description of her abilities, raised alarm in me. She was a magical copycat who had presumably just duplicated my telekinesis. Did access to the power give her the prowess? Or was she about to grind my forearm into a bloody pulp?

Vesper’s face pinched in concentration. The lines on her face deepened, and purple tinted her cheeks. Her hands quivered as she extended them once more with her palms pressed together. Gradually, she hinged them apart, mimicking the motion of an animal’s mouth opening.

Slowly, excruciatingly, the panther’s maw yawned wide.

I cringed away as my stomach surged. Dizziness came next, and my eyelids fluttered, threatening to close for good. I forced them open, then turned my gaze to the pool of blood spreading beneath me.

“Shhhit…” I gasped.

Vesper, in contrast to my growing dread, tittered a laugh. “Good God,” she whispered almost to herself. “You did every bit of it, didn’t you? How could anyone stop you?”

The moment Jax’s teeth cleared the boundary of my skin, I pulled my arm to my chest and shoved backward. The movement was clumsy and sluggish, a stuttering sort of drag across the floor with little help from my uncooperative legs.

“He’s fading,” Tobin said.

I glanced aside, ready to argue, but moving my head felt like sloshing my brain in a jar full of water.

God, I was tired.

When did I get so tired?

The lights began to dim, and darkness stained the corners of my vision.

I didn’t mean to close my eyes but, when I opened them again, I was somewhere else entirely.

An IV line trailed from my arm where I lay in the white-sheeted hospital bed. Not the cat-gnawed arm. That one was wrapped in so many layers of gauze and tape that it made me look more mummy than man. Further inspection found my hand still attached, though I couldn’t feel it and didn’t dare move it. The discovery brought relief and a smug chuckle.

Rustling came from the visitor chair beside me.

“Oh, good. You’re up.”

Holland sat with her arms and legs crossed. Her scornful look warred with fleeting worry.

Vertigo lingered, challenging my efforts to orientate myself in the room. I’d had no cause to visit the Capitol healers before, but this fit my imagined view of the place. It was sterile and bright, with a window providing a view of the parking lot. An IV tree accompanied a monitor and pump with a corded remote that lay beside my unbandaged hand. Pain management. I grabbed the button and clicked it. I wasn’t uncomfortable, but I didn’t want that to change.

The bedside table boasted a Styrofoam cup and a small pitcher. Seeing them made me realize how dry my mouth was. I reached out awkwardly, dragging a tube full of crimson blood and another administering what I guessed to be saline.

Sighing, Holland stood and grabbed the pitcher, filling the cup then capping it with a lid and bendy straw. She thrust it out for me to take.

“Thanks,” I said and lipped the straw, gulping the tepid water greedily down.

People wearing pale blue scrubs bustled outside the open doorway. But in here, it was just Holland and me. We’d left the other investigators behind, and Jax, too, which reminded me…

“Did you put the furry bastard down?”

Holland returned to her seat. “He’s in a holding cell. Sedated.” She dragged her fingers down her face, holding them over her mouth and nose as she drew a breath. “Did you know he was one of the escaped convicts?”

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