Page 45 of Coerced

“What do we do now?” Maddy looked from me to Kerry and back to me. “Should John get him back to the Sanctuary?”

“If Gemma, the strongest healer in a century, can’t heal him, who can?” Tara pointed out. “There’s no one at the Sanctuary who’s more powerful, is there?”

“No. There isn’t.” Clem’s nap must have revived him, and his eyes glimmered in the firelight. “And I have a few reasons to think we should avoid the Sanctuary for now. Something’s not sitting right about that circle we found today.”

“But Jax will die if we don’t figure something out!” I wailed.

Kerry inhaled sharply and his muscles tensed into iron bands - and I knew Jax getting injured had hurt him more than he would ever admit.

Tears pricked my eyes. I hated failing him - and Jax - like this.

“Clem, surely you’ve seen someone fall victim to a Hell creature before,” Travis said. “What do the healers do?”

“Just what Gemma has.” Clem grimaced. “Stop the bleeding and seal the wounds.”

“That’s it?” Maddy squeaked.

“That’s it. It isn’t a spider bite, kiddies. It’s poison fromHell, which is anathema to our Divine half. We can only stand so much of it before it does us in.”

“So they mostly die?” My voice spiraled higher. “Is that what you’re saying?”

“Yeah, angel. That’s what he’s saying.”

The fire’s snapping and popping was loud in the silence that followed Kerry’s words.

“We need a miracle worker,” John said at last.

“Good luck finding one of those.” Travis poked at the fire with a long stick. “There have never been very many, and we have none at our Sanctuary.”

“I know a miracle worker,” Clem said.

“You do?”

“Where is she?”

“Would she help us?”

“Why didn’t you say something sooner?”

“Ah, I guess I should have said Iknewa miracle worker,” Clem cut in over our excited voices, and his sorrowful look shut us up quickly.

“She’s dead?” Kerry didn’t have a problem saying it.

“As good as. She was frozen in stone a couple of centuries ago.”

I slid down the log and took one of the old man’s rough hands in mine.

“If it’s not prying, would you tell us what happened?”

His eyes narrowed as he studied my face for a long moment, then he began to speak.

“I was away on a mission that took far too long. Amanda usually came along as part of my team, but this time, she wanted to stay home. I don’t know why, and she wasn’t the kind you badgered for answers. She’d tell you when she was good and ready and not before. Anyway, when I finally made it back, I found a granite statue on our front porch and the stench of the Diabolical everywhere.”

“She was your wife?” Maddy asked.

He nodded.

“After it happened, I kept her with me at first because I couldn’t bear to let her go. I didn’t want to move on if it meant leaving her behind. It took three decades before I woke up one morning and realized that I could mourn her until I died from the grief, or I could avenge her. So I put her somewhere safe and went back to work.”

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