Page 127 of Fangs
“Have you tried healing him?” he pushed.
“Yeah.” I turned back toward the clinic, but Lee caught my arm.
“What happened?” he asked. “You couldn’t heal him?”
I narrowed my eyes, studying his expression. His voice had a strange tone. I glanced at Wolf and caught him studying Lee, too.
Lee sighed like he was annoyed with both of us. “If she couldn’t heal Sam, maybe it’s the same reason she couldn’t heal Dune.”
Oh.I barely resisted cringing, my eyes darting to Wolf again. “It’s not the same reason.”
“I thought you didn’t know why it didn’t work on Dune.” Wolf’s voice sharpened.
“I don’t,” I muttered, jerking my arm free from Lee. “But Sam?—”
“—saved her life like the fearless, noble hero he is,” Sam finished, coming to a stop beside Lee, his hands in his pockets and a wide grin on his face.
“How?” Wolf demanded.
He was looking at me when he said it, but I couldn’t get any words out around the lump in my throat.
“Well, we didn’t finish that story… about when she jumped in the Pit,” Sam said, raising a hand to scratch his head.
“You said she was fine,” Wolf growled. “Sounds finished to me.”
“Shewas… eventually.”
A muscle jumped in Wolf’s jaw.
“I’d get to the part where you finish it, then,” Lee muttered.
“Well, uh, Brimstone kinda beat the shit out of her. Broke her arm, and what was that thing that happened to your lung?” Sam turned to me.
“It collapsed,” I mumbled, eyeing Wolf’s darkening expression warily.
“Yeah, that. Her lung collapsed, and she couldn’t breathe. She was dying on the clinic table, so I took a gamble and asked her to direct her power through me to heal herself. And it worked,” Sam grinned again, but I could see it for the mask that it was, “because I am a motherfuckin’ genius.”
Wolf turned his furious gaze to me, but for a moment, I saw a flash of worry and fear so deep it took my breath away.
“So what, it made you sick? Her power?” Lee asked.
“Not sure,” Sam shrugged like it was just a minor inconvenience, and my anger surged.
“Yes,” I snapped, “it did. It sucked the fuckin’ life out of him, which is why it’sneverhappening again.”
“Shortcake—” Sam tried to interject, but I ignored him, turning to my brother.
“That never happened with Dune, so Iknowit’s not the same thing.”
Wolf studied me, his jaw still tight. “You don’t think it could’ve happened, and you were too young to remember it?”
I hesitated. I’d never thought about that, but then I remembered how it’d felt when I tried to heal Dune. “It felt completely different. When I tried to heal Sam… after… it felt like hitting a wall, and I couldn’t get through it. With Dune,” my voice grew hoarse as I tried to control my emotion, “it felt like I was just pouring everything into him, and none of it was… was sticking.”
“Sticking?” Wolf repeated.
“Usually I can… feel it… the injury or the sickness. My power goes right to it, and it feels… contained. But with Dune…” I struggled to find the words to convey how it felt. “With Dune, it felt like pouring something into a bucket only to find out it was actually a sieve.”
They all studied me silently. The grief for Dune ached in my chest, right next to my grief for Trey.
