The Den of Shadows Quartet - Amelia Atwater-Rhodes [64]
“Is there anyone else?” Aubrey asked, sounding frantic.
“Vida would kill her,” Caryn answered, “and Light’s dead.” She cast Aubrey a sharp glance, knowing that his kind had murdered Lila, the last in the Light line. “All the others are too weak. Whoever did this broke one of her ribs, and now there’s blood in one of her lungs; she’s going to start drowning in it soon. Besides that, she’s just about drained. It’s amazing I can even keep her heart beating at all. Plus, she’s got at least a dozen other injuries … I don’t know of anything in science or magic that can heal her.”
Caryn looked beseechingly at Aubrey, hoping he knew something she did not.
He knew nothing she wanted to hear. “I can kill — I can’t heal,” he sighed.
“I’ve been channeling my own … I don’t know what to call it … life into her, but if I keep doing it we’re both going to die. No witch short of an Arun could survive this, and they’re part vampire …”
Caryn trailed off, defeated.
“I could.”
She looked at Aubrey blankly for a moment after he spoke those words.
“Unless Fala decided to tear her heart out, her injuries are really rather insignificant to my kind,” he clarified.
Finally Caryn understood. She had channeled from other witches in the past. If she could take energy from a vampire and give it to Jessica … would that heal her?
It might.
“I could kill you accidentally,” she warned him.
“I’ve lived a long time.”
“This is very definitely going to get me disowned,” she muttered, hoping her mother would find some way to forgive her. “I need you on my right,” she told Aubrey.
After he had shifted position, Caryn placed her right hand just above Jessica’s heart, one of the three strongest energy centers. For healing, the heart center was best.
There were no words to accurately describe what she did next. Her own energy centers were open, forming a path from Aubrey to Jessica, and now as she tapped into Aubrey’s —
She gasped as the power flowed through her. That was all it could possibly be called. Not life, not chi as Hasana called it or simply energy as Monica had taught her, but pure, unrestricted power. No wonder his mind was so strong …
Caryn forced herself to control the power, which required all her years of practice, and then focused on channeling it into Jessica.
Jessica’s own aura was strong, and Caryn wasn’t surprised to note vampiric traces in it. She directed Aubrey’s power to the areas of Jessica’s injuries, where the girl’s aura was weakest.
First she focused on the crack in Jessica’s skull. It knitted itself together within seconds, and the blood that had pooled inside was reabsorbed into the veins as they repaired themselves.
The lung came next. The organ collapsed into itself and then regrew — small like a child’s at first, but quickly expanding to full size. The rib mended in moments.
The rest of Jessica’s body healed just as quickly, simply from the overflow of power. Caryn was grateful, since she was becoming sleepy. How could she be so exhausted with all this power running through her?
She was trying very hard not to think about what this process was going to do to her. She knew only one story that involved channeling the vampiric aura: Midnight Smoke, mother of Ardiente Arun, had drawn the vampiric aura into herself to save a human from becoming one of them. Since then, all Midnight’s ancestors had carried a vampiric taint. Ardiente and Midnight had split from the line they had been born in and become the first in the Arun line. Caryn was descended from their relations, who had continued the Smoke line.
Caryn was feeling light-headed. There was nothing more she could do for Jessica; if this wasn’t enough, then nothing would have worked. She quickly closed off Aubrey’s power centers, then her own, aware that if she passed out before doing so she would probably kill all three of them.
With her eyes closed, she focused on Jessica yet again, trying to ascertain what still needed to be done.
While most of her body had healed, Jessica was still all