Whispers in the Dark - Maya Banks [47]
If he hadn’t already been exposed to all Shea could do, he would have said bullshit. But he’d experienced firsthand that healing ability. He’d thought Shea had done it. Swanny knew it too. He knew something had saved him.
“The problem is, healing comes at a great cost to Grace, which is why she has to be so careful. It’s hard on her because she’s so tenderhearted. She can’t stand to see people suffer. She’d help them all if she could. But it would kill her. And so she tries to stay away from people as much as she can because she can’t refuse anyone.”
Nathan frowned. “Did helping Swanny hurt her? What happens exactly?”
“I wouldn’t let her help him for long. Just enough that he could move again. But yes, it hurt her. Just like I take the wound or the pain of someone I’m connected to, she takes the actual illness or injury.”
“But wait a minute, you take the injury too. I felt your pain, Shea. I could feel those cuts on you. I smelled your blood, goddamn it.”
“It’s different. I know it sounds far-fetched. Ridiculous even. In some ways I have it far better than Grace. The wounds do appear on me. I feel the pain. But it doesn’t last long. They appear and then they fade. For the time they’re present, they are very much real. I bleed, hurt, feel it as though it happened in real time, as if someone stood over me with a knife. But then they go away. With Grace, she takes on the injury or the illness, and her body processes it differently. At a much slower rate. She heals the wound itself, and so it takes her much longer to rid herself of the injury. She could die doing what she does. If she gets overloaded. If she does too much, her body could shut down and she wouldn’t recover. We simply don’t know and I’m afraid to risk her.”
“Where is she now?”
Shea’s mouth quivered and she picked up her other hand to wipe at her eyes. “I don’t know. It’s complicated. We can speak to each other. Like you and I did. But I don’t because I can pick up things through the link. I can see things. The surroundings. It’s possible I’d know where she is and I knew if I was ever caught that they’d try to get information from me in any way they could. So I closed myself off from her because I couldn’t very well give them information I didn’t have.”
Nathan’s blood ran cold. “What did they do to you, Shea?”
“It doesn’t matter,” she said wearily.
“The hell it doesn’t!”
“It’s over and done with. I escaped. Now you came. I’m safe.”
“What did they do?” he ground out.
“They drugged me. They interrogated me. They wanted to know how to find Grace. I didn’t know, so I couldn’t tell them. Grace is safe. That’s all that’s important.”
Nathan swore under his breath. She wasn’t telling him the whole story. The idea of some bastard torturing her for information made him physically ill. She’d already endured far too much for him when he’d been in captivity.
“Do you know who they are?” Nathan asked. “Do you know anything about them at all?”
Her fingers tightened around his. “Grace was doing some investigating, but I begged her to stop. We can’t take the chance. I suspect it’s a government agency or group simply because they seem so well funded. They’ve dogged my steps for the last year. I move frequently. I never stay in the same place for long. Just long enough to earn enough money to keep running. The longest was two months in Kansas City, but they caught up to me there as well. I’ve tried to be methodical. I’ve tried to be unpredictable, but I swear I’m becoming predictable in my unpredictability. I’m so tired, Nathan. I don’t know what to do anymore. I don’t know how much longer I can keep evading them.”
The hopelessness in her voice made Nathan’s gut tighten. “You’re not alone anymore, Shea. You have me now.