He downplayed it but had the feeling she knew that was what he was doing. If Rubin hadn’t been a psychic surgeon, he would have been dead. Had they not had his blood on hand, he wouldn’t have made it. There were a million things that could have gone wrong for him. He’d been lucky.
Her hand hovered over his leg and he immediately felt warmth that quickly turned to a raw blazing heat. More than once he’d experienced this same kind of thing when Joe helped him. He watched her face, not her hand. At once he could see her eyes, the difference. Those blue, blue eyes that turned inward. He’d only seen that once before, with Joe. Amaryllis was a psychic healer, and they were very rare. If Whitney knew she had that gift, she would have had no option but to escape if she didn’t want to spend the rest of her life being taken apart or in his breeding program.
His leg suddenly felt on fire, as if flames licked up his bone from his calf to his hip. It was a flash-fire. Hot and fast burning. It took every ounce of discipline he had not to react, to not drag his leg away, out from under that terrible heat.
She suddenly pulled her palm away from his leg and sat abruptly on the lounger as if her legs had given out. It took a few minutes with Amaryllis first staring down at her hands and rocking back and forth, breathing deeply and then looking out to the ocean and the surfers there.
Malichai waited patiently for the verdict. When she turned to look at him, he didn’t like what he saw on her face. He rubbed his hand down the leg. The fire had slowly subsided, but he still felt the aftereffects.
“I’m pretty fucked, aren’t I?” He tried to be realistic.
“I think it can be fixed, but, Malichai, something chewed that bone up. It’s still doing damage. Either there was something chemical in the bullets that hit you, or you reacted very poorly with those field dressings you used. You could have been highly allergic to one of the compounds used. Whatever it is, it’s trying to eat through your bone.”
He rested the back of his head against the lounger. “Can you fix it? I don’t think a doctor can. If they could have, they already would have. I’ve had three operations already.” He forced his voice to be matter of fact when inside he was screaming. He couldn’t lose his leg.
He had to contact Joe fast. Even if Amaryllis thought she could fix it, why hadn’t it worked when Joe had worked on him? But even more so, Rubin? Rubin’s gift was so powerful, they literally hid him from everyone. There could be no whisper of what he was capable of or every faction would be after him. There would be no way to protect him. Rubin had worked on him on more than one occasion. Why hadn’t it worked? Now, he was past worry and on to terrified.
“I discovered that weird little ability I just showed you when I was around fourteen and one of the girls was very sick.”
“Girls?” He ventured the question cautiously, mostly because if he didn’t and she realized what she’d just said, she would wonder why he hadn’t asked.
There was the briefest of hesitations. “I’m sorry, didn’t I tell you? I grew up in an orphanage. My parents abandoned me when I was first born. Those of us who weren’t perfect babies grew up and went to school there.”
“I had no idea orphanages still raised children. I suppose they must. Was it difficult? Or did you like it?” He didn’t bother to keep the curiosity out of his voice.
“I liked it. Two of the girls didn’t. They felt . . . less because of it. There were six of us raised there, although not really together. I was lucky and spent a lot of time in the kitchen with the cook. It was fun and I picked up things fast. In that respect, I was able to excel in school and just about anything I chose to do.”
“Are you still in touch with the other girls?”
For the first time she looked at him directly, her gaze moving over his face, a touch of suspicion in her eyes. “Not really, why?”
He shrugged. “They’d be your family. I never go more than a couple of days before I check in with Ezekiel or Rubin, with any of my brothers.”
“You didn’t have a sister?”
He shook his head and rubbed his aching leg. She immediately began to massage the cramping muscles. Her hands felt warm—they felt magic. The cramping stopped almost immediately.
“You have a gift, Amaryllis. My leg aches quite a bit and for the first time in a long while it feels better.”
She hesitated. “Malichai, I can try to fix the damage that’s being done to your leg, but I’ve never really tried anything that severe. I think you should call your doctor and get them to do an MRI, something that will reveal the damage to the bone. If you don’t do something soon, there’s a possibility something could go really wrong.”
He knew that. Subconsciously, he knew it before he’d ever agreed to take a vacation. He supposed he’d really come there to think about his future and what he’d do if he lost his leg. He’d allowed himself to be distracted because the last thing he wanted to do was face his reality. The leg had started off fine during all the physical therapy, feeling strong and sound and little by little it had begun to ache. And then hurt. His gut had begun to give him that alarm that always told him when something was really wrong.
When he was a boy, he’d worried about losing a limb. Every time he’d gotten a cut and an infection, that had been his biggest worry, although he’d never shared it with his brothers. The worry had carried over into his career when he was carrying out the wounded with their many losses of limbs. At first, when his leg just ached, he’d told himself it was his old paranoia; now, with Amaryllis clearly concerned, he was more worried than ever.
“The docs have done everything they know how to do,” he admitted. “I don’t have any more options.”
She remained sitting very still, her hand on his leg gently rubbing up and down the ragged scar tissue, a soothing gesture that was comforting.
“Can you do something?” He had to be careful, not act like he knew too much about the kind of gift she had.
She hesitated. “I don’t honestly know, Malichai. I don’t have a lot of practice and I’m not very good at toning it down. It feels like a lot of power, almost too much. Okay. Too much. If I do something wrong and damage the bone further . . .” She trailed off.
“You think I could lose my leg.” He had to say it out loud to someone. It seemed ridiculous there on the beach with the ocean rolling in the background.
Amaryllis bit her lip and then nodded. “I don’t know. Maybe, but I don’t want to carry that responsibility. I’ll have to think about it, maybe practice on something first. There’s so much heat . . .” She trailed off, looking up as a tall, gangly man with a surfboard tucked under his arm came bounding up to them like a shaggy collie.
“Amaryllis. Dude. You should be ridin’ the waves. They’re perfect today.”
His blond hair looked darker slicked back, the salt water still dripping.
“Malichai, this is my friend Dozer. Dozer, this is Malichai.”
Dozer shoved out his fist to do a bump. “Gnarly scars, man. I saw some on a man who had a shark take him down, but they weren’t even close to that. Cool.”
Malichai resisted pulling down the material of his pants. He wasn’t five.
Dozer beamed at him, his teeth gleaming almost as white as his hair. “What’s the good word?”