A Madness of Angels: Or the Resurrection of Matthew Swift by Kate Griffin Page B

slammed into the door, which shook, but didn’t open. I murmured gentle words into my ward and backed away. Someone opened fire, the noise at this proximity almost painful, shocking to our senses, but the door didn’t splinter, didn’t move, didn’t open. That wouldn’t last long, but it was good enough. I crawled across the room, past a neatly made double bed to where a window stood open, a metal staircase visible below. I half-fell onto the cold stair, damp from the evening drizzle, and saw below the struggling shapes of the motorbiker and the woman, hauling Sinclair down towards the ground.
     
I scurried after them, and caught up as they managed to drag the gasping Sinclair into a small passage at ground level.
     
“The men?” the motorbiker asked me, with a strong grasp of the relevant.
     
“They’ll get through eventually.”
     
Sinclair’s face was white and slick. “He needs a hospital,” I muttered.
     
“You think?” snapped the motorbiker.
     
“Do you have a vehicle?”
     
“My bike.”
     
“Can you get him on it?”
     
“Shit, you think he’s in a fit state? You’re a fucking sorcerer, do something!”
     
“It’s not that simple! To repair something like this you need equipment, preparation…”
     
“Sorcerers can’t heal,” said the woman. It was the first time I’d heard her speak. Her voice was low and cold, almost dispassionate. “It’s not part of their magic.”
     
“I can fucking heal when I have the fucking equipment!” I retorted. “But no, if you’re asking, we’re not exactly into bringing people back from death or even the bloody edge!”
     
“Great,” the motorbiker hissed. “You’re just so grand, aren’t you?”
     
“We can keep him alive,” we snarled. “Our blood can hold him for a little; if you can get him to a place to heal.”
     
Perhaps even the motorbiker sensed our intent – certainly he was not foolish enough to question us. I pulled out the Swiss Army knife from my satchel, the cool metal slipping in my bloody fingers. My hand was shaking; I didn’t know what I was doing, nor if it would work. And if it didn’t, then…
     
We steadied our hand, forcing ourselves to be still. We took a long, slow breath, every nerve on edge, and tried to calm our heart from its thundering in our ears. We searched, and levered out the hinged knife we needed from within the casing. Then, careful not to cause ourselves more than a shallow injury, we drew the blade across the palm of our left hand. We could feel the disgust and horror in the woman, even though her expression stayed cold, and see the surprise in the man’s face. For a moment, the pain was a shocking relief, a distraction that removed the ringing in our ears, the burning in our eyes and the shaking in our limbs, and focused us entirely on the blood pooling in our cupped hand.
     
At first the blood was not appropriate: dark, almost black in the poor light. Just crude human fluids; ugly, temperatureless. We waited. After a few seconds, the change began. A bright worm of blue light rose to the surface of the blood welling between our fingers, then dipped down again, like an animal breaking from the sea for air. A moment later, another shimmer of blue flashed like a static spark between two lightning rods across the surface of our blood; then another. I tried to hold back nausea as, emerging like blue maggots, the colour spread throughout the blood in my hand, a bright glow of sparks that rose up to the surface, shimmering and twisting, so bright it cast shadows across our faces, pushing back the darkness in its electric-blue glow. It wasn’t just in the blood in my hand; as the writhing blueness spread, I could feel it running up inside my veins, saw my skin turning white and blue as the redness drained from it, a pallor running from my wrist up my arms, that seemed to turn my blood to ice, shuddering through my flesh like frozen electricity, rattling off my bones and making my head buzz with…
     
… come be …
     
… we be …
     
I closed my