He paused and turned to look at me, waiting.
“What job?” I asked through clenched teeth, earning a grin from the dark elf.
“I’m so glad you asked.” Reave chuckled and resumed his pacing. “I have someone that will be doing an important errand for me and he needs some added protection. Unfortunately, he can’t travel with the usual assignment of muscle. It’s too conspicuous. As a result, you will be giving him a tattoo that will provide him with the needed protection.”
It seemed too easy and it appeared as if it would be legal as well. “What kind of protection does he need?”
“I think that will best be decided by you.”
“How can I do that? Who am I protecting him from? What’s this job that he’s doing for you?”
“Delivery.” I waited for Reave to elaborate, but he didn’t say anything else. I sighed, running my free hand through my hair, leaving it standing on end. It was turning out to be a long fucking night. “Fine. Am I to meet this person somewhere or will he come to my shop?”
“He’ll stop at your tattoo parlor for the work.”
“When?”
“Soon,” Reave called over his shoulder as he started to walk out of the warehouse with his flunkies following behind him.
“Hey! You never told me his name!” I shouted, lurching to my feet.
“You’ll know him when you see him.” Reave’s comments were soft as they floated across the empty expanse toward me.
I stared at the door that slammed shut behind the last thug as he exited the warehouse, leaving me alone with Bronx. My heart thudded in my chest and a chill crept down my spine. I’ll know him when I see him. Yeah, that sounded bad. I knew a lot of guys who were involved in some shady shit, most of them being tattoo artists. But as far as I was aware, none of them had these kinds of dealings with Reave and his sort. I wanted to pretend that Reave hadn’t found another way to strike at me, but even my imagination wasn’t that good.
Bronx groaned as he rolled onto his back. The pain left him panting heavily and I could see sweat—or blood—shining on his wide brow in the faint light.
I knelt at my friend’s head and hastily pulled off my light jacket. Fall was just settling on the city and the nights were still warm, but I had grabbed it more out of habit than real need. I rarely remembered to glance at the weather report most days and I had learned from experience that weather in Low Town was unpredictably strange on the best of days. I placed my hands on either side of Bronx’s face and angled his head so that he was staring straight up at me. He winced at the movement, but didn’t make a sound. Quickly folding my jacket, I gently placed it under his head.
“Where’s the pain?”
“My body,” Bronx grunted.
“A little more help, please.”
“Get me home. I need some rest.” His words were labored between bursts of heavy breathing. Each breath was wheezy and slightly liquid, making me think that one of his lungs had been punctured, possibly by a broken rib or two. If I had to guess, he had internal bleeding from several organs and broken bones, and a concussion. From what little I knew of trolls, they weren’t the quick-healing type like shifters or vampires. If I didn’t do something, Bronx would drown in his own fluids.
“You need a lot more than rest, but you don’t seem the take-me-to-the-hospital type.”
“Go to hell, Gage.” Bronx gasped as he tried to move, clenching his eyes shut.
“Already there,” I said, but my mind was elsewhere, focused on setting up the cloaking spell I needed in order to do my work. I was planning to do a whole lot of loud magic and I wasn’t stupid enough to do it right out in the open to draw the attention of every Merlin and Morgana in the Ivory Towers. Gideon might not have been actively hunting my ass, but that didn’t mean others weren’t watching for me to fuck up.
The cloaking spell wasn’t without its defects. No one would be able to see what I was doing, whether they were using magic or not. To the naked eye, we were invisible. When I was using magic, a warlock or witch would simply see us sitting on the warehouse floor, but at the same time there was an energy void around us. Voids were anomalies created by magic spells, which would raise questions should a warlock or witch stumble upon us. My plan wasn’t foolproof, but without the cloak, my healing spells would be like fireworks in a frigid winter sky.
“You using magic?” Bronx asked.
I sighed as the cloaking spell fell easily into place with a wave of my hands and a couple of whispered words. “Just a bit.”
“Don’t. You’ve … got enough problems.”
“Stop talking. You don’t want to distract me,” I said, earning me a low growl. “Got to heal you. I’m not carrying your heavy ass to the car.”
“Fucker.”
I smiled and closed my eyes as I placed both my hands on his shoulders. “Just a warning: this might not work. I’ve never tried it on a troll.”
Bronx stiffened under my fingers, sucking in a ragged breath. “Great.”
Truth was that I had never tried this healing spell on anyone but myself. Warlocks and witches were more concerned with their own survival. Hell, when we were learning to heal wounds, it was always the hard way. Our mentors beat us until we were barely conscious and then left us alone in an empty tower. You learned to heal yourself or you died overnight from a ruptured kidney or drowned in your own blood as it poured into your lungs.
Focusing on the spell, I sent a wave of energy coursing through Bronx’s body, kicking off the first phase of the spell. Organs were mended so that they were no longer losing vital fluids and were returned to normal functioning levels. They were still battered, bruised, and extremely sore, but no longer in danger of failing him. As the spell moved through him, I could feel each organ as it healed. One lung had been punctured and flooded with blood, the other bruised. A kidney had been badly damaged and it looked like his spleen was on the point of rupture. A few blood vessels had been crushed, but were now open again, sending blood through his body.
As the energy exited through my hands, I sent in a second wave. This was the painful one. Each broken bone was set back to rights, causing a sickening echo of snaps and clicking through his body. Bronx groaned loudly as the spell took effect, causing him to arch off the ground while trying to pull away from my hands. I rose up on my knees and pressed down, holding him in place. The spell needed additional time for the bones to properly set and harden again.
The second phase lasted less than a minute, but there was nothing I could do about the pain, leaving both Bronx and me covered in sweat and breathing heavily. The energy flowed back to my hands and I sent the final wave through. This one knit together any cuts in his skin, stopping any additional bleeding while urging his body to speed up the process of creating fresh blood to replace what he’d lost. There weren’t many cuts and the final wave returned to me after only a few seconds.
I fell backward, sitting on my ass on the cold concrete, trying to get my breathing to even out again. I was exhausted, but Bronx’s life was no longer in danger from his wounds. I looked down at my friend. He breathed evenly without the sickening rattle and squish I had heard before.
“What the hell did you do to me?” Bronx asked. He had yet to move and I was glad for it. He needed time to recover. You didn’t walk away from a troll beating even if you were a troll.
“Heal you.”
“Then why the hell do I still feel like