Dead Man's Deal The Asylum Tales - By Jocelynn Drake Page 0,13

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