his blood to aid both Draicon and human. The elderly woman faced the inevitable. Her heart had given up, and it was simply her time to go.
The darkness rose inside him, smothering him with weary knowledge. He felt death grasp the woman.
He could do nothing.
Emily looked up at him with a pleading look. His chest tightened as she whispered into his mind. Help her, please, Raphael.
“I can’t,” he told her thickly.
Emily slid out of the booth and pushed through the crowd to the woman. She knelt gracefully at the woman’s side. Raphael snapped at the milling crowd to get back. They obeyed the steely command in his voice. Alarm filled him as his draicara picked up the victim’s pale hand in her gloved one.
Emily wanted to save a life that could not be saved.
He had to shield her from view. The bolt of energy directed at an empty table started a small fire under his control, but it caused enough of a distraction to take away people’s attention from what Emily was doing.
What she was doing made him stagger back in shock.
Her focus unabated, she tugged off her gloves, grabbed the woman’s steak knife and cut her hand. Emily held her bleeding palm over the woman’s parted, blue lips and dripped four drops of blood into her mouth.
As the cut on Emily’s hand healed, the woman began to cough and then gulped in several breaths. Emily pulled back on her glove, avoiding his gaze. She gently murmured comforting words to the woman.
Raphael lowered the blaze to a flame easily put out by the manager, who came bearing a small extinguisher. He helped the woman sit as his intense gaze pierced Emily’s.
“Thank you, young lady,” she said, looking up at Emily. “I don’t know what to say. When I saw you earlier, I thought you were one of those criminal bikers who terrorize people, and here you are, saving me,” the woman said, sounding contrite and confused.
“If someone dresses a little different, it doesn’t mean we’re bad. It was just a little scare, ma’am, and you can thank my girlfriend for knowing CPR,” he murmured, using a deep, hypnotic tone to convince the woman that was exactly what Emily had done to her. “You’d better think about getting yourself checked over.”
The woman started to thank him as well. She hiccupped. Her careworn face flashed surprise. “Oh, my. I feel…odd. Rather like I’m inebriated.”
Emily hiccupped as well and looked abashed.
Oh, hell, he’d better make a hasty exit. Raphael stood, taking Emily firmly by the elbow. He threw several large bills on their table, more than enough for the bill and the tip, and escorted her downstairs and outside.
Not until they’d reached his bike did he stop. His draicara kept hiccupping, until he told her to hold her breath. When she did and finally stopped hiccupping, he gripped her shoulders lightly.
“Emily, how did you restore life to that woman?” he questioned in a low voice.
Color tinted her cheeks. She hastily avoided his gaze. Raphael reached over, cupped her chin, forcing it up. “Emily, answer me.”
“I can’t stand seeing anything suffer, an animal, or a person or even a cranky old woman,” she said in a low voice. “I had to save her. Because she wasn’t dead yet. And I knew I could.”
He grasped both of her wrists gently, turned them over so her hands were palms up. “Your blood gives life.”
“Four drops of my blood.” Her full lower lip wobbled tremulously. “I was granted the gift of life with my first change into wolf. I can restore life with four drops of my blood, representing the four seasons. But when I turned twenty-one, Aibelle cursed me with the death touch. It was during a dream, when the goddess came to me and said the power of life and death rested within me. My hands now kill as well.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
He heard her audible swallow. “I was afraid you’d be like my people, and judge me as being proud, seeing this as another reason I shouldn’t live.”
“Hey,” he said softly. “I am not like them. I always investigate the facts. Did the goddess say why you were given the death touch?”
She wrinkled her brow as her gaze grew distant. “I couldn’t remember. But my aunt Bridget said I was cursed because of my pride and haughtiness.” Her voice dropped to a bare whisper. “It was after my first change into wolf that the pack started to avoid me, because I was different.”
It