of my will and my rage lashed out and shattered the wall into powder.
The sea came in with a roar, one enormous impact that felt like the strike of a hammer being applied to every square inch of my body at once.
Then it was cold.
And black.
Chapter Thirty-four
T he next thing I knew, I was coughing, and my chest hurt, and my head hurt, and everything else hurt, and I was colder than hell. I choked in a breath and felt my body getting ready to send up everything. I tried to roll onto my side and couldn’t, until someone pulled on my coat and helped me.
Fishy salt water and whatever had been in my stomach came out in equal proportions.
“Oh,” someone said. “Oh, thank You, God.”
Michael, then.
“Michael!” Sanya shouted from somewhere nearby. “I need you!”
Work boots pounded away at a sprint.
“Easy, Harry,” Murphy said. “Easy.” She helped me turn back over when I was done puking. I was lying at the top of the stairs to the lower level. My lower legs were actually on the stairs. My left foot was in cold water to the ankle.
I put a hand to my chest, wincing. Murphy smoothed a hand over my head, brushing hair and water away from my eyes. The lines in her face looked a little deeper, her eyes worried.
“CPR?” I asked her. My voice felt weak.
“Yeah.”
“Guess we’re even,” I said.
“Like hell we are,” she said quietly. “I only spit fruit punch into your mouth.”
I laughed weakly, and that hurt, too.
Murphy leaned down and rested her forehead gently against mine. “You are such an enormous pain in my ass, Harry. Don’t scare me like that again.”
Her fingers found mine and squeezed really tight. I squeezed back, too tired to do anything else.
Something brushed my foot, and I nearly screamed. I sat up, reaching for power, raising my right hand, while invisible force gathered around it in shimmering waves.
A corpse floated in the water, nude, facedown. It was a man I’d never seen before, his hair long, grey, and matted. His limp, outstretched hand had bumped against my foot.
My right hand remained where it was, fingers outspread, ripples of light flickering over them. Then they started shaking. I lowered my hand again, releasing the power I’d gathered, and as I did I felt my fingers tingle and go numb once more.
I stared at them, puzzled. That wasn’t right. I was fairly sure that I should be a lot more worried about that than I was at the moment, but I couldn’t put together enough cohesive thought to remember why.
Murphy was still talking, her voice steady and soothing. I dimly realized, a minute later, that it was the tone of voice you use with crazy people and frightened animals, and that I was breathing hard and fast despite the lack of any exertion to explain it.
“It’s all right, Harry,” she said. “He’s dead. You can let go of me.”
That was when I realized that my left arm had pulled Murphy tight against me, drawing her across my body and away from the corpse as I’d gotten ready to do…whatever it was I had been about to do. She was, at the moment, more or less sitting across my lap. Wherever she was touching me, I was warm. It took me a moment to figure out exactly why it was a good idea to let her go. Eventually, though, I did.
Murphy slid carefully away from me, shaking her head. “God,” she said. “What happened to you, Harry? What did they do to you?”
I slumped, too tired to move my foot out of the water, too tired to try to explain that I’d failed to stop the demons from carrying away a little girl.
After a moment of silence Murphy said, “That’s it. I’m getting you to a doctor. I don’t care who these people think they are. They can’t just waltz into town and tear apart my—” She broke off suddenly. “Hngh. What do you make of this, Harry?”
She took a step down into the water and bent over.
“No!” I snapped.
She froze in place.
“Jesus, those things get predictable,” I muttered. “Silver coin just fall out of the corpse’s fingers?”
Murphy blinked and looked at me. “Yes.”
“Evil. Cursed. Don’t touch it.” I shook my head and stood up. The wall had to help me, but I made it all the way up, thinking out loud on the way. “Okay, we’ve got