getting hit by lightning?"
"That felt great!"
We were wandering off topic, and poor George was looking more than a little spooked.
"Well, this will, too. Now, I want you to just let that power move into your hand, your fingers, your palm. Then let it flow from you to George. Don't try to direct it. Just let it flow."
I remembered learning this, in fast, terse lessons from other Wardens who hadn't had the time to teach me all the proper techniques. Being a late bloomer meant I'd missed all the classical education, but I had a good working knowledge of down-and-dirty first aid. One of the key things Lewis had taught me was that if you don't know how to do fine control with Earth power, don't try. There's a certain instinct to it that pulls the power to where it's needed most. Bodies want to heal. All we have to do is help them.
"It's going in," Cherise said. I couldn't see a thing, but Kevin was watching in fascination, eyes gone wide and unfocused as he followed along in the aetheric. "I think it's working. I can see it in his blood. It's moving--there's some kind of a block. I think I can--"
"No!" both David and I said at the same time. I kept going. "No, I told you, let the power work. Don't try to direct it!"
From the look on her face, she was trying, but she'd already made the mistake, and I could see it in George's choked gasps. Wielding Earth power is like working with nanotechnology--you have to be able to make controlled, very slight adjustments at a microscopic level. It's not brute force.
Cherise cried out, and George arched his back. His eyes rolled back in his head. "I tore it!" she yelled frantically. "I tore something, it's all bleeding out--"
Kevin reached out and added his hand on top of Cher's, and even as magically blinded as I was, I felt the power flooding out of him. His eyes sparked and changed, and George's labored breathing suddenly and dramatically eased.
"Oh," Cherise said, in a very small voice. "Like that. I see."
Kevin sat back, staring at her with those glittering, powerful eyes, and he said, "Do you?
Because you almost killed this guy because you were stupid. She told you not to do that. You blew out an artery, for God's sake!"
Cherise went white, clearly horrified and shocked as Kevin turned on her. It wasn't him, I realized; it was the fact that with David's power, he was seeing way too much. He saw Cherise's secret delight in having power, finally --something that as a Warden he'd probably never have picked up, but it reminded him of someone else.
It reminded him of his stepmother, I realized. Yvette. He'd seen her turn into a predatory monster, driven by that same kind of excitement and ambition. What he saw in Cherise was the opposite of Yvette Prentiss ... a woman without any of that power, without any desire to have it or use it.
He was hating her right now, and she could tell.
"Hey," I said, and put my hands on their shoulders. "Good work. He seems better. George, are you feeling better?"
He nodded, but he looked scared. Well, I'd have been right there with him, if I'd had two amateur psychic surgeons rummaging around in my innards. "Who the hell are you people?
You with the government?" He was feeling better, because I heard suspicion kick in.
"In a way," I said. "Kevin, how's the patch? Solid?"
"It'll hold," he said. "He had a blocked artery. It's clear now. He'll be okay."
"Kev--," Cher said anxiously. He stood up and walked away, head down, hands in his pockets.
"I'm sorry! I didn't mean to do it!"
"Give him a minute," I said. "Cher, he's used to the other you. The one without powers.
He's never trusted other Wardens, not any of us, not deep down. He hates feeling that way about you, too. Understand?"
She didn't, really, but she blinked back tears and acted like she did. We got Mr. Bassey on his feet, had him walk around a little, and then put him back in his car. Mindy was extremely excited by this, and obviously protective; she stood with her stubby little legs on his and growled at us through the window.
"Do you have someplace safe to go?" I asked George, as he started up his car. He looked at me like I might have been completely insane.
"I'm going to the church," he said. "Devil's walking the streets, and