Healing Ties (Ties, Book 2) | ✓

Chapter 2

Fanner didn't know how long he'd laid there for, but by the time he undid the strap binding his other wrist and sat up the blood that had pooled beneath him had grown thick and tacky. Whelan still lay on the floor where he'd fallen. He hadn't moved.

Fanner looked at the cuff that was still around his wrist from the restraint. The strap had been burned through. Fanner hadn't known he could make fire. He undid the buckle and dropped the cuff to the floor.

There was still an open gash in his side, and when he moved things poked out of it that he'd really prefer stayed inside of him. Fanner undid the leg restraints and then pinched the skin on his side together to hold everything in place as he got up.

He ignored Whelan for now. What had he done?

There were bandages in a cupboard at the back of the room. Fanner wrapped one tight around his midsection, holding everything in place.

Was he going to die? Part of him wanted to. It would simplify things.

Fanner went and checked on Whelan. His eyes were open, staring up. He showed no signs of breathing. Fanner took a shaky breath as he carefully knelt and placed a hand on Whelan's arm, confirming what he already knew: Whelan was dead.

Fanner sat on the floor next to the body, in a pool of his own blood, his arms wrapping around his knees. This was why healers were illegal. They were too dangerous.

Fanner had known for some time now that he could draw energy out of other living things. They had an old cow outside that he took energy from to help restore himself. He'd always felt like he needed to be careful with it, that taking too much could harm her and that using a person for this purpose could be risky. He had even once accidentally knocked her unconscious, but it had never occurred to him that he might kill someone that way in a moment of desperation. It had never occurred to him that if he was put in such a situation he wouldn't just let himself die.

Mr Burrows was expecting that kidney. How long would he wait before he came to find out what had happened? What would he do when he saw what Fanner had done?

Surely Fanner would be killed. Mr Burrows had been willing to defy the law by intentionally breeding and keeping a healer, but now that Whelan was gone he wouldn't risk his own life by dealing with Fanner directly. Especially not now that he'd proven himself dangerous.

Part of him — a large part of him — wanted to just wait and let it happen. What else could he do? He had nobody else, nowhere else to go. Even if he did, he had a tracking chip inserted into his back, next to his spine. They would find him.

He was quite flexible, though, and he was a healer. Unlike others, he had a sense of exactly where his chip was.

Fanner found himself picking up the scalpel and reaching around to cut into his skin, but his hand was shaking and even though he could reach the part of his back where the chip was located it wasn't easy to angle the scalpel correctly. A stream of fresh blood trickled down his back, but at this point pain and injury meant nothing.

A single, confident press and the scalpel lodged deep in his skin, not quite where he needed it, but if he angled it and pressed deeper... yes, that was it. He pulled the scalpel out and let it drop to the floor and then pressed against the sides of the cut with blood slick fingers until he felt the chip slip out.

He held the tiny chip out in front of him on his fingertip and stared at it, the pit of dread deepening in his stomach.

Why had he done this?

Maybe he could just poke it back in and nobody would ever know. He could still take this back, right? Except... except he was pretty sure the chips monitored lifesigns, and if his was no longer inside his body...

He was so stupid. Danya and Duran had always insisted that he wasn't, that he was just easily distracted and didn't always stop to think things through and that wasn't the same as being stupid, but it was going to get him killed no matter what you wanted to call it.

It was hard to think, so he gave up on trying and just acted. He went outside, walked down the hill, and dunked himself in the creek. He had always hated washing himself by hand. Magic was so much more efficient, especially with things like blood. He couldn't spare the energy just then, though, so he rinsed himself as well as he could in just a few minutes and called it good enough.

He headed back inside, dried himself, and replaced his wet bandages with dry ones. His insides were no longer threatening to escape his body, but one wrong movement could tear the wound back open and change that. Fanner dressed, Fanner put on his travelling cloak to disguise his extremely noticeable golden hair, and Fanner left the house.

There were two options before him now. He could take the horse and follow the road to... somewhere. The nearest city, he supposed. But then what? There was no disguising what he was. Nobody would offer him safe harbour.

The other option was to walk off into the woods. This also seemed like an extremely bad and deadly idea, but Fanner at least felt like there was uncertainty attached to it. He literally did not know what he might find out there. Sure, the leading possibilities were monsters that would eat him or eventual death from starvation, but at this point he fancied his chances with monsters better than with humans.

Fanner flipped his hood up, picked a direction, and walked off into the woods.

Fanner had been walking for around half an hour before the pain really started to hit him. Every step hurt. Every breath hurt. His side was sliced open deep enough that his intestines had been threatening to spill out. The cuts on his back were nothing in comparison, but they stung too.

And he was tired. The adrenaline and the energy he'd stolen from Whelan had kept him on his feet this long, but he had lost more blood than he'd realised he'd had in his body. He shouldn't have still been standing, let alone walking around.

He found a stream and drank from it. He hadn't brought anything with him but the clothes on his back. No food or water or tools to make a fire. Though apparently he could make fire on his own. That was new.

He sat down to rest, just for a minute, and then suddenly the light was dimmer and he realised the sun had started to set. He forced himself to stand, to keep walking, but when he looked around he realised he didn't remember which way he had been going.

Well, it didn't really matter as long as he didn't end up back at the cottage. He picked a direction and walked.

#

Yore lifted his big, furry head and drew in a deep breath through his nose. The smell of mage blood hung in the air. His nose didn't work as well as it once had, but that was a smell he'd become all too familiar with in recent years. He picked up the bag containing his belongings in his mouth and turned towards the direction of the smell.