On Broken Wings (2 page)

Here they had found her, and here they had lost her. In the ten years had elapsed in between, they had passed through this area many times. If she had harbored a yearning for someone or something here, it would have surfaced before this. There would have been an escape attempt. There had been none.

Yet he could not accept the accident, the locale, and the disappearance as coincidence. More to the point, if Christine was still alive, as he was certain was the case, he was determined to retrieve her. If the accident had somehow been her creation, he would make her wish she had died in it.

No one defied Tiny.

====

Chapter
2

It was late afternoon when Christine was roused.

Though the pain from her face still roared, it had dulled enough to permit her to feel her other injuries in detail. She seemed to be bruised everywhere. Her left ankle was swollen and stiff. A huge ache resided at the base of her spine. Both her forearms throbbed as if they'd been crushed between boards.

"Miss?"

Her inner advisor, whom she called The Nag in the silence of her skull, came awake and began to talk.

If the white coat and stethoscope are any indication, this is a doctor. You'll have plenty of time for pain later. Concentrate on him.

"Yes, Doctor?"

He looked young, grave and puzzled. "Do you know where you are?"

She shook her head without thinking, and received a sharp jolt of pain along the back of her neck.

Don't do that again.

"This is Onteora General Hospital. Do you know what happened to you?"

"Bike went over."

He nodded. "Were you wearing a helmet?"

"Yeah. Came off, huh?"

He nodded again. "We had to do a lot of work on your face. Some of the sore places on your legs are because we needed skin for grafts."

She strove for calm. "You patched me up?"

"Yes, with a lot of help from another fellow you'll probably meet later. We did our best, but we'll have to wait and see on some of it. Not all skin grafts take properly, I'm afraid."

Fearing to tax her face too far, and uncertain what it would look like from beneath the bandages, she attempted a gentle smile. The pain wasn't too bad.

"Doctor, what's your name?"

He returned her smile with added wattage. "Miles Jefferson."

"Doctor Jefferson, I'm lucky to be alive, and grateful to have come under your care, and everything else can go to hell. Thank you."

You probably haven't said that much at one time in two years. Don't push your luck.

Jefferson's expression turned solemn again. "Your partner didn't make it, I'm afraid."

There was a momentary clenching in her chest. "I guessed."

"Was he your husband? A relative or friend?"

She tried to keep her voice steady. "Just a guy I met recently."

He reached down to the foot of her bed, lifted a clipboard from a hook there, and leafed through the papers on it. What he read appeared to perplex him.

"What is it, Doctor?"

"Miss, what's
your
name?"

Of course he doesn't know. You haven't carried any identification for ten years, at least.

"Christine."

"Just Christine?"

She opened her mouth and closed it again at once. If she had ever had a last name, she did not know it, and she had not prepared a lie.

Give nothing away. You don't know the stakes yet.

"Can we leave it at Christine for now?" She tried the smile again, and he shrugged.

"What was his name?"

"He told me to call him Tex."

"Just Tex? Nothing else?"

"Nothing else. Doctor, how long will I be bandaged?"

He peered at the clipboard. "I'd say about five days. The damage was extensive, and we don't want to risk infection while the grafts are still new. May I send an administrator in to talk to you now, or should he wait until later?"

"Could he wait until later, please?"

"Of course." Jefferson replaced the clipboard on the hook. "Get some rest. I'll be back to see you this evening." He pulled the door closed carefully as he left.

She took several slow, deep breaths. Whatever they had given her to dampen the pain was probably working as well as could be expected. Straining against the multitude of aches, she twisted, plucked the phone book from the nightstand, and began to riffle through it. She had to have a last name before the administrator arrived.

She'd known she'd be hurt, possibly even killed. At the last, it hadn't mattered much. The opportunity had been too good to squander. The Nag was there to remind her.

He's dead, and you're alive, and that's the way you wanted it. Now hope the others don't find you. If you have to stay here too long, they will, so get well.

***

Louis's fingers dug into the leather of the antique rectory armchair. "What can I do?"

"Only you know that."

"Father, please! Don't toy with me."

Father Heinrich Schliemann's face remained grave. "You know better, Louis. Try to take it seriously. You can do whatever you can do. But nothing is guaranteed to help."

Once more Louis Redmond felt coldness surge through him. He had pinned more hope on the old priest's wisdom and counsel than he'd realized.

The priest rose from the sofa, went to the rectory kitchen, and returned to the sitting room with a fresh pot of coffee. Rays of late afternoon sun shone through the half-closed blinds. The alternating bands of light and shadow gave the little room a surreal cast. Louis sat in silence as his pastor poured for them.

"You're not the first. In all your pride, you could never think that. If there were some formula, some magic string of words I could recite that would restore your faith, I could convert the whole world." Schliemann returned to the sofa and shook his head, smiling ruefully through the murk. "Too much power for a parish priest."

"I thought you were a vicar of Christ. Christ could have done it." Louis was surprised by the bitterness in his own voice.

But Schliemann was shaking his head again.

"What? Why not?"

"Because he would not. The nature of omnipotence is generally misunderstood."

"Enlighten me, please."

The priest's lips thinned. "Such pride, Louis."

"Father, I'm asking you to perform your most fundamental function: to explain the mind of God to man. Or have you decided to renounce the cloth as soon as you can acquire a new wardrobe?"

Schliemann sighed. "Theologians have regretted the use of the word 'omnipotence' since the founding of the Church. A much better term would be 'control over natural law.' That's reasonable, since natural law is only a thought in the mind of God, as is all the rest of the natural world it governs. But it has no relevance to supernatural law, which binds both God and man."

Louis raised an eyebrow. "Supernatural law?"

"Yes, Louis, the supreme law, the law that transcends law. The law that says that a statement cannot be both true and false. The law that says that each thing is what it is, and nothing else. Man is free, because God made him so. It is Man's nature to be free. The Almighty Himself could not impose faith upon you, not with all His force. Not without making you something less than a man."

The priest went to the window and surveyed the street beyond. The rectory was in a poor part of Onteora, where land was cheap but few cared to own it. One walked the streets carefully here, and only in daylight. Yet, in the afternoon sun, with spring slowly returning vitality to the land, even that seedy semi-commercial street had an air of promise.

"You've been dealt a serious blow, no doubt of it. But you still have a great deal: wealth, intelligence, ability, integrity. Use them. Do what you can. Do what you've always done: act with love toward those whom God puts in your path. But don't expect the return of your faith by way of recompense. It simply doesn't work that way."

Louis bowed his head. "Knowing what you know, having heard what you've heard, are you still willing to see me?"

The corners of Schliemann's mouth lifted in an involuntary grin.

"Louis, I wouldn't turn you away if the Devil himself rode on your shoulders."

***

Tiny was still sprawled on his couch, fuming, when Hans returned that evening. As Hans slipped through Tiny's door, Tiny looked up, glowered briefly, and looked away.

Hans, a big curly blond of Swedish descent, was one of Tiny's seconds-in-command. He also fancied himself to be Tiny's friend. He wasn't far wrong, though friendship of the conventional sort wasn't part of Tiny's range of emotions.

Hans felt the responsibilities of his position more keenly than one might suppose. He felt an obligation to his mates, to guide and protect them as best he could. He felt a greater obligation toward his leader, to see his wishes carried out while protecting him from the excesses of his temper, when that was possible. Hans owed a great debt to Tiny. Riding with the Butchers was Hans's preferred mode of life, as it was Tiny's, and Hans credited Tiny with its continued existence.

Like Tiny's, Hans's intellect was untrained but considerable. He tried to use it, when circumstances warranted. This seemed to be one of them. "Boss, I've been thinking."

Tiny's gaze flickered back toward his underling. His expression was still one of impatient rage, as if to say
this had better be good.

"The way Tex got himself smeared, she mighta been hurt, too. She probably was, right? Maybe even bad. What if some local fuzz picked her up and took her to a hospital or something?"

Tiny's eyes widened and his attention became unconditional. A wolfish grin spread over the coarse features of the head Butcher. He hoisted himself upright and rubbed the stubble on his face.

"Now I remember why I keep you around. Where are the others?"

Hans shrugged. "Maybe half a dozen at the Crazy Clown. The rest are scattered all over hell and gone."

Tiny scowled, then shrugged. "Well, it's my doing. They'll be back by dawn, most of 'em. Tomorrow should be time enough. Go over to the Clown and bring me back a Yellow Pages."

As Hans turned and made to comply, Tiny spoke again. "Hans?"

The lieutenant turned back toward his leader. "Yeah, Boss?"

"Ever stormed a hospital?"

====

Chapter
3

Christine slept away the next three days. Her body had its own imperatives, and her anxieties were reduced to spectators until it said otherwise. But there came a morning when she was ready to try the world beyond the door of her room. The day nurse agreed, although she advised Christine not to tire herself out. They disputed over a wheelchair, but Christine cut the nurse off after two salvoes and strode out. Her legs weren't that sore.

The third-floor patients' lounge was moderately populated. Her powers of locomotion were high for that crowd. Until she arrived, everyone not on crutches was in a wheelchair. A surprising number of patients had facial bandages like her own, and many of the others bore livid facial scars.

She found a small unoccupied sofa bathed in the morning sun, and eased herself onto it. Sitting felt strange after three days spent exclusively on her back. She closed her eyes and slumped, letting the sunlight warm her face through the bandages.

As she relaxed, the sounds of the lounge began to sort themselves out. Snatches of conversation, murmured prayers, the occasional groan or whimper. Now and then there was a creak from a wheelchair in transit, or the peculiar rhythm of crutches thudding across the linoleum. At irregular intervals, the public-address system would call the name of a doctor or nurse. Underneath it all was a low, whooshing rumble of air passing back and forth through the room, propelled by the hospital ventilating system.

After a while, she straightened and tried to pay attention to what was going on around her, if only for practice. The high percentage of the patients there who were facially disfigured, or who appeared to be headed that way, had not changed. There were no hospital personnel evident, nor did any appear during the subsequent hour. Movement around her was slow and labored. She remained the only occupant of the lounge who needed neither crutches nor wheelchair until just before noon.

She had sat alone for more than two hours when a new patient walked in normally, breaking her monopoly on ambulatory status. He was an ordinary-looking young man, perhaps a little shorter than she, with the dark eyes, thick dark hair, and pallid complexion of the long-time northern families. He was dressed in street clothes and bore no mark of calamity, save the tight discomfort evident in his face and the hunch of his shoulders.

He hesitated when he noticed her attention upon him, then headed toward her. "Is this seat taken?" His voice was soft and pleasant.