And I couldn’t look too closely at why that caused my own heart to break into a panicked sprint.
“We can heal him.” She hopped down onto my shoulder. “Maybe?”
“Maybe isn’t great for me.” I clutched my wand tighter. “I need you to be sure.”
Otherwise, we might cook his brain the way I flambéed the zombigo.
“We can…” she tilted her head, “…remove the bullets.”
Not without a knife, tweezers, flashlight, and a metal-detecting spell. “We can?”
“Yes.” She climbed up onto his shoulder. “Then he’ll heal.”
His knees buckled at that slight touch, and he slid through my arms to hit the damp earth.
“Asa?” I shoved the hair away from his face. “Can you hear me?”
“We need to do this.” Colby scurried onto his chest. “Hurry, Rue.”
With no sign of Clay, the only hope I had of getting him to the cabin, I had to side with her.
“Okay.” I clamped my eyes shut, my stomach roiling. “I’ll try.”
Low in her throat, Colby began to hum a tune that struck me as familiar. Her glow increased in time with its cadence, until she was as luminous as the moon on a starless night. When it hurt to look at her, she quit her song. Her brilliance was a balm to my dark soul, and I soaked in her goodness until it filled me.
“Now,” she breathed, her voice a vibration on the air. “Do it now.”
Wand hot in my hand, I touched it to the puckered edge of the worst of his injuries and shoved power into him until beams of light shone from the bullet holes, piercing the darkness like searchlights. His wounds, they…boiled…the blood foaming as the battered projectiles were ejected in metallic lumps. The raw skin sizzled and hissed as magic cauterized his injuries from the inside out, leaving a burnt-flesh smell behind.
The magic fizzled out of me, and I sank onto my haunches. I put away the wand and smoothed my hands over Asa’s chest and abdomen, stunned at the miracle Colby had worked through me with her magic. He would live. Already his heart thumped stronger in my ears, and his lids fluttered as he fought to surface.
Anger drove me to pick up a malformed bullet, and I squeezed it until the metal bit into my palm.
“Rue,” he exhaled my name, his voice a thready rasp of sound.
“I’m right here.” I clasped hands with him, pocketing the bullet. “I’m not going anywhere.”
“We did it.” Colby shot for the moon. “We did it.”
“You mean you didn’t know it would work?” I gawped at her. “I told you—”
“I heard a voice in my head, and you decided to listen to it.” She spread her hands. “It was fifty-fifty.”
As much as I wanted to snap at her, she had me there. I had known the risks and chosen to take them.
Heavy footsteps announced Clay’s arrival, and he jerked to a stop beside the charred zombigo.
“What the f—” he spotted Colby, “—fudgesicle happened here?” Then he sniffed. “What’s that smell?”
“Asa.” I squeezed his hand harder. “Colby healed him.”
A long whistle escaped Clay as he took in the proud moth’s fading glow. “Impressive, Shorty.”
“Can you help me get him back to the cabin?” I stared down at Asa. “He’s still out of it.”
“I’ll handle it.” He clamped a hand on my shoulder. “You did good, Dollface.”
“All I did was channel Colby.” I covered his hand with mine. “It was all her.”