Marked by Magic (The Baine Chronicles #4)(41)

Right. The Jaguar Clan. What side did they stand on? Mafiela owed me for rescuing her granddaughter, Mika, from the Shifter Royale. That had been fun, particularly since Mafiela had ignored my warning about a possible kidnapper, and her daughter Melantha had then blamed me for Mika’s kidnapping. In fact, she’d come to my apartment and tried to kick my ass, and I’d had to threaten her with magical fire to get her away from me.

I know, I know. My loving family environment was a big part of why I had such a charming personality. But Mafiela had begrudgingly sent me a thank-you card after Mika’s rescue, so maybe if I went to see her and asked for her help on this, she’d actually invite me into the house for a real discussion instead of making me wait on the front porch.

Yeah, or she’ll just try to rip your face off again.

Okay, so maybe I didn’t have the mental fortitude to attempt a civilized conversation with my aunt just yet. But I could start by talking to Lakin, at the very least, and besides, I needed to make sure he was all right after his ordeal. Once I was done here in Maintown, I’d pop over to Shiftertown and see what kind of reception I got. Hopefully, Lakin wasn’t so angry at the Mages Guild that he’d refuse to work with me.

The sound of shouts and crying pulled me from my thoughts, and I looked around, trying to determine the source. There was nothing happening on the street I was walking on – I was in a residential area, all the shutters closed, all the doors locked, not a single person enjoying the summer night on their front porch – so I followed the direction of the noise, heading west. A couple of blocks later, I found myself across the street from a hospital. A large, horse-drawn cart had just pulled up in front of the two-story building, and as I crossed the street to get a better look, I saw wounded men and women being loaded onto stretchers and rushed inside. They seemed to be suffering from burns, cuts, and broken limbs.

“Hey, you there!” Someone tapped me on the shoulder, and I turned, startled to see it was a thirty-something civilian male, sweaty and dressed in a stained shirt and jeans. “Come, help us get these patients in! The hospital is short-handed. It has asked all able-bodied Maintown civilians to pull together and help. You look strong enough.”

“Uh, sure.” Since I wasn’t dressed as an enforcer, I couldn’t very well tell the guy I was on patrol, so I let him pull me forward and introduce me to the two hospital staff who were directing the transport of all these patients. We grabbed a stretcher, and I winced as they loaded an unconscious woman with a badly burned face onto it.

“What happened to all these people?” I asked the man as we carried the woman inside.

He looked at me as if I were crazy. “A battle broke out between the Resistance and the Mages at the Maintown-Shiftertown border. It was all over the radio. Didn’t you hear?”

“No, sorry,” I muttered. “I’ve been a little busy.” Obviously, this battle was a very recent development, since it hadn’t been mentioned at the meeting.

We carried the woman into a large room filled with beds. The stench of burnt flesh, blood, and other bodily odors and fluids filled the air, along with moans and cries coming from the other rooms. We deposited her as gently as we could onto the last available bed in the room, then went back out to grab the next victim. I hoped there were more beds in other rooms, because, otherwise, these poor patients were going to have to lie in stretchers on the floor as they waited for treatment.

It turned out that this wasn’t the first cart of patients to be dropped off, and nor was it the last. I helped unload three more carts, taking the wounded to different rooms depending on how the staff directed us. All the victims had major injuries – apparently, the ones who only suffered minor burns or scrapes were simply sent home with instructions for care, and told to come to the hospital if they needed supplies – but some were much worse off than others. The man with the broken arm, for example, was deemed much less severe than the woman bleeding out from a gash across her abdomen. As I watched the nurses triage them, I couldn’t help but feel grateful for my shifter abilities – these poor humans would take weeks or months to heal from their injuries, and some might never regain the mobility they’d once enjoyed.

I was impressed with how calm the hospital staff managed to remain in the face of such suffering, assessing each individual’s injuries and sending them off to the right department, and refusing to flinch or back down when some people thought their cases were more urgent than they actually were. They had a difficult job, and one I wasn’t sure I’d be able to manage with my temperament. Bedside manners weren’t really my thing.

Between unloading and delivering the wounded, I also helped bring food to recovering patients and overworked hospital staff. Repeatedly, I was asked to help hold a patient down so a broken limb could be set, or to assist in a minor surgery. As I stood by surgical tables, cleaning used tools and implements and passing over new ones, all while listening to whimpers and screams and trying to ignore the stinging antiseptic smell, I wondered why Iannis hadn’t thought to send a mage healer over to help treat the wounded. When I mentioned as much, both the doctor and a civilian volunteer standing nearby gave me withering looks.

“Haven’t the mages caused enough damage already?” the doctor snapped as she leaned over the abdomen of the patient she was stitching up. “We just want them to stay out of our lives. We don’t need them here in this hospital, barking orders and making things worse.”