M. Lee - Immortal.pdf

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Immortal * M. Lee
2
Immortal
E ILIF was born in a time when magic was dying. Its death
throes, thrashing across the land in great wars, were long
and painful. He thought he would die with it. But he didn’t.
Instead, he lived.
He was the last of the great sorcerers. The people
whispered his name in love and in fear. For a whiletwenty
years, he thought now, or perhaps a centuryhe went to
them when times were dark. He would appear in a
household when the mother was dying birthing a babe, or
when plague threatened a whole town. He stayed away from
the quiet little wars that peppered the land, now that magic’s
great time had passed. He had seen enough of them at his
love’s side. But eventually there came a day when his coming
was greeted not with awe, but terror, and he was driven off.
He allowed them to drive him off.
It was then that grief caught up with him. All that time
he had not let himself think of Jon. His liege lord was gone.
As good as dead. He had been mortally wounded, and all of
Eilif’s skill had not aided him in healing Jon. At last,
desperate, he had sent his lord out of time, to the in-between
place. Time, he hoped, would bring him the skills and tools
he needed to heal his lord.
His love.
And until then, he would just have to wait.
T HE emergency room was its normal hustle of efficient
nurses calling out names, someone’s child crying in pain, an
overwhelmed parent or wife arguing loudly that their family
should be bumped up the line, and random beeping. Eilif
ducked through it with ease, smiling at the on-duty desk
Immortal * M. Lee
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nurse and scrawling his name across the sign-in clipboard
she handed him. Julie, that was her name.
“In again, Dr. Jameson?”
Eilif shrugged. “You know how it is, Julie, always more
work to be done.” An ear-splitting shriek cut through the
ambient noise. He gave her a “ see? ” sort of look. She smiled
in wry acknowledgment.
“You’re on Hall Four, Dr. Jameson.”
Scooping his bag onto his shoulder, he went to scrub
up. “Thank you, Julie.”
As he strode down the hall, Eilif remembered the days
when he’d thought it would be magic that saved Jon. He’d
gone questing, nearly a century and a half of going from
place to place, learning all he could. His magic had been
pushed to its limits. Sometimes he had gone too far; there
had been more than one incident that had left him surprised
to be waking up. Some days, the ache of longing he felt
weighed down his bones and he wouldn’t have minded not
getting up again.
His magic wouldn’t let him die. That was the horror of it,
in those overwhelming moments of grief. He could lose
decades, sometimes, if he just laid down somewhere and let
himself go. But he always woke again.
Blinking, he forced himself to focus. Magic could do a
lot, but he was sure now that it was medicine that would
save Jon. A glimpse of white-blond hair caught his eye as he
pulled on his scrubs, and he made sure he tucked it up
properly. He was growing it long again, back to the length
Jon would remember it being. In those days, it was a tacit
admission that he was Jon’s bedmate. Now, it was more of a
nuisance than a pleasure, especially as a doctor. Infection
was more of a problem than he had known back then, but he
wasn’t about to lose his edge over daydreaming. It took
years, every decade or two, to reinvent himself as a doctor
and train to current standards. He couldn’t lose that time.
Immortal * M. Lee
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Not when he was so close.
Each wound Jon had taken on that long-ago battlefield
was etched in his mind’s eye. The vivid red of blood, the
depth of the stroke on his thigh, the arrow sticking from his
side. Eilif would know those wounds blind. So he knew the
exact moment when science and medicine had progressed
far enough that Jon’s life could be saved.
Eilif knew he would only have a single chance, but he
was certain now. He could save Jon. There was just one
small problem.
He would need another doctor. Once the stasis was
broken, Jon would bleed out in the time it would take Eilif to
get to all his wounds. Skilled surgeon though he was, there
was only so much one person could accomplish. There were
others here at Albion Hospital who were sufficiently
accomplished. There would be alarms going haywire, though,
if Eilif made a man appear out of midair. He couldn’t count
on everything settling down quickly enough to save Jon’s life.
And finding a doctor in these modern ages who believed in
magic was damnably difficult.
D AVID Dr. David Greenwas the latest in a series of
doctors. Eilif courted them, seeking the open-minded, those
interested in the mystical, any who gave some hint they
might be willing to work with magic.
David leaned back in his seat, turning his coffee in his
hands. “An interesting hypothesis,” he agreed. “A hundred
years ago, men might well have called what we do ‘magic’.
Magicor miracles, I supposeare anything we can’t
explain.”
“Hmm.” Eilif nodded. He was perfectly content to let
David rationalize magic, if that helped. “I’ve wondered before
what the next breakthrough of scientific understanding
might bring. There are an awful lot of strange things out
Immortal * M. Lee
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there. A childhood friend of mine is Pagan, you know, and
it’s fascinating, the things she can do.”
David shifted slightly. Eilif held back his smirk. David
cleared his throat, not quite looking Eilif in the eye. “I know
someone too,” he said softly.
Eilif nodded. David’s lover was one of the reasons Eilif
had approached him in the first place. “Amazing, isn’t it? I’m
not much of one for religion myself, but I’ve seen things I
can’t explain.”
A smile curved over David's lips for a quiet moment as
their eyes met. Eilif's heart beat loudly in his ears as time
drew out, lending a poignant weight to their tentative
understanding. “Yet,” David said.
Eilif laughed. “Yet,” he agreed, leaning back in his chair.
David picked up the conversational ball and began
expounding on some of the small oddities he’d noticed over
the years. Eilif nodded along, caught on the curve of David’s
jaw. The difficulty of living so long was that everyone
reminded him of someone.
Charles looked up from his treatise, trying to frown.
“Eilif? Are you even listening?”
Eilif brushed the wig out of Charles’s face. It looked
ridiculous on him. His jaw was too strong, his voice too
passionate when he spoke of philosophy. He was altogether
too present to look like a dandy.
“No,” Eilif confessed.
Charles tilted his head into Eilif’s touch. “Well, then.”
“Eilif?”
Eilif blinked guiltily. “Sorry, drifted off a moment there.”
David chuckled. “You’ve just come off a sixteen-hour
shift; it’s no wonder.”
Eilif let David make excuses for him and hoped his skin
didn’t show the blush thinking of Charles had brought. Jon
was a hole in his heart; it hadn’t been often he’d strayed. But

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