Strangers

Could he heal himself? Probably. But if he was shot dead? He would not be able to bring himself back to life. And if anyone else was shot dead, he was not sure he would be able to bring them back, either. It was no good being gifted with the power of a god if no clear instructions came with the blessing.
        Now, watching scores of bullets slam into the Jeep, watching it rush like a crazed and blinded beast down the hillside, seeing it come to a shuddering stop in the headlight beams of one of the vehicles on Vista Valley Road, Brendan felt his frustration ballooning beyond containment. The occupants of the Jeep had been hit. He could help them. He knew he could help them, and it was his duty to do so, not merely the duty of a priest but the minimal duty of a human being. He did not understand his healing power, either, but there was no greater danger in trying to use it than there was in attempting to employ telekinesis. So he thrust away from the Cherokee against which he had been standing, dashed through the group of soldiers whose attention had been distracted by the drama on the hillside, and ran toward the blasted Jeep even as it came to a stop.
        There were shouts behind him. He distinctly heard Falkirk warning him that he would be shot.
        Brendan ran anyway, slipping on the snowy pavement. He stepped into a ditch, fell, scrambled up, ran on to the bullet-riddled Jeep.
        No one fired, but he sensed people sprinting after him.
        The passenger's side of the Jeep was nearest, bathed in a beam of light from one of the military vehicles, so he pulled open that door first. A stocky man of about fifty, wearing a navy peacoat, was slumped against the door and fell out into Brendan's arms. Brendan saw blood, but not a lot. The stranger was conscious, though on the precarious edge of a faint; his eyes were unfocused. Brendan pulled him all the way out of the Jeep and lowered him gently onto his back on the snow-covered ground.
        A pursuing soldier put a hand on Brendan's shoulder, and Brendan whirled on him, screamed in his face: "Get away from me, you rotten-crazy son of a bitch! I'll heal him! I'll heal him!" Then he vented an oath of such a vicious, ferocious, and filthy nature that he was astounded to hear it pass his lips. He hadn't known he could use such obscene language. The soldier, thrown into an instantaneous fury, swung his machine gun high, intending to slam the butt into Brendan's face.
        "Wait!" Falkirk shouted, stepping in and grabbing his man's arm to halt the blow. The colonel turned to Brendan and regarded him with eyes like polished flint. "Go ahead. I want to see this. I want to see you incriminate yourself right in front of me."
        "Incriminate?" Brendan said. "What're you talking about?"
        "Go ahead," the colonel said.
        Brendan waited for no more encouragement but knelt at once beside the wounded man and threw the flaps of his peacoat wide open. Blood was soaking through the sweater in two places: just below the left shoulder; and low on the right side, a couple of inches above the beltline. He rolled up the victim's sweater, tore open the shirt beneath. Brendan put his hands on the abdominal wound first, for that appeared the worse of the two. He didn't know what to do next. He could not recall what he'd thought or felt when he had healed Emmy and Winton. What triggered the healing power? He knelt in the snow, feeling the stranger's blood oozing between his fingers, acutely sensitive to the life throbbing out of the man, yet unable to concentrate the miraculous power he knew was in him. Frustration filled him again, turned to anger, and the anger turned to rage at his own impotence and stupidity, at the injustice of death, this death specifically and all death in general-
        A tingle. In each palm.
        He knew the red circles had appeared again, but he did not lift his hands from the victim to look at those stigmata.
        Please, he thought desperately, please let it happen, let the healing happen, please.
        Amazingly, for the first time Brendan actually felt the mysterious energy flowing from him into the wounded man. It took shape in him and raveled out of him as if he were a spinning wheel and as if the wondrous power were the thread that he created. He whirled it into existence in the same manner by which the formless mass on the distaff was drawn into a strong filament of thread by the action of a