by Jax Garren
Rosalie nodded, handed the baby back to Javier, and walked tentatively toward her, as if she wanted to look but was also terrified.
Behind them, Cash read aloud what she assumed was Vince’s message. “I don’t want to see pictures of things you killed.”
“Told you,” Javier said.
“But it was with your ax. Send.” He paused, and Javier laughed. “Yes it was a bad guy. Period. Monster thing killing hookers. Send.” Another pause. “You’re no fun. Send.”
She stashed her gun, dug into the med kit for equipment, and took a blood sample from the not-a-zombie—a skill every CoVIn member was taught. Just like they’d planned to reteach Javier, until she’d intervened. She probably should’ve done a lot more of that for him. He’d just finished his classes so fast, faster than she’d realized was possible.
Was blood all he’d need to study this thing? He was a brain-doctor person; that was what neuro-whatever meant: brains. She’d looked it up. Should she get him brains to study? Cash hadn’t split the cranium. Getting out gray matter would be problematic. But if it helped…
She yanked Cash’s ax out of its midsection. Once again it didn’t bleed, just oozed. Weird. The weapon was double bladed, probably one side iron for dealing with errant fae and the other steel for dealing with everything else. The handle ended in a wooden stake with a metal tip to help pierce a vampire’s chest. Vince made cool weapons.
She looked from the blade to the thing’s head. Axes weren’t meant for delicate work, but maybe if she sliced the top of its head off, she could get to what was inside without scrambling it too much.
“Miss?” Rosalie asked. “What are you doing?”
Its fingers twitched against the concrete.
She cocked her head at them. Death twitch? Or…
The thing lurched to sitting and grabbed Rosalie by the ankle.
“Cash!” Emma yelled. Talk about selfies getting someone killed… She tossed the ax up, knowing Cash would catch it.
Rosie kicked out, but the thing didn’t defend itself, letting every blow land as it lunged for her head. It snapped its teeth at Rosalie’s face, like it would bite it off.
Emma yanked Rosalie backward.
The ax sliced the air again and crashed into the thing’s forehead, splitting its skull from the crown to between the eyes. Cash kept hold of his weapon this time. He stepped on the creature’s shoulder, using the leverage to yank it out, and once again the zombie went down. “Huh. On a one to ten, that just went from one to… two and a half.”
The thing grabbed his foot.
“What the…” He dodged back, out of its reach. The thing’s brainpan was split open, blood and brains on display through the wedge made by Cash’s ax. And yet it was still moving.
Clutching the baby in one hand, Javier pulled Rosalie farther away.
Emma pulled her gun and aimed for the line of red between the creature’s eyes. The gun went off with a crack and a burst of smoke.
The thing dropped backward again, crumpling completely.
Cash stood over it with the ax, no longer dismissing the threat.
“Shit,” Javier said.
Emma turned toward whatever had caused that uncharacteristic outburst.
“It’s nothing,” Rosalie said. Blood trickled down her forearm.
“It’s just a bite. I had worse.” But she hissed and held her arm. Drawing blood with a human’s blunt teeth would hurt like hell compared to a vampire’s. Javier, though, had already gone to the med kit and come back with vampire speed, leaving the baby on the ground beside it.
“We’re cleaning that out.” Antiseptic came out and Javier dumped half a bottle onto Rosalie as she hissed and then howled as he swabbed the wound with multiple Q-tips.
“You’re hurting her,” Emma said.
Javier’s gaze strayed from Rosalie to the zombie. At least in the movies, zombies reproduced by biting.
His gaze found hers, and for the first time since she’d come back, her fledgling looked at her seriously. “We’re solving this.”
* * *
Frustrated as hell, Javier was, once again, stuck in a fucking waiting room—this time in CoVIn’s so-called hospital. The waiting area was tiny but lavish, with plush chairs and a Persian rug—because every hospital needed a Persian rug.
He took the baby from Emma, who couldn’t seem to figure out how to hold him, and sunk into an overstuffed couch. Rosalie had protested, but she was in a hospital room getting examined by people who’d become doctors around the time a medical degree was invented. He hoped they washed their hands. “They don’t have basic chromatography. It’s like I’m in the 1800s.”
Emma lowered slowly into the chair next to him. “Been there. Ain’t a good place to be.”
They’d grudgingly let him back into their pathetic lab, but he’d made one little comment on what a nice microscope they had, which maybe had sounded sarcastic, and then he’d been ushered back out. Somebody just north of a witch doctor was treating his patient.
“She’s gonna be fine. That cut was teeny.” Emma made light of everything: her past, the way he felt about her—he was going to get over that stupid crush—and now this.
Everything inside him tensed in anger. Dopamine. Epinephrine. Glutamate. Norepinephrine. Oxytocin. Serotonin. “I’m not worried about the cut. I’m worried about transmission and infection.”
She looked at the floor, her perma-grin drooping. “I know.” She patted him on the knee, her fingers so hot it made him realize how cold he’d gotten. “Why do you care so much? You got no connection to her.”
“Because she’s a person and therefore she matters.” He rubbed the baby’s back, soothing it to sleep. “And she reminds me of one of my sisters.” Monica had run away with her boyfriend the year before. Rosalie’s eyes looked just like hers.
“I didn’t know you had more than one.”
The baby snored, content with a belly full of formula, and it made him smile just a little as he leaned back into the couch. At least waiting at CoVIn was more comfortable than anywhere else he’d spun his wheels. “My dad’s side. I didn’t grow up with them.” Six kids, all born after his dad had married a nice woman—a woman who was cool with him coming around occasionally but didn’t want to co-parent a boy who wasn’t hers with Danielle.
He couldn’t blame her, and not just because of Danielle. She was a janitor; his dad was a painter. They didn’t need an extra mouth to feed. He didn’t know that part of his family, the calm and cheerful part, as well as he’d like, but they kept up on Facebook and attended each other’s graduations and whatnot. He’d had his own little cheering section at his MD graduation, Monica among them, with that asshole she’d run off with.
Emma’s hand was still on his thigh, and she squeezed. “We don’t know what’s happening. She’s probably going to be just fine.”
All at once, he wanted to fling off her hand or move it higher up his leg or lean into her like the friend she wasn’t. He got attached too easily, an attachment disorder—psychologists had labels for everything—that was common in foster kids. The neurological connections created in the first three years of life through interactions with a parent figure formed a pattern for building relationships that usually lasted the rest of a person’s life. It was why he usually didn’t do one-night stands; the morning after always turned into a sappy pop song.
He’d only taken Emma home because he’d already liked her enough to hope for more than one night. “Yeah,” he muttered, not even sure what he was responding to.
“Prepare for the worst, sure, but don’t assume it. Never helps.”
Then why do you assume the worst about me? She blinked at him, and he realized he’d said it out loud. Shit. It wasn’t even true. She hadn’t left because of anything he’d done any more than his mother ever had. He knew that with a logic borne from study.
“What makes you think that?”
He didn’t think that at all. He just believed it. He stood up. “Forget
it.”
“Because I skipped town? Ever dawn on you, boy, that I left because I like you too much?”
That wasn’t true either. She didn’t know him. “Ever dawn on you, after I’ve asked you dozens of times not to call me ‘boy,’ that I don’t like it?” The baby snorted. His voice was too loud. He bounced the child and shushed at him, hoping he would go back to sleep.
She sank back into the seat. “Shit, b—Javier. I don’t mean nothing by it. I call everyone that.”
He’d never heard her call Cash boy or any other terms meant to diminish, but pointing that out would just keep them fighting. Getting into another spat with Emma was not going to help anything, so he shut his mouth. Maturity, thy name is Javier.
Speaking of, the blond devil came whistling into the waiting room.
“Hey, sweet cheeks. Get your report in?”
Javier gritted his teeth. Sweet cheeks. Not boy.
Cash’s whistle petered out as he looked Javier up and down. “What are you doing out here playing padre? Don’t you diagnose shit for a living?”
Of all the creatures on the planet, his sister’s party-boy fuck buddy was taking him seriously. “After pointing out that they have no useful equipment, I was escorted from the lab.”
The tiniest hint of a frown creased Cash’s forehead. He held up a finger and strode to the reception area. “Who’s in charge of Miss Whatever-the-fuck-her-name-is’s case? The teen hooker who came in with them.” He pointed a thumb back at them.
“Cash Geirson. Omigod, you’re Cash Geirson. You’re here. Omigod.”
Cash smiled like he was getting photographed for vampire GQ. Which actually existed. Cash was, of course, their favorite topic.
The flustered woman flipped through paperwork without looking at it. “Oh. Oh. Yes. Uh. One second.” She glanced down for a fraction of a nanosecond, then back at Cash. “Dr. Thibeault.”
“Send him out here.”
“He’s—”
“Now, doll.” His tone was a study in patronizing friendliness.
At her nod, Cash patted her cheek, and instead of being wildly insulted, she blushed and smiled like he’d given her an award.
An about-face, and his blank expression said he’d already forgotten all about her. “Paperwork is in.” He rubbed his hands gleefully. “Time to kill zombies. Or whatever the fuck that was. The re-rising-from-the-dead part could be challenging in packs.”
The doors from the main lobby burst open, and a curly-headed teenager with blazing eyes strode in. Javier straightened as Emma sunk back into her seat as if she could disappear. The petite brunette was the daughter of a tribal Welsh chieftain, a witch with two thousand years of practice, and the first vampire to ever have a soul—Queen Modron, CoVIn’s ruler. And she looked pissed.
Cash ignored his sire’s wrathful stare and motioned casually at the medical offices. “Our hospital is disgracefully out of date. Do I have to fill out paperwork to get new equipment, or can you just okay it? I hate paperwork.”
“You killed a human in his own neighborhood? With an ax?”
Javier glanced at Emma. Technically she’d killed it. Apparently Cash had given himself credit. Emma sank farther into the chair, as if to stay out of the way. Maybe now wasn’t a good time to correct his error.
“Monster. I axed a draugr who was attacking people and had turned on us.”
She lifted an eyebrow. “Who attacked first?”
“The thing. Killed a woman—which I wrote about on your stupid form—and attacked another.”
Modron didn’t even blink, her steely green gaze boring into Cash. “According to a low-rent prostitute. When you saw the human, who attacked first?”
Cash didn’t answer right away.
“Don’t lie to me.”
He shifted back onto his heels and rolled his neck like a busted teenager. “Me.”
The queen stepped forward until she was eye to eye with Cash… or would be if she were a foot taller. Even so, Javier wouldn’t want to be on the receiving end of that dark-eyed glare. “You are the general of my army. You can’t make mistakes like this. That was a city councilman you put an ax through. We can’t just sweep that aside like some nobody.”
Javier glanced at the baby—a city councilman’s son. Now an orphan.
Cash’s casual attitude crumpled. “Fuck.”
“Yes. Shit. Alexandre would not make a mistake like that.” Alexandre Moreau was practically engaged to one of Rhiannon’s good friends, so Javier had gotten to know the former Napoleonic spy. He was a good guy, but not one of the queen’s fledglings, so he’d never rise to the same level of power as happy-go-lucky Cash. Because… nepotism.
“You hate Alex.”
“But he”—she grabbed his arm, and blue sparks, the beginnings of a spell, gathered at her fingers—“would not make a mistake like that.” Lights danced in her eyes as her power built. The queen was right. Alex would’ve learned everything he could before charging in. Alex fought smart and followed rules. He was exactly the kind of levelheaded, intelligent person Javier strove to be—unlike Cash, who took his advantages for granted and barreled headlong into every trouble he could find.
None of that mattered. Cash looked like he was forcing his muscles to relax, prepping for a magical assault like it was far from the first time he’d endured this pain, so Javier stepped up. “I’d given my medical opinion that transformation had occurred. The councilman was already deceased and therefore already undead when he came at us. Cash saved me, Emma, and two additional humans with his actions.”
He could feel all eyes on him, and it unnerved him to draw negative attention to himself like this. From the little Javier had seen, Modron was scary old. She was old pagan—not in a “my sister the witch” way, but a “when I was a kid we put people in a wicker man and set them on fire… I’m not sure why we stopped doing that” way.
It didn’t matter who or what else she was, though. Modron was Cash’s sire. Tough as he was, he shouldn’t have to take abuse alone—or at all. Javier put the sleeping baby on Emma’s lap and turned back, forcing his own muscles to relax. A blow hurt more if you tensed. “If Cash is to be reprimanded for his actions, I should be as well.”
Cash shot him a warning look. “Don’t.”
Emma stood up, clutching the baby like a shield. “Me too. I was part of the fight.”
Cash tipped his head, chin high and jaw tense like he was irritated at the interference. His voice was light as always as he tossed out, “You two are nuts as fuck.”
Modron dropped his arm, stepping away with a dark look. But the immediate threat was gone. “No more stories about zombies.” She sailed toward the door.
Cash narrowed his eyes at Javier before turning to the door. “My queen.”
She stopped, ancient eyes turned back on him. “What?”
“The hospital. We need better equipment.”
“What good does human equipment do vampires?”
Cash nodded toward Javier. “He’s studying occult biology. We could possibly increase our turning odds.” A human who was bitten and then drank the blood of a vampire only had about a fifty-fifty shot of turning into one. Javier was lucky to be on the winning half.
The lie surprised him—he’d never even thought of researching that—but when Modron looked at him, he nodded, instinctively siding with Cash.
Her chin went up. “Order what you need.” Then she was gone, and the room breathed of blessed quiet.
Emma sighed in relief, but her expression was dark. “Yeah, Cash, next time you kill a monster, make sure it started out poor, black, or otherwise undesirable.” Her sarcasm took Javier by surprise; he’d never heard her sound so angry before. Not that she didn’t have a point. “Rich white monsters on city councils get a pass.”
The door opened again, and Charlie Travert entered, tugging Vince Pagano, Cash’s weaponsmith and Rhiannon’s best friend, behind him. Vince said something enthusiastic about wedding music over his shoulder, probably back
to Modron, who would be officiating their wedding next summer.
Then he grinned and dashed to Javier for a hug. “Jav-ster!” Hug received, he ran to Emma and retrieved the now awake infant. “Woman, you do not know how to hold a baby. Come here to Uncle Vince. Look at you! Yes! You! Gayby-sitters have arrived! We’re going to have so much fun!”
Charlie followed him more sedately but seemed just as enthralled by the infant, chucking him under the chin and making faces. “Gayby-sitting? That’s bad even for you.”
Vince stuck his tongue out.
Javier couldn’t help teasing them. “So, marriage this summer. When’s your baby arriving?”
Charlie snorted like that was hilarious, but Vince bounced the baby and took the question seriously. “We haven’t talked about it. I was thinking around thirty we could start—me thirty, obviously, not mister three hundred and un-aging over there. That gives us a few years together first.”
“We can’t—” Charlie started, but a look from Vince silenced him.
“We can. But if you don’t want to…” Vince bumped hips with him, softening his stern look with the touch. “We can talk about it later. But we’d be great parents.”
Charlie frowned like he was processing that. As old as he was, he often had a hard time accepting progress Vince took for granted. They were good for each other—Charlie the stable one, keeping Vince’s wilder tendencies in check, and Vince the hopeful one, helping Charlie come out of his shell. After a moment, Charlie shot a sly smile to Cash, as if he’d figured out an easy solution to the debate. “What do you think about a baby in the house?”
Emma laughed. “Uncle Cassius!”
Cash shrugged like it was fine with him, and judging by the looks everyone shot him, Javier wasn’t the only one surprised.
Charlie’s brow shot up. “You wouldn’t mind?”