by Cari Z
It was strangely cold inside the room, and I shivered as the warmth of the hallway dissipated. I closed the door behind me and looked around. A governor’s suite apparently consisted of a bunch of useless extra space, as well as a television the size of a bed. I crept quietly along the hardwood floor, every sense alert for a noise, a sound, but there was nothing. I looked in the kitchenette―uninhabited. Shit. Had I missed my chance entirely? I moved on to the bedroom, glanced inside, and―
“Oh, fuck.”
Chapter Eleven
There was a body on the bed. It didn’t move, not even the barest rise and fall to indicate breathing. The head was turned to look my way, eyes open and sightless, pupils tiny and fixed. There was a dead body on the bed, and I recognized it. It took me a few seconds of deep breathing and biting my lip so hard I drew blood before I could acknowledge that yes, the body was Sören’s. I forced myself to step closer and take another look.
Yeah, it was Sören…but dead might have been an overstatement.
Seems like an odd thing to say, but I’d met more than a few people who dabbled in necromancy in my travels, and according to one of them, the body in front of me might be lifeless, but it wasn’t dead. Sören’s cheeks were flushed, his skin tone was normal―hell, he was even dressed in a suit, shockingly dark against his fair skin. He wasn’t breathing, didn’t respond when I touched him, but his hand was warm. The body was still alive, but what was keeping it going, I didn’t know.
There was stuff I needed to be doing, plans I needed to be enacting, but at that moment I just―couldn’t. I couldn’t make myself move other than to sink down beside the bed and stare into Sören’s blank face, his glassy eyes, and heave a huge, shuddering sigh of relief. I took his closer hand in my own and gazed at it. I’d never seen anything so beautiful before: those were his long slender fingers; there was the scar on his knuckle that he told me he got when he was eleven. This hand had touched me, held me, worshipped me. He might not be able to respond, but he was familiar. All of it was familiar.
I checked his eyes again just to make sure, and―nope, nothing. Not a hint of his fate, not even a quiver within me. Sören was completely checked out. On the plus side, I couldn’t see any indication that he was under the kind of spell that would dissipate if he was moved. That was good, since I had no intention of leaving him here. I knew people, specialists, who could help me figure him out. I was going to save him the way he’d saved me so long ago. I was going to do better by him, and I was going to figure out why my vision of his fate had gone so strange. I could work it out.
First things first, though, I had to get him out. If I were built like Sören or one of his brothers, I could have just hoisted him into a fireman’s carry and called it a day. But even though he was definitely the baby of the bunch, he still had two inches and probably thirty pounds on me. Carrying him would have been a tough sell if I was completely whole and in control. With a bullet wound in my arm, there was no way that was going to happen.
Good thing I’d come up here with a baggage cart.
Forcing myself to let go of his hand was ridiculously difficult. I wanted him to wake up. I wanted to speak some magic words or prick his finger on a spindle or cover him with fairy dust or whatever the fuck you did in stories to make someone wake up. My soul felt like it was teetering on the edge of a precipice of guilt, a depthless chasm I’d plastered over for the past two years that was back with a vengeance. I would either be pulled back onto the ledge if I could wake Sören up, or fall headfirst into something I wasn’t ready to consider yet if I couldn’t.
I squeezed Sören’s hand and then set it back down on the comforter. I needed the baggage cart. No one had entered the room yet, but the clock was ticking. I walked back into the suite’s foyer and opened the door, surreptitiously checking to make sure the baggage cart holding my stuff was still there―yes. So far, so good. I took a breath, let it out slow, and then walked over to the elevators. I grabbed the cart by one shiny brass rung and pulled it behind me toward the suite.
“Excuse me, sir? Do you want me to clean your room now?”
I stopped, my shoulders tensing painfully before I forced them to relax. I turned around and addressed the woman at the end of the hall. “No, it’s fine, thank you.”
She frowned. “Four days and no cleaning…are you sure?”
“Quite sure, thank you.”
“As you wish, sir.” She went back to her business, and I went back to pretending my heart hadn’t been about to jump through my throat. I maneuvered the cart into the suite, shut the door behind me, and headed down the hall. I also pulled my phone out and called Andre; I was going to need him for what came next.
He picked up on the third ring. “Cillian, what’s up?”
“How soon can you be at the Omni?”
“The hospital I’m at is only five minutes away, but man, this labor has barely started. We’re going to be here for hours.”
“Then you can take some time off to give me a hand and be back before the happy event culminates.” I considered the layout of the bedroom, trying to figure out how close I could wedge the baggage cart to the bed.
“Giving birth isn’t a race, man―it’s not just the ending that counts.”
“Uh-huh,” I agreed. “And does your sister-in-law want you there for her screaming, panting, pushing, swearing phase, or would she rather see you when she’s in the ‘Thank god that’s fucking over with, come admire my baby’ phase?”
Andre was silent for a long moment. “Fine, I’ll see what I can do.”
“Don’t see, just do it. Be in the Omni garage as soon as possible. I need a hand carrying a package out of here.”
“What kind of package?”
“The important kind,” I said softly before I hung up. Andre didn’t need details right now―they’d just encourage him to be more curious. Curiosity could wait until we got Sören out of here.
I had to get him on the cart. I pushed it as close as I could to the bed and then looked at him and sighed. “I’m so sorry, baby,” I muttered as I reached for his legs. His long, long legs… Damn, they went on for miles, and I needed to stop thinking about them and start moving them. I pulled them down onto the cart, folding them a little as they went before tackling his midsection. His head―I had to protect his head. I hoisted his shoulders up with my good arm and eased him off of the mattress.
Bang. I fumbled the landing, and his right shoulder slammed into the vertical rod of the cart, almost tipping it over onto its side. I swore and sat down on the far side and then wrapped my arms around Sören’s chest and hauled him into a more central position. Wow…awkward. He looked like a broken mannequin, and I was briefly very grateful he wasn’t alive, awake―whatever it was―to recognize his own indignity. I rearranged his legs and shifted his chest around so all of his upper body was almost, kind of, fitted on the cart. If I tossed a blanket over him, he’d―well, to my eyes, he’d still look like a body covered by a fucking blanket, but beggars couldn’t be choosers. I threw the comforter over the top of him, wincing a little as I did so. Wha―shit. My arm was bleeding again. I’d probably torn a few stitches.
I didn’t have time to worry about it. I pulled my waistcoat and jacket back on, stuffed my tie in my pocket, and figured that at least if I bled through the jacket, it wouldn’t be visible since the fabric was dark.
Okay: I was put together, Sören was on the cart, and Andre was on the way. Now I just had to make it down to the parking garage. Piece of cake.
The cart was a lot harder to maneuver with two hundred pounds of Icelandic muscle and bone on it, but I managed to get it out the door and into the hall without banging into too many walls. I headed for the elevator and pushed the button. We’d get in, get down, and get gone. In, down, gone. In, down, gone. It was my mantra, my muse. I had to believe everything was going to work out―what choice did I have? I was flying blind here, no hint of the future to help me figure out the present. It would be fine; it would all be fine.
In, down, gone.
The door opened, and all my confidence instantly dried up. I dropped my head and pulled my hat down low so the two men emerging from the elevator wouldn’t see my face. Two tall, broad, blond men. Neither was Papa Egilsson, which was a small blessing, but one of them was Rolf, who was being spoken to in a scolding tone by the other man as they exited. They barely spared me a glance, instead heading straight for their suite. Rolf had noticed his missing key card, then. I pushed Sören into the elevator and hit the button for the first floor, hearing them open the door and head inside. Close call. One minute later and they’d have found me and Sören in the back room together, and then―
I heard a muffled expletive, something that sounded almost like “Fuck” but not quite, and then the door to their suite was opening again, and I was frantically pushing the button that closed the doors―honest to fucking god, how long did it take for this elevator to get going? The shining metal closed on my reflection a moment before I heard the smack of a meaty body hit the other side, followed by a quick pop pop and a scream. Shit, they were shooting at things. They were shooting at me!
The elevator moved smoothly down, and I calculated times in my head as we descended. Using the stairs, they’d be at least half a minute behind me. That should be enough as long as Andre was here already. He’d better fucking be here already. Otherwise I’d have to waste time breaking into a car, and that would only be messy.
Thank god we didn’t have to stop at any other floors on the way down.
The door opened at the bottom, and I powered my way through the crowd on the other side with a vague, “’Scuse me.”
“Mommy, look, a hand!” one overly observant child called out as I passed by. Shit, one of Sören’s arms had come partially uncovered.
“It’s a dummy,” I called back to his shocked mother as I headed for the door to the parking garage. “We’re filming a Vine, there’s a whole big thing. You’ll see it on Buzzfeed!” Here’s hoping she wasn’t on the up-and-up with technology; who made Vines anymore? Then I was through and easing the cart into the garage, searching for Andre, who…was not there. Fuck.
Well, I wasn’t being shot at yet, so there was still time. I recovered my duffel bag and set it on top of Sören’s midsection, opened out the case with my Glock 19 in it and shoved in the magazine. I tucked it into the back of my trousers, then pushed the cart toward the garage entrance. Andre would be here any minute. Aaany minute now…
“Það er hann!”
The brothers had found me first. I didn’t know what they were saying, but fortunately they provided a direct translation via shooting at me. I ducked down behind someone’s Porsche SUV and fired back, well above their heads. I wasn’t in this to kill anyone. I just needed to keep them occupied, and I had fifteen bullets to do it with. Bang bang bang. Twelve.
When Andre arrived thirty seconds later, he drove straight into a firefight.
To his credit, probably thanks to years spent in combat zones, he didn’t balk, just stopped his Prius between me and the brothers and yelled, “Where’s the package?”
“On the cart. I need your help with it!” Bang. Six left.
“Making me get out of my damn car in the middle of this shit,” he muttered furiously, but get out he did. When he saw what was exactly on the cart, he yelled, “You’ve gotta be fucking kidding me!”
“Just get him in the car. I’ll cover you.” One of the brothers―Rolf, I think―was trying to flank us to the side. I fired two shots at him and then another at the first one by the door. “I’m running out of ammo here, hurry!”
“Running out of goddamn ammo in a gunfight, what kind of seer are you?” Andre was big, bigger than me, and he managed to heave Sören into the backseat, throw my bag on top, and slam the door shut. He jumped into the driver’s seat again. “C’mon, let’s go!”
Crash! A bullet shattered the Porsche’s window just above the crown of my head, showering me with glass. I fired blindly in the direction of the shot, threw myself into the car over Andre’s lap, and scrambled for the far seat. “Go, go now!”
“I would if you’d get your damn ass out of my face!” he snarled, but the car did leap forward. Five seconds and one broken barrier later, we were out on the road heading away from the Omni. I had never been more relieved in all my life.
“There are fucking bullet holes in my Prius! How am I gonna explain this to my wife?”
Even with the shouting…so relieved.
Chapter Twelve
Andre obviously didn’t share my relief at escaping relatively unscathed from the Omni parking garage. He was silent for the first few minutes of the drive, opening his mouth every now and then but stopping before more than a hitch of breath emerged. It happened five times before I finally spoke up.
“Just get it off your chest. I don’t want you to have a stroke.”
“And I don’t want to punch you in the face so hard your daddy feels it, but that’s where I’m at right now, so give me some goddamn space.”
Well, that was clear enough. Except―we kind of needed to talk. “I’m going to need a car.”
“Fuck you, man, I’m going to need a car,” Andre muttered. “How am I going to explain this to my wife, huh? Bullet holes in my Prius, man. This thing is less than a year old. I drive my daughter around in this!” He turned to glare at me. “Did you know this was going to happen?”
“No!” He looked unconvinced, but I was tired of taking it, so I glared right back. “No, because I don’t make a habit of sending other people into dangerous situations just to save my own ass!” Except for Sören. “Especially when I’d rather not be in a dangerous situation in the first place. For fuck’s sake, you think that was where I wanted to be? Do I look like John McClane?”
Andre snorted. “More like a really low-rent version of James Bond.” He glanced at me again. “I think you’re bleeding.”
I checked my arm. Yep, there was blood happening. “Brand new suit,” I muttered as I started to squirm out of my jacket. A sudden pain in my upper back stopped me. “Ow, fuck!”
“Just…stop moving, okay? I’ll look you over when we get back to my place. We’re not far. You’re probably driving glass farther into the wound.”
“What glass?”
He stared at me like I was stupid. “Glass from the window that exploded over your head, maybe?”
“What window?”
“You really aren’t used to being in the middle of a firefight, huh.”
I sighed and stopped trying to get out of my jacket, letting the cloth settle back down over the bullet hole. Now that the adrenaline was wearing away, I could feel the burn where the stitches had been pulled.
“No, I’m really not. I try not to let situations get that far. It tends to end badly for me.”
“Well, settle in and just breathe, okay? I’ll fix you up when we get home.” He checked the backseat in the rearview mirror. “Although feel free to talk to me about the dead guy in the backseat whenever you want.”
“He’s not dead.” I looked back at Sören reflexively, as if to convince myself of that fact. No bullet holes in him that I could see―that was good. He was just…still. “He’s in stasis.”
“In stasis.”
“Yep.”
“That sounds suspiciously Star Trekkie to me.”
“Fuck off,” I snapped.
“You don’t actually know what’s going on with him, do you?”
“That’s what I’m going to figure out.” Figuring that out was now my life’s purpose. “He’s important, though. He’s the key to what’s going on with the Egilssons, I’m sure of it.”
“Really? Because at first glance, he doesn’t seem to have anything at all in common with their mysterious warehouse.”
“Except for, maybe, the mysterious part?” I shut my eyes determinedly. “You worry about getting us to a secure location; I’ll worry about how this all fits together.” I could tell Andre wanted to argue with me―the pressure of his gaze
was palpable―but he didn’t speak. That was nice. I was a tired of being yelled at, in English or otherwise.
First priority: get myself patched up, because as much as I used to believe I was an island, really I was an archipelago at best. I needed help with some things, and putting fresh stitches in my arm was one of them.
Second priority: new transportation, and fast. Something that would fly under the radar, nothing that required me to use identification to purchase or rent it, and roomy. Preferably with tinted windows or―I winced―a big trunk.
Third priority: get the hell out of Chicago, find someplace to lay low for a while, and make some calls. I knew almost nothing about what was going on here, but I had contacts who were experts in, well, everything. I knew shamans. I knew priests. I knew hunters. I knew people who’d dealt with way heavier shit than me over the course of their lives. Possessions, plagues, angry zombie hillbillies―I wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t seen the bite marks, but it had happened. The world was full of specialized knowledge, and I was in a unique position to bargain for it. Almost everyone wanted to know about themselves. Vanity, more than envy or pride, was the real weakness of humanity. The truly selfless were few and far between, and that made my job easier.
About ten minutes later, we pulled into a cul-de-sac populated with identical gray and blue townhomes. Andre and his wife lived in an end unit with a double garage, which the Prius shared with an enormous old Buick that was somewhere in the process of being restored. As soon as the garage shut, Andre was out, grabbing my duffel from the backseat and, after a moment, gingerly rearranging Sören’s limbs into a marginally more comfortable position.
“He’s warm,” he remarked with surprise.
“I told you he’s not dead. Just…”
“In stasis.”
“Right.”
“Yeah, fine. Get inside, take a right into the kitchen, and do not get blood on my carpet.”