by E. A. Copen
It dawned on me that he’d made it a request and he was waiting for my approval. “What about those who objected? Valentino and Nina?”
“They’re licking their wounds and will be for some time yet. They won’t raise a challenge now. Besides, Hunter is ready. It’s time for him to Change. He might have done it already if I hadn’t been so blinded by my own problems.”
“How are his wounds?”
“Right as rain.” Sal offered a weak smile. “I’ll see to it he’s completely healed. They should be discharging him soon.”
A new wave of thankfulness for Chanter’s intervention struck me followed by the pang of his loss. Hunter would live and he’d join the pack. Everything I wanted for him was possible so long as Marcus didn’t die. Only Marcus could keep Hunter’s test results from getting back to BSI. If he died, I didn’t know what would happen to Hunter. Or to Mia.
Mia. Here I was beaming over my son’s success while Sal’s daughter fought for her life. And she had to do it without her father by her side. Instead, she had a cold and callous mother and an opportunistic doctor. I’d promised both Zoe and Marcus I wouldn’t tell anyone the details of the case, but dammit, Sal deserved to know. What kind of monster was I, keeping the man I loved in the dark about his own child? I knew too well how much it hurt not knowing.
My throat grew tight and I swallowed the tension gathering there. “Sal, is there someone else who can sit with Hunter? There’s someone I need you to meet.”
He pursed his lips and then shrugged. “Ed’s in the lobby. We’re after hours for visiting so they wouldn’t let him come back. I only got back here by dropping your name.” He grinned and winked at me.
Dammit. Now I felt even worse. Once he knew I’d been keeping Mia from him, even for a good reason, he was going to lose his shit completely. He might decide I’d make a better stain on the floor than a girlfriend or mate. The worst part was, I’d deserve it. But I couldn’t live with myself anymore if I didn’t tell him, not after everything he’d done for me and Hunter.
Sal gave Hunter’s shoulder a gentle shove back, but Hunter didn’t dare look him in the eye. “Is it all right with you if I send Ed in, Hunter?”
Hunter wiped an arm under his nose. He nodded but paused when he saw the bloody bite on Sal’s arm. “Sorry,” he mumbled, lowering his head further.
Sal mussed his hair. “Don’t sweat it, kid. I’ve had worse.” He stood and scooped Hunter up as if he weighed nothing, placing him back on the bed. “I’ll send Ed in. You behave.”
“Yes, sir.”
I gave Hunter a hug and a kiss before tucking him back into bed. The nurses at the station all gave me a wary look when I came out to join Sal who was talking to them. “I’ll be in and out,” he explained, crossing his arms. “But when I’m not here, someone from the pack will sit with him. It’s safer that way.”
The lady nurse, the one who’d had the phone pressed to her ear when I came running, frowned and raised an eyebrow. “For us or him?”
Sal didn’t answer. “If you have any more problems, you call Agent Black first and Daphne Petersen second. She’s a volunteer counselor here. Petersen with an E.” He spelled it one more time for the nurse and had her read it back to him.
I hung back and watched the exchange, unsure whether I should be worried or not. Something about Sal had been different since he climbed out of that pit with Valentino, but I couldn’t put my finger on what. Maybe it was the whole alpha werewolf thing. I’d always assumed it wasn’t anything more special than a promotion at work, being the alpha of a pack. Maybe it was more. He carried himself differently, surer. When I stood in a room with him, I noticed him more. Presence, I thought. He’d always had it but now it just seemed bigger.
The nurse, who only moments ago had been ready and waiting to take control of the situation, was now all too happy to oblige reading the name back to him. I got the feeling she enjoyed doing what she was told, which didn’t match my earlier impression of her at all when I’d come running through the halls. Sal nodded once and she gave him a big, dreamy smile like she was a kindergartener and he’d just given her a sticker.
I narrowed my eyes. He didn’t turn around until I cleared my throat. “You ready?”
“Yes, ma’am.” He gestured forward. “Lead the way.”
My shoes squeaked walking down the hallway. They squished a little if I put too much weight on the heel and the sound grated on my nerves. I wished I could walk smooth and soundless like Sal seemed to be able to do. Even in big, gaudy flip-flops, he managed stealth. We stopped into the tiny waiting room where Ed was the sole occupant. Sal directed him to Hunter’s room and he went without a word. Poor Ed still looked tired and dazed from the day’s events. I couldn’t blame him.
The elevator was just down the hall from the waiting room. My shoes squished extra loud when I stopped and pressed the up arrow on the elevator. We were on the second floor and needed to go up to the sixth.
“So,” he said casually as we waited, “who is this person you want me to meet?”
My heart jumped. What should I tell him? Should I tell him anything at all or just hope he’d figure it out once he saw her? Maybe he’d see enough physical similarities that he could guess. I hadn’t, but I didn’t have to look at Sal’s face every morning in the mirror. Now that I reflected on Mia’s face, there was no mistaking it. She and Sal had the same cheekbones, the same nose, and a similar chin. Her hair was a mop of tightly curled ringlets while his was straight, but they both wore the same color.
“You don’t actually want me to meet whoever it is, do you?”
I jammed my thumb into the up button again, wishing that would make the car come faster. “What makes you say that?”
“Your heart rate picked up and your voice has a slightly higher timbre to it when you’re trying to cover something up.”
The elevator car arrived and the doors slid open at an achingly slow pace. He followed me in and stood at the back of the car in the middle. It was a small elevator and not one of the big patient transport ones, which meant that I’d never be more than two feet away from him no matter where I stood. I mashed the button for the sixth floor.
“That’s not fair.”
“Judah, who is it?”
I closed my eyes with the elevator doors. There wasn’t an easy way to tell the truth and he’d know if I lied. Putting it off until we were already in the room would only hurt him more. I didn’t want that.
“Do you remember when we all thought Zoe was dead? When we went down into the caves, she was so pregnant, she could barely walk.”
“I remember.” Sal’s voice sounded too calm, too patient.
I swallowed and then grimaced. There was no way to tell the tale without making myself out to be the bad guy, was there? “I hate her. I hate her for what she did to you and... and for the whole situation I’m going to have to show you. There was a time when Ed and I were down in those caves and she was the only thing that stood between us and LeDuc. She was helping us find our way out when she went into labor. I tried to help, but something was wrong. I had to make a choice that wasn’t mine to make.”
The elevator stopped on the fourth floor and the doors slid open on a couple with a stroller. They had a helium balloon tied to the stroller with a cartoon whale wearing a stethoscope. Silver text lined in pink read GET WHALE SOON! What I had to say was important and inappropriate for sick toddlers to hear, so I gave them a menacing look and pressed the door close button. The mom caught my eye and offered a sympathetic frown. The doors slid closed and the elevator went up.
“I saved the child,” I said once the elevator was moving again. “And left Zoe to die.”
Sal sucked in a deep breath. “Explains why she’s so pissed at you. Seems you didn’t finish the job.”
“There’s more.”
My heart rate picked up again and threatened to drown out my other thoughts, but I fought to give them a voice. This was too important. I needed to get it out now before
it was too late. If I was honest, there was still a chance he might forgive me. Maybe.
“The little girl that Zoe delivered disappeared. She was taken from the scene, and I couldn’t stop it. I spent every free moment I had hunting her. Drained my bank account, used departmental resources. I even stole some evidence and gave it to Mara when I thought it might work. But it was all for nothing. The little girl I was working so desperately to find had been under my nose the whole time. Marcus had her.”
“Marcus was raising a wendigo baby?” There was skepticism in his voice. If I’d turned around, I probably would have seen him standing there with crossed arms and a cocked eyebrow. I couldn’t face him.
The elevator slid to a stop and let out a ding. The doors opened but I didn’t get off.
“No,” I said shaking my head. “Not a wendigo. A werewolf, one genetically engineered from samples Zoe brought to LeDuc in his lab.”
He didn’t say anything. Not a word. The elevator doors closed but the car didn’t move because no one anywhere had pushed a button to go up or down. We stood in a tiny car, suspended in limbo by metal cables. The air was thick, musty, and electric charged.
I heard him swallow. “Not LeDuc’s?”
“No. Not Andre LeDuc’s daughter.”
Sal’s hand swept me aside, and he slammed his finger into the console of the elevator so hard that sparks flew out. The door opened partway and then jammed, but that didn’t stop Sal from climbing through. It wouldn’t have stopped me from getting to my kid either. His shoulders were too wide to fit so he braced himself on one side and shoved his back against the other door. It bent with a loud screech under his weight and he stumbled into the hallway, sniffing the air.
He couldn’t have known her scent, especially over the cleansers and disinfectants the hospitals used, but he might have known Zoe’s. Whatever he was looking for, he found it and took off in a blur of motion down the hall. A security locked ward door stood between Sal and Mia. I stepped out of the elevator in time to see him pull the re-enforced metal door from its hinges. Alarms screeched and blue lights flashed. Several burly men in scrubs lumbered toward the entrance to the ward where Sal stood, sniffing the air and deciding which way to go next.
I fumbled to get my badge out and shouted, “BSI! Step back and let him through!”
Sal gave a low, rumbling growl when one of the guys didn’t stop immediately. The sound stopped the burly man in his tracks. Sal darted for Pod Four and I jogged after him with no hope of catching up.
“Put this ward on lockdown,” I shouted to the stunned nurses, even though they were probably already on it. I didn’t stick around to find out.
My lungs were on fire from the run to Mia’s room. Sal had jerked that door off the hinges, too.
Han stood in a half turn, his pen paused on the paper he’d been scribbling on, a look of shock on his face. Sal stood over the crib full of wires, tubes, and monitors, shoulders tense like a predator about to strike. When he reached down into the crib, it was with a shaky hesitant gentleness. He caressed Mia’s sleeping face as if he were afraid his touch might break her.
“Her name is Mia,” I said quietly.
“Mia,” he repeated her name like a spell and it became one. “Mia,” he commanded using the compulsion magick of an alpha werewolf. “Wake up.”
Mia’s eyes snapped open. Han leaned forward, a hopeful look on his face. That hopeful look faded when Mia’s body jerked violently and she fell into another seizure.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Sal jerked his hand away. Han leaned into the crib and rolled Mia over onto her side. Han’s eyes were wide and forehead creased with worry but his moves were practiced. Sal and Han weren’t the only creatures standing beside Mia’s bed.
Right about the time Mia started seizing, Emiko materialized in a blue-white cloud of energy over her. She leaned forward with her mouth open, mandibles flexing. The eagle talon thumped loudly against my chest, and I reached up instinctively to grab it, watching in horror as the small, worm-like head wriggled out of Emiko’s throat.
Mia’s heart rate monitor went berserk, the sudden pitch of sound drawing Emiko’s attention away. The numbers on the screen jumped, dropped, and then stopped registering altogether.
Within seconds of Mia flat-lining, the two burly nurses I’d seen in the lobby of the ward along with nurse Uhl barged into the room and shouldered everyone out of the way. Everyone except for Emiko.
“What the hell’s happening?” Sal growled, his rage directed at the orderly who was trying to shuffle him toward the door.
“Sir, please step back and let us help her,” the orderly was saying.
Sal wasn’t having it. He growled at the other man and showed his teeth in challenge.
“Sal,” I said, stepping up to stand between him and Emiko. Emiko’s gaze had shifted away from the crib and onto Sal, her eyes glowing blue pinpricks of cold flame. “You need to leave right now!”
“Like hell, I will.”
Nurse Uhl started CPR on Mia. More medical personnel filtered into the room, one of them speaking into a pager-like device, presumably with someone in the emergency room.
Emiko tilted her head. A creaking, rattling sound came up out of her throat. I took it as a gesture of challenge and started pulling energy in, readying it for...For what? Was there even anything I could do to stop her? I didn’t have time to decide. In a strobing, blue blur, she charged straight for me. Magick surged out from the center of my chest, down my arm, and into my fingertips, the charge of it dark, electric, and painful. When it left my fingers, it was in wisps of shadow and fire.
The darkness whipped out through the air like ink in water, wrapping around Emiko with all the grace and strength of a boa constrictor. Flames trailed behind the shadow, licking at it as if it were gasoline. Both wrapped around Emiko four times, pinning her ghostly arms to her sides. She screamed so loud the room shook.
Everyone but me pressed their hands to their ears to block out the painful screech. I didn’t have any hands left to spare. My left was tangled in the necklace of gifts Chanter had given me while my right was tied to whatever instinctive spell I had wrapped around Emiko. Something thick, warm, and wet trickled down the side of my neck from my ears. Blood. Emiko was still screaming, but I only heard muffled cries. I jerked my right hand back and closed my fist around the black streaks of flaming magick in my palm, holding them like a rope. Another pulse of magick went down into the power I held in my hand, this time intentional. The wisps of shadow tightened around Emiko until, suddenly, she disappeared.
The magick I held backfired and raced at me. It felt like holding onto an electric fence. White, hot pain overloaded every other thought and instinct in my body until all I could do was stiffen and let it hit. It seared into me and threw me back into Sal and the orderly, who were standing behind me. They tumbled over and I landed on top of them, awake, aware, but unable to breathe or respond.
Panic should have taken over. Deaf, paralyzed by a magickal electrical shock from a power I didn’t even know I had, and now unable to breathe, I should have been terrified. Instead, an overwhelming sense of calm settled into my bones. Even as I lay there, staring blankly up at the orderly who was mouthing something at me, even as he pressed his ear to my chest and searched for a pulse, I wasn’t bothered. It was like lying in a hot bath without any of the feeling but all the comfort. All I wanted to do was close my eyes and go to sleep.
Sensation slammed back into me like a cement brick. Everything hurt, and I mean everything, even the body parts I’m not normally aware of. Unless you’ve been seriously hurt, it’s normally difficult to point to where every single internal organ is in your abdominal cavity. When I got feeling back, I knew where the blood vessels in my eyes were. Every nerve lit up in a single, burning flash of pain. Air wheezed out of my lungs in a fiery breath.
“Ouch,” I managed and winced. My voice still sounded horribly muffled.
“What the shit,” I heard Sal say b
ut I couldn’t answer him, even if I could talk. I didn’t know.
Someone else in scrubs bent over me and said something but his voice was too muffled for me to understand.
“No.” Sal pointed emphatically across the room to Mia. He stepped over me and left me alone with the orderly who had been checking me over with the stethoscope.
I tried to sit up and regretted it as I got smacked with another wave of blinding pain. “Mia,” I choked out as I barely managed to move my head.
The orderly caught my meaning and turned his head. “They’ve got a rhythm back. Taking her downstairs to be safe.”
Downstairs, I thought. To the emergency room where they’ll register her and process her just like any other patient.
Han had things handled. “She’s a special case,” he assured them. “I can take it from here.”
After a short argument back and forth, the emergency personnel eventually decided to listen. I didn’t get to hang out, though. Since they’d gone through all the trouble of bringing a gurney up, and since apparently my heart and respirations had stopped for just over a full minute, they decided I might as well benefit from the trip. I was still light headed, barely able to move, and in a lot of pain when they loaded me onto the gurney and started shining lights at me, muttering numbers back and forth. As bad as I felt, I didn’t want to leave Mia unprotected. Emiko wasn’t gone, just hurt. I couldn’t explain how I knew, but I did. She’d be back.
I lifted a limp hand and tried to grab onto Sal, but my fingers wouldn’t work, so I just brushed my fingers over his arm. By the look on his face, he was both more worried and more pissed than I’d ever seen him. Still, he turned and frowned down at me.
“Ghost sickness,” I croaked out in a hoarse voice.
Sal was smart. He’d understand, even if he couldn’t forgive me. This was his daughter’s life at stake. He had to know that now, even though I hadn’t had time to explain everything. I still had to make sure he didn’t get sick, too. Emiko had seen him and she’d wanted a taste now that Mia was fading. If I knew anything about Sal, the first thing he’d do now that he knew Mia was sick was try to heal her. That was the worst thing he could possibly do.