by Sarah Fine
“I guess. Are they gonna have clothes there? I’d love to take a shower and get cleaned up.” He plucked at his bloody tracksuit and leered at her. “But then again, if there’s anybody there who looks like you, maybe I don’t want clothes after all.”
“Oh, they have exactly what you need there.” Cacy yanked the Scope wide, swung it over her head, and looped it over the driver before he could say anything else. His scream cut short as she drew the fiery ring all the way down to his feet with a whoosh of acrid smoke. “Whoa. Stinky.” Coughing, Cacy stood up and dodged the red-hot coin as it leaped out of the center of the portal. It landed several feet away, cooled instantly on the frigid sidewalk, and she trudged over to retrieve it.
“Your break is probably almost up, and I’ll bet your new partner is waiting for you.” There was an impatient edge to Trevor’s voice, like he had somewhere to be.
Cacy turned around. He was leaning against the very storefront where the girl’s crumpled body had landed. His eyes glowed red as he watched Cacy come near. He held out his hand. She dropped four gold coins onto his palm and handed him the fifth. “Split that for me?”
He grinned, baring daggerlike fangs. The Kere looked like normal people in the real world, but in the Veil, there was no mistaking them for human. She was glad he’d kept his mouth closed while the souls were still here.
“No problem, Ferry.” He put the coin between his teeth and snapped them shut, slicing it down the middle. He handed one half to Cacy, its edges scalloped with the curves of his fangs.
“Thanks. Are you done for the night?”
He shook his head.
“You said nine! Didn’t you do all these?” She waved her hand at the wall where the souls had been sitting a minute ago.
“I got a last-minute assignment,” he replied, staring at her with those glowing crimson eyes. She couldn’t tell how he felt about it. “Go back, Cace. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
He turned in place and disappeared.
“At least you could have done me the courtesy of telling me if it was in my response zone!” she shouted at the space where he’d been.
The gold coins were heavy in her pocket as she flipped her Scope again and opened an intra-Veil portal back to the EMS station bathroom. She walked through the jellified closed door of an empty stall and then stepped through the final portal—back into the colorful, warm, messy real world. She sagged against the now-solid wall of the stall.
“—here, Lieutenant?” called Eli, his voice echoing off the tiles.
“I’ll be right there,” she answered, flushing the toilet.
The bathroom door clicked shut again. Good boy. She emerged from the stall and carted her gold into the locker room, where she stashed it in her bag and set the laser snaptrap. The guys were unlikely to go snooping, but if they ever did . . . well. Fingers could be easily reattached with a little vascular glue.
Eli was in the back of their now-sparkling rig when she returned to the garage. He hopped off the rear deck and met her halfway. “I was getting worried that you’d collapsed or something. You hit your head pretty hard, Cacy.”
His concerned expression reminded her how beat-up she looked. She tried to give him a reassuring smile. “Good thing my skull is so thick.”
“I’ll remember th—”
The wireless alert beeped. “Assault at Tremont and Boylston. One police unit on scene; additional units requested but not available. Casualties confirmed. Four EMS units requested. Caution advised.”
Cacy turned to the videowall in the alcove. A lone police cruiser was pulled up against the curb, wedged in front of a limo with its doors hanging open. Thick red smears covered one of the windows. One figure lay in the street and three others lay on the sidewalk. Another was slumped against the side of a building a few feet away. She ran up to the wall screen and circled her fingers around the area where the victims lay, then punched the center to enlarge it.
And screamed.
One of them was her father.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Len,” Cacy shrieked as she sprinted toward the rig. “Three other units. Now!”
Eli ran after her, wondering what on earth had freaked her out like that.
She threw open the door of the cab and jumped in, immediately punching the ignition and opening the ambulance garage doors. The sirens were already on. It looked like she was about to take off without him.
He jerked the passenger door open and leaped into the seat as the rig started to roll forward.
“One of the victims,” Cacy choked out, “is my father.” She hit the accelerator and lurched into the street, nearly winging a bus.
“Shit. Do you want me to drive?”
Her silence was the only answer he needed. He scooted into the back and started to prepare, thoughts racing. Her father. The CEO. Or former CEO. What the hell had happened? He seemed like the type to travel with an entourage, including a full security detail. But there had been only one vehicle at the scene, plus a police car.
He flicked his eyes up to the front. Cacy was gripping the steering wheel so hard it looked like her bones would split through her skin. Behind them, the shrill sirens of the other units screamed out. As the rig streaked down Kneeland and circled a sprawling shantytown, Eli tried to remember details from the video feed. There had been a lot of blood at the scene, and the limo had been pockmarked with shrapnel.
The wireless came to life. “EMS units are advised that the scene is not yet under control. Please hold your positions.”
“Shut the hell up,” Cacy muttered as she ran a red light.
Eli leaned forward and touched her shoulder. “Maybe we should take one of the other patients.” A personal connection to the patient didn’t usually lead to clear thinking. He knew that from experience.
She shrugged him off. Eli wasn’t surprised, remembering her face as she’d watched her father give his retirement speech. She’d looked so protective, like it was her job to keep him safe. Whether that was true or not, this had to be killing her.
Eli retreated into the back again and double-checked the contents of his med kit, determined not to let her down.
Cacy screeched to a stop less than half a block away from the intersection where the assault had gone down. Eli peered through the rear window and held his arm out to bar her way as she came barreling through. She hit it with a huff and stumbled back. He turned to her, hating that he had to keep her from her father for even a few seconds. But her own safety was more important. To him, at least. “With all due respect, Lieutenant, this is a hot scene, and I’d rather neither of us got shot.”
She flipped open the cabinet to her right, pulled out a tranq gun, and aimed it at him. “With all due respect, Sergeant, get out of my fucking way. If we don’t hurry, the pirates are going to drag them into the Common.”
He held his hands up. “I’m on your side, Cacy. I want to get out there, too. But we can’t help your dad if we’re perforated.” Still holding one hand up, he reached out with the other and popped open the rear door. He picked up his med kit and nodded at her hands, which were still clutching the tranq gun with white-knuckled determination. “At least get your gloves on.”
With quick, impatient tugs, she zipped on her gloves and grabbed her kit. Together, they pulled a stretcher out of the back. Eli used his size advantage to push her behind him and was relieved when she didn’t fight him. He rolled the stretcher in front of them as they ducked low next to a row of junked cars. The street was eerily quiet. Eli reached back and pressed Cacy against an amphibious sports car with busted-out windows and dried blood on the seats.
“Wait a second.” He raised his head and took in the scene. “The cop’s gone, but his car’s still there. I don’t see anyone else, though. Maybe he chased the attacker off?”
Cacy peeked around Eli’s shoulder. Her gaze focused on a lean man hunched against
the stamped-concrete wall of the building at the corner. Her father. Patrick Ferry. He was still wearing the dark suit he’d worn to the press conference. His head was bowed, and his gray-streaked hair hung over his face. Eli felt nothing but relief as he watched the man’s chest expand with a shuddering breath. It wasn’t too late.
On the street in front of them lay a man with a gaping wound to his head, his gray matter scattered on the asphalt. A definite black-tag. A few feet away lay a woman with glazed eyes set in a deathly pale face. She was alive, but in shock. Red. Two other men were crumpled on the ground in front of Cacy’s father, both red-tag status. One of them was bleeding profusely from a neck wound, while the other was curled into a ball, moaning softly. Possible gut wound. They’d probably been trying to protect their boss. It looked like all of them had been shot, but Eli couldn’t figure out how it had gone down. Why had they left the safety of their bulletproof limo?
Footsteps thunked along the pavement behind them, accompanied by the squeak of ungreased stretcher wheels; Len and the others were on their way. Cacy twisted out of Eli’s grasp and was at her father’s side in less than a second. Eli took a moment to check the vitals of the other victims before handing them over to Len and the other crews. He looked up in time to watch Cacy wave a shaking cardiac wand over her father’s chest. It beeped.
“Daddy. I’m here.”
Patrick Ferry moaned. The fingers of his left hand, lying limp at his side, flexed. “My . . . darling,” he rasped. His head rose briefly from his chest but then bobbed back down, too heavy for his weakened body.
“Tachycardic,” she whispered as Eli squatted down next to her.
“The others have been shot. Is he bleeding? Did you assess for trauma?”
“I . . . I don’t know,” she said, her eyes filling with tears.
Eli’s hands closed gently around her shoulders. “Cacy, move aside and let me help him.”
She scrambled backward, and Eli got to work. Patrick Ferry’s lips were gray with shock. The streetlight above them reflected off the blood that soaked his dark suit. Shit. He yanked the man’s shirt open to reveal a puckered hole in the lower-right quadrant of his chest.
“Cacy, hand me an autostaunch.” Eli held his hand out as he leaned around to check for an exit wound. “Wait. No. Make it two.”
Cacy let out a low sob and began to dig in the med kit as Eli maneuvered his patient onto his back. “Shears too, please.”
Cacy handed him the shears and bandages. Eli cut the perfectly tailored suit away from her father’s arms and chest, wishing to God she didn’t have to witness this. The soaked fabric soon lay in a pile next to them. He hoped the autostaunches would do their job and keep Patrick Ferry from bleeding out before they could get him to the hospital.
Eli glanced up and saw Len and the two other teams carting victims away. He could tell by the urgency of the paramedics’ movements that the patients were at serious risk if they didn’t get to the CMC fast enough. He focused on prepping Cacy’s father for the same journey. He clipped an oxygen minipump to the man’s nose and a blood-pressure ring to his neck.
The cardiac wand chirped. A disruption in the patient’s heart rhythm. Patrick Ferry’s eyelids fluttered. He turned his head toward his daughter. His hands shifted restlessly at his side, and his eyes went wide. “No,” he mouthed.
Eli whipped around to see Cacy staring back at her father, her full lips open in a silent scream. Her eyes were wild. She clutched her round pendant in her hand. Tears coursing down her beautiful face, she looked down at the engraved metal disk as if it had betrayed her.
Eli’s hand shot out, and his fingers closed around her wrist. He yanked her close and spoke right into her face. “It’s going to be all right, Cacy. I’m going to take care of him. But you’ve got to help me.”
He released her arm. “Get over here and help me get him on the stretcher.” He kept his voice firm, trying to snap her out of panic mode. Cacy obeyed him, and together they lifted her father onto the stretcher.
Eli looked down at Cacy as they jogged toward the rig. She was steering the stretcher while he injected chemical defib into her father’s chest. She looked shaky and pale, like she’d seen a ghost. “You’re going to drive, all right? I’m going in the back with your dad.”
She nodded. They loaded her father into the ambulance. Eli grabbed the suction device and got to work, but when he looked up again, Cacy was still standing in front of the open rear doors, staring at her father. She touched her tearstained cheek and looked blankly at her fingertips, like she hadn’t known she was crying.
“Cacy, dammit, get up there and drive!” Eli reached forward and slammed the rear doors in her face, praying she would understand.
The driver’s side door opened, and Cacy climbed into the cab. A second later, they lurched into motion.
Eli’s heart pounded as he worked. He’d never wanted to save a patient more than he wanted to save this one. Anything to chase that pain out of Cacy’s eyes. It shouldn’t have mattered as much as it did—he’d only just met her—but he didn’t have time to analyze his feelings.
Patrick’s breathing was rapid and shallow, his heart rate fluttering and unsteady. Eli turned up the oxygen on the minipump and grabbed an oropharyngeal airway, in case his patient lost consciousness.
Suddenly, Patrick’s eyes opened and fixed on Eli with a burning intensity. His lips began to move. Eli tilted his head and bent close, trying to catch the whispered, faltering words. He understood only one, but it was enough to send his own heart rate sky-high. “. . . Galena.”
Eli leaned away and stared at Patrick, who looked back at him like he knew exactly who Eli was. Like he could see straight through him.
Why had Patrick Ferry just said Eli’s sister’s name?
Cacy slammed on the brakes and cursed at the traffic. Eli caught himself against the ambulance bench and broke eye contact with Patrick. The cardiac wand screeched.
Cacy’s father had gone into cardiac arrest.
From the front seat, Eli heard a broken, hitching sob. And all he could think was No. No. I will not let this happen.
His hands flew over the equipment; he inserted the airway in less than five seconds, injected self-perpetuating saline gel, positioned the autocompression device to keep the heart going, suctioned beneath the autostaunch, and checked blood-pressure-ring readings. They weren’t good.
His eyes flicked up and caught Cacy’s in the rearview mirror. “Eyes on the road,” he barked. “I’ve got this.”
But he didn’t.
Cacy pulled up to the front of the hospital and cut the sirens just as the piercing scream of the cardiac wand fell silent.
CHAPTER EIGHT
By the time Cacy crawled into the back of the ambulance, Eli was already shouting for hospital staff and wrenching her father’s stretcher off the rear deck of the rig. He plowed through the double doors of the emergency department, hauling the stretcher by himself instead of waiting for the nurses to help. Cacy’s father lay still and pale atop it, the autocompressor doing its futile work.
Cacy already knew it was too late. She’d seen it with her own eyes, through the lens of her Scope. Her father had been Marked.
She climbed off the back of the ambulance, thinking vaguely that she should follow, that she should be doing something for her father. But her legs couldn’t hold her up, and she collapsed to the ground.
“Cacy!” Eli jogged back through the emergency department doors. He gathered her in his arms and climbed into the back of the ambulance, clutching her to his chest. “Did you hit your head when you fell?” he asked.
“No,” she whispered. He tried to lay her on the bench, already reaching for his biolight. It was clear he was planning to examine her, like she was one of his patients. But that wasn’t what she needed. What she needed was something to hold on to, something to keep her from falling, from
tumbling over the edge of the world. Her fingers curled around the thick muscles of his shoulders, hanging on tight. She buried her head in the crook of his neck. His fingers nudged under her chin and tipped her face up to his. He gave her a long, searching look. Then he sat on the bench and wrapped her in his arms.
“I told them you were his daughter. They said they’d give us a status update as soon as they could.”
She nodded.
“I’m so sorry, Cacy.” His voice was rough. “There’s still a chance—”
“No,” she choked. “Don’t, Eli. He was dead when we pulled into the ambulance bay. You know that.”
He didn’t argue. He might be optimistic, but he obviously wasn’t stupid. Instead, he held her tighter. The warm, clean scent of him filled her up, keeping the darkness at bay for the moment. She couldn’t push him away. She needed this feeling of safety too much.
“I feel like I failed you,” he said.
She shook her head. “You were amazing, and you did all you could.” She didn’t want him to feel bad. Her father had been doomed before they even arrived on the scene. A black void of sorrow opened its mouth wide in front of her, threatening to swallow her whole. She hid her face against Eli’s body, not wanting him to see her fall apart.
Eli sighed and laid his large palm against her cheek, his fingers burrowing in her hair. His other arm held her against him, like he wasn’t going to let anything happen to her. She was surprised how good it felt. They were practically strangers. And she planned for it to stay that way, in all the ways that counted. But for now . . . she focused on the deep rise and fall of Eli’s chest, the whoosh of air from his lungs, the pulse in his neck. She counted the beats, pinning her thoughts to each number so she wouldn’t picture the doctors with her father, their fruitless attempts to jolt his silent heart back into motion.
They sat like that for a long time—quiet, alone and yet together. Eli held perfectly still for her, like he knew one move would remind her of where she was, of what they were waiting for. She pressed her palm over his chest and took refuge in the solid strength of him. Maybe, if she could stay there forever, the darkness wouldn’t find her. Maybe she could hold off the moment when her father’s death became real just a little longer—