A large truck slammed into the back of their car on the right-hand side, causing their car to skid and almost fly off the edge of the road. Darien snapped both hands on the wheel and frantically spun it, trying to right himself before they careened down a steep ten foot drop. The truck pulled up beside them and swerved, knocking them off the road.
The car dipped as it hit the edge, then rolled over a few times as it tumbled down the slope. The crunch of metal and shattering of glass filled the air as they came to a stop. Darien and Susan didn’t even have the breath or time to scream as they struggled to protect themselves from the chaos of the accident. The airbags deployed, smacking the passengers in the head and driving them back into the seats. Darien felt hundreds of tiny cuts as shards burned through his skin and muscles underneath. When they came to a stop the vehicle hissed and groaned, offering the occasional creak as twisted metal settled into place.
The smell of burned rubber and hot metal assaulted his nostrils and helped him cling to consciousness. Darien blinked open his eyes, not even aware of when he shut them. He felt like he was still spinning and the world was rocking all around him. Everything had a hazy and indistinct border around it and trying to focus only heightened the pounding in his skull. He forced his eyes open and twisted his head as best as he could to look at Susan. She had to be okay. He needed to know that she was all right.
Her chest was rising and falling in a steady rhythm, but her eyes were closed and the rest of her body hung limp. Her head rolled off to the side as much as was possible given their restraints. Darien reached out to try and touch her, feel her pulse, or something. When he tried to move, pain lanced up his left arm all the way to his neck. An involuntary cry escaped his lips.
Darien reached down to undo the seatbelt, hoping that without it pressing against his shoulder he might have more ability to move. It clicked free, but wouldn’t retract. The steering wheel had crumpled far enough forward to touch his chest. Even if he could get free, he didn’t know if he could get out. The window to his left was crushed to at least half its size. They had to be on the roof, because everything was upside down.
He heard the familiar sound of rocks skittering as someone tried to navigate a steep slope and the ground gave way. He twisted, trying to see out the front or the side windows, but all he saw was grass and a trail of dirt and mud where their car tore up the landscape. He needed to get out before whoever drove them off the trail got down here. Once he dealt with their attacker, he could get Susan to a hospital.
The risk was necessary, otherwise they were both sitting ducks. Darien closed his eyes and tried to focus, willing himself to shift. He clenched his jaw with the effort and closed his eyes tighter, which only heightened the pain in his face—the pain that kept him from being able to calm down enough to shift. The more he struggled, the faster his heart pounded and the more frantic he became, which kept him stuck in his human body.
Giving up, he opened his eyes and glanced at Susan once again. If he could reach the gun in her pocket, he might have a chance. He strained and reached out, his fingers brushing against the edge of her coat as he struggled to get a purchase on anything. Now he heard the soft crunch of grass and pine needles under someone’s foot as they grew closer.
“Look what we have here.” The voice was soft and filled with malicious humor. “It looks like the great Darien Yost, Sheynan and threat to the Arm, is caught in a twisted wreck. Now what are we going to do with you?”
Darien rolled his head back to stare out the remains of his side window. The first thing that struck him was how young the woman was who stared back. Her dirty blonde hair fell around her face and dragged in the dirt near the edge of the car as she stared at him with a smile that held no trace of warmth.
“Looks like you’re stuck. Would you like a hand?”
She reached into the car and grabbed his shoulder, yanking hard and trying to drag him out. The pain in his arm flared and Darien howled. By pure reaction, he turned his head and bit down on her hand. She jerked it back as soon as she felt his teeth on her flesh.
“If you’re going to be like that, I guess you’ll have to deal with my other side. She’s not as friendly.”
The young woman stepped back and her body shimmered as she shifted. Darien flailed as much as he could with his good arm, trying to reach Susan’s jacket pocket and get the gun. Within a few breaths, he found himself staring at the face of a small jaguar. The cat hissed at him and lunged forward, swiping with a paw before dancing back out of range. The claws bit into his shoulder, shredding part of the flesh.
The jaguar crouched down and ducked its head, getting ready to lunge again. Darien could just barely feel Susan’s jacket underneath his fingertips. But his vision was getting dark around the edges, making it harder to keep his focus and keep moving. He curled his fingers around the jacket, trying to pull it closer so he could reach the pocket. His hand felt like it was going numb, the sensation fading away.
With a growl, the jaguar lunged forward, only to be driven sideways in the middle of her attack. She yipped in pain and turned around, exposing her backside to Darien. He saw the shaft of an arrow sticking out of her right hindquarters. She raced off at a target that Darien couldn’t see and swerved to the side in midstride, dodging another arrow. Just before she left his field of vision, he saw her crash on her shoulder and slide to a stop without a sound. A third arrow was deep in her chest, just inside her left front leg.
The adrenaline kept him awake and aware, but Darien didn’t know how much longer it would last. He struggled as much as he could in the wreckage, trying to get a glimpse of the person who shot the shifter. Soon he was rewarded as a pair of black hiking boots walked into his field of vision, standing a few feet away from the wreckage.
The man crouched down, holding a compound bow in both of his hands in front of his body. He carried a quiver at his side, filled with arrows fletched in many different colors. He also had a large knife tucked into his belt. A ball cap was over his head, keeping his long dark hair pulled back. The most striking feature that Darien noticed was the collection of animal pelts dangling from his quiver.
“This is not how I expected to find you, Darien.”
He paused for a moment, his eyes wandering as he took in the entire scene of the accident. He leaned out to the side a little bit, peering around Darien to see Susan in the passenger’s seat.
“Bah, there’d be no sport in this. But I look forward to our next meeting—assuming you live that long.”
With those words, he stood up and collected his wayward arrow. The last thing Darien saw before giving in to the darkness knocking at his consciousness was the hunter picking up the jaguar and carrying it off like a prize.
Chapter 8
White replaced black with a blinding flash as Darien opened his eyes. He immediately closed them again, raising his hand to provide some shelter from the light. Some part of his brain registered that there was a slight pulling sensation on his arm as he lifted it up to his head. Now that he had some shelter from the fluorescent assault, he opened his eyes again, just a crack at first.
He was lying in a bed, with bright white lights running in long strips overhead. Tubes were connected to his arm and ended in needles taped to the back of his hand. His arm was covered in small scratches and a few bandages. He turned his hand around, examining and flexing it as if it was a new appendage. Where was he? An incessant rhythmic beeping filled the air around him and everything had a faint odor of bleach. Darien rolled his head to the side, and the pillow under his head rustled as he tried to examine the rest of his surroundings.
The room was very plain. The bed that he rested on was against the center of one wall oriented so that his feet pointed towards the center of the room. A chair, little more than metal rods and two pieces of curved plastic, sat by his bedside. There were two doors, both closed, and no windows. When he rolled his head to the other side, he saw a wheeled table parked nearby with a cup of water. A bag of fluids hung
on a metal post that supported a fluid rate machine and an ECG machine. Realizing the latter was the source of the beeping helped to pull everything into focus.
How did he get to a hospital? And why did his neck hurt so much? Darien thought back, trying to piece everything together. Flashes came back to him: driving down the highway, calling Agent Clements, and the truck running him off the road. The beeping picked up in frequency as the images came flashing back. He saw the shattered glass and could hear the crunch of the car as it rolled down the side of the hill. He saw Susan’s face, bruised and bloody.
Darien reached up and began ripping off the wires attached to his chest. He needed to find Susan. Was she okay? His left shoulder protested the sudden motion. He continued with his right arm only. The ECG machine let out a long monotone now that it lacked a signal. Darien pushed himself up from the bed, rising to a sitting position. The room began to spin and he had to grip the edge of the bed to keep from falling back into the pillows. Pain shot down his neck and radiated from his spine to the edges of his torso. With a growl, he tried to push through it, tossing back the sheets with his good hand. The sight of his lacerated legs made him hesitate for a moment and almost made him give up. But the thought of Susan was too strong.
The door burst open and several people in scrubs ran into the room. They were a flurry of noise and activity that Darien couldn’t follow. He only knew that the third person into the room wheeled a cart in with her and fished a syringe out of one of the drawers.
“Susan! Where’s Susan? Is she okay?”
One of the nurses came up and put hands gently on his shoulders, trying to get him to ease back, but Darien shrugged off the gesture. The request became a command and he dropped back to the bed. The tendrils of fiery pain in his back and neck flared, making him cry out. He wanted to thrash, but it felt like any motion he tried to make only increased the pain. Hands were holding his shoulders and wrists, keeping him pinned to the bed. Then the pain eased away, and he felt himself sinking; falling away from the nurses and their hands, falling through the bed, leaving the hospital room behind as he drifted to a realm where he felt almost outside of his own body. But at least the pain wasn’t able to follow.
One of the nurses leaned over the bed and looked down at him. The man wore glasses and had the same shade of blue scrubs as everyone else in the room. His face looked so far away that Darien felt he could reach out his arms and still not be able to touch the man.
“Susan’s all right, she’s in the room next door getting some rest. Just like you need to.”
Darien saw the man stand back up and grab a syringe handed to him from someone out of Darien’s field of vision. The nurse took the syringe and injected the bag of fluids hanging nearby. They performed a couple of other checks on him. He was vaguely aware of hands moving his body about and a light being shined in his eyes, but the rest blurred into an indistinct haze. After a short time, they left and he was alone with the beeping of the ECG machine.
The next time that he woke, Darien felt his focus sharpen almost as soon as he opened his eyes. The haze was gone from both his vision and his mind. He remembered the accident, all the way up to the hunter showing up and the cryptic message he gave before departing. Using his hands, Darien pushed himself up so that he was no longer leaning against the back of the bed and was using his own muscles. Moving with care, he bent his knees and flexed his legs, becoming painfully aware of how sore everything felt.
Picking up a corner of the sheet, he lifted it with his right hand, exposing his legs inch by inch. Several deep cuts ran along the length, and the pieces that weren’t covered in bandages often had sutures holding his skin together. If it weren’t for the pink color, he could almost pass for Frankenstein’s monster from the waist down.
There was a quick double-knock on the door that caused him to drop the sheet, and then the door swung into the room. A doctor, wearing the classical white coat of his profession and carrying a clipboard, walked into the room. He held the clipboard horizontally in front of his body as he walked. Callie entered the room a few steps behind him and closed the door behind her. She had ditched her outdoor hiking gear for a more practical ensemble of jeans and a dark blue sweatshirt. She still didn’t strike him as someone who would work for the government, but he knew all too well how deceiving appearances could be. At that thought, he couldn’t help but do another quick sweep of the room, checking to see if there were any animals present that he missed on first glance. The quick motion made the pain in his neck blossom and he hissed as he closed his eyes.
“Easy there, Mister Yost. You need to be careful. My name is Doctor Hughes, and I’ve been the one watching over you since you were brought in. Can you tell me the last thing you remember?”
Darien steadied himself and opened his eyes to look at the doctor. In the background, Callie dropped into the chair but kept quiet.
“There was a car accident. A truck rammed us off the road. We flipped as we fell down the slope. The car was totaled. Susan was unconscious. Is she here too? Is she okay? Did you find Susan?”
“She’s fine. You were both very lucky. The airbags probably saved your lives, even if they did give you both a good bruising. It’s good that you can remember the accident. While you were both stable when they brought you in, there’s always the possibility of brain damage with whiplash and a concussion. Do you mind if I examine you?”
“Go ahead.”
The doctor put his clipboard down on the edge of the bed and picked up a pen light clipped to his coat pocket. He held open Darien’s eye, shining the light in, first the right and then the left. Then he had Darien follow the light as he moved it in different directions. Satisfied with the results of that examination he checked Darien’s suture sites and the mobility of his joints. It was going fine until the doctor got to Darien’s left arm. When he lifted the arm, Darien sucked in air and had to resist the urge to jerk back away from his touch.
“You seem to be healing nicely and I’m glad to see that you had no problem with the cognitive tests. The only residual damage appears to be to your left shoulder, where you took some impact during the crash. We took some radiographs and nothing’s broken. However, it’s pretty clear that you have significant soft tissue damage and probably a strain. We’ll keep an eye on it and see how it heals when the swelling starts to go down.”
As he talked he walked around to the foot of the bed and picked up his clipboard. He jotted a few notes, and then held it back in front of his body.
“I don’t think there’s any need to keep you on supplementary fluids so I’ll get a nurse to come take that IV out right away. We’ll give you something for the pain, but now that you’re awake, let’s try switching you to an oral pain management system. I’ll have a nurse take care of that too and get you some food. Do you have any questions for me?”
“I need to see Susan.”
“That can be arranged. Let’s get you disconnected first and then I’ll make sure the nurse escorts you to her room. Anything else?”
Darien shook his head, making the motion slowly so as not to aggravate the pain that he could feel just underneath the surface. The doctor flashed a smile before leaving the room and closing the door behind him, leaving Darien alone with Callie. She had to know he had questions. Darien eased himself back so that he was resting against the inclined bed once again.
“What happened?”
“I don’t know if you remember, but I was on the phone with you when the accident happened. As soon as I heard the noise, we sent a team out on Route 12 to find you. We arrived shortly after the local authorities. Someone had seen your car wrecked off the side of the road and called emergency services. They had pulled you and Susan out of the vehicle and were strapping you into an ambulance. We simply arranged to have them bring you here rather than a civilian hospital. That was a little over twenty-four hours ago.”
“Where is here?”
“Madigan Army Medical Center, in Fort Lewis. We’re about half an h
our north and east of Olympia.”
Darien closed his eyes and sunk into his pillow a little bit further. He didn’t even know there was a military base in the area, let alone one large enough to house its own hospital. He wasn’t sure how he felt being trapped in the middle of a government facility, but he did have to admit that Callie and Amber had come through. They got him and Susan to safety and were treating their injuries. If he had gone to a normal hospital, who knows what would have happened or who would’ve found him first. If the Shadows and the Arm were both trying to kill him, he doubted he would’ve survived long. Still, some part of his brain was concerned what the real cost of this hospital stay would be.
The silence between the two didn’t last very long as soon there was another quick rap on the door. A nurse came in, wheeling in a tray loaded with bandages. She walked over to Darien’s right side and smiled down at him.
“Hi, Darien. I’m just going to take that needle out of your hand and get this out of here. Then I’m sure you’ll want to use the bathroom. After that, I’ll take you to see Susan. Sound like a plan?”
“That sounds like my cue to leave. The work never stops. I’ll check in on you later. I just wanted to let you know where you were and that there’s no reason to panic. You’re safe here.”
“Thanks.”
The nurse went through her motions with a practiced air, getting Darien disconnected and free from the machines. She helped him sit up and swing his legs over the edge of the bed and held onto his good shoulder as he eased his weight onto his legs. At first he was concerned that he wouldn’t be able to walk on his own, but he found that as long as he kept his back straight and didn’t bend his neck at too harsh of an angle, he felt fine. Going for a run was out of the question, but at least he managed to make it to the bathroom without assistance.
After finishing up and coming back into the hospital room, the nurse escorted him to Susan’s room next door. She was sitting up in her bed, pushing some food around on her plate when he walked in. As soon as their eyes met, her face brightened and she dropped her fork onto the table. Darien rushed to her side as fast as he dared and wrapped his arms around her, leaning forward and ignoring the pain in his back.
The Torn Soul (The Sheynan Trilogy Book 3) Page 6