A muscle twitched in his right eyelid. “Because of your lover, that’s why.”
“I don’t understand.”
“He’s on the verge of completing his contract.” He made a tsking sound and wagged his finger, staring at the tip of his finger in fascination. After a moment, he blinked and refocused on her. “We all know that ending a contract with the big boss is a big no-no. Nobody gets out of a contract.” He paused. “Well, almost no one.”
Barnaby.
She took a careful breath. “What does this have to do with me?”
“Ah, yes, you, you, you. Me, me, me. I wanna talk about me.”
He began singing a country song by the same title. Reason wouldn’t work, so she hummed the song along with him until he ran out of steam.
He snapped his bloodshot gaze back to her. “Now where were we?”
She cringed away from his breath, foul like a sunbaked corpse. He had a few missing teeth where only bloody pulps remained.
“Ah yes. You, you, you … ”
While he sang, she tried to collect herself enough to call to Peter. She closed her eyes and got a burst out right before Anton leaned into her shoulder again. The two pieces of her collarbone ground together. She screamed, the blackness closing in.
He grabbed her chin. “Pay attention, lovely, lovely. It’s rude to think about other things when I’m talking. So if your boyfriend figures out his Meaningful Kill, he’ll be done with the contract. The big boss hates that. Hates it, hates it, hates it. Once an employee, always an employee. So he wants to make Peter pay.” Giggling, he sang, “Peter pay, Peter pay, bossy’ll make Peter pay.”
When he let up the pressure for a moment, Allison sucked air into her lungs, formulating her next move against this nut job. Nothing obvious came to mind.
He said, “So you’re the piece of torture, see?”
“No, I don’t see,” she cried.
“Even if Peter finishes the contract, he’ll have nothing to live for anymore. I’m going to destroy anyone he cares about. You. That delightful little girl. Her parents. Maybe his friend Barnaby if I can track him down.”
Her heart plunged into an airless vacuum. “No. You can’t kill my family. They haven’t done anything wrong.” A tear ran unchecked down her cheek as terror and pain mixed. She had to stop him.
“Sorry, rules are rules,” he said, tapping his forehead rhythmically. “But maybe we can make a deal. You do some nice things for me.” He licked his chapped lips with his bloody tongue. “And I’ll make your family members’ deaths swift. If you’re not nicey-nicey to me, well, then … it could take a while.”
“You’re an animal.”
Panic overwhelmed her as she kicked at him. He merely pressed his hand against her collarbone, stilling her with the cruel pressure.
“Rowr.” He growled and made a claw.
He stopped mid-paw and stared at his hand for what seemed like an eternity. His bloodshot eyes brightened, and he focused intently on Allison with a toothless smile.
“I have an idea that’s going to get me in good with the big boss. Okay, you just stand there against the wall.” He reached down to his leg and pulled out a knife similar to Peter’s. “So while I’m in the process of torturing you to death, I can also get loads of your life force for the big guy to dine on tonight. He might promote me. No one’s ever supped on a Ward’s spirit. Yummy.”
He pointed the tip of the knife at Allison’s sternum and pressed hard enough to draw blood.
She screamed as the blade seared her like a hot poker.
Anton drew the knife downward, slicing her scrub top in two. “Take that shirt off, lovely, lovely. I want a pristine canvas to work with.”
She eased her right arm out of the top, and then used it to slide the shirt off her useless left arm. In a bra and scrub pants, she leaned against the wall, her knees threatening to buckle.
“Now, how well you stand there and let me play will determine how nice I am to your family when I kill them.”
The knife glowed with a greenish hue when he traced it over her sternum. As he slid it up and brought it flat against her face, the blade heated and hummed next to her ear.
Oh God, what a way to die. If she could hold still through the hurt, maybe she could help her family.
Sweat beaded his forehead. Stale steam rose from the pores of his skin.
“Oh my, my, my. The hard part will be going slowly with you. Don’t want to waste any of your blood, yummy scrummy, yummy scrummy.”
Allison froze in horror, fixated on the blade now glowing bright green and poised over her skin.
He drew the knife down her arm, the blood blooming red. She burned beneath the razor-sharp blade. Turning to her torso, he trailed the knife in an agony of art along her ribcage.
She couldn’t hold in the screams as Anton held her in place by her shattered collarbone and continued his slow work, laughing as her blood ran onto the floor.
• • •
Dante braked violently at the entrance to Allie’s dirt lane. Peter jumped out and sprinted toward the house with Dante at his heels.
Her screams were audible even outside the house, and her terror banged inside Peter’s head. Caring about nothing but getting to her, he dove through the dining room window and rolled on the shattered glass. Allie, her upper body naked save for a blood-soaked bra, stood upright by virtue of Anton’s grip on her shoulder.
Peter stopped in his tracks. Lurid lines crisscrossed her arms and chest and abdomen. Blood flowed and pooled on the floor. Her glassy eyes were unfocused.
Was she even alive?
Dante crunched broken glass as he stepped up behind him. “Herre Gud!” his friend swore in his native tongue.
Anton smiled and dragged the flat of the blade over her cheek.
Peter lost the edges of his vision as his entire world narrowed down to a bloody Allie sagging under Anton’s hand.
“You like my work? I’m quite the artist. See?” He waved the glistening, glowing blade. Anton’s giggle raked across Peter’s nerves. “It likes this one. Delicious.”
“You bastard!” He launched himself at the minion.
He didn’t reach her in time.
Anton plunged the knife into her lower chest.
The tiny, pitiful sound that escaped her pale lips set off an explosion in Peter’s mind.
He hurled Anton away, crashing the minion into the kitchen table.
Her right hand shaking, Allie pulled the glowing knife out of her chest and slid down the wall, blood squirting from the wound.
Torn, Peter looked from her broken body to Anton, who was sprawled on the floor on his hands and knees, trying to rise.
“Dante?”
“Oh, yeah. I’ll take care of this one, Petey.”
His friend stalked toward Anton, his giant legs pounding the floor. Dante’s ice-blue eyes had turned cold and black.
“This oåkting will pay.” Dante planted one foot and viciously kicked Anton in the head, leveling the minion to the ground.
The minion tried to crawl away, but with one thunderous stomp to Anton’s midsection,Dante broke the minion’s spine in a sickening crack, temporarily paralyzing him. He didn’t wait for the minion to heal. Anton’s pleas fell on deaf ears as Dante drew his knife and ran the minion through slowly and repeatedly. He then hacked Anton’s head from his body and let it drop to the floor with a thunk.
Peter fell to his knees in the pool of Allie’s sticky blood, pulling her against him. She breathed rapidly, gurgling. Air whooshed in and out of her chest wound. He put his hand on the wound to close it.
“Dante! Get me ointment and a cloth. Hurry.”
Dante blinked until his black eyes became blue again and ran off in search of supplies.
“Allie,” Peter whispered. Real tears rolled down his face, the first time since 1945.
He felt the buzz of their mental connection growing weaker. She was drifting away from him, like a boat floating from shore.
&nb
sp; Her green eyes flickered open. Little blood vessels had burst in the whites. She licked her swollen lower lip. Her wet cough drove a wave of nausea through Peter.
Allie weakly lifted her right hand to touch his chest. “You’re okay,” she said. “Quincy? Sarah?”
“They’re fine, Allie. They’re safe.”
“No, he’s going to kill them, too.” When she closed her eyes, a teardrop rolled out of one corner.
“He’s dead now. He can’t hurt them.” Peter caressed her cheek. “I’m so sorry for everything. I’m sorry I brought this down on you.”
She inhaled rapidly as she shook her head. “My choice,” she gasped out. “Thank you … ”
Her bloodied body. This torture. Her fear. Every bit of it was his fault. It had to stop. He had to stop. The answer clicked as Barnaby entered the house. Peter’s world was over without her.
“Good Lord, son, is she alive?” The older man put a hand out to her bruised neck.
“Barely. Please call an ambulance.”
“Dante can get there faster,” Barnaby said.
“I know, but she needs oxygen right away. The ambulance is safer.”
Barnaby picked up the phone and gave dispatch the information.
Dante returned with a tube of Neosporin and strips of bed sheets. Even the unshakable Swede paled and turned away at the sight of Allie’s injuries.
Peter squirted ointment on the fabric and pressed it over the sucking chest wound to create a seal, willing her to stay alive.
Dante reappeared with a sheet and gently draped it over Allie. He shook his head. “The minion’s death was much too swift. I wish I could kill him again for this, bro.”
“Me too, Dante.”
They met the EMTs in the driveway, where Peter laid an unconscious Allie on the gurney. The ambulance personnel placed an oxygen mask on her while electrodes recorded her rapid heartbeat. The medics transferred her to the ambulance and sped off, lights blazing and sirens blaring.
The house was deathly silent. Blood covered the kitchen walls and floor. Peter stared in shock at his soaked clothes. He hadn’t said goodbye to her. He might never get the chance.
“We’ll clean up before the police get here,” Dante said.
Barnaby nodded. “Go wash up. You’ll want to stay with your lady. They won’t let you in the hospital if you’re covered in blood. And when you’re done at the hospital, you come get me. We’ll talk about what needs to be done.”
Peter stopped dead in his tracks. The Meaningful Kill. He understood.
Barnaby smiled sadly.
Chapter 22
Allison’s life boiled down to brief flashes of images.
There was a prick on her arm in the bouncing vehicle as an EMT placed an IV. She tried to answer his questions, but blackness covered her again in a blissful blanket.
Bright lights shone overhead. Buddy stood over her, his kind face creased with worry as he called out rapid-fire orders.
Odd, he’s normally quite calm.
She heard her own desperate rasping. She clawed at her throat. Couldn’t get enough air. Gentle hands held her arms down. She heard the air poofing in and out of her sucking chest wound.
An open pneumothorax sounds different when I’m the patient.
Buddy’s mumbled apology as he prepped for a chest tube placement. The fire of thousands of intercostal nerves flaring when Buddy drove the tube between her ribs and up and into her pleural space.
A tidal wave of darkness.
Sarah’s tears, her cool hands touching Allison’s bruised cheek.
Buddy’s call for four units of O negative blood, run wide open.
Allison knew why he was asking for that much blood. Well, that’s bad.
A rumbling movement as the OR crew and anesthesiologist ran her gurney down the hall. Fluorescent lights flashed above her bed.
One, two, blank. One, two, blank.
A bump as they entered the OR.
The general surgeon, his gruff face hidden by a mask, bent over to talk with her about bleeding thoracic vessels. Her lung remained collapsed despite the chest tube. He needed to fix both issues.
Yup, that sounds about right.
Also he mentioned that the orthopedic surgeon would be in to repair her collarbone.
Roger. Whatever they have to do.
She skimmed along in rolling waves of agony until the anesthesiologist covered her nose and mouth with a bag valve mask and cranked up what she hoped was isoflurane. She slid into a painless abyss.
No air, but blackness. Allison was back in the mine. Her chest ached. Throat sore, she wanted to rub her neck, but her arms wouldn’t move. Struggling, she realized her left arm was fixed in place across her body. And she was intubated, which felt like drowning alive as the machine regulated her breathing.
Stay calm, ride the vent.
Easier said than done. She needed to remember how this felt when she intubated patients in the ER in the future.
Maybe the nurses would turn up the Propofol drip so she could go back to sleep. Allison couldn’t speak. The tube and beeps and pain were starting to get to her.
I can’t exactly ask for help.
Quiet beeps punctuated the ventilator sounds.
In, whoosh, out, click. In, whoosh, out, click.
Warmth started in her right hand and traveled through her chest out to her head and toes. Her entire body relaxed.
She was pain-free.
That makes no sense.
She curled her hand into the heated hand that held hers, and she met Peter’s dark brown gaze. She wanted to touch his rough cheek, but couldn’t work up the energy.
“Allie.” His voice cracked.
She started to get mental feedback from his anguish and tried to block him but couldn’t un-fuzz her brain enough to do so. Pain, not physical but mental, pressed down on her mind. All she wanted to do was reassure Peter that she would be okay.
That he would be okay.
Why wouldn’t he be okay?
So she rode the vent and the waves of pain coming from Peter. She pushed against his agony with her love for him.
Love?
Oh God, no. She had no intention of falling in love with him. The plan was to find a normal man, right?
He lifted his head. “You’re crying. Are you in pain?”
That’s not why I’m crying.
“I’ll get the nurse,” he said.
His warmth was gone, but his pain continued to flow into her mind, relentless waves of torture. Something sliced into her chest. Or was it his chest?
He called to her, as if from a great distance. As if he were being pulled away.
Away.
She searched along the faded lines of pain.
Silence. Had she imagined him?
“Al?”
Allison squinted against the fluorescent lights.
Sarah’s haggard face was wet, her eyes red-rimmed. “You’re awake.”
When Allison tried to reply, the tube abraded her throat.
Don’t fight the vent.
Sarah was gone, replaced by an ICU nurse.
“Want off the vent?” The nurse studied the flow sheet.
Allison nodded carefully, the endotracheal tube scraping with the movement.
“Okay, Dr. Al, you know the drill.” The nurse deflated the ET tube balloon. “Give me a few good coughs.”
Allison complied despite searing agony in her ribs. By her third or fourth cough, the tube was out. The nurse placed a Venturi mask with its stale, plastic, oxygen scent over Allison’s mouth and nose. She welcomed the oxygen over face.
Sarah’s face floated back into view. “How’s your pain?”
“Decent,” Allison whispered. “The worst is my right side.”
“Not surprising. Dr. Bart had to open your chest to stop the bleeding. And you still have a chest tube. You’ll be sore for a while.”
“Quincy?”
“She’s receiving IV fluids. She had some frostbite on one
foot and might have a little nerve damage but should be fine. She’s demanding ice cream now. I left Bryce to sit with her for a while. She’s driving me nuts. But you and Peter did a good thing finding my girl.” Tears rolled down Sarah’s cheeks as she leaned into Allison’s one-armed embrace.
“It was Peter who saved Quincy.”
“No, it was a joint effort. You two make quite the team.”
Allison’s smile cracked a swollen lip. “I know. That’s the problem.”
“What’s the problem? You like him and he likes you.”
“It’s not that simple with me, and you know it. I want a normal relationship with a normal man.”
“I know you do, sis. You’ve always wanted that.”
“I can’t have that with Peter.”
Sarah patted Allison on the leg. “You of all people should understand. In life you sometimes get what you need, not what you want.”
“Speaking of Peter, where is he?”
Sarah didn’t meet her eyes. “We haven’t seen him since last night.”
• • •
“What are we doing?” Dante asked from the driveway of Allie’s house.
Peter rubbed his chin. “You can’t come with me. But if you can stick around La Grande for a while and watch over Allie, I’d appreciate it.” The image her of last night, laying on the hospital bed with all the wires and electrodes attached to her, haunted him.
“Anything, bro. When are you returning?”
Peter glanced at Barnaby, who shrugged.
“No idea,” Peter said. “Not even sure I’ll return.”
Dante’s eyebrows rose.
“But I have to try.”
“Well, then good luck to you. I’ll watch over your lady.” Uncharacteristically serious, he clapped Peter on the arm and took off for the hospital.
Peter turned to the stooped old man. “All right, now what?”
“I don’t know. There’s no manual for this kind of thing.”
“How’d you do it?”
“You know I can’t give details.” He rubbed his bald head. “But I might suggest you go somewhere private and safe, where you have some connection to humanity. Where you find meaning. Where you can focus.”
Peter squinted at the sunny sky. “Can you still hike?”
“Not quickly, but yes.”
Immortal Flame Page 19