Lily grabbed his hand and squeezed it. “Let it out, man. Don’t hold it in.”
Hanger patted him on the back as well. “It’s good. No one here is judging.”
“Does it ever get better? Is there every going to be a day when I don’t break down in public or at all because something as stupid as cheesesteak reminds me of my wife and children? That I won’t wake up wishing they’d find me too and kill me?”
“No,” Ellie said. “It doesn’t ever.”
We all looked at her, and she shrugged. “It’s true. It never really gets better. It just gets different. I watched my dad die. I watched my mom kill herself with drugs. I was seriously alone for four years before you all found me. It never got easier. I miss my dad. I was five when he died. I miss my mom. I was twelve. I don’t miss the same way I did, but I do still miss them.” She looked at me and I could see the tears in her eyes. “And I miss my little brother. I want him back. Desperately.”
I grabbed her hand across the table.
Time seemed to freeze.
…the flameblade danced in front of her, held point down. The young man, no older than fourteen, stood just behind her, defiant and terrified. He stared ahead at the cold, cruel icy angel.
“You can’t have him, Melchior. He’s not yours. He’s angelico, and he’s ours.”
“He’ll be mine in a moment. As soon as I dispatch your annoying ass to Hell with your father.”
“Hell doesn’t frighten me.”
I stepped up next to the boy behind her. “He’s not yours, Melchior. Leave, now.”
“He has only half the protection he needs, belazhjian. He’s ours.”
There was a tilt and a shift and whirl of white flame, a roar of translocation, and whoosh of two new blades as they lifted into the air. “He has all the protection he needs.”
The voices were harmony and melody, from either side of Ellie. The white flame of their swords lit the room against the black flame of Ellie’s, casting long, dangerous, and protective shadows around us.
The icy angel took a step back and growled…
We ripped our hands apart and stared at each other.
“What the hell was that?” Sebastian asked.
Time caught up and the birds resumed their flight in the air.
“Are you okay?” Hanger asked from the end of the table. “You kind of jerked apart real fast.”
“Fine,” I said.
But when I looked at Sebastian I realized he had seen everything. Possibly even the spark that we’d all noticed during the visions, darsana.
God, was Sebastian a part of this too? I’d already touched him, and there was no connection at that point. But could it be that it wasn’t the right time yet?
I was getting tired of not knowing what was going on. Glancing down the table, Lily’s eyes were wide and full of warning.
“Are you sure you’re okay?” Hanger asked.
Letting out a breath, I nodded at him. “Sorry. Yes. I’m fine. Just a little static electric shock. El?”
She coughed. “Yeah, sure. I’m fine. Gotta remember to discharge once in a while.” She added a pretty convincing laugh.
The ground under us trembled, and I could feel the air around us trying to rip.
Shit. Our darsana had tripped something.
Laxmi snapped her head around to us. “Wren, doesn’t Ellie have to go to gymnastics?”
“Oh, my God, yes!” Ellie crowed. “And I left my bag at home!”
Nodding in the direction of my car, we both stood up. “Come on. I hope there’s time to go get it. Doctor Hanger, it was a pleasure to meet you. Bastian, take it easy.”
He looked like he was going to offer his hand for a handshake, but I grabbed Ellie and we walked at an angle that allowed me to ignore him as if I hadn’t seen the hand.
Ellie ran around the car and dove in as I pulled my seat belt on and started it up. I pulled away from the curb and headed for the on-ramp for 95 North.
“Back to the house?” I asked.
“Yes,” she said. “Away from the rip.” She stared out the window. “Jesus, Wren. The twins?”
“You saw that.”
“Who the fuck is Melchior?”
I shrugged, turning onto the on-ramp. “I don’t know, but it’s not the first time I’ve seen him either.”
“He’s a nasty fucker,” she mumbled. “But the twins. We have to keep them out of this as long as we can. They’re going to try and awaken them. And they are way, way too young for this.”
“I agree,” I said, cutting across too many lanes of traffic to get onto the Vine to head for the house. “The air still feels like it’s trying to rip. God, I hope we don’t have to give up Shank’s because of this.”
Ellie laughed. “Really? We just found out that the twins—and maybe Doctor Mederos—are part of this, and you’re worried about cheesesteak?”
“It’s good cheesesteak.”
Lincoln
I pulled into the parking space near the hospital, and turned to look at my kids in the back.
They were beyond terrified. Wide eyes, and trembling hands, they were hanging on to each other. I wanted to punch the demon who had put the terror in their eyes. I hadn’t seen it since we took them out of that miserable warehouse in Reading.
“You’re going to see Doctor Gary today, you two,” I said, trying to be a comfort. “I know you’re scared about this place, but just like Mom, I swear to you that I won’t let anyone hurt you. I will stay right in the room.”
“No more dark men?” Tim asked.
“As much as I can promise, no. No more dark men.”
“And you’ll stay in the room?” Tabi asked.
“Yes.”
“All right,” she agreed and a moment later, Tim did the same.
They always fell back into this pattern when they were scared or unsure. Tabi was the older of the two, and she took that roll seriously when it came to Tim. Wren, Fischer, and I had been working to pull that obligation away from her.
We walked through the hospital toward the OT rooms on the first floor. Doctor Gary was their usual doctor, so that was a huge relief, but I was still staying.
Nurse Andy, on duty as always it seemed, came running up and smiling at the twins. “Hey you two!”
They perked right up at seeing him, and he took their hands. “You two ready to have a good session today?”
“Yes, sir.” They smiled together.
“And you both heard that the doctor you had last time is gone. He won’t be substituting here anymore. He was fired and disciplined for frightening you.”
The two of them looked back at me, and I shook my head just a little. Nurse Andy wasn’t part of this. He had no idea what had really happened in that room and I was even reluctant to let the twins know more about it.
These two little lives were mine—ours—to protect and I wasn’t thrilled about pulling them out of the normal they were just starting to redefine.
Andy backed into the room with them, grinning and shuffled us all over to where Doctor Gary was sitting. The two of them walked toward the desk and he smiled at them.
“Hey, kids,” he said.
Alarm bells started screaming in my head. I’d brought them here enough times to know that he always called them by their names. On purpose. He told me he believed it helped them relax with him, and helped them create their separate identities. With twins, that was a priority. And he’d stressed that with all of us at the intake.
He also had no sins on his skin. At all. Not even the little bruises I was now used to with people who weren’t necessarily habitual offenders.
I’d never seen anyone who had no sins.
“Doctor, are you feeling all right?” I asked.
“Of course, just happy to see the kids here.”
The kids. Again.
I cocked my head and considered him. Andy had an eyebrow raised as well, and we exchanged a concerned look. “Doc, I’m going to get Nurse Irene to help you toda
y. She’s on duty and she said she loves working with Tim and Tabi.”
Andy remembered to say their names. Which meant that he was probably seeing the same thing I was.
Something wasn’t right.
“No, I don’t think we need to bother Nurse Irene today,” he answered. “I think we can handle this together.”
Andy shot a look at me. Together was not Gary’s MO. He always had someone in to help him so each twin got his undivided attention.
“I would like Irene in here, Doctor.” I left no room to broker argument. “These children need the therapy, and each is unique, as you’ve stressed before.”
He stood from the desk and stared at me. “Mister Foster, these children are under my care right now and I will do what I think is best for them.”
“Daddy,” Tim whimpered.
“We’re leaving,” I barked, and motioned both of them back over to me.
“If you leave—”
“They’re leaving with my permission,” Andy snapped. “Get your shit together, Doctor Kirgan. There will be no OT for Tim or Tabi today.”
It was only a heartbeat of time, but in that heartbeat, time seemed to slow down. Doctor Kirgan’s eyes lit with a dark burning fire. Not the black fire that Laxmi and Ellie had, or the white that Miriam held. An icy blue navy flame, that burned cold, as if someone had actually managed to set dry ice to flame.
It was Hell. The bad parts of Hell. The part that Miriam and Laxmi kept telling us about, where the Zhadanjir came from.
I could see that Gary Kirgan wasn’t there anymore—this was a golem.
Gary was dead, and this thing was using his body.
To get to my children.
Time sped up again, and the thing that was once Gary reached for Tim and Tabi. Andy jumped forward and grabbed them by the waist, pulling them back away from the thing in the skin suit.
“No!” he snapped, and turned to run them out of the room.
A blade made of black and gray flew from the golem’s hand into the base of Andy’s skull, killing him instantly.
The twins screamed as they spilled forward, but I was only a second behind and dove for them, scooping them both against me before they could see the bleeding body of someone they considered a friend. I crashed through the door, slinging Tim on to my back and clutching Tabi to my front.
“Hang on, we’re running like hell, kids,” I barked. Tim’s arms wrapped tighter around my shoulders, and I could feel Tabitha trying not to cry.
Running through the corridors, I slammed sideways through a fire exit I knew was close to the car, not giving a rat’s ass about the alarm. We were a hundred steps from the vehicle.
I hit the unlock. “I need you both to jump in the back. I’m going to start driving before you’re buckled in, but you need to do that. Can you?”
“Yes, Daddy,” Tabi said.
“Good girl.” I yanked the back door open, and they both jumped in. I slammed the door behind them and jerked open the driver’s door, sliding into the seat.
The car was away from the curb and racing down the street as fast as I could drive. I checked the rearview as both of them fastened their belts in the booster, and Tabi pulled her big sister routine to make sure Tim was in correctly.
“Daddy, I don’t even want to go back there again,” Tim said, catching my eyes in the mirror.
Yeah, that was a shock. “I don’t think you will, kiddo.”
There was a flash and a twist of reality in the passenger seat and Ellie was suddenly there. “What the hell is going on?”
“Andy’s dead,” I snapped. “Go to the hospital, see what the hell is going on. I got the twins, I’ll get them home.”
She nodded and vanished. The two little faces in the backseat looked horrified and I could see Tabitha’s lip trembling.
“Nurse Andy?” she whispered.
“I’m sorry, sweetie. Yeah, I think the doctor killed him.”
“Doctor Gary wouldn’t ever hurt anyone!” Tim defended his grown up friend.
“I don’t think that was Doctor Gary anymore,” Tabitha said. “There was something weird in his eyes and he smelled.”
“Smelled how?” I asked.
“Like someone was cooking bad eggs.”
Sulfur. The smell of brimstone, a purported signature scent from Hell. And if I was right, this guy was from the bad parts of the After. There were probably only three kinds of people who didn’t have sins on their skin: Jesus, the angels, and the dead.
I seriously doubted that guy was Jesus.
Pulling the car on to 95 South, I moved through the traffic as fast as I could without being that guy on the road. I probably still was.
I sped up the ramp for the Vine and pulled all the way to the right, the image of Andy on the floor dead running through my head.
Wren was going to be crushed.
The traffic was moving well for the middle of the morning. All the people around us moving through their day, completely unaware of the bits of Hell that moved through their day as well.
Tabitha screamed wordlessly as Timothy barely managed words. “Look out!”
Fischer
“Where are the twins?” I called down the hall to Lily, trying to hold back a completely hysterical Wren.
“Paige has them in the waiting room,” Lily said, holding up a hand.
Wren gasped through a sob, “Lincoln—”
“Is in surgery,” Lily said. “His leg was pretty fucked up and he was unconscious, but he’s alive.”
Finally, Wren let out the wrenching sob that she’d been holding in since Ellie had called from St. Christopher’s an hour before. I shoved her into the waiting room where Lily had parked the twins and Paige, and led her over to the couch there to force her to sit.
Tabitha and Timothy darted over to her and wrapped their arms around her. They had cuts and bruises on them.
“What happened to the kids?” I asked Lily.
“I’ll get the doctor in here.”
“Lily—”
“I have a fatal accident to deal with. I have to find out who the lead detective is on Rollins’ murder and coordinate. I’m going to send in the doctor.” Her words were clipped, angry and dismissive. She was gone out the door a moment later.
Ellie walked in before the door closed, with Miriam on her tail.
“The twins—”
I pointed to where they were wrapped around a relieved and exhausted Wren. “Fine.”
“And Linc?”
“In the operating room. That’s all we know right now.” I leveled my gaze at her. “And you?”
She shook her head. “Andy was laying there, dead. He was...um…exsanguinating. Like even though his heart had stopped the blood was just draining out of him.”
I put a hand on her shoulder. “There was nothing any of us could have done. From what Tim and Tabi were able to tell me, it happened really fast. He had grabbed them away from the doctor and gave Lincoln just enough time to get them out.”
“Do you think it was an honest accident?” Wren asked.
“No,” the twins chorused.
“The man in the car looked just like the doctor did,” Tim said. “There was nothing in his eyes.”
“He was looking for us,” Tabi added. “He aimed the car for us.”
“That answers that,” Miriam said. She put a hand on my back and gave a little shove. She knew that Wren was a mess, and I needed to be over there. She and Ellie each took one of the twins and sat on the couch opposite as I sat down and Wren collapsed into my shoulder, weeping.
“I don’t understand. They killed Andy! He had nothing to do with anything except protecting those children! He was an amazing nurse! He ran that unit like a military base and nothing got lost…” She hiccupped. “He’s dead.”
“Doctor Warner?”
She and I both looked to the door, and Wren recognized the man right away. “Doctor Juarez.”
He closed the door. “You’re here with Mister Foster?”
“Yes.” She nodded.
“All right, let’s start there. He had a compound break of the humerus, as well as fractures in the tibia, and clean break in the fibula. It’s from the engine landing in the cabin. We’ve repair the humerus with some pins, and he’s been stitched up. The fibula has been set, and the leg is being casted in a few days. He’s going to be in ICU until he wakes up from the anesthesia, which should be about an hour.”
The tension drained out of Wren—and shockingly, out of me. Lincoln had become a real friend to me, and I hadn’t realized how tense I was with him being hurt.
“And the kids?” Wren asked.
“Bumps and bruises,” Juarez said. “Tabi has stitches under that bandage on her hand from a slice from glass. Tim has a few on his elbow for the same reason. But they’re going to be sore tomorrow. Did Detective Haden show you the pictures of the wreck?”
Both of us shook our heads.
“The car was upside down, and we were slammed against the wall, three lanes over,” Tim said. “It was really, really scary.”
“They can have ibuprofen if they’re really sore, and if that doesn’t work, call me and I’ll get them something stronger. I don’t think you’ll need it though.”
“Can we see Lincoln?” I asked.
“Give them half an hour and I’ll ask one of the nurses to come up and get you,” he said. “That wreck was quite the scene. The other driver didn’t make it.”
The doctor walked back out quietly, and Paige followed him now that Miriam and Ellie were there. They left us in silence for a minute.
“He was dead before the accident, wasn’t he?” Tabitha asked. “The same way that Doctor Gary was dead before he tried to take us.”
Miriam nodded. “Yes. You’re right. They were dead before they stopped moving. They were taken by the zhadanjir, their souls discarded, and their bodies nothing but an empty husk.”
“This is the second time they tried to steal us,” Timothy said quietly. “First with Mom and now with Dad. Why do they want us? We’re just no ones.”
“Even our families don’t want us back,” Tabitha said.
“Who told you that?” Ellie asked.
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