by Joey W. Hill
“I don’t. I have what I need.” Alistair’s gaze shifted to Nina. “What happened at the market was a distraction. His next target is the hospital.”
“What?” Alarm filled her. “What is he going to do?”
“His man Curtis did explosives during the war. It seems to have something to do with that.”
She scrambled to her feet even as Stanley spoke, his brow furrowed. “If his intent was to kill your servant at the hospital, why’d he attack her first? He’d have to know that would keep her from going back, at least for a while.”
“He doesn’t care if Nina is there or not. The whole chain of events is intended to unbalance me, and prove to the Council I have no control of my Region, nor even of my servant, allowing her to work. An explosion, connected to her, to a human hospital with mass casualties, would lead back to me, attracting undue attention from the human world. I would be forced to pack us up and leave after a human tragedy of that magnitude. Leave the Region altogether.”
He glanced down at Stanley, resting under his hand, his cheek lying on Alistair’s biceps.
“So what do we do?” Nina asked, quelling her natural desire to race for the hospital, to do she knew not what. Tracy was on shift today. Dr. Jones. All the faces of people she knew flashed through her mind, patients and nursing staff. God, the children’s ward. “Does Donovan know you know?”
“I don’t think so. Thanks to Stanley remaining so relaxed, I was barely a feather brush in his mind.” Alistair’s hand tightened on her. I will go find the explosives, if he’s put them in place, and take care of it. Stay here.
It was still full dark. He might also run afoul of Donovan and more of his vampires. “Alistair, I know that hospital. I know people who can help us there.”
“You are going nowhere near that hospital.”
“Alistair—”
“You will not cross me on this, Nina. I won’t lose you. I’m not standing over another destroyed body. Particularly yours.”
He spoke baldly, in front of Stanley, and gripped her shoulder, his thumb against the base of her throat. “You promise me.”
She would do no such thing. It didn’t take an extremely clever person to know that Donovan would likely have traps ready just in case. Alistair shifted his attention to Stanley and Nero. “You keep her here. Even if you have to lay hands on her.”
“Going to have to let your butler handle that, because you can’t go there without some kind of backup, mate,” Stanley said. He struggled to his feet, planted them with a determined look. And started to sway. Nina and Nero caught him before he crumpled.
“Damn it to fucking hell,” the young male said.
“Yeah. It takes something out of you,” Alistair said. He put a hand on Stanley’s shoulder, a palm against Nina’s face, looked hard at both of them, then at Nero. “Just stay here, the lot of you. We’ll have tea when I get back and hash out what’s left to be done.”
His attention came back to Nina, and his blue eyes were suddenly deep enough to drown in, a storm that held her in its powerful turmoil. I know your courage. But let me do this without the distraction of worrying about you. I can reach out to your mind if I need guidance at the hospital. It will be as good as you standing beside me.
No, it wouldn’t. But he was going to go without her, and there was nothing she could do about it. She understood the why, but it still frustrated her. She gripped his wrist, digging her nails into his skin. “You better succeed, or I’ll be right angry with you, my lord.”
He almost smiled, though it didn’t reach his eyes. “Take care of Stanley,” he said. He pulled her to him, a hard, rough kiss, over too soon, and then he was gone.
She ran down the hallway, and came out the front entranceway, in time to hear and then see his car start up and peel out of the drive, spitting gravel. She stood on the veranda, hands clenched as helplessly as Stan’s had been. Keep him safe, she prayed. She knew how futile that could be if the Fates were already decided, but it was all she could do at the moment. Please keep him safe, damn you.
“Miss Nina.” Nero had followed her, probably dropping Stan on the floor like a sack of potatoes to stay on her heels. She turned to him.
“Nero, can’t you… I don’t know. Oh, bloody hell.”
“I can’t leave you, Miss Nina. He’s made it clear you’re my charge. He’s depending on me to let him know if this is a ruse by Donovan to draw him out and away from you. In case.”
Though she didn’t know why Donovan would bother with her again when he easily could have killed her, maybe it was as Alistair said. If he kept him off balance, chasing his tail, not sure what Donovan would do next, it would suit his ultimate purpose. Though she had a terrible fear Donovan’s ultimate purpose was to be rid of Alistair altogether, not just deposed as Region Master.
She didn’t give a damn about what made sense. But when it seemed there was nothing to be done, she’d do what she knew how to do.
Going back inside, she returned to Alistair’s study. Stanley was still sitting on the floor, looking steadier but still not quite up to being on his feet by himself, so she and Nero helped get him onto the couch and she sent Nero for a fresh ice compress for his still swollen face. Stan sat upright there, obviously attempting to pull it together.
“Never had a mind probe done before,” he grunted. He’d managed to secure the bottle Alistair had left on the side table and took a healthy swig from it now. “How do you servants manage it all the time like that?”
Nina extricated the whisky from his hand with a reproving look and poured more in his glass. “A vampire getting into a vampire’s mind is a far craggier terrain than it is for a Master in the mind of his third mark. Alistair describes it like sinking into melted butter.”
“A good thought. Never had a servant yet, but that sounds a lot like sinking into a willing arse. Might have to think harder on it.”
She shook his head at his unconscious crudity, and he flushed a little. “Got to work on my manners some, don’t I?”
“No more than I do on my InhServ etiquette,” she said truthfully, and surprised a smile out of him. No sense pretending with someone else who could see the truth clear enough. “Maybe I’ll get you a manners manual,” she said. “And then—”
It was like being struck full in the chest and head with a bag of bricks. She stumbled back, hitting the table and knocking over the tea set, sending it crashing to the ground. The whisky bottle dropped out of her hand, the heavier glass thudding to the carpet, the contents sloshing out. She went down with all of it, broken glass cutting her. She barely felt it. Panic at the unknown grabbed her, but something far worse sliced through it. Alistair.
She struggled through a haze, registered Stanley yelling for Nero. Crunching glass, people lifting her free of it as she thrashed weakly, tried to orient herself.
She was…he was…alive. They were alive, but he’d… His mind was suddenly wide open, and she fell into it, still writhing in pain, and saw what had happened in the same moment he tried to make sense of it. Driving the car along the winding drive from the house. Crossing the bridge over the small creek that marked the end of his property and the intersection with the main road. The car gave a hitch and…
Fire, searing heat, an explosion so loud even recalling it had her flinching, covering her ears. Oh God, the burning…and the pain. The pain was…he couldn’t make sense of anything.
Him, not her. She was not hurt, but he was. Very badly. She struggled through it all, swam upward like she was swimming through bodies, through blood, through hunger and fear, through a mass of faces, people she’d cared for and lost, patients she’d never seen again. Some of whom she’d been the last to see, pulling the sheet over their faces, a tender shroud so the departing soul didn’t have to see the mangled condition of the body they’d had to escape.
“Alistair,” she gasped. “Alistair.”
She was gripping someone, and realized it was Nero. She was on the couch where she’d told Stanley to sit, but he was knee
ling next to her, holding her steady as Nero barked something at Coleman, who’d come at a run.
Get out of it, the Matron snapped. A man needs you.
The voice beyond the grave brought her back, even if she felt weak as dishwater. “Nero, my nurse’s bag… Stanley, car. We must go. Alistair. At bridge. Blown up. He’s hurt.”
Nero and the vampire exchanged a look, and Nero’s face hardened. Following the same thought herself, she acted on it even before Nero did. Vampire or no, she was on Stanley in a heartbeat, her fists curling into his shirt as she yanked him up close to her face. Adrenaline gave her the strength to hold him, snarl at him. “God help you, did you—”
“No,” Stanley said hastily, and the paleness of his face, the wideness of his eyes, told her it was the truth. “Fuck, no. Donovan must have had a backup plan. Or maybe this was the plan. He knew I’d give it up about being marked. He planned for it, planted the wrong info. It wasn’t the hospital.” Stanley got even paler, and despair, hopeless guilt gripped his features. “Fucking hell, the blighter used me. Used my mind to kill Alistair.”
“Don’t,” she snapped at him. “He’s not dead. No time to wallow in it. We need to help Alistair.”
As Nina struggled up, Stanley proved he was worth something by indeed shoving it aside enough to help her. Nero had her bag, and they were headed for the door out to the garage. Nero instructed Coleman to stay put, to ensure the house stayed secure until their return.
“He wanted to take Alistair out,” Stanley said. “That was the plan. The rest of it was just distraction. He knew Alistair was too smart for a frontal attack.”
Nina nodded. “Going after me was just a way to make sure Alistair would be home, in the proper place for them to plant the bomb. Why would Donovan waste time on a servant when killing the vampire would kill us both? He didn’t care about savoring it, making Alistair suffer. He just wanted him gone.”
“Or both,” Stanley said, anger in his voice. Good. She wanted him angry. “If he could have his cake and eat it too, that’s bloody Donovan to a T.”
Nero and Stanley ushered her into the car that Nero usually used to pick her up from the hospital. Thank God Alistair was flush and had three or four of the damn things. Hurry, hurry, hurry.
Nero took the wheel and Stanley the back as she gripped her bag in both hands. Her head was reeling, so she did everything she could to hold onto consciousness. She had to help him. You hold on. I can’t bloody help you if you die.
She’d tell him that if they ended up at the gates of the afterlife together. She’d give him a piece of her mind.
As the end of the driveway came into view, her hands tightened on the bag, her heart leaping in her throat. His car was a mangled mess, pieces of it everywhere. The main body of the vehicle was halfway into the creek below the destroyed bridge. A couple trees overhanging the bridge had branches on fire.
He was there and still in one piece. He had to be, because she was still alive, even if she did feel like a hive of bees were roaring in her head, and her limbs needed to be told what to do several times before they reacted.
Nero and Stanley were out of the car ahead of her, Nero splashing down into the creek and Stanley scouring the surrounding area.
But she knew where to look because she could feel him. She stumbled from the car, staggered toward the trees. He’d had the top off of the convertible, for that was how he liked to drive it. He’d been thrown free. He hadn’t been trapped in the car and burned…
When she saw him, she wasn’t sure for a moment what she was seeing, and then the horror of it nearly dragged her into the blackness. She fought it like a demon, screaming her rage, refusing to let it take her. Her Master needed her.
She fell to her knees next to him. If he’d been human, it would have been over. His head…his neck looked half severed by the blast, but a quick, terrified probe told her the cervical bones were still intact. There was a crater in his chest and he lay in enough blood to kill two people, if they’d lost that much. Thank God all his limbs were intact, but that wasn’t saying much, since one arm seemed to be holding on only by scraps of veins and muscle. She had a brief, absurd flashback to his teasing her about a finger and the butcher knife.
She clung to the things she’d been told could kill a vampire. A wooden stake through the heart. Decapitation—hopefully only full decapitation, not just partial. Burning. Everything she was looking at could heal, as impossible as that seemed. It had to.
She couldn’t feed him if he didn’t have any ability to swallow. A direct transfusion then. She’d supplemented her field kit over time, adding in things that would allow her to perform procedures she’d learned from battlefield medics, the doctors at casualty clearance centers. Things a nurse didn’t usually do, but she’d made it her business to learn. Anything that could help a patient.
“Nero, I need you here to hold his shoulders.” As she showed him what she needed, she positioned herself so Alistair’s head was between her knees. While a vampire might not need his neck and shoulders aligned properly for the protection of the spine, it would heal faster if they were, just like with Stanley’s arm.
She dug into her bag and found a line, needles. Despite the fog in her brain, her hands were steadier than they’d ever been in her life. She refused to look again at Alistair’s face. Not right now. She instead thought of him as a man depending on her for his life. Any man, any patient, still vitally important, but not as unbalancing as knowing it was the man she loved, sliding down the perilous slope toward his death.
Stanley knelt at their side. “I will need blood from you both after I give him as much of mine as I can without becoming useless,” she said shortly. “And then—”
The shot caught her high in the shoulder, slamming her down over Alistair. The report echoed through the night, followed by a couple startled bird cries.
Her first reaction was pure, killing rage. “Bloody fucking hell,” she spat. The burn of it only added to the fire in her blood. She was cursing some more as Nero dragged her away from Alistair, behind the cover of the car. She fought him like a she-lion, but even with her third mark strength, she couldn’t throw him before he talked sense into her.
“Stop it now. You won’t do him any good with a bullet in your head. Be still now. Let us find the blighter.”
“He’s over there,” Stanley said, crouched next to them. His expression was hard, and she remembered the night he and Alistair had wrestled. She saw the predator in Stanley’s face now, the lethal fury. In the next blink he was gone, like a bullet himself. Headed in the direction from which the shot had come.
“There, Stanley has him in hand,” she said, struggling. “Let me…”
“When he finds him,” Nero said, holding her fast. “And makes sure there’s no more of them. Let’s check and see that you’re not hurt worse than you think.”
Impatiently, she brushed aside his hands and ripped the shoulder of the blouse out of her way. A quick probe, and she shook her head. “It went through.” She held out her arm, wiggled all the fingers. “No serious damage. Nero, he needs me.”
At the sound of a heavy thud and a groan, Nero leaned cautiously out around the bumper. Nina scrambled after him, pressed against the arm he used to hold her back. The body that hit the pavement like a landed fish was still wriggling, but Stanley leaped onto the man like a mountain cat. “Damn sniper,” he said. “Only one, far as I can detect. Didn’t kill him yet, in case you need the blood.”
“A sniper who’s a bad shot,” Nero said. “Though I think you turned your head at the last moment, Miss Nina. No predicting that. You’re working your guardian angel overtime.”
She barely acknowledged him, scrambling back over to Alistair. Nero, apparently determining she was safe for the moment, helped Stanley secure their prisoner, but they both came back to her quickly, Nero taking Alistair’s shoulders as before.
Later, she would remember that Stanley positioned himself over them like a guardian angel, watching
in all directions, a protective detail. For now, there was just her and her patient.
She set up the line, and didn’t draw an easy breath until the blood started to flow from her body into Alistair’s. Then she turned her attention to whatever else she could set to rights, to help the healing process. She put her hand on that terrible wound in his neck, needing to feel it when it started to come back together. His eyes were open, staring like a corpse’s. She couldn’t bear it. She closed them, told herself it was the vampire’s version of being unconscious after a terrible, mortal wound. She wished she knew more about vampire anatomy, had asked a hundred more questions at the school. None of this would work for a human. They would already have pulled the sheet up over his face.
At least there wouldn’t be any question in her mind if he died, because she’d fall right over him. If he died, she did, but it was the last thing on her mind right now.
To keep herself from thinking too much about the thing that was most important to her, she focused on what Stanley and Nero were discussing as they kept watch.
“Donovan sent one of his lackeys to blow the car,” Stanley was hypothesizing to Nero. The sniper had been dragged close, flat on his stomach, hands tied behind his back and wrists bound. He’d been blindfolded with Stanley’s tie. She had an impression of a lean, muscular male in dark clothing, with snarled brown hair.
“And hang around to take out anyone who tried to help him,” Nero added.
Nina recalled Curtis mentioning how he’d blown Donovan up by accident and Curtis had happened by at the opportune time for Donovan to seize him, take his blood to regain strength. He remembered such opportunities, and had taken steps to ensure they didn’t benefit Alistair.
“Makes sense. Alistair would have detected a vampire,” Nero continued thoughtfully. “There are occupied houses close enough to us a human scent wouldn’t have raised an alarm for him.”
“But this one hasn’t been marked by Donovan,” Stanley gestured to the sniper. “The dumb bastard. He can’t tell Donovan he’s fucked.”