Gut Deep: Torn Worlds Book One

by Augustine, Donna

  We got outside and she held her hand out. “Is there any chance I can get that—”

  “No.”

  “Okay then. Well, sorry for the inconvenience, but thanks for coming. It’s appreciated.”

  She still looked surprised I was there, almost stunned, but still sort of glib in her response.

  I pointed to the car. Bigs, who’d been waiting by the driver’s side, walked over and held the door open for her.

  “Are you all right?” Bigs asked softly, as if I wouldn’t hear.

  “Yes. I’m sorry about that. I hope it wasn’t a lot of trouble,” she said, looking like she was going to start overflowing with gratitude.

  Did she not realize the only thing Bigs actually did was call me?

  “I’m just glad you’re okay.”

  “Get in the fucking car,” I said from behind them. In another second they’d be hugging it out or something. He acted like she was his long-lost daughter.

  Her face scrunched a little tighter and somehow leeched a little bit of my annoyance out with it. She did make some funny faces when she was angry. That was something.

  She got in the car, and I followed.

  “Why did you have this?” I asked, holding up the phone.

  “I found it.”

  “So you’re going to lie?” What a load of bull that was. I could see her gearing up for a fight, holding on to her secrets with both hands and ready to plow over anyone who tried to delve too deep.

  “I know why you’re pissed, and I get it. I’m sorry I got you involved, and I really appreciate that you helped me, but I’ve already had a very bad day. Do we really need to do this?”

  Did she not realize she was fucked right now? That I’d saved her ass again? That maybe I deserved some answers?

  “Where did this come from? What are you involved in? Bigs didn’t get this for you, so you had to have gotten it on the black market.”

  “I told you, I had a bad day.”

  “You had a bad day? I was the one who had to—”

  “Get driven five minutes away from your house and ask for me? Like I said, I get it. I inconvenienced you and you don’t owe me anything. I’m the one who overstepped, but I can see you’re clearly gearing up for a big, long lecture about how I shouldn’t use your name and I shouldn’t have the phone. Meanwhile, I just sat in a jail cell for hours because I claimed a cell phone that would’ve been considered a shitty one at best five years ago. A cell phone. Something that every single human had before you people took over. That was my huge crime.”

  “It’s the—”

  “Law. Yeah, I get it. It’s your law because God forbid we get on some secret internet site and try to gather forces up. Like I said, I get it. And you know what? You want to turn around and drop me back off at the precinct, then so be it, but I’ve had it for the day. I’m up to here with it.” She waved a hand over her head. “And you know what? While we’re at it? Why did you even show up? Why the fuck do you keep helping me? And don’t say it’s for you. I’m not buying it anymore. There’s something else.”

  What did she expect me to say? I was saving her because I couldn’t seem to stop myself? That was never going to happen. She’d know she had me in the bag for good then, and she was already too much trouble. I should be hand-delivering her to Mallard myself. Not that I ever would, but it was what I should do.

  The last thing I needed was to become obsessed with a fucking human woman. I didn’t need that in my life. She had to go, one way or another. I needed her gone, otherwise she was going to end up in my bed.

  “Are you listening to me? Are you going to answer?” she asked as we pulled up to my house.

  She was still waiting to know why I kept helping her. You’d think she’d be happy to still have a head on her shoulders. No matter what she said, she reeked of guilt, and we both knew it. She could come at me with whatever line of logic she wanted, but we both knew she owed me an answer that she wouldn’t give, and I wasn’t buying into the show she was putting on.

  I glanced at her one last time. “I thought my silence was pretty obvious.”

  I got out of the car, intent on ignoring her for the rest of the night so I didn’t either fuck her or kill her.

  Twenty-Four

  Penelope

  Me: I’m telling you, I’m fine.

  Sassy: I shouldn’t have left.

  Me: You couldn’t do anything. I needed you to leave. The situation was handled.

  Sassy: Okay, I guess…

  Me: I’m good. No guessing about it.

  I dropped the phone on the bed and pulled some more clothes out of my drawers, thinking of Sassy’s ragged jacket yesterday, and shoved them in the provisions box Bigs would have dropped off. I couldn’t believe I hadn’t thought to send her clothes earlier.

  I grabbed the bag Bigs had saved for me yesterday during the scene. God bless that man. He’d not only run the cops down, he’d gathered up my items for me. I grabbed the jeans I’d gotten her—well, technically Donovan had—and my hand brushed against a piece of paper too big and thick to be a receipt.

  There are consequences to not helping us. We hope you’ll decide to cooperate soon. You know the number.

  There was no name, only a phone number. Someone in the shop had told them I was there while I’d been walking around. They were watching me. I wish they’d been watching close enough to realize I didn’t know anything. I walked in the bathroom, tore the note into tiny pieces, and flushed it, hoping it wouldn’t block up the pipes.

  My fingers were trembling as I picked the phone up. I had one vulnerability. My sister.

  Me: Did you go stay with that sick friend or yours?

  There was a long pause before the phone buzzed.

  Sassy: Yes. He’s looking good.

  She was fine. She’d be fine. They couldn’t get to me here and they wouldn’t find her where she was going—I hoped.

  The front door opened and Donovan’s muffled voice carried from the hallway. I deleted my messages before he came in. It might be paranoia, but that was the place I lived these days.

  It was lunchtime and he was home—again. Was this going to become a habit? It would take my uncomfortable living situation and ramp it up into something else altogether. I just wasn’t sure what it would ramp up into. I was afraid my body and my mind would disagree on the right course of action.

  He strolled into the study, and I kept my eyes on my book instead of his perfect hair and broad shoulders. He wouldn’t even answer me last night when I’d asked him a question. Why was he saving me over and over again? He’d probably come in here and act like an ass again, because that was what he did.

  We were two people stuck together who didn’t always like each other, definitely didn’t trust each other, and yet he kept saving me. I couldn’t keep ignoring this feeling that maybe there was a better man in there than he wanted to let on. Or the pull inside me to find out for certain. To break through this strange façade of uncomfortable roommates we had going on and see what might come of it.

  He walked over to the sideboard, pouring himself a drink. “We need to go out tomorrow night.”

  I dropped the pretense of pretending he wasn’t in the room. “Why?”

  “I want to force Mallard’s hand. He either accepts you’re with me and moves on, or he doesn’t and makes a move against us. Either way, we force the issue.” His voice had an edge that had been polished with a chisel.

  He turned, his eyes grazing my face and body before he turned away, as he pretended to not watch me as well. He took his drink as he walked the room.

  “We go out to a crowded place and get tongues wagging. If he’s obsessed with you, as I fear, it’ll push him. We push and keep pushing until he cracks.”

  Suddenly this house felt more inviting than ever. Hell, I could sit here for another few months, no sweat.

  “Do you have any objections?” Donovan asked.

  Other than the idea of leaving him making me want to chain myself to
this couch? “No. I think that will work.”

  He lifted his glass toward me. “Do you have anything a little sexier?”

  “What’s wrong with this? Bigs picked it out for me. It’s my favorite.” I ran a hand over the cable-knit sweater I was wearing. It might not be that provocative to him, but it would be a fisherman’s wet dream. It was a hundred percent wool and could wick away moisture like a pro.

  “I need you to look like you want to be with me, not like you’re heading out to the tundra. We want tongues wagging, not falling out of their mouths because they’re dying of boredom. I’m assuming you’ve tried to entice a man before. You certainly wouldn’t wear that, would you?” He leaned on the sideboard, sipping his bourbon and looking at me over the rim of the glass.

  And just like that, the asshole was back. He must’ve thought his niceness quota was getting too out of balance with the dick in him.

  I crossed my arms. “I don’t know. Maybe.” Before the takeover, I’d worried about school, not having a slew of suitors. The couple of relationships I’d been in, I’d fallen into.

  “You’ve had boyfriends, haven’t you?”

  “They didn’t mind my sweaters, but they were a different type of man. I think I can manage to look slutty enough to make us believable.” I put my book away. One of these days, I was going to manage to stay in a room long enough to break through all our bullshit. But that day was not this one.

  He tilted his chin down.

  The door in the front hall crashed open. “Donovan!”

  He was across the room and into the front hall, and I was on his heels.

  “Kia, what the fuck happened?” he asked, as I froze.

  There were two shifters in the hall, in human form and one… I’d never seen a werewolf, this close, in his beast form. It was awe-inspiring. Or would be if he wasn’t falling to his knees.

  “We don’t know. He was thrown out of a van like this in front of the club. I was afraid to bring him in. We didn’t know what to do, so we brought him here,” Kia said. I’d served her at Tessa’s, although I doubted she recognized me, especially not now, as her full attention was on the collapsed form in the hall.

  Werewolves in full shift weren’t a common sight. Sassy had often said they weren’t cute little puppies. Man, was she right. I’d only seen one myself a few times and always from far enough away that I’d gotten a sense of the whole but none of the finer details. Not this time. There was a full-blown werewolf on the floor in front of me. Had to be a good seven feet tall and all lean sinew. An elongated jaw that could make short work of elephant hide and a body covered in rough fur, which was matted in blood, so much blood. The blood wasn’t spurting, but there was way too much. How strong were werewolves? Certainly not invincible.

  “Bigs, get hold of the doctor.” Donovan’s eyes shot to me. “Penelope, go upstairs.”

  Whoever this creature was, he might be bleeding out. I walked closer to it instead.

  “I can help…maybe. He might die anyway, but let me try.” I shoved my way in, certain the only reason I succeeded was because of the shock that I’d even tried.

  “I need more light,” I said, forgetting that these were werewolves I was bossing around and I was a human.

  Kia’s phone was out of her pocket with the flashlight on.

  “We need to find all the bleeds,” I told her.

  Donovan was suddenly in front of me. “Tell me what to do,” he said, kneeling and ready.

  I ran my hands over the muscular body that was covered in matted and bloody hair, searching the torso first. There was a small cut bleeding on his left side.

  “You,” I said to Kia, who I’d shocked into submission. “Put your hand here, just enough to slow the blood. Not so hard you do more damage.” She nodded, doing as I asked.

  That wasn’t the worst of them. A little pressure would keep that in check. There was a larger one here somewhere under all this matted blood. I followed the moisture, moving down toward his thigh.

  “This is the big one he’s losing most of his blood from,” I said as I came to his upper thigh.

  Donovan was by my side. “What do you need?”

  It wasn’t what I needed so much as what they’d have on hand. I’d heard of emergency vein and artery repairs with catheters. They’d never have that, but I knew Donovan kept a stocked bar. “Do you have straws here?”

  “Bigs, get me whatever straws you can find and then get the doc on the phone,” Donovan yelled. I hadn’t realized Bigs was even in the room because I’d been so focused.

  “And scissors. And water and salt. Towels, too!” I yelled after Bigs. I turned back to Kia. “You keep pressure there. Donovan, I don’t have clamps so I need you to put pressure here and here,” I said, as I pointed to a spot right above and below the bleed.

  “Hang in there, Ralph,” Donovan said to the unconscious shifter.

  “Nothing is spurting, so it’s a vein, not an artery. That’s good. There’s a lot of bleeding because there’s a lot of damage, but I don’t think his attacker got any arteries. We keep pressure on the wounds and he should make it.”

  Bigs rushed in with different-sized straws, scissors, towels, and water that he placed beside me.

  I sprinkled some salt into the glass of water and then poured it over the worst wound, trying to keep the hair parted, to see what I was working with. The slice from the vampire had been like a razor, leaving everything gaping open but clean. The vein looked partially intact. I could try to apply pressure, but with so many other small slices on his body, it could be death by a thousand cuts. I had to get on top of the damage enough for his body to have a chance.

  I grabbed the straw and cut it down to size. I dunked the scissors in the saline mixture before using it in a close position to drag the vein upward. I inserted it into one side of the vein and then the other, before slipping the scissor out.

  “Let up the pressure,” I said to Donovan.

  The blood flowed from one side of the vein to the other. I put my fingers on Ralph’s ankle, feeling for a pulse. It had worked.

  I sat back on my knees. “Obviously it’s not permanent, but it’ll hold until a doctor can get in there and do a better fix. There’s muscle damage, but he should make it.”

  “Donovan, the doc’s on the phone,” Bigs said.

  Donovan got up, getting the phone from Bigs.

  Kia looked over the body at me. “Thank you,” she said. “I really mean that.”

  The shifter beside her nodded and smiled. “Seriously, we really appreciate that. When we’d heard Donovan had hooked up with a human, we were all pretty freaked out, but you’re not so bad.”

  “Thanks, I guess,” I said, smiling back.

  “Can he be moved?” Donovan called to me.

  “I think so, but I’m not a doctor.”

  “She says yes,” he said. “Okay, we’ll meet you there in fifteen.”

  He handed the phone back to Bigs. “Bigs, you stay here. I’m going to bring the truck around. I’ll be back soon,” he said, tipping his head in my direction.

  They were gone a few minutes later. Bigs and I cleaned up the mess. Then Bigs went to clean himself up as I waited, sitting on the hall stairs, wondering if this had been the “sign.”

  No, it couldn’t be them. Why would they go after a shifter? Although it was one of Donovan’s pack. It could’ve just as likely been someone sent from Mallard.

  Donovan walked in, his brow furrowed and eyes tired. He stopped in front of me.

  “How’s Ralph?”

  “He’s good. Doctor said he’ll be okay.”

  “What happened? Do you know who attacked him?” That question had haunted me as soon as I got a calm moment to think.

  He sat on the steps beside me. “I’d rather not drag you into pack politics. It’s a tough discussion,” he said, not explaining himself again, but being respectful about it for a change.

  It might be because I’d helped them, or maybe his dick-o-meter was showing as
full. There was no way to be sure, but I liked this Donovan.

  “I get it. I just need to know one thing: do you think this was because of Mallard?”

  “No,” he said.

  I let out a sigh that sounded as worn out as he looked, while I ignored the way his thigh grazed mine and his scent called to me.

  He turned his head toward me, his eyes soft as he said, “Thank you for helping him.”

  “I did what I could.” I shrugged.

  “A lot of humans would’ve let a shifter die. Where’d you learn how to do that?”

  I’d learned it in another life that didn’t seem real anymore. In another world where I’d had a bright future. In a time that was long gone but still painful to think of.

  “It’s a tough discussion,” I said, smiling a little.

  He nodded, as if he understood what it was like to not want to dredge up the past.

  I’d grown up surrounded by kids my age who had no idea what they wanted to become. I knew I wanted to be a doctor for as long as I could remember. It had been so long since I’d helped someone that I’d forgotten how wonderful it was, and how devastating the loss of my dream. It was a still-bleeding wound.

  Delay. Not loss. Only delay. But as every year ticked by, that became a little harder to believe.

  “Well, that ends any debate over whether you should wear that sweater out tomorrow night.”

  I looked down to see myself drenched in blood, as if I’d stepped out of a Stephen King novel and been standing beside Carrie on prom night.

  “Dammit. This was my favorite.”

  “Can’t say I’ll mourn the loss,” he said.

  This time, it didn’t feel as if he was poking at me, but joking with me.

  As we sat on that stair together for another few minutes, I could feel the shift in our paradigm. I couldn’t say why or how, but something had changed.

  * * *