by RJ Blain
The pain, slight as it was, helped me focus enough to twitch a finger or two. It took all of the concentration I had and then some, but I managed. With my small victory, I tried for a toe. My toes weren’t as eager to please me as my fingers, and I couldn’t tell if I was making any progress at all.
With nothing left to think about in the here and now, I retraced my steps, from what little I could remember about the funeral, to picking up Mrs. Peters’s kids, to Samantha’s death. Where had I gone wrong? Had my trust in Donnie been misplaced?
Donnie could’ve easily sent word ahead from Detroit to Atlanta. He knew Samantha’s real name. It would’ve been trivial for him to find a contact within the Inquisition, if he had wanted to. From Detroit, I retraced my way back to Slide Mountain and the coven of witches and their focal crystal.
Winter hadn’t come early, despite their efforts. But, I hadn’t earned myself any friends, either. Had one of them somehow tracked me down? Had they been part of the Inquisition all along? The grey wolf answering to the dog whistle didn’t ease my anxiety over the mistakes I’d made with Samantha in tow.
It would’ve been better for all of us—and for her—if she had let me run wild until the end of my days.
The first thing I remembered of New York was of Mark pleading for my help to thwart an engagement he didn’t want to a woman he had never met. My good intentions, to help someone I’d let get too close to me, had caused it all. If I hadn’t gone to New York, if I hadn’t helped Mark, Samantha would still be alive.
I wouldn’t have been left behind.
How much did Mark know about his step-mother, the Wicked Witch of the West? He had to have known about the Inquisition. I didn’t even know how much of his behavior at the party had been an act for my benefit or the real thing. While I couldn’t feel my body, the emotions boiling within me hurt.
I wanted to scream and blame Mark for everything, but I couldn’t. Even if Mark had been present when Samantha had died, someone might have forced his hand, as my hand had been forced to kill my own kind so many times in the past.
Freedom was mine, and the thought of those still caught in the organization’s insidious hold cooled my rage towards Mark.
Even if Mark had issued the killing blow, it wasn’t his fault Samantha was dead. If my guess was right, the blame for that belonged to the Inquisition alone.
To my surprise, my wolf roused. She soothed away the raw edge of my grief and anguish. I slipped back into the darkness.
Chapter Eighteen
The days following, when I was finally able to open my eyes, passed in a blur of tests, tests, and more tests. I was aware of people talking to me, and of me murmuring some form of incoherent reply.
I lamented the loss of the comfortable darkness of unconsciousness in exchange for dizziness, nausea, and pain. Time distorted as I adapted to having senses again. Focusing my attention on moving my fingers and toes distracted me from the incessant prodding of the medical staff.
As though afraid I would break if they forced me to speak, the nurses in their green scrubs and the doctors in their white coats spoke to me only when absolutely necessary. I didn’t mind it, as whispering was enough to make my head throb. Turning my head was an experiment I’d attempted once. I didn’t relish the idea of having what was left of my brain escaping out of my ears.
To my surprise, one of the nurses paused in her checking of the infernal beeping machine keeping me firmly tethered to life stared at me. “How are you feeling today, Jane?”
It didn’t cease to amuse me I was still a Jane Doe to them. I’d been read the riot act on the nature of my injury and the dangers of a cracked skull, but either they assumed my memory was faulty, or they didn’t want me to make a mess of their work by trying to remember the basics, my name included. “There’s a herd of horses trampling through my head,” I whispered. My eyes flicked towards the chart hanging from the wall at the foot of my bed.
“How would you rate the pain?” the nurse asked, her gaze following mine to the picture of cartoon faces hanging on the wall, ranging from smiling to tears.
I picked seven. Then I remembered the nurses had asked me that question before. Maybe they had asked my name, but I didn’t remember it?
Maybe the pain would let up in the next few years, at the rate I was going.
“Do you remember your name?” The nurse made a show of checking the machine again, but I could feel her stealing glances at me when she thought I wasn’t watching her.
“Victoria,” I replied.
She flinched as if a bee had stung her. “Very good, Victoria. Is there anything you need?”
Everything I wanted involved being unhooked from the infernal machines attached to me, but I settled on a whispered denial. I remembered not to shake my head in time to avoid from joining the ranks of the most miserable of the unhappy faces on the chart on the wall.
“If you need anything, please call for one of us,” the nurse said, gesturing to the remote placed near my right hand. “You can request another dose of pain medications in fifteen minutes. Do you remember how?”
I forced my hand to move so I could point at the appropriate dial. The nurse smiled, nodded, and left the room in a hurry.
Wasn’t she supposed to ask me more questions than that? I risked turning my head a little to watch the door. Pain stabbed down the length of my spine, but my vision didn’t blur. I tensed to grab the bed in anticipation of the room flipping and circling around me, but the nauseating vertigo didn’t come.
I wasn’t left alone to puzzle over her departure for long. A middle-aged man with dark hair touched with the first signs of grey swept into the room. His white coat flapped against his legs. He paused at the door, scooping up the clipboard from its holder. Flipping the pages, he approached the bed, his dark eyes focused on the text in front of him.
To my surprise and pleasure, my eyes didn’t betray me when I went to read his name tag. Dr. Shepard didn’t seem to notice me scrutinizing him. He left me waiting a few minutes before he lowered the board and favored me with a smile. I doubted it was for me. Behind his dark eyes, I imagined him mentally snapping his fingers at having thwarted death once more.
My life was his trophy. I didn’t mind. There were worse trophies a man could collect, and if he wanted to view my existence as a matter of pride, I wasn’t going to interfere with that.
“Nurse Carlton tells me you’ve made progress in remembering your name,” he said, his deep tones soothing in comparison to the high-pitched beep of the monitoring machines.
“Victoria,” I supplied, watching for his reaction. The perverse need to nettle the man surged up. “I think,” I added, smothering my smirk. I knew my name. I remembered my birthday, too, though I doubted he’d believe it if I told him. To my relief, I also remembered the name of my alias and her birthday.
“Victoria,” he repeated in the doubtful way that I expected made his other patients scramble to elaborate.
“So I think.”
“Victoria is a far better name than Jane Doe,” he said with enough good cheer to startle me. He hooked a stool with his foot, pulling it towards him before sitting. “Do you remember the rest of your name?”
“Allison Victoria Mayfield Hanover,” I said, dropping my facade for a factual tone. I didn’t use the British lilt or intonations to make it my true name. “But call me Vicky. Victoria, if you must.”
Dr. Shepard’s eyebrows rose. “I’m impressed, Ms. Hanover. You are far more lucid than yesterday. This is an excellent improvement. Do you remember why you are here?”
“I don’t know where here is,” I admitted. I glanced at the medical equipment and the white walls. “A hospital, of course, but which one?”
“This is the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota. I’m Dr. Shepard. How much do you remember?”
“Minnesota?” I frowned. Minnesota didn’t sound right. I lived in Atlanta. After a moment, I recalled the location of Oleran’s funeral. “I was in Washington.”
/> Dr. Shepard humored me with another one of his triumphant smiles. “Very good. You were transferred from John Hopkins to here after emergency treatment. You’ve been here for just over two weeks.”
“Something happened at the funeral,” I muttered, wondering how much I should tell the doctor. I suspected if I told him it was a grenade, I’d be questioned by him and the police. If I didn’t answer their questions well enough, they’d probably accuse me of murder again.
Keeping my mouth shut was for the best, I decided.
“You’re very lucky to be alive, Ms. Hanover. As you correctly recall, something did happen at the funeral you were attending. You were found several hours after the incident. You dodged death by a very close margin. Your skull fractured in two different places. There was notable swelling. Fortunately, we didn’t have to open a window in order to alleviate the pressure on your brain.”
“There was an explosion,” I commented, once again taking note of the doctor’s reaction.
His smile faded, and his already dark eyes turned black. “Yes. You were found near one of the blast sites.”
“What happened?”
There was a long moment of silence followed by a gusty sigh. “From my understanding and the reports on the news, someone threw three grenades and a pipe bomb into the crowd at the funeral you were attending.”
I felt my eyes widen, and all of the suspicions I had evaporated into dust. One person like James couldn’t have coordinated a huge event. If James had been involved, he hadn’t been working alone. “Three grenades,” I echoed, trying to wrap my aching head around the impact of such explosive power in such a thick crowd.
The phantom pains of shrapnel tearing through my back made my eyes water. Dr. Shepard nodded. “It was quite a tragedy. But, I think I can say with confidence that you’ll live. With how well you are healing, I think it is very probable you will make a full recovery. If you cooperate, of course.”
Dr. Shepard took a pen out of his pocket and clicked it. He flipped the pages on the clipboard, staring at me expectantly. “Can you answer questions for me?”
I risked nodding. It hurt.
If the blast had been enough to almost kill me, they hadn’t just found me at the blast site. They’d found me among the corpses of those who hadn’t been as ‘fortunate’ as me.
“What do you need to know?” I couldn’t manage anything more than a whisper around the lump in my throat.
“First, I want to test your memory. It isn’t uncommon with head trauma for amnesia, partial or complete, to be a serious concern. Once we have a better idea of the state of your memory loss, someone from the FBI has questions for you, if you’re up for answering them.”
That caught my attention. I answered him with a careful nod. It still hurt.
“Your full name?”
“Allison Victoria Hanover.” I gave him my fake date of birth for good measure.
“Your age?”
My cheek twitched, but I humored him. “Forty-six.” Maybe math was a part of the diagnosis for amnesia? Either that, or he took a perverse satisfaction in making me repeat myself.
“Your address?”
I had to think about that one for a second. I gave it to him, and then explained I had purchased the property recently.
From there, he dove into a long list of questions regarding my childhood, growing up, college, my career, and personal life. I answered each one, careful to keep the truth hidden behind the facade of my fake life. Dr. Shepard’s grin broadened with each answer.
“Your recall is extraordinary,” he complimented. “I was worried about impairment, but I suspect your incoherence and amnesia were a combination of temporary trauma and medications. In a few days, we’ll begin physical therapy to restore motor function. But if your progress with that is similar, you won’t be staying with us for too long, Ms. Hanover.”
I forced a smile. If I wasn’t careful, Dr. Shepard would clue into the fact that something was drastically different about my rate of healing. I wondered how hard it would be fool someone who had spent much of his career fighting death and encouraging recovery.
“Do you think you can handle a few more questions?”
“For the police?” I asked.
“Not exactly. The FBI. An agent has been waiting to ask you questions. It will only be a few minutes, if you’re feeling up for it.”
I sighed but nodded. Answering the questions would ensure I wouldn’t have to deal with it later, although it was the last thing I wanted to do. Each time I remembered the funeral, all I felt was guilt that I might have been the cause of the attack on the crowd.
~*~
Dr. Shepard returned with a tall, pale-haired man in a suit. He frowned at me before taking a long look at all of the machines attached to me.
“Ms. Hanover, this is Agent Anthony Gerard from the FBI,” my doctor said, staring at the agent with furrowed brows.
“If you’ll excuse us, this won’t take long,” Agent Gerard said.
“I will be right outside the door if you need me, Ms. Hanover.” After a moment’s hesitation, Dr. Shepard left.
Agent Gerard pulled out a notepad from his pocket. I caught a glimpse of his handgun holstered under his shoulder. Pretending I hadn’t noticed the weapon, I focused my attention on his face.
Then I made the mistake of drawing a deep breath. Scents flooded my nose as my wolf chose that moment to awaken. I tensed.
The smell of cats didn’t normally bother me, but there was something about how it clung to Agent Gerard that put me on edge. Unless FBI agents enjoyed visits to the zoo and rolling in the lion cage, there was more to the man than I wanted to know about.
Inquisitor, then.
It shouldn’t have surprised me. With such a blatant attack on the public, the Inquisition would need to get directly involved to cover up their activity—if they were responsible for it. Why would the Inquisition send a cat—probably a shaman—to question me unless they were involved in some fashion or another?
I wondered what sort of cat he became when he fully embraced his magic. In a way, I was a little jealous of him. Shamans could use their inner beasts without risks of becoming a wild animal. They couldn’t do it long, limited to minutes or hours at a time, but it was far more useful than transforming into a dangerous, rabid thing under the influence of the full moon.
Agent Gerard pulled a stool to him and sat down. “I’ll try to make this quick so you can rest and recover, ma’am. This is a preliminary questioning.”
I decided cooperation was my best option. “What do you need to know, sir?” Addressing him as sir was safe; appealing to the pride and superiority of a suspected cat shaman wouldn’t hurt me at all.
With a visible relaxing of his shoulders, Agent Gerard settled, flashing me a brief smile. “Between you and me, I’m going to pretend I read this long disclosure to you. You’re going to tell the truth, right?”
“Yes, I swear I will tell the truth and nothing but the truth,” I replied, struggling not to laugh. While I was getting away with slight movements of my head, I didn’t want to think about the agony a good chuckle would cause me.
“Good. Let’s begin. Why were you at the Washington Monument?” he asked.
“I was attending Alan Oleran’s funeral.”
Agent Gerard wrote my answer down. “Why?”
“He worked at a legal firm my corporation oversees.”
Arching a brow, he looked up from his clipboard. “That your company oversees, Ms. Hanover?”
“Yes, I’m the primary CEO of Marrodin Inc.”
The FBI agent wrote that down, and I could see the tension in his shoulders again. Was he aware of being in the same room with another hunter? While shaman and werewolves could get along, wolves and cats clashed. It was natural for us to antagonize each other. I tried not to notice his wariness.
Fortunately for both of us, my wolf went back into hiding.
Agent Gerard tapped his pen against his notepad. “How did you know
Mr. Oleran?”
“I didn’t, not personally. He worked with Smith & Sons, Marrodin’s primary legal firm.”
“I don’t expect you to remember these details, but tell me what you can,” the agent said as he wrote down my answers. He paused, underlining something on his pad. “Did you see anything suspicious at the funeral?”
I shook my head, hissing at the surge of pain in my skull. “Ouch. No, I didn’t.”
“What do you remember of the attack?”
“Someone used a grenade launcher. I think there was pepper spray, too.”
He stared at me with a slack jaw and wide eyes. “How do you know there was a grenade launcher?”
“The sound.”
“The sound,” Agent Gerard repeated, still staring at me. “How did you recognize the sound?’
I blinked at him. What was I supposed to say? I couldn’t exactly tell the man I’d been at Saigon. I didn’t look old enough to get away with telling the truth. “Training videos. I know some folks in the army, and they showed me some. I got to see some training exercises, too.” It wasn’t that far from the truth. My training videos had been live action, though.
“Do you know where the grenades were made?”
I stared at him, my mouth dropping open. “Is that an actual question?”
With a grin, Agent Gerard flipped his notepad around to show me. I whistled. “Your answer, Ms. Hanover?”
“No idea.”
“Were you aware of any other weapons being used?”
“Just the pepper spray I mentioned before.”
“Is there anything else you can remember?”
I considered. Was there anything else I could remember? When I couldn’t think of anything, I risked shaking my head. “No, sir.”
“Then I think we’re done here. We’ll be in touch if we have any more questions for you.” With a nod of his head, Agent Gerard left the room.