“Ah.”
There really was no other answer he could have given.
“Why don’t you go check on Mala?” Maggie said, her tone just a tad too sweet.
“Um,” he muttered, trying to assess the situation. “Is this one of those times that I’m not actually supposed to believe what you’re saying, or did you mean that?”
“I don’t know, babe,” she answered. “What do you think?”
“I think I’m going to go buy you chocolate instead.”
At that, all eyes turned to him, including those of every single nurse in the room. It seemed that chocolate might not be the right answer.
“I’m only allowed to have ice chips right now,” Maggie hissed. “And I haven’t eaten since that piece of dry toast I choked down this morning. So maybe don’t mention chocolate in my… ay… ay… aaaaaay!”
As she spoke, her grip on Trey’s hand got more and more intense, until it really felt like his bones might shatter. Man, this woman was serious about her food intake.
“I meant flowers!” Trey shrieked in pain. “I’m going to go get you flowers!”
“She’s having a contraction, sir,” the woman said, but the way she said sir made it sound more like idiot. “Could you please move out of the way?”
Two other nurses were shoving him aside at this point, their faces tight and hard. Something was happening, and it didn’t seem like it was something good.
“The baby’s in distress,” the one who seemed to be in charge said. “Get him out of here. Now.”
“Wait,” Trey protested.
But a burly attending had already placed his hands on Trey’s chest and was propelling him out the door. Maggie’s moan of anguish followed him as he was essentially thrown into the hallway.
The door closed, and Trey was left alone, knowing only that nothing inside the room was okay. It didn’t matter where he remained, with Mala or here with Maggie. He could do nothing in either place.
Regardless of where he was, Trey knew himself to be utterly useless.
* * *
Janey stared at Darc. His eyes were open and staring, and there was a stream of spit that had begun to drip out of the corner of his mouth. The swirling colors gathered around that tiny drop of moisture, showing Janey things she didn’t want to see.
Carly and Cat were moving the bald detective into a chair. Well, mostly Cat, if Janey were being honest about it. Jessalyn’s mom had muscles that seemed to pop out from underneath her skin as she hauled Darc around like a sack of potatoes.
This was the point at which Popeye would have said something gross or silly about Cat. Or about Carly. Or maybe about Darc. Who was Janey kidding? He would have made a comment about all three at once.
Janey had to remind herself that Popeye was helping Mala right now. He was probably happier there than he would be stuck in here waiting. Janey knew that she would be, if their places were switched.
After some grunting and groaning, Carly and Cat managed to prop Darc up in the chair. He sat, appearing to stare at the wall. Janey had seen him do that before, and it had always been when things were really bad. Her stomach dropped into her shoes.
“I’m going to go see if I can get someone to come in and take a look at this big guy,” Cat said, wiping her hands against her pants.
She must have changed out of her bridesmaid’s dress, as she was now dressed in what looked like the clothes that Mala sometimes wore to do yoga. Tight black top, black yoga pants. Her muscles stood out against the fabric.
Janey wondered what it would be like to have muscles like that.
Before Cat left the room, she turned back to face Janey. “Maybe after Mala’s out of surgery and we know she’s okay, you can come over to our house. Spend some time with Jessalyn?”
Janey didn’t know how to answer that, so she gave a noncommittal shrug. Going over to Jessalyn’s house sounded great, but the thought of leaving Mala… and Popeye… didn’t feel right.
“We can talk about it later,” Cat said with a smile.
She winked at Janey, but behind the smile and the twinkle in her eye, Janey was pretty sure she could see sadness. Grownups did that a lot. Pretended that things were better than they were.
Maybe Cat could see from Janey’s expression what she was thinking, because she let out a big sigh. Moving back into the room, she wrapped Janey in a big hug.
“I’m sorry, sweetie. I’m so sorry.”
Then she was out of the room, moving quickly. But Janey was pretty sure that she saw Jessalyn’s mom wipe at her eyes before the door shut behind her.
Carly stood up at that point. Janey’s half-sister’s face looked like it had been stretched across her skull like Silly Putty. In the harsh light of the hospital, her skin almost looked green.
“I’m going to go check on Trey and Maggie. Will you be all right on your own for a bit?”
Janey didn’t feel like she would be all right at all, but she didn’t want to say that. So she shook her head, and Carly punched her lightly on the shoulder as she passed by on her way out of the room.
Then she was alone in the room with Darc, who hadn’t moved even a millimeter from where Cat and Carly had placed him. Janey couldn’t remember the last time she’d felt so alone.
Even when Father John had taken her to the Underground, she’d known that Darc was there for her. That he would come and protect her. And she’d had Popeye.
But right now Mala was in surgery and might not come out. Darc was in a stupor and might not come out. And Popeye was somewhere in the hospital, and Janey didn’t know when she might see him next.
So she did the only thing she could.
She sat down on the floor and let the tears roll down her cheek.
* * *
Darc struggled against the feedback loop in which he was caught.
Always before, when this type of fit had come upon him, he’d tacitly allowed it. On a subconscious level, he’d been aware that it was his body’s mechanism for conserving strength in order to process information. Information that, for most people, would remain inaccessible no matter what their process might be.
Not for Darc. Even when he was almost comatose, his mind was still processing information. Especially when he was in the state, in fact.
Therefore, Darc had not fought it.
This situation, however, defied this straightforward assessment. The information being processed was not data, but rather emotional overload.
And the need for Darc’s help did nothing but grow.
Janey needed him. Trey and Maggie needed him. Carly needed him. Even Mala, who could not consciously register his presence, needed him.
Someone had tried to kill Mala. They had not succeeded. Another attempt would come. The probability of an attack was high enough that it was a virtual certainty.
Yet in spite of those responsibilities, Darc could not find his way out of his mental prison. The network of logic had solidified into a web that confined rather than expanded Darc’s awareness.
The cause was clear. The silver emotional ties, those that had given Darc’s processing talents such a significant boost, had multiplied and then cemented themselves at key points within the colorful tapestry of information. The stress associated with the attack upon Mala had caused a rigor to spread throughout the emotional chain. The chain that up until this moment had supported the logical framework.
Darc probed the boundaries of his imprisonment, seeking the weak point that would allow his escape. But the boundaries remained firm.
So rather than continue to push out against the constraints, Darc went further in. Down into the frightening depths of his own soul.
These were largely uncharted waters. Hidden rock that covered over pain and fear and shame. And there, buried deep underneath the grey emotional landscape that had so often thwarted his attempts to plumb its depths, he discovered something.
There was a black vein that ran through Darc’s foundational bedrock, a thread of non-light that
pulsed with an aggression that felt both intense and frightening. Here was the negative image of the silver-white links that had formed to help Darc navigate the terrifying terrain of intimate emotional responses.
There in its non-shape, un-light vibrations, Darc found vibrancy. The power needed to burst the network of logic and solidified worry.
He paused for a moment, concerned about the ramifications of the choice that lay before him. There could be no predicting what would occur if he accessed this resource.
Backing away from the non-heat of this vein, he cowered before the raw and throbbing life force he faced. But then an image rose into his mind.
Mala, falling to the floor of the cathedral, her life’s blood flowing out of her chest. Janey by her side, her small mouth stretched in a silent scream.
This deed could not go unpunished.
Reaching into his core, Darc took hold of the black fire, allowing it to fill him to the brim. The surge of strength was instantaneous.
The network of white links and colored strands melted away at his lightest of touches, and Darc once more became aware of everything around him. The only one left in the room was Janey, and she had crumpled to the ground, where her shoulders shook with her sobs of grief.
The black force blossomed within him. Janey would not be allowed to suffer.
Mala’s danger, Janey’s grief, even Darc’s experiences here today… all could be laid at the feet of one person. And the darkness flowing out of Darc hardened into a point, guiding his path forward.
Janey turned, surely prompted by the slight noise he made upon standing. As her gaze fell upon him, she shrank back, an expression distilling upon her delicate features.
The black force inside of Darc understood what he saw. Translated the foreign language of emotion. With that newfound awareness, a thrill of pleasure coursed through his body.
Janey was afraid.
Of him.
There was a murmured flash of white inside. One that spoke to him of Janey and her need for him. Of her fragile strength, and how it had been supported by her ability to trust in him. Darc had frightened her, and the only one who could make that better was Darc himself.
Black anger flowed down, extinguishing the insignificant glow. The white illumination had not been enough to free him of his prison. He would not allow it to slow his actions now. A wash of satisfaction coursed through his veins, invigorating him.
More than anything else right now, Darc had to find Mala’s attacker.
Find him.
Then destroy him.
* * *
Trey turned the corner that led to where Mala was having her surgery. After trying without success to get back into the room where Maggie was trying to squeeze their child out through a tiny opening, and with no one giving him any information, he figured he could at least check in on Janey.
Mala had to be coming out at any moment, now, right? Even with a complicated gunshot wound to the chest, the risks of staying under anesthesia grew with every passing minute she was unconscious.
Or was that something he had seen on some old episode of Trapper John, M.D.?
Shaking his head, he tried to clear it of the last image he’d had of Maggie. Her face had been screwed up in pain, and her eyes had been bulging out of their sockets.
Not a good look for her.
And yet, right now, Trey would give just about anything to have her screaming at him, instead of a roomful of nurses. It had to be true love. That was the only answer that made any logical sense at all.
Another thought rolled around in his head. Maybe if he could find out that Mala was okay, that news would calm Maggie down enough that all the issues she was having right now would go away. Might be magical thinking, but that’s what he was going with.
As he neared the area where he’d last seen Darc and Janey, a figure in scrubs exited the surgery suite, pulling down the mask he wore on his face. It was the surgeon who had worked on Mala.
Behind him, a couple of orderlies were pushing a bed on which a pale version of Mala rested. They wheeled her into a recovery room off to the side.
“Is she okay?” Trey asked, rushing up to the doctor.
What was his name? Bouillon? Bouillabaisse? He glanced down at the dude’s badge. Dr. Bouffard. Close enough.
“She made it out of surgery and is stable,” the doctor said, his tone serious, but his expression much lighter. “There was a lot of blood loss, but I think she’s going to be all right.”
“Aw, Doc,” Trey gushed. “I can’t tell you how much--”
There was a flash of movement back behind the doctor, and Trey cut himself off. What was that? It seemed to have moved in the direction of the recovery room where Mala had been wheeled.
“Did you see that?” he asked the doctor.
“See what?” the man asked.
Then, just as Trey was about to start moving toward the room, a tall figure sped by, almost a blur. It was Darc.
“Hey, Darc, I…” Trey began, but his partner was making a beeline for the recovery room.
By the time Trey managed to overcome his inertia and make it into the room, Darc was pulling a pillow off Mala’s face and searching around the room. The doctor followed in on Trey’s heels.
“What is going on in here?” Bouffant… no, Bouffard… demanded. “Where are the orderlies who came in with the patient?
Darc ignored the doctor, still searching the room. Trey looked back and forth between the doctor and his partner.
This didn’t seem like it was going to end well. Most surgeons possessed some level of ego, and being ignored wasn’t high on their list of things-I-love-when-they-happen-to-me-in-my-hospital.
Sure enough, after a moment or two of watching Darc tear the room apart, the doctor moved toward a nearby phone. “I’m calling security.”
Trey stepped in front of him. “I would suggest that you not.”
“Why is that?”
“Because he’s a detective, and right now he’s examining a crime scene.”
Bouffard’s eyes seemed to bug out of his skull. “What are you talking about? How is this a crime scene?”
“Someone just tried to kill your patient,” Trey answered, pointing to the pillow that Darc had tossed on the floor.
“But… You… How do you…?” the surgeon sputtered.
Trey pointed back toward the door through which they’d entered. There, out of the way behind the door, where they wouldn’t be seen at first glance, lay two bodies.
The missing orderlies.
From what Trey could tell, it appeared that their necks had been snapped. Whoever had come into the room had been strong.
Darc had stopped moving, and was now staring up at the ceiling. What…? Trey peered up at the spot Darc seemed to be examining.
An air conditioning shaft. And it seemed… off. Like it had been replaced hastily by some careless maintenance worker.
Or a clever killer.
Someone had ended the life of two hospital workers, tried to do the same for Mala and then vanished through the ventilation shaft. It was the only explanation that fit.
Trey glanced over at Darc and caught his partner’s eye. But when the bald detective peered back at him, Trey felt a chill run down his spine. He’d seen his partner in that freaky blank space that Darc sometimes went to when he got upset.
But Trey had never felt anything like this from Darc before. His gaze was like a pair of lasers aimed right at Trey’s soul.
And for the first time ever, Trey realized he was afraid of his own partner.
* * *
Janey knew that something important had happened by the way that all the uniformed cops were running around like chickens with their heads cut off. What a weird phrase that was.
She’d never seen a chicken with its head cut off. The thought of it alone was enough to make her not eat her chicken nugget kid’s meal. So why had she used that phrase? Popeye would probably have something to say about it.
He’d have something to say about all of this. The way Darc had been acting, the manner in which the officers were behaving, the fact that Carly had seemed to just disappear… even Janey herself would have gotten an earful about how much she had been crying.
Didn’t matter. Popeye wasn’t here right now. It was just Janey and the policemen. From the way the cops’ eyes would search Janey out and then melt away from her, the colored threads in her mind told her it was about Mala.
But Mala wasn’t dead. Trey had come in for just a second and told her that she was out of surgery and seemed to be stable. And stable was a good thing.
So why was everyone looking at Janey’s adoptive mother?
One of the threads spat out a symbol that spun around and then settled into a blank space, giving her an answer. It wasn’t one that she liked, but it made sense.
Someone had tried to kill Mala. Again. Right here in the hospital.
It made sense. Whoever had fired that gun back at the cathedral must have tried to come back and finish what they had started.
On one level, her brain sorted out the information, sifting it like sand through fingers. But on another level, Janey could feel the ground moving underneath her feet, like it was going to open up and swallow her whole.
The emotion that had already come spilling out of her earlier threatened to return. She could feel the tide rising up inside of her, a billowing mass of tangled grey, so she did the only thing she could think of.
She crammed it deep down inside of her.
For a moment, she rocked back and forth, not finding her sense of inner balance. But then it felt like things stabilized, and she was able to walk out of the waiting room with her body and face calm, like still water on the top of a pond.
Underneath, she could feel the turbulence, but that wasn’t important right now. What was important was getting to Mala’s side without an adult trying to stop her.
That ended up being more complicated than it might sound. People were streaming in and out of the hallway, half-heard conversations drifting toward Janey. It sounded like whoever had attacked Mala must have managed to escape.
Then she was past all of the people and into Mala’s recovery room. Everything else seemed to retreat into the background, and all that was left was Mala’s face.
The 2nd Cycle of the Darc Murders Omnibus (the acclaimed series from #1 Police Procedural and Hard Boiled authors Carolyn McCray and Ben Hopkin) Page 56