She lay motionless in my arms, as if I’d actually drugged her. Earlier, I’d phoned Imri to set this up, telling him I was going to incapacitate Azazel and bring her here.
He’d been pleased, saying he’d known I’d see reason eventually.
I carried her to the door of the clinic like a bridegroom carries his new wife over the threshold.
But Azazel and I weren’t ever going to be that kind of couple.
This was our life.
Imri met me at the door. “Hello, Jason.”
I looked around. The lobby was a large room, flanked on all sides with chairs. One couch on the far wall. There was a glass window where a nurse would usually sit, but it was black and empty now. There were men outside the door—about six, three on each side. The rest of the men were inside the room, behind Imri. Half of them were wearing police uniforms, since Imri had the whole police force on his side. The others were wearing street clothes. But they were all armed. “Where’s Chance?”
Imri motioned for a man to come and take Azazel from me.
I backed away from the man. “No way. I’m not giving her up until I see my son.”
Imri sighed. “All right, all right.” He nodded at one of the other men.
The man disappeared. When he returned, he had Chance in his arms. Chance was tied and gagged and also knocked out.
“Is he okay?” I said.
“I promise he’s fine,” said Imri. “He’s just sleeping.”
The man set Chance down on the couch on the far wall.
“You going to put him on the couch at the back of the room?” I said, mostly for Azazel’s benefit, since her eyes were closed. I wanted her to know where she needed to go.
“Will you let one of my men take Azazel now?” said Imri.
“All right,” I said.
“We’ll need to check you for weapons,” said Imri. “Can’t be too careful, you understand?”
“Yeah,” I said. “That why you got a squadron here?” I looked around at all the armed guys. We were so outnumbered. Might not have mattered so much when we had the leaf bullets and they didn’t, but they had them now. Every bullet could be deadly. The last time I got shot with a leaf bullet, I nearly died.
One of the men approached me, taking Azazel.
Tense, adrenaline pumped at my throat. I surrendered her body to him.
“Hands up, Jason,” said Imri.
Slowly, I raised my hands. A man started to pat me down.
Fucking A, where was Boone? I knew he had to leave his computers and get armed, but we’d told him to deploy everyone else and bring up the rear. We needed to be moving on this.
Then, there it was. The first shot, a resounding boom shattering the air.
Azazel moved in the man’s arms, pulling out a gun and shooting him in the face.
He fell.
She was on her feet and running for the end of the room, the couch.
The man who was patting me down put his hand on the gun inside my shirt.
I punched him. I drew my gun.
“Jason, I thought we had a deal,” said Imri.
I shot the man in front of me and leveled the gun at Imri. “Sorry, too bad.” I pulled the trigger.
Imri’s head jerked backwards, and I knew I’d hit him.
I turned, and it was muscle memory, pointing and squeezing the trigger, men going down like dominoes, one after the other.
It was poetry, that’s what it was. Perfection.
Behind me, I could hear the rattling of more gunfire, but I didn’t turn to look. That would be everyone else—Hallam, Jude, Marlena, Grace, and Boone. They’d get the guys at the door, the guys behind us.
We had surprise on our side, and hopefully that would be enough.
Azazel had Chance in her arms. She jumped up on the couch and shot out the window.
“Go,” I yelled at her, pulling the trigger again, watching another of the men go down.
She nodded at me, holding Chance tight and crawling out the window.
She was gone. She was safe.
Fiery pain seared through me.
I gasped, looking down. Shit. A bullet had gone through the meat of my thigh.
I lost my balance, going down on one knee.
Fuck, that hurts.
Wasn’t healing either. Leaf bullet.
I could still shoot, though.
I twisted, bringing up my weapon, sighting the next man I saw. I pulled the trigger.
The bullet caught him between the eyes. He crumpled to the ground, a dazed expression on his face.
I took a second to assess the room. There were bullet holes in all the walls. At least fifteen dead bodies on the ground.
Through the confusion, I could see that our guys were all standing, all still shooting.
Even Jude was advancing pretty quickly, his face twisted in a sneer.
“Jason,” said a voice from behind me.
I turned.
It was Imri, sitting back up, his wound healed. That damned true immortal blood meant that even the leaves didn’t get him. He had a gun. He pointed at me.
He was so close.
He pulled the trigger.
I threw myself to the ground, shooting as I went.
But his bullet tore between the knuckles of my index and middle finger, burrowing into my hand and wrist.
I shrieked, dropping my gun.
I curled up into a ball on the floor, cradling my wounded hand.
Okay. I’d been shot a lot of places, even a couple times in the head, and they’d all hurt pretty freaking bad, but I didn’t think there was anything on earth that compared to this.
All I could feel was bright white agony.
Imri got to his feet, laughing down at me. “Well, I shouldn’t have expected it to be that easy, should I?”
He started back the hall, away from the shooting.
The fucker was getting away.
I picked my gun up with my left hand, and I did my best to aim it after him.
But all my shots went wide. None of them got near him.
Not only was I not left handed, but I didn’t have my other hand to steady myself. I was useless.
Fuck.
A high-pitched scream. Female.
Azazel? I looked around, panicked. Hadn’t she gotten out?
But it wasn’t Azazel. It was Grace. She’d been shot in the chest, and blood was pouring out of the wound, staining her shirt crimson.
She dropped her gun, her hands fluttering at her wound.
Boone was next to her. He grabbed her, held her up.
Because she couldn’t stand. She was falling.
Boone’s face was white. He looked at her, shaking his head.
I lifted my gun again, trying to take something out, anything. But I couldn’t hit anything with my stupid left hand.
And I was in so much pain. I gritted my teeth against it.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a bullet hit Jude in the shoulder. He backed into the wall, grunting.
Hallam was still going. He was grinning like a demon, shooting everything that moved.
I watched two or three more men go down.
And then Hallam grimaced and swayed on his feet.
They’d got him from behind. There was a shot in his stomach.
Fuck, fuck, fuck.
Why couldn’t I do anything?
Boone was yelling. I could hear him saying Grace’s name over and over again.
Hallam grabbed at his gut. He lumbered around, searching for the man who’d shot him.
But another bullet hit him first.
Hallam went down.
I saw Marlena behind him, at the door. She gritted her teeth as she sprayed bullets over the room, cleaning up.
Bodies hit the floor.
And it was quiet.
Not even Boone was making noise.
I looked at him.
His arms were still around Grace, but there was a wound at his throat, and his gaze was dull. Grace wasn’t moving either.<
br />
Marlena threw herself to the ground next to her husband. “Hallam?”
Jude pushed himself up, bracing his body against the wall.
“Hallam!” said Marlena.
CHAPTER TEN
~azazel~
Chance was crying. He was sobbing these crazy kinds of sobs, and I was afraid he was going to rip his own tiny body apart. I held onto him as tightly as I could, and he clung to me, crying and crying.
I was crying too.
I rocked him. We sat on the couch in the living room back at the mansion, and I rocked back and forth, whispering nonsense at him. Things like, “It’s okay, it’s okay.”
When it wasn’t okay. Nothing was okay.
I didn’t mean to say it, but it kept coming out of my mouth.
Marlena appeared in the doorway. Her clothes were covered in blood. “We should send him to the Paulsons’ too.”
“What?” I said.
“Chance,” she said. “We should get him out of here. He likes playing with Kenya. It’d be better not to be here.”
Chance stopped crying. He turned to look at Marlena with defiant eyes. “I don’t want to go anywhere.”
“Maybe you should get Kenya back,” I said. “What if Imri…” I left the sentence unsaid, because there were too many real horrors in the world at the moment, and I didn’t want to say any worse things out loud.
Marlena’s eyes widened. “He couldn’t.”
“Probably not,” I said.
She turned away. “I’ll be back.”
I got up. “Marlena, wait.”
She didn’t.
I went after her. “How is everyone?”
She was opening the front door. “Jason and Jude are both wounded, but not bad. The leaves are still in their blood, so they’re not healing, and they can’t heal Hallam.”
“But he’s… he’s okay?”
“He’s got a bullet in his stomach, Azazel,” she said.
“And Boone and Grace, there’s no chance?”
Marlena shook her head. She started out of the door.
“Marlena!”
“What?” She looked annoyed.
“You can’t go pick her up looking like that. You’re covered in blood.”
Marlena surveyed her stained clothes. She pulled the door shut and ran up the steps.
“Zaza?” said Chance.
I turned back to him. “Yeah?”
“Where’s my daddy?”
“I don’t know, sweetheart,” I said. “I’m supposed to stay away from him. My baby makes it hard for him to heal.”
“Oh,” said Chance. “I want to see him.”
“Okay,” I said. “But I don’t want you wandering around by yourself. So, maybe when Marlena comes back, she can take you to him.”
Marlena shot down the stairs again in clean clothes. She went out the door without looking at us.
Chance looked up at me. “She just left.”
“She’ll be back,” I said.
Chance’s face crumpled again.
“Hey,” I said. “I know this is bad.”
“I just want to see him,” Chance said. “I want to make sure he’s not dead too.”
“He’s not,” I said. “I swear. He’s going to be fine by tomorrow, all right?” It took about a day for the leaves to wear off.
Chance went and sat down on the couch. “Are you going to die too?”
“I…” I wanted to reassure the kid, but I didn’t want to lie to him either. I sat down next to him. “Someday.”
His lower lip trembled.
“I mean, everyone is,” I said. “So, eventually, I will. I hope it’s not for a long time.”
Chance screwed his face up, and he nodded. “Right. I guess I knew that.”
“You did?”
“Well, my first mom died, you know? I don’t even remember her.” He sniffled. “And then, I watched them hurt my mom.” His face twisted again, but he didn’t start crying. “You’re my last one. I only have one mom left.”
I put my arm around him. “I’m sorry.”
He hugged me. “Try not to die very soon, okay?”
“Okay,” I said.
* * *
Chance was huddled up next to me on the couch. He hadn’t spoken in a long time. He just sat and stared off into space. He wasn’t crying anymore.
From time to time, I tried to think of something to say to him, but I couldn’t think of anything, so I just held onto him. And waited.
“Zaza?”
I looked up.
Jude was coming into the living room. He wasn’t wearing a shirt, and he had a big bandage on his shoulder.
“Jude, you shouldn’t be in here,” I said. “Being close to the baby, it’ll stop you from healing.”
“Well, the leaf bullets are doing that just fine,” said Jude. “I don’t see why it matters.”
“We don’t know that,” I said. “Maybe if you’re near me, it will make it take even longer for the leaves to wear off. Hallam needs your blood.”
He strode over to me and knelt down. “I had to make sure you were okay.”
“I’m fine,” I said.
“And the baby?”
“Fine too, as far as I know,” I said.
He swallowed. “I wish we hadn’t even brought you in there.”
“I got clear right away,” I said. I’d missed the whole thing, running for the car with Chance. I’d been back here at the mansion waiting for them when they came back. When most of them came back, anyway. “I’m fine. Chance is fine.”
Jude turned his attention to the boy. “Hey there, little man.”
“Hi, Uncle Jude,” said Chance in a small voice.
“He saw what happened to Mina,” I said. “They did it in front of him.”
“Shit,” said Jude. He put his hand on top of Chance’s head. “You all right?”
“Yeah,” said Chance.
“He’s not,” I said. “Can you take him up to see Jason? He wants to see Jason.”
Jude nodded. “I can do that. But then, you’re going to be here all alone.”
“I’ll be fine,” I said. “You need to not be around me.”
Jude laughed bitterly. “You never want me around you, do you, Zaza?”
“Jude, please,” I said. “Not the time.”
Jude held out his hand to Chance. “Come on.”
“You taking me to see Daddy?” said Chance.
“Yep,” said Jude.
Chance got off the couch.
I watched them walk out of the room. And then I curled up on the couch and started to cry again.
I couldn’t stop thinking about what Grace had said. If I die, will you care?
* * *
~jason~
Jude knocked on the door of the bedroom. I was propped up on the bed with a laptop, trying to make sense of some of the security that Boone had hacked into.
Man.
Kid was dead, and it was basically my fault. I’d led him into that place, into danger. He was too young to be gone, and he didn’t deserve what had happened to him.
“Hey,” I said.
Jude nudged Chance into the room. “There he is, little man.”
“Daddy,” said Chance, his big eyes full of tears.
“Hey, buddy,” I said, holding out my arms to him. I couldn’t get up because of the stupid bullet in my thigh.
Chance looked up at Jude, and then over at me. He moved cautiously into the room. “You got shot with a gun, too?”
“Yeah,” I said.
“Everybody did,” said Chance.
“He saw what they did to Mina,” said Jude.
I squeezed my eyes shut. Damn it. “Chance, come over here.”
“It won’t hurt you if I do?”
“No, it’ll be okay,” I said. “Come here.”
He moved more quickly across the room and climbed up on the bed next to me.
I caught him by the chin and examined him. He wasn’t hurt anywhere, thank g
od. “I’m so glad you’re okay.”
Chance looked away. “Mommy Zaza says I’m not okay.”
Alarm went through me. “What do you mean?”
“She said that because he’s upset, that’s all,” said Jude. “He’s not hurt. Not physically hurt.”
“Oh,” I said. Right. Kid was probably emotionally scarred for life. I never wanted that for him. Damn it.
“I’ll let you guys talk,” said Jude.
“Okay,” I said.
“I’ll swing back in a while, in case you want me to take him back downstairs. It’s probably not a good idea for him to walk around alone.”
“Good point,” I said. “Thanks, Jude.”
Jude half-smiled. “I think that’s the only time you ever thanked me in my life.”
“Yeah, well…”
He left.
I went back to Chance, who was eyeing the bandage on my hand with worry in his eyes.
I held my hand out to him. “You want to look at it?”
He shook his head. “No, it’s okay.”
“You want to talk about what happened to your mom?”
He made a face. “No.”
“You want to talk about something else?”
He shook his head.
I took a deep breath. I didn’t know how to talk to him about this. By the time I was his age, I’d seen more men get killed than I could count. I knew what it was like to wake up in fear, me and Anton in a hotel room, people shooting at us. I knew that the next shot could kill him. Kill me. I didn’t want Chance to ever feel like that, but it had happened anyway. “You know, buddy, sometimes… bad things happen.”
“I know,” he said. “Sometimes moms die. Like Mommy Polly.”
Right. Okay, he had a reference point for this.
“They had guns, Daddy. But I couldn’t do anything about it, because I was too little, and because I didn’t have one.”
I swallowed.
“What if it happens again?” he said. “What if there are more bad guys with guns? What if they try to shoot Mommy Zaza?”
“I’ll be there,” I said. “I’ll stop them.”
“What if you get shot?” He pointed at my bandage.
“Look at me, Chance,” I said. “The only way that I will ever let anyone hurt you or Azazel is if I’m dead. And I’m hard to kill.”
He nodded solemnly, considering this. “But you could get dead, right? I mean, eventually, that’s what happens to everybody. Everybody dies. Even you.”
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