“You all right?” he asked.
Even breathing hurt, but I forced air through my vocal chords again for him. “Get them,” I told Apollo. “Save Thalia.”
“Sir, are you with her?” the woman asked.
“No,” I said, before he could respond. They’d want him to come along. To answer questions I couldn’t or to make decisions if I passed out on them. But I wasn’t the one who needed him. Not at that moment.
He looked hurt and let go of my hand as the gurney continued on. But I knew he’d understand. If not in that moment then as soon as he thought about it clearly. Or I’d have time to explain when I healed up to the point where I could check myself out of the hospital. Thalia might not have that kind of time.
A car pulled up, siren and lights blaring as I was loaded into the ambulance, but a jostle as the wheels bounced over the bumper set all my pain receptors to flaring, and I blacked out for a minute…or two. When I opened my eyes again, they were swimming with spots, as though the world had been blotted out by purple-black bruises.
When they faded, I was face to face with Nick’s partner, Detective Reyes, who stared down at me emotionlessly, either hardened to or uncaring about my pain. “Tell me everything you remember,” she ordered.
I closed my eyes again for a second, blocking her out, trying to free a synapse or two from screaming about pain to focus on a response. How was I going to explain an explosion with no incendiary device?
“Tori,” she said sharply. “Ms. Karacis, stay with me. I need you to tell me what you can. Every second counts.”
I’d had the same thought, but… In the end, the words slipped out without any filter on them. I didn’t have enough available brain cells for misdirection. “Do you believe in magic, Detective?”
I’d said it so faintly I wasn’t even sure she’d hear, but I’d opened my eyes to see her reaction and watched her reel back as if I’d slapped her face.
“What did you give her?” she asked the EMT who’d stayed in the back with us while the other put on the sirens and the speed.
“Nothing,” she answered, sounding mildly offended. “We don’t dare until we get her to the hospital. Make sure there’s no brain injury.”
“So she has a concussion?”
“She was unconscious and non-responsive when we arrived. Her pupils were uneven. There’s a good possibility.”
“Damn. How soon before I can get anything useful out of her.”
The EMT shrugged. “Can’t say. Doctor might be able to tell you more, but it can come with amnesia or confusion.”
And there was my out. Amnesia. I have no recollection of these events. Except the ones that mattered. Richie and Ian Roland had taken Thalia; the police had to focus on them.
“The Roland boys,” I said, forcing enough air from my lungs to make myself heard. “They have…Thalia.”
“Did they say where they were taking her?”
I started to shake my head, forgetting I couldn’t move it. “No.”
“What the hell?” asked the EMT up front.
“What is it, Jake?” asked the one back with us.
When he didn’t answer, she said, “Jake?”
He cursed and swerved suddenly, and Reyes left me to poke her head through the window into the front of the cab. She cursed sharply in Spanish and grabbed the phone on her belt, voice dialing dispatch. “We’ve got a massive brawl on Hollywood Boulevard. We’re just passing Highland now, and it looks like…” She trailed off for a second and then, “Oh, holy hell!”
“What?” the EMT asked, coming up beside her. “No freaking way. Is that Captain America fighting Bizarro? They’re not even in the same universe.”
I couldn’t see a thing. Couldn’t move. But I heard shouts and screams, the sound of shrieking metal…
“It’s like all the characters on the strip have suddenly gone insane.”
Chaos. That was the only explanation. The boys must have come this way. But did they carry some kind of chaos field, maybe Ian’s amulet, or did it naturally follow them wherever they went? Was there a way Apollo and Neith could use it to track them?
And how twisted was it that with everything else going on, I felt a little cheated that I didn’t get to watch superheroes fighting? Fake superheroes, but still. I pictured the old-timey Batman, Oooph! and Kapow! signs appearing above heads, though I was sure the reality was nothing so campy.
“Turn here,” the female EMT ordered her partner. I felt the ambulance give a heave to the right, and then swerve almost immediately to the left.
“Holy hell,” he said, echoing Reyes, “was that a Transformer?”
Something hit the side of the ambulance hard, and it rocked from one set of wheels to the other before falling back on all four. Every part of my body screamed in protest, my brain most of all, because I wanted out of this damned back brace, off this damned gurney and into the hunt. It wasn’t even a possibility at the moment, but I hated being sidelined. Helpless was just two four-letter words jammed together.
“Dammit!” the EMT cried, gunning the engine and racing us away faster than was probably safe or legal, but Reyes didn’t say a thing.
Behind us I could hear more sirens as, I assumed, police cars poured into the plaza, trying to contain the insanity.
I had to hope the hospital wasn’t far now, because even strapped down for minimal movement, every swerve hurt the hell out of me.
“Reyes,” I called. I had to try again, hoping she could hear me over the sound of the sirens. She turned, finally, “Tell Nick to follow the crazy.”
She looked at me like I was nuts, especially after the magic comment, but she pulled her phone from her hip and hit a button. “Tell him yourself,” she said, holding the phone up to my ear as it rang.
He answered before the first ring even cut off. “Reyes, how is she?”
“She’s…stable,” I said, knowing he’d recognize my voice instantly. He’d also get the subtext. “I’ll heal, but listen. You have to follow the chaos.”
“What?” he asked.
“Reyes will tell you. And call Neith.”
My eyes wanted desperately to close, and now that I’d done what I could, I let them. Reyes might not get me, but she could tell him what was going on and Apollo could probably fill him in on the rest.
Chapter Seventeen
I woke when they were pulling me out of the ambulance, my vision blurry at first, like an old television that had to resolve the pixels, but then everything snapped into perfect clarity. Unfortunately, my brain didn’t come on-line quite as quickly, and I immediately tried to rise, only to find that I couldn’t…but because of the restraints, not because my muscles failed to obey. They’d tried to snap me free, but even at my best, I wasn’t exactly the She-Hulk.
“I’m fine,” I said to the EMTs as they unloaded me from the ambulance.
The woman gave me a pitying look, but didn’t immediately answer, too busy lowering the wheels and getting them all to move in the same direction.
“We’ll just make sure of that,” her partner said. The radio on his hip buzzed, and he helped maneuver me with one hand while he answered with the other. I didn’t understand the codes, but there was no missing that it was another call-out. And, it seemed, right back to the mess we’d driven through.
He and his partner exchanged a look, her with a groan, and they handed me off as soon as we were inside, their paperwork signed off on and a copy given to the nurse. Reyes followed me in but then disappeared with her phone, only to reappear once the nurse had me in a…well, “room” was being generous. Had me in an area of the emergency room partitioned off by perky polka-dotted curtains in shades of blue and purple.
Reyes grabbed the nurse as she was leaving. “Keep me apprised of her status?” she asked.
The nurse looked startled. “Ma’am—Detective—I don’t k
now how much I’ll be able to tell you.”
“It’s okay,” I said from the gurney.
“Oh, well, if you’ll sign off on that…” And she disappeared, presumably to get the paperwork necessary to cover her butt.
“I have to go,” Reyes said, not unexpectedly. She grabbed a card from her pocket and put it into my hand, which made me think of Eros’s business card tucked into my cleavage. “Call me if you think of anything. Or, anyway, have someone here call me or Detective Armani.”
I tried to nod and cursed myself. I’d forgotten again that I was all bound up. Now that I could move, there was nothing I wanted to do more. Although, the fact that my muscles had responded didn’t mean they were in any condition to actually coordinate with each other.
“Okay,” I said.
She nodded, and I tried not to be jealous of her freedom of movement.
Five minutes passed. Ten. A million for all I could tell. Paralyzed boredom minutes were about a zillion times longer than regular minutes. Finally, a nurse came and shined a light into my eyes, took my blood pressure and temperature, asked me a few more questions to add to the info on her clipboard and then told me they’d be taking me into x-ray any time.
I started to ask about releasing my restraints, but she was gone before the question died on my lips.
She was back a second later, and I thought maybe she’d heard me after all.
“Can I get out of here?” I asked as she came through the curtain.
“Oh, you’re getting out of here,” she answered back. Only it wasn’t her voice.
“Neith?” I asked, half sure I had a concussion after all.
“Shh,” she said quietly. “That’s Nurse Nancy to you.”
I realized my jaw was hanging open, and I shut it. She came around to the side of my bed and raised the protective bars up into position.
“What are you doing? You’ve got to get me out, not fence me in.”
“Don’t worry, I’ve got this. Play groggy.”
I glared.
“Come on, shouldn’t be too much of a stretch.”
I glared until she ducked down to see where the brake releases were on the bed, and then she slid the bed out from the wall and disappeared around behind me. With my head bound to the board, I couldn’t rotate it to see her, and anyway, I didn’t seem to have much choice but to play along.
I let my eyes go vacant and willed my body to go slack.
She rounded the gurney long enough to push the curtain out of the way and then pushed me through.
No one stopped her. No one even gave us a second glance.
The real Nurse Nancy came out of a curtained area just in front of us, and I willed her not to turn around, not to see her second self. The chaos field must have been far enough away to give us that turn of luck. She immediately headed off in the direction that was away, and we slid right through the ER and out into a hallway without anyone taking notice.
The hallway was too well-trafficked for Neith to do whatever she was going to do…or so I presumed, and so I held my peace while she wheeled me around a corner and down another hallway, stopping us in front of an elevator. I hoped to Hades she knew what she was doing and that the gurney would actually fit into the elevator. The doors looked wide enough, but…when they opened, I was thrilled to see the elevator was even deeper than it was wide.
We slid in, and as soon as the doors closed, Neith set my brakes, stripped off her jacket and hung it on the control panel, which wasn’t quite flush with the elevator wall. Then she undid my head restraint and I instantly rocked my neck back and forth, thrilled to have movement, even if my muscles screamed with it.
She flopped the strap back over my head without a word and took her jacket as the elevator beeped to let us know we’d hit a floor. Two men in lab coats stood aside holding the doors as Neith wheeled me out again. I reassumed the dazed look and didn’t ask any of the million questions running through my head, like, “Why the elevator?” The emergency room was already on the ground floor. Going up seemed to be the opposite of progress, but I assumed the goddess of strategy knew what she was doing.
Halfway along that hallway, she stopped at a door with a backing over the inset window that made it look like stained glass. It had a small gold plaque where a room number might be that said, “Chapel.”
She left me in the hallway momentarily to check whether anyone was inside, then propped the door open as she wheeled me in. We seemed to have the place to ourselves.
“What are you doing?” I finally asked as the door closed behind her.
“No cameras in here. Let’s get you free.”
I was absolutely on board with that. I’d never have guessed Neith was the answer to my prayers, but then, the gods worked in mysterious ways. After she got the strap across my chest unbuckled, she moved to the one around my lower arms. Once they were free, I was able to help with my own legs.
I felt as weak as a newborn colt on spindly little legs as I tried to stand, and I had a moment of vertigo where I fell back against the bed, but once that passed, I was able to stay upright more or less reliably.
“You got this?” Neith asked. Not coddling. Not offering help. Just watching. Assessing.
“Yeah, what next? Why up?”
“Because they’ll search everywhere else when they come to take you to x-ray and find you gone. They’ll check cameras, starting with those around the exits… Since you came in as the victim of an attack, the first thing they’ll think of is foul play. Neither one of us can afford to get caught. We’ve lost too much time as it is.”
It made sense, but… “What now?”
“You have wings, don’t you?”
“Yeah, but…it’s broad daylight. Anyone could see me use them.”
“Uh huh. There are superheroes and supervillains battling it out on Hollywood Boulevard. The waxworks at Madame Tussaud’s are coming to life. The replica of the tallest man in the world at Ripley’s Believe It or Not Museum just stood up and dented the ceiling… I don’t think anyone’s going to be too concerned about your wings.”
I stared at her, stunned. Maybe I really was concussed. “Seriously?”
“And that’s just what I know of.”
“We’ve got to stop these boys before things get any worse.”
“Well, duh.”
My mind boggled. Of all the things you didn’t expect to come out of a goddess’s mouth.
“Besides,” she said, “what good is a superpower you’re afraid to use.”
That steeled my spine. I hadn’t thought of myself as being afraid. Cautious, yes. Considerate even, thinking that if the world found out about me, they’d go looking for others. But my family had been in the glare of the circus lights for generations. And the gods, Fates, titans and others had been avoiding detection for ages. They were clearly better at it than I was. Was I really hiding out for them or for myself, not wanting the attention, afraid of what it would mean for my life? I wasn’t a big fan of change. Chaos was right out.
Damn it, these boys had to be stopped.
“Fine,” I said with admittedly bad grace. “What about you?”
Neith gave me a pitying look, and then shook herself. As she shook, her body rippled and transformed. Her hair darkened and gathered up into her former braids, color spread across her face and over her skin in a wave, pounds melted off, her shape changed… And then Neith was standing before me. She shed the lab coat, dropping it onto the hospital bed. No one would associate her with Nurse Nancy. No one would have seen us together. She could just walk out. I should have thought of that.
No wonder the gods and goddesses had been so good at hiding all these years. They could be anybody. If the boys channeled enough power to Set for him to break loose, we were going to be in a whole world of hurt.
“We’re all meeting at my hotel, the Loews Hollywood
. You know it?”
“Yeah, but shouldn’t we be going after these guys while the trail is hot. Thalia—”
“Are you ready to get your ass kicked again? Maybe this time the boys will do some damage you can’t come back from. The police are on Thalia’s kidnapping. Let them do their jobs. At this point, with a kidnap victim, they’re not going to go in with guns blazing, but maybe they can keep the boys busy long enough for us to come up with a plan. We need something that will neutralize them.”
“We need Sigyn,” I said.
It popped out of my mouth before I even realized I’d formed the thought. She’d “neutralized” me back when we’d been on opposite sides. She was a runemaster…mistress…whatever. If anyone could come up with a countermeasure…
“She’s already in. She and Hermes are meeting us there.”
“Great.” Already I wasn’t so certain about my brainstorm. What if Sigyn was ready to switch sides all over again? If she joined forces with Set we were sunk.
But who on earth would join forces with the god of chaos? It was the same thing I asked myself about satanic cultists. Why would people pledge themselves to the Prince of Lies? Did they really think he was going to live up to his end of any bargain? Or that there wouldn’t be a buttload of fine print?
And that was the very moment it occurred to me that the devil might be real and…
I couldn’t even think about that. One crazy crisis at a time. If I ever came face to face with a pitchfork-wielding, cloven-footed menace, I’d spit in his eye. Until then, I had to focus on the demons that came to my town spoiling for a fight.
“Meet you there,” I said.
I let her leave the chapel first, since my wings would be faster than driving in L.A. traffic, especially with roads likely blocked off around whatever insanity had spilled out into the streets. I left a minute or so later, all my lack of patience could handle. Nobody stopped me. Nobody questioned me. But then, my wings were still safely hidden away. The real fun would come when I tried to jump out a window.
Blood Hunt Page 18