“Excellent. Now.” Dashiell glanced at me with aristocratic curiosity. “You are all wet. And you are not wearing shoes.”
I looked down at my clothes. My tee shirt, leather knife belt, and jeans were soaked through, as were my now-dirt-colored socks. “It’s a long story.”
Dashiell hesitated, and I was so sure he was going to ask me about Jameson, I could practically see it. Then he looked around and said, “I suppose the next item on our agenda is cleaning up this mess.”
I relaxed infinitesimally. Dashiell would have to ask eventually, of course—Jameson had helped the Holmwoods—but he was giving him a head start. The cardinal vampire sighed, considering the bodies all around us. “We’re going to need help to get this done by sunrise. I can make some calls.”
Make some calls. It was only in that moment that my brain began to process Lucy’s final words. “Oh my God.”
Both men turned to stare at me. “Dashiell, I need a car,” I said desperately. “Right now.”
Dashiell gave me the cell phone he was carrying—mine was still in a zillion pieces back at the hotel room—and the keys to a late-model Jeep. I had the feeling it wasn’t a rental, but I didn’t care. Heat blasting, I followed the Internet’s directions to the closest ER, which was in Boulder City. It was a manic, reckless drive, fueled by adrenaline and fear, and if the Jeep hadn’t been a four-wheel-drive vehicle, I would have flipped it at least twice.
Finally, I saw the signs for the hospital. I dumped the Jeep in the short-term ER parking and rushed inside, my head swiveling around. The waiting room wasn’t large. There was a cluster of worried-looking people sitting around, waiting for loved ones, but none of them seemed particularly agitated. It was the normal, barely tamed frenzy of any other night at the emergency room.
I spotted Cliff in a cluster of those fake wood and fake leather chairs, underneath an equally cheap TV. He was slumped down, his head propped on one palm. Blood streaked down the front of his shirt, but it didn’t look like it was his.
I rushed toward him as fast as my injuries would allow, my wet socks slipping on the linoleum. Cliff looked up, and I saw his face go flat, like he was trying to keep feelings off it for my sake.
He stood up as I arrived, automatically holding out his arms to steady me. “He’s in surgery,” Cliff reported. “The doctors aren’t optimistic, but . . . he has a chance. I sent Laurel home to be with her family. She was exhausted.”
I processed all that quickly, and said breathlessly, “We need to get in there. I think Lucy may have told the skinners where to find Jameson.”
“How?” he demanded. “When would she have had time?”
“After Jameson shot Arthur,” I explained. “If she called Malcolm and told him about Jameson betraying her, and if he googled the closest ER . . .”
“Shit.” Cliff scrubbed his hands through his hair and started toward the big airlock door that led into the patient area. “Come on. We’ll see if we can talk our way—”
The sound of gunshots burst into the relative calm of the waiting room, and the intake nurses looked up in alarm. I started toward the door leading into the hospital, but just then lights on the wall began to flash, and a siren wailed. Someone had pulled the fire alarm.
The waiting room occupants began to rush toward the exit. Then the airlock door I’d been about to enter slammed open, and a flood of people rushed through it, nearly trampling each other.
“We gotta get in there,” I yelled to Cliff over my shoulder.
He caught my upper arm, the one still oozing blood. I cried out, and he let go instantly. “Sorry! But look, you’re never gonna be able to get back there—”
“Are you coming with me or not?” I demanded. I was already beginning to push against the wave of people.
Cliff clenched his teeth, but he nodded. I wormed my way through the doorway, snarling at everyone who tried to shove me. It probably helped that I looked like I’d just run through a blood sprinkler. I wove my way through the panicking stampede, following the signs to the surgical suites.
This hallway was already deserted. Cliff and I exchanged a look, and he drew a handgun from the small of his back. I followed suit with the Glock. We crept forward, stopping at each doorway, where I would hang back and Cliff would do a quick sweep of the room. We checked three doors on the left and two on the right. They were all empty, although two of them had lots of instruments and discarded gowns. Probably the surgeons had wheeled patients out of there when the fire alarm sounded.
Then we found a surgical suite that wasn’t empty.
“Oh my God,” I breathed. Cliff, who had swung the door open, motioned for me to stay back, but I ignored him and forced myself to step inside. My legs felt like lead posts in damp jeans.
There were three bodies in surgical scrubs on the floor, all dead of obvious gunshot wounds. A fourth body leaned against the wall in the far corner. If there had been anyone else in here when the shooting started, they had fled.
I stepped over them and approached the table. Jameson’s large body was stretched across it, partially covered by a gown. His chest and upper legs were exposed and bloody where the surgeons had started to extract the buckshot. His eyes were closed, and his face looked peaceful.
He didn’t seem at all troubled by the three new gunshot wounds in his chest.
I knew what I’d find, but I had to check anyway. I stepped up and put trembling fingers on his wrist to feel his pulse. I waited. Waited.
Nothing. I began to sob.
A gentle hand was placed on my arm. “He didn’t feel anything,” Cliff said quietly. “He just went to sleep.”
I shook my head, the tears pouring down my cheeks. I was so tired. And dizzy. Was this even real? Hadn’t I just been checking the ground for cottonmouths, and now I was in the middle of a hospital massacre? This couldn’t be right.
In the distance, we could hear the wail of sirens. The fire engines. “We need to go, Scarlett,” Cliff added in the same careful tone. “He’s gone.”
I reached up and touched Jameson’s cheek, below the black eye. He was still warm. He felt like he might wake up at any moment, but I knew better. I went on tiptoes and leaned forward to brush a kiss on his forehead. “I’m sorry,” I whispered, though I didn’t even know what I was sorry for. For sending him to the hospital without me? For the shitty hand he’d been dealt as a null? Or was I sorry that we hadn’t gotten a chance to see what this was? We could have loved each other. It felt like we had been on our way there.
I turned to Cliff, but just then the dizziness rose up to take me. I let it.
Chapter 39
“Scarlett. Wake up, babe,” came the familiar, teasing voice.
I bolted upright, but of course Jameson wasn’t really there. Instead, Cliff and I were in Dashiell’s Jeep, where I’d passed out with my head leaning against the glass. Some of my hair was still stuck there with tacky blood.
“Yes, sir.” Cliff was talking on the cell phone, but he glanced over at me with concern on his face. I shook my head. “We’ll be there in about fifteen minutes.”
I let my eyes drift closed again, and didn’t open them until Cliff pulled open the door and held out a hand to help me climb down. “Where are we?” I croaked.
“Regional airport just outside Vegas,” Cliff reported. We had driven right onto the tarmac. He pointed. “That’s Dashiell’s plane.”
I didn’t bother to nod, just rested my head against the glass and stared out. From the outside, it looked like a mini version of any other aircraft, but when we climbed the steps and crossed the threshold, I saw that the inside was configured as a nice lounge area for humans and awake vampires. Instead of rows of seats, there were groups of four soft leather armchairs that could be swiveled around to form conversation clusters. There was a separate room at the far end, and I knew without checking that it would be full of airtight sleeping pods—Dashiell didn’t like the word “coffins”—for vampires. I stumbled to the closest chair and collapsed.<
br />
Cliff had climbed up behind me and was standing in the doorway, shifting his weight from one foot to another. “Dashiell and Wyatt are smoothing things over at Erson Station,” he said, using the slow, cautious tone that one reserves for the mentally ill. His shirt was damp where he’d carried me out of the hospital. “Apparently the Holmwoods had already dug a big pit out back for bodies. Dashiell and Wyatt will bury everyone and make it look like an exploding water pipe caused all the damage.”
I think I nodded.
“I know you’re in shock,” he continued. “But I need to check on your injuries. Um, your physical injuries.”
He stepped toward me, but I shrank back, shaking my head.
“I’m fine,” I said. “Leave me alone.”
“You might have a concussion,” he insisted. “And the bullet wound on your arm is still bleeding.”
When he tried to come close, I cringed away from him, hearing a voice say, “No, no, no, no.” Oh. It was my voice. Cliff said something else, but I’d stopped listening. Eventually he put a blanket over me and went to sit somewhere else.
I just sat there for the longest time in my bloodstained clothes, staring at nothing. After a while, the plane’s inside door opened again, and I heard footsteps on the ladder. Without really thinking about it, I instinctively felt for two vampires in my radius, but I sensed only witch magic. Powerful witch magic.
I blinked, looking up. Sashi Brighton was in the doorway, looking down at me. “Hi,” she said, her voice cracking a little. She was wheeling the little first-aid suitcase I’d seen in her house. “What happened to your shoes?”
I looked around, without really seeing anything. “They’re . . . somewhere.”
“Cliff says you won’t let him check on your injuries.” I just looked at her. “I can’t use magic on you, obviously, but I’m still a proper physician’s assistant.” Sashi glanced at Cliff.
On cue, he stood up. “I’m just going to take a look around outside.” He squeezed past Sashi and climbed down the exterior stairs.
Sashi looked around for a moment before swiveling one of the large chairs so she could sit right across from me. I sat passively while she took my blood pressure and shone a light in my eyes.
“Do you feel light-headed?” she asked, pulling on sterile gloves. “Headaches?”
I nodded.
She examined the bump on my forehead. It wasn’t bleeding anymore, but it hurt when she touched it. She asked me some more questions about my head injury, and then some stupid stuff about the president and the date. Then she sighed. “Well, you’re in shock, and you’ve got a pretty severe concussion. Your blood pressure is dangerously low. You should be in the hospital.”
It wasn’t a direct question, so I didn’t bother to answer. After a while she took a few materials out of her kit and put butterfly tape over the cut on my forehead. She told me it would probably leave a scar, as if that was something I would care about. Then she cut away the sleeve of my ruined tee shirt so she could examine where Arthur Holmwood’s bullet had gone through my arm. “This needs stitches. God, your skin is so cold. All right, that’s it,” she announced. “We’re taking it all off. I have a hospital gown in here somewhere.”
She unbuckled my knife belt and helped me get my arms into the gown. After she tied the back, I had to stand up long enough for her to pull down my jeans. She peeled them off matter-of-factly, taking what was left of my socks too. “Ouch,” she said when she saw my feet.
“Just scrapes.”
“Still.” She put some disinfectant on gauze and used it to clean the scrapes on my feet, which hurt. She rolled some bandages around each foot before covering my feet and legs with an airplane blanket. “Better,” she said, and took some more supplies out of her case. She pulled down the shoulder of my gown and began applying iodine to the bullet wound. I winced at the sting.
“Cliff said that you lost someone tonight,” Sashi said gently, probably trying to distract me. When I didn’t respond, she asked, “Was he human?”
It seemed like a strange question for a second, and then I realized she was probably wondering if she could have done something to save him. “No. A null, like me.”
“I’m so sorry, Scarlett. Were you close?”
I had no idea how to answer that. After a moment I settled on, “He saved my life tonight.”
“So he was a good man.”
“I think . . . he was trying to be.” My voice wobbled. “He was complicated.”
After another moment, Sashi said, “There,” and put down her instruments. I hadn’t even noticed her doing the stitches. She pulled off her surgical gloves with a snap, looking at me directly until I finally met her eyes.
“This world . . . the one in the shadows. It isolates us into these little bubbles,” she said, covering my cold hand with her warmer one. “As a result, we have so little say in who we get to be with.”
“That’s why you don’t want to be with Will?”
She sighed. “I’ve been thinking about that. Say I took your cure, and say Will would even have me. I could move to LA and take a human job at a hospital. But Will’s whole life is in the Old World, and I would no longer have a place in it. How many hours a week do you think he spends dealing with pack business?”
“No idea. A lot.”
“As he should. But me being there would be a constant pull away from what he needs to do. Away from being alpha. It would divide him, force him to choose. Every hour of every day, he would have to pick between me and the pack.” She shook her head. “Even setting aside the good I can do as a witch . . . I think we would eventually tear apart. Or he would ask you to cure him, too, and that would tear him apart.” She reached over and pushed a lock of my hair behind my ear. It was a maternal gesture.
Very, very gently, she said, “Scarlett . . . sometimes it’s not supposed to work out.”
I cried then, for a long time. Sashi held me, smoothing back my hair and just generally making a fuss over me. When I was done, she helped recline the leather chair and then covered my lap and chest with more airplane blankets, which smelled like plastic wrap. The last thing I heard her say was, “I’m going to start some IV fluids, all right?”
I just nodded, already half-asleep. I felt her moving aside the sleeve of my gown to tie the tourniquet, and then I was out.
The next thing I was aware of was the sunshine. Someone had opened the window shades on the plane, and a beam of sunlight was warming the right side of my face. Just as it got uncomfortable, someone crossed in front of the window, cutting off the heat. I opened my eyes . . . and saw a familiar figure in a tee shirt and hoodie.
“Jesse?”
He looked down at me with that thousand-watt grin. “Hey, lazy. Geez, I thought this was a work trip. I wish I got paid to sleep all weekend.”
I burst out laughing, but it quickly turned into more of a sob. “You know me. Shows, spas, and shopping. It’s what I live for.”
“Yeah, that sounds about right.” There was a whine from next to Jesse, and I looked down—sort of—to see Shadow. She was sitting politely, but when I sat up and really looked I could see her tail wagging frantically. “Hey, Shadow.”
The bargest took that as permission to put her front paws on my lap and take one long swipe of my face with her tongue. “Ack! All right, fine. I missed you, too.”
Point made, the huge bargest dropped back down to all fours, her nose snuffling over my blankets and the hospital gown. I looked around. The plane was empty except for some of Hayne’s men, in their signature black polo shirts. They were carrying a couple of the airtight sleeping pods out of the plane. “Where are we?”
“Burbank airport. Dashiell called a few hours ago, said you were flying back and you had some minor injuries.” He gave me a skeptical look, but was smart enough not to point out that my injuries didn’t look so minor. “Corry’s waiting in the car.”
People. I was back home, where I had my people. My eyes pricked with tears again. Stup
id fucking Las Vegas. “I’m never, ever going back there,” I said to Jesse. “Where’s Cliff?”
“He already left. Said to tell you he’d talk to you later.”
“Okay.” I hit the button to make the seat un-recline. My skin was still stained red, and more red had rubbed off onto the leather seats from when I’d been sitting there in my blood-soaked clothes. Dashiell was going to kill me when he saw it. Actually, scratch that. He’d probably make me come back later and clean it up.
Jesse was watching me again. “Hey, are you aware that you’re covered in a great deal of blood?”
“Yeah, but most of it’s mine. Speaking of which . . .” I peeled off the clear tape holding the needle in place and pulled out the IV.
“Hey!” Jesse protested, but I was already pressing my fingers down on the small spurt of blood. “Seriously, Scar. What the hell happened this weekend?”
“It’s a long story.” I pushed the remaining blankets down, aching in so many places that there was no point in taking inventory. I saw that someone had left my boots set out neatly near the door, which cheered me up a little.
I shivered from the plane’s air conditioning. “Here.” Jesse shrugged out of the hoodie and helped me get it on. I zipped it up gratefully, breathing in his comforting scent of oranges and cologne. The warmth felt amazing. “Is it still Sunday?” I asked.
He gave the bump on my head a very concerned look. “Yes.”
“Take me home?”
“You bet.”
I started to stand up, and felt something tucked between my hip and the armchair. I reached down and pulled out a small paper bag, rolled up. When I held it up, the bottom of the bag began to tear, and tightly bound chunks of money spilled out onto my lap.
Jesse’s eyes got huge. “Whoa. That’s gotta be like . . .”
“Ninety thousand dollars,” I said in a hollow voice. Wyatt had seen me lock the hotel safe. I hadn’t killed him like I’d promised, but maybe he was counting on me doing it when his service to Dashiell was up.
Blood Gamble (Disrupted Magic Book 2) Page 25