“Speak for yourself,” Phoebe muttered.
“What about me?”
They shared a look I didn’t like. At all. Collum’s eyes skated over me, assessing. He frowned when he saw me clutching my one measly dagger. Between the three of them, they carried a veritable arsenal.
Phoebe reached into her bag and retrieved a small silver revolver about the size of my palm. “What about this?”
“She hasn’t trained with guns,” Collum argued. “Much less a derringer.”
“Aye, but we can hardly let her go unarmed, now can we?”
“What about the Colt?” Bran said.
Collum shook his head, which made me want to slap that serious I’m-in-charge look off his face as he said, “Hope isn’t going in at all. Not until I give the word.”
“Just stop it!” I snapped. “Okay? Stop talking about me like I’m not even here. I know I’m no warrior, but those are my people too. Just give me a freaking gun, Collum.”
Collum peered at me for a long moment. I knew he was probably thinking: Can we really trust her not to shoot off her own foot?
I glared right back, letting my rage and determination show. I knew Collum and Phoebe—Bran, too, for that matter—thought they were protecting me. But I was not helpless, and I was sick and tired of other people deciding my fate.
I’m a Viator too, dammit. And I can decide what I’m capable of, thank you very much.
Before anyone could stop me, I snatched the Lilliputian gun from Phoebe’s hand and moved to the steps. “Ready when you are.”
Chapter 44
IT ALL HAPPENED SO FAST. LATER, I WOULD TRY TO re-create it in my head, but even with my abilities, there were simply too many elements to follow.
Kneeling outside the door, through which came the sounds of crashes and shattering glass, the slam of heavy objects being overturned.
A sharp crack. A muffled cry.
Then Collum and Bran were blasting through the door. Shouts and ear-numbing shots. Bangs and more glass shattering. The caustic mixture of gunpowder and burning oil and frying electricity. Smoke everywhere. A shot at the ceiling that made the bulbs flicker and go out.
After that, everything seemed to happen in a series of flashes. Lit only by the crackle of electricity overhead, my brain was unable to decipher the utter and complete destruction of what once had been Nikola Tesla’s lab. Blasi’s men had ripped the place apart.
“Holy. Friggin’. Hell.”
“Took the words right out of my mouth,” Bran said as he shoved me down behind an overturned table.
Golden and crimson sparks danced and popped from dangling wires. Chunks of machinery and other, unidentifiable objects lay strewn across the floor in a jumble of glass and twisted metal. A six-foot tower, one of two that were identical to those that lay beneath Christopher Manor, was on its side. Half of what might have been an intricate web of black yarn was still tacked to the wall. The rest hung in a limp tangle.
“Doug! Mac!” Phoebe shouted in triumph as she wrenched open a small utility closet and the two men tumbled out.
Collum scrabbled over a pile of detritus to the spot where Jonathan and Tesla sat on the floor, hands and wrists bound. Tesla’s eye was swelling. As Collum struggled to free them, I saw one of the guards take aim. I didn’t think. I just raised my gun and fired. I missed, of course. The bullet ricocheted toward me, spraying me with shards of brick before splintering one of the tall windows. The building itself seemed to inhale. A draft of dark smoke streamed in to thicken the already dense air. The shot was off, sure, but when the guy ducked, Bran dove on top of him. They went down in a flurry of fists.
I couldn’t see Blasi or Gabriella anywhere.
Coughing. Coughing. Everyone coughing now.
Collum fired. A yelp of pain answered.
“Screw this.” A spotty-faced guard with a beard stepped out and tossed his gun aside. He sidestepped toward the door, clutching his wounded shoulder as blood drenched the arm of his tuxedo jacket. “Don’t shoot,” he said. “I’m out of here.”
He ran. Sleeves covering their mouths and noses, the other two took off after him.
Ropes still dangled from Mac’s wrists as he hobbled over to pull Tesla to his feet. I helped Phoebe saw through the sinewy ropes that secured Doug and Jonathan. The instant Doug was free, Phoebe threw herself on him. Eyes screwed shut, he kissed her fiercely on the top of the head. Jonathan Carlyle rubbed at his wrists, his face a mask of sorrow as he surveyed the wreckage.
“Stop!” Blasi’s shout echoed off the ceiling. “Stop! Don’t fucking move or I swear to God, I’ll kill her.”
Gunnar Blasi edged out from behind the untoppled tower, pistol jammed into the soft flesh beneath Gabriella’s chin. Her hands were clasped together, begging. Her red-rimmed eyes were huge with terror.
“Where is my enhancement, Tesla?” Blasi coughed and spat on the floor. “Where is it?” He screamed this last part, like a furious toddler denied his animal crackers.
“Gone.” Mac, hoarse but utterly composed, stepped forward. “I told your men, but they wouldna listen. Douglas and I, we found the professor’s hiding place and destroyed the thing. See for yourself, ’tis over there, smashed to nothing.” He wheezed in a breath. Tilted his head toward a dark opening in the wall where several bricks had been removed.
On the counter lay a smashed and mangled metallic tube. Tangled wires and electrical guts and small piles of what looked like minerals were strewn around close by. “The thing is done, lad. So let the girl go. Let’s all leave while we still can.”
Blasi laughed. He laughed. “Whoo!” Hacking, he wiped his eyes with the back of his gun hand. “That’s not good. Oh, that is not good at all. You have no idea what you’ve done.”
No warning as Bran made his move. In a lightning-fast sprint, he shoved Gabriella out of the way and slammed Blasi to the floor. Gabriella stumbled. Her bad leg crumpled beneath her. She cried out as she went down hard on hands and knees. Bran’s attention wavered for only an instant, but it was enough for Blasi to wrench his hand free and slam the gun into Bran’s temple. As Bran teetered, Blasi thrust him aside and bolted for the door.
Phoebe made to run after him but Collum grabbed her. “What do you plan to do, then? Kill the man? Take him back and turn him over to the authorities?”
Bran got to his feet and moved toward where his cousin was kneeling in the center of the floor. Gabriella de Roca lifted her head and wheezed through a silky curtain of hair. “Is this true, Professor Tesla?” She inhaled, coughed. “The enhancement device, it is destroyed?”
And I knew then what had bothered me when I saw Gabriella emerge from the carriage. Knew what I had not seen when she hopped down and strolled across the sidewalk with Gunnar Blasi.
“Yes.” Tesla—nineteenth-century gentleman that he was—took a step, hands out to aid the poor, helpless girl. “Do not concern yourself with that anymore, miss. I shall never again—”
“Look out!” I tried to scream the warning, but my throat was ripped from coughing.
Bran looked at me like I’d gone crazy as he reached Gabriella’s side. “Hope?”
Only Mac and Collum reacted. Mac was closer.
Just as Gabriella leapt to her feet with an uncanny—and undamaged—dancer’s grace, Mac raced forward and knocked Bran aside.
The bullet meant for Bran took Mac in the chest, spinning him to the side.
“Mac!”
I think it was Phoebe who screamed the name, or maybe it came from me. Everything was smoke and heat and blood and nothing . . . nothing was real anymore.
From his spot on the floor, Bran could only gape up as Gabriella aimed once more. She pulled the trigger, but the gun either misfired or was empty. She chucked it away in disgust just as Blasi burst back into the room and grabbed her hand.
Bran knelt in the center of the room, staring at the girl . . . the friend . . . he’d grown up with. His face held no expression, though he looked suddenly li
ke the little boy from the forest.
I wondered why no one was moving. Why weren’t they moving? Then I saw the reason. Such a small thing. It fit into Blasi’s hand like a miniature black pineapple. He’d already pulled the grenade’s pin, though he clamped down hard on the trigger as he and Gabriella backed toward the doorway.
Blasi smiled broadly as he hugged Gabriella tight to him.
She looked at Bran. “I am sorry, Brandon. Truly. Gunnar and I both wanted to keep you with us, but Doña Maria would not have it. I warned her”—she waved a casual hand in my direction—“to keep you out of this. To take you back to her home, where you would be safer.”
“You were like a sister to me, Gabi,” Bran told her in a flat, emotionless voice. “All those times I protected you from Celia. Every time your mother abandoned you, I was there.”
Gabriella at least had the decency to look ashamed as she glanced away.
“Yeah,” Blasi said. “Shame. We could have used you. And while I may not be all into Maria’s whole ‘Restoring the True Faith to its former glory’ rhetoric, as long as she lets me loot and plunder while we hunt for the Nonius Stone . . . I’ll do whatever the fuck she says.”
Jonathan and Doug were speaking quietly to Mac as they knelt over his prone form. Collum and Phoebe stood nearby, but their attention was glued on Blasi and Gabriella.
Gabriella’s eyes watered, though whether from tears or smoke I couldn’t tell. “Gunnar may not be a believer, Bran, but I am. I—I had to make a choice.” Coughing, she wheezed out, “Do you remember the day last winter when it snowed? Bishop Mendez and Father Pietro were there. They spoke with us in the sculpture garden. Do you recall what they told us?”
Bran’s head tilted, unsure. Then his jaw dropped as the memory returned. “Wait,” he said. “You . . . you can’t be serious?”
“Trust me,” Blasi said. “They aren’t kid—”
Moving with a synchronicity only those trained together since childhood could manage, Collum, Doug, and Phoebe charged.
Chapter 45
TOO FAR. TOO LATE.
My friends wouldn’t shoot. If they did, Blasi might drop the grenade. With Collum in the rear, Doug and Phoebe would swing out to flank the pair. Capturing Blasi and Gabriella, however, was only the diversion. The true mission lay in Collum’s hands. Literally. While Phoebe and Doug drew the others’ attention to themselves, Collum would pounce. Blasi was a smallish guy. If Collum could reach him in time, he could easily envelop Blasi’s fist with one of his own. With Blasi unable to let go or drop the explosive, they could reinsert the pin. It wasn’t a terrible plan. But Blasi and Gabriella were already running backwards.
My vision pulsed a hard and fast warning as Collum hit the door an instant after Gabriella slammed it shut. Something heavy clunked onto the landing. Two sets of footsteps pounded down.
“Back!” Collum yelled. “Everyone get ba—!”
Boom.
The door saved them. Built in a time when people still cared about craftsmanship, the door only buckled inward. By the time Collum and Doug wrenched it open and saw that most of the landing and the first few stairs were missing, Blasi and Gabriella were long gone.
I counted limbs, saw they were all more or less intact, then shoved the overturned table off me and raced to Mac’s side. Kneeling, I pressed my palm against the floorboards. They’d grown almost uncomfortably warm. Outside the window, the night was obscured by a veil of smoke.
Jonathan Carlyle still knelt behind Mac, propping him up. I looked up at Tesla. “The time! What is the time!”
With jerky and robotic movements, Tesla checked his pocket watch. “It is three forty-eight in the morning of the thirteenth of March.”
Twelve minutes until the alarm is sounded, until people begin gathering outside on the street. Until they begin evacuating the buildings on either side of us. At four twenty-three a.m., the unfortunately ineffective fire brigade will arrive. And eleven minutes after that, the entire building will be engulfed in flames.
Gotta hurry. Gotta hurry.
Mac’s dear, careworn face was covered in soot and filmed in an oily sweat. So pale he looked like a wax effigy. His lips peeled back as the breath hissed between red-rimmed teeth. The humor lines around his eyes had deepened into grooves of agony.
“Mac.” I tried to keep my voice calm and steady, but it quaked as I told him I needed to check the wound. There was barely any blood, which at first I took for a good sign.
Bran knelt beside me and between us, we ripped away Mac’s blood-stained shirt. Bran worked without speaking. A blank sheet of copy paper held more expression.
Phoebe whimpered as she slid in across from me. Collum followed an instant later.
Here, near the floor, the air was somewhat better. But the haze around us was growing denser as oxygen was replaced with the stench of scorched wood and fried electricity and the burnt greasy tang of motor oil.
Overhead, only one wire—damaged when Blasi’s men searched the place—still fizzed and snapped. As we gathered a beneath the amber shower, each spark of light reflected inside the smoke like the Fourth of July on a foggy night.
Phoebe took Mac’s knobby, leathery hand and clutched it to her chest, and I had to squeeze my eyes shut so, so tight to keep the tears at bay.
Mac reached up to touch his granddaughter’s face. “’S a’right, mo ghràdh,” he wheezed. “Right . . .” Wheeze. “Rain.”
“Mac, please!”
“Shh.” Even barely able to draw breath, Mac was still Mac, offering comfort, as he’d always done.
Then, he coughed. A red mist fanned through the air. When a bloody froth oozed from his lips, I felt my heart wither.
Bad. This is bad.
We gently rolled him to the side, to check for an exit wound. The older man’s pale, freckled back was smooth, which meant the bullet was still lodged inside. Bright, oxygen-rich blood bubbled from the neat hole in his chest.
“Roll him back. Roll him back.” Frantically, I searched my memory for anything, everything regarding gunshot wounds. There was but little. My brain was packed with the useless and ridiculous minutia of historical facts and figures. Battlefield medicine had never been at the top of my list.
It was Jonathan who got it.
“I believe his lung has collapsed.”
I sat back on my heels.
Tension hemopneumothorax (or collapsed lung) is a life-threatening condition produced by either blunt or penetrating chest or thoracoabdominal trauma. Signs of tension hemopneumothorax include: Difficulty breathing. Lack of breath sounds on the affected side. Hemoptysis, or blood in the sputum, often with a foamy appearance. As the affected side fills with blood, the lung will collapse down to the size of a fist. At this point, the patient will be unable to breathe.
Frantically, I searched the wreckage around us. “Hurry. Get me a cloth or something. We have to stop this bleeding.”
“Hope?” I didn’t answer. Collum spoke my name again, this time like a firecracker thrown at my feet. “Hope!”
I looked at him and Phoebe across their grandfather’s wide chest. Everyone was coughing now. Eyes streaming. Sweating and squinting through the smog.
Mac inhaled, the rattle growing weaker. A spasm rocked him. Jonathan held on as Mac writhed in his struggle for oxygen.
“We need to get him out of here,” I said. “To clean air. To a hospital.”
“Can we get him down those stairs?” Jonathan asked Collum.
Collum stared into his grandfather’s face, the fearless, indomitable leader replaced momentarily by a lost little boy. “I don’t . . . I’m not sure.”
Bran pressed his ear to Mac’s chest. “His heartbeat is erratic. And I cannot hear any breath sounds.”
Mac reared up in a violent spasm. His hands fisted as he went rigid. His chest heaved, but hardly any air moved between his dusky lips. After several agonizing seconds, he went mercifully limp.
“Here.” Tesla bent toward me, hol
ding out a wad of raw cotton. “I use it to pack my more delicate instruments.”
I grabbed it, tore off a large piece of the white fluff, and pressed it to the wound.
No flinch. No groan. Mac’s features remained slack and empty as his breath still wheezed and the cotton wicked up the blood. The wad grew heavy. I tossed it aside, but the same thing happened with the next handful and the next. With every inhalation, Mac’s chest moved a bit less.
Sweat trickled down my back. The room was heating up quickly. Tendrils of smoke had begun to ooze up the inner walls.
Jonathan put an ear to Mac’s mouth. “The breathing has become more strained.”
“I know,” I snapped. “Just give me a second.”
I took a deep breath, and let drawings and images of the human anatomy . . . any article, any vague reference . . . roll through my brain.
When my eyes opened, I knew what had to be done.
The gold standard for treatment is thoracotomy—a tube inserted between the ribs and into the chest cavity—to release the pressure.
Without this immediate intervention, this condition is, in every case, fatal.
“I need tubing. Glass or—or rubber if you have it. And a small, sharp knife.”
Doug’s bleak gaze met mine. He nodded in understanding. “Can you do it?”
“I don’t . . . I don’t know.”
My hands were shaking as I pressed a fresh wad of cotton to the wound. But I now knew, without a doubt, what was happening.
Mac’s lung had been punctured by the bullet. With no exit wound, the bullet had likely been slowed by a rib. Shards of bone fragments had severed arteries and veins, and now his right lung and chest cavity were filling with air and blood. If we couldn’t drain it off, he would suffocate.
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