A shot fired.
The back of his head—God, she loved heads—exploded out, splattering all over Artur and one of the bodyguards. The dead man teetered and fell directly on top of her, and she screamed as his weight landed.
A rush of employees ran into the room, Ember’s gun somehow making it out from under the huge man’s body, pointing directly at them. She dropped it on the ground, evidently seeing who it was. She cried out, in obvious pain, “Get him the fuck off me!”
They rushed over and dragged him off.
Ember rolled, kneeling again with her head back on the ground, ordering whoever, “Hand me the fucking gun.” She sounded ready to pass out. An employee I didn’t know grabbed it and placed in her outstretched palm. “Go check that staircase back there.”
And they did as Zane raced back in the room with an armful of small white cases.
Ember’s head tilted to the side, her cheek planted on the floor. “Grigori’s behind that couch.” She motioned with her gun where he was. “Dose him first. Give him half a dose more than what Stash said. He’s big enough. He can take it.”
Zane hesitated, and then nodded quickly, racing behind said couch.
I just stared at Ember. My eyes glued to her as she fell on her side, eyes trained on the door, gun aimed. Her eyes kept closing then would snap back open, her gun beginning to tremble in her hand. She was my new damn hero.
Zane moved on after Grigori, going to Daniil next, taking a needle out of one of the small white boxes, tapping it, and squirting some. “Stash said it’ll take a half hour to work.” Yeah, as if we all hadn’t been listening avidly to that. I was sure all of us wanted to be able to fucking move again after being glued to a couch during that slaughter.
After injecting Daniil, he moved to me, obviously going through the chain of command within this household. He stuck me pretty damn expertly before altering on his knees to a bodyguard lying on the ground at my feet…when we all heard the deep gasp that came from behind the couch.
“Fuck!” Grigori shouted.
Ember flinched, but her gaze stayed on the doorway.
Zane paused with the needle against the bodyguard’s arm as Grigori stumbled out from behind the couch, pounding on his chest and shaking his head hard. Guess that extra little bit most definitely sped up the process. He stood there for a few seconds breathing in great gulps of air, flexing his hands, his head thrown back. He looked like a man on speed, which he probably was right now.
His head snapped down, and his wide eyes darted all over the room, unnervingly landing on the blood-soaked woman in the middle of the floor, watching the door. He started shouting in Russian, so quickly that I couldn’t keep up—I’m good, but not that good—as he raced over to her, dropping to his knees. He was pointing right in her face and shouting in what seemed like fury.
Ember mumbled, “English, Grigori.” Slowly, she rolled onto her back, blinking up at him.
He sighed heavily and said—in English—in the calmest shout I had ever heard, “I’m. Going. To. Kick. Your. Fucking. Ass.”
“Oh,” she blinked. “That was a lot of Russian words for only seven English ones. See why I’m having issues with the language?”
He growled loud and long into the quiet of the room, sounding like a pissed off lion instead of the Pit bull he had sounded like earlier in the evening.
She dropped the gun and patted his cheek with her blood-crusted hand. “Maybe we should try yoga. Helps to calm people down, I hear.” And her hand dropped to her chest, her eyes closed.
Grigori stilled. “Ember?”
She didn’t move.
Grigori cursed, his hands immediately going to her head, searching her, but it was going to be hard as fuck to tell exactly where as injured as she was.
Daniil said more clearly than he had before, “Her shoulder for sure.” He wasn’t moving yet, but at least he could speak. “Hit at least twice that I saw.”
“Fucking goddamn it!” Grigori shouted, grabbing a knife from his pants and lifting her shirt, cutting it off her in less than five seconds. I tested wiggling my fingers and toes, happy that I could—just barely—while he removed the tatters of her shirt.
My attention was on Ember’s wounds. Her black bra hung precariously on her breasts since she had a clear shot to her shoulder, the strap evidently getting in the way, so it hung over her stomach. She had a flesh wound on the same shoulder, probably the last shot I had seen. But the most disturbing wound was the one on her right side, down toward her hip.
That must have been the very first time she screamed from upstairs. And yet, she had still kept going, protecting us all. She fucking had to live just so I could tell her how much of a badass she really was.
Grigori’s hands hovered over her, his body starting to visibly shake before he shouted, “Call 911! And Dr. Benedict at Donovan Hospital! Now, goddamn it!”
As two people got on their phones, he rolled her onto her left side, his hands gripping her tight as he stared at her back, whispering, “They both exited. She’ll be fine.” His hands clenched before steadying, and he lowered her onto her back again. He ripped his shirt over his head, his muscles flexing and quivering he was so tense and doped up. He cut his shirt with his knife, tying a strip tight around her shoulder and did the same for her stomach.
He moved down, yanking her shoes and socks off, and started stripping her pants from her legs even as they clung to her. He left her underwear on but stuck his hand under them feeling around before nodding. He checked her legs out, alternating between checking her pulse and breathing when it wasn’t so obvious as his hands roamed over her. She didn’t seem to have any other wounds.
“How long until the ambulance gets here?” Grigori barked, jumping from the ground, and grabbing a blanket from a basket nearby.
“Probably less than ten minutes,” Cole stated softly, staring hard.
Grigori nodded, wrapping her up in the blanket. He gently picked her up, but she still jarred awake. She choked, “Hurts.”
“You’re in so much fucking trouble,” he spewed.
She coughed, and clenched her jaw. “Had to make up for my failure today.”
“Shut up and stay awake,” he ordered harshly in broken English, stalking from the room. He stepped on dead men in his path, seeming not to even notice, disappearing out the door. “You will live, or I’ll follow you to Heaven and drag you straight to Hell.”
The carnage was unbelievable. I rode shotgun in a new armored limo with Daniil, Artur, and Eva less than an hour after the invasion. We were headed to Donovan Hospital where Ember was, all of us just sitting there in mute silence, a long line of vehicles following behind us as everyone that had been in the house traveled to the lone woman who had wreaked so much death in an effort to save us all.
We had searched the house as quickly as we could, everyone putting in a helping hand, and no one found a single living individual that wasn’t supposed to be there. The foyer, stairs, and the balcony had been so littered with bodies we’d had to use the hidden staircase to travel upstairs to check the rooms. I had lost count after forty men. She must have made sure every bullet and knife blade hit its mark. I had never seen that kind of carnage before.
And we had just left it there to make our way to the hospital. There wasn’t anything to be done with the bodies right now anyway. We were all hyped up on whatever drug Stash had ordered Zane to inject us with, and all of the employees who had entered the house just stayed out of our way as we stormed around as quickly but efficiently as we could.
Artur cleared his throat, holding Eva, who was staring blindly out the front window. “I think we need to have a little talk with Ember about the new skills she has acquired.”
Daniil grunted. “She was death’s whisper on the breeze.”
“Poetic,” Eva mumbled, her eyes glassy.
Artur started rubbing her arm with his good hand. “Are we sure she’s at Donovan Hospital?”
“That’s what the receptionist said.
She’s in surgery. Benedict’s the surgeon,” I answered factually. Grigori must have carried her all the way to the gate because none of us had heard the sirens.
My head felt like it was a balloon, floating above as shock still flooded my system.
“All those bodies,” Eva mumbled. “I can’t even imagine what would have happened if Grigori had been fighting with her.”
Artur shushed her. “I’ve said it before, just be happy they’re on our side.”
Everyone in the car nodded silently because that was the understatement of the century.
Pulling into the parking garage of the hospital, I vaguely wondered what the staff would think of us. We hadn’t been to this hospital before. No one had changed, so we all wore blood on us somewhere since we had checked the pulses of the dead men, even when it was obvious they were goners. I fumbled inside a side compartment, hoping…yes, there were some moist toilettes there. Most of the cars at our house had them since Nikki and Beth always seemed to have sticky hands.
We hopped out of the car, and I took a few and passed the package along to Daniil first since his face had blood splattered all over it and more disturbing things in his hair from when Ember had blown away the last guy.
He blinked at me, and I muttered, “Your face. The nurses will think you need help if they see you like that.” Our clothes couldn’t be helped. I had a streak of blood on each pant leg Ember had touched, but we could at least clean our skin. Thankfully, my boots were black so nothing I had stepped in would show too bad.
He nodded mutely, pulling a few out and handing it off to Eva as the other vehicles pulled up next to us. And so the moist toilettes were passed to each individual that got out of the cars, all of us cleaning ourselves the best we could without a mirror as we walked toward the stairs, not even going to the elevator since our group was too big. We dumped the now rust colored moist toilettes in the trashcan by the steel door and made our way up the stairs.
I glanced back and turned back around, walking next to Daniil. This was one hell of a group. Everyone looked scary as hell, rightly so, with almost all of them trained killers and half the group with mobster to their name. I was betting the receptionist was going to hit the ‘oh shit’ button.
I was right.
About ten cops showed up immediately after we entered the hospital, following us as we made our way through the hallways to the waiting room where the freaked out nurse had pointed a finger toward. It surprised me the cops were already here. I figured it would take at least five minutes for them to arrive. I tried to look as harmless as possible, but it didn’t help much. Only a heavy dose of miracle would help our group.
And then, I saw why we already had ten cops on us as we rounded a corner to a large open sterile area with seats spread all over, only two of them occupied—one with an old man and the other with a teenage boy. They both looked freaked. As did the other five cops—new ones—who were already standing against the walls of the waiting area.
They all stared at the lone man who paced back and forth from one wall to the other, his muscles bulging on his bare torso, his arms crossed, his black cargos riding low on his waist, and his black army boots pounding against the floor. His face was turned down toward the ground, his red-streaked black hair dangling around his face, hiding his features. It didn’t help much that he had blood all over his hands, forearms, chest, and stomach, stalking the floor like a caged lion.
Grigori.
Our group stopped in our tracks, everyone bumping into each other. I got an elbow in my back, but ignored it, wondering where I could sit that would be farthest away from him. I wasn’t the only one with that idea because, suddenly, a portion of our group darted away before I could and took all the chairs that seemed like a safe distance.
Daniil leaned down and pressed a kiss to my temple. “I need to speak with my son. Stay with Roman and Zane while I do.”
I sighed and stayed close to Roman and Zane, as he said. The three of us waited for Grigori to pass in his stalk before we darted behind him to chairs against the wall in the middle of the room, facing outward, giving us a fine view of everyone. The ten cops added their numbers to the other five, standing around the square room, taking us all in, looking dazed and frightened.
Their faces became even more comical when Daniil stopped right in front of his son, halting Grigori’s stalk, standing toe-to-toe with him. The cops’ gazes darted back and forth, obviously seeing the uncanny resemblance. They actually placed their hands on their guns.
Jesus. That was so not what we needed right now.
Grigori wouldn’t look up at his father, even as Daniil started talking to him. I couldn’t hear his words, but I could hear the deep, soothing tone he was using. I really wanted to hear what he was saying, especially because, after a few minutes, Grigori’s shoulders lowered a fraction. That would be useful information to have if he ever got this way again when his father wasn’t around. His father kept talking to him, even as his eyes darted around the room, lifting an arm and snapping his fingers at one of his bodyguards, motioning for him to come over. The bodyguard seriously looked like that was the last place he wanted to be, but he stood and walked over, Daniil only breaking his hushed words with his son to order the guy to give him his shirt.
The shirt came off quicker than I have seen anyone undress before. Luckily, he had a white undershirt on underneath, even if it was a little sweat soaked. After the bodyguard had left them, Daniil started speaking to his son again, grabbing his hand, and making him take the shirt. I was kind of surprised he didn’t actually put it on him since he had fingered it like he was going to, rolling it up and even stretching the neck, but he didn’t.
Sharply, Grigori’s chest expanded, and he nodded, putting the shirt on. His father placed his arm around his shoulders and guided him our way. I tensed. I didn’t want him over here right now. I glanced around and saw there were only a few remaining seats in the place and only two next to each other directly beside Roman.
Fuck.
Roman didn’t look bothered with him coming over, but his face was so damn carefully blank I knew it was an act. He stood from his chair and moved down, allowing for Daniil to sit directly next to me and taking the position of comfort on Grigori’s other side.
Daniil held my hand softly, his thumb brushing over the back of my hand while he continued speaking reassuring words to his oldest son. The cops had taken their hands off their guns, seeing that Grigori’s clone was actually calming him and not making the situation worse. My heart rate was going crazy from the drugs, and I started tapping my toe and fidgeting as silence descended on our group.
I asked Zane, “You’re sure the drugs aren’t harmful to the babies?”
He nodded efficiently. “Yes. They took care to make sure those weren’t.”
Daniil paused in his talk to glance in my direction. “I’ve confirmed with the doctor too. Our babies are fine.”
I blinked. “When did you have time to do that?”
He smirked a little. “I have my ways.”
Yes. Yes, he did.
For the next hour, people in our group kept popping out of their seats to wander around, the juice in their systems not letting them relax, only to sit back down and start fidgeting like I was. The cops’ eyes were still wary, watching our group that looked like a macabre act on crack. They didn’t stop anyone’s trekking, though. They just stood there as if they could actually keep this group contained. I stifled a giggle at that thought and jumped out my seat for a little energy release of my own.
Two hours later, Dr. Benedict entered the room, staring down at a chart. She wore scrubs and didn’t look at all tired even though the color of her clothes drained her naturally pale skin even more. The room stilled, and she flipped a sheet and kept reading, asking into the quiet, “Is there a…Grigori Kozar here?”
Grigori was already on his feet, halfway across the room before she even finished speaking. She looked up from her board, her gaze going wide at the fil
led room, but her eyes were instantly trapped on the man about to run her down.
Her trained gaze ran over him, and she asked hurriedly, “Are you injured?” She actually scowled, turning to glance at the cops in the room as if they had done something wrong before turning back at Grigori. “You should have checked in if you’re injured.”
Grigori shook his head, his hair flying out around his head. “No, I’m not hurt. I’m Grigori Kozar.”
Her gaze widened a little, and I could have sworn a smile tipped her lips before she stated, “Come with me, please.” She turned and opened a door on the wall next to the wide entrance of the room.
They stepped inside, and I asked, “She’s got Grigori listed as a contact?”
Zane answered softly, “Yes. And me. But I think his was just the name the EMT’s had to give when bringing her in. I’m sure he rode with her in the ambulance.”
I snorted. Yeah. He probably shot the driver so he could be the one pushing the gas pedal to get her here as fast as possible.
Zane stated, “Dr. Benedict can be hard to read, but I think Ember’s fine. She owns half this place so I would imagine the doctor would be a little more upset if Ember died on her table.”
My head snapped to him. “What? She owns the hospital?”
Zane shrugged. “The name’s Donovan Hospital. The Mayor owns the other half.”
My mouth snapped shut, and I glanced at Daniil. He didn’t look at all surprised, and I knew he had heard Zane. I would love to see the goddamn report he had on her. I knew Cole and Brent had left everything to her when they passed, but I guess it hadn’t occurred to me what ‘everything’ was exactly. Well, at least since she owned the place, she could get away without filing a report for coming in with gunshot wounds. I was betting the file was already ash.
Minutes later, the door opened, and the doctor exited. “As soon as she’s awake, you can see her.”
Grigori followed her out, nodding, his face carefully blank. He watched her, and pivoted, slipping into the shadows when the doctor started herding the cops together, chewing them out, Grigori apparently tattling, and confirming Benedict’s assumptions that the cops had not, in fact, asked Grigori if he were injured. And while this chew down occurred, Grigori went to an elevator just outside the entrance of the waiting room. I stared at him in silence, speculating what the hell he was doing as he pressed the “Up” button. No one said a word as he disappeared into the elevator after it arrived, the doors closing. I blinked, watching the numbers climb until it stopped at the twelfth floor.
Obsidian Music (Lion Security Book 3) Page 8