by E. A. Copen
Sal pressed one hand to a wound in Espinoza’s side and placed the other on his forehead. A beat of silence passed before Abe licked his lips and said, “Is it working? Nothing seems to be happening.”
“It’s this place.” Sal sighed, removing his hands. “I’m cut off from magick here. You need to take him out of this Way right now and call EMS to the scene if you want to save him, Abe.”
“But if we move him—”
“You don’t have a choice,” Sal barked and stood. “Get him out of here.”
Normally, Abe would have glared at Sal and they would have gotten into an argument about who could tell who what to do, but Abe was too worried to argue. He scooped Espinoza up in his arms, much the same way Sal had done with me and sprinted toward the door with supernaturally fast speed.
He stopped suddenly in the doorway and took a step back, revealing a dozen tiny, red dots dancing on his head and chest. Through interlocked fangs, he announced, “Blood, we were too slow.”
A squad of men in black, unmarked body armor filtered into the room, visored helmets obscuring their faces. They swept their weapons right and left, gauging the threat as they progressed, before eventually deciding to split their attention evenly between Sal, Abe, and Creven, surrounding us. The last two stopped next to the door and knelt down.
A moment passed before someone else strode into the room. He was of average height, middle-aged with salt and pepper hair. The beginnings of wrinkles marked the corners of his eyes and mouth. Whoever he was, he hadn’t even bothered with a bullet proof vest. He just wore a long coat over an impeccable suit. Gray eyes peered out from underneath a wrinkled brow. Polished two-tone shoes shone in the dim light as he stopped in the doorway to adjust his gray suit jacket.
“Good morning, gentlemen, and to the lady in the room.” He bobbed his head in my direction.
“Who the hell are you?” Sal snarled.
Abe lifted his chin and shifted Espinoza in his arms. “Deputy Director Rich Richardson.”
Richardson smiled and lifted a cigarette to his mouth. “Call me Dick.”
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Ed
For wanting to chat, mystery guy wasn’t too chatty. Shortly after we were all blinded by the spotlights, the armed guards grabbed me, twisted my arm behind my back and forced me forward. I didn’t dig my heels in, worried they’d shoot me if I resisted.
Angel fought. It got her the butt of a rifle to the back of the head.
Bran’s roar was so loud it threatened to explode my eardrums. Still in bear form, he charged down off the porch and swatted at one of the officers, batting him aside. A series of quick shots rang out, the bark of a machine gun pointed at the bear. Bran rose up on his rear legs and let out another loud roar that chilled my blood. When he came down, it was to swat the rifle away. The soldier’s arm went with it, twisting too far. The crack of bone was unmistakable.
Angel’s head shot up. “No, Bran!” she shouted firmly. “Stop! I’m okay! I’m okay.”
Bran paused with one arm raised, teeth bared. It was all the time the soldiers needed to fire nets at him. The nets came down and, like the trained professionals they probably were, the soldiers closed. The dancing lights on Bran changed from red to blue and different shots rang out, these were more air-filled, softer. Tranquilizers.
Hands shifted my arm further and forced me forward. My head slammed against the side of the armored transport. I fought to swing my head around and searched wildly for my sister. She was half-changed. When they shot her with the tranquilizers, I felt it in my bones. A new, protective rage stirred up and I tried to twist free only to have my head slammed against the side of the vehicle again, this time harder. “Resist and you’ll get some, too, werewolf.” The soldier’s voice filtered through his helmet, sounding almost computerized.
They lined us up like that, facing the side of the trucks, slipping silver handcuffs on each of us. My heart was in my throat the whole time. This is it. This is how I die, handcuffed and shot in the back of the head. Dammit. Mara, I’m sorry.
Angel shifted next to me, coming closer. Somehow, even though we were both handcuffed, she managed to link one of her fingers in mine. “It’s gonna be okay, little buddy. No matter what they do to you, don’t let the bastards break your spirit, okay?”
“Quiet!”
There was a wet crack and Angel made a loud grunting sound, sliding away.
“And keep your hands to yourself.”
Angel growled. “If you’re going to kill me, just fucking do it already, you dickless coward.”
The guard drew his rifle back to strike her again, but stopped cold when the remains of the front door opened. The whole yard fell silent as, one by one, heads turned. I lifted my head from the side of the car and careened my neck to see what they were all gawking at.
The man in the long coat had come back out of the house, leading a procession of armed guards and injured people. My people.
The first one I saw was Officer Espinoza in Abe’s arms. He looked dead. God, what had they done to them? It hadn’t been more than a few hours.
Then, I saw Sal. He carried Judah out with Abe’s coat draped over her. I breathed a sigh of relief when I saw her moving. She was alive then. We’d come in time.
My heart sank when the next two came out, each hauling a body. Well, the first guy had part of a body, Hector’s to be exact. I assumed the head was in the plastic bag the soldier had slung over his arm. The rest of him had been wrapped in some plastic and tossed over the soldier’s shoulder as if he were just a stack of wood.
Behind Hector came Reed’s body. There was no doubt in my mind that the priest had died, not with the way his arms hung limp and his head bobbed like dead weight. There was too much blood all over him. God, I hoped he went down fighting. He must have. He’d taken Hector with him. At least there was that.
The sight of the last one out made my breath catch in my chest. The body in his arms was limp, just like Reed. He carried her like a child, one arm under her knees and the other holding up her upper body. Her head hung upside down, lips blue and skin the wrong shade of pale. A numbness spread from the top of my head all the way down as my heart pounded through the realization. The voice that came out of me was small, broken like when I was thirteen. “Mara?”
It didn’t matter that there were dozens of guns pointed at me or that I was being held in place by someone stronger than me. Not even the cuffs on my wrists would hold me. In a fit of rage, I pulled and twisted. The metal groaned loudly and then snapped, freeing my hands. I pushed away from the vehicle and shoved my captors aside, dashing across the yard, jumping over bodies and screaming her name. “Mara!”
Guns raised, pointed at me. I didn’t care.
The man in the long coat raised his hand. No one shot me. They should have. If she was… if they had…
“Get away from her!” I screamed as I came up to the man holding her. “Get away!”
He lowered her limp body to the ground in the middle of a drying bloodstain. I hit the ground on my knees next to her with enough force that it sent a shockwave of pain through me. My hand shot out, preventing her head from striking the ground.
I choked on something. It felt like my throat was swelling shut and that my chest was about to explode. My limbs were numb and my head pounding. Tears spilled over. I didn’t even try to hold it back.
There was blood everywhere, all over her, and her dress was ripped. I touched her face, finding it cold. The skin didn’t feel real. Nothing did.
“No, no, no.” I just kept saying over and over. What else was there to say? “It’s my fault. I didn’t come back soon enough. It’s my fault!”
“Ed?”
I couldn’t see through the tears, but I could feel Sal’s presence across from me, kneeling on the other side of Mara. “Help her. Please. Do something!”
Sal sighed. “She’s gone, Ed. I can’t. I’m sorry.”
My hands balled into fists. “It’s not fair.”
I struck the ground. “It’s not fucking fair! It’s my fault. This is my fault…”
Sal reached out to grip my shoulder and pull me into a tight hug. He didn’t say anything because there was nothing anyone could say or do. Mara was dead. Words are for the living.
Inside, it felt like I was dying too, like the very idea of her not being there was ripping my insides apart. There was a black hole in the center of my chest and it was swallowing the rest of me whole. If I didn’t let it out somehow, I was going to wither away and die with her. For a long moment, I thought I would. I couldn’t go on alone. Mara was the whole reason I’d learned to be stronger, to stand up for myself. I owed her everything. What was the point in going on all alone?
A feeling cut through the pain, trickling down through the pack bonds and growing stronger. Something hard to explain. It felt like hands, a half dozen pairs, linked together around me forming a protective barrier. At the same time, they somehow reached for me, resting unseen on my back as I wept, just letting me know they were there. I drew strength from the pack, strength enough to lift my head and let out a low, mournful howl.
After a long moment, Sal pulled me up, his hands still tight on my shuddering shoulders. “Ed, we have to go. Espinoza needs medical attention and so does Judah. I promise you, we’re going to take care of Mara’s body. I’m going to make sure you get the chance to mourn her properly, but right now we have to see to the living.”
I nodded slowly.
“I need you to do everything these men tell you to do, okay?”
My head bobbed, even if my heart wasn’t in it. My heart was still with her, still as hers.
Sal patted my shoulder. “Good man. Now, go with them.”
“Come with us, sir.” Their robotic voices prompted me to dry my eyes. The soldiers stood on either side of me. One waved with his rifle.
I took in a deep breath and turned my back to Mara to march to the waiting trucks. I may have turned away, but I left part of my heart with her.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Lacerations. Contusions. Dehydration, fractures and blood loss. Whatever doctors Dick had look at me had a list of my ailments a mile long and that didn’t even scratch the surface of what was really wrong with me. No amount of fluids, rest or x-rays was going to make me feel better.
We had arrived at some underground bunker not so far from the Adventists’ compound by armored car. To prevent us from being able to guess the location, our hosts had made us wear black hoods. The werewolves, whose senses were good enough they might have been able to sniff out our location, wore bags laced with some kind of deodorant spray that had them gagging and sneezing all the way. Well, Sal did. Ed went in a different truck with Angel and Bran.
Espinoza and I went in the largest of the trucks, which was loaded with medical equipment. The back was a makeshift ambulance, and space was tight, but Sal wasn’t leaving me alone, not with them. He convinced them to let him come on the basis that he was a trained field medic and healer. It took a lot of convincing before they let him squeeze in and keep his hand on my forehead.
It was comforting enough that I eventually drifted off to sleep, only to wake in a white, sterile room. I’d been changed out of Sal’s bloody shirt and into a hospital gown. My open wounds were closed, my arm back in a cast. An IV in my left arm delivered fluids while a series of monitors to my right silently tracked my progress.
I stared at the pulse monitor racing up and down like cars on a hilly road. I knew where I was, some underground, off-the-grid BSI facility. Any other time, I would have been freaking out, screaming, plotting to fight my way out. But I barely had the energy to stay awake.
After a long while, the door on the far side of the room slid open with a loud hiss. A nurse in pink scrubs shuffled into the room with a cart. She stood beside me in silence, not even acknowledging me, prepping an injection. Maybe she was there to kill me. Silence me. Get me out of the way. My mind was so numb, I didn’t care. I watched her with disinterest as she gripped the port in the IV and brought the needle to it.
“That won’t be necessary.”
Another figure appeared in the doorway of medium height, wide shoulders and a strong, chiseled jaw. Shoulder-length auburn hair styled back behind his head, green eyes and a flawless, expensive suit marked him as Eden Memorial Hospital’s CEO and largest donor, Marcus Kelley. The fangs in his smile told everyone he was a vampire and proud of it.
Marcus strode into the room and placed a hand on the nurse’s shoulder. “She’s been out long enough. Now that she’s back with us, you should inform Deputy Director Richardson.”
The nurse’s cheeks flushed and she smiled. The slight buzz of the vampire’s power rippled through the air and incensed me enough that I snapped out of my funk to growl, “Leave her alone.”
Marcus took his hand away, grinning. The nurse’s complexion paled a little. “Nurse, please, don’t let us keep you. I’m sure you have other patients to attend to. I’ll see to Ms. Black personally for the time being.”
“Yes, sir,” said the nurse. She gave Marcus a warning glare before exiting the room.
“I didn’t realize you had your M.D., Marcus.” I sat back and crossed my arms, ignoring how the corners of the room blurred. It was the effect of whatever drugs in my system as they wore off.
“I hold advanced degrees in sociology and business administration, but I haven’t pursued medicine yet. An interesting thought.” His wide smile tightened to a thin, amused smirk. “But you do pick up a few things when you’re the CEO of a pharmaceutical company and a major donor to a research hospital.”
“Like that your head research scientist is involved in some really sick human experimentation?”
Marcus’ smile faded. “Doctor Han’s employment at Fitz has always been something of a double-edged sword. Much like my agreements with BSI.” He sat down on the edge of my bed, resting his hands in his lap. For a long beat, he stared down at his fingers, the expression on his face hoovering between pain and worry. “My people are being persecuted. For a long time, everyone believed that the dust would settle and we’d all hold hands and stand as one. That was always the dream. But people like the Stryx, like Andre LeDuc, share a different belief. They believe supernaturals are superior and that a war of subjugation must be waged against humankind. On the opposite side, you have the Vanguards of Humanity and the various other human rights groups who have taken up their cause. The middle ground grows emptier with every passing day.”
“So you make a deal with the devil.” My voice came out scratchy and thin. “You ally yourself with both sides and straddle the middle?”
“The system is broken. Hatred on both sides is driving us toward a conflict that neither can win.” Marcus sighed and rubbed his forehead. “The split is so deep, even BSI is divided. You have stumbled into that divide headfirst and without a flashlight. And yet, beaten and bloodied as you are, you still lie in a hospital bed and find the strength to lecture a vampire.”
His shoulders shook. I didn’t realize he was laughing until he burst out into loud, gasping guffaws.
“I don’t see what’s funny about it, Marcus.”
“You! No matter how much we’ve all tried to keep you out of this, you keep insisting on thrusting yourself into it. If I don’t laugh, I may be tempted to do as I was told and kill you.” He wiped away a tear.
“Kill me?”
Marcus stood and paced to the end of my bed, hands behind his back. “Yes. When you came to Paint Rock, it was with a bounty on your head, a rather sizable one. You’d made quite a name for yourself in Cleveland, arresting that senator’s son. The spotlight on you was still too bright and public opinion was very much on your side, so BSI couldn’t act openly to silence you. They determined your existence was too much of a threat to allow you to continue.” He turned around and tilted his head to the side. “You’d be very dead if Dick hadn’t taken such an interest in you. He and I worked together to remedy that, but that was not without its risks.�
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I winced as I fought to sit up. Whoever this Dick guy was, he had to be pretty high up the BSI chain. I’d never heard of him, but then I didn’t normally concern myself with the higher-ups. I knew none of them liked me. If they did, why would I wind up in one of the most despised posts in the whole country?
“You’re trying to tell me that this Dick guy saved my life?”
“No, Judah. Not just once. Have you never questioned why you get away with the things you do? Why your son has never been detected?”
I stared down at my shaking hands. God, he was right. I’d suspected someone up the chain had been looking out for me, someone sympathetic or maybe just a good Samaritan who thought the same way I did, that BSI needed to be changed from the inside. I’d never suspected someone that high. It made sense, even if I didn’t want it to.
I slowly raised my head to stare at the wall beside Marcus’ head. “What’s going to happen to me now?”
“That’s not for me to decide, but I suspect you’ll be released to continue with some added layers of warning. Or Dick may decide you’re no longer worth the investment and kill you. Personally, I’d much prefer the former. He’d put that Upyri half-blood upstart forward as a replacement and I can’t trust him. You might be a nosy bitch, Judah, but you’re a known quantity and I think you’ve more than earned your position. Besides, the werewolves like you and they don’t like anybody.” He smiled. “For now, I’m going to go see if I can find you some clothes and if the nurses can get you a bath. Two days in recovery has done nothing for your smell.”
He nodded his head to me and started for the door.
“Marcus, what about Espinoza? Mara? Ed?”
The vampire stopped and turned his head so that I could see his face in profile. “You don’t remember?”