“And Mordecai?”
“He’ll be okay, but it will take him some time, possibly four or five days before he’ll be well enough to regain consciousness.”
“You male chauvinist bastard!” Now that I knew he was okay, I could get pissed at him. “Making me sit here and watch when I could’ve stopped him.”
“If we couldn’t stop him then you wouldn’t have been able to, either.” He sounded tired, but he wasn’t listening to me.
“I could’ve hit him with the laser from fifty yards away and still been nice and safe while killing him. What happened to the wolves? Apparently a lot of them passed out, not just the ones there with you, but Cora was fine.”
“The entire pack passed out, if Cora didn’t then she’s the only one who didn’t. Even the Alpha was out.”
We talked a little more and then said goodbye, with me making sure he knew I was still pissed at him. I turned the laptop off and Cora and I tried to go to sleep.
My mind was racing, though, and I settled on the puzzle of why Cora was the only one in the pack not affected by whatever had knocked them out.
And then I started thinking about the patterns. The next murder would be tomorrow night on an H street. Hawthorn, Hemlock, Hickory, Holly. There were too many H trees.
It wouldn’t be easy, but I wasn’t going to ask Aaron for help. I was going to figure out the where all by myself and then sneak out tomorrow night to go take care of this bastard. I’d situate myself far enough away I could use my laser to kill him before he knew what hit him.
Chapter Twenty-Two
The next day I researched what I could between every appointment, and I stayed at my desk during lunch and researched then, too. It wasn’t easy, and I had to use my credit card to get into a few of the databases I needed, but I found two Irish names on two different H streets, and finally decided to go to the one a few streets over from the first murder, as it seemed this guy wanted us to find him.
I was sure there were other Irish names on H streets I must’ve missed, I just had to hope the one I was going to was the right one. I’d be in Denny’s jurisdiction, but I didn’t think it would matter.
When I got home from work I went upstairs while everyone was still downstairs, and moved black long johns, black jeans, black socks, black athletic shoes, a black shirt, and a black fleece pullover to the cabinet under the sink.
After dinner and homework I said I was going to take a nice long bath, and took my mp3 player and the speaker for it in with me.
I pulled up my heavy metal playlist, turned the water on, changed clothes, and timed it so I lifted the window as David Lee Roth screamed about running with the devil. Apropos for the way my week was going, I thought.
The window screen was already loose so it wasn’t hard to lift it and then hang onto it as I levitated up and out of the window. Thank goodness Aaron hadn’t asked Abbott to send vamps to keep an eye on the outside tonight, but I still needed to be quick. I made it around the house as quickly as possible, unlocked my car and was in it and gone before they missed me.
It took seven minutes for my cell phone to start ringing. Once it did, I opened it and took the battery out so they couldn’t track me. I needed to know how big of a head start I had, and I’d need to be able to make calls later, but for now I wasn’t available.
When I arrived in the neighborhood I looked around to get an idea of the best spot to hang out and wait. Last night the murderer had gone up the front steps and I was assuming he’d do so again. I ended up on the roof of a house across the street and caddy corner from the intended victim’s house. Or, I hoped it was the intended victim.
I was all in black and was on a black roof, and it was cloudy and dark. My car was parked about a half mile away at a fast food restaurant, and I was as full of energy as I could get without help.
Now all I had to do was wait. Lucky for me the temps were in the low sixties and I wasn’t too cold, since the roof was holding some of the heat of the day.
I alternated second guessing my decision with being certain I was doing the right thing. I had a little over an hour to wait, and I was a bundle of nerves when a car pulled up shortly after eleven.
The giant of a man got out, and I knew I’d guessed right.
I lifted my hand to aim the laser, and he turned and looked straight at me. My heart jumped into my throat as I shot the laser at him. The fiery beam hit him, but he moved a little so it didn’t get his heart. He ran so fast, answering my question about whether he’d be a blur in person, as I had a harder time seeing him now than I’d had on camera. I tried to aim again, but he ran zigzag and there was no way.
Adrenaline flooded my system and I was purely in fight-or-flight mode by the time he launched himself into the air, and I levitated up and headed for the trees to try to use them to get something between us. He moved faster than should’ve been possible, and all I could see was his bulk and that damned scary sword, and it was all I could do to dodge, run and, levitate to avoid it.
We were in a forested area behind the houses now, and I dropped to the ground and manifested my quarterstaff. He paused for maybe a second and a half when I manifested it, which gave me time to land several punishing blows — one of which I would’ve sworn should’ve decapitated him, but it didn’t.
He backed off, not running from me, but regrouping as he decided on a battle plan, and I shot the laser from the end of the quarterstaff, and this time I took his head off.
Quick, before anything could regenerate, I exploded his head into a million pieces, and then got to work burning his body to ash. I used every bit of energy I could muster doing it, but within five minutes he was nothing more than a pile of ashes.
It was supposed to take Mordecai days to recover from being cut in two, I figured I had at least a couple of hours before this guy could come back from ashes. Hopefully a few centuries, but I’d take what I could get.
I pulled my cell phone and battery out of my pocket, put them together, and called Aaron.
“Where the hell are you!” he demanded.
“Hemlock Street, Fort Oglethorpe. I killed him. Or, I think I did. He’s a pile of ashes. And my arm hurts like, damn, he must’ve gotten my left arm with his sword. I didn’t realize how bad it was. Oh shit, now that I’ve seen it, it hurts. Why is that?” Part of me realized I was in shock, wondering more about why it didn’t hurt until I looked at it than worrying about whether I could stay alive long enough for help to get to me.
“Abbott will fly to you. I need a landmark to give him.”
I told him the fast food restaurant out on the main drag and how to find Hemlock Street from there, though I figured once he got that close he could find the stench of the burning murderer with his nose. Aaron and crew were already in an SUV headed my way, and Aaron intended to keep me on the phone until Abbott reached me.
I sank to the ground and concentrated on my breathing, trying hard not to lose consciousness until someone reached me. I can psych myself out of pain when there’s no damage, and I can sometimes even enjoy that kind of pain. But I could see massive damage to my arm — I was looking at raw muscle, and a huge chunk of arm without skin or muscle. If there weren’t so much blood I’d probably be able to see bone.
There was no way to psych myself out of how bad this hurt.
When Abbott arrived I could see the concern on his face. He turned his right hand into something with knives, or maybe razor sharp claws, and cut the ripped sleeves off my shirt and fleece top, baring my left arm. He spoke on the phone in another language so I didn’t know what he was saying, but if he didn’t want me to know, it was probably bad.
“Kirsten,” he said, his voice pulling me from the edge of unconsciousness. “I can numb the pain without taking your mental faculties, but you have to let me into your mind. Will you let me in?”
The only time I ever released all of my shields was while I meditated in the middle of nowhere. I’d hike for hours, find a spot with great energy, and let everything go
to meditate and become one with nature. Since I’d learned what they were and how to hold them, I’d only let my shields down all the way for the head monk, the man who taught me so much of what I know.
But I was hurting, and I understood what Abbott needed, and why. So, for the first time in nearly a decade I released every one of my shields around another person. Some were hard to release — like when you need to use the bathroom, but you’ve been holding it so long it’s hard to finally relax and let go.
I was now open to him, as well as anyone else in the vicinity.
I felt him probing around in my head and it took effort to let him. I also felt a shield around both of us, and realized he’d somehow managed to protect me from others, putting me in his shield, so he could get in but no one else could.
I had no idea this was possible, and would need to figure it out so I could shield Lauren, if necessary.
As the pain lessened, I felt what he was doing and wondered if I could do it to myself. I gave him a drowsy smile and pulled some of my shields back up, leaving down enough so he could stay where he was. I wasn’t hurting anymore, but the world had gone hazy. Part of me realized it was blood loss, the rest of me just wanted to go to sleep.
He returned my lethargic smile with a grim one, then picked me up like a baby and flew me a little ways before dropping into some woods and walking me a short ways to my car.
I later learned he used the car keys in my pocket to drive us to meet Aaron, but even though he says I never completely lost consciousness, I don’t remember the drive. The pain had been dulled, but my body was still in shock from the damage.
I do remember Aaron giving me something to drink, and how awful it was. They insisted I drink it all, and then gave me a bottle of Jack Daniels to swig. Even the whiskey didn’t kill the taste, but it helped.
The burn of the whiskey also managed to bring me back to consciousness. I realized Abbott was gone, and guessed he’d taken someone back to retrieve the remains of whoever I’d killed.
Whatever Aaron had given me helped, but I needed to sleep. He gave someone my keys to drive my car back, and he laid down with me in the back of his SUV while someone else drove us to my house. I remember him holding me as I dozed, and I remember him talking, but not what he said.
We went in the back door of my house so we wouldn’t wake Lauren. Aaron handed me to Cora, and she got me upstairs, undressed, into and out of the shower, partially dressed, and then Aaron helped her bandage my arm and shoulder.
They didn’t wake me at the normal time the next morning. Cora told Lauren and Xiaolan I’d been sick last night and needed sleep. She drove Lauren to school, and used my keys to get Xiaolan into my office to retrieve her bike.
As they left, Aaron arrived. He gave me more of the horrible stuff to drink, followed by another shot of whiskey, though I didn’t know what it was until I gulped it. I must’ve brushed my teeth for five minutes, trying to get the taste out of my mouth.
Thankfully, the giant man had mangled my left arm and not my right, and I could do my makeup. I was surprised Aaron knew how to do hair, but he pulled it up into a messy bun and it looked fine.
We hadn’t really been speaking to each other, both of us still pissed, but I broke my silence to ask, “How the hell do you know how to do that?”
“You’d be surprised the things you learn when you’re alive for millennia. You aren’t the first wounded female I’ve helped get ready for the day.” His words were clipped, but at least he answered.
I was pleased to discover Abbott’s trick to keep me from feeling pain was still working, and with the bandage on my arm, I had no idea how bad the wound looked. Surprisingly, I could move my fingers a little, though I couldn’t last night. The muscles still weren’t letting me move my entire arm, though, and I asked Aaron, again, if I should see a doctor.
He only shook his head, but didn’t answer. I’d just have to trust him, but I assumed the horrid drink was somehow healing me. Aaron is the only person who gets this much trust from me, so I let it go and didn’t ask again.
He fed me, helped me dress, and then silently drove me to work, arriving a few moments before my first client.
His planning allowed me to get an extra hour and a half of sleep, and coffee allowed me to focus on my patients instead of myself. He might be pissed, but he was taking care of me so I knew we’d get beyond it.
I took the bandages off between appointments, and while my arm still looked bad, it was a thousand times better than the night before. Skin had formed over the wound, though the muscles hadn’t completely filled back in underneath. I could also use it a little, where I hadn’t been able to even control my hand this morning. It was still pretty tender, even with Abbott’s mind trick, and my range of motion sucked.
The wound last night had taken out a good part of my upper bicep, tricep, and deltoid muscles. Only the fact it was a glancing blow had kept it from taking my arm completely off. It was impossible for the skin and muscles to have healed even this much, and I wondered, again, what Aaron had given me.
I put my suit jacket back on before my next patient arrived, and looked over my notes.
At lunch, Aaron made me drink more of the noxious stuff and once again gave me a shot of Jack Daniels to chase it.
The stronger I grew, the more distant Aaron became, and I realized just how angry he was. I tried to start a few conversations, but he only looked at me and didn’t speak.
Frustrated, I asked, “You talked to me this morning? Why not now?”
Again, he merely took a bite and looked at me, and I answered for him. “I was still in pretty bad shape this morning. Now I’m better and it’s easier to be mad at me.”
As we finished our meal, I told him, “Okay, so you’re pissed, but the fact remains that I killed him when no one else could. I’m grateful ya’ll came to my rescue, but I’m still a little pissed at you, too, for keeping me away when I might’ve made a difference the night before. It would’ve been immensely better for me to face him with backup, instead of being forced to do it alone.”
He sat in my lobby the rest of the day, and then silently walked me to his car to take me home after my last patient.
“Can you take me to see Abbott?” I asked. I didn’t tell him why, but I needed to talk to someone who might have some answers for me.
Aaron finally spoke, but each word was clipped and I was reminded of a conversation from a few years ago, when he’d told me he’d been born a dragon, and had pecked his way out of an egg. The wolf shifters talked about controlling their wolf, but Aaron was a dragon who could take human form. There was no controlling the dragon, because his dragon wasn’t a second soul residing in him. He was the dragon, he just happened to be in human form most of the time.
“You will not be able to go see Abbott for a while. If you must see him, you should invite him to your house, which is where I am taking you.”
Temper or not, dragon or not, this was the last straw and I practically exploded at him. “Who the hell do you think you are? You can’t tell me where I can go! The last time I checked, I’m an adult and you don’t have the authority to ground me like a teenager! I’m sorry you’re pissed at me, but something had to be done so I did it. I knew I could if ya’ll would just get the fuck out of my way and let me!”
He didn’t react to my anger, and I had the feeling he was already so pissed, nothing I could say had the capability of making him any more angry with me.
He very quietly told me, “Call him yourself, if you don’t believe me.”
Something about the way he said it made my heart hurt. Aaron wasn’t just pissed at me, he was hurt, and worried. I started to tell him if he kept things from me I couldn’t make informed decisions, but I needed to know if he was right about Abbott, so I reached for my phone.
Abbott answered with, “Hello, darling. How are you feeling?”
My heart went into my stomach and I felt a little sick. I hadn’t liked it when he’d called me ‘my darling’,
but I knew something was wrong now, without a doubt. Still, masochist that I am, I had to keep talking.
“I’m much better today, though I’m unclear how it’s possible. Thanks for coming to my rescue and getting to me so fast.”
“Not a problem, but you have to know how idiotic it was for you to go after…him.”
I mostly held my temper this time — I still said what was on my mind, but managed to say it in a normal voice. “Perhaps if the men in my life weren’t male chauvinist pigs I’d be able to fight without having to sneak off.”
The air pressure in the SUV was growing heavier and heavier, and I knew I was pushing Aaron’s temper, but my own temper was at a boiling point and I didn’t especially care about anyone else’s in that moment.
I ignored Aaron and asked Abbott, “Would it be okay for Aaron to drop me off by your house? Can you take me home later?”
“I’m at my home on the mountain, and it’s important you don’t go by the coterie house until I tell you it’s okay to do so. If you want me to come see you, though, I can come to you this evening. I can be there about an hour after sunset, as I’ll need to drive.”
My stomach in my throat, I quickly told him, “No, that’s okay. I just thought I’d stop in and see you real quick, no need for you to drive all the way down the mountain and across town. Let me see how the rest of my week shapes up and maybe we can figure something out for later this week.”
I hung up without waiting for him to respond, and glared at Aaron. Something wasn’t right and it was pissing me off no one would tell me anything.
Chapter Twenty-Three
The next morning Cora followed me out of the driveway, but she went home as I went to work.
No one took the day shift. I was apparently back on my own.
My left arm was almost perfectly healed, though I didn’t think life was back to normal. I still hadn’t heard from Nathan or Mordecai, and Aaron would only tell me they were going to be okay.
Only Human (Kirsten O'Shea Book 1) Page 26