“He already called for backup?” I went cold all over. Had Mari called in some Ouroboros goons to help her capture Nik? Would they hurt Garth? Would they go so far as to kill him? “Then it’s too late,” I said numbly, and hung up.
I stood there for a moment, feeling slightly nauseated, then took a deep breath and fished my sodden wallet out of my jacket’s interior pocket before going into the 7-Eleven. Standing there being worried and afraid and feeling sorry for myself wouldn’t help anyone. I headed straight for the refrigerated case of energy drinks in the back of the store, pulled two oversized cans out, and brought them up to the checkout counter. “No change,” I said, dropping a soggy five on the counter before walking out through the door.
If there was one thing I’d learned during my years as one of the Senate’s assassins, it’s that carrying cash is one of the best ways to keep a low profile. I always have some on me. And since many of my current clients paid in cash, I almost never had to go to the bank.
I chugged the first can of sugar and caffeine in thirty seconds flat. I tossed it into the garbage can by the door, then cracked open the second and downed it in five big gulps. They should sustain me for at least an hour, even with the untended stab wound. When I crashed, I would land hard, but this bought me some time.
I hopped back onto my bike and kicked the engine on, zooming away from the convenience store. I made it to Fremont in barely ten minutes—record time—only slowing once I was within two blocks of the troll. I couldn’t hear any sirens, but I could see the emergency vehicle’s lights flashing off trees and the sides of houses up ahead.
I rode around a corner and pulled the Ducati up onto the sidewalk, killing the engine and backing it into the driveway of a dumpy-looking house with an overgrown yard. I left the bike tucked between a broken-down pickup raised up on cinder blocks and a rusted boat trailer and snuck out to the sidewalk, sticking to the shadows by the bushes and trees.
I had a good vantage point from behind the trunk of a massive pine about halfway up the block. I could see the five police cruisers pulled up haphazardly around the underpass the Fremont Troll called home. An ambulance was just being loaded with a gurney, and if my eyes were right—and they almost always were—Garth was the injured guy strapped in, face covered by an oxygen mask. My heart sank.
I didn’t know why Mari’d attacked him, but I was just relieved she hadn’t killed him outright. But don’t get me wrong, the relief didn’t come close to surpassing the fury burning through my veins. Garth was innocent in all this, and he was, in a sense, my friend. Or the closest thing I had to a friend right now. He didn’t deserve this. I’d pay Mari back for what she’d done to him.
I scanned the rest of the people milling around, looking for Nik’s lanky silhouette. But all I saw were cops and paramedics and about a dozen lookie-loos. More civilians were trickling in from around the neighborhood. I searched the streets and yards around the underpass but saw no retreating figure. Which meant Mari must’ve found Nik. But had she taken him by force, or had he gone willingly once he’d heard I was in danger? Or was Nik injured, too?
My anger spiked. Hands in fists, I closed my eyes and took several long, deep breaths. Mari had said I had a tendency to act rashly and let my emotions take over. She viewed that as a weakness; I never had. She was about to bear the brunt of that rashness firsthand.
Hearing a person walk up the sidewalk just a few yards away, I opened my eyes and slunk deeper into the shadows. I couldn’t stay here.
I supposed I knew where Mari and Nik would be headed—back to Harbor Island to “save” me—and I played with the idea of following them back there. But there were bound to be police crawling all over the place by now, thanks to my 9-1-1 call. Mari wouldn’t risk it, and she would assume I’d ducked out as soon as the cops arrived.
Head hanging and hands in my coat pockets, I headed back to my bike. There was no real reason for me to track Nik and Mari down right away. She needed Nik for something—not that I knew what—and I figured he was safe enough for now. Besides, they’d be too preoccupied searching for me to get started on whatever plans she had for him. Dom was the one most urgently in need of help.
Back on the motorcycle, I pulled out of the little hideaway and wound around the block until I was merging onto Aurora Avenue to head back downtown to Harborview Medical Center. It was the city’s most renowned trauma hospital, and there was no doubt in my mind that the paramedics would’ve taken Dom there.
By the time I turned off the bike in the hospital’s parking garage, the glowing green digits on my little dashboard clock said it was just after ten at night. I parked the bike near the skybridge and hopped off. I shed my visible weapons, stashing them in a nearby garbage can that was nearly empty—under the bag, of course—and followed the signs to the skybridge. Visiting hours must’ve ended a while ago, because the garage was nearly empty.
I stopped in the third-floor bathroom near the elevators to clean up. My clothes were still soaked through, the anti-At orb containing Dom’s ba bulging in my left coat pocket, and my hair was a tangled mess. Whatever scrapes or bruises I’d acquired during the fight were all but healed by now, though the wound in my abdomen still throbbed in time with my pulse and seeped blood with every intake of breath.
I folded up a wad of paper towels and pressed them against the wound, wrapping my belt around my torso to hold the bundle in place. At least Mari’d had the decency to stab me below the hem of my tank top, leaving my shirt intact.
I zipped up my leather coat and stared at my reflection in the mirror. There was nothing I could do about the wet clothes, or about the eau de harbor water wafting off me, a delightful scent that would only get better. “Well, I think this is as good as it’s going to get,” I told my reflection. The girl in the mirror was a sorry copy of me, and I stuck my tongue out at her.
It was easy enough to find the emergency room—they’re always on the ground floor, at least in every hospital I’ve ever been to. Convincing the intake nurse to share any information with me about Dom was more on the difficult side.
“Listen . . .” I let the sorrow and fear and dread I’d been feeling since first finding out about Dom’s disappearance well up in the form of tears. My chin trembled, and when I spoke again, the quaver in my voice wasn’t on purpose. “He’s my brother. I just want to be here for him when he wakes up.” I wiped a tear from my cheek with my knuckle. “If he wakes up . . .”
Finally—finally—the nurse took pity on me. Her entire demeanor softened and a warm, motherly glow shone in her eyes. “Alright, hon.” She turned in her chair and stood, coming around the partition. “He’s in surgery right now, but you can go back to the family waiting area.” She held out an arm toward a doorway leading to a bustling emergency room filled with bay after curtained bay of patients in various stages of checking in and being treated.
She guided me through that chaotic room to another area beyond, where chairs, large potted plants, and an enormous fish tank had been arranged to delineate a “waiting area” within a larger open space at the convergence of several hallways. There were magazines on little end tables and arranged in a wooden display stand and not much else.
“There are vending machines around that corner, there,” the nurse said, pointing across the open space. “And I’m not sure how long he’ll be in surgery, but the cafeteria opens again at six in the morning.”
“Is there a phone? I need to call my family,” I said, voice catching. God, Heru was going to be pissed when he found out about all of this, specifically that I’d gotten involved in Nejeret matters without talking to him first. And Lex—she was, quite possibly, even closer with Dom than I was. She was going to kill me.
“Of course,” the nurse said, pointing to a plant at one corner of the waiting area. “It’s just on that table, there, hidden by the plant. You go ahead.” She bustled away. “I’m going to check in with the doctors working on your brother . . . tell them he has family waiting so they know to
update you if there’s any news.”
I nodded, feet dragging as I walked into the waiting area. The boost from the two energy drinks was depleting quickly, and I could feel the pull of regenerative sleep. It was tempting to give in—my wound would heal much faster then—but I’d be knocked out until my body determined it was recovered enough and ready for sustenance. I couldn’t shake the feeling that if I gave in to the pull, something would happen to Dom, but if I could hold on to consciousness with my much lesser wound, then he could hold on to life.
I plopped down in the chair by the phone and picked up the receiver. It was one of the old corded phones with real buttons you could actually push. I dialed the only number I could think of that would get me to my family back on Bainbridge. The line rang several times before anyone picked up. She probably wouldn’t answer; it was an unrecognized number, after all, and it was late, especially for the mother of a three-year-old. I thought the call was going to go to voice mail, so I reached out my other hand to press the phone’s hang-up mechanism.
“Hello?” Lex said after the fifth ring.
My voice stuck in my throat.
“Hello? Is anyone there?”
I licked my lips and swallowed roughly. “Lex?” My eyes stung, tears breaking free almost immediately. This was why I stayed away from the people I loved. This stupid, overwhelming vulnerability.
The line was quiet for a few seconds. “Kat? What’s wrong?” Because for me to call her now, after nearly three years of radio silence, it had to be something bad.
Well, damn it, it was.
“You guys need to come to Harborview . . . Aset and Neffe need to come here.” I cleared my throat, hoping Heru’s twin sister and daughter, the two oldest, most skilled doctors I knew, would be able to do something for Dom even if the surgeons here couldn’t. They had over ten thousand years of combined experience going for them, so the odds were in their favor. “It’s Dom . . .”
Lex didn’t respond for several more seconds, but I could hear her voice, muffled as though she’d pressed the phone to her shirt. And then she was back, clear as day. “We’re on our way.”
Chapter Sixteen
The hours passed in that waiting area in a blur, my mind trying its hardest to float away to the land of dreams while I did my damnedest to make sure that didn’t happen. I guzzled far more vending machine coffee in a couple-hour period than was safe. Add to that the packaged cookies and little brownie bites I kept scarfing down, and I was feeling increasingly nauseated, my heart jackhammering against my sternum and my hands shaking even as my eyelids drooped.
Eventually, the call of regenerative sleep was too much for the battalion of sugar and caffeine or the discomfort of the belt pressing into my injury and pinching the skin of my waist. I passed out, curled up on the chair by the phone, and was, for some unknown period of time, dead to the world.
The scent of grease and fried potatoes filled my nose, luring me out of a dreamless sleep. I groaned, not understanding how I’d come to be lying down or why my belt wasn’t pinching my skin.
“I knew that would work.” The voice was feminine and more than a little smug. I recognized it immediately.
“Lex?” I cracked my eyelids open to see a pair of white fast-food bags with the familiar orange and blue Dick’s Drive-In logo across the side, stuffed so full of glorious fast food that the paper bags were bulging. Lex’s face was beside them, her head tilted to the side, her strange, crimson eyes mere inches from mine.
“Hey, Kit-Kat.” Her lips curved into a hesitant smile. “How are you feeling?” She brushed a strand of hair from my eyes with gentle fingertips. She still treated me like her kid sister, even though I was technically about twenty years older than her due to a ridiculously complicated time travel situation. I didn’t really mind, though. It was actually kind of nice that she remembered me the way I used to be.
I pushed myself up from the string of chairs I’d stretched out on while asleep, moving the warm bags of greasy burgers and fries to the seat next to me, and rubbed my eyes. “Better,” I told her.
Peering down at myself, I pulled up my tank top a few inches to get a look at the stab wound. My belt was gone—coiled up on the floor nearby—and a neat gauze bandage had replaced the blood-crusted wad of paper towels.
“Aset cleaned you up when we first got here, while Neffe was in conferring with Dom’s doctors,” Lex explained. She moved the fast-food bags closer to me. “You should eat. You’re too thin.” It wasn’t a judgment, just a statement of the aftereffects of Nejeret regeneration. My body had diverted all possible resources to healing me, including drawing from any stored energy, namely fat.
I huffed out a breath. “And here I was hoping to pick up a few years for a couple days . . . see what it’s like to be a real-life grown-up.” I dug into the first paper bag, pulling out a cheeseburger wrapped in foil paper and tearing it open, stomach rumbling. I was ravenous.
Lex laughed softly, but no hint of mirth touched her eyes. “I got you a strawberry milkshake, too,” she said, her gaze flicking to the table with the phone, where two Dick’s cups awaited me. “And a Cherry Coke.”
I grabbed the latter, taking a deep pull from the straw. The sweet, fizzy liquid helped me get the burger down in three bites. I unwrapped a second as soon as the first was nothing but crumbs. “Thanks,” I said around a mouthful.
She nodded and stood, not the least bit disturbed by my pig-out session. She knew my hunger as well as any Nejeret who’d been injured enough to go through regeneration cycles. She crossed the waiting area to sit in a chair beside her husband, Heru. I was studiously avoiding looking at him. I knew what I’d find if I did—that haughty, hawkish stare, his burnished gold eyes focused on me, and his expression a cold, emotionless mask. Painfully beautiful, just like his sister’s and his nephew’s faces, but giving nothing away.
“So, what happened?” It was Lex who asked first, despite Heru’s eyes searing the question into my skin. “To Dom,” she said. “And to you.”
I could only stand to look at her for a few seconds. I didn’t see blame in her garnet eyes, but that didn’t stop me from feeling it. My gaze quickly diverted to the floor, seeking out the pale stains no amount of carpet cleaner could remove from the mutely patterned ivory and blue rug.
“Explain,” Heru said, the one word an iron-clad command. It was the first time I’d heard his voice in years, but his faint, slightly Middle Eastern accent was exactly as I remembered it. As was the power he could wield with his voice alone.
He was a Senate member, elected by our people along with Aset and Lex. But he was more than that, too—the leader of my clan and the general to our people. He’d been the former for more than twenty years, since I swore an oath forsaking my clan of birth for his, and the latter for over four thousand years. Power wafted off him in waves, and he had more charisma and charm than anyone I’d ever met, though he could turn it off like flipping a switch. I never understood how Lex could do it, be with him. But somehow she managed, and not as a doormat, but as his equal. His partner.
I locked eyes with Heru. It was a mistake, because once he had me, I couldn’t look away. My hands stilled, a half-unwrapped cheeseburger sitting on my lap.
I considered lying to him about everything that had happened over the last few days. For all of two seconds. “Nik came to me,” I confessed. “He told me Dom was missing and asked me to look into it because, you know . . .” Actually, I realized that maybe they didn’t know; I’d been keeping my distance for so long. Which then made me wonder how Nik had known in the first place. I made a mental note to pry the truth out of him later before starting my explanation. “My sheut,” I said, “the way it’s developed—well, it makes it so the things I draw have power.” I continued unwrapping the burger, hands shaking a little. How could they not be, when Heru was staring at me so . . . stare-y. “In some ways, it’s like they’re alive.”
I took a bite of the burger, considering the quickest and easiest way to explai
n what I could do and how and why Nik thought I’d be able to find Dom and the other missing Nejerets when nobody else could. “There was this case about a year and a half ago—a missing sixteen-year-old girl. The cops weren’t having any luck, and the older sister came into the shop, wanting to get the girl’s name tattooed on her wrist.” I took another bite, washing it down with a sip of Cherry Coke. “She got to talking, and one thing led to another, and my sketches of the girl’s name started taking on a life of their own, changing and spelling out different things.”
I set down the cup by the phone on the end table. “I called in an anonymous tip as soon as the girl’s sister left, and they found the girl later that day. She was a little worse for wear, but she was alive. Some sick fuck had abducted her and was ‘training’ her to be sold as a sex slave.” I glanced down at the burger, momentarily too disgusted for even my ravenous post-regeneration hunger. “That’s how my side business of finding people started.”
“So, you’re a PI?” Lex asked.
I shrugged, shaking my head. “I don’t have a license or anything, and I don’t advertise, but people still come to me. Word of mouth, I guess.” I thought of Garth and the missing street kids. “Some of the cops have even heard about me now.” I hoped Garth was all right, but my fear for Dom’s life far surpassed my concern for Garth. Even so, I thought I might get up and wander the hospital in search of him in a bit. It would be nice to stretch my legs, and seeing that he was really all right—if he was all right—would set at least part of my mind at ease.
Heru exchanged a quick glance with Lex. “And Nik knew about this?” he asked. How? was unspoken, but implied.
I swallowed and nodded, just as in the dark about the how of that reality as he was. “He came to me a few nights ago,” I said. “Told me about Dom and the others. I did some readings and sketches, and I have this wall—” I waved a hand to the side dismissively. “It doesn’t matter.” After a deep inhale, I continued, “I kept seeing the same symbol over and over. And then this cop got involved, and I realized the missing Nejerets are linked to a bunch of street kids who’ve gone missing over the past couple months.”
The Kat Dubois Chronicles: The Complete Series (Echo World Book 2) Page 11