by S A Gardner
His right ear had also been nearly blown off, along with a very vascular part of his scalp. Those would take some fixing. But they weren’t my problem now. I had to drain the blood around his lung first, to re-expand it. Then I’d go all out correcting his blood loss.
Pierro groaned as I advanced the tube between his intercostal muscles.
I turned to Megumi. “You prepped the incision site with two cc’s of lidocaine, right?”
Megumi’s slanted eyes rounded. “I injected three. He can’t be in pain. You in pain, Pierro?”
Pierro’s long grunt was answer enough. So the local anesthetic wasn’t working as it should. Argh. I had it up to here with PACT drug-resistance conditioning.
Securing the tube with a suture and tape, I attached it to an underwater-seal bottle. Blood gushed under pressure. After two pints accumulated rapidly, it still came, slowly, but steadily.
Dammit. I might have to stop the bleeding surgically. I really, really wished I didn’t have to resort to something so invasive, in our current situation. It would be a terrible development. As grisly as it sounded, an incapacitated teammate was worse than a dead one.
Megumi listened to his chest before removing the stethoscope, chewed her lip. “Breath sounds still unequal. Clearing on the right lung base, but no breath sounds at the apex.”
So his collapsed lung was taking its time re-expanding fully. If it didn’t do so in about thirty minutes, and if blood was still coming by then, I’d have to operate. But I’d worry about that when it actually became a necessity.
For now, I had to reassure my patient, realistically, while boosting his morale and keeping the mood light.
I grinned down at him. “Damian sure knows how to pick his people, Pierro. I sure never saw someone fighting like you did with only a half-tank of blood before. But I’d really appreciate it if you stop bleeding on your own. How about you save me the trouble of cracking you open to do it for you?”
His smile was a little stronger, giving me hope it wouldn’t come to that. “Will do, Doc. I sure as hell am not sitting this one out in recovery.”
I gave his tough, big hand a squeeze, winked. “And don’t think I won’t hold you to that.”
Giving Megumi some final instructions, I called Doug and Ishmael to come take him to the Surgical Trailer Suite, just in case.
After they all left, I busied myself with replenishing my trauma set, trying not to think about what was about to happen.
“How is he?”
I almost fell face-first in my open emergency bag. Damian. Behind me.
Man, I was beyond wrecked if I didn’t even feel him walking in and up to me.
Without turning, I tossed my report over my shoulder.
“Great,” Damian said. “Thanks, St. James.”
“Just doing my job.”
At my clipped answer, I could feel the stillness that gripped him. Then he exhaled. “About that, got something better than a bullet to the head?”
Sick electricity buzzed though my muscles and right to my heaving soul. This time I did sway.
His large hand clamped my arm, pulled me back against his immovable support. “You okay?”
I almost leaned back, sought his refuge. God, I needed it. A moment. Of life and warmth and contact. Just to defuse my discharging mind, to neutralize all this death.
What the hell. Why was I fighting it? I deserved this, succor from a fellow soldier in war, and upcoming partner in crime. Halving the ugliness and the guilt.
I sagged back, augmented his tug with my yielding. Going for broke, I turned my face into his neck as he curved down to contain me.
He smelled of danger and mystery and man and life. Of death, too. He’d killed more than me today. I bet he made my overall record seem measly. Wondered how many he’d sniped, shot, blown apart, shredded with his bare hands…
“Calista…”
Not a good time for him to whisper my name, and that way. Ragged, mind-messing. I jerked out of the moment’s solace as they assailed me. The could-never-bes, and the faces. Dead and gone, or thought dead but still lost…
Nauseating pressure grew behind my eyeballs, turning the sunset coming from the open trailer door into night.
I pushed away from the brief moment of penitence. If he even indulged in that.
Nah. Remorse wasn’t one of Damian’s permissible ingredients. Not in the black-and-white universe he inhabited.
But without remorse, how could someone retain their soul? How much soul did he have left?
In his opinion, I never had much to start with. Which was something really. I could understand that from Sir Ashton, with his activism and benevolent worldview. But from Damian, the archangel of retribution and destruction? Did he really think I was worse than him?
According to his logic, I was. Damian had no moral dilemma, committed no transgression. He was an undisputed predator whose actions were a necessity for maintaining the natural balance.
I was the unnatural freak messing with it, crossing all the lines. I’d enlisted as an angel, then I’d become a hellhound out of choice. I was the one who no longer knew where one side stopped and the other began. I was the one who’d taken an oath to save the lives of even my enemies.
Instead, I was going to execute them.
Suddenly what Damian had asked took on a salt-rubbing intention.
My vision fogged with aggression. To think I had any left after the last hellish hour. Seemed there was an unending fount of the stuff in my system.
Snapping shut my bag, I turned on him. “So now when you’re looking for better ways to kill people, you come to me?”
The cold fluorescent light of the Emergency Unit shifted across Damian’s face. It was only then I noticed the warmth I’d just erased. The warmth I’d never seen before. Not when it wasn’t drug-induced.
For crying out loud. Warmth? What next? Holding hands as we go blow out eleven men’s heads?
I ground my teeth against the horror of it. “And am I okay, you asked? Physically, not a scratch. Otherwise, how could I be? Are you? With what we’re going to do?”
“I don’t have to be.”
I tried to read him. Was he disturbed, too, but doing what must be done? Or had everything long become one extreme realm where only the cause, of snuffing evil, existed? Had it become the excuse for crossing all lines?
Better luck reading a blank board. No—not blank. Damian was a tome filled with arcane writings, inviting endless interpretations. Everyone would find what would validate their own wishes reflected in his expressions.
And I’d bet everyone would be wrong.
I tore my eyes away. This doctor didn’t prescribe more emotional turmoil. “So we’ll do it?”
“Do you have any other ideas?”
None. And he knew it. I’d already ordered everyone dead.
But I hadn’t factored in that not everyone would be killed in the battle. Not everyone had been.
And we couldn’t spare the survivors.
If only they hadn’t surrendered.
“I thought an overdose might be more humane…” He huffed a harsh laugh. I glared at him. He shrugged. “The word struck me as funny, considering both sides of this macabre equation.”
So did he think this was monstrous, no matter who they were, or what the stakes were? The act itself carried the same horror for him?
I had no idea.
I mimicked his laugh. His magnificent head tilted, questioning. “You sure came to the wrong woman for ‘humane’ alternatives. You saw how the ones I killed died. I bet any of them, given the choice, would have begged for your bullet to the head.”
“Yeah, I bet.” His eyes took on a shrewd cast as they glided slow fire over me. “You really are ruthless, aren’t you? You decide what needs to be done, then you go for the maximum pain and damage way of doing it.”
So he was driving his eternal point home, huh? The creep.
He drove it deeper. “I know what strychnine does—hell, we’ve
used it, eliminating crime lords or would-be dictators here and there. But I never thought it a possibility in direct combat. Your equipment and targeted delivery made it as instant as a bullet, if far more merciless. Combatants the world over would literally kill for your hardware patents and drug potency. The most savage Amazon Basin or Ninja warriors would envy your anatomical knowledge and precision. And you created your team in your lethal image.”
So that was what it meant to be damned by praise. If that was praise. It sounded like…I didn’t know like what.
Get this—whatever this is—over with already.
“Listen, De Luna. My team is setting up for surgery in case I need to do a thoracotomy on Pierro. Even if I don’t need to, I still have to reconstruct his scalp and ear. So we need to wrap up our prisoners’ issue pronto.”
“They’re not going anywhere. And there’s something else I needed to say.”
“So spit it out already.”
His nod was slow. “When I assessed out attackers, I projected our victory, but with more losses, at least injuries. It was thanks to the psychological damage of your attack that we’re in one piece. They could have retreated to regroup. They should have turned around and waited to ambush us with reinforcements a hundred miles from here. But you both spooked and incensed them into mass hysteria. They attacked with no plan, with the same uncoordinated suicidal desperation the doomed fight an unseen demon with.”
My huff was at once oppressed and sarcastic. “Is this your roundabout way of admitting I’m effective?”
“I never thought you anything else. I only questioned your damage potential to allies. I draw the line at Samson tactics.”
“I didn’t pull any this time. You already admitted we’re all in one piece thanks to me.”
“Yeah.” He gave me one of those looks that left me nothing and no place to hide. “You know people, don’t you? You’re not only intimate with the way their bodies work, but with their psyches, too. And to think I thought you never paid attention during psychological warfare sessions.”
Was he for real? I’d hung on his every mind-rearranging word, every damn libido-reinventing move… Oh, shut up, St. James.
“But you never needed me to teach you such stuff, did you? It’s innate. Not only the way you can manipulate anyone through their deepest desires and fears, but the way you’re intimate with the criminal mind.”
“It takes one, you mean?”
He didn’t even attempt to deny it. Creep just wasn’t enough. “You do share the same anarchist tendencies. You understand them far better than me. I only use anarchy to serve my purposes, get it only on a mental level.”
“While I do on a gut level, huh?”
His painstakingly chiseled lips pursed. “It’s what makes you such a perfect menace, in my opinion. And then you’ve got the extensive knowledge and the sheer, unbridled passion, intelligence and inventiveness to make you potentially mass destructive.”
Why was he shoving a mirror at me now? After we’d fought literally back to back, when I’d felt we’d finally connected, clicked? I couldn’t bear him dragging us back to square one.
Or was that what he was doing?
More confused than ever about his intensions, I forced myself to answer as calmly as I could.
“And? Unleashing said potential lethality today was what saved our lives. Your admission.”
In answer to that he just…smiled.
Dammit all to hell. Damian De Luna shouldn’t be allowed to smile in inhabited areas. Not with XX homo sapiens around.
“Don’t let it go to your head,” he finally murmured.
Well, tough, buddy. That smile went straight there. To other places, too. Now I knew why he never really smiled. Sobering projected casualty counts.
Change the subject. Dwell on death and destruction.
I moved to the door, hopped down, looked around. Plenty of distractions there. Our teams were rushing about, checking bodies to ascertain their death, gathering their weapons, guarding our prisoners, securing the perimeters.
I gestured toward them. “You must admit, we did a good job together. Our teams meshed.”
“They did. I also have to admit that when you insisted to go first with your drug-based weapons, I thought you’d kill us all.”
“Bigoted of you.”
“It is big of me. Huge. I’m admitting I was wrong. And I did defer to your judgment. Now, let’s wrap this up.”
I looked up at him, almost beseeching. “You’re really okay with killing those guys in cold blood?”
“It’s not even something I pause to think about.”
“You’re one perfect killing machine, aren’t you, De Luna?”
His smile twisted and—heated?
No, no, I didn’t want it to. I wanted him to remain my old mentor and cold tormentor. My new beleaguering co-leader. I couldn’t handle anything else.
Even if you’re dying for everything else?
I said shut up.
“So are you, St. James. This is the first time I’ve seen you killing premeditatedly, and you know what? You were born to it. It takes a healer to be the best killer, doesn’t it?”
That hurt. For being so true. I did spend equal time perfecting my termination techniques as I did my healing ones.
“So why are you pretending to find it so hard to kill those who—if the situation were reversed—wouldn’t have only killed you, but raped and mutilated you first?”
My gaze panned to our vicious-looking, but now cowering prisoners. They wouldn’t have been that kind.
I shared my diagnosis. “They probably would have kept me as a medical-sexual slave.”
Something…massive lashed out from him.
Before I could analyze it, his next calm words made me believe I’d imagine it. “So why are you balking?”
I threw my hands in the air. “Because the situation isn’t reversed, and I have the upper hand. Because the heat of battle has died out and self and others’ defense is no longer an issue. Because I’m going to kill someone who’s surrendered to me, counting on my integrity and mercy. And let me tell you something, if one day I don’t find that hard, I’d advise you to be very, very worried.”
The world went on around us. The sky that an hour ago had been a shard of heaven was now a dimension of hell. Our colleagues cast us curious glances, not missing a beat of their gruesome work. I hung in stasis, lost in the thousand things I could and couldn’t read in Damian’s eyes.
He finally drew in a sharp inhalation, let it out. “Forget what I said. I’ll take care of everything.”
He was offering me a chance to look the other way and pretend I had no part in this. I should probably take it, in the interest of maintaining my humanity. What was left of it.
I shook my head. “I can give them a lethal injection. Y’know, like in capital punishment.”
“You have those drugs with you?”
I nodded. “We use them all in their medical capacity. Sodium Pentothal to knock them out…”
Was that a flare of realization? Acknowledgment? That it was what I’d hit him with that night in my apartment? If so, the deliberate emptiness in his gaze told me he’d decided not to go into it. Not now. Probably not ever.
Good. Great.
I tried not to gulp too visibly with relief. “Tubocurarine chloride for paralysis, and potassium chloride for cardiac arrest.”
It was his turn to shake his head. “All these drugs must be administered one after the other, since they’d precipitate if they’re mixed outside the body.”
So he knew this execution business as well as I did. Thankfully. What I’d just proposed was more torture than a firing squad. Why anyone thought it more humane than a hail of bullets, I’d never know. Maybe with all the gadgets, it seemed more advanced, less barbaric. Or maybe it was to save on cleanup detail.
“I don’t know why I proposed something other than a bullet to the head. It’s the neatest exe
c…” At my involuntary lurch, he amended, “Solution.”
“No. Please.”
I had no idea why I thought killing them with a bullet any worse than with our drugs. I just did.
I expected Damian to ignore my qualms. But he only nodded, exhaled. “We need something quick. Doesn’t have to be lethal, just enough to knock them out.”
Before we put a bullet in their head, went unsaid. I nodded, heartsick.
Darkness was swooping down like a vulture, numbing cold following on its wings. It wasn’t why every cell in my body knocked together in escalating shivers.
His heavy-lidded gaze was like an embrace, hot, welcome, enfolding. “Just give me the drugs and I’ll see to it.”
“That’s my job.”
“No, it isn’t.” My heart squeezed with the power of his vehemence. “I’m the professional assassin here. You kill only to guard your patients, and protect yourself and your team. And don’t you dare pull rank on me, St. James. To hell with this ‘who’s leader’ shit. I won’t let you break your code of medical ethics.”
A demented giggle burst out of me. “You’re far, far too late, buddy. I…”
I hiccupped and the tears I’d been desperate to hide welled up from my depths.
His caught me to him, crushing my head against his shoulder, forcing relief into me.
So weird. To find comfort in his arms. To be offered it there.
“No, I’m not,” he hissed into my ear, fathomless voice storming my defenses. “Self and others’ defense is defensible, acceptable. This, now, is where I come in.”
“You were there all through.”
“Yes, and now I’m finishing it.”
“I have to do my part—”
He pushed me away, circled me in a brooding prowl, making my insides quiver with the need to throw myself back into his assuaging vice.
“If corpses are found without a mark on them…” His words were slow, cruel. “…poison would be the explanation. Behind poison, drugs and doctors and us aren’t far behind. We have to make this look consistent with a regular guerrilla battle. So, if you insist on taking part in covering our tracks, go shoot the corpses of the men you and your team killed.”