“I don’t care what you say, Ted.” I didn’t either. All I cared about was getting Mae to the hospital and getting her help. “You saw what you saw. Believe what you want to believe.” I’d tried to protect him. There was no time for that now.
“I don’t want to believe any of it, but I can’t help you if you won’t help me. Was that some kind of act or something?”
“An act? Does this look like an act?” I nodded toward the blood-streaked mat. “Does Mae look like she’s pretending?”
His jaw tightened. “No, but what I saw couldn’t have been real. Those things couldn’t be real. What you did couldn’t be real.”
“Trust me. It’s as real as it gets.” I finally heard the sirens in the background. “They’re coming, Mae. Hold on.”
“Alex,” she whispered.
“Absolutely,” I said. “I’ll call him first thing. He’ll be waiting for you at the hospital.”
“Now,” she whispered. “Call him now.”
I looked up and Ted was staring at me again. “You heard those sirens a full five seconds before I did. What is going on here? What are you?”
And there it was. I could see it in his eyes. He finally started to get it. I wasn’t what he thought I was, not even close. I had to get him away and keep him away before he really figured it out. In my whole life, there was one person who knew what I was and accepted me for it without asking anything back and she was bleeding to death in my arms. “I’m sorry, Ted,” I whispered. Then I turned my back to him and tried to keep Mae’s lifeblood from leaking away forever.
Thirty seconds later, the door burst open and the EMTs ran into the dojo. I was thrust aside as they went to work, starting IVs, taking blood pressure, calling into the hospital. They shoved Ted in the opposite direction, toward the back of the dojo.
I looked at him across the mat and then walked out the door. I pulled my cell phone out of my pocket and dialed Alex. He answered on the second ring. “Hello, Melina.”
“Alex,” I said. “Mae needs you.”
Then I said the hardest thing there is for me to say. “I need you.”
THEY WOULDN’T LET ME STAY WITH MAE. I WANTED TO RIDE IN the ambulance with her, but not as a patient. Arguing with the EMTs was wasting precious moments. She needed to get to the hospital and she needed to get there fast. I decided to drive myself. The decision wasn’t exactly endorsed wholeheartedly by the EMTs, but since I outran them to my car, they didn’t argue. Besides, they knew how critical it was to get Mae to a trauma center. They were going to waste only so much time with someone who could still run on her own two feet.
I didn’t manage to outrun Ted. “I’ll drive you,” he said, trying to usher me to his car.
I pulled my arm away from him and almost screamed at the pain that ran up my side. “I’m fine,” I hissed between gritted teeth.
“Yeah,” he said. “I can see that. I see exactly how fine you are. Now come on and let me drive you.”
I got into the Buick and slammed the door shut behind me. I watched him grow smaller in my rearview mirror as I fishtailed out of the parking lot and sped away, hot on the trail of the ambulance. I’d seen the look in his eye. He would never again look at me the way he had the night before. I didn’t think I could bear the change.
Fat lot of good it did me. Once I got to the hospital, I was shuffled off into my own bay of the emergency room. I couldn’t even get them to tell me where they’d taken Mae.
Being a patient in a hospital in which you work is a special kind of hell. I knew how to get the information I wanted, but I couldn’t access a computer without someone seeing me. The fact that I was dripping blood, my own and other people’s, made me somewhat conspicuous; no one was going to let me get close to any piece of hospital equipment.
They kept assuring me they were doing everything they could for her. I knew that was true. These were, for the most part, good people. There are a couple of doctors who think God speaks directly into their ears and a few nurses who I think might be closet dominatrixes, but mainly, these were people who’d chosen their professions with a sincere desire to help their fellow man or woman or whatever. Unfortunately, I also knew everything they could do wrong. Hospital error is terrifying and way more prevalent than anyone wants to admit.
I knew what I had to say to get released quickly. Nothing hurt too much. I wasn’t seeing double. I could move my arms and wiggle my fingers. The only reason I didn’t bolt was I knew the cops were going to have questions and I had no idea what I was going to say to them. I felt a momentary stab of pity for Ted. He’d have to figure it out on his own. The less contact he had with me, the better.
After about forty-five minutes, Alex came in, sat down on the plastic chair in my charming little bay of the ER and said, “They took Mae into surgery. She’ll be in there for at least four or five hours. You might as well let them treat you.”
“I want you to do it.” The words were out before I knew I wanted to say them. I stole a quick look at him. Based on the surprised expression on his face, I knew it wasn’t a thought he’d planted in my head and forced me to say with some weird vampire power.
“It’s not always a good idea for a doctor to treat someone he’s emotionally involved with.” Alex stood and walked over to my bed. He took my hand, his skin cool against the fevered heat of my own.
It wasn’t comforting in the usual way I might find someone else’s touch comforting. It was nothing like the night Ted stood beside me while we watched the sunrise and we held hands for the first time.
It was nothing like when Ted had held me close and murmured in my hair. On the other hand, Alex didn’t look at me like I was a freak because through some accident of birth and genetics and timing, I am what I am. No, I’m not like other girls. No, I probably don’t need protection, but I do need some comfort now and then. The cold touch of an undead emergency room doctor might be all I could get, and for the moment it would have to do.
“We’re not emotionally involved,” I said.
He looked down at me with something an awful lot like pity in his eyes. Or maybe it was regret. “We’re not?”
“No. We’re not. Now check to see if my goddamn rib is broken, will you?”
He sighed and began to examine my rib cage with his chilly hands.
Cold comfort indeed.
ALEX GOT THEM TO RELEASE ME. I COULD TELL NONE OF THE nurses thought it was a good idea, but none of them seemed to want to argue with Alex tonight. Maybe he’d showed them a little fang. It was just as well. I wasn’t staying there any longer anyway. I shambled out of the ER through the double doors into the hallway, clutching a fistful of prescriptions and a thick stack of papers that I’d never look at again.
“Which waiting room?” I asked.
“I’ll walk you.” He took my arm. I tried to shake him off, but it hurt too much, so instead I ended up walking docilely beside him to a waiting room on the second floor in the east wing. It was practically identical to the one we’d sat in just the other day, except the desperation and fear that threatened to choke me in this one was my own, not the faded imprint of someone else’s emotions.
“How bad is she?” I finally asked, wanting and not wanting to hear the answer.
“Pretty bad.” He didn’t look at me. I was glad. I didn’t want to see the pity in his eyes, and I didn’t want him to see the tears in mine. I couldn’t lose Mae. I didn’t know how I’d go on without her. I felt as if my throat were swelling shut every time I thought about her lying on the mat, so broken and so helpless.
“Who’s doing the surgery?”
“Valdez.”
That was good. Valdez was one of the best. If anyone could piece Mae back together, it would be him.
“Where’s your boyfriend?” Alex asked, still not looking at me, studying his fingernails instead.
I shrugged and then winced. There wasn’t a place on my body that didn’t feel bruised and battered. “I don’t know, and I don’t think he’s my boyfriend. At least, not anymore. I guess, he, uh, saw me . . . in action.”
Alex nodded. “I see. Freaked him out, did you?”
“It appears so.” I didn’t bother mentioning that I’d shoved Ted away before he could fully figure out what he’d seen.
“He’ll be back. He seemed . . . okay for a mundane.”
High praise coming from Alex, but still not enough. Alex hadn’t seen the look on Ted’s face. “I don’t think so. I don’t think he should. It’s not safe.” The only reason Mae was lying in an operating room, bleeding from a hundred different places, was because of me.
Alex finagled a pillow and a blanket for me from one of the nurses; I took them and curled up on the couch. He handed me two tablets and a little paper cup of water.
“I don’t want any pills. I’ll be fine.”
He shook his head. “Get over yourself. They’re just Tylenol. They won’t dull your amazing Messenger senses; they’ll barely take the edge off those bruises.”
I took the pills from him without looking at him and tossed them back. “You’ll wake me up if something happens?”
“Yeah, but I’m out of here by five A.M. You’re on your own after that.”
I nodded. For all practical purposes, I was on my own now. Having a vampire watch over me for the night didn’t exactly make me feel like anyone had my back.
IT WAS THREE THIRTY IN THE MORNING WHEN VALDEZ WALKED into the waiting room and flung himself down into one of the chairs.
I sat bolt upright. Alex straightened in his chair, too. Valdez rubbed his eyes. “I’m sorry,” he said. “We did everything we could. Her injuries were simply too overwhelming.”
Then the universe opened up and swallowed me whole.
19
ALEX GOT ME HOME, BLESS HIS SILENT, UNDEAD PEA-PICKING heart. I remember him starting to lift me off the couch and me landing a pretty decent upper right in the area of his kidney. No one was carrying me out of the hospital, not until they actually had to.
“Still in there, are you, little one?” he’d asked, leaning over me. “That’s good. Get up and walk, then.”
If I saw anyone I knew on my way out of the hospital, it didn’t register. I remember the too-bright lights, the antiseptic smell. It was so familiar, the terrain of my everyday life, and now it seemed like some kind of bizarre foreign landscape. Putting one foot in front of the other to walk down the corridor took all my focus and concentration.
Then we were in the elevator. The sudden rush away of the floor made my knees buckle.
“Hang on there,” Alex said. “Hang on. Just a little longer.”
I registered what he was saying. I even nodded, but I didn’t understand. What was there to hang on to? Mae was gone. She was what I’d hung onto since I could remember.
Alex led me out of the elevator into the parking garage. The fluorescent lights buzzed. Their flickering light made shadows dance around the columns and in the corners. At any other time, I’d be on my guard now. This was the kind of place where it would suck to be attacked. The quarters were confined, and there were too many hard surfaces someone could bounce your head on or pin you against. Right now, however, I couldn’t have cared less.
A strange urge to laugh started in my chest. This was where bad things were supposed to happen. Isn’t that where the heroine in the movie always was attacked, as she walked through the gloom in the parking garage? Bad things weren’t supposed to happen in brightly lit dojos.
Alex gave me a little shake. “Not yet, Melina. I’ll have you home as fast as I can. Hold it together until then.”
Home? Home was the dojo. Home was the scratchy old mat where I’d broken Trevor Shelton’s nose before I learned to pull my palm strikes. Home was the changing room in the back where the wooden finish had been worn off the floor by years of bare feet. Home was where Mae knew when to give me a hug and when to drop me to the floor with a scissor kick.
He opened the door of his car and folded me into the seat. The smell of expensive leather surrounded me, and I suddenly realized that Alex had no smell. None. It must be a vampire thing. He would never smell like cookies. The world of cookies and men who protected you wasn’t my world anyway. I’m sure that eventually, I wouldn’t miss it at all.
The rock on my chest got a little heavier.
Once he’d started the car, I rolled down the windows as we sped through the city. The streets were practically deserted at this time of day. It was too late even for the night owls and way too early for regular folk. I let the wind play across my face and whip my hair across my eyes. There was nothing to see out there anyway.
He parked in front of my apartment building. I was surprised when he got out of the car with me. “You don’t need to come in. I’m fine,” I said.
“Right,” he said. “You’re peachy. Is your roommate home?”
“You mean Norah?”
“Whoever. The limber blond.”
I shot him a look, and he held up his hands in a gesture of truce.
“Probably,” I said. “I don’t know where else she would be.”
“Good.”
“Why? Are you hungry?” I stopped on the porch.
“Just open the door, Melina.” He didn’t look hungry. He looked sad and weary.
I let us in the front door and clambered up the stairs. I didn’t remember there being so many of them. I unlocked the door to the apartment and walked in, turning back toward Alex standing at the threshold. “You might as well come in,” I said.
He stepped in. “Let’s get you to bed.”
I gave him a baleful look.
