Obsidian Music (Lion Security Book 3) (11 page)

Scary. As. Fuck.

“Ember…come…here…” Grigori murmured into the quiet, sans the ringing—now dead—phone.

Ember blinked and teetered more. Her head turned to where he lay behind the couch, and she lifted her obviously good arm and blinked at it, then down at her shirt, pulling it off her skin where it had suctioned.

She stared at the soaking material, stating, “Now’s probably not the best time, Grigori.”

“Ember!” Grigori ordered in a hoarse shout.

“Grigori,” she muttered in a deep voice, imitating him. She swayed, stating in a strong voice, “I’m good. No biggie. I’ll take care of myself once Zane gets you guys going.” She slumped, and barely caught herself. “I don’t know how well everyone’s searching the house. There were a lot of those motherfuckers. Can’t leave you unattended.”

She blinked, her head tilting up, looking behind us. “Speak of the devil.”

Rapidly, she reached behind her back and aimed a gun over our heads. Firing, and shouting at the same time, as her body flew back from a second shot fired from behind us. I saw it in slow motion as she fell, blood flying out behind her, looking like she got hit in the same bum arm, before she toppled on it, shrieking.

Unable to do anything, I watched as a redheaded brute stumbled past us. He cursed her, holding his right arm as blood rolled down it. He stood over her, switching the gun to his left hand. She moaned under him, rolling.

A shot fired.

The back of his head—God, she loved heads—exploded out, splattering all over Artur and one of the bodyguards. The dead man teetered and fell directly on top of her, and she screamed as his weight landed.

A rush of employees ran into the room, Ember’s gun somehow making it out from under the huge man’s body, pointing directly at them. She dropped it on the ground, evidently seeing who it was. She cried out, in obvious pain, “Get him the fuck off me!”

They rushed over and dragged him off.

Ember rolled, kneeling again with her head back on the ground, ordering whoever, “Hand me the fucking gun.” She sounded ready to pass out. An employee I didn’t know grabbed it and placed in her outstretched palm. “Go check that staircase back there.”

And they did as Zane raced back in the room with an armful of small white cases.

Ember’s head tilted to the side, her cheek planted on the floor. “Grigori’s behind that couch.” She motioned with her gun where he was. “Dose him first. Give him half a dose more than what Stash said. He’s big enough. He can take it.”

Zane hesitated, and then nodded quickly, racing behind said couch.

I just stared at Ember. My eyes glued to her as she fell on her side, eyes trained on the door, gun aimed. Her eyes kept closing then would snap back open, her gun beginning to tremble in her hand. She was my new damn hero.

Zane moved on after Grigori, going to Daniil next, taking a needle out of one of the small white boxes, tapping it, and squirting some. “Stash said it’ll take a half hour to work.” Yeah, as if we all hadn’t been listening avidly to that. I was sure all of us wanted to be able to fucking move again after being glued to a couch during that slaughter.

After injecting Daniil, he moved to me, obviously going through the chain of command within this household. He stuck me pretty damn expertly before altering on his knees to a bodyguard lying on the ground at my feet…when we all heard the deep gasp that came from behind the couch.

“Fuck!” Grigori shouted.

Ember flinched, but her gaze stayed on the doorway.

Zane paused with the needle against the bodyguard’s arm as Grigori stumbled out from behind the couch, pounding on his chest and shaking his head hard. Guess that extra little bit most definitely sped up the process. He stood there for a few seconds breathing in great gulps of air, flexing his hands, his head thrown back. He looked like a man on speed, which he probably was right now.

His head snapped down, and his wide eyes darted all over the room, unnervingly landing on the blood-soaked woman in the middle of the floor, watching the door. He started shouting in Russian, so quickly that I couldn’t keep up—I’m good, but not that good—as he raced over to her, dropping to his knees. He was pointing right in her face and shouting in what seemed like fury.

Ember mumbled, “English, Grigori.” Slowly, she rolled onto her back, blinking up at him.

He sighed heavily and said—in English—in the calmest shout I had ever heard, “I’m. Going. To. Kick. Your. Fucking. Ass.”

“Oh,” she blinked. “That was a lot of Russian words for only seven English ones. See why I’m having issues with the language?”

He growled loud and long into the quiet of the room, sounding like a pissed off lion instead of the Pit bull he had sounded like earlier in the evening.

She dropped the gun and patted his cheek with her blood-crusted hand. “Maybe we should try yoga. Helps to calm people down, I hear.” And her hand dropped to her chest, her eyes closed.

Grigori stilled. “Ember?”

She didn’t move.

Grigori cursed, his hands immediately going to her head, searching her, but it was going to be hard as fuck to tell exactly where as injured as she was.

Daniil said more clearly than he had before, “Her shoulder for sure.” He wasn’t moving yet, but at least he could speak. “Hit at least twice that I saw.”

“Fucking goddamn it!” Grigori shouted, grabbing a knife from his pants and lifting her shirt, cutting it off her in less than five seconds. I tested wiggling my fingers and toes, happy that I could—just barely—while he removed the tatters of her shirt.

My attention was on Ember’s wounds. Her black bra hung precariously on her breasts since she had a clear shot to her shoulder, the strap evidently getting in the way, so it hung over her stomach. She had a flesh wound on the same shoulder, probably the last shot I had seen. But the most disturbing wound was the one on her right side, down toward her hip.

That must have been the very first time she screamed from upstairs. And yet, she had still kept going, protecting us all. She fucking had to live just so I could tell her how much of a badass she really was.

Grigori’s hands hovered over her, his body starting to visibly shake before he shouted, “Call 911! And Dr. Benedict at Donovan Hospital! Now, goddamn it!”

As two people got on their phones, he rolled her onto her left side, his hands gripping her tight as he stared at her back, whispering, “They both exited. She’ll be fine.” His hands clenched before steadying, and he lowered her onto her back again. He ripped his shirt over his head, his muscles flexing and quivering he was so tense and doped up. He cut his shirt with his knife, tying a strip tight around her shoulder and did the same for her stomach.

He moved down, yanking her shoes and socks off, and started stripping her pants from her legs even as they clung to her. He left her underwear on but stuck his hand under them feeling around before nodding. He checked her legs out, alternating between checking her pulse and breathing when it wasn’t so obvious as his hands roamed over her. She didn’t seem to have any other wounds.

“How long until the ambulance gets here?” Grigori barked, jumping from the ground, and grabbing a blanket from a basket nearby.

“Probably less than ten minutes,” Cole stated softly, staring hard.

Grigori nodded, wrapping her up in the blanket. He gently picked her up, but she still jarred awake. She choked, “Hurts.”

“You’re in so much fucking trouble,” he spewed.

She coughed, and clenched her jaw. “Had to make up for my failure today.”

“Shut up and stay awake,” he ordered harshly in broken English, stalking from the room. He stepped on dead men in his path, seeming not to even notice, disappearing out the door. “You will live, or I’ll follow you to Heaven and drag you straight to Hell.”

The carnage was unbelievable. I rode shotgun in a new armored limo with Daniil, Artur, and Eva less than an hour after the invasion. We were headed to Donovan Hospital where Ember was, all of us just sitting there in mute silence, a long line of vehicles following behind us as everyone that had been in the house traveled to the lone woman who had wreaked so much death in an effort to save us all.

We had searched the house as quickly as we could, everyone putting in a helping hand, and no one found a single living individual that wasn’t supposed to be there. The foyer, stairs, and the balcony had been so littered with bodies we’d had to use the hidden staircase to travel upstairs to check the rooms. I had lost count after forty men. She must have made sure every bullet and knife blade hit its mark. I had never seen that kind of carnage before.

And we had just left it there to make our way to the hospital. There wasn’t anything to be done with the bodies right now anyway. We were all hyped up on whatever drug Stash had ordered Zane to inject us with, and all of the employees who had entered the house just stayed out of our way as we stormed around as quickly but efficiently as we could.

Artur cleared his throat, holding Eva, who was staring blindly out the front window. “I think we need to have a little talk with Ember about the new skills she has acquired.”

Daniil grunted. “She was death’s whisper on the breeze.”

“Poetic,” Eva mumbled, her eyes glassy.

Artur started rubbing her arm with his good hand. “Are we sure she’s at Donovan Hospital?”

“That’s what the receptionist said. She’s in surgery. Benedict’s the surgeon,” I answered factually. Grigori must have carried her all the way to the gate because none of us had heard the sirens.

My head felt like it was a balloon, floating above as shock still flooded my system.

“All those bodies,” Eva mumbled. “I can’t even imagine what would have happened if Grigori had been fighting with her.”

Artur shushed her. “I’ve said it before, just be happy they’re on our side.”

Everyone in the car nodded silently because that was the understatement of the century.

Pulling into the parking garage of the hospital, I vaguely wondered what the staff would think of us. We hadn’t been to this hospital before. No one had changed, so we all wore blood on us somewhere since we had checked the pulses of the dead men, even when it was obvious they were goners. I fumbled inside a side compartment, hoping…yes, there were some moist toilettes there. Most of the cars at our house had them since Nikki and Beth always seemed to have sticky hands.

We hopped out of the car, and I took a few and passed the package along to Daniil first since his face had blood splattered all over it and more disturbing things in his hair from when Ember had blown away the last guy.

He blinked at me, and I muttered, “Your face. The nurses will think you need help if they see you like that.” Our clothes couldn’t be helped. I had a streak of blood on each pant leg Ember had touched, but we could at least clean our skin. Thankfully, my boots were black so nothing I had stepped in would show too bad.

He nodded mutely, pulling a few out and handing it off to Eva as the other vehicles pulled up next to us. And so the moist toilettes were passed to each individual that got out of the cars, all of us cleaning ourselves the best we could without a mirror as we walked toward the stairs, not even going to the elevator since our group was too big. We dumped the now rust colored moist toilettes in the trashcan by the steel door and made our way up the stairs.

I glanced back and turned back around, walking next to Daniil. This was one hell of a group. Everyone looked scary as hell, rightly so, with almost all of them trained killers and half the group with mobster to their name. I was betting the receptionist was going to hit the ‘oh shit’ button.

I was right.

About ten cops showed up immediately after we entered the hospital, following us as we made our way through the hallways to the waiting room where the freaked out nurse had pointed a finger toward. It surprised me the cops were already here. I figured it would take at least five minutes for them to arrive. I tried to look as harmless as possible, but it didn’t help much. Only a heavy dose of miracle would help our group.

And then, I saw why we already had ten cops on us as we rounded a corner to a large open sterile area with seats spread all over, only two of them occupied—one with an old man and the other with a teenage boy. They both looked freaked. As did the other five cops—new ones—who were already standing against the walls of the waiting area.

They all stared at the lone man who paced back and forth from one wall to the other, his muscles bulging on his bare torso, his arms crossed, his black cargos riding low on his waist, and his black army boots pounding against the floor. His face was turned down toward the ground, his red-streaked black hair dangling around his face, hiding his features. It didn’t help much that he had blood all over his hands, forearms, chest, and stomach, stalking the floor like a caged lion.

Grigori.

Our group stopped in our tracks, everyone bumping into each other. I got an elbow in my back, but ignored it, wondering where I could sit that would be farthest away from him. I wasn’t the only one with that idea because, suddenly, a portion of our group darted away before I could and took all the chairs that seemed like a safe distance.