Patient Darkness: Brooding City Series Book 2 (13 page)

To his surprise, though, Clara started to tug insistently in the opposite direction of Brennan’s apartment. “Come on, my car is this way,” she told him.

“We’re going back to your house?”

“That plan still works for you, right?”

Brennan shook his head in an attempt to sober up. “No, yeah, that sounds great. But you aren’t in any shape to drive right now.” He realized he had jinxed himself when, not a minute later, he tripped on a perfectly level slab of sidewalk.

“You aren’t doing much better yourself, sailor,” Clara teased, slurring slightly. “Still haven’t found your land legs, have you?” She fell victim to her own karma demons, though, and Brennan managed to catch her mid-fall as one stiletto heel caught on the stubborn lip of a sidewalk crack. She laughed it off and caught the look he was giving her. “At least I had an excuse, Mr. Can’t-Walk-On-Even-Ground.”

“Good to know that that tongue of yours isn’t curbed by a bottle of wine.”

Clara affixed him with a sultry gaze. “You would be surprised at the things my tongue can do when I’m drunk. Not that I’m drunk,” she clarified. “And wow, I sounded slutty just then. I hope you aren’t judging me right now. I really don’t go out like this very often, and I think I had a little too much.”

“Now that we’re standing and moving around, I can feel the wine a lot more,” Brennan said sympathetically. He felt a little buzzed, but it was a far cry from where Clara seemed to be at the moment. Clara led the two of them onto a smaller side street. “Maybe we should get a cab.”

“That’s probably a good idea,” Clara said, nodding slightly as they continued onward. The street was empty and quiet, and the soft light of the streetlamps was calming. The breeze was slight and brought cool air with it, and it smelled like it might rain later in the night. A single black SUV rumbled down the street, and the trash can next to Brennan crumpled inward following the low cough of a silenced pistol.

“What the—?” Clara began to ask, just before the nearest parked car exploded.

A wave of heat and pressure knocked Brennan off his feet. His back hit the ground a split second before his skull cracked against the pavement, and he was seeing stars when he opened his eyes. The street erupted with noise all around them, but it sounded like he was hearing everything from underwater. His eardrums had been damaged, most likely. Brennan touched the back of his head, and his fingers came back with blood on them.

Come on, you need to get up!

The voice in his head urging him on, Brennan lurched to his feet, then promptly dropped to one knee. His head pounded in agony; his left arm seared with pain and it refused to work properly. Thankfully, his vision was recovering, and he blinked away the dust and ash that threatened to blind him. Clara had ended up against the wall, her prone body facing away from him.

Brennan stumbled to her side and rolled her over. Her coat had several tears and was dirtied in the fall, but there were only a few minor cuts on her legs and arms. One thin line of blood crossed the ridge of her forehead, and it made the side of her face look much worse than it actually was. Brennan brought his ear close to her mouth and nose, and a small exhalation of warm air told him she was still breathing. It was shallow, but she was still alive.

You have to move,
the small voice in his head insisted.
I can get you out of here
.

That was odd; the voice didn’t usually talk so much, or in the first person. Brennan shook his head. Now wasn’t the time to wonder about his apparent psychosis. There was a much more physical threat to his wellbeing. The SUV that had been passing by during the attack now idled in the middle of the street. Doors opened on either side, and men began to disembark, each one holding a semi-automatic rifle. Dark smoke billowed from the burning wreckage of the car they had just destroyed.

“All right, time to go,” Brennan huffed, jostling Clara in an attempt to wake her up. Her eyelids fluttered slightly but remained closed. Brennan maneuvered his arms beneath her as well as he could and grunted as he heaved her over his shoulder into a fireman’s hold. She didn’t weigh much, in spite of her height, but his body was still dazed and weak from the blast. His knees wobbled as he took shaky steps into a nearby alley. With luck, Brennan figured the smoke would buy them a few seconds as they made their escape.

The wall directly to Brennan’s left gained several new pockmarks as bullets embedded themselves in the brick.

Or not.

Brennan swore loudly as more bullets whizzed past his head like an angry swarm of hornets. He sorely wished he had his gun, but he had left it at home with the assumption that his date night
wouldn’t
devolve into an ambush by unknown assailants.

Clara started to stir, and Brennan staggered behind a dumpster just as another staccato of gunfire erupted overhead. “What the hell is going on?” she demanded. Her voice echoed the fear that was apparent in her wide eyes. “Arthur…”

Brennan shushed her as politely as he could. It came out as a loud hiss, though, to be heard over the sound of their impending deaths. He looked around desperately for anything that could serve as a weapon. Unlike in the movies, spare metal bars weren’t just casually lying around. He pulled out his cell phone to dial for the police, only to realize that the screen had been shattered. It refused to turn on. “We’re being shot at,” he told her. “Or more likely,
I
am.”

“By who?”

“Don’t know, and it really isn’t the time to care about that. You need to get out of here as fast as you can and call the cops.”

She looked in dismay at the broken phone in his hand. “My phone was in my purse,” she said.

“Then you’ll have to find someone who can lend you theirs.” They both ducked down further as bullets smashed against the other side of the dumpster. Brennan recognized it as suppression fire, meant to keep them subdued until their attackers could come around the side and face them.

“What about you?” Clara asked. “I can’t just leave you here!”

“Fine, we don’t have time to argue.” It would have been better for her to run for help while he held them off, but now the odds of survival were pretty even either way for both of them. Brennan repositioned himself so that he was facing the open path away from the gunmen. “On three, I’m going to push this dumpster out to block the alley. It’s heavy, and they’ll need to stop firing for a few seconds to move it out of the way.”

“And then what will we do?”

“Run.” He stared intently into her eyes for what was likely the last time. That last bit of insight he kept to himself, though. “On the count of three,” he reminded her.

Gunfire hammered against the dumpster from just a few feet away.

“Three!” Brennan shouted. He threw his weight against the battered hunk of steel, and the dumpster groaned as it started to slide away from the wall. “Run!”

Clara took off down the alley, holding her heels in one hand. He hadn’t told her to go barefoot, but it was faster than attempting to run on several inches of borrowed height.

Smart.

The dumpster continued its slow progress. One of the wheels broke free from its bearing, and that corner abruptly lurched to the ground. Steel grinded against concrete, and while it meant it was harder for Brennan to move it into position, it also meant that his assailants would have the same difficulties.

And Brennan was a larger and stronger man than most.

Finally, the dumpster smashed against the opposite wall of the alley. Slanted on a diagonal, it completely blocked any line of sight from the other side. Brennan coughed up dust as he accidentally inhaled the odor emanating from the dumpster, and then started off down the alley in pursuit of Clara. He turned a corner and saw her dress disappearing around another bend a hundred feet away. Adrenaline surged through his veins as Brennan raced to catch up with her.

They are jumping over the dumpster.

His steps faltered as a sudden realization bashed him over the head like a slugger with a baseball bat. The voice he was hearing wasn’t the usual one that accompanied his power.

Finally, he gets it.

Now that he listened closely, he could hear the difference. It was so obvious that he wondered how he hadn’t heard it before.

You
were
just shot at and nearly blown up,
the other voice commented dryly.
More to the point, though, they are catching up to you.

How are you in my head?
Brennan demanded. In his experience, the only people with that kind of power were Sleepers, and even then only when the subject was asleep.

Is that really the most pressing issue? I can help you.

True,
Brennan’s power chimed in.

He turned the corner and found Clara panting against the wall beneath a broken streetlight. She cried out as he appeared, and Brennan held up his hands to show her he wasn’t a threat. “Clara, are you all right?”

She nodded wearily, not speaking as she caught her breath.

You can help by calling the police,
Brennan thought to the mystery voice.

Gunshots were fired in midtown; someone will surely have called them. You two need to find safety, though. They will reach you before the authorities can find your bodies.

Brennan frowned at the imagery, but immediately took solace in the fact that he had an ally where there was none before. It was even more reassuring that his power had backed up her claim, just as it had validated Greg during the summer when he’d promised he could find Bishop.

He looked over at his companion, who was sucking in air with heaving breaths, and then glanced back at the alley they had just vacated. He knew it wasn’t enough of a lead to ditch their pursuers. His body was just about ready to give out, and Clara was on her last legs.

Fine,
he replied.
How the hell do we get out of here?

They have made it past your barricade.

“Shut up and help me!” Brennan shouted.

Clara shrunk away, startled, and looked at him with searching eyes. “Who are you talking to, Arthur?”

Calm down,
came the voice.
There is a sewer system that runs directly beneath where you are standing.

You want me to drop ten feet into a river of shit?

Technically, a river of runoff from rain. If you want to wait a little longer, your friends can accommodate you with a slightly shorter fall. About six feet, by my estimate.

Brennan gulped and glanced at Clara, who was still waiting expectantly for a response. “We need to move,” he told her.

“Already? I thought you blocked the way. Aren’t we safe now?”

“Not yet,” he said. He grabbed her arm and pulled her toward a nearby storm drain. “Help me lift this up.”

“You’ve got to be kidding me.”

“Come on, grab that side,” Brennan ordered. He looped his fingers around the bars of one side and shivered as the cold, wet steel pressed against his skin.

“Arthur, I don’t know about—”

“Hey! We do
not
have time for this right now!”

Jolted into action by his voice, Clara hurried to the other side and set an uneasy hand on the storm drain. “Ooh, it’s cold!” she exclaimed, shivering at the touch.

“On three. Three!”

They heaved together, though Brennan knew he was basically pulling for both of them, and the metal grate lifted slowly out of its rectangular depression in the pavement. Brennan heard a quiet trickle of water coming from the stream below. He kept pulling on the storm drain until its momentum shifted and it slammed heavily against the concrete.

“Go, go, go!” he urged Clara.

She moved so her legs were dangling through the hole in the ground and gave Brennan one last desperate glance. With his nod, she gripped his right arm with both hands, and he gently lowered her as far as he could reach. She let go with a small yelp and fell the few remaining feet. Her foot slipped on the slimy stone below, and she collapsed into a shallow puddle of water.

Ten seconds.

Brennan quickly threaded his legs into the opening and propped himself up with his elbows on street level. His body wanted to let gravity do its work, but he forced his one good arm to reach out and grab the metal bars of the heavy storm drain. He flexed and brought it slowly to a standing position, where the slightest shift of its weight in either direction could send it crashing to the ground.

Five seconds!

Brennan let himself fall, his left arm flailing helplessly as he held on tight with the right. The storm drain fell back into its depression. Brennan felt, more than heard, the pop of his shoulder sliding out of place as his descent jerked to a halt, and his grip went slack. He fell like a rag doll to the ground and bit back a scream as he landed on the freshly dislocated shoulder.

“Are you okay?” Clara asked. She gingerly touched the arm he was cradling, and this time Brennan cried out in pain.

Be quiet,
warned the anonymous witness.
Keep out of sight and don’t make a sound. They are right on top of you.