The Wicked City (28 page)

June closed her eyes. Sam’s words echoed in her head.
You’ll realize who you are, who you really are, before this is over
.

“Maybe my angel of death will be benevolent,” Muse said, her voice tight. “The way Sam hopes it was for his brother.”

June opened her eyes. Muse stood up.

“Muse!” June scrambled to her feet as well, but kept crouched so they wouldn’t see her.

“You’ll make it,” Muse said. “I
know
you’ll make it.”

Jason got up as well, hunched over.

“No,” June said. “Don’t confuse me with someone else, Muse.”

Muse's eyes glimmered. June stood up straight and gripped her arms.

“Take my brother,” June said. “Get him out of here. Don’t stop until you get to safety.” She shook her. “You can do it.”

“June!”

June squeezed her tighter. “Do what Sam needs you to do. He doesn’t need you to die.” June let go of her. “Go down between the cars, all the way to the end by the wall, and cut across. Fast as you can.”

“June, you can’t—”

June raised her gun, turned, and walked out into the open.

“Hey!” Her voice echoed. So did her footsteps as she marched down the wide lane between the rows of cars. “Come on you assholes. I’m right here.”

The two guards at the exit ramp darted from their spot and ran toward her, as she hoped. Two others popped out from between the cars farther down the row, and the third, at the end near the wall, broke and hurried in her direction.

“Stand down!” one of them yelled. “Drop your weapon or we’ll shoot.”

“Wouldn’t be the first time.” June stood her ground.

All five of them entered the lane, stalking toward her from opposite directions, guns raised. She pointed her gun at the two coming from the ramp and made them slowly circle her, until all their backs were toward the wall and they wouldn’t see Muse and Jason pass. She could have used her voice on them at that point, floored them like the guards upstairs. But she wanted this. She wanted this moment. She wanted them to be afraid of her, afraid of what would happen, the way they'd made her afraid.

“Drop your weapon,” a guard said. “Or we will take you down.”

June kept them focused on her.

“You’re outnumbered here, young lady,” another one said.

Their faces were now visible under the lights. She recognized one of them.

“You shot Rose Bellevue.” June aimed at him.

“Drop it!” he roared back.

“You took my brother down after you killed her. You should have killed me then, when you had the chance.”

Against the wall at the end of the row, two hunched shadows darted from one side to the other. She stood in the middle of the lane with the guards. Their guns were all leveled on her, but she wasn’t afraid.

“You won’t be so lucky this time,” one of them said, “unless you drop that gun. You’ve got five barrels on you right now, not good odds.”

“You weren’t afraid to shoot me before.” Their lack of fire bolstered her confidence. “You have to bring one of us back alive, don’t you? And you don’t know where my brother is right now.”

From the corner of her eye, June saw two figures streak up the ramp. She jerked her gun at the guards to keep their attention, so they wouldn’t notice.

“Just drop the weapon,” one of the guards said. “We know plenty of places to shoot you that won’t kill you.”

June didn’t budge. “Then shoot me.”

“You’re playing with fire here.”

“So are you.” She focused on the man who shot Rose. “Don’t you know who I am?”

“You got three seconds,” another one said. “One. Two…”

June closed her eyes. She reached deep down inside herself, down into dark, cold depths, to a place she knew but refused to visit; it lay deeper than the voice of her conscience, deeper than the inner voices of the people she loved, deeper than her sanity.

She opened her eyes. Opened her mouth. A sound ripped out of her, vast and inhuman and horrible. The sound made the very shadows recoil, a scream that cut across cars, cracked concrete, burst windows, shorted out lights. The power behind the sound burned her chest and seared her throat, opened her up like a knife from navel to sternum. Four of the men fell instantly, writhing, blood spurting from their ears, noses, mouths. The fifth remained, horrified, blanched, wide-eyed, but unaffected.

The man who had shot Rose.

A vampire.

June aimed her gun and pulled the trigger. So did the vampire. Everything seemed to happen in slow motion.

Her gun jerked and sent a jolt up her arm, the discharge hardly a pop in the wake of her scream. The vampire lurched and reeled away. She had hit him. But in the same instant, a violent shock struck her body, and the sensation seemed to fling her right out of reality.

She lost her feet and fell hard on the concrete, though she didn’t feel the impact. Her whole body went instantly numb, her surroundings flying away. Her breath caught like a solid mass in her chest. She jerked her hand to her side and wetness spilled over her fingers. Her vision brightened and blurred at the edges, as if someone were shining a light into her eyes.

The vampire ran away. This was the last thing she saw that she could actually process.

Nothing made sense. She wasn’t in pain; the world had stopped, nothing to feel. But in the back of her mind, she knew she’d been shot in the right side of her chest. She wasn’t afraid, but a sense of urgency commanded that she hold on and not give in to the rushing white gathering around her, roaring in her ears like building static.

Perhaps she would die. This thought didn’t particularly alarm her, either.

Through the buzzing in her ears, some undetermined amount of time later, a sound pervaded. Wheels on concrete. An engine. More light filled her vision, and she tasted copper behind her teeth. Footsteps approached, and she tried to lift her head, but her body was too stiff and heavy. She coughed, struggled for breath, and found little. Something squeezed inside of her, deep under her ribs.

A figure, larger than life, blotted out the light around her.

“June!” A familiar, female voice. Someone lifted her head off the concrete and touched her face. “They shot her. Sam, get over here. Help me!”

Micha entered her mind with a twinge of remorse, and a vague detached resentment sparked inside her, that she might be forced to leave him.

“What did she do to them?” Sam’s voice, sounding awed. “Let’s get her in the car. This crazy bitch is not dying on my watch.”

The white light around her shimmered. For the first time, she experienced pain, in the form of a hot, spreading ache deep in her chest. She was aware of movement, but she seemed to be floating, like she’d been lifted up in the arms of Sam’s angel. Someone put her into a car.

“Oh God!” A man’s voice, rough and afraid. Jason. “She’s been shot?”

“I think it’s in her lung.” Sam’s voice was like a pulsing black light over June’s head. “I can hear sucking. I need something plastic to cover it. We got a bag in here or something?”

“Drive, Cindy.” Muse’s voice. “Follow my father.”

Despite the accumulating pain, June still floated outside her body, observing rather than experiencing. The car moved, the sound of the engine filling her ears again. The squeezing in her chest increased, and her ability to breathe diminished. She couldn’t find the strength to panic.

Someone had her hand. A weight pressed against her shoulder. She smelled a familiar shampoo.

“You can’t leave me,” Micha whispered, close to her ear. “You saved me. You have to make it too.”

June lifted her hand, distantly aware she had done so, her fingers seeming insubstantial. She barely felt the silky, elusive touch of Micha’s hair against her fingertips.

“S’all right.” June’s voice slurred out of her, but she didn’t know if she’d actually spoken. “Best thing that’s happened to me in a long time. Not leaving.”

Lights flashed above her, streetlights through the window. Someone was talking, fast and panicked, the words running together. Her body started to reassemble, and she became acutely aware of sensation. A pressure moved up her leg, up her stomach, onto her chest.

“Where the hell did that thing come from?” Sam asked.

Micha lifted his head from her shoulder. “How did she—”

A comfortable rumbling vibrated against June’s ribs, and the soft, warm weight of a tiny body settled on her chest, over the wound. June lifted her hand, touched fuzziness with her wet fingertips.

“Dipster,” she slurred. She tried to pet her, scrabbling weakly at her little form.

“Get it the fuck off her!” Sam said.

“No,” Micha said. “Whatever she’s doing, let her do it.”

A gentle suction started in June’s chest. Her breath was leaving her. The light at the corners of her vision renewed and eased in around her, embraced her, pushed the pain and fear away. Then everything dimmed.

She closed her eyes, calm, comforted, painless, and faded out.

June opened her eyes to light. Not the same light she’d seen after being shot. The normal light of daytime. As her senses fell into place, she realized she was warm, lying on something soft, and encased in peaceful quiet. Since her memory was sketchy and completely nonexistent since she’d fallen into darkness in the back of the car, she assumed she might have died and taken up residence in some heavenly afterlife.

She turned her head, squinting, and took in her surroundings. A few things assured her she probably wasn’t dead.

A needle was inserted in the crook of her left arm, a tube attached to it leading to a bag of clear fluid above her head. She was in a hospital bed, the railings pushed down and her head elevated. The tight, prickly ache under her ribs and a sensation of stiffness from the neck down also pointed to still being on the earthly plane, since pain after death would be rotten.

Micha sat at June’s right side, arms folded on the edge of the bed and head resting on them, his hair spilling onto the mattress. While he looked an angelic sight, he wasn’t naked, so she obviously wasn’t in Heaven.

Confusion reigned, despite being comfortably assured she was alive. While she was in a hospital bed, had an IV in her arm, and judging by the ache in her side some serious excavation had been done, she wasn’t in a hospital. Or if she was, it was the swankiest hospital on the planet. She didn’t doubt the latter, being in Chicago.

She assumed they were still in Chicago, anyway.

A wall of windows to her right presented a dazzling, highly-elevated view of the city, the buildings outside reflecting and magnifying the sunlight. A little sliver of the lake peeked through the buildings in the distance. The windows reminded her of the hotel, but she was clearly in a spacious apartment with immaculate white décor. The walls were white. The furniture, white. The floors, where they weren’t covered in white carpet, were gleaming white tile. A few tables, at least, were black with glass tops, adding some accent.

Maybe she’d landed in Heaven’s waiting room. If God existed, He would undoubtedly pose some questions to her before He let her in.
If
He let her in.

She reached out and stroked her fingers through Micha’s hair. After a moment, he stirred and lifted his head. He had a red mark on his cheek where his face had been resting on his arm.

He sat up straight. He was pale, but maybe that was the light. “You’re awake. How are you feeling?”

“Like I’ve been shot.” She winced. Taking too deep a breath made her chest burn. Her voice was thick and hoarse. She was also insanely hungry and thirsty. “Where am I?”

“Aaron’s penthouse.”

“How long have I been out? Did you guys bring me here from the hospital?”

“Two days. You’ve been going in and out.” He touched her hand. “You were never in a hospital.”

She was even more confused. “I…got shot in the chest?” she asked uncertainly. Maybe the whole thing had been a nightmare. “You didn’t take me to a hospital?”

“Aaron has a very good private doctor.”

“Oh…okay.” She pondered that, and then stiffened. “My brother. Where is he?”

“He’s all right. He’s here. He’s resting.”

She relaxed. “Are you all right? I thought for sure they were going to kill you.”

He said nothing for a moment. Then he whispered, “I don’t know.”

“Are you in pain?”

He shook his head slightly.

“Has anything…changed?”

“I don’t know.”

“Micha.” She gripped his hand. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry I made you forget Rose. I’m sorry all this happened to you.”

“How is any of this your fault? Don’t apologize.”

“If I hadn’t messed up your head, you wouldn’t have been involved in this. They wouldn’t have caught you. You would have been grieving for your wife and you would have stayed out of it.”

“Eric was preparing me, regardless. He would have come for me eventually.” He paused, expression darkening. “And I’m not sure grief for my wife is warranted. She was apparently trussing me up to be Eric’s guinea pig.”

“I don’t believe she was doing it on purpose.” June lowered her voice. “A means to their end, that’s what she said.”

“She was a top researcher at the Institute, a place where the higher-ups are rife with corruption. Maybe I was a target from the day I met her. Maybe she was living a double life.” Anguish shone in his eyes, the pain of betrayal. “Maybe it was her mission to get with me and make me ready for Eric.”

“Do you really believe that? Maybe she didn’t know she was giving it to you, or maybe she thought it was something else. Eric could have lied to her. He probably did.”

Micha was silent.

June clutched his hand. “Micha, I don’t think she’d be appearing to me if she really did it, on purpose. She wants me to clear her name. That’s what her visits are about.”

“I’m not so sure. The dead can be confused.”

Footsteps approached. Sam, dressed in jeans and a black T-shirt, entered the room. The short sleeves displayed some impressive musculature in his upper arms. Probably from all that shotgun wielding. His hair rested smooth and gleaming on his shoulders.

“Thought I heard voices.” He strode to the bed. “I knew this hot mess would come around.” He stopped at the end of June’s bed, hands on his hips. “Hey, Aaron! She’s awake!”