by Megan Morgan
“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.
Chapter 20
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 b
uildings 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!”
“What’s going on?” June tried to lift her head, but the strain on her chest hurt too much. “Did they close the Institute down? Have they been exposed?”
Micha gently touched her shoulder. “You need to relax. Your lung capacity is diminished. You have to stay calm.”
June took his non-answer as a “no.”
“What did you do to those guards?” Sam asked her. “They looked like they were stabbed in all their orifices with an ice pick. Did you have an ice pick on you?”
June swallowed. “Siren Song,” she whispered.
Aaron appeared at her bedside, dressed in a pair of black pants and a white dress shirt tucked in and the sleeves rolled up. The light made his face smoother and younger, and he looked even more like Muse.
“I’ll call the doctor,” Aaron said. “If you need your morphine upped, just let me know.”
“I would love my morphine upped. What the hell is going on?”
Aaron reached up to June’s IV bag. “You’ve missed a lot, but you don’t need to get worked up about it right now.”
Someone else appeared at June’s bedside—Muse, dressed all in white, of course. Her family had a thing for white. Before June could greet her, she bent over and planted a firm kiss on June’s lips.
June gave her a half-smile when she stood back up. “I’m gonna let that one go, because I like you. We don’t want Cindy to start a rumor.”
“You’re a hero.” Muse smiled widely, the corner of her mouth jerking. “Thank you.”
“You’re a hero,” June said. “The way you kicked Robbie’s ass at that press conference. Is he alive? Does anyone know?”
“We don’t know,” Sam said grimly. “The police have raided his house, my sources tell me. He was amassing a library on the history of the paranormal, but they found a bunch of other stuff, too. Books on weapons and ways to kill people, stuff about serial killers and paranormal violence. Enough for the FBI to jizz over for years.”
“Crazy bastard.” June winced, fighting down the urge to cough.
“He’s got his own little faction,” Sam said. “I realized it as soon as he started talking about being responsible for all the violence. He can’t be doing it all on his own. Problem is, I can’t flush out his helpers right now, not while we’re in hiding.”
“We’re in hiding?” June asked.
“We assassinated the head of the Institute,” Aaron said.
He had clearly honored June’s wish for morphine, because a sudden rush of euphoria spread through her limbs.
“Outside of our groups,” Aaron said, “most people in this city—activists, the rest of the paranormal, the normals—think the Institute is a legit facility. We’re not exactly heroes.”
June didn’t understand. Her body quickly became heavy, and yet she seemed to float at the same time. “What about the story?” she asked Sam. “Didn’t Ethan run the story about the serum?”
Sam shifted his jaw. “He tried. He wrote it. He sent it to press. The head of his department pulled it and fired him.”
“What!” June instantly regretted raising her voice. She gritted her teeth in pain.
“Let’s not talk about this right now.” Micha pressed a hand to June’s forehead and eased her back down. “She’s not ready for any strain.”
“You have documentation.” June was still stiffening against the pain. “And Micha is the proof. Can’t you go to the police or some board that governs medical ethics? Isn’t there someone you can tell?”
“We need an entity more powerful than either of those,” Aaron said. “And until we find one, we have to stay under the radar.”
“One good thing,” Sam said. “Neither of our organizations believe we’re cold-blooded killers. They’re raising a lot of hell on our behalf.”
“The police are unsure about you and Jason,” Aaron said. “No one knows if you were involved, taken hostage by us, or killed.”
“How awesome,” June said.
June tried to relax, if for no other reason than she wanted to stop being in agony. Micha shooed everyone off. Sam stayed and leaned against the side of the bed.
“You’re a force to be re
ckoned with,” he said to June. “I knew you were powerful.”
“I hear that’s not a good thing.” She looked up at him. “Muse told me why you helped me.”
Sam arched an eyebrow. “Did she now?”
“I’m not a good poster girl, Sam. Unless, you know, someone wants a tattoo. Or a good wine recommendation.”
Sam smiled, though it didn’t reach his eyes. “I think there’s more to you than you give yourself credit for.”
“Sam, I know I owe you…”
“Let’s not talk about it right now.” He patted her arm. “However, how would you feel about joining the Paranormal Alliance?”
“Sam,” Micha said, warning in his voice.
“Just striking while the iron’s hot.”
June smacked her lips. Her mouth tasted metallic from the morphine. “I don’t wanna join any groups.” She squinted up at Sam. “I think I’ll stay freelance for a while. Sam Haain and June Coffin? That’s too many kitschy names for one organization.”
Sam chuckled. “My name is Samuel, I’m afraid. Samuel Marcus Haain. Not quite as fear-inspiring as the Celtic god of death. Unless you think all Arab people are terrorists. My father is half. Thus the last name.”
“Oh, yeah?”
“His father came from Israel, but he married an American woman here. And my father married an American woman, so I’m quite a bit diluted. Still, you know how Americans feel about anything not pure white. Especially anything from that part of the world these days.”
June pointed lazily at him, starting to get loopy. “Knew you had something a little exotic in you.”
“And I knew you were pierced in other places. We had to take your clothes off.”
“Sam,” Micha said again.
A doctor arrived a short time later, tall, thin, somber-faced, and carrying a black bag. Like something out of the fifties. He checked the bandage on June’s side and listened to her chest.
“Your lung is staying inflated,” he said. “That’s good news. And your sutures are holding. It was a clean shot, so you only needed a couple stitches after I took the chest tube out.” He walked around the bed and checked the IV bag.
