“No,” I said sharply, answering my own question.
Xavier was different than them. He was the only reason I was alive.
That redeemed him, didn’t it?
A man raced out of the opening of the mine. I stopped and watched as another Shade followed him out, dragging a third out behind him. They were all dressed in dark suits, and they were hurrying to get to one of their cars.
I’d seen everything I needed in order to make sense of what was happening.
Xavier was in the mine.
And he needed help.
One of the men raised a pistol and fired five shots into the opening.
I gritted my teeth, sat up straighter, and pressed the gas pedal to the floor. I veered around the parked sedans and turned the wheel sharply, coming around in front of the mine entrance at high speeds.
The Shades hadn’t expected me.
One of them, the one who’d come out first, spun around to face me as I swung around their vehicles. His eyes widened in surprise and he lifted his gun.
He was too late.
The front grill of the car slammed into his stomach. He crumpled and went right under the car. I heard him shriek as I drove over him, and then I slammed the breaks and came to a grinding, sliding stop in front of the mine shaft opening.
I dropped the seat so I was lying flat, leaned over the console, and threw open the passenger door.
“Xavier!” My scream was wild and sharp and full of fear.
Bullets peppered the driver’s side of the car.
“Xavier!”
I searched the cavern of the mine frantically. All there was to see were stone walls, a pitch black tunnel at the back that disappeared into nothingness, and the inside of the car Xavier had raced off in.
It was full of blood.
Copious amounts of it stained the seat and the steering wheel and the door panel and the-
Movement off to the right caught my eye.
Xavier stumbled out from behind the blown apart wood barriers. He had a hand pressed to his side as he limped toward the car. His left eye was shut against the blood leaking out of a gash near his hairline. His belt was tightened around his thigh and his pants were torn, exposing a bloody flesh wound in the muscle.
“Hurry up!” I screamed.
More bullets blasted into the side of the car. I let out a shriek and clamped my hands over my ears. I wasn’t sure what good that would do, but gunfire is a hell of a lot louder up close and personal than a girl expects it to be. Especially a girl like me who’s led a very safe and cushy life.
Up until Xavier.
Xavier was only a few feet away. My foot itched to hit the gas. I wanted to get us the hell out of there. I had no idea how close the other Shades were, and I wasn’t going to risk stealing a peek out the driver’s side window. They’d probably blow a hole right through my head if I did.
So I stayed low.
And I willed Xavier to move his ass a little faster.
He grabbed the door and used it as support as he fell into the passenger seat. I didn’t wait for him to pull it closed. Instead I hit the gas hard. The tires spun for a brief second before catching traction. The car launched forward, and as I pulled away Xavier sat up straight, put his hand on my chest to keep me low, and aimed his gun out the driver’s window.
He fired two shots.
My ears rang.
Then he slumped back in his seat, rested his head back, and gripped the door handle.
I raised my seat again and trusted it was safe to do so when Xavier didn’t tell me otherwise. I spun us around and aimed for the road. As we drove past the two black sedans, I noted the two corpses that hadn’t been there when I arrived.
Even in this state, Xavier was a good fucking shot.
I was afraid to look at him.
“A-are you okay?” I stammered. My voice was higher than usual. Pinched. Thin.
“Just drive.”
“Where?”
He let out a pained sign. Not a groan or a gasp, but a mix of the two. “Anywhere.”
After a quick glance in the rear view mirror to make sure we weren’t being followed, I stole a glance at the only Shade who’d walked away from the fight in one piece.
I swallowed. “We need to go to a hospital.”
“No. No hospitals.”
“But—”
Xavier’s dark brown eyes slid to me and narrowed. “No hospitals.”
I fixed my attention back on the road as we neared the pavement. “Fine. No hospitals. There’s an exit onto the freeway up ahead. Only a couple miles. Which way should I go?”
“East,” he winced.
Okay. I could handle that.
“I have our passports,” I told him.
He didn’t answer me. I wasn’t sure what I was looking for. Praise or recognition for being a good girl and thinking two steps ahead?
Xavier wasn’t the sort of man to give me a pat on the back for something so trivial. Well, trivial in comparison to what he’d just been through.
He was a mess. A bloody, beat up, barely conscious mess.
There was one question lingering on the tip of my tongue that I was terrified to ask. I had no experience with injuries like this, so I had no grasp of how serious they were. I had no idea if he just needed to rest, or if he needed surgery, or if it was all worse than that.
“Xavier?”
He didn’t look over at me as he tightened the belt around his thigh with a sharp hiss of pain. “What?”
“Are you going to be okay? Can this—can this kill you?”
Xavier pushed himself up a little straighter and leaned forward to look in his passenger mirror. “Just drive, Violet.”
Chapter Three
Xavier
“Watch it, woman,” I growled, as Violet turned sharply around the bend to take the on ramp onto the highway. I clamped a hand over my side and bowed my head as I felt the searing of fresh pain. Being jostled around like this was no good. Not with a bullet sealed in my side and my leg.
“I’m doing the best I can,” she snapped at me.
“Do better.”
She shot me a dark look before checking her mirrors to merge onto the nearly empty highway. We had the middle of the night on our side. Darkness was our friend. We’d be reported to the police if other drivers on the road could see the state I was in–not to mention the car. It was full of bullet holes.
Violet drove a little over the speed limit and kept her eyes peeled for somewhere we could pull over. “What about here?”
I shook my head. “No. We need to cover a hell of a lot more distance before we stop. Keep going.”
“How long?”
What were all these questions? Couldn’t she just fucking drive?
“How long, Xavier?”
“Until I tell you to stop.”
“And if you pass out before then? Then what?” she spat.
I rolled my head to the side to look at her. Her face was pale, her eyes wide, and her knuckles white from her tight grip on the wheel.
She was scared as hell.
I blinked and it was hard to open my eyes. “I won’t pass out. I’m here. I’m with you. Just drive. We can handle this. Do you believe me?”
Her bottom lip trembled, and then she nodded. “I believe you.”
I sighed and stared out at the empty stretch of highway ahead of us. If we could put a couple hours between us and the scene back at the coal mine, I’d be happy.
But, realistically, I knew there was no chance I was going to stay awake that long. I couldn’t expect Violet to keep it together while I was unconscious and bleeding in the passenger seat. She needed some peace of mind if we were going to make this work.
“This won’t kill me,” I said.
“Promise?” she whispered, her voice ragged.
I hadn’t expected that. I’d been expecting a bunch of follow up questions about all the blood loss. About the hole in my side. About my last minute patch job with the cigar
ette lighter. But all she wanted from me was a promise.
“I promise.”
She deflated with relief and nodded. “Okay. Okay. Then it’s just one step at a time? Right? Just drive.”
I nodded. “One step at a time.”
Violet let out a slow and shaky breath and squared her shoulders. Then her eyes flicked down to my bloody leg. “Is the bullet still in there?”
“Yep.”
“We’re going to have to get it out, aren’t we?”
“Yep.”
She scrunched up her nose in distaste and looked for a moment like she might throw up. “And your side?”
“I’ve taken care of it.”
“What? How?”
“It’s probably best if you don’t know.”
“Xavier,” she said, her tone sharpening. “If you pass out, I need to know what I’m dealing with here. What did you do?”
“I burned it closed.”
“You what?”
Had I not been in such pain and so close to losing consciousness I might have had the energy to laugh at her, but instead I simply said it again. “I burned it closed.”
“With what? How did you have the time to—”
I pulled out the cigarette lighter in the car. It was different shape and style than the one I’d used, but when I held it up, Violet got the idea. Even more color drained from her face.
“Oh,” she breathed.
I pushed the lighter back into place.
“And that worked?” she whispered.
“That remains to be seen.”
“What does that mean?”
Conversation was exhausting, but it was also probably the only thing that was keeping me awake and her centered. So I indulged her. “It means I’ll have to wait and see. So long as nothing inside was hit and I’m not bleeding internally, I should be fine.”
“How are we supposed to get the bullet out?”
“We leave it in.”
“What?”
“Leave all the bullet related decisions to me, all right?” I grated.
Violet bit her bottom lip. “I don’t like this. I don’t like this one bit.”
“I’m not exactly enjoying myself either. I’m the one who got shot.”
“Yeah,” she snapped, “and I was the one who got left behind at a motel locked in my room. Had I not broken out of there, those guys would have killed you and I would have been screwed. If you ever lock me in a room and abandon me again, I swear to God I’ll—”
“Not now,” I said.
“Now is perfect,” Violet said stiffly. “You can’t put up a fight. You just have to sit there and take it. You’re lucky I got out and came after you. Otherwise you’d be dead and I’d be next.”
“There’s no way to know how things would have unfolded if you hadn’t shown up.”
“There were still three men standing. You think you could have handled them in your condition?”
I shrugged and instantly regretted it as pain raced up my side. I closed my eyes against the pain and held my breath until it subsided. “I’d have figured something out.”
“Right. Of course you would have.”
“What do you want me to say, Violet?”
“How about ‘thank you’ or something of the sort?”
I glared at her. “Thank you.”
“Like you mean it.”
“Are you trying to kill me?” I seethed.
“Don’t turn this around on me. I’m not caving just because you’re in pain. I’m right on this one. I know I am. You shouldn’t have locked me in that room. I can handle myself.”
I rolled my eyes. “Right.”
“I can,” she insisted. “I could have helped you. I could have stopped this from happening. Maybe if you’d gotten your head out of your ass for five seconds you’d see that we’re in this together. We’re not going to make it at all if you keep leaving me on the sidelines like a fucking water boy.”
My eyes were heavy. So damn heavy. And Violet’s incessant attacks were stringing together in a jumble of incoherent words that were getting scrambled in my brain.
“We’re doing things differently from now on, Xavier. You hear me? No more leaving me behind. No more not telling me the plan. Otherwise we’re both going to end up dead. Okay?”
It was cool and dark, quiet in the solace behind my closed eyes. Calmness and reprieve from the pain gathered me up and carried me away from Violet’s scolding and I didn’t resist anymore.
Then, someone was shaking me and jostling me around in the seat. I came to with a painful snarl as I sat bolt upright and clutched at my side.
“I’m sorry,” Violet whimpered, recoiling from me as I hunched over in pain. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know if you were dead.”
“Not dead,” I managed through clenched teeth.
“I’m calling it. We’re stopping at the next hotel we find.”
“No, we need to—”
“I said I’m calling it,” she said, nostrils flaring as she glared at me and dared me to challenge her.
I let it go. We hadn’t left any of the Shades alive and I was fairly confident that a short stop to get some rest wouldn’t be the nail in our coffins. So when Violet took the next exit off the freeway, I kept quiet. She held out and didn’t pull into the first hotel we came across in a small town with plenty of gas stations and little else.
She stopped at a two story hotel with a nearly empty parking lot and parked around back so the car wasn’t visible from the road. Then she slid out the door and leaned over to look in at me. “I’m going to check us in. I’ll be back for you. Don’t die before I get back, okay?”
Words were escaping me in my nearly delirious state, so I just nodded and watched her close the door and jog around the side of the building to the lobby.
Quiet settled in around me.
There was no sense in fighting it.
So I closed my eyes and waited for her to come back.
She had to wake me again. When I came to, Violet was crouched down beside me outside the passenger door. Her eyes were concerned but warm, and her touch on my arm was light and gentle. “Come on. I got us a room on the ground floor. Stairs sounded like a bad idea.”
She offered me her shoulder.
I accepted her help as she helped me stumble across the poorly lit parking lot to a room with a burgundy door and a gold number 11 on it. She slid a key card into the slot and a little green light blinked at us. She pushed her way in, and I followed, reaching out and bracing myself against the wall as she hung the ‘do not disturb’ sign on the outside of the door before closing it, locking the handle and the deadbolt and sliding the chain into place.
She turned to face me, and I noticed for the first time that she had a little red bag tucked under her arm. A first aid kit.
Violet hurried over to the bed and flicked the lamp on beside it. She unzipped the kit and patted the bed for me to sit down. I sat on the edge and waited for the room to stop spinning.
“Okay,” she said, as she stared down at the contents of the kit. “Needle. Thread. Antiseptic wipes. Gauze. Bandages. Do we need anything else?”
“Are there tweezers? Or something you can use to get the bullet out?”
“Um,” she paused and searched through the kit. Then she held up a pair of silver tweezers and stared at them so intently she nearly went cross eyed. “Will these work?”
I nodded. “Yes. And grab those gloves.”
She plucked the pale blue sterile gloves and a pair of scissors out of the kit and put everything else aside. Then she hurried to the bathroom, washed her hands, and brought a towel, which she laid on the bed. Without waiting, she snapped into action.
Violet cut through my pant leg with the scissors and then tossed them aside. The hole in my thigh was ragged, swollen, and bloody. Violet stared at it and then looked up at me. “Now what?”
“Put the gloves on.”
She did.
“Run the tweezers and needle under hot
water.” A flame would work better to sterilize the tools, but I was working with what I had.
She hurried to the bathroom and did that before returning to kneel beside me.
“Okay,” I said, dizziness closing in on me. “You have to get the bullet out. And then clean the wound. Then you can stitch it closed.”
“I don’t know how to sew.”
“It’s not rocket science. I’ll walk you through it.”
Her lips stretched in a thin line as she picked up the tweezers and pinched and un-pinched them in her fingers. “Okay. Okay. I can do this. Right? I can do this.”
“You can do this,” I said.
If she couldn’t, I’d just have to see to it myself.
Violet poised the tweezers above the bloody gash in my leg. At least blood didn’t make her queasy. She took three deep breaths, and then she lowered the tweezers until the two ends vanished inside the bullet wound.
“Slowly,” I hissed when she hit the bullet and wedged it in deeper. “Slowly!”
“Sorry,” she said, but she didn’t sound sorry. She sounded focused. She sat up higher on her knees and leaned over close to peer into the wound. She dug around with the tweezers, either oblivious to or ignoring my pained groans as she worked. “I think I’ve got it.”
“Pull it the fuck out already.”
“Hold on. Don’t move.”
Little stars exploded in my vision as she lifted the tweezers out, pulling out a bloody bullet and holding it up between us.
“Got it,” she said, a smile tugging at the corners of her lips.
Chapter Four
Violet
I dropped the bullet on the nightstand by the bed as Xavier let out an even breath. “The hardest part is over,” he said.
I frowned down at his torn flesh and looked back up at him. His brow was creased in pain and there was sweat on his upper lip. He was pale. Very pale. To top it all off, fresh blood was now pumping out of his leg.
“I feel like the hard part is what’s next,” I muttered as I picked up the sterilized needle and threaded it with shaking fingers before tying a knot at the end of the stitching thread. His blood stained the blue gloves I wore, and I ignored the nausea welling at the thought of having to push the needle through his skin.
Dark Lover: Sins of the Night Page 2
