He opened his mouth to answer, but Jesse spoke first. “If you do, they will know for sure you’re on to them,” he said.
“How?” Will asked.
“They got Frederic to join them, by pressing him or just corrupting him,” Jesse reminded us. “They could have gotten to any other vampire before we got Katia. They must have a spy here.”
I thought of the swollen crowd. There were plenty of Old World people present, and we hadn’t exactly made sure every one of them had an LA County address. I didn’t think the Count was actually in the building—he would need to communicate with the MC guys who had Hayne, and there was the bad reception working for us again—but Katia might have pressed anyone into service, pun intended, before we’d captured her.
Dashiell’s eyes were locked with Jesse’s, which would have been really scary if he hadn’t been human at the moment. “He’s right,” Dashiell said, his voice heavy.
“Abby, slow down!” came Kirsten’s voice from the corner.
The four of us turned to look. Will and Dashiell’s faces had taken on the grave stoicism of someone expecting bad news, but I was a female, and therefore didn’t need to project emotional fortitude if I didn’t feel like it. I rushed over to Kirsten and crouched down. Her eyes met mine, and they were wild. I felt her magic push against me again, and although it wasn’t actually a physical force, I was almost knocked on my ass from the strength of it. “Is he alive?” Kirsten said into the phone. Her knuckles were white where she held the handset.
I’m not sure who reached for whom, but suddenly she was clutching my hand. Then her face relaxed, just a little. She nodded at me. Hayne was alive. “Did you call an ambulance? Okay . . . okay. I’ll be there as soon as I can.”
Kirsten dropped my hand and slammed the phone down, turning to face the others as she rose. “We’re too late,” she told us. Tears were streaming down her cheeks, but her face was impassive, a mask of regal resignation. “They came and exchanged Ted—Theo,” she corrected herself. Kirsten was the only one who could call him Teddy. “For Molly. It’s done.”
“He’s alive?” Dashiell said quietly.
Kirsten nodded. “Barely. He fought them, probably fearing that you would punish Abigail for her decision.”
“We’ll talk about that later.”
Kirsten’s hands fussed at her hair, her skirts. “I need to go. They’re taking him to Huntington—”
“You can’t,” Dashiell said, his voice still low and unnaturally calm. “The Trials must go on. Will,” he turned to the werewolf alpha, “would you please go upstairs and announce that we need ten more minutes to handle a technical problem with the wards. Make it sound small and boring, if you can.”
Will left, shooting Kirsten a sympathetic look that she didn’t see, because she was staring at Dashiell in outrage. They were all human at the moment, but if sparks had started shooting out of her eyes, I wouldn’t have been the least bit surprised.
“There is no fucking way—” Kirsten began. Whoa. Had I ever heard Kirsten drop an f-bomb?
“There’s nothing you can do,” he told her. “I will have Lawrence make sure that the best medical staff in the city is available to Theodore, but right now there isn’t anything you can do that the doctors can’t.”
She was still glowering at him. “He’s human. There are healing spells—”
“For which you have no aptitude,” Dashiell interrupted again, but his voice was surprisingly gentle. “There are no thaumaturge witches in Los Angeles, and we both know that the trades spells that deal with healing can be unpredictable. You could wind up doing more harm than good, especially in your emotional state.”
Kirsten’s mouth shut with an audible snap, and she spun around, stalking a few steps away from Dashiell and muttering to herself. I winced, temporarily surprised into silence. There was a special branch of magic for healing? And Dashiell knew all about it? I was used to the vampire playing his cards close to the vest, but I hadn’t expected him to know so much about witch spells.
“Scarlett and I can go,” Jesse blurted, surprising me again. “If he’s conscious, Hayne may have learned something that will help us find these guys.” Kirsten turned back around to look at him, but Jesse’s eyes were on me, his eyebrows raised slightly. I nodded and stepped toward Kirsten.
“We’ll go check on him at the hospital, and Abigail too,” I told her, touching her arm. “Is there a number on that phone?”
Kirsten turned to look. “Yes. It’s taped to the handset.”
“Get one of your witches to sit by it. I’ll call as soon as we find out his condition.”
Kirsten bit her lip, clearly wavering.
But Dashiell turned toward me. “You are needed for the Trials, too,” he told me. “Let Mr. Cruz go alone.”
Of course. Of course Dashiell was only thinking about damage control. I shook my head. “Can’t do it. I’m not sending Jesse out there with a vampire running around. He’s my partner.” I made it a point not to look at Jesse’s face.
Kirsten left the phone and came back toward Dashiell. Then she laid a hand on his forearm. It was a completely innocent gesture, but I felt my eyes bulge. I couldn’t remember ever seeing anyone besides Beatrice touch Dashiell in any way. “We can handle this,” she told him. “The three of us can control our people enough to keep the peace.”
“You need us to find Molly,” I added firmly. “Everyone in that auditorium thinks you and I are conspiring to let her escape her trial. If this guy tortures her to death, we’ll never be able to prove what really happened.”
“Besides,” Jesse added with a brittle smile, “I bet you can spin this to your advantage. ‘We’re so confident in our people that we don’t even need a security null.’”
Dashiell looked at each of our faces in turn before finally nodding. “Go.” To Kirsten, he added, “You’ll need to redo the wards after Scarlett punches a hole in them. It’s possible that leaving an opening was part of their plan.”
She was already moving toward her spell materials, looking relieved to have something to do. “I can do that.”
“Are we taking Shadow?” Jesse asked me. We were already moving down the hall.
I hesitated. Bringing Shadow into the hospital wasn’t a good idea, and she was relatively comfortable in her little den . . . but I hadn’t forgotten how much she’d helped during the ambush earlier in the day. “Yeah,” I said. “I think we may need all the help we can get.”
Chapter 32
“Play it again,” I said.
Jesse raised his eyebrows. “You sure?”
“Do it.”
Jesse and I were in stiff chairs in the ICU waiting room, where he was holding one of the tablets that Abigail had brought to the hospital. Even dinged up and afraid for her job, she was dedicated as hell. She’d pulled up the exterior security camera footage from Dashiell’s mansion for us, handed it wordlessly to Jesse, and wheeled away to grab some coffee. Shadow, meanwhile, had been left sulking in the van, where she would probably eat one of the headrests again.
After a quick glance to make sure no one was watching us, Jesse hit Play again, and then touched a command to make the video full screen. The color footage was crisp as hell, but there was no audio. Dashiell’s policy, to prevent political issues.
The best footage came from a discreet camera in a tree well behind the wrought iron fence, facing the mansion. Onscreen, a large black SUV pulled up to Dashiell’s gate, which was basically decorative—most of the Old World would have no problem getting over or through it. The SUV stopped ten feet shy of the barrier, and all four doors opened at once, plus the back. Four beefy white men wearing balaclavas erupted from the car like a Chinese fire drill. They went straight to the back and did something we couldn’t see with a long black shape. Jesse had told me they were unzipping the body bag where they’d kept Hayne. A few of the MC thugs punched at the shape, and then the thugs stepped back and there was Hayne, tottering upright, his thighs leaning against the SUV fo
r balance. He looked like hell already, his lower lip and one eye fat with swelling, and he moved his torso in a gingerly way that even I could recognize as broken ribs.
The MC guys’ leader stepped forward and took Hayne’s arm roughly. We couldn’t see his face because of the balaclava, but he had a slight limp, which I suspected had something to do with Hayne’s kidnapping. He certainly looked like he wasn’t a fan of Hayne, who said something to Limpy that earned him a new punch in the stomach. It was brutal to watch, especially if you suspected the broken ribs. I’d flinched the first time, but I knew Jesse was concerned about me so I made my face blank.
Limpy made Hayne shuffle over to the camera on the call box. Then the guy pushed the button and pressed the barrel of a fat-looking handgun to Hayne’s temple.
We couldn’t hear what they were saying, although Abigail had filled us in. Limpy was demanding that Abigail produce Molly and send her out alone, no tricks. They had clearly been warned to stay outside the wards, which had been set by Kirsten earlier in the afternoon, after Jesse and I had left the premises.
A few minutes passed as the MC guys waited for Molly to make her appearance. Hayne seemed to be swaying on his feet, like he was about to pass out from the pain, but since this was the third time we were watching, I knew he was actually preparing to make his move.
I didn’t know if he was really trying to win a fight against four armed men, or if he was just trying to force them to kill him. Either way, I watched it unfold again on the screen: Hayne’s slow swaying dwindled to a halt, and then Limpy turned his head to yell something at the three men behind him. Hayne, beaten though he was, seemed to suddenly pounce.
Theodore Hayne had spent his entire life training with vampires, and by that, I mean training to stop vampires. Moreover, he had always operated under the assumption that he would be outnumbered and overpowered. He kicked at Limpy’s good knee, sending the other man crashing to the ground. Limpy’s lieutenant ran forward, but Hayne was ready with an elbow that seemed magnetized to the other man’s face. It was the wrong angle for us to see the blow, but we could see the splash of bright red blood arcing in the air as the lieutenant’s nose shattered. Before he even had his hands all the way up to clutch at it, Hayne kicked him between the legs. The guy dropped next to Limpy, who was still rolling back and forth on the ground, holding one knee. And Hayne did all of that in the time it took me to take a breath.
If they had kept attacking in that stupid way, one at a time with their fists, I had no doubt that Hayne could have taken them down. But after Limpy and his buddy were down, the two remaining men stayed a good ten feet away from their prey, and the one on the left abruptly shot Hayne once in each thigh. I had to work to keep from cringing as the big man crashed to the ground, blood pooling from his lower body.
They stayed that way, with the fallen MC thugs eventually pulling themselves to their feet, until the gate began to open. Then the four thugs raised their guns and pointed them at the space in the wrought iron.
After a few additional seconds, a small woman with bare feet and a dirty dress stepped through the gap and into the light, her black hair hanging loose around her face. Molly. Her arms were raised above her head, and she was moving slowly even for a human, which she most certainly was not. Hayne had told me Molly’d been fed, and her eyes were glittering with life when she glanced at the camera. If I’d never met Molly before this, I would still have known she was a vampire.
There was some shouting back and forth, and it was obvious the MC guys had become unnerved by Hayne and Molly. They were waving guns about, though Molly’s responses to them were perfectly calm. There was a moment when a wide space opened up between the two thugs closest to Molly.
“She could have run,” I murmured to Jesse. I felt him nod.
Molly pointed at Hayne, who lay bleeding and unmoving on the ground. The thugs yelled something, but she responded calmly, pointing to Hayne again. Finally, Limpy nodded.
Keeping her hands up, Molly made her way to Hayne. She crouched down and checked his pulse at his neck, then turned to Limpy and said something else. Limpy reluctantly gave his guys an order, and two of them began pulling off their belts.
I took the tablet from Jesse and moved it so close that it was practically bumping my nose. On the screen, Molly tied the belts like tourniquets, using her strength to punch a new hole in the leather to hold them on. And then—this was the part I’d wanted to see—she moved her forearm over Hayne’s face.
Her other movements had been efficient and precise, but this seemed oddly clumsy. It almost looked like she was using the sensitive skin at her wrist to check for his breathing. I paused the video, tapped the player to back up a few seconds, and watched it again. And again, until I was sure.
Jesse glanced at me, but I just shook my head and let the video play out. On the screen, Molly reached down and gathered up Hayne, lifting him as if he were nothing. She carried him through the gap in the gates, with all four guns pointed at her. Then she slowly stepped back over to the thugs’ side of the fence, and Limpy nodded at the video monitor. The gate began to close.
I don’t know if Molly would have run, because that’s when the second vampire stepped out of the shadows. Frederic didn’t bother with a balaclava—his “cover” had already been blown. He had been hiding in the bushes to one side of the gate, though Abigail still didn’t know how he’d gotten there or when. She would need to go back through earlier footage, and there hadn’t been time. Molly must have heard him stand up, because she began to turn around—but it was too late. The vampire was already behind her. With a movement too fast for even Dashiell’s high-tech cameras, he reached up and brutally snapped her neck sideways. Molly crumpled.
“You’re sure?” Jesse murmured, for about the fourth time.
“Yes. As bad as it looks, they can survive that. She’ll wake up in a few hours needing blood, but she’ll be okay. Well, until . . .” I didn’t bother finishing the sentence. Jesse and I both knew why Molly had been taken “alive.” The vampire behind all this had never wanted Molly to die easily. She would be tortured to death, unless I could find her.
“What will you do now?” came a tired voice from across the room. I actually started in my seat. I hadn’t heard Abigail come back in. She’d wheeled to the far corner of the room, where she sat looking drawn and exhausted. I guessed she hadn’t really wanted to watch the video again.
Jesse and I exchanged a glance. “I—” I began, but just then we heard an alarm sound down the hall, a screaming beep-beep-beep that sent a number of nurses and doctors running toward the noise. Abigail turned her chair to look. “That’s Theo’s room!” she cried, starting forward.
Jesse and I were already on our feet. Abigail was wheeling herself down the hall, but moving slow. “Can I—” I began.
“Push me, goddammit!”
I pushed. A nurse stopped us in the hall just outside the room, her hands raised in a defensive position.
“That’s my brother!” Abigail snapped. “What’s happening?”
“Miss, I’m sorry, you need to go back—”
“Like hell,” she snarled. “Tell us what’s happening right fucking now!”
“The doctors are doing everything they can—”
It went on like that for a while. Security was called, and if Abigail wasn’t in a wheelchair I’m pretty sure she would have been bodily lifted and carried out of the building. As it was, she was given the choice of going back to the waiting room or being arrested. For a moment I honestly didn’t know which way she was going to go.
We sat at the edge of the waiting room, watching medical personnel run in and out of Hayne’s room. None of us spoke, and I had to keep glancing at Abigail’s chest to make sure she was even breathing. Her eyes were fixed on the door to the hospital room, as though she could will Hayne to live by sheer force of personality. If anyone could do it, Abigail could.
When the doctor finally came out to talk to her, my heart sank. He had a prett
y good poker face, but I knew the signs.
Apparently, so did Abigail, because she started to cry. “No—”
“We did everything we could, Ms. Hayne,” the doctor began. “But I’m afraid your brother is gone.”
As soon as the doctor retreated, I crouched next to Abigail’s wheelchair. She was crying so hard I doubted she could see me through the tears. “Abigail,” I said, but she shook her head. “Abby!” I looked up at Jesse, but he had turned away, his eyes rimmed in red. I turned back to Abigail, who had covered her entire face in her two hands. There were people all around us, but it didn’t matter. Abigail was an island of grief, and she couldn’t hear me.
“He doesn’t get eaten by the eels at this time,” I said loudly.
Abigail pulled her hands down. Her face was red and swollen with the tears that were still running down her cheeks. “What?”
I lowered my voice, leaning toward Abigail’s ear. “Molly. She knew he wasn’t going to make it. She fed him vampire blood. You have to get control of the body, right away. Claim religious reasons, whatever.”
Abigail hiccupped, staring at me like I’d grown an extra head. “Are you hearing me?” I asked. “Do you get what I’m saying?”
“Teddy’s . . . going to be a vampire?”
“No. Well, yes, for now. You gotta step up, Abby. You need to get Hayne’s body, by any means necessary. I can’t go near it while the vampire magic is working, and Jesse needs to come with me, so this is on you. But—and I cannot emphasize how important this is—do not tell anyone in the Old World what really happened. If anybody asks, the hospital believes Hayne died, but you just moved him to a secret location for his own protection. Got it?”
Midnight Curse (Disrupted Magic Book 1) Page 21
