Margot Vetter ripped his heart wide open and let all his monsters out. So be it. He let out his breath, and his resistance with it. The room was full of monsters. Might as well add his own to the crowd.
Snakey walked in, staring hungrily at Margot. His arm was bandaged, and he had gauze patches on his face, but he looked better than he had last night in the hotel room. His bloodshot eyes glittered with the vibe of a guy hopped up on some performance-enhancing drug that killed pain and quickened reflexes. Davy had run into those guys before. They were tough to fight. Sometimes they didn’t even have the sense to know when they were dead.
Marcus gestured to one of his men to take out Davy’s gag. “Mr. McCloud, you have a choice,” he announced. “Faris wants to fight you. If you agree, I’ll have your bonds removed. You will be covered by several gunmen at all times. If you attempt to escape, or do anything that I find objectionable, you will be instantly shot. Do you agree?”
“If I don’t?” Davy asked, just out of curiosity.
“Then we’ll leave you tied, and let Faris amuse himself with you while your lady friend watches. Faris is very talented with his needles.”
Some choice. Davy shrugged. “I’ll fight him.”
“I’ve given Faris a little pick-me-up to compensate for the injuries you inflicted.” Marcus looked smug. “Do you think that’s unfair?”
“Yes,” Davy said.
“You’re right,” Marcus agreed easily. “Life isn’t fair, so why pretend? Rules are just a self-imposed prison.”
Davy struggled to fathom the guy’s reasoning, and quickly abandoned the attempt. “You think you’re some kind of god, don’t you?”
Marcus gestured for them to remove Davy’s bonds. “We all are, but most of us are afraid to accept our own divinity. Not me. I’ve embraced my power. I’m completely free.”
Davy struggled to his feet once they’d cut him free, and tried to flex his numb fingers. They wouldn’t respond. Marcus’s words echoed in his head, reshuffling as if he were trying to break a code. Rules are just a self-imposed prison. His brain was trying to tell him something, but he couldn’t stop to ponder it. He wished he could tell Margot how beautiful and precious she was, but he didn’t dare say it in front of these people. Anything he said could be twisted into a weapon to hurt her.
He tried to tell her with his eyes.
Faris walked into the center of the room. The black tank top and workout pants he wore showed off his thickly muscled body. He jumped up and down on the balls of his bare feet and stared at Davy, eyes burning with hatred. Feeling no pain.
Davy did a quick and depressing inventory of his own injuries. Swelling in the joints of his arms from being hyperextended for hours. Numb hands beginning to tingle. Eyes and throat burning from dehydration. The bruises and strains of the last two battles, a pounding head, a swollen, battered face. Days without sleep.
Whatever. It was as it was.
He loved her.
“Faris is actually a handsome young man when his face is not so battered,” Marcus remarked to Margot. “You never saw him at his best.”
That comment set Snakey off, and Davy barely parried a chop to his neck, twisting his arm around Snakey’s and tossing him over his shoulder. Snakey spun several yards across the room, sliding on the slippery parquet, and bounded to his feet like he was made of rubber.
Back he came, with a blow to the gut, but it was a feint, and Davy barely changed course in time to parry the vicious kick to what would have been his groin, if he hadn’t spun sideways.
He was thick, and slow, and hurting. And getting scared.
Rules…a self-imposed prison.
Sweat rolled, burning into his eyes. He was furious with himself. A lifetime of relentless training, and still he struggled with himself as much as with his opponent. He blocked a lightning fast volley of lethal blows while he contemplated the resistence inside himself. He’d tried so hard to keep it together, with all his rules and tricks and techniques.
But now he was dragging a shell of useless armor around. It was unwieldy, heavy. Weighing him down. It was killing him.
He was changing. Outside that rigid shell was a huge new world. He’d gotten too big to fit inside his own cage any longer.
He loved her. Something inside him let go, softening and shifting, and it all came into focus; the global awareness of every square inch he inhabited, the balance of yin and yang, the qi sinking lower in his chest with each deep breath, energizing him. Right crane neck fist parried a jab to his face. He dropped the crane neck down to block a punch to his ribs, hooked Snakey’s arms, stabbed at the guy’s eyes with a left crane beak. Snakey shrieked, jerked back, rubbing his eyes.
He loved her. His pain was gone. He sank down into horse stance, front leg ready to kick, sweep, exert force in any direction. He was the crane, the leopard, the tiger, the snake, the dragon.
Snakey struck at his throat. Davy’s dragon’s claw smashed into Snakey’s face, trapped his hands and bore him to the floor. Dragon swings his tail, whipping from the waist, a spinning backfist to Snakey’s temple, crushing the zygomatic arch.
Snakey lay on his back, blood flooding out of his nose. He coughed, began to choke. His eyes stared at the ceiling, unseeing.
Davy rose to his feet and backed away.
Marcus’s face was expressionless. He walked slowly over and knelt next to Faris. He placed his hands on either side of his brother’s face. “Failure is unacceptable,” he said softly.
Faris’s body jerked. He dragged in a labored breath and blinked up into his brother’s face.
Marcus got to his feet and gestured imperiously to Davy with his pistol. “Finish what you started.”
Davy stared at him. “Say what?”
Marcus’s sigh was impatient. “You’ve broken him. Finish him off.”
“But he’s your brother,” Davy said, unbelieving.
“So?” Marcus’s face did not change. “Do it.”
Davy wiped the sweat from his face and stared around at the guns that were trained on him. “I’m not your fucking gladiator,” he said quietly. “Do your own killing.”
Marcus shifted his aim until his gun was pointed at Margot. He smiled and let the barrel drop till it was aiming at her knees.
Suddenly Marcus gasped, and stumbled back, pinwheeling his arms. The gun went off. Zing, shards of plaster exploded from the wall.
Marcus toppled. Faris had hooked his leg through his brother’s, and jerked him off balance. His finger stabbed into Marcus’s groin. The man’s shriek of agony cut off abruptly as Faris’s other hand chopped down like an axe over the bridge of his nose. A hideous crunch, and Marcus’s nasal bone and orbital socket fractured and collapsed.
In that split second of stunned disbelief, a shrill whistle pierced the air from outside the room. Two ascending tweets followed by a short, lower trill. Marcus’s goons panicked and opened fire on Faris.
The guy jerked and twitched as bullets punched into his body.
Davy launched himself at Margot. “Get down!” He bore her to the floor beneath him, just inside the three-second window Sean’s signal had indicated. They hit the floor so hard, they bounced.
All hell proceeded to break loose. Sean and Seth were spraying the room at chest height, or so he assumed. Glass shattered, shouts and screams of confusion and pain between thundering crashes of gunfire. One of the chandeliers crashed to the ground. Margot huddled beneath him, warm and trembling and alive.
Sensation crept back. He wished it hadn’t. His shoulder ached as if it had been punched, but it was more than a punch. He knew that cold, sick feeling of an energetic hole. Blood pressure dropping. He was bleeding heavily. Nothing to do but wait for the storm to pass.
But by then he was already far away and fading.
Chapter
27
Margot squeezed her eyes shut and endured the huge noise. Even without Davy’s weight pinning her down, it would have been impossible to breathe. His landing on top of
her had knocked her breath out. She was squashed, strangled, forced from three dimensions to two.
Unconsciousness threatened. She fought it.
Her ringing ears finally registered that the noise had abated. She was just starting to drag tiny, hitching teaspoonfuls of air into her lungs when it dawned on her. Davy wasn’t moving.
He was sprawled on top of her, and not moving at all. Dead weight. Something wet and hot was trickling over her back, over her arm, and pooling on the floor near her face. Crimson.
Panic and horror exploded inside her. “Davy? Hey! Davy, answer me!” She struggled beneath him, and it abruptly occurred to her to slow down, move gently. Any move she made could hurt him more.
She wiggled, slowly and carefully out from under his inert body, careful not to jostle him. His shoulder had a ragged hole in it, and was bleeding copiously. His face was grayish, eyes closed. Terribly still.
“Davy?” She looked around desperately for something that could serve as a bandage, and saw Sean galloping across the room.
He skidded to a stop on his knees next to Davy. “What the fuck have you done to yourself now?” Panic edged his voice.
“He was shot,” she whispered.
“No shit. Seth, call an ambulance! Now!” Sean dropped the rifle in his hands to the ground and shed a pack from his shoulders, yanking a small kit out of it. He popped it open, pulled out a wad of gauze with the sharp, efficient movements of a man who knew what he was doing. Thank God for that, at least.
Margot finally noticed carnage around her. The lights had been shot out. The bodies of Marcus’s men were scattered and sprawled around the floor, pools of blood of varying sizes around them. Some of them still moaned. Most did not.
Marcus and Faris were locked in a grisly, blood-soaked fraternal embrace. Broken glass covered everything, glittering like shards of ice. Gusts of cool, rain-scented wind blew into the room.
“Is he going to be OK?” Her voice felt like a child’s whisper.
“He has to be.” Sean said viciously, pressing down on the wound. “Or I’ll clobber the bastard.”
Seth crouched down beside them. “The bullet didn’t hit any vital organs,” he said to her. “There’s a lot of blood loss, though.”
She took Davy’s uninjured hand and held it. Faris’s bloodshot dead eyes stared straight across the room at her, a wide, accusing stare. She looked away, shuddering.
Davy’s hand was cold and clammy. She clutched it tightly, as if she were in zero gravity, and if she let go, she would spin away into deep space. There was nothing holding her back. No other point of reference. He couldn’t die, or there would be no point left in anything.
Just a cold, blank nothing.
A bunch of noise started up, after a while. A clamor of voices. People bustling around. They strapped Davy onto a gurney and took him away. She tried to follow him, but she was blocked by a guy who stuck his face in hers and started asking a bunch of loud questions. Something about blood. She tried to explain that it wasn’t her blood, it was Davy’s, because he’d saved her life, but they were taking him away, she was losing him, and they had to let her go with him.
She couldn’t get the words to make any sense. She couldn’t communicate at all. She tried to pull away. The medic held her back.
She started to cry in pure frustration. Davy was gone, Seth and Sean, too. It was all over. All lost, all gone. Someone gave her a shot.
She floated away, on a river of hopeless tears.
“I’m really sorry, miss.” The woman behind the desk regarded Margot’s bloodstained slip and mascara-stained face with fearful fascination. “It’s not visiting hours, and only family’s admitted. Are you OK? Do you need to go to the emergency—”
“I’m fine, thanks, and this is a special case,” Margot said. “He took that bullet for me. I count as family. Believe me. I’m in the club.”
“I’m sorry. I just can’t break the rules—”
“Oh, never mind,” she snapped. She turned her back on the suspicious cow and recommenced pacing up and down the brightly lit corridor. She wished she could disguise herself as a normal person, but even a desperate scrub in the hospital bathroom with stinky surgical soap and a wad of harsh paper towels hadn’t made much of a dent in her scary look. Every time she caught sight of herself in a reflective surface, she almost yelped. Psycho raccoon woman on the rampage. No wonder the hospital personnel wouldn’t let her anywhere near the poor guy. She wouldn’t either, if she were in that woman’s shoes.
At least she knew Davy was alive. That question had been torturing her ever since she woke up, all alone, in the curtained hospital bed.
On her fourth turn up the corridor, the bulldog who guarded the ward was talking with a nurse at the end of the corridor. All rule-breaking inhibitions had been burned out of her. She crept closer to the door. Someone punched the button on the other side and shot her a startled look as she sailed on through the automatic door, borne along by a tidal wave of lawless momentum.
Seth was lounging in a plastic chair in the corridor, his long body still giving the impression of coiled tension in spite of the relaxed pose.
He turned as she approached, and looked relieved. “Oh, hey. I was wondering where you’d disappeared to. You got lost in the shuffle when the medics came and did their thing.”
“Somebody gave me a shot,” she said. “I just woke up a while ago. I’ve been looking for you guys ever since.”
His dark eyes slid over her, looking for injuries. “You OK? You look kind of puny.”
“I’m fine,” she said. “Davy?”
“Asleep. He’ll make it. The wound is no big deal, he just lost a lot of blood. But Sean’s all torn up about it. He thinks we waited a nanosecond too long for the cavalry charge, so it’s all his fault Davy got shot.” He shook his head. “McClouds are so high-maintenance,” he grumbled. “Drop a pin, and they freak out. Go all emotional on you.”
She thought about Davy’s passionate anger, his protectiveness, his unbridled eroticism. “I know exactly what you mean. Can I go in?”
Seth grunted. “I’m not the watchdog around here.”
She pushed open the door, and stared at Davy for a long moment. It hurt her heart to see his powerful body so inert. An IV snaked into his arm. His battered face was pale where it wasn’t bruised. The golden tinge of his skin had taken on a grayish tint.
Sean sat beside him, his face in his hands. He looked up.
She almost gasped at the change in him. His dimples were gone. His mouth was hard, eyes cold. All the humor gone from his face.
He looked like Davy. She’d never noticed the resemblance before.
It was an uncomfortable thought: that the way Sean looked when he was tense and miserable was the way Davy looked most of the time.
It made her feel guilty, for some reason. From the moment she’d met the man, she’d done nothing but give him trouble. Lying to him, provoking and goading and bugging him.
Still, he’d saved her life. Heroically, more than once. And he was brought to this for his trouble. Silent and gray-faced on a hospital bed, hooked up to a bag of fluid. Covered with bruises, full of holes.
Seth had nothing to say to her. His eyes flicked over her, checking for injuries as Seth had done. Evidently contenting himself that she was in one piece, he dismissed her and turned back to his brother.
“Seth said he was going to be OK,” she offered timidly.
“So they say. He looks like shit to me.”
She moved closer to the bed, and put her hand on Davy’s big hand. Cool, so still. She gripped his long, graceful callused fingers. “He’ll be fine,” she said quietly. “He has to be.”
Sean’s short laugh was full of bitterness. “You think? Hah. The worst can always happen.” He stroked Davy’s arm. “I spend a lot of time staring at my brothers lying unconscious in hospital beds. Only thing that can be said for it is that it’s better than staring at a coffin.”
“I’m sorry.” She felt h
elpless.
Sean shook his head. “I’m always lagging a couple of steps behind,” he said. “I never get to fix things, or save anybody.”
She struggled to think of something comforting to say. “But you did help. You came, and you saved him. You shouldn’t blame yourself.”
“Oh, yeah? Shouldn’t I? I was the one who maneuvered him into hooking up with you in the first place. I thought he needed to get out more. I thought he needed to relax, get laid, have some fun. Hah. Would any of this shit had happened if I hadn’t done that? It’s the story of my life. One catastrophic fuck-up after another.”
The cold knot in her belly tightened until the pain was almost unbearable. “I’m sorry,” she whispered again.
Sean waved his hand. “Nah,” he said. “You’re not the one who shot him. It’s not your fault the world is full of slime-sucking assholes.”
But it was true. None of this would have happened if Sean hadn’t nudged her into asking Davy’s advice. Of course, if she hadn’t, she would probably be dead, or worse.
That reflection was not a particularly helpful one.
“I should have known he’d react like this to you,” Sean said. “Like that stripper he got mixed up with years ago, what was her name…”
“Fleur,” she said. “His ex-wife.”
Sean looked startled. “He told you about her? He’s never told anybody about Fleur. Even Connor and I had to get him drunk to pry it out of him. And it’s not easy to get that uptight bastard drunk.”
“I believe you,” she murmured. “I know how he is.”
“He never lets down his guard,” Sean said. “Not even with Connor and me. He’s got to be the one who’s always strong for us. You know about what happened to our dad?”
She nodded again.
Sean gave her a long, wondering look. “Huh. So he told you all his deep, dark secrets, then. He must be crazy about you.”
Out of Control Page 36
