Forging Day (Crucible of Change Book 1)

by Noelle Alladania Meade

“Ma’am, can you tell us your name?”

  “Olivia. Not ma’am.”

  “No problem, Olivia. We need to get you onto the stretcher. We’re going to help steady your leg, but it’s going to hurt. The sooner we move you and have a look, the sooner we can give you something for the pain. We’re going to lift you on three. Ready? One. Two,” and then they swiftly lifted me onto the stretcher.

  “What happened to three?” I whimpered.

  Leo followed the stretcher, making sure I could see him. “Hang in there, sis.”

  I could just see Cordie if I craned my neck. She was talking earnestly to one of the SWAT officers and pointing back toward the house. I called out, “Leo, there was another prisoner in the basement. I saw them when Colby did his video call.”

  “Be right back, sis. Listen to the nice paramedics and stay out of trouble.”

  My two paramedics raised the bar for efficiency under pressure. They interrogated me about my unusual physiology while starting IVs and cataloging my newest injuries.

  Leo walked over to the SWAT officer Cordie had just been talking to, checking his magazine for bullets. I guess he had at least a few left. Along with the SWAT officer, he disappeared around the corner of the house.

  Helicopter rotors whumped overhead, and there was a screech of tires as one of the local news vans skidded to a stop. A BMW with tinted windows pulled in behind them. Vivian emerged, looking utterly distraught for the cameras.

  Lieutenant Clark, using a crutch and looking fairly grumpy, hobbled over. “This is an active crime scene. Get these people out of here!”

  Vivian went up to him. “Are you in charge here? I’m the owner of the house. Assistant District Attorney Vivian Davis. What happened? Is it true the Cheesman Park murderer is dead?”

  He couldn’t quite turn his grimace into a smile. “Yes, I’m Lieutenant Clark, and I am in charge of this scene. Miss Davis, I appreciate your concern, but we’re not yet prepared to make any official statements.”

  “I totally understand, Lieutenant Clark. Of course you can’t confirm that Colby Green was the Cheesman Park killer, and I know you have to notify his next of kin, but this city owes you a debt of gratitude that simply mustn’t be forgotten.”

  Before he could order her to leave again, she ran over to me. “Oh, Olivia, you poor dear. What did that monster do to you?” Based on the horrified look in her eyes, I was pretty sure she recognized what was left of her nightgown. She looked in the direction of Colby’s body and swallowed hard.

  When she looked back at me, I smiled at her, and, just for a moment, she flinched. She recovered just as fast, and gave me the slightest, most imperceptible of nods.

  That’s right, bitch. You may have the attitude, but I’ve got the body count. I win.

  Just then shouting and the unmistakable sound of gunfire came from the basement of the house. There was a whoosh followed by the screech of breaking glass as the basement windows blew out.

  “Leo!” I screamed. “My brother was in there. Help him.” I aimed my hand at the shattered window, shooting a jet of water into the fire.

  The fire crew sprang into action, but it seemed to take forever as they hooked up the hose and went to work. Flames and smoke were pouring out of the open windows. I didn’t release my magic until Leo staggered out, soot-stained, coughing, and supporting one of the SWAT officers. Even from here, I could see the officer was covered in burns and oozing blood. Berto ran over to them. The news crew never stopped filming.

  “Two more people in there.” Leo paused to cough. “Both dead. Couldn’t get them.”

  My whole body was floating in warm molasses and I was vaguely aware of pain, but it was very far away and possibly happening to someone else entirely. They must have got the happy juice hooked up. I heard Cordie arguing with someone, and then she appeared on the stretcher opposite me. “I’m staying with my sister,” she said.

  Report 11

  Targets Acquired

  Memo

  To:General Dxxxx

  From:Major Parker

  Operation Bad Dog went off with moderate success. We acquired two individuals for the program. We were unable to acquire the Alpha without inserting ourselves into the greater battle.

  You should be aware that the team recognized the sisters of Sergeant Mitchell, and at least one member was seen by the older sister. Our monitoring shows she has not shared information with the Sergeant yet, but we expect this to happen within the day. Unit morale is currently suboptimal.

  Subject one is content to eat raw meat and make suggestive comments to female personnel while pleasuring himself. Subject two refuses to play with his squeaky squirrel toy or his squeaky bone. He also ignored the rawhide chews.

  Memo

  To:Major Parker

  From:General Dxxxx

  Subject two is not a pet. If I hear any more about flea collars or squeaky toys, you’ll be sharing his enclosure.

  Please remove all female personnel from contact with both subjects. Evidence from the operation indicates they would be in extreme personal danger should the subjects get loose.

  If Sergeant Mitchell makes contact, remind him of his oath, and that he is still a member of this team. He served, but in a different way. Unit morale is your issue. Handle it.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Do Hospitals Offer Frequent Flyer Programs?

  I think I must have drifted off. When I opened my eyes, bright hospital lights lazily flowed by overhead. I half expected to see a fluffy white Cheshire cat grinning at me from around a corner.

  “Olivia?”

  “What?” I didn’t recognize the man talking to me, but he was ruining my dreams. “Go away. You scared the cat.”

  “Olivia. I’m Doctor Kingston. Do you know where you are?”

  “Not in Las Vegas,” I replied.

  I heard Cordie say, “Olivia!”

  “In a hospital. Again. Where else would I end up?”

  “Do you know what day it is?” asked Doctor Kingston.

  “A sucky one. No wait, that’s not right. It’s the day that bastard Colby died.” I smiled and pictured Colby’s face with a big, red X across it. “Swallow this, bitch,” I said, and couldn’t stop giggling.

  Kingston’s face swam back into view. “Olivia, stay with me,” he said. “They’ll be bringing you to X-ray shortly, but I believe you’re going to need surgery to repair your knee. We’ll know more about your shoulder and arm after your scans.”

  “I don’t want surgery. Surgery sucks. Get with the times and get me a healer,” I muttered.

  The doctor turned and looked at the computer screen. “Don’t let your sister have morphine in the future,” he said to Cordie.

  “That’s not the morphine,” said Cordie. “She always sounds like that.”

  “Cordie, you silly,” I said, and suddenly realized something was missing. “Where’s my necklace? Who took my necklace? Where’s my dagger? The werewolves might come back.”

  “Olivia, it’s okay. I have all of your stuff. I won’t let any werewolves get you. I promise.” Cordie squeezed my hand, trying to be reassuring. She smiled weakly at Doctor Kingston. “You might be right about the morphine.”

  “Hey! Doctor. I got a question for you,” I half whispered.

  “Yes, Olivia?”

  “Do hospitals have punch cards? Like after ten visits, I get a free kidney or something? Or how about a dozen donuts? I like donuts.” I couldn’t stop giggling. I guess I wasn’t surprised when I didn’t get an answer. I watched the dust motes sword fight in the air while Cordie and the doctor talked near the giant seahorse.

  “I’m going to start a new record type for your sister. What does she call herself?” asked the doctor.

  “A Dark Elf,” said Cordie.

  “Okay, new file, Dark Elf. Morphine is contra-indicated. Appears to act as a hallucinogen,” said Doctor Kingston as he typed his notes into the computer.

  The doctor vanished in a puff of purple smoke, and a pink-a
nd-yellow-striped tiger bounced into the room on its tail. “Olivia, I’m Nurse Lily. We’re going to get you cleaned up.”

  “Okey-dokey. You’re so bouncy. How do you get your tail to do that? Do you think Kat could bounce like that, Cordie?” I was getting dizzy watching her boinging up and down and up and down.

  The nurse chased the puffer fish away from the bed, and put a clownfish in its place.

  “How do they breathe?” I asked her.

  “How do what breathe, dear?” asked Nurse Lily of the bouncy tail.

  “The fish. How do they breathe in the air like that? Are they magic?” I reached up to poke at the fish, but Cordie grabbed my arm.

  “Leave the fish alone, Olivia. You’re right. They’re magic fish. Don’t tell anyone.” She held my hand while the tiger nurse probed and poked at me.

  “That hurt!” I complained, loudly.

  “She has to get the glass out, sweetie. You need to hold still.”

  “Why didn’t you say so?” I held out my hand and thought about glass, broken glass in me, and pulled.

  I shrieked as pain blossomed across my body, and my hand filled with bloody glass shards. “Ow, fucking ow! That hurt!” I whimpered.

  The nurse bounced away from the bed in a blur of pink and yellow stripes. “Oh dear Lord!” she shrieked, and the alarms in my room went nuts.

  There was much annoying bandaging and asking of questions. At least I put all the glass in one tight little group for them. They should be thanking me. I pretended I only spoke Dark Elf and abandoned the mess to Cordie. She was still talking when the tech arrived to take me to X-ray. I don’t know why the security officer was following us. “Ater-lay, Ordie-cay.”

  On the way down, the hallway looked like a funhouse tunnel. The other stretchers in the hall were a blur of brightly-hued fur and undulating limbs. It was like every cartoon I’d ever seen threw up in my brain.

  Sometime during the multitude of X-rays, the clownfish turned back into an IV bag, and the pain started gnawing on me in a serious way. On the way back up, I was ready to crawl out of my skin. Waiting for the elevator was a painful eternity. Another stretcher was already in the large elevator. As the doors closed, I recognized the man handcuffed to the stretcher next to mine. He was one of Colby’s men. A motorcycle dropped on his leg. Everyone else was dead. All he had to do was blame one of the others, and he’d probably walk away with a slap on the wrist. Not if I could help it.

  He had one of those pain drip controller machines attached to his stretcher. I bet his leg sure hurt, what with getting shot and having a bike fall on it. I wouldn’t want him to be too uncomfortable. I focused on the machine, and on the device that cut off the flow between doses, and then focused my will as I closed my fist.

  His eyes drifted closed as his breathing slowed.

  The elevator doors slid open and I smiled and waved goodbye. I was nearly back to my room when someone noticed a problem with the prisoner. Alarms blared and people went into panic mode. I already knew it would be too late. I was more than happy to wait patiently until they returned me to my own room.

  Cordie was still there, waiting for me. I said, “Hey sis, I feel like hell. Is everyone else okay? Where’s Kat?

  “I know you feel like hell, sweetie. They have to get the morphine out of your system before you can have anything else. Everyone else is being tended to and is being very cooperative. They said you could only have one visitor, and I’m being selfish and staying with you. I know you want to see Kat, but you would have scared her. They’re probably going to move you to a room, and Kat will see you then.”

  Doctor Kingston came in carrying a pile of X-rays. “Olivia, I hear you’re back with us.”

  “Apparently. If you mean I can think straight and my entire body hurts, then yes, I’m back. Back sucks.”

  He pinned the first few X-rays to the light board. “This is your knee. You’re going to need surgery, but it’s not an emergency. We’re going to do a cast and you’re going to get an appointment with your primary care doctor and an orthopedist.”

  He moved to the next set of X-rays. “This is your shoulder. While the slash is deep and needs to be cleaned and stitched, nothing important was damaged. You got lucky. This could have been a lot worse. Your lab results show you lost enough blood that we’d like to give you a unit, except that your blood doesn’t match any type we’ve ever seen. Your friend, Miss Davis, was kind enough to donate a unit for you. As far as we can tell, she’s a match. I suggest if you’re going to continue assaulting gangbangers that you plan ahead a few months and bank some of your own blood, just to be safe.”

  “I’m feeling stupid, so use small words. My knee needs surgery but the hospital isn’t going to do it. I have to come back later. I need blood except you don’t have it but you do. You have to sew things up in my shoulder. Does that mean I get to go home today?”

  “We’re going to clean and stitch the shoulder fairly soon. We’ll get you started on the blood. We’d like to keep you at least through tomorrow to make sure you don’t have a reaction to the blood, or to any other medications. We’ll numb your shoulder with locals. By the time you’re ready to go up to your room, we should be able to try another method of pain management. We’ll be much more conservative this time.”

  As it turned out, the folks arrived to do the cast before whoever was supposed to do the shoulder. Since I got to pick the cast color, I went with a royal blue, to match Kat’s eyes. Cordie was on her phone for ages. She smiled at me whenever I caught her eye, but she didn’t put down the phone.

  I hurt and I wanted to go home. I started crying, which only made everything hurt worse. Cordie ended her call and came back over to hold my hand. “What’s wrong, baby?”

  “I want to go home, but how am I going to get to my room? I can’t do the stairs. I lost my phone. It’s smashed in the park. My car and purse are still in the car, abandoned in the park. I’m tired. I can’t fix this.”

  She squeezed my hand and stroked my hair. “Don’t worry, Olivia. I’m taking care of things. We’re setting up a bed downstairs until the tech can come out and get Grammy’s lift system working on the stairs again. Her wheelchair and walker will both be ready to go. I will buy you a new phone. You’re alive. You saved me and Berto. Everything else is minor details. Razaini knows where your car is. Someone will retrieve your stuff. It’ll probably be home before you are. Lieutenant Clark is even at bay for now. He’s getting his own cast.”

  “What happened?”

  “Apparently during the initial charge to battle, he tripped over a downed clothesline and broke his ankle.”

  That made me nearly crack a smile. “How undignified. Did he shoot the clothesline for insubordination?”

  “I don’t think so. No matter what fights you’ve had with him, he really had our back on this one. If he hadn’t supported us, and called in the SWAT team and extra officers, a lot of other people in that neighborhood might have gotten killed.”

  “What about my necklace? And the dagger?”

  “I have them. The paramedics gave me a bag and I put them away for you. Please stop asking about them, because I don’t want them taken away as evidence.”

  “Okay. Thanks, sis. I’m glad you’re here for me.”

  “I’m glad I’m here for you too, Olivia. Let’s not push each other away again, okay?”

  “Okay.”

  I was half dozing when the team showed up to work on my shoulder. I highly recommend avoiding this kind of repair if at all possible. They did numb it first, with about a million little burning shots all around where it already hurt. Cordie never let go of my hand the whole time. She was my anchor.

  They finally pronounced me safely free of the morphine and administered a new pain med, before wheeling me up to my room. I had my nice new royal blue cast, and a spiffy sling for my left arm so I wouldn’t put any strain on the stitches in that shoulder. If one more thing happened to me in the next week, I was going to stamp my invisible Injury of t
he Month card and yell, “Bingo!”

  Cordie followed me to my hospital room, excusing herself to make even more calls while they got me suitably arranged. I had one of those little trapeze things to help me pull myself up in bed, except I’m not sure how I was supposed to use it one-handed. I guess the shoulder team and leg team needed to send each other a memo or something. I was exhausted and the medicine made me sleepy, but I didn’t want to close my eyes without Cordie there in the room. I tried to not imagine Vivian’s blood turning all my honest little blood cells into devious little politician blood cells.

  The nurse was helping me manage water with a straw when Cordie got back. “Kat’s on her way up, and I texted Leo your room number. You need to try and sleep. You’re safe now.”

  “Not sleeping without someone here. What if there were more wolves? What happened to the ones guarding you and Berto, and how did you get out of the cage?”

  Leo wheeled himself in, followed by Kat. He was sporting new bandages and hooked up to oxygen. “No catching up without me,” he wheezed.

  Kat ran around him, and stopped, staring at me. “I want to hug you and I don’t know how. You’re a mess.”

  “Come here.” I reached for her hand and squeezed it. “You can still give me a kiss. Part of me works.” She kissed me and held tight to my hand. There were tear streaks in her fur. “No crying. We won,” I told her.

  She snuffled and wiped her eyes. “Right.”

  I turned to my sister. “Cordie, you first. What happened to those two thugs with the hose?”

  “You and Colby were arguing, and these guys reached over the fence with heavy duty dogcatcher poles. They hooked the guys around their necks and yanked them into the other yard. They were all in black and had greasepaint on their faces. That wasn’t even the weirdest part. One of them popped back up, and was staring at you and then me. He pulls this little flexible wire saw out of his pocket and tosses it to me, does this little salute, and then disappears again. He had this funky patch on his sleeve. It looked like a grey skull on a black background, with VM stitched in the middle of the skull. Berto got to the wire first, and was trying to saw through the metal ring in the ground. I took it away from him and threaded it through the leather collar. It cut through that in no time. Your cat appeared out of nowhere and did something to the padlock. It popped open and he disappeared again. I got the gate open as fast as I could and came to check on you.”