Aces Wilde: Immortal Vegas, Book 5 (13 page)

But in the absence of that fight, in the wake of an attack on me, this leader they did not know, could not respect…they’d laid down their lives for me instead.

“No,” I said again as I locked gazes with the man looming over me. Sweat poured down his face, and he flinched back as I moved my hand to touch his temple. An emotion I couldn’t name swelled in my chest, thick and heavy, the same kind of panic and desperation I’d felt in the Magician’s mansion not two days ago churning again. But there was no anger here. There was only despair.

This was the first man to have reached me, the first to have laid down his body to save me when his own death would have been the only result.

“You will not die,” I said again. “Not you, not here.”

My hand firmed on the man’s cheek and he looked at me with confusion—confusion from someone who’d not thought twice about defying bullets with his body. I could smell something burning, and my fingers grew hot—too hot, my whole body suffused with a new agony now as my blood seemed set on fire and my gaze remained locked with the stranger’s, his dark eyes staring out at me from a weathered face twisted and broken from long years of battle. He’d probably been the first to seek to deny my place, but he also was the first to help me retain it, for all that it was useless, for all that there was nothing left around me but death and destruction.

But this man wouldn’t die.

“No,” I whispered a final time, and the heat left me, heat and sight, and the general’s own eyes grew wide with a different kind of panic as, finally, silence settled over the alley and I dropped into darkness at last.

Chapter Eleven

Death seemed like it should be a lot more comfortable. And quieter.

Machines chirped and whirred around me, a symphony of bleating alarms, while the voices of men whispered in hushed tones. Those men were beyond the door, I realized, beyond the window, but the sounds of their earnest concern were still as evident to me as if they were murmuring in my ear.

One of the words was “miracle,” which made me happy, since miracles were always a good thing. And then I heard the phrase “brain damage,” and I got less happy.

I took stock of my perforated body. I had bandages on my shoulder and both arms, but my torso seemed fairly un-mummified. My head was swaddled in cloth and my legs felt like two lumps—no sensation at all below my hips.

The reaction of my heart monitor to that little realization had the men looking up outside of the ICU, but before they could burst in, I funneled a burst of desperate WTF downward and was rewarded with both legs jerking simultaneously—the blast of pain so great that I passed out again.

The next time I awoke, it was nighttime. I’d been moved to a room that allowed visitors, apparently, or Nikki had found a way in. She sat slumped in a chair several sizes too small for her body, her red hair locked down in a ponytail, her outfit a sedated version of SWAT—camo pants, combat boots, black tank top and work shirt. No glitter in sight.

Unaccountably, seeing her so unadorned was worse than the pain gnawing at me through the haze of whatever drugs were hooked up to my drip, and tears sparked behind my eyes.

I blinked and whispered her name.

Nikki’s eyes popped open immediately, and she sat forward with so much force, I cringed back, though she was still five feet away from me.

“Dollface,” she blurted, her voice sounding like she’d just come off a three-bottle bender. “How are you and where’ve you been?”

“What?” I blinked at her, lifting my hand slightly despite the wave of nausea. “I’ve been here, haven’t I?”

“Not exactly.” Nikki rubbed what looked to be tears out of her own eyes. “You’ve been out for four days. Came to briefly to hear the docs tell it, then coma city. I thought…I mean I hoped you were with Armaeus. But…” She scowled at my bandages. “You aren’t better. Then again, you also aren’t dead. So it was tough to figure.”

“Armaeus…” I inched myself higher on the pillow, my brain starting to fire again. Nikki had a point. “He didn’t send flowers, I guess.”

“Uh, no. None of the Council has been by, other than Death, which didn’t make me all that happy, I gotta tell you. Nothing like getting a house call from someone who trucks in mortal souls.”

I smiled, then instantly sobered. Mainly because smiling hurt. “She say anything?”

“Only wanted to let you know she’s been to the house in Paris, inspected the work there. The Gamon slaves have had their ink altered enough that they can’t be tracked. They can go home when they’re ready. She was glad you let her know they were there. Oh, and Father Jerome sends his love and prayers and his wish that you’d get your head out of your ass and be more careful.”

I lifted my brows.

Brows didn’t hurt.

“I may have taken some liberties with the translation.” Nikki managed a grin, but her eyes remained clouded. “You scared me girl. What a cluster that whole scene in the parking lot was.”

“Yeah…” I groaned, shifting position slightly. “What happened to General Som?”

“Found her right outside the door, but she’s fine. Apparently, she’d known about the general throw down, not the impromptu firing squad. She’s pretty shook up, though she’s trying not to show it. Four fatalities, multiple gunshot wounds, should have been five.” Her gaze slid to mine. “Or six, really. You lost a shit ton of blood and cracked your head when you fell. Two broken bones in your legs, one in your shoulder.”

“My legs.” I frowned down at the end of the bed, where I was happy to see my feet. “They’re broken?”

“They were. That’s why—” Nikki blew out a breath. “You broke out of traction the first night, snapped pins. By the time they got to you, you’d passed out again, but the X-rays showed healed bone. The muscle and skin were still torn all to hell, but the bones were solid. And your pain was off the charts, so they pumped you full of morphine.”

I stared at her, too shocked to speak for a moment. How had all that happened without me realizing it? And why was I still alive? I swallowed, then managed another question. “How could they tell I was in pain if I was out of it?”

“Heart rate. Seizures. Brain waves. You name it, you were radiating agony. Apparently, it hurt the hospital staff to stand too close to you. Which, again, kind of negated the whole likelihood that Armaeus was on the job.”

“Death have anything to say about that?”

“Honestly? She seemed happy he wasn’t here. But then she’s kind of a twisted sister, you ask me. She said she’ll be ready for your next tat when you are. Then she left, leaving a trail of staring docs and nurses behind her. Whatever she’s got, there’s no shortage of people who want it.”

“They should be careful what they wish for.” I lifted my left arm experimentally. “What else did you say I broke?”

“Nothing, anymore.”

“Any…more.” My body might have recovered, but my brain was clearly still shredded. I couldn’t fathom healing so quickly without Armaeus’s help—but there was no way he’d been here. Surely he wouldn’t have left me in so much pain.

Right?

Then again…where was he? He’d never left me this broken for this long. Not once in all the time I’d worked for him. What had happened? What game was he playing?

And, more importantly, when would it stop?

“Yep,” Nikki continued, oblivious to my growing hysteria. “You’re pretty much un-Humpty-Dumptied. And your muscles are healing, obviously way ahead of schedule, but you ripped out your feeding tube three different times, once despite the fact you were restrained. So they stopped pumping food into you.” She eyed me. “Hungry?”

I hadn’t thought about it before she mentioned it, then my stomach growled, and I realized how…empty everything was. Hollowed out. “I must be freaking out the entire floor.”

“We got you moved after the first day. That’s why I’m not thinking the Council is completely hands off here. The doc on staff here is Dr. Sells, but she’s acting like she’s never seen you before—and doing such a damned good job of it, I don’t know if she’s doing it on purpose or simply trying to screw with me.”

“Got it. Well, if she’s here, then Armaeus knows my condition.” Betrayal swamped me, but I forced the next words out if only to convince myself. “Apparently I wasn’t that bad.”

Nikki’s snort was cut short when the door opened. A familiar face stood at the door despite the late hour—Dr. Margaret Sells, probably the only Las Vegas physician who made house calls to the Arcana Council.

Now she eyed me with patent shock. “You’re awake.”

There were so many possible snide comebacks, I was rendered temporarily mute.

Fortunately, Nikki suffered no such limitations. “You take a special class to figure that out, or does that kind of medical brilliance come naturally to you?”

Dr. Sells sent her a withering glare. “Visiting hours are clearly posted, Miss Dawes.”

“Yeah, fortunately your staff thought better of trying to manhandle me off the floor. Special wing, special rules, sweet cakes. No one was willing to ring you up to confirm.”

“Why am I still hospitalized?” I asked bluntly as Sells’s gaze returned to me. “Did the Council drop me from their insurance plan?”

She moved over to check the monitors, as obvious an evasion as humanly possible without her running out of the room. “I’ve been providing them with extensive updates.”

“Right. What you’re saying is, they know, they’ve simply left me here to work things out on my own.”

She finally looked back at me. “That’s correct.”

Sweet Christmas.
I’d been cut off. Well and truly cut off. The shock was almost worse than the pain coursing through me despite the morphine drip.

Almost.

“They tell you why they put me in time out?” I asked, my tone as bleak as an executioner’s blade.

Sells apparently didn’t share my dismay at being cut off from the Council. “Do you actually want their help?” she shot back, her gaze challenging.

I squinted at her. “You’re kidding me, right?”

“I’m not,” she said. “From all accounts, you’ve managed to bring yourself back from death’s door with no outside intervention. That’s nothing short of miraculous for the average human, or even the above average Connected. Believe me, I’ve seen my share of gifted souls.”

“Well, don’t get too excited. I had help.” I looked down at my chest. “Wait. Where’re Soo’s pendants?”

She frowned, stepping toward me. With a gentle touch, she lifted the collar of my gown away from my neck—but there was nothing there. Not even a scar to mark where Soo’s necklace had lain.

“You had nothing on you when you came in except your clothes, which were pretty badly singed and bloodied. We gave those to the police for evidence.”

I winced, imagining Brody getting a load of that laundry, but Sells continued. “Which is why I say your recovery appears to be completely self-generated, and as such, it’s something you should be proud of. Celebrating, even.”

Reaching over with my swaddled right hand, I tapped the tube feeding into my left arm. “There’s a lot of morphine going into me right now, yeah?”

She pursed her lips, then nodded. “There is.”

“Well, I still feel like road-rash flambé. Ergo, healing clearly hasn’t been a bundle of fun. Ergo, yeah, all things being equal, I could use a little outside help.”

Sells chirped something supportive, then spent a few minutes more going over my recovery points—skipping neatly over the one thing that worried me most. As she wrapped up her assessment of my no longer broken bones, torn muscles, deep bruising, and blood loss, I fixed her with as steely a glare as I could, given that my head was wrapped in fluffy white gauze.

“What about my brain?” I asked.

She quirked a look at me, playing Doctor Stupid. “I’m sorry?”

Her careful tonality made my stomach tighten into a thick knot. “My brain. I overheard doctors talking about possible brain damage. What’s. That. About?”

“Your preliminary scans have been…anomalous,” she said, again with the hesitation that ratcheted my worry yet tighter. “There’s almost too much activity, and in quadrants of the brain not consistent for where your injuries are greatest.”

“So my eggs have been scrambled is what you’re saying.” I stared at her, unable to force my gaze away. “Nothing’s working right.”

“That’s not what I’m saying at all,” she replied, too calm, too cool in the face of my clammy-skinned fear. “Your abdominal organ functions were not affected by the attack—nothing shot, barely a scratch—yet that section of the brain has been lit up since you arrived.” She peered at me intently, clearly fascinated by the medical mysteries I presented. I couldn’t drum up the same enthusiasm. “It’s as if your sacral core needs attention, despite the fact that it has no injuries.”

I frowned, then flopped my own bandaged hand in the general direction of my sacral core. Nothing happened. Nothing, at this point, was good.

“The areas of the brain associated with extrasensory cognition have also been engaged to almost alarming amounts, and your metabolism has become increasingly erratic.” Sells said. Then her eyes widened. “Let me get some food in you before you pass out again. You removed—”

“I’ve heard.” I blew out a pensive breath even as she pulled out her cell phone and tapped on it quickly. “Straight up, Dr. Sells. What happened to me? If the Council didn’t heal me, how am I still here?”

She dropped the phone back into her pocket, and for the first time since she’d entered the room, her smile seemed natural…even a little dazed.

“We don’t know, Sara,” she said quietly. “You should’ve been dead. Without Council intervention, you would have ordinarily been dead before you even reached the hospital. There was significant cauterization at the bullet wound sites, blood vessels sealed off, muscles held in stasis. But there’s nothing to account for such a large heat event at the crime scene. It’s as if something burned through you and out of you, then was gone.”

Fire. Agonizing internal fire. I did remember that, vaguely.

Dr. Sells shook her head. “As much as I don’t care for this word, you are something of a miracle.”

The door swung open, and she turned to the orderly who came in with a tray laden with dishes.