Recovering (16 page)

I grunt and sling Tucker’s bundled body over my shoulder. His
bare feet dangle as I walk across the room and cautiously open the door. Just
as I step out, a door across the hall flings open. The female pirate, her
costume shoved down to her hips, stumbles out. She sobs loudly, way too loudly,
and mascara-tinted tears lance down her cheeks.

I quickly set down my cargo and hold up my blood-stained
hands.

“Hey, hey, hey.” I open my arms and she tumbles into them.
Her body shudders violently, all that delicious energy heaving against me. Her
energy is music to me.
Sweet music.
I can hear it inside the inner
cavities of my mind, plucking beautiful harp strings. Another time, another
place, I wouldn’t have been strong enough to resist all that energy, all that
fear.

“Help. I….need…he’s dead….he killed him….Batman….we have to
call the…the….”

“Shhhhhh,” I say to her gently as my fingers find the carotid
artery in her neck. I press firmly.

“Stop. Wait…..wait…” the girl mumbles. She tries to break out
of my embrace, but her efforts are nothing compared to my strength. I keep my
hold, and watch the red spikes of fear fade as her aura flattens. When her legs
give out, I catch her.

 “You missed one,” I say to Gabe who stands in the doorway
panting hard.

“He had three girls in there with ‘em,” Gabe says. “I got Red
Riding Hood and the witch. Man, Red Riding Hood gave me quite a chase. You good
on your end?”

“Tucker Cartwright.” I nod toward the bundle at my feet. I
carry the limp pirate back into the room. “Got a little bloody.”

 Gabe’s angel – the vampire – is sprawled on a huge,
luxurious bed, now sporting a perfect round hole in his forehead. The two
unconscious girls are laid out nicely on the pillows beside him. The
half-dressed witch has a tranq dart in her arm. I don’t see a dart in Red
Riding Hood.

“Pull the sheet and wrap him up,” I tell Gabe.

“Yep.” He shoves the vampire off the bed, and the body thuds
against the floor. “Any of that blood yours?”

So that’s why his voice is so hard.

I lay pirate girl down next to her sleeping companions. “No,
it’s Tucker’s. Had to use my dagger. It got dicey.” I realize the bad pun only
after I say it.

“I don’t like dicey.” It’s not the way Gabe says it, but the
flare of his aura, those spikes of pained reds, that feels like a punch.

He rolls up the vampire in the crisp white sheet, turning him
into a life-sized bowling pin. A ruby stain immediately begins to form and
metastasize near the top.

“Time to go. Tarren’s probably waiting for us.”

Gabe grunts, and wobbling only a little, heaves the swathed
vampire over his shoulder. When we make it back to the hallway, I reload Tucker
onto my shoulder. Thank god the two trolls didn’t come upstairs and find his
bundled corpse laying in the middle of the hallway.

“There.” Gabe points to a door that opens up into a Jack and
Jill bathroom. I twist the crystal knob, and damn, the bathroom is so big you
could probably fit an entire cheerleading squad inside and still have room for
the basketball team in the stone shower.

“God, why are so many bad guys so rich?” Gabe says behind me.

“Batman is rich too,” I point out. Already, the shaking is
beginning to quiet in my limbs. The image of the endless crimson puddle of
Tucker’s blood is retreating from my mind as my training kicks in. A long, thin
horizontal window sits about six feet up from the tub. I reach up, slide it
open, and punch out the screen.

“You go first, bring the car around,” I say.

“Batman doesn’t…” Gabe starts.

“…unless you want to shove these guys through that window.”

Gabe looks at the distance from floor to window. He’s strong
for his size, but I know he doesn’t want to try shoulder pressing two hundred
pounds of dead weight over his head. “Lady’s choice,” he says and gives me a
gracious little bow before stepping into the tub.

“You need any help?” I ask Gabe teasingly. “I can give you a
boost.” The window is small, high up. Most people wouldn’t be able to manage it
without a step ladder and a serious diet.

“In case you’ve forgotten, I was skvyying my skinny ass
through tiny windows in giant, rich-guy bathrooms long before you ever joined
this club,” Gabe says. Then he sticks his tongue out. “Plus, Batman can always
handle himself.”

He grabs the window ledge and swings his body up and out in
one fluid motion.

“Batman has a fucking butler,” I remind him.

I hear him laugh, and then his gloved fingertips disappear
from the ledge. I listen and hear the faint impact as he hits the ground below
and cusses. I wait, watching the weird blobby shape the blood makes on the
white sheet covering the vampire.

“It’s clear,” Gabe says into my earpiece. “No eyes out here.”

And then it’s time for my hat trick. I start with Tucker, who
is smaller and thinner than his vampire friend. I boost him back onto my
shoulder and step into the empty tub. I know that Tucker is dead, but I still
tense up, half expecting a hand to come shooting out from the cover to wrap
around my neck.

Get a grip,
I tell myself. With a quick bend of the
knees, I press Tucker over my head and shove him through the window. He gets a
little stuck, but I push, and then he’s gone, tumbling into the night.

The vampire is much more stubborn. His body is unwieldy in
the thin sheet, and I almost lose him as I struggle to get him overhead. He’s
all muscle, tall and heavy, with broad shoulders and a barrel chest that does
not want to go through the window. I get his legs out, but his chest gets stuck.
I keep seeing that growing red stain over his head, the locks of dark hair
peeking out from the top of the sheet.

Dammit, go!

I shove his shoulders, scooting him out little by little.
Dear
God, what if we have to cut him up?
I left my bone saw in my other nurse’s
costume. That joke isn’t even funny. I’ve seen a lot of gruesomeness in the
past year, but I’m not sure I could handle hacking off limbs and spilling out
intestines. With one final, brutal shove, the vampire clears the window and
drops like a stone. I almost feel bad for the police who are going to have to
investigate this crazy mess of a crime scene.

In one smooth motion, I grasp the window’s edge and slide my
body through the narrow opening. I let go of the ledge and drop two stories
into the bushes below. My landing is soft, but the impact jars my elbow and the
other sore places where I took a beating curtesy of Tucker’s telekinesis. I’ll
see what pretty bruise art I have as soon as we get clear of this place.

Just as I pull my soggy vampire from a flattened bush, the
jeep pulls up, headlights off. Gabe jumps out and opens the back. He grabs
Tucker.

 “Screen was still in the window,” Gabe says to me as if I
hadn’t noticed that one part of our trio is conspicuously absent. The bodies
land heavily in the back,
wump, wump,
one after the other.

“Maybe Tarren took another way out,” I say without
conviction.

“He never deviates unless there’s a problem,” Gabe says. He
unmutes his phone. “Batman, check, nurse check. Wings are clipped. Cargo loaded.
What’s your status, Sheriff?”

We wait for Tarren’s check-in.

Nothing.

“If he doesn’t check in, he’d want us to wait ten minutes and
then go,” I say with no conviction. Gabe and I look at each other. We are of
one mind.

“You climb back up through the window,” Gabe says. “I’ll get
back in through the front and meet you upstairs.”

Just as I nod, something hurdles out of the window and lands
with a
SMACK
on the ground.
Tarren!
My heart nearly explodes. I
stumble forward, staring at the unmoving object.

“Watch out, another one coming,” Gabe says, touching my arm.
His aura stings, snapping me through the cloud of my fear just as another dark
shape plummets to the ground. I look up at the window just as two boots slide
out, followed by legs and Tarren’s big body. It’s amazing he can even squeeze
his wide shoulders through that tiny opening. He drops hard and rolls, his hat
speeding away from him. When he stands up, Tarren favors an ankle. A single
trickle of sweat rolls down his temple.

“Everything okay?” I pick up his hat and hand it to him.
“Are you injured?” Tarren’s eyes are planted on the bloody smears on my costume
as he takes his hat.

“It wasn’t pretty, but I got it done.” I lean down and pick
up one of the sheet-wrapped bodies.

Tarren bends to collect the other body, but Gabe steps up,
blocking him. “Next time, check in,” he says. His gaze holds Tarren, and all of
Gabe’s smiles and jokes are buried beneath the red fear that streaks through
his aura. 

Tarren nods, and I wonder as I so often do how the one could
possibly survive if the other were lost. I got a glimpse of that chaotic ruin
last year when Gabe almost died…because of what I did…what I became. I push
those thoughts away. The mission isn’t over yet. 

“We need to go,” Tarren says, and Gabe moves out of his way.
Tarren and I drop the final two bodies into the back of the jeep. His aura hugs
low to his body, almost as gray as his eyes.
Craptastic.
His eyes only
shift from blue to gray when he’s angry. Is he still mad about the fact that I
didn’t have a tranq gun, or is this entire mission just giving him the heebie
jeebies, like me? He’s holding his aura down with all the control he possesses,
and I can’t read anything off it.

Tarren closes the back door on our silent cargo. I let out my
breath, feeling like I was just released from an incredibly tight corset. This
mission could have turned into a shit hurricane in a hundred different ways,
but we improvised, and we took four very bad people out of commission
permanently. I wasn’t fast enough to save that poor dead girl lying in Tucker
Cartwright’s bed, but there are other starlets who will live to audition
another day because of me.

We did a good thing. Won another small battle.

I open my mouth to say something profound and encouraging to
my weary team when my phone dings with an incoming message.

Shit.
Rain knows I’m on a mission. He shouldn’t
text…unless.

Gabe says something behind me, but I don’t hear it as my
hands tear into my holster, digging out my phone. Stupid fingers. I press too
hard, and the slider on the screen doesn’t move. I take a little breath, and
try again, slower. This time the phone opens. I jab at my passcode and then
slap the message icon. My breath turns into a garbled sob as I read the message.

Hurt. Help. Enterprise.
 

***

LEAPING
is available on Amazon.