Woman King (40 page)

I pushed myself up, only to nearly collapse
from a sharp pain in the back of my leg. I made an awkward pivot to
my left and immediately collided with Josef, who seized me tightly
and started to shout. Despite the volume, it was hard to tell what
he was saying over the ringing in my ears.

“I have her!” Josef yelled. “William, I have
her!”

“How do we get out of here?” I asked, worried
the fire would kill the vampires before they could escape the
flames.

“We run,” he said. “Now that we’ve found you,
we run like hell.” Josef grabbed my hand and started to pull me
through the smoke. I resisted. It felt as if we were heading
straight for the inferno.

“What about Elsa? And Gabriel? We have to
find them too,” I yelled, struggling against him. I could sense the
immense fear my friends were feeling, but I could not see them
through the smoke and ash of the fire.

“Don’t stop,” he growled. “Not for anything,
not for anyone.”

I obeyed, hearing the sound of fear in his
voice, something I would have thought impossible a few weeks
ago.

“Where is William?” I asked, wishing it was
his hand dragging me through the curtain of smoke.

“He’s moving the wounded to the fountain,” he
said quickly. “We’re going to make a jump.” He meant the portal;
the fountain Elsa had called the Guardian. I realized we were only
a few hundred yards away. Josef’s mention of the wounded brought my
thoughts back to Aidan.

“Aidan?” I asked, choking back a sob as I
remembered that last moment when he had turned to smile at Elsa
before reaching for the door handle.

“Dead, I presume,” Josef said quickly,
yelling over the noise. “We couldn’t get close enough to see. We
were looking for you. The force of the blast threw you backwards,
away from the car, but then you seemed to disappear. Until you
bumped into me, William and I couldn’t see you through the
smoke.”

Although I tried, I wasn’t able to pay
attention to his words. I could barely hear. There was a tremendous
buzzing in my ears. I was suddenly aware that my leg was throbbing,
and it was difficult to walk. Josef was forced to drag me toward
the fountain, my shredded leg trailing behind. I leaned down,
trying to locate the pain, running my hand quickly along the back
of my left thigh. My fingers returned, crimson, covered in my own
blood. Josef saw my hand, but wouldn’t let me stop.

“Later!” he said. “We need to get out of here
before the police arrive. All of us; there can be no trace.”

I nodded, trying to keep up with him, but it
was a losing battle. The pain overwhelmed my mobility. My leg began
to feel chilled in the night air thanks to all of the blood
collecting in the fabric of my pant leg. When I caught a glimpse of
Josef, I opened my mouth to tell him to leave me, that I was too
injured to move, but I never had the chance. Darkness closed in and
I felt a faint sensation of falling, and the sound of my name being
called from far away.

I’m not sure how much time passed, but
sometime later I awoke to “Drink, Olivia. Drink!” Those were the
only words echoing in my head, and I struggled to respond, unable
to awaken from a deep sleep. Someone was pushing me, imploring me
to wake up, but I didn’t want to. I was very tired, so I resisted.
The person on the other end of my dream, though, was relentless and
persisted, shaking me and rattling my bones until I regained
consciousness.

I blinked several times, trying to make sense
of the chaos and bloodshed before me. People were leaning against
the walls of the room, some slumped on the floor, bodies wounded,
bloodied, bandaged and disoriented. I scanned the faces, trying to
piece it all together. Elsa was on her knees, hovering over a body
under a sheet. Why, I wondered, were we all here? Then, as if to
make the answer obvious, the searing pain returned, passing through
my leg and shooting up my spine until it caught in my throat,
forcing me to choke back the agony. Now, I was present, in the
moment. My eyes opened wide and quickly recognized Josef’s face
directly in front of me.

“Drink, Olivia, you must drink from William,”
he implored me. William was also kneeling inches away from me. He
was holding his arm in front of me, revealing an open cut, his
blood pooling at the edges of the incision.

Despite my injuries, I managed to recall
Lily’s warning about drinking a vampire’s blood.

“Why?” I managed to ask, my tongue rough and
swollen in my mouth. “Is it safe? What will happen to me?”

“It’s safe enough. Besides, you won’t survive
unless we stop the bleeding right away,” Josef said. “You’ve lost a
lot of blood. Drinking from William will help close the wound at
the back of your leg more quickly.”

William, stone-faced, nodded softly in
agreement. He held my gaze, and I could hear him clearly inside my
head pleading with me to hurry up before I bled to death.

I was in no position to doubt them, so I
nodded.

William brought his arm to my lips and I
opened my mouth. His blood was warm and sweet, quenching a terrible
thirst I wasn’t aware of until the liquid ran down my throat. After
a few seconds of timid sipping, my body’s survival instinct kicked
in and I began to drink more robustly. Feverishly I drank from him
until finally he pulled away. I mewed like a kitten whose milk bowl
had been removed, but William soothed me.

“That’s enough for now, darlin,” he said
softly. I heard him from a faraway place, his voice slightly
muffled. I felt drowsy, maybe from his blood, and once again, I
succumbed to sleep.

My rest was short-lived. I awoke a few
minutes later to witness something I could hardly believe. William
was stitching up the back of my leg. I came back to life with a
start, just as he pulled a stitch through my skin.

“Olivia, love, stay still,” William urged me.
“Someone come over and hold her down.”

“This hurts like hell,” I said, to no one in
particular, tears springing from my eyes.

I was rewarded with a sharp prick in my arm,
and looked up to see Elsa holding a needle.

“You’re a nurse too?” I asked, my words
slurring as the painkiller dulled my senses.

“Try to rest, Olivia,” Josef whispered. “This
will help with the pain.”

I did as I was told, and when I awoke the
third time, I found myself in bed at William’s house. This time I
knew where I was, and sat up quickly, desperate to see William, to
know that he was OK. I rose and saw that he was sitting in a chair
across from the bed, a guitar on his lap, great sadness written on
his face.

“I thought you were going to die,” he said
quietly. “You lost so much blood. The glass from the museum. You
wouldn’t wake up.”

I began to recall the events at the
concourse, the injury to my leg, Josef dragging me to the fountain
to make the jump. I remembered drinking William’s blood in a
strange room I didn’t recognize.

“I did wake up though,” I said. “We were in a
room with lots of people and you put your arm out. I did drink from
you, right?”

William looked down at his guitar. “I didn’t
want this to be the way it happened,” he said. “I wanted you to do
it freely, to want to bind yourself to me.”

“You saved my life,” I said earnestly. “I
would have died without your help.”

“I know, but,” he said, and then paused.

“But what?” I asked.

“You drank a lot of my blood,” he said. “Once
I drink from you, our bond will be very strong.

“Go ahead,” I said, holding my arm out, wrist
up. “Let’s finish this so we can stop worrying.”

“No,” William said. “You’re too weak. We’ll
have to wait until you are better to even consider it.”

I was fully aware of the depths of his
anguish. His feelings were strong inside me, almost parallel
sensations to my own. I wondered if it would wear off eventually,
but for now, I had another question.

“My leg,” I asked. “Will I be able to walk
again?”

“That depends,” said a surly voice from the
opposite corner of the room. It was Josef, walking into the room
carrying a serving tray carrying a glass of water, a bowl of broth,
a bottle of Jack Daniel’s and two tumblers.

“Do you promise to listen to your nurses and
follow their instructions?” Josef asked, setting the tray on my
bedside table.

“Maybe,” I grumbled. “What do I have to
do?”

“Your leg will be fine,” William said. “I
asked Nadia to come over and examine it. You needed a lot of
stitches. You sustained a pretty severe cut in the back of your
thigh. It will heal, but you will be stiff for several days.

“What did Nadia do?” I asked, curious to know
the extent of her healing powers.

“She made a salve that she rubbed over the
wound. It was already healing rapidly because of my blood, but she
says her salve will help keep the swelling down and prevent too
much scarring.”

I ran my hands along the bandages, admiring
the tightness of the wrappings. “Did you learn how to do this when
you were an ambulance driver?”

“A bit,” William said. “But mostly later in
the Resistance. We couldn’t be sure there would be a doctor around
so we had to learn to care for our own. Being the least squeamish
about blood, I learned how to stitch wounds.”

I paused for a moment, steeling my courage.
“Did you have a lot of wounds to sew today?”

“It was yesterday, actually,” Josef said,
finishing his bourbon in one gulp. “You’ve been asleep for almost a
day.”

His words made me feel even more separated
from my friends. People I’d seen last lying against a wall, covered
in blood, perhaps their own, perhaps not. I had no idea who’d
survived.

“You must tell me everything,” I said. “I
need to know.”

William and Josef grimaced, but nodded in
agreement.

“Aidan is dead,” William said. “He was killed
instantly when he opened the door of the car. We left his body at
the scene when we first made the jump, but Elsa went back to search
for his remains. She brought back what was left.”

I buried my head in my hands, trying to
banish the ghastly images William had described.

“Everyone else is alive,” Josef added,
pulling me out of my thoughts. “I was burned pretty badly on one
arm. Gabriel suffered a series of cuts on his face from the
glass.”

“What about Elsa, and Lily?”

“Lily broke her arm,” explained Josef. “It
was a compound fracture which made for a lot of blood. She is in
the next room resting. She wouldn’t leave until she knew you were
OK.”

“Elsa was not harmed physically,” William
said. “She was the furthest away from the blasts when they
happened, but…”

“But she saw the man she loved blown to
pieces in front of her eyes,” I said, tears streaming down my face.
William came to sit on the bed with me, holding me gently in his
arms.

“Yes. She’s not said a word since it
happened. She helped hold you down so I could sew your wound, gave
you the shot that knocked you out, and stayed to see that you were
stable. Then she left. I warned her not to go to Aidan’s house,
that it might also be booby-trapped. She nodded, but left
anyway.”

“Where’s Gabriel?” I asked.

“He made a call and asked a security team to
meet him at his apartment,” Josef said. “He’s expected back here
tomorrow morning.”

“Were you hurt?” I asked William.

“Miraculously, no,” he said. “A piece of
shrapnel hit me in the leg, but it was minor. Josef and I took
turns feeding after we treated your wound. Both of us are
fine.”

“Where were we? When I drank from you? I
didn’t recognize the place,” I said.

“Vampire safe house,” Josef said. “You know,
vampires and our privacy. Occasionally we need a place to rest or
to heal after an altercation. We have a spare house. We use it for
those kinds of moments. It contains an infirmary of sorts and a
doctor who’s on call. She set Lily’s bone in her arm. When you were
all stabilized, we brought you and Lily back here. She was given a
very powerful painkiller to ease her pain for the next few hours.
Fortunately, fairies have rapid healing capability.”

The three of us sat quietly for a moment,
absorbing the details of the conversation we’d shared. Car bombs,
vampire safe houses, security teams—so much for ghost stories and
fairy tales. The real version was infinitely more lethal than the
fables parents sent their children to bed with.

“Someone tried to kill us all last night,” I
said, wiping my eyes. “It wasn’t some fluke accident or a case of
mistaken identity, was it?”

“Car bombs are a specialty of the Serbian
mafia,” Josef said. “The door detonator is one of their
signatures.”

“Let’s finish this conversation when Gabriel
arrives tomorrow morning,” William said abruptly. “Olivia needs to
rest.”

Josef bade us goodnight, saying he was going
to look in on Lily. I wasn’t sure how much I could rest thinking
about my role in Aidan’s death. If I hadn’t pressed him to
investigate, if I hadn’t taunted Nikola in the lobby, maybe Aidan
would still be alive.

“This is my doing,” I murmured.

“No,” William said. “Aidan was a grown man
with years of experience. He wasn’t sloppy. He wasn’t emotional. He
wouldn’t have done anything simply because you asked him. He was
killed because he either uncovered something, or confronted Nikola
directly.”

“That doesn’t make me feel any better,” I
said, lying back on the pillows. My leg was beginning to throb and
suddenly I felt exhausted. “Can I have something for my pain?”

William nodded and brought me a bottle.
“Gabriel sent it over, it seems he has a pharmacist that fills
prescriptions on demand. Take one, it’s a Tylenol with
codeine.”

I swallowed a pill and laid my head back to
wait for sleep. William came and stretched out beside me on the
bed, our faces a few inches apart. Despite the pain in my leg, I
leaned in to kiss him, yearning to be close to him. He returned my
kiss, gently touching his lips to mine.