Dearly Departed, page 23
“Are you okay?!” he asked.
I shifted the towel to a more comfortable position and pinched my nose. “Yeah. This happens after my dreams sometimes.”
He moved to a cabinet to grab a new hospital gown, opening the same drawer I had in my dream. My stomach twisted and I forced myself to swallow down the bile trying to escape. Throwing up while dealing with a bloody nose was the worst.
“I didn’t know you still got them this bad.” He held up a clean gown. “Want me to help you change or should I call the nurse?”
“Don’t call. They’ll run more tests. Just help me with my left arm. I don’t want to tear my stitches.” I released my nose, relieved to see the dark blood had turned light pink. Almost done.
Dallas helped remove my left arm from my old gown, then replaced it with the new one. After he turned around, I removed my right arm and yanked the soiled fabric off, pulling on the clean one. “I’m covered. Can you tie me?”
He returned and helped me lean forward as he tied me in the back. “What are we going to do about the sheet?”
“Search the drawers again?” I suggested.
He poked around and found a clean top sheet, then gathered up my blood-stained clothes and shoved them into the biohazard bag. “There.”
I gave him a thumbs-up, then closed my eyes, exhausted.
“What was the dream about?”
My eyes shot open as the images crashed back into my mind. “Where’s Daisy?!” I demanded.
Dallas grabbed my hand. “She’s okay. They did the ritual and now she’s eating chicken nuggets with Ben. Mina told me before she went to grab dinner. Loren’s watching them.”
I sucked in a deep breath, then another. She was okay. She was safe. “God, I’d rather talk to the dead than have these dreams.” I dragged the heel of my hand across my watering eyes. “I want to see her.”
“You need to stay in bed.”
“It’s a minor gunshot wound to my bicep, not a cannonball to the chest. I’m fine. I don’t even understand why they put me under for surgery.” I had fought for local anesthetic. It hurt, but it wasn’t unbearable. “When are they letting me out?”
“Probably a few more days.”
“Days?! I’m sore, not dead.”
“Should’ve taken vixen.”
“I would never.” It would’ve made my recovery instantaneous, with only a small potential side effect of turning into a vampire or dying. But a little pain and a few months recovery were nothing compared to the devastation the venom caused, will cause. Plus, knowing my luck, I’d be allergic or something.
“God, you’re fucking stubborn.”
“Yeah, yeah, I know.” Despite having transferred, I’d been pulled back to R&D to help with blood transfusions after the weight loss company Thinner dissolved, leaving thousands of humans at risk for turning into feral vampires. It had been an all-hands-on-deck situation and I’d been happy to help, but I’d seen the damage venom could truly do.
I’d worked with Carma and her best friend Elena, neither of whom could have the procedure reversed. They were vampire hybrids until they died or turned into full vampires. I had sat next to Carma’s bed while she’d cried when we told her what was truly going on at her mom’s company. I knew venom had practical and life-saving applications, but I didn’t want to touch something that poisoned so many lives.
I turned toward the window as a ray of sun came in, and in-between blinks the parking lot changed back to the scene from the dream. I looked over at Dallas and struggled to sit up. “Dal, where’s the vixen?”
He raised an eyebrow. “What do you mean?”
“Ben took all the venom and vixen from evidence, then Russell tried to steal it. What happened after Ben and I were loaded into the helicopter?”
“We cleaned up the mess and then drove back here. Why?”
Was he being deliberately obtuse? “What happened to the stash of illicit drugs after we left?”
“What do you mean?”
I searched his face. “Dal, what aren’t you telling me?”
“I’m not not telling you anything!”
“Russell didn’t take the venom with him when he died. Where is it?”
He shook his head. “Don’t ask me that, P. It’s safe, I promise.”
I fisted the sheet with my good arm, my stomach dropping to the floor. What was my twin mixed up in? “Dallas, why didn’t you have to go into hiding? Why only Ben?”
He dropped his legs and leaned forward. “I told you—”
“I know what you told me. Now, I want to know what you didn’t say.”
“What are you trying to say? You need sleep. You’re all fuzzy.”
I was fuzzy, but not incoherent. Outside of my throbbing arm, I was fine. But Dallas kept touching his eyebrow with his left pointer finger, his tell when he was lying.
“You didn’t have to go into hiding…because it’s you behind the threats, isn’t it?” I whispered, watching his reaction.
He brushed his palms over the thighs of his jeans. The same thing I did when I felt trapped. He swallowed hard then turned on the charm. His eyes softened and he smiled as if he were in a toothpaste commercial.
His attention crept over me like a warm blanket and for a moment, I forgot what I was saying. Then I pushed the feeling away. “No. You can’t charm your way out of this.” I was one of the only people who could push away his gift. I was one of the only people who could push away his gift. “You’re manipulating people into doing what you want them to do.”
“Are you running a fever? I’m calling a nurse.” He reached for the button on my bedrail, but I swatted him away.
“No, tell me the truth. You have the venom.”
He shrugged. “What’s it matter? It’s off the streets.”
“What are you going to do with it?”
“What I have to.”
I blinked at him. “You’re going to sell it.”
“I have my orders.”
“What are your orders? To make and sell weapons?”
His eyes held mine. “No.” His left eyebrow ticked.
My mouth fell open. “SHAP’s selling weapons, aren’t they? That’s why I’ve been dreaming of a hostile takeover for weeks.” My mouth went dry as the tops of his ears turn red. “Because you find out what people want and then use your gift to make it happen.”
A wave of dizziness and exhaustion washed over me. “It was you testing the venom. Was Thinner an involuntary clinical trial to see if it would work? You just needed someone ruthless enough to carry it out, and Lucinda was the perfect candidate.”
“Paris, you’re delusional. You got shot yesterday and you just had a bad dream.”
I was sweating, my heart monitor’s beeps increasing in frequency. I shook my head. “Vixen was supposed to be a modified, safer product, but Fletcher threw a wrench into that with her own plan. No honor among criminals anymore, I suppose.”
I gasped. “You put the tracker on my trackers! You knew there was a probability I’d use them for something and catch you. And you were right. That tracker was shitty, by the way, but I guess I’d have made a shitty one, too, if I had to do it with supplies from a chain electronics store.”
He frowned at the insult, and I knew I’d landed the blow. My brother the traitor. Panic seized my lungs and I fought to take a breath as the events of the last twenty-nine months shifted into focus.
“Dare I sound like a doctor from the 1950s and say you’re hysterical?” He leaned over my bedrail and pressed the nurse call button. “You need a sedative.”
“Ben,” I whispered. “You needed him. He was a genius at chemicals and—” I covered my face with my hands and shook my head. “Oh my god…you texted me that night to manipulate me. You knew I wouldn’t just sit back while you were in danger and that I’d find you and create a distraction.”
“Paris, what planet do you live on?”
I gripped the bedrail. “You ordered Ben to make sure I was safe. You’re the one who followed him, didn’t you? So he’d freak out and play dead, then come work with you without interference?”
I shook my head, trying to make it untrue. “Jim didn’t know, did he? At least not until just before Jake resigned. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have put his best agents on the Thinner case.” I laughed once. “I knew he underestimated Eliza and me. Expected us to just write up a tidy case report and absolve SHAP of any wrongdoing.”
“How on earth are you jumping to these conclusions?”
“Because I know you.” My eyes widened. “Your favorite movies are The Departed and The Winter Soldier.” I shook my head.
“Do you even hear yourself? You’ve gone mad.”
“You were the boy who beat up my bullies for me and taught me to fight. You spent your life protecting me and now you’re the bully!”
“I’m still trying to protect you!” he shouted. “Why do you think I pushed you out of R&D? Encouraged you to become an agent? The irony of you being assigned to this case…” He laughed without humor.
He raked his hands through his already disheveled hair, the exact color as mine. “I couldn’t let it touch you, I couldn’t—” He sucked in a shaky breath. “We didn’t know. The orders come through anonymously. When I realized who was behind it…it was too late.”
“Dallas—”
“We didn’t have an exit plan. So I made myself untouchable to protect you and our family. I had to make Ben my lead researcher, no matter what stood in the way. I did what I had to in order to finish the job.”
“You hurt so many people.” I didn’t recognize my own voice.
“I’d do it all again! You’re my twin. I’ll always have your back. But I need you to have mine, okay? After the sale, we just have to get out of the country and we’ll be okay. We’ll all be okay.”
“You can’t sell the venom.”
He leaned on the bed, hands over his face. “If I don’t, we’re all dead. The man who ordered it…” He leaned forward and gripped my arm. “The man who ordered it doesn’t have limits. We can only hope to distract him long enough to never be on his radar again.”
A shiver rolled down my spine. “Ben is with Daisy right now. Is she in danger?”
He didn’t answer.
A PA system announcement interrupted us. “Code purple, eight-year-old girl with curly red hair…”
Eliza’s guttural scream echoed down the hall.
My spine turned to steel, and I scrambled out of bed. “Oh my god, it’s why you convinced them to do surgery on me. So I wouldn’t figure out your plan even when I was so close to it. That’s why you’ve been sitting here, to keep me from figuring it out?” My heart rate increased even more, the beeping reminding me of a detonated bomb seconds before it blew. I ripped off the sticky pad and wire.
“To keep anyone from hurting you!” he defended, standing with me. “Ben was supposed to keep Daisy safe!”
The door opened and the nurse I had for the last few hours walked in. She saw the heart monitor and frowned. “We need to get your heart rate down.” She turned to Dallas. “You need to leave.”
“No.” Dallas withdrew his gun and held it on the nurse. “Who are you?”
The nurse was unfazed. She reached into her scrubs and removed a tranquilizer gun and shot my brother in the shoulder. “No guns in the medical suites. Oxygen canisters are very flammable.”
Dallas stumbled backward and into a chair. “Paris,” he wheezed, “Wingspan Bridge. Run.” Then his eyes closed.
“He’ll be fine in a few hours. Enough to cool off.”
I looked at her, wide-eyed. My blood ran cold. I shook my head, trying to clear it. I needed to get out of here, get to Eliza, help Daisy. “Uh, my brother didn’t get much sleep last night,” I offered, trying to distract her. She was on the opposite end of the bed, between me and the door. “I’m so sorry.”
She put away her own weapon. “Let’s get you something to calm you down, too.”
She blinked and her eyes went bright yellow for one moment. Everything went eerily quiet. This wasn’t my nurse. And not-my-nurse was reaching into her pocket to remove a syringe, just like she had in the dream.
As if in slow motion, I scanned the room. My clothes, my phone, and my shoes were gone from the couch. I bet if I looked in the lockbox at the bottom of the dresser where the TV sat, my weapons would be gone, too. I pulled my sheet up over my IV arm and started to peel back the tape that kept the tubing in place.
I studied Dallas, relieved to see his chest rising and falling.
“Don’t worry. He’s still alive, just resting. He’s too valuable to kill, unfortunately. You’ll have to serve as the warning.” She uncapped her syringe and leapt across the bed, shoving the needle into an injection port on my IV. “This will only burn a little, then you’ll just close your eyes.”
I thrust my hand upward and hit her nose, causing her to fall on to the bed and release the syringe. I grabbed it, shoved it into her arm, and pressed down, injecting the remaining medication. She screamed, changing into Miriam, my old lab manager, before falling to the floor. So she wasn’t a troll, but a shapeshifter.
She cackled. “It’s too late for you, too,” she wheezed. “It works fast.”
I ripped my IV out, ignoring the blood coursing down my arm, but she was right. My energy was already pouring out of me, my breathing labored, my vision nearly double. Get to Eliza. Find a way to get to Eliza.
I looked at Dallas. Vixen. Get vixen. I stumbled toward my brother and grabbed the gun out of his hands, then gripped the arm of the chair to keep from tumbling down. If I fell, there’d be no getting up.
Get vixen. Find Eliza.
I clenched my jaw until my teeth were about to break and pushed myself off the chair. I stumbled toward the door, my socked feet slipping a little. I hit the door hard, then yanked it open, crying out as stitches tore.
The wall held me up as I stumbled forward, the gun nearly useless in my bloodied hand. My nurse—the real one—was bent over an unconscious Loren, slumped in the hallway. She gasped when she saw me. “Ms. Evans!”
“I’ve been poisoned. I need my clothes.”
Her mouth opened and closed without sound, then she took a step forward. “Let’s get back to your room—”
“Miriam, disguised as you, poisoned me and tranquilized my brother. Get. My. Clothes.” I held the gun in my shaking hand.
Eliza bolted out of Daisy’s room and stopped dead.
My legs gave out. I tucked my arm between the wall and the railing, my knees useless. My mouth tasted like sweet metal and I could barely hold my head up. “Find my jeans,” I ordered, gasping for breath.
Eliza didn’t hesitate, pushing past the nurse and running to the nurse’s station. She threw open cabinets and drawers, then reached into a trash can and removed a plastic shopping bag.
“You can’t be back here!” someone argued, but Eliza was already running toward me, pulling my jeans out.
“Pocket,” I breathed.
Eliza reached into the pocket and removed the clear capsule with the pink powder, shaking her head. “You can’t,” she begged.
I reached out and grabbed her hand, crying out at the pain to do so, and brought her hand to my mouth. Please don’t be one with fentanyl. I sucked the pill into my mouth and chewed, choking on the powder.
I fell to the ground, unable to hold myself up anymore.
A blistering fire grew inside my mouth, and I feared if I dared to scream, I would burn down the entire building. My heart thundered, the throbbing at my gunshot and IV sites grew so hard, my body shook. Then, the pain eased.
Eliza’s heat was wrapped around me and as I shifted, she helped me stand. My strength was returning. Not much, probably not enough to drive, but enough to move. “Let’s fucking go rescue our Daisy.”
We ran—well, more like stumbled—to the elevator, barely making it before the doors closed. I slammed the lobby button, straightening as the pain gradually faded.
The doors opened, and Sienna stared at us from across the threshold. “Saw an older man carry an unconscious Ben and fighting Daisy out of the building on the security monitors. Shot the guard before he could stop him. I’ll drive.”
Chapter Thirty-Three
Eliza
“Where to?” Sienna asked.
“Dallas said Wingspan Bridge,” Paris explained, “but it was demolished in 2010.”
“And replaced with the Folk River Bridge,” I explained. I pulled out a crumpled paper from my pocket. “I hadn’t connected the dots yet, but you wrote down the location of every incident report. All were at the bridge.”
“Dallas said this guy was a threat to all of us if he didn’t get the vixen. But why take Daisy? I’m going to tear that man limb from limb—”
“Get in fucking line,” I said, lifting the phone to my ear. My brother answered on the first ring.
“You still at the hospital? Poppy’s asleep, but I’m on—”
“Someone kidnapped Daisy and Ben. We think they’re headed to the Folk River Bridge for the vixen sale. Bring every weapon you have.”
“Roger.” He hung up.
“What I want to know,” Sienna asked, ignoring a red light in favor of using her horn to weave through the intersection, “is when you’re going to figure out Ben’s real name.”
I stared at Sienna, then looked back at Paris. “Bennett?”
“Bennett as in Bennett Somerville, the missing child of Christian Somerville? The abusive wizard who did oral venom experiments on his own son?” Paris asked. “Was Christian the guy who kidnapped them?”
Sienna made another turn that would’ve made a regular human’s truck flip over. “Where can a wizard go where he won’t hurt anyone else?” she prompted. “Because even if you manage to stop him, he’ll come after you.”
One of Poppy’s reaper stories from Saturday evening popped into my head. “Once someone crosses into the afterlife, it’s nearly impossible to come back, unless you’re a reaper.”
“We’re going to need reaper help.” I dug through my purse and found a pen, then flipped Paris’s crumpled note over and began to write.
