A Fistful of Charms (49 page)

“Please don't let me burn when the tanks explode? Please, Rachel?”

My head hurt. I couldn't breathe. “I won't let you burn,” I said, tears making my face cold. “I'll stay with you, Peter. I promise. I'll hold your hand. I'll stay until you go, I'll be there when you leave so you won't be forgotten.” I was babbling. I didn't care. “I won't forget you, Peter. I'll remember you.”

“Tell Audrey that I love her, even if I don't remember why.”

The last car between us was gone. I took a breath and held it. My eyes were fixed on the truck's tires. They shifted. “Peter!”

It happened fast.

The truck veered across the temporary line. My feet slammed into the breaks, self-preservation taking control. I stiffened my arm, clenching the wheel and Peter's hand both.

Nick's truck swerved. It loomed before us, the flat panel of the side taking up the entire world. He was trying to get entirely across the lane and miss me. I spun the wheel, teeth gritted and terrified. He was trying to miss me. He was trying to hit the passenger side only.

The truck smashed into us like a wrecking ball. My head jerked forward, and I gasped before the inertia-dampening curse took hold. I couldn't breathe as the air bag hit my face
like a wet pillow, hurting. Relief filled me, then guilt that I was safe while Peter.
Oh God, Peter…

Heart pounding, I felt as if I was wrapped in muzzy cotton. I couldn't move. I couldn't see. But I could hear. The sound of squealing tires was swallowed by the terrifying shriek of twisting metal. I managed a breath, a ragged gasp in my throat. My stomach lurched, and the world spun as the momentum swung us around.

Pushing at the oil-scented plastic, I forced it away. We were still spinning, and terror shocked through me as the Mack truck plowed into the temporary guardrail and into the empty northbound lanes. Our vehicle shook as we hit something and came to a spine-wrenching halt.

I pushed the bag down, fighting it, shaking, blinking in the sound of nothing. It was smeared with red, and I looked at my hands. They were red. I was bleeding. Blood slicked them where my nails had cut through my palms.
Yes,
I thought numbly, seeing the gray sky and dark water.
That's what the hands of a murderer should look like.

Heat from the engine washed over me, pulled from the breeze on the bridge. Safety glass covered the seat and me. Blinking, I peered out the shattered front window. Peter's side of the truck was smashed into a pylon. There would be no getting him out that way. We had been knocked clean into the empty northbound lane. I could see the islands past Peter and the guardrail they were repairing. Something…something had ripped the hood off Nick's blue truck. I could see the engine, steaming and twisted. Shit, it was almost in the front seat with me along with the front window.

A man was shouting. I could hear people and car doors shutting. I turned to Peter.
Oh, hell.

I tried to move, shocked when my foot caught, panicking until I decided it wasn't moving because it was stuck, not because it was broken. It was wedged between the console and the front of the seat. My jeans were turning a wet black from the calf down. I think I had a cut somewhere. My eyes traveled numbly down my leg. It was my calf. I think I'd cut my calf.

“Lady!” a man said as he rushed up to my window, gripping the empty frame with a thick hand, a wedding ring on his finger. “Lady, are you okay?”

Peachy,
I thought, blinking at him. I tried to say something but my mouth wasn't working. An ugly sound came out of me, chilling.

“Don't move. I called the ambulance. I don't think you're supposed to move.” His eyes went to Peter beside me, and he turned away. I heard the sound of retching.

“Peter,” I whispered, my chest hurting. I couldn't breathe deeply, so keeping my breaths shallow, I struggled with my seat belt. It came undone, and while people shouted and gathered like ants on a caterpillar, I pulled my foot free. Nothing hurt yet. I was sure that would change.

“Peter,” I said again, touching his face. His eyes were closed but he was breathing. Blood seeped from a ragged cut over his eye. I undid his seat belt, and his eyelids fluttered.

“Rachel?” he said, his face scrunching up in hurt. “Am I dead yet?”

“No, sweetheart,” I said, touching his face. Sometimes the transition from living to dead goes in a heartbeat, but not with this much damage, and not with the sun still up. He was going to take a long nap to wake hungry and whole. I managed a smile for him, taking my pain amulet off and draping it over him. My chest hurt, but I didn't feel anything, numb inside and out.

Peter looked so white, his blood pooling in his lap. “Listen,” I said, adjusting his coat with my red fingers so I couldn't see the wreckage of his chest. “Your legs look okay, and your arms. You have a cut above your eye. I think your chest is crushed. In about a week you can take me dancing.”

“Out,” he whispered. “Get out and blow up the truck. Damn it, I can't even die right. I didn't want to burn.” He started crying, the tears making a clear track down his bloodied face. “I didn't want to have to burn….”

I didn't think he was going to survive this even if the
ambulance got to him in time. “I'm not going to burn you. I promise.”
I'm going to be sick. That's all there is to it.

“I'm scared,” he whimpered, his breath gurgling from his lungs filling with blood. I prayed he wouldn't start coughing.

Broken chips of safety glass sliding, I pulled myself closer, gently holding his shattered body to me. “The sun is shining,” I said, eyes clenching shut as memories of my dad flooded back. “Just like you wanted. Can you feel it? It won't be long. I'll be here.”

“Thank you,” he said, the words terrifyingly liquid. “Thank you for trying to turn the lights on. That makes me feel as if I was worth saving.”

My throat closed. “You are worth saving,” I said, tears spilling over as I rocked him gently. He tried to breathe, the sound ugly. It was pain given a voice, and it struck through me. His body shuddered, and I held him closer though I was sure it hurt him. Tears fell, hot as they landed on my arm. There was noise all around us, but no one could touch us. We were forever set apart.

His body suddenly realized it was dying, and with an adrenaline-induced strength, it struggled to remain alive. Clutching his head to my chest, I held him firmly against the massive tremor I knew was coming. I sobbed when it shook him as if he were trying to dislodge his body from his soul.
I hated this. I hated it. I had lived it before. Why did I have to live it again?

Peter stopped moving and went still.

Rocking him now for me, not him, I shook with sobs that hurt my ribs.
Please, please let this have been the right thing to do.

But it didn't feel right.

“R
achel!” Jenks cried, and I realized he was with me. His hands were warm and clean, not sticky like mine—and after struggling with the door to the truck, he reached inside the window to unlatch it. I let my grip on Peter loosen as it opened. My leg, twisted behind me, felt kind of cold, and I looked at, going woozy. There was a dark, wet stain on my jeans, and my brand-new running shoe now had a red stripe.
Maybe my leg was hurt more than I thought?

“Get Peter out,” I whispered. “Ow. Ow, hey!” I exclaimed when Jenks dragged me across the seat and away from Peter. His arms went around me in a cradle, and with me getting Peter's blood all over him, he carried me to a clear space on the cold pavement.

“Up,” I whispered, cold and light-headed. “Don't lay me down. Don't hit the button before you get him out. You hear me, Jenks. Get him out!”

He nodded, and I asked, “Where's the truck driver?” remembering not to call him Nick.

“Some lady in a lab coat is looking at him.”

Fumbling, I pulled my half of the inertia-dampening charm from around my neck. I slipped it to Jenks, and he replaced it with the remote to ignite the NOS. Palming it, I watched him nudge the amulet through the nearby road grate, destroying half the evidence that we were committing insurance fraud.
David would have kittens.

“Wait until I get back before hitting that, will you?” he
muttered, his eyes darting to my closed grip. Not waiting for an answer, he loped to the truck shouting for two men in the crowd to help him, and a woman descended upon me.

“Get off!” I exclaimed, pushing, and the narrow-faced woman in a purple lab coat fell away.
How had she gotten there so fast? The coming ambulance wasn't even a noise yet.

“I'm Dr. Lynch,” she said tightly, frowning at the blood I'd left on her lab coat. “Just what I need. You look like you're a worse PITA patient than me.”

“PITA?” I asked, slapping at her when she took my shoulders and tried to lay me down.

She pulled back, frowning. “Pain in the ass,” she explained. “I need to take your blood pressure and pulse supine, but after that you can sit up until you pass out, for all I care.”

I tried to see around her to Jenks, but he was inside the truck with Peter. “Deal,” I said.

Her eyes went to my leg, wet from the calf down. “Think you can put pressure on that?”

I nodded, starting to feel sick. This was going to hurt. Holding my breath against the wash of pain, I let her take my shoulders and ease me down. Knee bent, I clamped my hand to the part of my leg that hurt the most, making it hurt more. While she took her God-given sweet time, I listened to the sounds of panic and stared at the darkening sky framed by the bridge's cables, holding my ribs and trying not to look like they hurt lest she wanted to poke them too. I thought of my pain amulet, praying it had eased Peter when nothing else had. I deserved to hurt.

She muttered at me to hold still when I turned my head to look at the passing traffic. A black convertible was parked just inside the closed northbound lane.
Hers?

I jerked at the ugly ripping sound and the sudden draft on my leg. “Hey!” I shouted, putting my hurt palms against the pavement and levering myself up. I held my breath as my sight grayed at the pain, then got mad when I realized she had cut my jeans up the seam to my knee. “Damn it, those
were fifty bucks!” I exclaimed, and she gave me a cold look.

“I thought that would get you up,” she said, moving my bloody hand back to my leg and taking my blood pressure and pulse a second time.

I could tell she was a high-blood living vampire despite her trying to hide it in the old way, and I felt safe with her. Her blood lust would be carefully in check while she worked on me. That's the way living vamps were. Children and the injured were sacred.

Still mad about my jeans, I took a shallow breath, staring at the chaos lit by the orangey yellow glare of the setting sun. “Let's see it,” she said, and I released my hold on my leg.

Worried, I peered down. It didn't look bad from a bleeding-to-death standpoint—just a slight oozing and what looked like a huge bruise in the making—but it hurt like hell. Saying nothing, Dr. Lynch opened her tackle box and broke the seal on a small bottle. “Relax, it's water,” she said when I stiffened as she went to pour it on me.

She had to hold my leg still with an iron grip as she poked and prodded, cleaning it while muttering about torn arterioles and them being a bitch to stop bleeding but that I'd survive. My three-year-old tetanus shot seemed to satisfy her, but my stomach was in knots when she finally decided I had been tortured enough and slipped a stretchy white pressure bandage over it.

Someone was directing traffic to keep the rubberneckers moving and the bridge open. Two cars of Weres had stopped to “help,” worrying me. I wanted them to see the statue rolling around on the floor of the front seat, but having them this close was a double-edged sword.

Slowly I tucked the remote to blow the NOS under my good leg and out of sight. The wind through the straits pushed my hair out of my eyes, and as I looked at the faces pressed against the windows as they passed, I started to laugh, hurting my ribs. “I'm okay,” I said when the woman gave me a sharp look. “I'm not going into shock. I'm alive.”

“And it looks like you're going to stay that way,” she said, taking both my hands and setting them so they hung past the shelf of my lap. “Aren't you the lucky one?”

She poured more water on my hands to get the grit off, then set them palm up on my lap to make a wet spot. Disgusted, I watched her pluck a second packet from her tackle box and rip it open. The scent of antiseptic rose, whipped away from the wind. Again I jumped and ow'ed as she brushed the grit and glass from my hands, earning another “wimp” look from her.

More people had stopped, and Nick's truck's paint job was showing where the metal had crumpled. Jenks was inside with Peter. They were trying to get him out. Weres had gathered at the outskirts, some in jeeps, some in high-end cars, and some in little street racers. I felt the remote under my leg, wanting to use it and finish this run. I wanted to go home.

Nick.
“Where's the guy who hit us?” I said, scanning the faces and not seeing him.

“He's fine apart from a damaged knee,” she said as she finished and I pulled my hands close to inspect the little crescent moons from my nails cutting my palms. “It might need surgery at some point, but he'll live.” Her deeply brown eyes flicked to my dental-floss stitches. “Your gnomon is with him,” she finished, and I blinked.
Gnomon? What in hell was that?

“She's keeping him occupied until the I.S. gets here to take his statement,” she added, and my eyes widened. The woman meant Ivy. She thought I was Ivy's scion, and gnomon was the flipside of the relationship. It made sense—a gnomon was the thingy on a sundial that casts a shadow. I was about to tell her Ivy wasn't my gnomon, then didn't. I didn't care what she thought.

“The I.S.?” I said with a sigh, starting to worry now that it looked like I was going to survive. Motions quick, she fixed a big bandage over each palm. I hadn't forgotten about the I.S., but if Nick's truck wasn't burning before they arrived, it was going to be a lot harder to get rid of that defunct statue.

Her attention followed mine to the truck, her shoulders
stiffening when Jenks and two men pulled Peter's broken body out. I expected her to get angry they were moving him, surprised that she was messing with the living and not him, obviously the worse off—until she leaned close with her little penlight and flashed it in my eyes, saying, “You cried for Peter. No one ever cries for us.”

I pulled out of her grip, shocked. “You know…”

She moved, and I panicked. With vampire quickness she was atop me, knees to either side of my thighs, pinning me against the barrier. Her one hand was behind my neck holding me unmoving, the other held that light as if it was a dagger pointed at my eye. She was inches away, her closeness going unnoticed or considered okay by way of her official-looking lab coat.

“I'm here because DeLavine told me to come. He wanted to make sure you survived.”

I took a breath, then another. She was so close, I could see the soft imperfections in her cheek and neck where she had been professionally stitched. I didn't move, wishing I wasn't so damn interesting to the undead. What in hell was their problem?

“I'd tell him to leave you alone,” she said, her breath lost in the wind, “because I think you'd kill him if he tried to hunt you, but it would make him interested, not simply—concerned.”

“Thanks,” I said, heart pounding.
God help me, I would never understand vampires.

Slowly she lowered the penlight and got off. “Good re-flexes. No head trauma. Your lungs sound clear. Don't let them cart you off to Emergency. You don't need it, and it will only jack up your insurance,” she said, switching from scary-ass vampire to professional health provider in seconds. “I'm done here. You want a pain amulet?”

I shook my head, guilt for being alive cascading through me when Jenks and two men set Peter gently on the ground apart from everyone. Jenks crouched to close his eyes and the other two men backed away, frightened and respectful.
The woman's face blanked. “I wasn't here, okay?” she said. “You bandaged your own damn leg. I don't want to be subpoenaed. I wasn't here.”

“You got it.”

And she was gone, the purple lab coat flapping about her calves as she lost herself in the crush of growing turmoil surrounding the single spot of stillness that was Peter, alone on the pavement, broken and bloody.

Feeling the adrenaline crash, I met Jenks's gaze. He sank to the pavement beside me so he could see Peter from the corner of his eye. Respect for the dead. He handed me my shoulder bag and I put it on my lap, hiding the remote to blow the NOS. “Push it,” he said.

There were sirens in the distance. They weren't approaching quickly, but that would change when they reached the bridge and the closed northbound lanes. Behind Jenks was Nick's truck, a twisted chunk of metal with wheels and no hood. It was hard to believe I had survived it.

The Weres were starting to edge in, clearly wanting to swipe the statue. No one was within that golden circle of twenty feet or between the truck and the questionable safety of the temporary railing and a possible fall. Jenks leaned closer, and with him protecting my face with his body, I clenched my eyes shut and pushed the button.

Nothing happened.

I opened one eye and looked at Jenks. His expression was horrified, and I pushed the button again.

“Let me try,” he said, snatching it away and pushing it himself. The little bit of plastic made a happy clickity-click sound, but there was no big ba-da-boom after it.

“Jenks!” I exclaimed barely above a whisper. “Did you
fix
this too?”

“It's not my fault!” he said, green eyes wide. “I rigged it myself. The NOS should have blown. Damn friggen moss-wipe remote. I should have had Jax do it. I can't solder with that stupid-ass iron Nick had. I must have fused the fairy fucking thing.”

“Jenks!” I admonished, thinking that was the worst thing I'd ever heard him say. Starting to get one of those “Oh crap” feelings, I looked at the Weres. As soon as official people started poking around in there, that statue would be gone and my life with it when they realized it was a fake. “Can you fix it?” I asked, my stomach knotting.

“Five minutes with an iron I don't have in a private space that doesn't exist on a bridge six hundred feet above the water surrounded by two hundred good Samaritans who don't know crap. Sure. You bet. Hell, maybe it's just the battery.”

This wasn't good. I sat and stewed while Jenks took out the battery and shocked himself on his tongue. While he swore and danced from the mild zing, I pulled my knees to my chest to get up, wincing at the dull throb in my leg. Ivy and Nick were still beside the flat panel of the Mack truck, Nick looking nothing like himself under his legal disguise charm. The wind coming up through the grating they stood on sent her hair flying. She gestured with a small movement, and I gave her a lost look. Her lips pressed together and she rounded on Nick.

Nick's head was down, and it stayed that way as she put her hands on her hips and shot unheard questions at him. Blood soaked one of his pant legs and he looked pale. That he was hurt would make it easier to get him to the hospital where the vampire doctor waited, ready to pronounce him dead of a complication, mix up the paperwork, and shuffle him both out the back door and out of my life forever. Peter would be moved to the vamp wing underground until his body repaired itself. Everything was perfect. But the damn truck wasn't exploding.

“What are our options?” I asked Jenks, taking the remote and dropping it into my bag.

“It might be the switch on the tanks,” he said. “If Jax was here—”

“He's not.”

Jenks took my elbow when I swayed. “Can you blow it with your ley line magic?”

“You mean like with me lighting candles?” Hiking up my shoulder bag, I shook my head. “Can't tap a line over water. And I don't have a familiar to connect through to a land line.” My mind jumped to Rex.
Maybe I ought to remedy that. This is getting old.

“Nick might.”

A shiver went through me, remembering when I channeled Trent's ability to tap a line last year to make a protection circle. I had hurt him. I didn't care if I hurt Nick right now—I just wanted to finish this run—but the question might be academic; I didn't know if Nick
had
a familiar. “Let's go ask,” I said, lurching into motion.

My chest hurt, and as I gripped it with my arms, I forced a slow breath into me and tried to pull myself upright. It wasn't worth the effort to look unhurt, so I gave up, hunching over and breathing shallowly. The wind sluicing through the straits had a chill in it, and the setting sun was lost behind the clouds. It was going to get cold very quickly. Relegating Jax to cat-sitting duties at the motel had been a good idea.