Blood Hunt (16 page)

Richie twisted like a snake, grabbing for her even in his pain, but he missed, and Thalia came down on the palm of his hand with the heel of her spiky shoe.

He howled and retracted the hand, cradling it against his body, and that was all I could see before Ian, eyes red and squinted shut with pain and swelling, reached blindly for my face and got a thumb hooked up into my nostril. He jabbed it in, and it hurt like hell, tearing sensitive membranes…and then burning them up with the pepper spray he'd tried to wipe away from his face which had transferred his hands. Immediately, tears filled my own eyes, and my nose welled with something a lot grosser.

I heard Thalia struggling with the doorstop, and pounding from the other side of the bathroom, which probably wasn't helping. Richie must have jammed the wedge in good.

I wanted to help, but Ian was now fighting like the Tasmanian devil on speed. I knew from my experience with Richie that my gorgon glare couldn't penetrate Ian's crazy, but still I watched for his pepper-burned eyes to open enough for me to give it a try. The other option was my blood. If I could get it into his bloodstream through one of his already vulnerable membranes, I could turn him to stone, but I didn't want to do that except as a last resort.

Just to be ready, I bit down on my cheek and tasted blood. It filled my mouth with a tang. Meanwhile, I squeezed Ian tighter and rolled toward Richie to grab him before he could recover enough to try for Thalia again. But grabbing him meant readjusting my hold on Ian, and it gave him just enough space to reach up between us—groping at my breasts, I thought at first, before I realized it was something that rested against his own chest he was going for.

Set's amulet? I knew what the coins did, but had no idea about the amulet.

In the very next instant, I found out.

All at once, Thalia got the wedge free with such abruptness that it slid across the floor. The door burst open, spilling in our reinforcements…but the real explosion came from right beside me. Right about chest level. It blasted the entire room, blowing me back against the wall until I hit with such force it seemed I'd crack open. If I'd thought my pain was supernova before, I'd been mistaken.
This
blast was a world ender.

Chapter Sixteen

I woke to a bright light shining in my eyes, and the very first thing I did was flashback to
Poltergeist
. Hadn't the creepy medium lady said not to go into the light? I didn't see that as a problem. Light was pain. I tried to flinch away from it, but someone was holding my eyelids open and maybe even my head in place. Which meant that I still
had
eyelids and a head and, now that I thought about it, an entire body that seemed made up of more pain.

“Now follow the light,” someone was saying, but it had become torture. My eyes burned, and regardless of whatever held them open, I squinched them shut so hard my tormentor had to let them go or do me damage.

My reward was blissful darkness and a downgrading of the pain in my eyes. Everywhere else was still screaming.

“Okay then,” said the person behind the light—EMT? Paramedic…? “—at least tell me what day it is.”

I had to think about that, and it scared me. And then…and then I remembered it all. The premiere, the fight, Thalia, the wings…

Oh gods, Apollo was going to kill me. This whole thing was supposed to lay speculation to rest, not provide incontrovertible proof.

I tried to move, tried to flap, to see whether they were still in evidence or whether, mercifully, they'd faded with my consciousness, but my body felt flattened, compressed, as if the explosion had crushed me like a soda bottle and I hadn't expanded back into my regular shape. Since my more dormant gorgon genes had activated, I'd experienced a lot of strange things, including the amazing ability to rebound from just about anything, but it still took some time, and while I recovered, the Roland brothers were getting away.

My eyes seemed to work anyway. I forced them open again and looked around the room, as much as I could from my prone position knocked flat against the back wall. Knees right in front of me, belonging to whoever had tortured me with the bright light. Other feet over by the doorway. Black shoes, shined but not shiny. Security? Law enforcement? I couldn't look high enough to find out. No Thalia. Not that I could see.

“Thalia?” I asked, ignoring his question about the day of the week for my much more pressing concern. My chest ached with the effort to force air up into my vocal chords, and in the end I couldn't manage very much. The word was barely a whisper.

“What?” the EMT asked, leaning down, first looking into my eyes and then resting his ear centimeters from my lips.

“Thalia Day…where?” I ran out of breath and thus sound and waited for a response while I tried to recover from the effort.

The EMT pulled back again and looked into my eyes. I could tell it was bad. He seemed to be gauging how much I could take, whether he dared tell the truth.

I begged with my eyes.

“Gone,” he said, as gently as he could.

I heard the sound of squeaky wheels coming from the entrance into the bathroom and shifted my gaze to see more shoes and a gurney coming at me.

“This is going to hurt,” said the guy by my side. “We have to get you onto a back board. There's no telling how much damage there is. And the police are going to want to talk to you, to see what you remember.”

I shut my eyes again.
Gone.
Thalia was gone. Somehow I knew he didn't mean
escaped
. Like me, she'd still been in the room when Ian had triggered the explosion. Muses weren't invulnerable. There was no way she could have walked away under her own steam. Which meant the Roland boys had taken her with them. Given their track record for murder and…worse…time was ticking away. We had to find them. Had to save her before they could do their worst.

The person who'd come in with the gurney—a woman this time I saw, as her face appeared above me, biting her lip in concentration—helped the other EMT get me onto the backboard. I could tell from their movements that my wings weren't getting in the way, which put at least one worry to rest. They must have vanished on their own once they weren't needed…or maybe retracted self-protectively at the explosion. So the EMTs made short work of lifting me up onto the gurney and whisking me out through the door.

Apollo waited in the hallway, held back by security, along with others from the premiere who'd decided the real-life action was more intriguing than that on screen. But the other faces were a blur. I was riveted on his—the fear in his eyes, the pain I felt through our link, which, for all I knew, was a feedback loop of my own. I was almost past the point where I could see him, since the board immobilized me, and I couldn't have twisted my neck even if it would obey when he pushed his way right past the security guard and ran up beside me, taking my hand even as the female EMT tried to block his way.

“You all right?” he asked.

Even breathing hurt, but I forced air through my vocal chords again for him. “Get them,” I told Apollo. “Save Thalia.”

“Sir, are you with her?” the woman asked.

“No,” I said, before he could respond. They'd want him to come along. To answer questions I couldn't or to make decisions if I passed out on them. But I wasn't the one who needed him. Not at that moment.

He looked hurt and let go of my hand as the gurney continued on. But I knew he'd understand. If not in that moment then as soon as he thought about it clearly. Or I'd have time to explain when I healed up to the point where I could check myself out of the hospital. Thalia might not have that kind of time.

A car pulled up, siren and lights blaring as I was loaded into the ambulance, but a jostle as the wheels bounced over the bumper set all my pain receptors to flaring, and I blacked out for a minute…or two. When I opened my eyes again, they were swimming with spots, as though the world had been blotted out by purple-black bruises.

When they faded, I was face to face with Nick's partner, Detective Reyes, who stared down at me emotionlessly, either hardened to or uncaring about my pain. “Tell me everything you remember,” she ordered.

I closed my eyes again for a second, blocking her out, trying to free a synapse or two from screaming about pain to focus on a response. How was I going to explain an explosion with no incendiary device?

“Tori,” she said sharply. “Ms. Karacis, stay with me. I need you to tell me what you can. Every second counts.”

I'd had the same thought, but… In the end, the words slipped out without any filter on them. I didn't have enough available brain cells for misdirection. “Do you believe in magic, Detective?”

I'd said it so faintly I wasn't even sure she'd hear, but I'd opened my eyes to see her reaction and watched her reel back as if I'd slapped her face.

“What did you give her?” she asked the EMT who'd stayed in the back with us while the other put on the sirens and the speed.

“Nothing,” she answered, sounding mildly offended. “We don't dare until we get her to the hospital. Make sure there's no brain injury.”

“So she has a concussion?”

“She was unconscious and non-responsive when we arrived. Her pupils were uneven. There's a good possibility.”

“Damn. How soon before I can get anything useful out of her.”

The EMT shrugged. “Can't say. Doctor might be able to tell you more, but it can come with amnesia or confusion.”

And there was my out. Amnesia.
I have no recollection of these events.
Except the ones that mattered. Richie and Ian Roland had taken Thalia; the police had to focus on them.

“The Roland boys,” I said, forcing enough air from my lungs to make myself heard. “They have…Thalia.”

“Did they say where they were taking her?”

I started to shake my head, forgetting I couldn't move it. “No.”

“What the hell?” asked the EMT up front.

“What is it, Jake?” asked the one back with us.

When he didn't answer, she said, “Jake?”

He cursed and swerved suddenly, and Reyes left me to poke her head through the window into the front of the cab. She cursed sharply in Spanish and grabbed the phone on her belt, voice dialing dispatch. “We've got a massive brawl on Hollywood Boulevard. We're just passing Highland now, and it looks like…” She trailed off for a second and then, “Oh, holy hell!”

“What?” the EMT asked, coming up beside her. “No freaking way. Is that Captain America fighting Bizarro? They're not even in the same universe.”

I couldn't see a thing. Couldn't move. But I heard shouts and screams, the sound of shrieking metal…

“It's like all the characters on the strip have suddenly gone insane.”

Chaos.
That was the only explanation. The boys must have come this way. But did they carry some kind of chaos field, maybe Ian's amulet, or did it naturally follow them wherever they went? Was there a way Apollo and Neith could use it to track them?

And how twisted was it that with everything else going on, I felt a little cheated that I didn't get to watch superheroes fighting? Fake superheroes, but still. I pictured the old-timey Batman,
Oooph!
and
Kapow!
signs appearing above heads, though I was sure the reality was nothing so campy.

“Turn here,” the female EMT ordered her partner. I felt the ambulance give a heave to the right, and then swerve almost immediately to the left.

“Holy hell,” he said, echoing Reyes, “was that a
Transformer
?”

Something hit the side of the ambulance hard, and it rocked from one set of wheels to the other before falling back on all four. Every part of my body screamed in protest, my brain most of all, because I wanted out of this damned back brace, off this damned gurney and into the hunt. It wasn't even a possibility at the moment, but I hated being sidelined. Helpless was just two four-letter words jammed together.

“Dammit!” the EMT cried, gunning the engine and racing us away faster than was probably safe or legal, but Reyes didn't say a thing.

Behind us I could hear more sirens as, I assumed, police cars poured into the plaza, trying to contain the insanity.

I had to hope the hospital wasn't far now, because even strapped down for minimal movement, every swerve hurt the hell out of me.

“Reyes,” I called. I had to try again, hoping she could hear me over the sound of the sirens. She turned, finally, “Tell Nick to follow the crazy.”

She looked at me like
I
was nuts, especially after the magic comment, but she pulled her phone from her hip and hit a button. “Tell him yourself,” she said, holding the phone up to my ear as it rang.

He answered before the first ring even cut off. “Reyes, how is she?”

“She's…stable,” I said, knowing he'd recognize my voice instantly. He'd also get the subtext. “I'll heal, but listen. You have to follow the chaos.”

“What?” he asked.

“Reyes will tell you. And call Neith.”

My eyes wanted desperately to close, and now that I'd done what I could, I let them. Reyes might not get me, but she could tell him what was going on and Apollo could probably fill him in on the rest.

Chapter Seventeen

I woke when they were pulling me out of the ambulance, my vision blurry at first, like an old television that had to resolve the pixels, but then everything snapped into perfect clarity. Unfortunately, my brain didn't come on-line quite as quickly, and I immediately tried to rise, only to find that I couldn't…but because of the restraints, not because my muscles failed to obey. They'd tried to snap me free, but even at my best, I wasn't exactly the She-Hulk.

“I'm fine,” I said to the EMTs as they unloaded me from the ambulance.

The woman gave me a pitying look, but didn't immediately answer, too busy lowering the wheels and getting them all to move in the same direction.

“We'll just make sure of that,” her partner said. The radio on his hip buzzed, and he helped maneuver me with one hand while he answered with the other. I didn't understand the codes, but there was no missing that it was another call-out. And, it seemed, right back to the mess we'd driven through.

He and his partner exchanged a look, her with a groan, and they handed me off as soon as we were inside, their paperwork signed off on and a copy given to the nurse. Reyes followed me in but then disappeared with her phone, only to reappear once the nurse had me in a…well, “room” was being generous. Had me in an area of the emergency room partitioned off by perky polka-dotted curtains in shades of blue and purple.

Reyes grabbed the nurse as she was leaving. “Keep me apprised of her status?” she asked.

The nurse looked startled. “Ma'am—Detective—I don't know how much I'll be able to tell you.”

“It's okay,” I said from the gurney.

“Oh, well, if you'll sign off on that…” And she disappeared, presumably to get the paperwork necessary to cover her butt.

“I have to go,” Reyes said, not unexpectedly. She grabbed a card from her pocket and put it into my hand, which made me think of Eros's business card tucked into my cleavage. “Call me if you think of anything. Or, anyway, have someone here call me or Detective Armani.”

I tried to nod and cursed myself. I'd forgotten again that I was all bound up. Now that I could move, there was nothing I wanted to do more. Although, the fact that my muscles had responded didn't mean they were in any condition to actually coordinate with each other.

“Okay,” I said.

She nodded, and I tried not to be jealous of her freedom of movement.

Five minutes passed. Ten. A million for all I could tell. Paralyzed boredom minutes were about a zillion times longer than regular minutes. Finally, a nurse came and shined a light into my eyes, took my blood pressure and temperature, asked me a few more questions to add to the info on her clipboard and then told me they'd be taking me into x-ray any time.

I started to ask about releasing my restraints, but she was gone before the question died on my lips.

She was back a second later, and I thought maybe she'd heard me after all.

“Can I get out of here?” I asked as she came through the curtain.

“Oh, you're getting out of here,” she answered back. Only it wasn't her voice.

“Neith?” I asked, half sure I had a concussion after all.

“Shh,” she said quietly. “That's Nurse Nancy to you.”

I realized my jaw was hanging open, and I shut it. She came around to the side of my bed and raised the protective bars up into position.

“What are you doing? You've got to get me out, not fence me in.”

“Don't worry, I've got this. Play groggy.”

I glared.

“Come on, shouldn't be too much of a stretch.”

I glared until she ducked down to see where the brake releases were on the bed, and then she slid the bed out from the wall and disappeared around behind me. With my head bound to the board, I couldn't rotate it to see her, and anyway, I didn't seem to have much choice but to play along.

I let my eyes go vacant and willed my body to go slack.

She rounded the gurney long enough to push the curtain out of the way and then pushed me through.

No one stopped her. No one even gave us a second glance.

The real Nurse Nancy came out of a curtained area just in front of us, and I willed her not to turn around, not to see her second self. The chaos field must have been far enough away to give us that turn of luck. She immediately headed off in the direction that was away, and we slid right through the ER and out into a hallway without anyone taking notice.

The hallway was too well-trafficked for Neith to do whatever she was going to do…or so I presumed, and so I held my peace while she wheeled me around a corner and down another hallway, stopping us in front of an elevator. I hoped to Hades she knew what she was doing and that the gurney would actually fit into the elevator. The doors looked wide enough, but…when they opened, I was thrilled to see the elevator was even deeper than it was wide.

We slid in, and as soon as the doors closed, Neith set my brakes, stripped off her jacket and hung it on the control panel, which wasn't quite flush with the elevator wall. Then she undid my head restraint and I instantly rocked my neck back and forth, thrilled to have movement, even if my muscles screamed with it.

She flopped the strap back over my head without a word and took her jacket as the elevator beeped to let us know we'd hit a floor. Two men in lab coats stood aside holding the doors as Neith wheeled me out again. I reassumed the dazed look and didn't ask any of the million questions running through my head, like, “Why the elevator?” The emergency room was already on the ground floor. Going up seemed to be the opposite of progress, but I assumed the goddess of strategy knew what she was doing.

Halfway along that hallway, she stopped at a door with a backing over the inset window that made it look like stained glass. It had a small gold plaque where a room number might be that said, “Chapel.”

She left me in the hallway momentarily to check whether anyone was inside, then propped the door open as she wheeled me in. We seemed to have the place to ourselves.

“What are you doing?” I finally asked as the door closed behind her.

“No cameras in here. Let's get you free.”

I was absolutely on board with that. I'd never have guessed Neith was the answer to my prayers, but then, the gods worked in mysterious ways. After she got the strap across my chest unbuckled, she moved to the one around my lower arms. Once they were free, I was able to help with my own legs.

I felt as weak as a newborn colt on spindly little legs as I tried to stand, and I had a moment of vertigo where I fell back against the bed, but once that passed, I was able to stay upright more or less reliably.

“You got this?” Neith asked. Not coddling. Not offering help. Just watching. Assessing.

“Yeah, what next? Why up?”

“Because they'll search everywhere else when they come to take you to x-ray and find you gone. They'll check cameras, starting with those around the exits… Since you came in as the victim of an attack, the first thing they'll think of is foul play. Neither one of us can afford to get caught. We've lost too much time as it is.”

It made sense, but… “What now?”

“You have wings, don't you?”

“Yeah, but…it's broad daylight. Anyone could see me use them.”

“Uh huh. There are superheroes and supervillains battling it out on Hollywood Boulevard. The waxworks at Madame Tussaud's are coming to life. The replica of the tallest man in the world at Ripley's Believe It or Not Museum just stood up and dented the ceiling… I don't think anyone's going to be too concerned about your wings.”

I stared at her, stunned. Maybe I really was concussed. “Seriously?”

“And that's just what I know of.”

“We've got to stop these boys before things get any worse.”

“Well, duh.”

My mind boggled. Of all the things you didn't expect to come out of a goddess's mouth.

“Besides,” she said, “what good is a superpower you're afraid to use.”

That steeled my spine. I hadn't thought of myself as being afraid. Cautious, yes. Considerate even, thinking that if the world found out about me, they'd go looking for others. But my family had been in the glare of the circus lights for generations. And the gods, Fates, titans and others had been avoiding detection for ages. They were clearly better at it than I was. Was I really hiding out for them or for myself, not wanting the attention, afraid of what it would mean for my life? I wasn't a big fan of change. Chaos was right out.

Damn it, these boys had to be stopped.

“Fine,” I said with admittedly bad grace. “What about you?”

Neith gave me a pitying look, and then shook herself. As she shook, her body rippled and transformed. Her hair darkened and gathered up into her former braids, color spread across her face and over her skin in a wave, pounds melted off, her shape changed… And then Neith was standing before me. She shed the lab coat, dropping it onto the hospital bed. No one would associate her with Nurse Nancy. No one would have seen us together. She could just walk out. I should have thought of that.

No wonder the gods and goddesses had been so good at hiding all these years. They could be anybody. If the boys channeled enough power to Set for him to break loose, we were going to be in a whole world of hurt.

“We're all meeting at my hotel, the Loews Hollywood. You know it?”

“Yeah, but shouldn't we be going after these guys while the trail is hot. Thalia—”

“Are you ready to get your ass kicked again? Maybe this time the boys will do some damage you can't come back from. The police are on Thalia's kidnapping. Let them do their jobs. At this point, with a kidnap victim, they're not going to go in with guns blazing, but maybe they can keep the boys busy long enough for us to come up with a plan. We need something that will neutralize them.”

“We need Sigyn,” I said.

It popped out of my mouth before I even realized I'd formed the thought. She'd “neutralized” me back when we'd been on opposite sides. She was a runemaster…mistress…whatever. If anyone could come up with a countermeasure…

“She's already in. She and Hermes are meeting us there.”

“Great.” Already I wasn't so certain about my brainstorm. What if Sigyn was ready to switch sides all over again? If she joined forces with Set we were sunk.

But who on earth would join forces with the god of chaos? It was the same thing I asked myself about satanic cultists. Why would people pledge themselves to the Prince of Lies? Did they really think he was going to live up to his end of any bargain? Or that there wouldn't be a buttload of fine print?

And that was the very moment it occurred to me that the devil might be real and…

I couldn't even think about that. One crazy crisis at a time. If I ever came face to face with a pitchfork-wielding, cloven-footed menace, I'd spit in his eye. Until then, I had to focus on the demons that came to my town spoiling for a fight.

“Meet you there,” I said.

I let her leave the chapel first, since my wings would be faster than driving in L.A. traffic, especially with roads likely blocked off around whatever insanity had spilled out into the streets. I left a minute or so later, all my lack of patience could handle. Nobody stopped me. Nobody questioned me. But then, my wings were still safely hidden away. The real fun would come when I tried to jump out a window.

I looked at the signs as I stepped out into the hallway. In one direction lay pediatrics. In another, obstetrics. I was sure those sections were watched fairly closely, and that I'd be a little…apparent. I turned around and found a sign for a visitor's lounge.

It was empty as I entered, lights out since it wasn't in use. I didn't flip the switch. The only light came from the two sliding glass windows. There were screens on the other side. And that weird prickly stuff that was supposed to discourage pigeons and gulls. But there were no bars on the windows.

I undid the latch and slid one open…until it stopped only halfway to home. There was a stopper jammed into its track to keep it from opening all the way, probably to keep people without wings from doing the very thing I contemplated. I checked out the stopper and found a nail. A simple nail, but smashed in so well, I didn't see any way to pry it out. I didn't have super strength or laser vision or anything that would help me with the problem. What I
did
have was the willingness to cause myself bodily harm, knowing I would heal. Still, I'd need something thin and strong enough to wedge under the nail head to pry it loose.

There was nothing, of course. A table, chairs, a couch, a smaller table, some magazines. I started there, grabbing the toughest looking of the bunch and sliding the middle staple on the spine under the nail head. I thought I felt it start to give, but it was only the staple buckling under the pressure. I cursed and tossed the magazine down.

I wondered if the buckle on my cursed sandals would do the trick. It seemed worth a try. I took both shoes off, so that if I was caught, at least I'd be flat-footed, which messed with the cliché, but there it was. Then I stabbed the buckle up under the nail head, angling it so that the head was caught in the corner and ripped at it with all the anger I felt at those shoes. Because yes, dammit, anger at inanimate objects
could
be productive, thank you very much.

Slowly, the nail pulled forth. The angle was awkward, but I repositioned myself and kept pulling and finally the nail popped free, setting me back a few steps.

The light came on suddenly, and I whipped my head around to see a nurse as surprised to see me as I was to see her.

“Hey, what are you doing?” she asked, stepping into the room.

I quickly tossed the nail down and yanked open the window. Now she wasn't walking, she was racing, and the room wasn't large. In a flash, I hopped up onto the sill, shoved out the screen and jumped out, chanting the words to free my wings in midair.