The air was suddenly thin again, and Doc stumbled. Cloudhunter turned, and fell. Doc gathered balance and ran to him. He shouted 'Patrise/' as loud as he possibly could, and knelt by Cloud, opening his bag, spreading Cloud's jacket. The wounds were awful: a load of tight-choked shot and two solid slugs, son of a goddamn bitch. Sponges, he thought. Pressure bandages. He had one unit of IV D-five in his bag, a couple more in the car.
Cloud's silver eyes were wide, staring straight up. His hands went blindly to his throat, unwound the blue Nancy-silk scarf. 'Calm down. Cloud,' Doc said, 'don't move.'
Cloud hung the scarf around Doc's neck. His arms dropped away.
Doc was aware that other people had come in. Without looking up, he said, 'Can anybody here start an IV?'
Patrise's voice said, 'Where is Whisper?'
Doc gestured with his head. 'That way.' More pressure. Clamp the bleeder. Tape.
Patrise said, 'Lincoln. Katherine. See if you can follow the trail. No friendly casualties, understand?' He leaned on his stick, lowered himself to his knees. 'What can we do. Hallow?'
'You got a trauma team in your pocket?' Doc said. 'How about an intensive care unit?'
'We can get them.'
Tie off. Bleeders every damn where. 'Do it quick,' Doc said, and then realized what he was laying. More pain, more cruelty, wasn't going to help anything. What they needed was-then it clicked. 'Katie!'
The woman stopped on her way down the hall, gun and knife out. McCain turned as well.
Doc said, 'You told me your father was a bloodstopper. That he showed you.'
'Yeah, but I never…'
'You gotta try.'
Mr. Patrise said, 'Come here, Katherine. Lincoln, do not go on alone. Get Rudy. Or the two detectives, if they're not busy. ' McCain nodded. Patrise said to Doc, quietly, 'What is a bloodstopper?'
'Folklore,' Doc said, breathing hard. He tried to explain, as he kept up the pressure on Cloudhunter's wounds.
Katie set her gun down, bent over Cloud. 'I just don't know.'
Mr. Patrise said, 'I believe you can, Katherine.'
She closed her eyes, tensed. 'Seisote vert' she said, 'Seisote verir
Cloudhunter heaved, gave a sigh that pulled tears into Doc's eyes. The hemorrhaging stopped as if a valve had been turned. Doc sponged again, groped in his bag for the IV set, knowing it was still hopeless.
No. Not hopeless. Not hopeless. If they can crawl to Elfland — 'I can't do anything more here. If I can get him up to Division, maybe-'
Stagger said, 'They'll never let you through.'
Patrise said, 'Try.'
Stagger and Katie helped load Cloud into the Triumph. He made no sound. Doc unstoppered a vial of fairy dust, scattered it on the wounds, touched it to Cloud's lips. Cloud breathed it in. His face grew luminous, relaxed a bit. Doc pulled out of the alley and turned north. Away toward the lake, there was a hint of false dawn.
Pedal to the floor, Doc drove toward Division. He ran out of gears and kept pushing: he could always mend the engine, or Jesse could, or there would be other engines, other cars. He drove until the buildings to either side squeezed up and bent over before him, until the light turned purple ahead and red behind and the clocks ticked slow, and still Division stayed ahead. He thought he was seeing the same windows and doors and traffic lights pass again and again, like a chase in a cartoon; and then suddenly the road was broad and black and glossy, like the marble floor of his bathroom back halfway to the World. Ahead there was a vast Gothic gateway flanked by stone griffins. Elves stood all around it. Through the gateway was-nothing. Xot darkness, not any kind of door or wall. just a dully luminous grayness, the color of a fainting spell.
Doc pointed the car at it. She hummed, skidded just a little; Doc doubled her down, gripped the wheel and Cloudhunter's wrist And stopped, without sound, effort, or inertia; the car was simply standing still, engine idling cool, five yards in front of the gateway.
Cloudhunter breathed in audibly. That was all. His eyes were open but seemed to see nothing. Or maybe silver eyes could see through the blind spot.
Doc blasted the horn of the Triumph at the gates of Elfland.
Most of the elves seemed to be ignoring them. A few were looking on and the fuckers were smirking.
Doc opened his door, yelled at the nearest elf. 'Let me through, dammit! I've got one of your people here, and he's dyingV'
'The mortal knows he may not pass,' one of the elves said, 'or else the mortal is a fool.' The timbre was metallic; it scraped Doc's nerves. This is how they talk, he thought, when they're not talking to us.
'Then take him through! He's not stable here-dying, do you understand that?' Do you fucking know what that is? he thought.
'Gwaed gwir takes this risk beyond homelands,' the inhuman voice said. 'It is a risk honorably borne, honorably lost.'
Another elf voice, a little milder than the first, said, 'If the Trueblood wishes to pass through, then aye he may.'
More of the Ellyllon turned to look. None of them moved a step closer.
Doc got out, opened Cloud's door. He couldn't get a pulse, but there was a faint trembling of the colorless lips. Doc pulled at his arm; Cloud fell on him, knocking him on his butt. Doc braced his feet against the car and pulled. He felt bone grate, and his heart flipped, but what was a little more damage now. a piss in the ocean: five yards awav was the deep water of healing, if only thev could crawl the distance.
He tried to lift Cloudhunter. Fresh blood welled up in the elPs chest, and he groaned aloud. The sound cut like a torch into Doc's brain, and his knees gave way; for a moment he was insensible, blind with tears.
Through water he saw one of the elves, watching them, hands pressed to his (or her or its) ears. Was it shock? Was it anything?
'Help me,' Doc said, from his knees. 'Please.'
Nothing.
'Piss on you all,' he said.
He tugged the Nancy scarf from his neck, got it under Cloud's arms and began to drag him. A dozen feet to go. Ten. Eight. He didn't know what would happen when he hit the barrier: would he just slam into it, bounce off, burn up, die? He would have to get behind, push A clear, sweet elven voice said, 'How earnestly he doth shift the thankless burden. A thing almost noble 'tis, to bear a stone unfreighted of itself.'
'You're lying,' Doc said out loud, 'You're lying, you want me to give up,' but he looked into Cloudhunter's face and knew it was so; meat, that was all, elf meat.
He heaved one awful sob, and then stopped, because enough rage makes anything possible. He stumbled back to the car. Behind him, the elves began to move toward the body.
Doc brought up Cloud's sawed-off shotgun. 'Get AWAY from him!' The elves stopped. He didn't know if the gun would fire, here, just on Division; he was ready and willing to find out. The Truebloods all drew back.
He got out the kit, carried it and the gun to Cloud's side. This was going to take a while. He hoped the elves hung around to watch. He hoped some of them got sick all over themselves.
An hour later, Doc threw what was his into the TR3's backseat, got in and slammed the door. The last thing he said to them, as he threw the car in gear, was 'Okay, I'm a fool. And you know what you are.'
Uoc took the elevator up to Patrise's office. His hands were stuffed into the pockets of his coat, which had long thin streaks of Cloud hunter's blood across it. He was stained with dirt and snow. His fingers tightened and relaxed, bunching the cloth.
He knocked and entered. Patrise was standing in front of his desk, looking at a poster on the wall. It was a network of colored lines, the rapid-transit system of the city long before there was World and Shade.
'Hallow,' Patrise said.
'I lost Cloud.'
Patrise nodded once, slowly. He turned to face Doc, held out a hand, palm up.
Doc took a folded, bloody gauze pad from his pocket. Inside were the pellets and slugs he had dug from Cloudhunter's body, as he had taken so much lead from so many dead Ellyllon before this.
He had thought he would throw it on Patrise's desk, as… what? A statement? A demand? For what? Instead
