stole him!”
Christophe inhaled sharply. “I never loved you!” he yelled, and the force of the cry rocked me back on my heels. The aspect burned through him, his hair sleeking back, and he looked pissed enough to try to jump up to the dome.
I was betting he’d make it, too. I wouldn’t put anything past him right now.
A hideous, dark, burning laughter boiled up inside me. The butt of August’s gun was between us, and it wouldn’t take much to jerk it free from the holster. I’d have to pick my shot, and I knew just how fast she was now. My palm itched for the gun, and my fingers curled. “You would have, if not for that bitch!” Anna’s face contorted again. “You would have loved me!” Was she crying? It was hard to tell. The nausea crested, the sound of wings filling my ears, and I gasped.
Anna made a quick movement. The assault rifle jammed solidly against her shoulder, and Christophe let out another yell.
“DRU!” he screamed, spinning and tensing, about to leap on me. Anna yelled one more time, a wordless cry of loathing and frustration, and pulled the trigger.
Echoes shattered the air inside the dome. Djamphir exploded into motion and a hammer blow smashed into my left shoulder. I lost my balance.
August’s knees buckled. He went down hard, and I tried to stop him. But he was heavy, and I didn’t have a good grip because my left arm suddenly wouldn’t obey. My knees hit hard, and I let out a short bark of surprise, trying to keep his head from bouncing off the stone floor. He ended up half in my lap, and his eyes fluttered closed. He said something very low that I couldn’t hear over all the noise. Stone chips flew as bullets dug out little divots.
Something else hit me from the side, and I ended up plastered on the floor. The pain came in a huge tsunami wave, my shoulder grinding and screaming. Hands on me, and a familiar wave of apple-pie scent, drenched with copper wetness.
It hurt. It hurt so much, the spot at the back of my throat where the bloodhunger lives slammed shut, closing the aspect away from me.
What? I thrashed, caught between August and Christophe. Augie lay on the floor, head tipped back, throat working as he tried to move. Christophe crouched over me, his arms steel bands. “No!” he yelled, almost in my ear. A long string of vile-sounding syllables I guessed were curses in another language before the pain hit again, swallowing me, and the world went a funny gray color, color bleeding away.
Shouts. Screaming. More gunfire. Cover. Get under cover. I tried to move, succeeded only in flailing a little bit. Christophe was still crouched over me, ranting, and I realized he was protecting me. More chips of stone flew, and the gunfire reached a crescendo. Christophe’s body jerked, and he hissed.
August suddenly jerked back into motion. He rolled to the side, and my head was tipped the right way to see the aspect boil over him. White streaks slid through his dirty hair, his fangs came out, and his eyes suddenly blazed, clear yellow instead of dark. I could see that through the haze coming down over me, though the rest of the world was slowly draining of its color, turning into a charcoal sketch.
He curled himself up like a pill bug, then was somehow kneeling, the gun yanked free of its shoulder holster and pointed up as he took his time with the shot. He exhaled, squeezed the trigger, and the gun spoke, its voice lost inside the cacophony.
Everything stopped. The gray curtain came down, and I heard a thudding.
Boom. Boom.
Feathered wings beat frantically. They brushed me all over, little feather kisses, except for the ball of agony high up in my left shoulder. I couldn’t feel my fingers or toes, and when I tried to get up, to scramble somewhere to find cover because, duh, someone was shooting, I couldn’t. A hot egg of agony broke in my chest again, and I whimpered.
Boom . . . boom . . .
A long silent moment, the gunshots fading. Was it over? I tried moving again and whimpered silently. It hurt to even try.
The throbbing in my ears was my heartbeat, I realized. Each thud was a brush of feathered wings, and I heard an owl’s soft who? who?
The numbness crept up my hands. What just happened? What was that?
I was still trying to figure it out when the world went white all over. A sound like the whine of a thousand speakers set on feedback filled my head. My heartbeat stuttered, the spaces between each throb growing wider and wider until my overloaded heart . . .
. . . stopped.
“Clear!” someone yelled, and the white glare slammed through me again. Someone was still cursing raggedly. A babble of voices. “Get him out of here!”
“Dru? Dru, hold on. Just hold on.”
“She’s still bleeding. Why isn’t she healing?”
“Exhaustion, and she’s not fully bloomed. Her blood pressure’s dropping. Where’s that other sliver? They keep disappearing.”
“Fragging ammo. Hate that.”
“Let’s hope none of them punctured her heart. Pericardium seems intact, but she’s fading. We can’t get claret in her fast enough—”
“Transfuse me.” Cold and calm, Christophe’s voice.
“We can’t. It could kill her, we haven’t typed her yet—” Finally, another voice I recognized. Bruce’s English accent.
“Then get out.” Christophe sounded furious. Funny how he just got quiet and icy, kind of like Dad. Only it hurt, when Christophe spoke like that. Dad’s mad voice never hurt me because if he used it I knew he wasn’t angry at me. He never was.
“What are you—”
“You can’t—”
“I said get out. I am not losing her.”
“She’s not even bloomed yet!” Bruce sounded deathly tired. I tried to open my eyes, failed, and heard a whimper. Someone was having a bad day.
Gran’s voice, quiet and final, echoed through my cotton-stuffed skull. Dru, honey, that someone is you.
A silent thundercrack, and I saw the room in the lightning flash.
It was another stone-walled infirmary cell. A weird directionless silver light drifted like snow, lying over every surface with a powder bloom like moth wings. I stood there quietly and heard machines booping and beeping. A small shape lay on the bed, djamphir clustered around. Bruce faced Christophe, Arab Boy a little taller but Christophe looking bigger because of the vibrating rage bleeding out from him in every direction.
Metal dropped into a pan. “Saline!” someone snapped. “Wash that clean, dammit! Let’s get this closed up; she’s still losing blood!”
“Blood pressure still dropping. Take it outside, Kouroi, we’re trying to save her.”
“I know what will save her.” Christophe half-turned and shoved toward the white-draped figure on the table. The thudding vibrating through me paused.
Bruce grabbed his arm, and someone yelled, “She’s coding again! Clear!”
