I remembered what I’d been doing right before Sike died. “There is one more thing for me to confess to.”
“Hmmm?”
“I … destroyed a lot of blood. All of it, in fact. I didn’t think I could risk them getting it.”
Behind her, Gina heard me and pumped her fist in the air.
“Well, that was unexpected.” Anna said and looked around, calling out, “Shadows—”
As the moon sank, the shadows of the trees were growing. The nearest Shadow answered her. “We can return the hospital to the way it was, and also many of these people. But we cannot find individual blood cells and return them to their original state. If they were here, perhaps. But they were washed away an hour ago, and denatured before that.”
“Denatured by what?”
“Chemical solvents.”
Anna’s shoulders slumped. From behind, and the side, she must have looked dismayed. But when she spoke next, her eyes were lit up by power. “When the other Houses find out—” She shook her head, mystified at the future she was seeing, with an avaricious smile. “They will all be indebted to me. I will, of course, have to be gracious, and give them pint upon pint of replacement blood. For a nominal fee.”
“You have it in you, after all,” I said.
“That I do.” She gave me a private nod. “So be it, Shadows,” she said louder. “Hurry this process. Dawn comes.”
I walked over to check on Rachel and Gideon. Gina came over to us.
“I’ve never seen so many weres,” Rachel said in awe.
“I’m glad Charles isn’t here. He’d be having a fit,” Gina said, crossing her arms. “I miss him.”
“Me too.” I looked over at Gideon. “Are you okay? You’ll need a new hat.”
Gideon held up his hand with his one missing antenna finger, and then gave me a thumbs-up.
Nearer the hospital, the weres were queuing. Where they’d once been intoxicated by werewolf water and controlled by House Grey, the Shadows took them over, setting them in orderly lines to deal with them one at a time. A wave of black washed over them one by one—weres with malformed hands and muzzled faces went in, and mere humans came out the other side. The survivors milled about, confused to find themselves suddenly in a hospital parking lot on a cold winter night, before dispersing.
Some that went in didn’t come out at all, and others lost the strength to move on the far side—with the were-strength leaving them, some of them couldn’t move at all. One fell like a stone, and a second later a woman’s voice cried out.
“Don’t worry,” said one of the horrible Shadow-things, feeling my gaze. “We can hide the dead.”
“That’s awful—” I said.
“Javier!” a woman screamed.
“Shit.” I started hobbling over.
Luz held Javier as he gasped for air like a dying fish. She looked wildly around. “Where are we? How did we get here? What’s happening to Javier?”
Oh, God. He was going to die out here in the cold. We were too far from the hospital to try to carry him in. The Luna Lobos that Luz had given him without me knowing had given him his legs back and healed his spine—but only for a time.
“Luz—” I began.
I didn’t know if she recognized me or just my bearing. “You! Help him!” She rocked him in her lap while he turned blue.
“I can’t.” All the emergency services here were gone. All the technicians gone home. Four nurses, one of them incapacitated by merging with blinding judgmental light, were not going to cut it.
“He’s going to die!” she protested. “Do something!”
“Shadows?” I knelt down and hit a fist on the ground. In the shadow made by the ridge of a cement curb, I was answered.
“His time has passed. We set things right, we do not change them.”
Luz kept crying and rocking him. “Do something! Fast! I would give my life for his!”
“Do you mean that?” Anna said as she arrived.
Luz looked at Anna with fury in her eyes. “Of course I do.”
“All right then.” Anna crouched and bit her own hand savagely. She shoved her bloody fingers into Javier’s lips, and he inhaled. Then she looked to Luz and held her hand out.
“He’ll be fine now. Come with me.”
Luz looked at Anna’s bloody hand.
“You said your life for his. Are you honorable or not?” Anna shook her hand, blood dripping off it.
Luz grabbed it. And when Anna let go, she reached out and stroked a line of blood on Luz’s forehead with her thumb.
“Good. Stay with him for now. I will return for you.” She stood and began walking away. I hurried after her, and she spoke before I could. “I need a sister, not a child. I’ll turn her tomorrow night.”
“Anna—Sike’s not a pet that can be replaced.”
Anna drew up short. “I feel her loss more than you. You merely feel guilt,” she said, and I knew what it felt like to be stabbed by a vampire again. Her face softened as she looked up at me. “It is my right now to build my House. I saved his life, and the girl is willing. It’s the price of blood.”
A group of vampires I vaguely recognized arrived. They were all the ones that’d been serving Anna-blood cocktails at the ascension earlier tonight.
Anna gestured to include them in our conversation. “Normally the loss of so much precious blood would be an offense punishable by death. But you have already been at trial once before, and we both know how that turned out. There is only one suitable punishment left.”
“What’s that?” Gina asked, taking my side, ready to fight.
Anna smiled at her approvingly, then looked to me. “We will shun you, Edie. No one will contact you, on pain of death. This world will be closed to you now.”
“Wait—what?” It was what I had wanted, to get away from all this. But I was still surprised.
She stepped nearer and raised her hand to touch my cheek. “I swore not to hurt you, remember?”
I nodded silently.
“I meant it. I will miss you, Edie.” She stepped back from me, and I could almost feel a wall rising between us. She tossed me keys, and I caught them. “Take Dren’s car. Go home. Be safe.”
“I’ll try,” I said, my throat tightening. It was the least I could do, after everything that had happened tonight.
CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE
Anna went to hang out with the others of her kind, leaving my co-workers and Jake in the moon’s dwindling light.
I’d save Jake to deal with last. He was being so quiet. He must have been stunned.
Rachel engulfed me in a hug, then patted me roughly. “You did it.”
Gina was crying too hard to talk. She said it all in her hug.
I saved Meaty for last. Meaty squeezed me tight, then grabbed my shoulders. “Don’t look back, Edie. Just go.”
After all this, Jake finally stood. “Can I get a ride home, Sissy?”
“Sure.” I held out my hand to him, and he took it.
It was good to have a reason to stay composed on our walk to Dren’s car. Otherwise, I would have lost it.
