“Fine. Now go,” Song Shi snapped. “We’re losing time. If you want your friend to live, let me do my work.”
Ten
It was gone three in the morning when Song Shi finished stitching Spook up. He’d sliced the poor kid up good too, with a long incision down the middle of her abdomen that would leave a tasty scar. But it had meant he could open all four quadrants and catch all the damage caused by the .22 as it blossomed inside her belly. The procedure had taken more than four hours, but he’d performed a full exploratory laparotomy on her – the works – and from what The Dullahan could tell, she’d been lucky. A few pieces of shrapnel had clipped her lower intestine but only superficially, and it was easy enough to patch up once Song Shi had stemmed the bleeding and located the injury. The rest of the shrapnel had lodged itself in her lower rib on the left side. Both Song Shi and The Dullahan were covered in her blood, and she’d almost arrested once, but she was through the worst of it.
“You think she’ll make it?” The Dullahan asked, grabbing up a bunch of wet wipes and cleaning the blood from his face and hands as Song Shi laid a large piece of padded gauze over the kid’s stomach.
“I’m good at what I do,” he replied, sticking down the dressing with surgical tape along the sides. “But with these sorts of injuries she’ll need follow-up care if she’s to survive. Now I need to monitor her blood culture for sepsis.”
“Meaning it’s a few nights’ stay yet?”
Song Shi nodded. “A week, at least.”
“That’s going to cost, I imagine.”
Another nod. “That going to be a problem?”
“I’ll go speak to her now,” he said, pulling a poseable mirror attached to the wall towards himself and checking his face for blood. “That’s Acid Vanilla, ya know. One of Beowulf Caesar’s lot, only she’s not with Annihilation any longer.”
“Yes. I heard. I also heard no one was with Annihilation Pest Control any longer thanks to her.”
He grinned. “Aye. She’s hot-headed is the lass. But she’s got her reasons. I’ll go speak to her now and be back.”
He grabbed his overcoat and trilby before making his way down the dark stairwell to the front door. With each step he began to decompress from the intensity of Shi’s operating room, but as he got to the foot of the stairs he realised his heart was beating far too fast. He removed a bottle of Tenormin pills from his coat pocket and knocked two out into his hand, swallowing them down dry. Gripping hold of the door handle he took a moment to compose himself, then yanked the door open and stepped outside.
The cool night air felt good on his face and he welcomed it after the stifled confines inside. Yet there was no sign of Acid. Letting the door close behind him he made his way up the street, checking in the window of every bar and fast-food joint as he passed by. But nothing. He’d almost given up when he reached an alleyway that ran down between two Chinese restaurants and squinted into the gloom. Despite his eyesight not being what it was, especially at night, he’d noticed a familiar-looking silhouette slouched against a fire escape. As he watched, the figure raised a cigarette to their lips and inhaled. The glow of the ash lit up their face momentarily.
“There ya are,” he said, shuffling into the dark alley. “I thought you’d buggered off, for a minute.”
She jumped at his words. Then seeing it was him, asked, “Is she okay?”
“Aye, she will be.”
As he got closer and his eyes grew more accustomed to the darkness, he could see the glass bottle in her hand. Only a lager, from the looks of it. She raised it to her lips and slurped down the last dregs before chucking it petulantly into the alleyway. It didn’t even smash. Poor lass couldn’t catch a break.
“You certain she’s going to live?”
“I’m certain.”
“That’s good,” she said, her voice now hoarse with fatigue and emotion. She sniffed back. “That bullet was for me.” She kicked out at something in the dark but missed, slumping pathetically against the side of the building and sliding to the floor with a grunt.
“Calm down, girl. Getting worked up won’t help anyone. You know that.” He moved closer. “Spook’s going to be fine, so she is. But yer man upstairs wants to keep her here for a few days to monitor her for sepsis and the like.”
He waited for a response. None came.
“You got money to pay for this?” he asked, but Acid just took another long drag of the cigarette and shrugged. “I don’t remember you smoking.”
She sneered, but still didn’t look at him. “I used to. I still do when I’m feeling especially shitty about everything.” She took another long drag before flicking the spent stub against the building opposite. “And yes. I have got the money. I think so, anyway. Sort of.”
“Sort of? What does that mean? Because Song Shi is a good man but I’ve seen him turn nasty. Don’t let the mop-top Chinaman act fool ya. He’ll want paying.”
Acid was silent for a long time. She pulled out another cigarette but held it between her fingers without lighting it. “It’s just… my savings have been somewhat… depleted over the last year or so. You know how it is. No revenue coming in. Plus trips to Berlin, Hanoi, New York. I know, I know: should have started living to my means, budgeted, or whatever normal people do. But it’s hard to change after more than a decade living in the best hotels, paying for premium everywhere you go.”
The Dullahan smiled into the darkness. “That luxury lifestyle never stretched to your wardrobe though, did it?”
“How do you mean?”
“I mean you dress like a moody teenager.”
“What can I say, I’m a fucking enigma.” She peered up at him
