Cardinal House (The Blackwell Brothers Book 4)

4. Wolf

“Where’s Raine?”

Those are the first words out of my mouth.

Cracked and dry. So. Fucking. Dry. It feels like the roof of my mouth is sandpaper when one of my brothers pushes a cardboard straw between my lips, the water at a disgusting lukewarm temperature, but god, does it taste fucking good.

“Not here,” Thorne says plainly, honest and true, my older brother is never a man to mince his words.

“Get him here,” I groan.

The pain in the centre of my chest feels like an elephant sitting atop my sternum with a fire laced sword shoved between my ribs, every breath laboured and bone fucking dry. The cough that comes shoots out of my mouth and has me bowing in agony. Body curling into itself like one of those little grey woodlice my nephew Atlas always picks up and holds out to me before stuffing them into his pockets.

Eyes gritty beneath shut lids, I flop back on the bed, my entire body aching, and a roaring headache pounding in my temples.

Jesus.

“Wolf, you need to relax, your blood pressure is spiking and then you will have the nurse in here berating me for working you up,” Thorne tells me, his tone brokering no argument. “Raine is fine, he feels bad, but he is fine.”

Finally opening my eyes, I squint hard, my lashes crusted over, the wash of bright white light spearing my pupils like a blade, “Fuck me,” I groan out, gritting my teeth in a molar-cracking clench, as I attempt to sit my arse up.

“Easy,” Thorne hisses, his hands on my upper arm, upper back, “I’ll move the bed, lie back down.” Pressure from the flats of his hands against the fronts of my shoulders has my spine gently reconnecting with the weird half sponge, half air-filled mattress. “Right,” he says, a white controller in his hand with an array of different coloured buttons. “This should do it.”

With that, the back of the bed starts to push forward, and I’m sitting up, panting at the crunch in my abdomen, but I feel better than I did lying down, less like I nearly died and more like I’m about to.

“Fuck me, I feel like shit.” Sweat beads across my brow, gathering at my temples, and I feel cold all over.

“You have been shot before,” my brother states.

Thorne, ever the wordsmith.

“Yes, I have. Too many fucking times, but never point blank by my own brother. Jesus Christ, it’s like there’s a fire in my lungs,” I complain, letting my head drop back with a thud. “Why aren’t I on the good shit? How long have I been out?”

“Which question would you like answered first?” Thorne drawls.

He slides his hands into his slacks pockets, cocking his head just slightly to one side. His perfect wave of black hair is styled neatly with his usual side-parting, his dark eyes like a black night’s sky intent on mine. He blinks once, slowly, and although his face is completely stoic, I can feel his teasing smile. He does that now. Smiles. Real ones. Since Haisley came into his life.

“You’re such a fucking fuck.” I exhale a huff of breath through my nose.

“I know.” He licks his lips, straightening his head on his shoulders, “One, you are on the good shit. And two, three days.”

“I’m tired as fuck,” I moan, a jolt of pain spearing through my lower back, vibrating through the discs of my spine, the cords of my neck.

“Yes, well, you died a few times, I am sure that is quite exhausting.”

“I don’t even have the energy to give you a reaction to that, bro,” I sigh heavily, breathing as deeply as I dare. “What’s the damage? Healing time?”

“Few more days here for monitoring, fluids, antibiotics, but you are looking at a slow six to eight weeks recovery.”

Slowly, I blink, staring down at my chest. A huge white gauze bandage covers the wound so I cannot see, but it feels as though a crater has been blown through the centre of my heart. The tape holding it down is stuck like a second skin and the thought of peeling it off when my body aches so much makes nausea roll in my belly.

I think of our youngest brother. The tape that held gauze to half of his upper body, his face, his neck, covering burns inflicted by our own mother. He was nine when she started changing her cleansings, spouting a bunch of culty bullshit, and changing up our treatments.

I wish I didn’t love her.

“I want to see Raine,” I swallow thickly, a lump in my throat, “I want to see our brother, Thorne.” I look to him, my eyes, so much different in colour to his, are glassy, his face a blank picture of calm, but I know he’s hiding something. “Where is he, Thorne, where the fuck is he?”

“He has not been heard from since it happened,” he tells me reluctantly, and for a long second I just stare at him.

Thorne lied to me.

I get it.

I would have tried to lie to him too, were our roles reversed, however, as Blackwells, we do not tell lies.

I’m plucking off little round sticker discs and tugging on IV tubing before I can think much more. Raine is vulnerable. He’s going through something right now and he’s out there, alone, probably getting even more fucked up, and it’s because of me.

“Wolf!” Thorne barks, my feet kicking at the sheets and cotton blankets tangled around my legs. “Wolf!”

Machines beep, an alarm sounds and pain shoots through every inch of my skull, but no one is with him. He probably thinks he fucking killed me.

“Wolf!” Thorne shouts this time, and the only reason I stop is because he shoves me back down, hard, and the pain that bolts and spears in the centre of my chest seems to grow and radiate in waves through my limbs. “Enough! Get in the bed, you fucking neanderthal.”

He tuts as he lifts my leg back onto the mattress. Shaking his head as he starts to untangle the sheets hanging off the edge and bundled on the floor, nothing covering me but a pair of black boxer briefs. The same ones I supposedly died a few times in. It makes me suddenly want them off.

“Those are fresh, Archer and I dressed you ourselves this morning.” That’s how well we know each other, my five brothers and I, we don’t really need to use words to communicate, we just know each other that well.

It’s why I know we need to find Raine.

“Thorne I-”

The doors crash open, and a harrowed looking old bat bursts in with a frown and a glare. Most people would probably cower away from her, she looks like a mean fucking bitch. Grey hair pulled back into a bun so tight, it’s as though she’s trying to smooth out the wrinkles in her aged face. The short woman struts aggressively across the room, every footstep closer makes her seem more and more angry.

“What do you think you’re doing, boy?” she sneers, directing her question at me. “You think we saved you just so you could throw a temper-tantrum like a spoiled little brat?” She bangs her fingers onto the clacking keyboard, shutting up the beeping sounds and alarm.

The dimple in her chin deepens as she turns to glare at me, her lips pursing tightly, the creases around her mouth etching into her skin like cracks. She doesn’t say anything more, scowling down as she resticks a bunch of coloured discs with wires to my chest and sides, puts my IV back in. I stare at her name tag, Senior Nurse Betty Barker. Should be Senior Nurse Batshit Bitch.

Thorne says nothing as he finishes unwinding my sheets, laying them back over my legs. His hands slide back into his slacks pockets, watching her finish, my heart rate spiking wildly on the monitor screen when the nurse finishes getting me hooked back up.

“Relax. Or have a heart attack. You might not be so lucky the next time,” Nurse Barker spits, throwing Thorne a narrow eyed glare, before turning and storming out of the room, the doors banging shut behind her, but I can still hear her voice bellowing orders halfway down the corridor.

“Fucking hell,” I groan, panting for breath.

“I told you I did not want the nurse coming back in here,” my brother says with distaste.

“She’s a fucking nightmare,” I grunt, shutting my eyes and laying my head back. “Raine shoulda shot her instead.”

There’s quiet for a few minutes as I pant to catch my breath, only the sound of Thorne folding himself into the large chair at my side, quiet as ever. So I don’t miss it when someone enters the room, the doors opening once more.

Breathing slowed, I open my eyes, hoping by some miracle it’s Raine, but instead, someone else steps through that makes my heart start hammering all over again.

The woman’s hair shines like black oil beneath the rays of the sun, parted straight down the centre, tied back at the nape of her long neck. Her uniform is sky blue, which, against the white iciness of her skin, makes her glacier-blue eyes pop like neon lights in a dark room. She’s tall, maybe five-ten to my six-six, her shoulders slim, arms soft, skin clean of ink or freckles or scars.

Her eyes blink, just once, as she takes me in. Her gaze roves up from the bandage over my chest to my face, the stubble over my jaw that is usually shaped and short and neat, feels too long now that someone has paid it attention, even if it was just a cursory glance.

My skin feels hot, the longer she holds my gaze, I feel the air in my lungs stilling, warming, like there are kindling embers inside of them. Those blue eyes are almost clear, the pupils so black, it’s like the lake at Heron Mill frozen over in winter, the dead night’s sky free of stars above.

She lowers her head, severing our connection and I take my first breath since she appeared in the doorway. She starts to move closer, only twelve feet between us, but it feels as though she’s daggered my heart, the way it thuds hard and fast in my chest, the rapid beeping of the machine beside my head. I’m not sure I could be embarrassed by it if I tried.

It feels as though I’ve been ensnared in a trap designed to kill. Barbed wire and crushed glass and razor blade sharp spears, all of it capturing me, piercing my skin, sinking deep into my organs and wrapping me up in blood and obsession.

I hate it.

The way my insides react to her.

It’s involuntary.

Her eyes are different, but other than that…

She looks like my mother.

I feel sick.

Gritting my teeth, she comes closer, stopping beside the monitor. I track her movements, the way her small hands hover over the keyboard, long fingers elegantly tapping the keys, the clacking loud. The beeping stops, her hands drop from the keys and those bright eyes come to mine again, they remind me a little of my sister’s. Grace has two different coloured eyes, but one of them is an icy-blue, it’s more surface level water than this girl’s though. These blue orbs want to drown me.

Her gaze flicks to my chest, and automatically, mine follows. The gauze is stained red, a steady seeping bloom in the centre of the covering. That’s when I feel the pain again, but it feels dull now, in comparison to how my heart ached and pounded when she appeared in the doorway.

“Hello, Luna,” Thorne greets quietly, my head snapping in his direction at the ease in which he speaks this stranger’s name.

“Hello, Mr Blackwell,” the girl replies softly, her voice rough, a little gravelly, as though these are the first words she might have spoken today.

Luna.

Sweat gathers along my hairline, beads of moisture gathering across my forehead, but the rest of me is cold. An infection of ice shoots through my veins, forcing goosebumps to raze across my flesh, and my heart hammers harder again. The wound feels as though it reopens, grows, turning into a black hole of my own despair.

I don’t want this woman in here.

I don’t want my brother greeting her like they are already familiars.

It’s been three days.

I need to go home.

“Wolf,” Thorne says, and the buzzing in my ears seems to wither away and die.

On the opposite side of the bed to her, I look to him, his immaculately suited body folded effortlessly into the hospital chair, fingers resting delicately atop his knee. You wouldn’t look at this well dressed, straight-postured man and see a killer.

“This is Luna,” I stare at my brother so long I feel my eyeballs drying out, but I can’t conjure any thoughts to make my mouth form a reply. “She has been taking care of you throughout the nights.” Thorne is not one to smile, though he does it more now, but his lips curl at one corner as he flicks his gaze back to the woman.

Luna.

The name feels too comfortable inside my head. Like I could say it too easily.

Too much warmth associated with it.

Too much comfort.

Luna.

Thorne stares at me, and I can feel my lips part, the air funnelling in through my teeth, and the first words out of my mouth are like poison, “I want a different nurse.”

“Wolf,” he frowns at me, those black brows dropping low over his even blacker eyes. “Do not be rude.” Looking over me, back to her, he says, “Please ignore my brother, Luna, he is a barbarian when he first wakes up.”

My molars ache where I clench my teeth so hard, staring at him, but the harder I clench my jaw, the worse the ache in the rest of my body feels, so I loosen it up, pull air in through my nose, try to breathe normally.

“Nurse Barker asked me to change your dressing,” the girl, the woman, Luna, whispers, her voice cracking, it makes my fucking guts twist. “I can see if I can ask her to do it, it’s not a problem.”

I feel the cool air move into the space beside me, her soft footsteps tracking her away, I don’t look, but I drop my head back against the bed, stare up at the ceiling before shutting my eyes.

“It’s fine,” I grit out. “Just get on with it.”