This Blood that Bonds Us (This Blood that Binds Us #4)

15. Fifteen

Fifteen

Presley

“Please, we need help!” I yelled into the not-so-crowded lobby of the hospital. Alaska was a dead zone.

Chaos erupted around us. Nurses and doctors came rushing in. Mom held me up. She’d met us in the parking lot while we bloodied up, so we didn’t get it in her car.

“What happened?” one of the nurses asked as they immediately took Kimberly from Aaron’s arm.

He collapsed on the floor, taking a fake plastic plant with him. A mob of nurses surrounded him, and shouts echoed against the white walls.

Aaron might just take my Oscar.

They fumbled to get him up on a gurney, and I resolved to lean into my role harder. I groaned while holding my arm. The weakness in my limbs surprised me as I grabbed for my mother and slipped on the fake blood.

“I found them just off the side of the road by Mulberry Trail,” Mom said. “I’m a nurse.” I think I was able to stop the bleeding.”

“Vera?” one of the doctors said to Mom while trying to cover the wounds on my arm. “I remember you. Do you know them at all?”

“No. But may I come back with them?”

He nodded and pulled me to the back through some double doors into a room full of bright light and the smell of antiseptic and blood. A symphony of machines echoed, along with the rush of footsteps and wheels across the bare floor.

“Someone attacked us. A person bit us. Call the police. Tell someone,” I said, channeling my inner Leonardo DiCaprio. I was going for an anguished Romeo in Romeo and Juliet . Classic. Specifically, the scene where Leonardo DiCaprio cries in the field. I’d gotten a lot of fake crying practice while being the youngest. Zach used to pinch me to help me channel it to gain Mom’s sympathy.

“Where are my friends? Are they okay?” I added a lip quiver for some extra pizzazz.

“They’re in good hands. Try not to move.” Mom soothed me with a hand on the back while she talked back and forth with the nurses. “I think this one is delirious.”

They led me to a bed, pulling me in different directions.

“You have to call someone,” I said again. “He’s out there.”

Mom was off talking to the nurses and hopefully ensuring the police report was made.

The room was oddly slow and dim. My vamp vision was dull, and I couldn’t move like I wanted to. Even small things like opening and closing my hands felt too slow. All that power leached from me minute by minute. Though, my wrist wound was almost completely healed. I didn’t train like Zach and Luke had, but I thought it was cool and had asked to. They outright refused to let me battle it out in my own blood.

Now I couldn’t stop thinking about how they did it.

Every drop of blood on the tile felt like losing power, and I needed power if I would find my older brothers. I needed it all. And feeling it leave me made me angry again. And cold. Alone.

I guessed I wasn’t as high of a priority because I was talking, but there were two nurses with me.

“Heart rate is . . . normal, but blood pressure is low. Oxygen is . . .”

An elderly woman looked up at me with wide eyes. “Something is wrong. The machine isn’t working.”

Gasps came from the next room over. We would need a distraction if we were going to get out.

“Ah!” I grabbed at my side. That gained Mom’s attention from outside. She was on the phone with someone.

The nurses’ mouths fell as they panned over my wounds. They were trying to hook me up to more machines, but my skin was hardening.

“This is—”

“There he is! He’s right there!” I pointed to the hallway and pushed my voice to the brink of hysteria. “Help!”

“I don’t see anyone.”

“He’s here! You don’t see him? He’s there staring at me.”

It was better for them to think I was hallucinating or on drugs. It would be easier to explain what came after. Those nearest, reeled around to gawk at the other end of the hospital hallway, and I popped up out of bed.

“Wait! Sir!”

I sped across the room, not nearly fast enough. One of the nurses almost caught my arm. The hospital wasn’t that big. So there wasn’t a lot of space to maneuver in. I crouched behind some equipment before they could find me.

“I’ve never seen anything like this!” someone exclaimed from the other room.

That was my cue. I found something large that didn’t look too important or expensive and sent it careening into the wall with a large thud.

“What was that?”

“What is going on right now?”

As their attention dispersed, I weaseled into Kimberly’s room and motioned to her to follow me. Only, there were still doctors in there, watching in horror as Kimberly seemingly resurrected off the table.

“Where’s Aaron?” she whispered in our hurried fleeing for the door. People were watching, yelling, and exclaiming things I didn’t care to listen to.

“Oh, god. I’m so sorry.” Aaron’s anxious voice came from the hall.

“There he is.”

He’d tipped over an IV drip and was getting fake blood over the hallway. We bolted for the lobby doorway and fumbled our way to the exit. I fell into a couple people on the way out, but we managed to hide back in the trees where we’d come from.

Once the hospital was firmly behind us, we collapsed next to the red and black mess we’d made in the snow.

“Uh. This blows,” I said. I was now sluggish and achy.

“I kinda like it,” Kimberly said. “My head feels . . . clear.”

“How’d we do, Burns?” Aaron asked.

“Perfect. I think that will be more than enough to put us on their radar. We just need to be ready when they come.”

I said nothing. I didn’t want to see The Legion again. Especially Kilian. If Kilian hadn’t been who he is, we’d never have been separated. So every moment my brothers suffered, how much I suffered . . . was because of them, and I wouldn’t forgive that. Aaron wouldn’t understand, but Zach would have.

“Here, let me see you.” Aaron grabbed my arm and inspected my wounds that were now closed.

“I’m fine.”

He moved past me to pat down Kimberly. “You’re okay?”

“Yeah. It wasn’t too bad.”

Aaron had that puppy-dog look again, and it was working. Kimberly wrapped him in a hug, and he kissed her forehead.

Pain radiated again in my heart deeper and more painful than it had been before, so I clutched my chest.

“Ah.” The groan didn’t come from me.

“Did you feel that?” I turned to Aaron rubbing his chest.

“Yeah. The ache got all intense all of sudden.”

I felt it again and had to put my hands on my knees till it passed. Like someone kicked me in the chest, it stole the air from my lungs.

“What the hell.” I could barely get out the words. Then it was gone again. The pain softened back to its heavy, dull ache. “I don’t know what’s happening over there, but it’s not good. That felt like a true Zach kick in the chest. What could be happening?”

The three of us shared the same worried expression. Kimberly’s eyes softened like she might cry, and my brother gritted his teeth. And me . . .

“We have to go.” I picked our empty fake-blood bottles up off the snow.

I didn’t want to be there anymore. I wanted to go home and lock myself in my room. I’d helped them with their doomed plan and needed time to think about my equally terrible one. Alone.