Chapter Twenty-Five Darius
Chapter Twenty-Five
Darius
The COE has a fully equipped medical department, but not an emergency department. There is a small, private hospital the COE sends its armed staff when needed, and it’s where I take Monika now.
She’s walking and coherent when I drag her through the sliding glass doors. The lights flicker off before I manage to concentrate hard enough to turn them back on and keep them on. By then, all eyes have turned to us.
The nurse behind the triage desk is standing and pointing. “Did she come from the ports?”
I nod.
Instead of asking us to sit and wait—which we wouldn’t have anyway—she shouts across the space, “Code four-oh-eight! We have another burn victim!”
Two human doctors come flying through the double doors to our left a moment later, a stretcher between them. “Where was she hit?” the man doctor asks me, moving around Monika while she just stands there.
“Her shoulder,” I answer.
The woman doctor shakes her head, her short braids tied tight at the nape of her neck. “The dart wound isn’t what we’re concerned about. We’re concerned about the acid.”
“Oh, that,” Monika says, like she’s speaking to us from somewhere else. “My legs mostly. Maybe my back? It feels hot.” She shrugs.
I almost pass out. Right there, in the center of the triage, where regular human folk with regular human ailments sit and watch as they wait, the doctors draw enormous metal scissors from their scrubs and begin cutting Monika out of her clothing, starting with her pant legs.
Fuck. Fuck!
The tops of Monika’s thighs are completely torn up, shredded by what looks like claws.
Even that is not enough to move the doctors.
Instead, they make panicky sounds when they see the backs of Monika’s calves covered in gooey pustules and scattered red blisters.
It’s revolting. They keep going, carefully pulling Monika out of her vest and then cutting off her shirt, working carefully around the dart. They even cut off her sports bra.
“She’s okay to lie flat,” the female doctor says after examining her front. “There are first- and second-degree burns on her back from where her vest overheated, but nothing on the front.”
“Acid?” the man doctor asks.
“Nothing on her front. Only her thighs have visible wounds and abrasions.”
“Agreed. We’re safe to proceed.” The male nods his agreement, and together they lift Monika off her feet and place her face down on the stretcher.
The male takes her camera away from her and hands it to me absently.
Without a word, they start to push her down the hall, talking about her legs.
It’s only when they’re ten paces away from me that I realize they were wearing thick black gloves I’ve never seen doctors wear.
I take a step to follow them, but the hospital doors slide open behind me.
“Please, help him!” The watery voice belongs to a woman. A woman who looks absolutely tiny standing next to the monster beside her—the pink monster who was just sitting in my apartment.
I turn and watch as the entire process repeats itself as if in slow-motion. The Wyvern is grunting, sounding much more coherent than Monika did. “She okay?” I hear him ask me as if through water. My brain ain’t working right.
I shake my head, nod, shake my head a second time. “No. Acid.”
“Yeah,” he says as he tries to lie on a stretcher.
His legs hang off the end. “That’s why I’m here too.
The darts and the water, I could deal with, but the acid .
. .” He roars and I see he has the same blisters and sores on his chest that Monika does on her legs.
He coughs, bloody spittle wetting his lips.
Fingers grab hold of my arm and just as quickly release. Vanessa charges after the stretcher, but two new doctors block her path as she tries to follow her fiancé. “Did you touch the acid?” one of them asks her.
She shakes her head, and with a simple cursory sweep of Vanessa’s body with his gaze, the doctor nods once.
“We’re going into surgery. We’ll come get you when he’s out.
” The doctor looks over her head at me. “Do you intend to wait for the woman you brought in, or is there another contact we can notify for her?”
“I’m her contact,” I say, voice so soft. The only name she gave us to call was Darius.
“We’ll let you know when she’s out.” He must see something on my face that gives him pause.
He hesitates instead of following the stretcher past the double doors down the hall to the unknown.
“She’s going to be all right. They both are.
” His gaze strays to Vanessa before quickly returning to mine.
“Just try to stay calm. Have patience. The acid is . . .” A voice shouts at him from behind the swinging double doors.
He turns. “Please stay in the waiting room!”
Vanessa wavers on her feet long after the doctor disappears.
Finally, after far too long, she turns. She’s sobbing, and when she comes to me, her arms are outstretched, leaving me no choice but to catch her.
And I surprise myself. I hold her in my arms and let her sob all over me, leaking her disgusting human fluids all over my tee.
My white T-shirt makes the inky red blood look so much more gruesome.
It’s Monika’s blood, and it’s smeared across my hands too, turning the tips of my fingers purple.
I let Vanessa grab my T-shirt and twist the hell out of it as I escort her to the waiting room and find us two seats, far enough in the back that we won’t be stared at but still in a position where I can see the waiting room doors. I want to know the second there’s information.
I let Vanessa lean her temple on my arm and squeeze my wrist so tight her little nails leave marks.
I let Vanessa whisper to me about how they’re going to be okay and ask me if I have any idea what the fuck happened and just .
. . chat to me even though I hate humans.
I let her do all these things because I need it. I need it so fucking much.
“You heard the doctors. They’re going to be okay,” I say, my voice strangling on the final word.
Vanessa tips her face to look up at me. She blinks, her eyes big and brown and red and watery. She bites her lips. “You really do care about her, don’t you?”
I hesitate, consider lying—it’s none of her fucking business. Except I don’t. “Yes.”
She rubs her nose. She has brown eyes. I’ve never noticed that she has brown eyes before. I’ve never noticed anything about her, really. “We all thought you liked Cynthia for a minute.”
“I don’t.”
She releases a desperate, watery laugh. “Yes, we saw the full video you posted where you electrocuted her. Are you really done being a Champion? You were always everyone’s favorite.”
“I don’t want to be everyone’s favorite. I want to be her favorite.”
“I can see that.” She inhales shakily and glances toward the door, but there’s a plant at her eye level that blocks us from sight and that she can’t see over.
“I’ll tell you the second somebody comes in,” I offer her unexpectedly.
She loops her forearm between my body and my bicep and squeezes my upper arm tight. “Please.”
“The Wyvern told you I liked Monika already, though, didn’t he?”
She nods. “Yes.” She doesn’t even try to lie.
“Did he tell you about this mission?”
She whispers, “I thought he was invincible.” Tears continue to drip from her eyes. “I feel so stupid.”
My claws clench into my artfully torn jeans, designed by Sandra to fit over my massive thighs and lupine feet.
They’re now speckled with dirt and blood from when Monika’s legs were pressed against me.
“Not as stupid as I feel. Monika lied to me about where she was going. She said she was going to take pictures of you. She didn’t tell me shit. ”
Vanessa just nods like that’s okay. I growl in the back of my throat and open my mouth, but before I can speak, Vanessa says, “Of course she didn’t tell you. You’re the bad guy.”
“What the fuck?”
“The Wyvern and I know that you’re working with the Marduk.
Monika told us. She’s the one who found out in a recording she took of you talking to the Meinad and Bia.
So of course she didn’t tell you about the mission.
You might have tipped off the Marduk—or worse, joined him.
” She looks up at me and she’s crying in earnest now, and it tears through the tattered remnants of my soul.
“She didn’t tell you because even though she knows you’re the villain, it doesn’t matter to her. ”
“What?” I choke.
She offers me a smile—a smile in the face of her scandalous accusations—and then she squeezes my arm again.
“She likes you back.” She sniffles and turns forward.
“She must have been trying to protect you. If she hadn’t been, the COE could have led you into a trap.
” She tenses and turns to me then, placing both of her hands on my arm. “You won’t, will you?”
“Won’t what?”
“Fight against Roland? Fight with the Marduk?”
“No,” the answer comes through my teeth like a hammer hitting nails through concrete. No word I’ve said has ever been truer.
Vanessa exhales, seeming to take my word, though I’ve given her no reason to trust it. “Good. I didn’t think there would be so many of them. Roland told me that there were thirteen, including the Marduk.”
“Which villains?”
She gives me a look. “The unknown ones. The Inconnus.”
I blink at her. And because we’re here, sharing this private moment that exists outside of time, a moment with no consequence, Vanessa tells me everything she knows.
Everything Monika knew. About how Monika was the one who got the information from Cynthia about the Marduk’s location—about how Cynthia wasn’t in a crash but actually had her legs broken by the Marduk.
All I can think is all the ways that Monika lied to me.
And all I can think is what she said to me when she sent that cropped video to my PR team. I wanted to protect you.
This can’t stand. None of it can. The punishment I have in store for her will be epic. Though nothing will compare to what I have in store for him.
A prickly feeling that creeps across the back of my skull tells me that Monika wasn’t at the ports by accident, and if the Marduk was there, he could have easily ensured her safety but didn’t. He’s declared war, and I think I know the reason.
“I didn’t have time to ask Roland what the powers were of the beings that attacked them, but he did tell me that Three was there, a being that can teleport.” She glances at me sideways and shivers. “They attacked me about six months ago.”
Attacked her? Roland’s woman?
My vision starts to go red. I don’t know Vanessa.
She’s a human. I should hate her. But in this moment that stands so far outside of time, I can no longer see the reality that existed before I plonked down beside her in this shitty plastic chair—I don’t.
I feel protective of her, and when she next squeezes my arm, I squeeze hers back.
“Monika’s so fucking badass,” Vanessa says, and it’s so unexpected I snort. My light laughter causes her to jump, then smile. She relaxes a fraction after that.
“She is.”
Vanessa nods, though her expression sobers quickly. “And she’s lucky too.”
“What do you mean?”
“Roland told me that something like fifty COE and SDD fighters were sent in.” She blinks and then looks around at the empty room, occupied only by two other individuals. “Haven’t you wondered why this room is so empty, Taranis?”
I haven’t. Not once. I shake my head.
“They all died,” she whispers. “The Marduk killed everyone. Only Roland, Monika, and five others made it. Three of them Roland carried here by himself before going to your apartment . . .”
“Miss Theriot?” a booming voice calls.
I jerk and Vanessa jumps to her feet. “Is he . . . ?”
The nurse nods, a smile on her face. “He’s impatient to see you.” She gestures Vanessa forward, and for a second, I’m instantly forgotten.
Then Vanessa surprises me. She turns around, hooks an arm around my neck in an awkward hug, and whispers against my cheek, “Be good.”
And then I’m alone, left to wonder how the fuck Monika survived, and what in the hell Vanessa means.