18. Ben
There was a lull in the patrols of unnaturals—big fucking surprise there—so several of us traipsed to the hospital. Along with their general injuries, Phaeron had patches of second- and third-degree burns, and Cress needed a blood transfusion, so they were both in a medically induced sleep as they recovered. I checked on Lucas, just to see that he was still deep in a coma.
I’d never felt so worthless than when I was waiting around for one of the trio to wake up. I’d taken a bet with Geo on who it would be first. “It’ll be Cress. She’s the least injured of them,” I’d reasoned.
“Phaeron, so I can knock him unconscious again for harming Cress,” Geo had grumbled. I’d cast him a worried glance. He and Phaeron had been getting along pretty well until this confrontation.
That was before he’d disappeared with Wren to appear on her stream. The population of supernaturals watching was swelling dramatically each time Wren went live. Tish had set up her laptop in the waiting room to monitor the chat and donations, setting it on an end table so I could listen in with the gaggle of women I’d ended up hanging out with: Bianca, Grace, and Tish.
Geo had a presence in his gargoyle form and his big, gravelly personality was quickly becoming a fan favorite. Wren was interviewing him as they toured the area outside, showing the blockades Ashbough Protective Services had put in. It was a little post-apocalyptic from the lingering bloodstains on the sidewalk and the way the streets were cracked and rucked up from the use of guardian witch magic.
Bianca and Grace weren’t all that interested in watching, while I faded in and out of their conversation and the stream, distracted. “Why a Medusa head?” Bianca was asking of the pin the two unnatural hunters wore.
“It’s not Medusa,” Tish practically squeaked. Her whole expression lit up from the question. “The Furies also had snakes for hair.”
“That’s the name of our group within Chaos Inc.,” Grace supplied.
“Because we’re harbingers of vengeance and death for the wicked.” Tish seemed entirely too small to be a harbinger of anything. “Grace is like Alecto, an unyielding hunter of criminals.”
“Unnaturals,” Grace added in her rough purr, barely getting the word in edgewise.
“While I’m Tisiphone—”
“Literally her name,” said her partner. Tish wrinkled her nose and gave Grace a shove, not like she could budge the more muscular shifter. “Word to the wise, don’t ask Tish about Greek mythology unless you have a couple hours to spare. She was raised reciting the myths and shit.”
“Weren’t there three Furies?” I put in.
Tish nodded. “We’re still waiting to meet our Megaera, punisher of oathbreakers.”
She opened a window over the stream playing on her laptop and started showing us her art pages. Most of her style was rather cutesy, but it was all about putting a modern spin on Greek myths. She’d drawn the Fury head that they wore, with its snarl and spitting snakes.
We spent a few hours together until I was about to bounce my kneecap off my leg with all my restless energy. When I saw Cress’s mom rush by with a medical device on wheels, I raced after her to help.
She let me shadow her, and I quickly learned the life of a nurse was not for me, but it gave me an outlet to distract myself. Late into her shift, one of the Crystal fae moved in front of her and stared daggers at me.
“Who’s this?” he asked, jerking his chin my way.
Kathy Rollins, usually such a nice lady, scoffed and gestured for him to step aside. “Someone who’s helping around here, unlike you,” she said waspishly.
As the fae stared at her, the citrine-like crystals growing from his shoulders seemed to glow. “I’m keeping you safe,” he protested.
“You’re standing in my way,” she said.
A little startled, he stepped back, and she brushed past him, saying, “C’mon, Ben, ignore him.”
We helped the next patient and stepped into the hall again. There was no sign of the fae man now. “Soooo, who was that?” I asked with far more intrigue in my voice than necessary.
She rolled her eyes on cue. “Some patients set out to make your life more difficult. It just turns out that he’s still doing it, but now he’s ambulatory.”
Maybe I’d misread something here. He’d definitely been looking at her with some interest, but she clearly wasn’t returning it. “Need help with him?” I offered more seriously.
“No, sweetheart. I can handle myself.”
Well, whatever. I put it out of my mind when we visited the rooms of folks I recognized. First, we saw Aurora, who showed me a gnarly row of scars that looked like tire treads on her arms and across her belly from the Jellywalker’s rows of stingers. The doctors had done what they could for her, but she still froze up occasionally. She needed more time to recover from its venom and was thus bedbound.
There were more than a few guardians and fae who’d gotten seriously wounded helping out at the library too. I was glad to help them get more comfortable. They deserved that much for facing the meat grinder that was the onslaughts of unnaturals big and small.
I was starting to pat myself on the back for a job well done when we came back around to Cress and Phaeron’s room. I peeked inside and gasped. I’d lost the bet—he was awake and in the process of peeling bandages off of healed skin. Aware of Cress’s mom behind me, I held in my “oh shit” with effort.
He’d unhooked himself from the machines without causing them to scream and settled next to Cress’s bedside, still dressed in his hospital gown.
“Hey, stop that!” Kathy protested. She burst into the room and intercepted his wickedly clawed hands as they moved toward his face.
Phaeron exaggerated a grin from within the thicket of white on his face and held up his thumb.
“I think it’s okay,” I said, drawing her away from him. I still reached for a dagger to cut my finger and started drawing subtle blood runes on my arm just in case there was still some Myuna in him.
His skin was shiny from ointment, but he was clearly healed as he stripped off bandages and set them in a pile next to the chair. The docs must’ve given him a shot of a strong verdant witch tonic…which made me hope they did the same for Cress, who slept peacefully in the bed. Phaeron casually slipped his hand into hers and started playing with the blunt crescent of her thumbnail. Bruises had bloomed all over her soft skin and aged with whatever healing regime she’d been given, leaving them a dull yellow.
“See, Mama Rollins? All good,” I said awkwardly since he couldn’t speak English anymore or something. He would’ve charmed her right out the door if he would do more than stare at us without even a hint of comprehension.
We exchanged a meaningful look, and she gave me a trusting nod, leaving me with him and my unconscious anam cara. I sighed, seeing this as my opening to ask him for help with something, but only if I could get him to understand me.
I pulled up the other chair across from him. He didn’t pay much attention to me, whispering in his language to Cress before he bent to kiss the back of her hand. Yeah, there was no Myuna there anymore, thank fuck. I snagged Cress’s phone off a bedside table—it was a miracle Geo hadn’t already stolen this—and did some creative searching on the supernatural side of the web. I typed in something on a translation website and handed the phone to him.
His eyes retracted to slits, and he squinted at the bright screen, but a moment later, he hissed a laugh at my joke. His big thumb claw loomed over the glass, and I gestured for the phone back urgently before he poked a hole through it. Shooting me a confused look, he handed it back. I dimmed the display for him and came over to his side to show him how to type on the screen with all the swirlies and dots that popped up for the Soiluirian language’s keyboard.
“See, fingertips,” I said.
His forked tongue tasted the air, and he watched me without blinking. Okay, I had to get used to the dimensional weirdness or whatever, but he was starting to creep me out.
He carefully typed with one thumb, the very picture of a tech-illiterate grandpa struggling to text for the first time. Eventually he passed the phone back. The translation read, “I understand I have you to thank for breaking a few bones in my tail. So, thank you. Glad to see you haven’t changed, even in a tiny glowing box.”
Well, damn, that was a proper English translation; what a good website. I starred it for Cress and sat back down. “You’re welcome, I guess. Only useful thing I did yesterday,” I typed.
He read the message and shook his head. “You may have saved her life. And my actions sent her to this bed. I will never outlive my remorse.”
“Hey, man, it’s not like any of us can say anything. We thought you were a goner for sure.”
“Goner?”
“Dead or worse.”
He read that and grounded himself with a heavy intake of breath and a long blink before typing a response. “I have no business being alive. But Cress willed that I survive, so I have.”
“You’re kind of fucked up, huh?” I typed, then thought that was too rude and deleted it. Still, he caught a glimpse of the screen and breathed a humorless laugh, nodding an affirmative. I passed him this message: “Could you come with me and take a look at my brother?”
He read the question and cast a reluctant sideways glance at Cress before nodding again. My heart leapt up to the vicinity of my throat when he tucked her hand and stood after me, silent as a shadow as we left her to rest. Now that he was here, I was terrified of what he’d say when he took a peek at Lucas’s soul.
Deep down, I think I already knew what the verdict would be. The Hungering Darkness never left survivors, right? Why would Lucas be any different? Yet I led him to the correct room, and he swept up to my little brother’s bedside to take a good look.
He already had the phone and angled its face away from me as he typed a message one agonizing fall of his thumb at a time. When he passed the device back to me, his free hand landed on my shoulder, giving a firm squeeze of sympathy. “A swift death would be kindest. But there’s a small chance to save him if we open Garroway’s chest cavity in the next few weeks.”
I felt my eyes widen as I read that. Well, damn, I could get behind that. The sooner the better, even. I just wondered what the blood baron had done to earn Phaeron’s bloodthirsty grin.