Chapter 27
Eight days after Trey’s death, Griz walked into the clinic, his arm wrapped in a bloody bandage.
My stomach flipped with a brief, nauseating mix of surprise, hope, desperation, and guilt.
But his expression was blank and flat, and my emotions died as quickly as they’d come.
Vulture didn’t move to stop him, so Mac’s crew must not have been forbidden from seeing me. They hadn’t come on purpose.
I moved forward, the chain around my ankle clanking along behind me.
I still sported a dark purple black eye, but the swelling had gone down enough for me to open it.
More bruises ranging from purple to green in color were littered across my face and the rest of my body.
I knew I looked rough since most people who walked in gasped out loud at the sight of me.
I braced for Griz’s reaction, but he held his bandaged arm out without a word.
I focused on that to avoid meeting his gaze.
I reached for the bandage so I could unwrap it and see the wound, but his good hand snaked out and caught my wrist.
“Wait,” he said, low.
I looked up at him, taken aback. His eyes gleamed with pain, and worry burst in my head like a flare. I tried to reach for the bandage again, but his fingers tightened on my wrist, halting me for the second time.
“Bones, wait,” he said, shifting sideways so that his bulky body blocked Vulture’s view. “It’s okay.” His thumb stroked my arm once. “Hold on a sec.”
Gunshots erupted outside, and screams filled the air. I jumped, but Griz spun, shoving me behind him and putting three bullets in Vulture before I even realized he had a gun. He turned and trained his gun up at the loft.
“Anyone up there?” he asked. “Bones, is anyone up there?” he repeated, enunciating when I didn’t answer.
“No,” I finally managed from where I stood frozen, staring at Vulture sliding to the floor and leaving a large streak of blood on the wall behind him.
He stared back at me, gasping. “Angel, he got…I’m not…please…” he attempted, choking, his face lined in panic and pain.
If I ran forward, I could heal him and save his life, but for the second time, I just stood there staring at him as he bled out.
Griz locked the door and then shoved the exam chair in front of it, propping it to block anyone from entering.
Vulture’s choked pleas trailed off. His blue eyes locked on me, swirling with a multitude of emotions, before the light left them.
Griz finished blockading the door and moved back to where I stood. He knocked the metal exam table onto its side and got behind it, looking up at me. Outside, the screams and gunshots grew louder.
“Bones, c’mere,” he snapped. When I didn’t move, Griz swore and leapt up, grabbing my arm and yanking me down behind the table. “I need you to focus. This is it. We’re gonna stop Madame for good.”
That should have made me feel something, but it didn’t. “Are you actually hurt?” I asked, eyeing the bandage.
“Nope,” he said, scanning my injured face. “Needed an excuse to get in here. Are you okay?”
I stared at him, unable to muster the energy to tell him that was a stupid fucking question.
Pain flashed across his face, but before he could say anything else, the blade of an axe breached the door with a reverberating crash.
It vanished, only to slam into the wood again, pieces flying as someone hacked the door down.
Griz shoved me down and fired off a shot, and someone let out a strangled scream.
Then bullets slammed into the table and the wall over our heads.
The next few moments passed by in a blur of Griz popping up to fire shots and ducking down as bullets whistled around us.
Judging by how often screams followed his shots, Griz was a pretty damn good marksman.
Finally, there seemed to be a pause, and Griz dropped back down, breathing heavily, and flipped up his jacket.
Underneath he had an insane amount of ammo strapped to his chest. I must have made some sort of noise, because he peered at me as he reloaded.
“You didn’t get hit, did you?” he asked.
I shook my head. He started to say something else, but then bullets peppered the wall behind us again.
As soon as they stopped, Griz leapt up and returned fire.
Outside, I could hear gunshots and screams from what sounded like every direction now.
This wasn’t a “little rebellion,” as Madame had called it. This was an all-out war.
“Gods, they better hurry the fuck up before the clinic falls apart,” Griz said the next time he dropped down to reload.
I eyed the wall behind us, noting the many holes and splintered wood. A tiny part of me flickered painfully to life, but then it died.
“Don’t worry,” Griz said with forced lightness, “we’ll fix it.”
The floor creaked and Griz twisted to peer over the table.
I jumped as he leapt to his feet and fired off a round of shots at the two men who had crept through the broken door.
His body jerked, blood spraying, as bullets went through the right side of his abdomen and upper thigh, but he only took a single step backward, continuing to fire.
I heard bodies thud to the floor, and Griz dropped back down, pressing a hand to his bloody side with a grimace.
“Don’t suppose—” he said, gasping.
I was already scrambling over to him in a panic, pressing my shaking hands to his side, trying to heal him as quickly as possible. Trey’s bloody face and empty eyes kept flashing through my head. Griz covered my hands with one of his large ones and squeezed.
“It’s alright, Bones,” he said, his voice so gentle it made my eyes burn. “You got this. I’m gonna be fine.”
Someone yelled outside, and then bullets slammed into the other side of the clinic.
I flinched, trying to focus on healing. Griz kept his hand over mine the entire time, and finally, the wounds in his side and his leg both closed.
Outside, someone started screaming, but then a gunshot echoed, and the sound cut off.
I felt disconnected from my body as I pulled back and hugged myself.
My panic over Griz’s injuries faded away to that empty nothingness again.
Somewhere in the distance, some sort of automatic weapon started firing. The windows in the loft rattled.
“That’d be the machine gun in the watchtower,” Griz said grimly. “Let’s hope the rebels got to it first.”
Gods, how many people were dead? Or injured? And here I was with the power to save them, hiding in the clinic like a fucking coward. I was a fucking coward. I’d always been too afraid to act, too afraid to risk my own survival, and I couldn’t live with that anymore.
I stood and Griz grabbed my arm, yanking me back down.
“What the fuck are you doing?” he growled.
“There’s probably hurt people out there,” I said. “I’m not gonna sit in here and hide.”
He glared at me. “You serious?”
“You don’t have to come.”
“For fuck’s sake, Bones,” he said, and gave me an incredulous look. “There’s no way in fuck I’d let you go out there alone.”
I stood again, feeling so strangely detached and calm. “Then let’s go.”
“You still have a fucking manacle—”
I crossed the clinic quickly, the chain clanking behind me, to where Vulture’s dead body slumped against the wall.
I tried not to notice how many dead bodies littered the floor.
To my relief, Vulture’s eyes had closed, and I didn’t hesitate before crouching and fishing through his shirt pocket, where I knew he kept the key.
Griz arrived at my side a second later, gun held ready, swearing under his breath.
My fingers closed around the cold metal and I pulled the key out, then bent to unlock the manacle on my ankle.
“You need any tools?” Griz asked.
“No,” I answered, shoving my boots on. I wasn’t gonna deal with tourniquets and stitches and shit right now. I’d use my power. I was at least good for one thing—healing people—and that’s what I would do.
“Don’t burn out,” Griz warned, but I pretended not to hear.
—
We stepped out into a grim scene. Bloody bodies lay collapsed in the snow, limbs contorted grotesquely.
I didn’t have to go far to find one still alive.
A young teenage boy I didn’t recognize had dragged his body halfway behind a barrel.
He had his bloody hands pressed against the gunshot wound in his chest. His eyes widened in terror when he noticed us, but he didn’t say a word.
I crouched beside him, but Griz grabbed my shoulder.
“He’s one of Madame’s,” he said in a low voice.
I stared at the boy, and he stared back at me, his nostrils flaring as he struggled to breathe. I could feel death creeping closer, like an icy breath on the back of my neck.
“Take his weapons, then,” I said to Griz as I leaned forward and pried his hands away from the wound, replacing them with my own.
The boy started crying as my healing powers flowed into him, mending his body back together. Griz didn’t try to stop me. He disarmed the boy of his gun and several knives.
“You’re gonna be okay.” I hoped I sounded comforting.
“I’m sorry,” he sobbed.
“It’s okay,” I murmured, watching the wound close. “Go home, alright?”
He nodded. As soon as the wound healed, I helped him up, grabbing him as he swayed. He glanced between Griz and me.
“I was only followin’ orders,” he whispered.
As he stumbled away, Griz murmured, “I shot him. He was trying to get into the clinic.”
Gods, what was wrong with me? I felt nothing.