Chapter 22
There was blood everywhere. On the floor, on the bed, on NightRaven’s middle and hands, hands that grabbed August by the front of his scrubs and threw him back into the door with the strength of a desperate man.
A dying man, maybe. If that blood was all from him… if he hadn’t hurt Ricardo…
There was no way of knowing until this was over, and NightRaven had gotten his gun back. He was shaky with it, his arm wavering as he pulled the weapon from the small of his back, but accuracy hardly mattered when you had a full magazine to work with.
Speed mattered, though. August braced himself against the wall as he grabbed the edge of the stand the monitor had been on and shoved it hard into NightRaven’s midsection.
The other man choked, bloody spittle falling from his slack mouth as the pain became too much to bear.
The gun fell to the floor, and despite the temptation August jerked the door open and kicked it into the hallway with a grimace.
He couldn’t risk it being taken away from him, and as fucked up as he was right now that was a distinct possibility.
NightRaven snarled and shoved the stand aside, scalpel clenched in his hand.
August dodged to the side, snagged the top sheet off Ricardo’s bed, and before NightRaven could turn and attack again, threw the broad, twisted cloth over the other man’s head from behind and jerked him down, hard.
He made sure to hit NightRaven’s head on the edge of Ricardo’s bed on the way down, jarring him enough that August could roll him onto his front without having to dodge the blade.
The air was shrill with the sound of alarms, but August ignored it all as he followed NightRaven to the floor and got on top of him, grinding the points of his knees into the man’s upper back as he began to twist the sheet around itself in a makeshift garrote.
It was a terrible material for it, too big, too soft, but—
He hissed as the hand holding the scalpel contorted enough to wing his hip.
“No!” August snapped—at NightRaven, at the world, at the fucking scalpel.
I will not be stabbed to death while I’m killing this fucker. Not today.
August released the tension just long enough to smash NightRaven’s face into the floor, then hauled him up even higher, until the back of his head practically touched between his shoulder blades.
He twisted the cloth again and again, ratcheting it tighter and tighter, and the cloth was bloody from the froth coming out of NightRaven’s mouth and he was making a sound, something hoarse and pleading, the most useless of all sounds.
August would have laughed if he’d had the breath for it.
Instead, he saved all his breath for killing, stayed steady through the pathetic flailing and agony and gradual, rattling end of NightRaven, the boy who would be king, until it was all over.
Until there was no possible chance the man would ever come back from this, not even in a hospital, not even if a dozen doctors worked on him for an hour. He was gone.
Gone at last.
August looked up in a daze that sharpened the second he realized that Ricardo was trying to get out of the bed.
“What the hell are you doing?” he demanded, getting to his feet—and immediately falling over again once he got there.
“Fuck,” he spat, the pain finally breaking through the shield of adrenaline he’d been carrying since NightRaven entered the hospital.
“Do not get up!” he shouted, hauling himself along the edge of the bed until he could slide up onto his abandoned chair.
“I swear to God, if you actually get out of bed right now I will send you to join that dumb fucker.” He jerked his head at the body on the floor even as he got a grip around Ricardo’s bicep and urged him onto his back again.
Ricardo’s eyes were glassy as he looked at August. He reached out with shaking hands and cupped August’s face, turning it a little like he was looking for damage.
August smiled. “It’s okay, I’ll live.” He grabbed one of Ricardo’s hands and kissed his palm. “Which is more than I can say for that asshole. You’re welcome.”
“Mm.” Ricardo opened his mouth, and August readied his heart to hear a much-deserved declaration of love. “I shot him. You just finished him off.”
August knew slack-jawed was one of his least attractive expressions, but for the love of God—“Are you fucking kidding me?” he exclaimed. “You winged him! I’m the one who actually killed the guy!”
“Mm-mm.” Ricardo shook his head minutely, his eyelids heavy. “Was a… a perfect shot.”
August huffed. “Then why did I just spend five minutes finishing him off?”
“Cuz you’re… little slow.”
He had to breathe through the urge to start screaming. “Says the man who delivered a gut shot in a hospital.” August scoffed. “You know how long those can take to bleed out. It’s like you wanted NightPigeon to survive.”
Ricardo’s reserved expression crumpled. “Best I could do,” he whispered. “S’rry.”
All August’s anger bled out of him. “Oh, honey.” He relaxed against the bed, close enough that he could touch their foreheads together. “You’re so high right now, aren’t you?”
“Mmm.”
“Yeah, I can see that.” He kissed Ricardo’s forehead. “It’s all right, sweetheart. You can relax now. We got him.”
In a few minutes, this place would be flooded with people—nurses, doctors, hospital security, probably cops.
They would take NightRaven away, clean up the mess, and then the questions would come.
August was going to have to do a hell of a lot of bargaining in the hours ahead, when all he really wanted to do was take a hit of his husband’s morphine, lie down on the bed beside him, and sleep for a hundred hours or so. Maybe a hundred years.
No rest for the wicked.
“August.”
He sighed and met Ricardo’s gaze. “Yeah?”
It was clear he was fighting off unconsciousness to speak. “’m sorry.”
Oh, baby. “It’s all right.”
“No. I’m sorry.” There was a lot of meaning being shoehorned into those two words, but August took it the way he thought his husband meant it.
“I know,” he said. “We got through it.” He pressed their lips together.
Ricardo’s were trembling. “We’ll talk about it later, okay?
We’re all right.” They were more than a little broken, but there was never going to be any other option for him outside of Ricardo.
No one else could come close, and August wasn’t stupid enough to let him go.
Besides, L’Avia would hunt him down and murder him herself if he broke her favorite grandson’s heart.
Oh. Fuck. He’d have to call them. Elodie was already on her way—he’d called her after the helicopter ride—but now he had to get in touch with Eve and Ricardo’s extended family and Heidi and…
“?Dios mío!”
August kissed Ricardo one last time, then lifted his head and looked over at the charge nurse, who was standing in the door with a look of horror on his face. “Don’t worry, the blood’s not ours!” he called out cheerfully.
“Senor, your chest!”
He looked down and—oh, yeah. The scalpel had gotten him out by the elevators.
And come to think of it, his right thigh and hip were aching in that sharp, very specific way that meant they’d probably been perforated a few times.
“Okay, so some of it’s mine.” He glanced at Ricardo and was grateful to see that the morphine had finally carried him off to dream land.
“Let’s take care of it before he wakes up again, hmm? ”