Chapter 10 #2
Together they approached one of the cars, where a paramedic knelt holding the hand of a woman inside.
“Just stay calm. You’re doing great. You’re doing so great. Jaws of Life is on its way, just stay with me until they get here, okay?”
The woman was sobbing too hard to respond.
Tai crouched beside the paramedic. “We can help. We’re vampires.”
“What?” The paramedic blinked at him. “You’re—wait, you’re vampires?”
“Both of us.” Tai nodded to Claire.
“Oh, thank God. You can help us.”
“Just tell us what you need, if there’s anyone we can help you move—”
“Weiss! Siddig! These two are vampires, and they want to help!”
Paramedics began hollering to them, and Tai nodded to Claire. “Be right back.”
He darted to the next car. Claire stayed where she was but crouched down in Tai’s place.
She studied the woman’s position and the vehicle parts around her.
The woman’s leg appeared broken, but she didn’t seem to be in any immediate medical distress, and she gripped the paramedic’s hand so tightly she hadn’t suffered paralysis, at least not in her arms.
“Do you see how she’s landed, outside the car but still pinned?”
“Yeah,” Claire said. “I think I can lift it off her without touching her at all, but I’m not an expert. If you think we should wait for the Jaws of—”
“No!” the woman cried. “Get me out, please get me out!”
The paramedic nodded. “If you’re strong enough, it’s safe.”
“I am,” Claire said. She crouched down, face to face with the trapped woman. “I’m Claire. Can you tell me your name?”
“B-Bella.”
“Okay, listen, Bella, I’m going to get you out of here. You’re going to be free in just a minute, okay?”
“Ok-kay.”
Claire took a minute to calculate where she would direct the vehicle to fall after lifting it.
She checked and double checked the woman’s position, each limb, her head and neck.
She explained her plan to the paramedic, who nodded agreement.
Then she braced her back against the frame of the car, crouched, and slowly lifted with her legs.
The car rose foot by foot until gravity tipped it from upside-down to its side.
It crashed over with a noise that hurt her ears.
Bella was free.
The paramedic, whose nametag designated him as Howard, moved into the space and took Bella’s pulse at her neck. One of his colleagues had already brought a gurney, and together they began to stabilize Bella’s neck and leg.
Claire didn’t wait to watch. She’d done her job, but so many more vehicles were endangering other humans.
Tai had already dealt with the worst of the hazards, taking on the full weight of the monstrous truck, which he couldn’t have rolled off the smashed sedan, because the truck’s back tires were both flat.
Tai had lifted the full weight of the truck and pivoted it away from the little car, and the family within the car were being treated now too.
Two more major dangers that Claire could see—one of the cars was gushing fluids, and the man inside was also trapped. A final car’s windows had crushed inward to trap the children in the back seat.
Tai met her eyes across the wreckage, and she nodded to him. Respect, teamwork, determination to use their power for the good of the humans who needed help. He nodded back, then moved on to the leaking car, while she worked on freeing the kids.
This task was harder. The children were scared, crying, and their dad, who’d managed to get out through the open driver’s window, was barely more composed.
“Please help us.” Tears streaked his face, shook in his voice.
“That’s what I’m here for,” Claire said. “I’m Claire. Can I ask your name?”
“I’m Kevin, and they’re Abbie and Alice.”
Claire turned to the paramedic who had so far taped a cut over Kevin’s eye and failed to convince him to sit on the curb. She checked his nametag. “You’re Siddig?”
“That’s right. Hi, Claire. We’re really glad you’re here.” His voice was soothing, and his eyes met hers with a clear message. Kevin wasn’t doing well, and they both needed to project calm for his sake.
Claire nodded. Message received. “I’m glad too. Do you have any advice for me before I do this? Anything I need to avoid?”
“Well, it looks like Alice might have broken her left arm. We need to make sure we don’t jar it, just in case.”
“Okay, got it. Hi, Alice, Abbie, are you guys okay?”
“No,” Abbie wailed.
“I’m so sorry. I know this is scary. I’m going to help get you out.”
This time lifting the car wasn’t an option. The children were inside, and the frame had collapsed around them. Maybe the universe truly had heard her plea, because the girls wore their seatbelts and sat in secure booster seats, ensconced but untouched by the crushed metal.
Siddig talked to the girls, periodically checked Kevin’s vitals, while Claire pulled apart the car piece by piece.
The metal groaned as she wrenched it, and every time she snapped off another piece, the cracking noise made Kevin jump.
Within about four minutes, she had created a space wide enough for the girls to exit safely.
She checked her surroundings. Tai still worked on the other car, which looked more precarious than this one.
“Anything else I can do?” she said.
Siddig looked up from taking Abbie’s vitals. “I’ve got them from here. Thanks, Claire.”
“Thank you,” Kevin said.
“You’re welcome.” Then she joined Tai at the final task.
Tai’s tux jacket was torn, and grease smeared his cheek.
When she reached his side, he glanced away from the car, and his eyes looked…
wrong. She tried to figure out why, but there wasn’t time.
He had shifted the car, torn pieces of it away, but the middle-aged man inside was still trapped by one foot.
“I can’t do anything else on my own,” Tai said. “Shifting the wreckage any more is causing him pain, and—”
“And I don’t want to lose my foot, vampire!” shouted the man.
“We don’t want that either, George,” Tai said, his baritone extra smooth. Typically humans responded well to a vampire’s soothing tone, but George must be immune.
“Don’t you walk off and leave me like this!”
“No one’s leaving you, George.” To Claire he said, “I think we could do it together. Leverage, see?” He pointed to a few different places where two people might lift the car’s remains without causing a crush.
“Got it. Let’s do it.”
“I don’t want to lose my foot!” George shouted.
He kept shouting the words, on a broken loop of fear and pain, for the next five minutes.
Tai and Claire worked an inch at a time.
This car was old, rusty, and positioned so badly that moving it even a few feet took all Claire’s strength.
Inch by inch, having to be so careful while not allowing the weight to slip began finally to wear her down.
Humans tended to assume nothing could fatigue a vampire, but hefting the weight of multiple vehicles in a short amount of time was incredibly draining.
Claire wished for a sip of blood to refresh her.
Just one sip went a long way. They were entirely separate in her mind—the cool tang of the blood that kept her alive and the warm odor in the air right now.
She worried for the people who had lost blood, including George while he hollered at her.
She was grateful none of them had life-threatening injuries, that none of them were losing so much blood she’d become overwhelmed by the stench.
The paramedic called Weiss had situated a gurney a few feet away from the wreck, so that when Tai and Claire lifted enough of it, Weiss could pull George free and deposit him onto the gurney. Just a few more inches should do it.
Tai met her eyes across the broken car. Locks of his hair had fallen across his forehead, and now his chin was smeared with dirt as well. “Ready?”
“Ready,” she said.
“One, two, three.”
They lifted. George didn’t cry out. They hadn’t hurt him.
“Weiss?” Tai called.
“I’ve almost got him. Just hold it there.”
“Holding,” Tai called. The muscles of his arms strained, and Claire felt the effort through her whole body. If this were their first lift of the night, no problem, but now the work was hard. And Tai had moved that whole big truck.
“Okay?” she said.
“Yeah,” Tai said, but he didn’t sound it.
Weiss shouted, forgetting their hearing was keener than his. “Got him! You can let it drop!”
“Sure?” Claire called.
“Yeah, we’re okay!”
Together they dropped the weight and took a quick step back as the crash echoed, pierced Claire’s ears.
She winced. Everything was too loud. Sirens as a third ambulance and a police car arrived.
Abbie and Alice crying while their dad hugged them.
Bella crying while she talked on her cell phone to her sister.
George groaning and cursing as Weiss stabilized his foot.
“They’re okay,” she whispered.
Tai met her eyes. “They’re all okay.”
“We helped.”
He nodded.
From the most hidden place inside her came a familiar flicker of protection—not only toward the injured they’d rescued but toward so many more, the victims she fought to prevent every time she put on a blonde wig and sauntered through a club as loud as the sirens had been tonight.
But this aftermath felt different. An accident, no predator to catch, no one to rage against. And teamwork.
What would it be like if Verena didn’t work in secret?
If someone knew, even partnered with her?
Impossible, of course, and no point feeling lonely about it; but for a moment, the ache lingered.
They made sure no one needed them for anything else before they began the walk back to the car. Claire’s gown was smeared with dirt, but maybe she hadn’t torn it anywhere. Unlikely. Worth it to help so many people.
She laced her fingers through Tai’s, and he gripped back so tightly she was sure now. He wasn’t okay.
“Tai?”
He said nothing all the way back to the car.