12. Rena #2
“What?” I asked dazedly as Sven slid his arms under Alice and gently lifted her.
“We have to help,” Lucy said, putting her face in mine. “Get up. We have to help.”
I nodded frantically and got to my feet to see that nearly a third of the room had been evacuated. Mates and Vampires were helping their counterparts, row by row, through the open doors.
Glancing over my shoulder at Sven, I let Lucy pull me away.
There were still so many beds filled with the wounded who were sitting all alone. I had no idea who to go to. How was I supposed to know who to help? My job had been to find the wounded for Alice, but now she wouldn’t be helping anyone.
“Hi, I’m Lucy.” She’d stopped next to one of the beds. “Can you walk?”
I spun in a circle, feeling unmoored. I couldn’t see Reese anymore. I’d lost Charlie when we’d entered the warehouse. Mattie was near the door, telling people what to do once they were outside. Helen was nowhere in sight.
“Can you walk?” I asked the Vampire in the bed next to me.
“Yes,” he said, sliding off the bed.
“Then do it,” I ordered. I looked around and raised my voice. “If you’re able to walk, move toward the door!”
“Rena,” Lucy chastised. “They’re supposed to wait?—”
“No one is safe until we’re out of here,” I shot back, my mouth pooling with saliva as nausea hit. “We’re taking too long.”
She stared at me for a long moment before nodding. “Make your way to the door,” she called loudly. “If you can’t walk, someone will be there to help you.”
There was a mass exodus as Vampires and mates climbed off their hospital beds. As I watched, I realized that many of them had found each other again and were holding each other, waiting for the all clear to leave.
Which reminded me of Zack and Suzie.
Turning, I found them exactly where I’d left them along the back wall. Swallowing against the urge to vomit and trying valiantly to ignore the nausea, I stomped toward them.
“Hop on,” I ordered as I got closer. “Up, Suzie.”
She looked at me in surprise but barely hesitated before climbing up beside her unconscious mate, lying pressed against his side.
I crouched by the side of the bed and looked under it.
There were wheels, but when I tried to push it, they were stuck in place.
I circled the bed slowly, looking for some kind of mechanism that would unlock the wheels, and finally found it down by the foot.
I kicked it, and the bed jerked. Then I yanked, and it started to roll toward me.
“Hold on,” I ordered.
I pulled that heavy bed with the two mates halfway across the room before a couple of Vampires in nothing but their underwear stepped in to help.
Then I raced back to find another one of the wounded who was unable to get out of their bed.
Seconds later, other Vampires who were able to walk started pushing the wounded toward the doors.
I wasn’t sure what they’d do when the beds started arriving at the exit point, but I figured that wasn’t my job.
My job was to get them there, and that’s what I was doing.
I’d searched every bed, in every row, checking to make sure that no one was left behind, when I found a gurney pushed off to the side with a sheet covering the body on it.
Bracing myself, I reached out and pulled the sheet back.
Only to find a very alive and very human lying still beneath it.
I’d barely inhaled in order to scream when his hand shot out and wrapped around mine. The pain of his touch was so overwhelming that I barely felt his nails digging into my skin. It took everything in my power not to fall.
There was nothing behind his eyes.
“Cover me again,” he ordered, pointing a small pistol at my chest. “And push my bed right to the doors.”
I could barely hear him above the blood pounding in my ears, but I nodded.
The chance of him making it outside was nil, and I would’ve done anything to make him stop touching me. Little flashes of light began to dance in the corners of my vision.
As soon as he let me go, I pulled the sheet back up, being careful not to touch him. Then I rounded the bed, grabbing hold of the headboard with both hands.
I was still a little unsteady on my feet as I started pushing the bed toward the crowd of Vampires and their mates waiting to escape. I moved as slowly as I could, afraid of bringing him close to the people he’d been tormenting for God knew how long.
I nearly sagged in relief and vomited in fear when Charlie joined me, crossing from the other side of the room.
“Last one?” he asked, gripping the bed next to mine.
I’ll never know what he saw in my face when I looked at him, but I’ll always remember the way his own expression changed. Every ounce of emotion drained away in an instant, leaving behind a man who was terrifying to look at.
Reaching behind his back, he pulled out a pistol, and in one movement, he stopped helping me push the bed and tossed the sheet off the man’s face.
“Don’t move,” Charlie said flatly, the barrel of his pistol pressed tightly against the man’s forehead.
“He has a gun,” I said frantically, jerking the bed to a stop as I watched the man’s torso for any chance of movement.
“What’s he gonna do with it?” Charlie asked, his tone somewhere between amusement and an unspoken dare. He leaned closer to the man. “He can’t cut my head off with it.”
The strange man stared back at Charlie, his lips twisting in some semblance of a smile.
“Hermann,” Charlie greeted, pulling down the sheet to take the man’s pistol from his unresisting hand. “Do you know who I am?”
I thought the man wouldn’t answer. I looked up to see multiple Vampires, including Danny and Rosemary, headed our way.
“Charles Franklin,” the man said finally.
I whipped around to stare at him in shock.
“You could’ve been with your mate by now,” the man added, his voice like slime pouring over my skin.
“Charlie,” I whispered as his hand began to shake, pressing harder and harder against the man’s forehead.
“Charles,” Danny called as he finally reached us.
“It’s Hermann,” Charlie replied as Rosemary wrapped her arms around me and physically moved me away from the bed.
“You got him,” Danny said, his voice low. “We’ve got it from here, little brother.”
Rosemary pulled me further back as Charlie shook his head.
“He has answers we nee—” Danny added, but before he could even finish, the sound of a gunshot echoed through the room.
I let out an involuntary noise and slapped a hand over my mouth as Charlie backed away from the bed.
“Let him go,” Danny ordered as Charlie turned and walked away.
“Fuck,” one of the Vampires muttered.
“It was his right,” Danny replied. “Let’s wrap the body and take it with us. We’ll deal with it later.”
The warehouse was empty as Rosemary ushered me through the beds that were haphazardly abandoned near the door. When we walked outside, Mattie was waiting with Reese next to an old pickup with a Vampire I didn’t recognize at the wheel.
“Come on,” Mattie said, taking me from Rosemary. She looked over her shoulder at her daughter-in-law.
“We’ll be right behind you,” Rosemary promised.
I was numb enough to let Mattie and Reese hold me between them as we climbed into the truck and sped off into the night, but I wasn’t numb enough not to look for Chance in every face we met at the small airport we were using as a rendezvous point.
There were able-bodied and wounded Vampires everywhere, corralled together in different-sized groups depending on how they’d be flying out of Arizona.
I shivered in the cool night air. My sweatshirt wasn’t enough to block the wind.
My legs buckled.
I couldn’t feel the mating heat anymore.