Chapter 602
The hospital was as packed as the school. Cars filled every space and were even parked in the flower beds. An ambulance from another town streaked out, lights flashing, while two more sat in the unloading zone. Huddles of humans spoke of fear and heartbreak. Though the helicopter wasn't in sight, the pad was lit up, as if it might return any moment.
Des parked on the street and Sorino dialed Verchiel's number. The Executioner said to meet him by the ER entrance. Katelina hurried towards the building, wrapped in a mixture of urgency and hesitation. If she didn't see it, it wasn't real, right?
Except it was, and the sooner she found out, the sooner she could figure out how to deal with it.
She saw Verchiel before they reached the building. His bright red hair stood out. His long black coat looked like a movie costume. His casual posture was stiff, hands in his pockets and face pinched.
She let go of Jorick to jog to him. "How is she?"
"Hey, Kately. Good to see you, too. Long time." The smile he offered didn't look real.
"I saw you less than a week ago," she said impatiently. "Mom?"
His fake joviality fled. "I'm sorry but it doesn't look good."
Katelina's energy evaporated. She leaned against a pillar. "What do you mean?"
Jorick put an arm around her as Verchiel said, "She's in surgery. She has internal injuries. I-I didn't get a chance to do anything for her. They were wheeling her away when I got here."
Do anything for her. What he meant was give her bloodvampire blood. Though it might heal her, it would create an emotional link with whoever she drank from. The last thing her mother needed was an emotional link with Verchiel.
"What did she say?" Katelina asked.
"Nothing. She was unconscious. I got that information from a nurse, who might be under the impression I'm your husband."
"What?" Katelina cried.
"They wouldn't hand out info to just anyone. I had to say I was family. Look at me. No way were they going to buy son."
Katelina glanced over his slanting violet eyes, distinctly Asian features and build. "You could have read it from their minds."
"I've told you before, it comes and goes. I can't use it all the time. It doesn't matter. They'll probably forget."
Jorick made a low angry noise, and Katelina waved it away. "You said she's in surgery?"
"Yeah. They gave her a room. One-twenty-two. Brad's there, if you want to talk to him." Verchiel turned regretful. "I can't stay. Ark's been blowing up my phone, wanting to know where I am. Hundreds of people aren't going to wipe their own memories. Of course, Jorick could always chip in."
The dark haired vampire made a low noise. "No, thank you. You can handle it on your own."
"Suit yourself. Though Ark wants to talk to you. When you get done, have Sorino call me and I'll set it up."
Ark. The leader of the Executioners, who was a mind reader, not to mention a haughty bastard.
Katelina gripped Jorick's arm. "If he thinks he's going to drag Jorick back-"
"I'm pretty sure that's the last thing on his mind." Verchiel's phone pinged before he could elaborate. "There's Ark again. I'll see you guys later. Room one-twenty-two."
He was gone so fast he was just a blur to her immortal eyes.
Jorick scoffed. "He enjoys disappearing like that, as if it makes him special. Come, little one, let's find your mother."
She followed Jorick through the sliding doors, then past the entryway, into the kind of chaos she'd only seen on TV. Hospital beds were stuck in the hall, full of people whose gauze was stained with fresh blood. She looked away from a woman with burns, and a child clinging to her grandfather, her tiny face half bandaged, her eyes full of tears.
Jorick skipped the ER doors to head down the corridor. Patients lined the hallway past Radiology. At the nurses' station, people in scrubs dashed to and fro, too busy to notice them.
Katelina counted off the room numbers until they found one-twenty-two. She pressed her palm to the closed door, as if she could see through it by feel. It wasn't her mother she didn't want to face right now, but Brad.
Brad had been Sarah's boyfriend until she was taken by the vampires. Since Katelina disappeared with Jorick at roughly the same time, everyone thought she and her best friend were kidnappedor murderedtogether. Brad and Katelina's mom teamed up to find them, including maintaining a website, making posters, putting in calls to TV shows, and canvasing the town.
Katelina came back, Jorick in tow. Though she couldn't tell Brad or her mother the truth, she made it clear she and Sarah weren't together. With Sarah presumed dead, Brad and Patricia worked to find her body. They grew closer, until they'd announced they were living together last Easter. Brad, the modernistic neat freak, and her scatter brained, sloppy mom. How in the hell could that work? Katelina'd tried to talk to her mom about it, but the answer was that it wasn't any of her business.
"And it isn't," Jorick said softly. "Any more than it's her business that we're together."
"You're not thirteen years younger than me," she whisper-yelled, afraid Brad would hear through the door.
"No, I'm more than five hundred years older." He gave a wry smile. "It seems a little hypocritical to fault them when our age difference is greater."
It was a fact she chose to ignore. "Yes-but you don't look five hundred years older."
"Your mother doesn't look thirteen years older than Brad. I'm sorry. You know I'm hardly her biggest fan, but this time I agree with her. If they're happy together it's none of your business. You're only upset because you considered Brad a peer, and your mother an 'adult'. Now your peer is crossing the line into your 'adults only' world. It makes you question where you are, and where you should be."
"That's ridiculous. I'm upset because he's supposed to be Sarah's boyfriend. They dated for two years."
"Though he obviously cared about Sarah, he wasn't as 'in love' as you expected him to be, or he wouldn't have moved on that quickly."
"Who's to say he won't move on from my mom that fast?"
Jorick shrugged, still irritatingly calm. "Maybe he will. That's something she has to deal with, not you. I'm sorry, little one, but it's time for you to leave it alone and let them be."
Her reply came out a sputtered sound of anger as Jorick pushed the door open. With a final dark glare, she marched inside. Curtains were pulled around the first bed, but the second was empty. Brad was slouched in a chair in the far corner. His face was smeared with dirt and blood, his clothes torn and dirty. His head was wrapped in gauze and his arm was in a sling.
When he looked up, his eyes went wide. "Katelina!" He jumped to his feet, winced, and swayed. "Fuck. Sorry."
She caught him and eased him back to the chair. "It's all right. Where's Mom?"
"In surgery. She hasn't woken up since-They said they stabilized her, but then everything crashed and they took her away again. If she dies-" He turned desperate eyes on her. "It's all my fault."
Katelina froze. "How is it your fault?"
"If we'd stayed at the restaurant-We were out with Linda and Ben. It was getting late, and they always get on my nerves. I talked Patricia into leaving. We got home-" He shook his head and muttered, "Sarah."
The name was enough to freeze Katelina's blood. If Lilith and Samael were fighting- She didn't have time to wait for Brad's explanation. She pushed for his memories and, unlike the vampires' unyielding minds, his human brain parted easily. Suddenly she was there, climbing out of the car, laughing. She saw her mother get out of the passenger side, wearing a black dress and a little wrap.
She looks good.
The thought died as her eyes swung to the porch. Something moved in the shadows. Stepping forward, she heard Brad's voice come from her mouth. "Hello? Is there someone there?"
The movement came again. Someone stepped from the darkness, into the yellow glow of the streetlights. Though the face was turned down, she recognized the mop of curly hair and the curvy frame.
"Sarah? I thought you left with Katelina?"
Sarah looked up, but her eyes were wrong. Hard. Cold. Glittering. Like eyes from the horror movies she'd made Brad watch. Like a demon or a possessed person or
She screamed. Brad shielded his ears, and saw Patricia do the same. Then he was flying through the air. He slammed into the neighbor's car. The world blinked off and on, a flurry of destruction. Like a tornado.
Patricia!
He crawled, using his good arm and dragging one leg. Where was she? Was she all right? He needed to get to her, he needed
Pain exploded in his skull and everything went black.
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