Blood Kiss - Ward J. R. - Страница 13

Marissa had had to blink fast at the gentle hands of the nurses. They were as careful with her in death as they had been in life.

As the staff filed out, she wanted to thank the females in their white dresses and discreetly squeaky shoes. Clasp their hands. Hug them.

Instead, she stayed where she was, paralyzed by a sense that the death that had occurred was not hers to witness. Family should be here, she thought with dread. God, where was she going to find the family?

“I’m so sorry,” Havers said.

Marissa was about to ask him why he was apologizing to her—when she realized he was addressing his patient: her brother was bent over the bed, one of his hands resting on the motionless shoulder beneath the sheet, his brows drawn tightly beneath his tortoiseshell glasses.

When he straightened and stepped back, he popped up those glasses and seemed to wipe his eyes—although when he finally turned to her, he was fully composed.

“I shall ensure that her remains are attended to appropriately.”

“Which means what.”

“She will be cremated with a proper ritual.”

Marissa nodded once. “I want her ashes.”

As Havers nodded in turn, and arrangements were made for pickup the following evening, Marissa was very aware that she was running out of time. If she didn’t get away from her brother, this room, that body, the clinic … she was going to break down in front of him.

And that was simply not an option.

“If you will excuse me,” she cut in. “I have some business to take care of back at Safe Place.”

“But of course.”

Marissa glanced at the female, noting absently that the sheet was staining red in a couple of places, no doubt from the removal of the tubes.

“Marissa, I…”

“What?” she said in a tired voice.

In the tense quiet that followed, she thought about all the time she’d spent being mad at him, hating him—but at the moment, she couldn’t muster up any of those emotions. She just stood in front of her kin, waiting in a position of neither strength nor weakness.

The door opened and the curtain was pulled back. A nurse, one who had not been involved in the death, put her head in. “Doctor, we are prepped in four.”

Havers nodded. “Thank you.” When the nurse ducked back out, he said, “Will you excuse me? I have to—”

“Take care of your patients. By all means. It’s what you do best, and you are very good at it.”

Marissa left the room, and after a split second of which-way, remembered to go left. It was easier to regain her composure out in the open and keep her mask in place as she walked back down to the reception area—and all eyes were on her as she departed, as if word had spread among the staff. Strange that she recognized no faces—it made her realize anew just how many had been killed in the raids, how long it had been since she had been around her brother’s work.

How the two of them, in spite of blood ties, were essentially strangers.

Taking the elevator back up to the surface, she emerged in the cell-like pre-building and punched her way out into the forest.

Unlike the evening before, tonight the moon shone brightly, illuminating the forest … and the absolutely no road in. It dawned on her then that there truly were a multiple of entrances to the subterranean complex, some for deliveries, others for patients who were able to dematerialize, and then that one for ambulances.

All of it so logically set up, undoubtedly due to her brother’s input and influence.

Why hadn’t Wrath told her that he was helping Havers with all this?

Then again, it wasn’t really her business, was it.

Had Butch known? she wondered.

I am so sorry.

As Marissa heard her brother’s voice in her head, her anger came back tenfold, to the point that she had to rub a heartburn sensation away from her sternum.

“Water under the bridge,” she told herself. “Time to go back to work.”

And yet she couldn’t seem to leave. In fact, the idea of heading to Safe Place made her want to bolt in the opposite direction: She couldn’t tell the staff there about what had happened just now. The female’s death was like a negation of everything they tried to do under that roof: intercept, protect, educate, empower.

Nope. She couldn’t face going there right away.

The problem was … she had no idea where to go.

Chapter Six

In the darkness that was as dense as that of a grave, Paradise could hear only her heart thundering behind her ribs. Squinting, she tried to get her eyes to adjust, but there was no light source anywhere—no glow from around the doors, no red Exit signs, no emergency lights. The void was utterly terrifying and seemed to defy the laws of gravity, the sense that she had maybe floated off the floor even as her weight remained on her feet confusing her, nauseating her.

No more classical music, either.

But things were far from silent. As she forced her ears to reprioritize away from the castanets in her chest, she could hear the muttering, the breathing, the cursing. A few must have been moving a little, the rustling of clothes, the shuffling of feet, like background chatter to the more prominent vocal noises.

They can’t hurt us, she told herself. There was no way the Brotherhood was actually going to hurt any of them: Yes, she had signed a consent and waiver form on the back of the application—not that she had read the fine print with much interest—but in any event, murder was murder.

You couldn’t sign away your right to remain breathing.

This was just the Brotherhood making their grand entrance. Any moment now. Yup, they were going to emerge spotlit from some door, silhouetted like superheroes against a rolling white fog, their awesome weaponry hanging from their larger-than-life bodies.

Uh-huh.

Any minute now …

As the darkness continued, her fear spiked again, and it was hard not to give in to it and run. But where would she go? She had some vague sense of where the doors were, where the bar was, where the sign-in table had stood. She also thought she remembered where that male, Craeg, was—no, wait, he had moved. He was moving.

For some reason, she could sense him among all the others, as if he were a kind of beacon—

A breeze brushed against her body, making her jump. But it was just cool air. Cool, fresh air.

Well, that ruled out an electrical short if the HVAC systems were still working.

Okay, this was ridiculous.

And clearly, she wasn’t the only one getting frustrated. Other people were cursing more, moving more, stomping their feet.

“Brace yourself.”

Paradise shouted into the darkness, but then settled as she recognized Craeg’s voice, scent, presence. “What?” she whispered.

“Get ready. This is going to be the first test—they’ve opened the way out, the question is how they’re going to drive us toward it.”

She wanted to seem as smart as he was, as calm as he was. “Why don’t we just go back over to the doors we came through?”

“Not a good idea.”

Right on cue, there was a coordinated shuffling in the direction of the way they’d all entered, as if a group had coalesced, agreed on a strategy, and was putting a plan in action.

And that was when she heard the first screams of the night.

High-pitched, and obviously of pain and not alarm, the horrible sounds were accompanied by a buzzing she didn’t understand.

Blindly—literally—she threw out a hand and grabbed onto Craeg’s … except no, the flat, hard expanse was his stomach, not his arm. “Oh, God, I’m sorry. I—”

“They electrified the doors,” he said without acknowledging her gaffe or apology. “We can’t assume anything is safe in here. Did you drink what they served? Did you eat any of that stuff on the plates?”

“Ah … no, no, I—”

From over on the left, the unmistakable sound of someone dry-heaving cut into the chaos. And two seconds after that, like a bird answering the call of its species, someone else started to vomit.