They didn't mean anything in particular, except that as I tried to lift Aubrey's dead weight to the open window, they shifted into sobs. I ignored myself, pushing his limp arms and legs out into the night air, then crawling after him.
The clean night air tasted wonderful. I let myself pause, my back against the rotting concrete wall, my breath labored. Aubrey lay beside me. His chest rose and fell deep and slow, as if he were only sleeping. As if he were the only one in his body. My hands were shaking with fatigue and the aftereffects of battle, but I couldn't stop. At any second, Legba's followers could pour out of the building. Or worse, the thing in Aubrey could wake up.
I fireman-carried Aubrey across the street, shuffling as quickly as I could to get across before a pickup truck ran me down. No one stopped to help, but no one stopped to ask me what the hell I was doing. At the base of the parking structure's stairway, I paused again, gasping for breath. I was still weeping a little, and I hated myself for that.
Karen was back there, in the hospital. She was probably dead by now. Between one breath and the next, it had all gone to hell, and there'd been nothing I could do. And the elevator was broken, meaning four long flights of stairs to the car. I couldn't carry him that far. I sank down to the steps, pressed my palms to my eyes, and trembled.
"Okay," I said. "Get it together. Come on, Heller. Get it together."
I swallowed my tears, looked up the twisting metal and concrete stairway, then back at Aubrey's still-inert form. I couldn't carry him. I just couldn't.
"Fine," I said. "You stay here, okay?"
Aubrey didn't answer, of course. I took a deep breath, nodded, and ran up the stairs by myself. Yes, someone might come by and find Aubrey passed out in the stairwell. Yes, the rider might come awake, and greet me with a renewed attack. But I needed the car, it was on the fourth level, and so I was going to go get it.
Driving slowly down the empty parking structure grounded me. By the time I got back to Aubrey, I'd almost stopped shaking. Karen's black duffel bag was still in the backseat. I thought I'd remembered seeing a roll of duct tape in it. Not quite as good as handcuffs, but what the hell.
As cars passed by on the street, I wrapped Aubrey's arms behind him, taping them together with almost half a roll. The rest, I put around his ankles and knees. He murmured once as I moved him, the voice not his own. I debated for a minute between the backseat and the trunk and opted for the backseat. I got him in, pushed the doors closed, and found my cell phone. Ex answered on the third ring.
"Where are you?" I asked.
"At the house," he said. "We've finished the first cycle of wards. I was thinking we could go pick up a refrigerator."
"Stay there," I said.
"What's wrong?" he said. I could see his face, the hardness of his eyes, the cold fury.
"The reconnaissance went south," I said. "Just... just stay there."
I dropped the cell onto the passenger's seat, turned on the engine, and started to pull out to the street. The cell lit up.
"Hey," it said. "You've got a call."
The display said it was Karen Black.
"Hello?" I said.
"Where are you?" Karen asked.
What if she'd been taken captive? What if it wasn't really her?
"In the car," I said, not lying, but not giving away anything.
"Great," she said. "Take La Salle south. Toward the Superdome. Turn left at Perdido. I'll watch for you."
"How do I know this isn't a trap?" I said.
There was a pause. I thought she was laughing, but she might only have been out of breath.
"You don't, really," she said. "But it's not."
In the backseat, Aubrey muttered angrily and shifted his weight. I wondered what I was going to do if the rider came to before I got back to the house. Was it a bigger risk to get Karen, who might be the free cheese in the mousetrap, or drive alone with a demon in the backseat? I thought about how I would have felt if she'd been the one to reach the car.
There wasn't really a choice.
"Okay," I said. "I'll be right there."
The traffic was light. I took La Salle down a long city block. Perdido was a one-way, and