"You looked past me, appeared alarmed, and then fainted."
She looked past him now, her eyes landing on the empty hall. "Leonius is gone."
"Yes. Did you see him go?"
Dani glanced to him with surprise, but shook her head. "No... At least, I don't think so."
Decker squeezed her arm as she frowned, searching her mind for a memory that just wasn't there. He said softly, "It's all right. It doesn't matter."
Dani lifted her eyes back to him and opened her mouth to speak, but then paused and glanced toward her sister when Stephanie moaned. Decker followed her gaze to see that Mortimer was off the phone, but the girl was more than restless, she was starting to thrash and the enforcer was having trouble holding her even with both hands. Decker forced himself away from the wall, relieved to find that while his legs felt a bit weak, they were no longer trembling under his weight. Placing his arm around Dani, he glanced to his uncle and said, "We need to get Stephanie back to the house and get her tied down."
Lucian nodded and glanced toward Mortimer. He raised his eyebrows. "You're in charge."
Pecker smiled faintly when Mortimer rolled his eyes at that. The only one in charge when Lucian was around was Lucian. He took control in most situations, or allowed others to take control until they made a decision he didn't agree with, then he took that control back.
"Justin," Mortimer said suddenly.
"Yeah?" the younger immortal asked from the bowels of the next room.
"You're driving these four back to the house."
Justin moved to the doorway and glanced to Lucian, Stephanie, Decker, and Dani, and then back into the room, before glancing to Mortimer to ask, "What about Leonius's son?"
"I'll take care of him and the mortals," Mortimer answered, passing the girl over to Justin.
"What if someone calls hotel security or the police about the noise up here?" Decker asked as the thought suddenly occurred to him.
"I've already taken care of them," Mortimer said calmly. "I called the boys downstairs while I was waiting for the connecting door to be opened. They were going to take care of hotel security and handle the police if they showed up."
Decker nodded, thinking that Lucian had obviously made the right decision putting Mortimer in charge. He was going to make a good chief for them.
"Here." Lucian took off his long coat and crossed to hand it to Decker. "It's hot, but will hide the mess on your chest."
Decker glanced down at his bloody shirt and the hole revealing the ugly wound beneath and released Dani to accept the coat. She immediately moved to help him don it, but it still caused him a good deal of pain.
"Are you all right?" she asked worriedly, eyeing his sweating face as she did up the top four buttons for him.
Despite the pain he was suffering, Decker smiled faintly and nodded. Bullet wound or not, he was all right now that she was safely at his side... and he was going to make damned sure she stayed there.
"Let's go." Lucian headed for the door, saying, "We'll take the stairs to avoid attracting too much attention."
"The stairs?" Justin complained, scooping up Stephanie to follow. "That's fourteen floors."
"Thirteen," Dani corrected as Decker urged her to follow. "This is really the thirteenth floor. They just call it fourteen because too many superstitious people refuse to stay on the thirteenth floor."
Justin grunted as he maneuvered his way out the door, turning sideways to carry Stephanie through. "I can see why. That means Leonius's son was really in room 1313, and that wasn't really lucky for him."
Decker saw Dani smile faintly. But the smile faded as they stepped out into the hall and she asked, "What will Mortimer do with Twenty-one and his victims?"
Decker urged her up the hallway after the others. "He'll have Twenty-one removed to be taken for judgment, and then probably make an anonymous call reporting screams heard from 1413 so that the mortal authorities can find and help his victims."
Dani was silent as they reached the door to the stairwell and passed through it. Justin and Lucian were already out of sight, but they could hear their footsteps echoing from the next flight down.
"Stephanie can never go home now, can she?" Dani said as they started down the stairs. Her words were laced with sadness.
Decker considered whether he should remind her that Stephanie had only a one in three chance of surviving the turn with her mind intact, but then decided not to add to her worries. She would remember that soon enough herself. "No, she can't. There would be no way to hide what she was from your parents. She's a teenager and a new turn and will be constantly feeding for a while... and then there's the need for her to stay out of the sun, the fact that if she's injured, she'll heal more quickly than she would were she mortal..." He shook his head. "No, she can't go home."
"I hadn't thought of that," Dani admitted unhappily. "I was just thinking of Leonius."