"Mercy." It was Yelena, her voice wobbly. "The call, it was Faith. She said she asked for help, wanted to tell me to tell you not to shoot them."
Mercy looked at the gun in her hand, then up at Yelena. "Our little secret?"
Giving a tearful laugh, Yelena went to take the saline bag.
"I've got it."
"No." A gentle hand on her arm. "You have to stay on guard... in case they come back."
But, as things fell out, the enemy didn't come back. The next to arrive were the paramedics, followed by a swarm of DarkRiver men and women led by a cold-eyed jaguar who rode guard on the two critically injured, then proceeded to lock down security in an entire wing of the hospital.
Vaughn bit out order after order until no one but Pack could get in. An oddly groggy Faith - her vision the reason Vaughn had arrived on the scene so quickly - took a seat in the corridor and told them she was scanning for psychic threats. Clay arrived over an hour later, having had to make the drive from Dorian's cabin. He brought a comatose Amara Aleine with him. "I left Jamie and Desiree in charge of the perimeter," he said, as he put Amara on a gurney and shoved a hand through his hair. "Sascha and Luc are on their way up. Sascha looks like hell." He frowned, eyes on Faith. "Like you."
Faith rubbed at her temples. "When Sascha realized what was happening, she shoved energy down Lucas's blood bond to Dorian. She took it from herself, Lucas, and me. Lucas probably doesn't look as bad because he's alpha - he's just stronger."
"Why not use the rest of us, too?" Mercy scowled.
"She had to take it from the people she knew would lower their shields in an instant. Even with her ability to get through changeling shields, it would've taken too long otherwise."
"Faith's right." Sascha's tired voice, as she came through the doors with Lucas's arm around her waist. "It only worked with Dorian because he was desperate to save Ashaya. When I shoved at his shields, he didn't hesitate to let me in."
Faith got up. "You saved their lives."
Sascha shook her head as they walked into the room where all three - Dorian, Ashaya, and Amara - lay. "It would've been too little too late if Ashaya hadn't held on for those first critical moments." She broke away to go to Dorian's side. Her fingers trembled as she brushed his hair off his forehead. "He came within a second of dying."
Chapter 46
She's injured, extremely vulnerable, but we can't reach her. I'd suggest waiting - if the Council backs off, the changelings will drop their guard. We can take her then. If she dies, we move on. We still have the drug.
- E-mail from Internet cafe in San Francisco to server in Venice
"She wouldn't have let him," Lucas said, touching Ashaya's face with his palm. It was a gesture of acceptance, as well as an alpha's offer of protection. "Dorian's mate is a strong woman."
Sascha nodded but her heartbeat was ragged. Because lying there, Ashaya looked very small, her color faded, her body almost lifeless. "Tammy?" The changeling healer could do more than any medical doctor - for Dorian at least. But Ashaya was connected to him, so if he improved, so would she.
"Should be here soon," Vaughn answered from the doorway, having come in to hug Faith. "She and Nate were on their way to drop the cubs at playgroup when I called."
After Vaughn left to take up his watch again, Faith sat down on a chair beside Ashaya's bed. "When I saw the shooting, it was strange - one of those new visions."
Sascha perched on Dorian's bed, holding his hand. Faith had curled her own hand around Ashaya's. Letting them know they weren't alone. It mattered, Pack mattered. "One of the ones that's not clear-cut?"
Faith nodded, but waited as Lucas made a motion to head out the door. "I'm going to check the body." His mouth was a flat line.
"Mercy tore out the assassin's throat," Faith murmured.
"Saves me having to do the job." With that, Lucas was gone.
"She took her cue from Dorian," Faith explained to Sascha, having heard this from Mercy when the sentinel first arrived at the hospital, "began running as soon as he did. She was right behind the shooter, managed to use her claws to bring him down."
Sascha was an E-Psy, but she couldn't find any pity in her heart for the shooter. Because that man had hurt her family, her pack. "Good." A pause to get her anger under control. "Tell me about the vision."
"I saw the shooting," Faith said with the quiet strength of an F-Psy who saw more than most people could imagine. "Then there was a sort of grayness that came down across it all, a kind of misty fog. I could hear garbled voices, glimpse bits and pieces of movement, but nothing concrete."
"Things in flux." Sascha looked from the fallen sentinel to his mate. Then her eyes drifted beyond. Releasing Dorian's hand, she walked over to Amara Aleine's bed. "Ashaya had to choose, that's why. If she hadn't accepted the bond, we'd have lost him."
She forced herself to take Amara's hand. Whatever she was, she was also a sentient being. And, "She made a choice, too," she said, trying to order the fragments of memory. It had been chaos in the Web of Stars as the mating bond snapped into place, then dragged Amara in with it. "She tried to save Ashaya." Amara had been ready to sacrifice her own life for her twin's.
A broken kind of love, but love nonetheless.