Darker Than Night - Amelia Wilde Page 0,1

me and a fresh gush of blood soaks my shirt. I hold her closer to try and mitigate the bump from the curb but I don’t want to push the glass farther into her back. It’s an enormous shard for her small body. It’s going to kill her. “We found the explosives and I cleared out as many people as I could, but—”

“The tower always falls,” I tell him sagely, some bullshit I heard from one of the women who works at The Fates. “I’m not giving you a glowing reference.”

James’s face is pale in the rearview mirror. “I won’t blame you if you kill me.”

“Kill you?” I laugh, automatic and heartless. “You’re my head of security. Why would I start with you?”

“I’m the closest.”

The way James is driving, it’s only a few minutes to the hospital. He guns it into the emergency entrance, throwing me shoulder-first into the door. Fine, it’s fine. I stop Brigit’s head from making contact and pull the handle, spilling us onto the sidewalk. James tries to get out but I kick his door shut. “You go to my place. You have the address?”

He does. He’s the only one at the whorehouse who knows the place I’m talking about, and he confirms it with a nod.

“Go there and wait for me. If I don’t come back, you know what to do.”

His hands are on the wheel. “You have to come back.”

I ignore this and go toward the lights.

The hospital is blinding at this hour. Its glass and metal front is an ocular assault. Maybe my retinas were burned by the explosion. Don’t look down. I look down regardless and the red threatens me a second time. Red on red. An ambulance howls its way along the side of the building and this sharpens my resolve. Not a single fucking person is going to get help before Brigit. I’ll get them to help her if it’s the last thing I do, and it might be the last thing I do.

The first thing I see when I get into the lobby is a woman, running.

Her hair is another red flash. Blue scrubs, sprinting in the opposite direction. Is she running from my father?

She’s running from me.

The waiting room is a collection of statutes, people frozen in chairs. They’re faceless, unimportant things, expressions frozen in shock.

Say something. No words come to mind. Or—the words that come to mind won’t mean anything to these people. My building exploded. Someone tried to kill me but Brigit was in the way. There’s glass—

A voice over a speaker is a muddled mess of codes. For her? For me? I don’t care if they clear the whole building, as long as someone comes to help.

Someone is coming.

A flock of blue scrubs and white coats, running, running. I discover I’m standing in some liminal space between the waiting area and a wide hallway, big enough for crash carts and stretchers. The redhead from before reaches me first.

Then she reaches for Brigit.

And—

I can’t.

I wrench her away from them, from the grasping vultures. They’re all talking at once, too many of them, and the rush of blood in my ears shreds the words into an unrecognizable mess. Panic body-checks me with enough force to crack several ribs, and fuck these people. I brought her here but it was a mistake, a terrible mistake—

“Don’t touch her.” I sound feral, and some detached part of me wonders what hell this desperate man crawled out of. “Don’t put your hands on her—”

I’m searching for an exit, though an exit is the last thing I need, when a familiar face elbows her way through the crowd. I’m the person with the poker face in every situation. Carina Jain wears one now. Shoulders relaxed, hands in view, she gestures the others back. They’re all on edge, tense and waiting, and if even one of them steps close again I will pull this building down around us. “Zeus, she’s losing a lot of blood.”

A lot of blood folds in on itself and then explodes like the back wall of my building. “She’s dying.”

“You have to let us help.” A hand on my arm, near my wrist, and I take a big step back. Don’t touch her. “Put her down. Right here. I promise you, no one will do her any harm.” Carina snaps a stretcher into being at my side. “Just lower her. Carefully, carefully...”

It feels like death, like being cut open at the core and flayed alive, but her voice seems