take a breath. My heart thudded into my chest like a jackhammer. Time snapped back to normal speed. I huffed for breath as I checked the two bad guys. One no longer breathing, one down and out.
"How bad?" I asked Tory.
"I'm gonna need some stitches." He leaned left, hit the railing with his shoulder, and slid down. His blood flowed out, venous, not the fierce, arterial pumping of the man I'd just killed. But still, not good. Not good at all.
CHAPTER TWO
Oh, Goody. I Wasn't Gonna Get Sucked to Death
The pilot stuck his head out of the door above me, back inside, and then raced down the stairs. "I've called airport security and 911. They're sending an ambulance and the cops," he said.
I said something that would have gotten my mouth washed out by the house mother at the Christian children's home where I was raised. "Medical kit!" I demanded. But the pilot was ahead of me and knelt beside Tory, opening the small kit. With actions that were medic-fast, he ripped open boxes and plastic packages and applied a thick layer of gauze over Tory's wound. Over that he folded a blanket from the jet. The entry wound was low in the upper left quadrant, above his waist, below his ribs. I tried to remember what organs were there and came up with upper colon and maybe spleen. The exit wound was directly behind it and way bigger. The pilot adjusted Tory's limp body, stuffed another blanket over that one, and wrapped them in place with gauze and a sticky-wrap bandage. He leaned in, applying pressure, his knees on the tarmac. "Come on, boy. Don't die on me," he muttered. "Don't die. Fight. You can fight this."
I lifted Tory's feet and propped them on the steel step, got more blankets from inside, all treatment for shock. I'd taken an emergency medicine course between life in the children's home and life as an adult as the junior member of a security firm. I'd taken a lot of classes in a lot of things. Some of what I'd learned was even useful occasionally.
Needing to be doing something for the man who had thought I needed help, and knowing there was nothing I could do, I secured the unconscious attacker, hands and feet, with double zip strips, cleaned out his pockets, and made a fast reconnoiter of the area while I called Leo's to report in. Bruiser answered. "We've landed. Two blood-slaves - " I stopped. Yeah. Multiple vamps had fed off them. Blood-slaves, not blood-servants. Expendable weapons. " - attacked me as I got off the plane. I took them down, but the first mate, Tory somebody" - I slid a hand over my face. I didn't even know his last name - "jumped in to help. He's injured. The pilot called 911."
Bruiser swore. Vamps took care of their own, avoiding all human agencies when possible, but this time it was too late. "Dan's a part-timer. Leo's regular pilot is sick today," Bruiser said. The phone fell silent as he thought, probably going over the vamp-political implications of Leo's self-proclaimed and uninvited Enforcer killing someone in the city of another master. Unlike me, Bruiser had a political mind and an elegant surface in addition to his ruthless side, which was the reason he was Leo's real Enforcer. That and the fact that he had the blood-bond with Leo that I had refused. "Okay," he said. "I'll get someone there to handle things. You get to the Romanello Clan Home."
Which was what I'd known he would say, but the words were still cold and heartless. Something twisted deep inside me. As if he knew what I was feeling, Bruiser added, "Or you can stay and spend the next two days answering the questions of local law enforcement."
He was right. I knew it. Still . . . "Okay. But someone knew we were coming. That list is limited to the pilot and first mate, the pilot who called in sick, any of the vamps y'all told on your end, and Derek Lee and his guys on my end." Derek's old team all went by monikers based on vodka drinks: V. Martini, V. Lime Rickey, V. Chi-Chi, V. Hi-Fi, V. Sunrise, V. Angel Tit. Derek had been called V. Lee's Surrender - a joke with historic connotations. I trusted these guys.
"Derek has new men," he said.
I thought about that. In some way I had never questioned or understood, Derek was Leo's before he was