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“She’s asleep? Resting?”
Tasha nodded. “Yeah. I was fairly liberal with the dosage, so she could be sure to get some real rest and a quiet mind for a while. She’ll be under for probably three, four hours. It’s late, so I’ll stay here tonight”—she nodded at the sofa—“that’s a pullout, and we can set up a cot for you in the procedure room, so you can stay with her. Gia, when I call Len to let him know I won’t be home, I’ll ask him—”
Gia cut her off “No, that’s okay. I’ll call home and get somebody to pick me up, and I’ll grab Cammy in the morning, if that’s okay.”
“That’s fine, yeah. Zaxx—”
Knowing what he needed to do and not wanting to get caught up in this suddenly and maddeningly mundane conversation, Zaxx stood. Vaguely, he felt Gia’s hold fall away from him.
“I’ll be back before she wakes up,” he said and headed for the door.
“Fuck. Zaxx, no!” Tasha said.
“Zaxx, don’t!” Gia said at the same time.
Zaxx heard but didn’t care. He knew what he had to do.
~oOo~
“Zaxx! Stop!”
Gia caught up to him as he crossed into the waiting room. She grabbed his arm. When he went to shake himself free, she pulled some kind of ninja move and suddenly his arm was folded against his back—not painfully, but inches away from it. He stopped so abruptly she crashed into him.
“Let go, Gia.” Her touch still felt like a grounding, but now he didn’t want to be grounded. He didn’t want to be sane or reasonable or cautious. He wanted rage to have him, to give him what he needed to avenge his sister.
She did not let go. “Did you hear what we said in there? This is not about you! It’s not your fight, not unless Zelda wants it to be.”
“You don’t know Zelda, you don’t know our relationship, you don’t know what you’re talking about. Let me fucking go.” Using as much power as he could, he got control of his arm and unfolded it. But still she held on.
“You need to be here for her, not out there having a testosterone tantrum.”
A testosterone tantrum? What the fuck? This time he moved without any concern for Gia and finally broke her hold. The force of his movement shoved her back hard enough that she nearly stumbled. He ignored the flick of guilt he felt at touching her with any kind of aggression.
“I’m not having a fucking tantrum!” he yelled. “What the fuck? I’m doing what I need to do.”
“No, you’re doing what you want to do. Look, Zaxx, I know you want revenge. I grew up in this world, I get it. But this ... what happened to your sister is different. Rape is more than just physical violence. You need to think about her.”
“What the fuck else do you think I’m thinking of? Those bastards savaged her! I’m thinking about nothing but that! Because it’s my fucking fault!”
She’d clearly had something else queued up to say, but her mouth snapped shut for a second as she processed his outburst. “How could it be your fault?”
He was not about to get into that long story now; he had to get out of here and make right what he could. “It’s none of your business.”
Her brilliant green eyes narrowed to slits. “You made it my business when you didn’t want me to leave while Tasha talked to you.”
Maybe he had, but it didn’t matter now. He shook his head. “Tell Tash I’ll be back as soon as I can.”
This time, when he headed for the door, Gia didn’t follow.
~oOo~
It finally occurred to Zaxx to check the time as he pulled from the clinic lot: almost midnight. That was late, but it gave him an idea. He knew he couldn’t hunt and kill Danvers on his own, but he knew who to ask for help, and he had a good idea where he’d find him. So he headed to No Place.
Saturday was the busiest night there, because they had live music, but Friday was a close second. At midnight, the lot was full and the juke was loud enough to shake the walls of the building. Zaxx saw Tommy’s hellbeast Heritage parked by the door and slid his LiveWire into the line of bikes. Not all the bikes were Horde, but those that were not left a respectful space.
There were people in the lot, as usual, drinking, talking, headed to their vehicles. He might have known all or some of them, but he didn’t give them more attention than he needed not to hit them with his bike or run into them on his way to the door.
Inside was loud, bright, and crowded. Zaxx pushed through the throng to the bar and found Tommy, Double A, and Dom—and, surprisingly, Showdown. Show was in his seventies and didn’t do crowd control work or even many protection jobs. He ran SBC and did enough runs to make his miles. But the old man stood at the bar with the others, drinking a Bud.
