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Gods, he felt sick just thinking about it. It was the kind of splitting, burning pain that would have brought a lesser man to his knees.
But somehow, Darien stayed on his feet and kept his head up as he walked at Roman’s side, holding his broken right hand against his chest—keeping it slightly above heart level to help with the swelling and pain. The slight tremor in Darien’s breaths was the only indication that he was suffering.
Up ahead, the black car Darien had told Roman to flip lay on its roof in the middle of the street, haloed with shattered glass and a spray of blood. Cars had pulled over, the drivers, passengers, and few pedestrians on the sidewalk staring. They only had a few minutes before the cops would be over here.
The longer they walked, the more irregular Darien’s breathing became, the more frequently he doubled up before steeling himself and resuming his determined pace.
“You okay?” Roman asked him quietly.
“Fine,” Darien replied, but the word was coated in agony, and beads of sweat dotted his face, his skin pallid.
They stopped beside the car, and Roman got down beside Darien as he crouched to look inside.
All the men were dead—no one they could take in for questioning.
Darien banged his good hand against the car. “Fuck.”
Loren knew something was wrong the minute she caught sight of Darien and Roman heading this way, the former cradling his hand against his chest.
Where she sat in the back seat of Darien’s car, Tanner beside her, she straightened, the hacker uttering a low oath she seldom heard on his lips as he did the same.
Darien and Roman had just made it to the car when the same warlock detective who was at the last crime scene approached, stopping them. They were close enough for Loren to hear their conversation.
“What the hell are you doing?” the detective fumed. Loren remembered Darien calling him ‘Finn Solace’. “You’re going to get me in trouble—”
“You’re the one who asked me to help you,” Darien cut in. “And I am done. I’m not your grunt.”
“You saw who did it, didn’t you?” Finn persisted, making the mistake of following as Darien and Roman made for the car. “Cassel, if you withhold information—”
“What?” Darien barked, rounding on a heel and getting up in Finn’s face. “You’ll what, Finn?” The detective’s throat bobbed. “Stay away from me and my family. No more favors, no more working together—that’s it.” He cut his gaze to a different detective—the one who’d arrested him and Jack—storming through the front doors of the conference center. “And keep that motherfucker away from me, or I’ll kill you both.” The threat sent a chill down Loren’s spine.
Darien got in the car, Roman taking the driver’s seat this time. The Devil didn’t say anything as he doubled up in his seat from the pain of the hand Loren realized was broken, except one word: Drive.
The spells on the car had wrecked Darien’s hand so thoroughly that Arthur had to set quite a few of the broken bones using a process called open reduction, where he made incisions in the skin so he could insert pins and plates.
From the sound of Darien’s muffled screams slicing through the house, the pain was unbearable. Excruciating.
Loren paced in the living room, eyes stinging, her throat too tight to swallow. Ivy sat on the couch beside Jack, her hand squeezing her husband’s in a death grip. For once, Jack had no jokes to crack, his expression more solemn than ever. Kylar and Tanner stood in the kitchen, silent and stiff as boards. Roman was out front, having a smoke, he’d said. He hadn’t even come inside. And as for the rest of them who’d gone with to Caliginous on Silverway, they had yet to make it back.
An Angel of Death named Dominic Valencia and a girl named Blue were here now. Let into the house by Arthur while the rest of them were at Caliginous. They stood together on the back deck, Blue unable to stomach the sound of Darien’s pain.
Loren could hardly stomach it either, muffled as it was. He was likely biting into something—wood or leather. Had magic not been involved in the breaking of his hand, the consequences for a hellseher wouldn’t have been nearly this bad—and neither would the pain, the others had told her. When magic was involved, bolts of it were left behind in the fractures, so when the bones were reset, the magic was released, forcing the victim to relive the pain a second time. Tenfold.
Nearly fifteen minutes of utter quiet passed. No one spoke or breathed too loudly, not even Jack. No further sounds came from the room Darien and Arthur were in—no bloodcurdling screams, no hoarse shouting, no cursing.
Eventually, Loren heard the quiet mumble of conversation.
And then the door clicked open, and Arthur walked out.
Darien came down the hall behind him, cradling his wrapped hand against his chest. He looked pale, and there were beads of sweat on his face.
“Someone,” Arthur began, looking a little pale too, “needs to drive Darien to the hospital.”
“I can drive myself,” he mumbled, for once not bothering to fix the strands of hair hanging in his face.
“I’ll drive him,” Tanner offered. “Are we going to see a Healer?”
“Yes,” Arthur said before Darien could argue, his tone resolute. The old man shot Darien a stern look. “If he doesn’t get a Healer to look at it, he could be living with this for at least a month. A Healer’s touch can lessen the recovery time by half.”
