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Of course he tried to fight her—because he was an idiot. But the only good thing about the fact that he was bleeding out in two places now was that his strength didn’t last long and it was a case of patty-cake-patty-cake. And she found his phone. The screen was cracked, but it came alive in her palm. He was coughing up so much blood now, she wasn’t sure facial recognition was going to work—
It did.
Meanwhile, his lips were clicking, and going by the glare on his increasingly gray face, it was clear he was yelling at her as best he could. Which was frickin’ insane. The last moments of your life, and you’re wasting them getting all hostile with a relative stranger?
She went into his contacts, to the final entry there was. Yet even with all the urgency, her fingertip hesitated over the name:Zsadist.
“You need to be giving me a last message to your parents,” she snapped at him as her heart rate tripled.
Call him.
Except she couldn’t do it. Even though her sire was one of the best people anybody would want in a life-or-death situation… he was the last person she needed here. She could just imagine him losing his shit that she was out of the house, then add in the slayers?
“You should be—” Her voice cracked as tears made that name blurry. “You should tell your parents that you love them and you’re sorry. For all the… miscommunication and distance.”
“I’m… okay…”
The sound of that raspy voice made her pull shit together, and she wiped her sleeve across her face. “What about a girlfriend or a lover. Jesus Christ, stop wasting your energy being pissed off at me and stupid about yourself.”
On that compassionate, totally noncritical note, she scrolled up, triggered a call, and put the phone to her ear. Then she went back to staring at Nate—as if that was going to do fuck all? Like there was anything to be done? There was no resuscitating him. She sure as hell couldn’t plug the holes inside of him by doing chest compressions—
A male voice cut into her spiral. “Nate?”
“Nonoit’sNallayougottahelpmehe’s—”
“Slow down,” Dr. Manny Manello said. “Who is this?”
“N-n-nalla—he’s been shot. In the chest and the abdomen. He’s dying! We’re in an alley off—”
There was a soft cursing. “Listen, take a deep breath for me—”
“You need to come now! We’re off Market between—”
Right on cue, Nate went into some kind of seizure, the spasms in his torso contorting him and turning him on his side on the pavement. The blood that flowed out of his open mouth was a copper bloom in the air and a red stain on the grimy snow, and as tears waved up her vision again, she knew she had to pull it together.
“We are off of Market Street. Get our location from this call—”
“Can you get to a safe place? I want you to dematerialize if you can—”
“Fuck that! You need to come save him—”
“He’s going to be all right.”
The statement was so strident, so out of left field, that she took the phone from her ear and checked the Samsung to see if it was malfunctioning. Had the man decided he didn’t like the M.D. after his name all of a sudden?
She put the thing back into place.“He’s dying!”
“No. He’s not. Look, you just leave him, and I’ll send someone now—”
“I’m not leaving and good, get your ass here! Get somebody here!”
As a strangled sound vibrated up, Nalla dropped the phone, and captured Nate’s face in her hands. She thought about when she’d noticed him earlier, out in front of the club. She’d give anything to get annoyed by that big-swinging-dick energy again. How were they here? Why had… this all happened?
It was her fault. If she hadn’t come out tonight, she—
“You fucking stay with me,” she choked. “Help is coming. They’re on their way.”
“Doesn’t matter…”
