“There’s a good possibility these ones can withstand sunlight. It wasn’t daytime when they arrived,” Lucien pointed out.
“They parked under an overhang and walked directly into the hospital,” Logan said. “I watched them on the camera. The first floor is the busiest, and I don’t see us getting past everyone down there without being spotted; you can’t changealltheir memories.”
Saxon pondered this, but before he could say anything more, the door below opened, and the stench of rot wafted to him. Unless they planned to carry more bodies out of here, they had to get out of this stairwell.
Saxon adjusted his hold on Elyse and carefully turned the knob so as not to make a sound while he opened the door. A shoe squeaked on the steps as he poked his head into the hallway and blinked against the influx of light.
A few doors down, a doctor and nurse were walking into one of the rooms. “Good morning, Mrs…?” The doctor’s voice faded away as she closed the door.
Further down the hall, another nurse pushed an older man in a wheelchair toward the elevator, but there was no one else around. He jerked his head for the others to follow him and closed the door behind him as the steps reached the landing below.
Saxon led the way down the hall as Logan and Lucien carted the dead bodies. They didn’t have much time, so he opened the first door he came to and stepped into the room. The beep of machines greeted him, but the older man lying on the bed didn’t open his eyes. Saxon stepped aside to let the others enter and closed the door behind his friends.
“You can put me down,” Elyse whispered.
Saxon hesitated, but some of the color was coming back into her face, and she wasn’t sweating as badly. He caressed her cheek before setting her down. She squeezed his arm before walking over to lean against the wall. It took everything he had to turn away from her.
He studied the sleeping man before striding over to the window. They were on the backside of the building, away from the parking lots and entryways. Snow covered the twenty feet of clearance between them and the woods.
Nearby, a door clicked as the Savage from the stairwell entered the hallway. Saxon glanced at the bodies; if the Savage hunting them was also a purebred, he would smell the stench of garbage these three emanated. Even if it wasn’t a pureblood, the scent of blood was sharp on the air, and it couldn’t be explained away by the hospital environment.
Lucien dropped his bodies by the bed where anyone looking through the window in the door wouldn’t be able to see them. With his dead guy still draped over his shoulder, Logan edged toward the head of the older man. Saxon returned to Elyse and maneuvered her into the bathroom where she’d be safer if something happened.
He stood outside the bathroom as the Savage’s footsteps stopped outside their door. If the bastard knew they were here, how far would it go, and how much would it risk exposure to come after them?
They had to be careful to keep the human world from knowing about their existence, but after the news story the Savages ran on Elyse, he didn’t know if they were playing by the same rules anymore. A fight here could put them all at risk, but this thing might not care.
The doorknob rattled then stopped. Saxon tensed as he waited for it to come after them, but retreating footsteps sounded before the door to the stairwell opened and closed again.
“It knows we’re here,” Lucien said.
“And it’s not stupid enough to come after us,” Logan said.
“We have to get out of here,” Saxon said. “It’s probably already on the phone with all its cronies; they’ll have us boxed in here in minutes.”
He stalked over to the window that stretched from the ceiling to his knees. Despite the size of the window, only a small, rectangular bottom panel could open when the lock was undone. He threw the lock and pulled the window toward him; it only opened a few inches.
Something squeaked in the hall and voices drifted to him. The door across the hall opened, and it sounded like the doctor from earlier calling another greeting. This room would be their next stop.
Saxon gripped the thin metal hinge connecting the window to the pane; as soundlessly as he could, he ripped the hinge from the frame. The window slumped down, but he caught it and propped it on the heater beneath it as he grasped the other hinge and tore it free. Once the window was off, there was enough room for all of them to fit through it.
He lifted one of the bodies and started to heave it out, but Logan stopped him. “What if there are windows and people below?”
Saxon leaned out to stare down the brick façade of the building; he spotted some windows beneath him, but he couldn’t tell if there were people in the rooms below or not. “We have no choice,” he said. “We can’t leave the bodies here for humans to discover and autopsy.”
“True,” Lucien agreed.
Saxon heaved the body out and away from the building before Lucien and Logan did the same with the other two. When they hit the ground, the Savages sank into the snow but not before the sun caught them. Smoke coiled up from their backs, and after a few seconds, the fire flickered over one’s shirt.
He held his hand out to Elyse; she’d left the bathroom and was standing only a few feet away. “We have to go.” She didn’t hesitate before taking his hand. “I’ll jump first and catch you.”
“Okay,” she said.
Saxon sat on the heater and pulled Elyse close to kiss her cheek. “We’re going to get out of this.”
“I know,” she said.
“And Iwillcatch you.”
