Page 188 of Carnal Wagers

“Maeve,” Erel cried out.

“Over here,” I quavered. The sound rattled in my chest.

A stampede rushed through the apartment, person after person filing inside the office in a nonstop flow. I heard the vibrations of their steps more than I saw them as they settled around the three of us in clusters.

“Hi, my name’s Michael. I’m a paramedic.” The newcomer’s drowned voice was too mellow, given that I’d just shot my closest friend. “Can you give me your name? Where does it hurt?”

“Help him,” I coughed out as figures blurred around me and turned into vague shadows. The world swam in and out. I lifted a heavy hand and tried to point. “Poison. Hellebore. Foxglove. In his coffee.”

“Okay, that’s good. There’s another team working with him. What about you?”

“And her. I shot her. Help her.”

“We will, but let’s help you too.”

My eyes opened and shut without my say-so. My head lolled against Cillian’s desk. There were so many voices, one over the other. So many sounds. Metal clanking, chiming, something mechanic whining. The tear of clothing, not mine. Suddenly, I wasn’t sitting upright anymore but was lifted onto a gurney. A mask tightened over my face.

“We’ve got a single penetrating sharp-force trauma to the…,” the paramedic’s voice droned.

“Shock advised,” a mechanical voice stated from farther in the room.

“Is he going to make it?” Liam asked frantically, so close but so far away. Cillian…he was talking about Cillian, and I tried to reach out to him as the gurney snapped up.

“Move aside, sir. Everyone stand clear,” another stranger exclaimed as the room rolled past me.

A long, steady tone sounded, followed by a dull thud, then beeping picked up, rhythmic and steady.

“Maeve, stay with me,” Erel said, somewhere else.

“I-I want to go with…Al,” Maeve strained to say. “Take me to Al, Erel.”

“We are going to. In the ambulance.”

“Y-you need…t-to find some…someone b-better than me,” she stuttered. “You’re a-a good man, just n-not good for me.”

“Mon ange.” The pain in Erel’s distant voice broke what was left of me. “I only want you.”

Rocked by the sway of my gurney, I let oblivion swallow me whole.

Chapter 47

The sharp throb radiating from my sternum with each inhale told me I’d survived. So did waking up in a hospital room. It was far too bland a hellscape to account for my sins, though the incessant beeping of the heart monitor and the pungent sting of antiseptics certainly had potential. Bright ambient lights seared through my eyeballs. I squinted through fluttered blinks and raised a hand to block most of it out. If this were somehow heaven, someone had screwed up the sign-in sheet and needed to be shot for lack of creativity.

I jerked my elbows behind me to sit up and groaned. Just that movement seemed to suck the life out of me.

A weight on the bed, cinching the blankets around my calves, stirred, and Liam’s head popped up. His groggy, hollow eyes looked through me. He blinked once. Twice. Three times. His mouth parted with a scratchy gasp, and he tore himself up to standing.

“You’re awake.” He raked his fingers through his hair and tugged it back. “Don’t fucking scare us like that ever again. You hear me, Killy?”

“That bad?” I joked with a cough, my throat drier than the desert.

“You coded twice. Twice. I thought…We thought…” He twisted around and threw a pen across the bed at our sleeping middle brother, who slouched in a chair, his eyes closed behind sunglasses he wore against the bright glare in the room. Brody’s bald head rested against his shoulder, and his legs were splayed out in front of him. “Oi, Brody.”

The pen smacked him across the cheek, and he startled awake with a snarl, rubbing at his face.

“You rotten bastard, that hurt.”

“Killy.” Liam jerked his head my way, teeth clenched as if saying my name might invoke the Dullahan to take my soul to the afterlife.