Page 30 of Reaper

I stood in the center of the yard with blood on my knuckles and a dead man at my feet and Lila’s handprint warm on my chest, and the weight of what came next settled into my shoulders the way my cut settled into my shoulders—familiar, certain, permanent.

The club would answer, or it was finished.

And I would be the one delivering the answer.

Chapter 10

LILA

The infirmary smelled like bleach and blood and something underneath both that I couldn’t name. The prospect lay on the cot with his eyes closed and his shoulder wrapped in gauze that had already soaked through, the dark stain spreading outward from the center where the knife had gone in. I held the IV bag above his head because the hook on the wall was missing and someone had to, and my arm had been up so long the muscle had gone past burning into something dull and permanent.

His breathing came wet. Each inhale dragged something loose in his chest, a rattling that carried under the drip of the IV and the hum of the space heater someone had dragged in from the storage room. The coarse blanket they’d thrown over him was too thin for the cold, but it was what they had, and his fingers gripped the edge of it even in whatever state of consciousness he was drifting through.

The older member who’d helped me carry him in had disappeared ten minutes ago. Radio call. Something about the perimeter. He’d left me with a roll of gauze and instructions to change the dressing when it soaked through, and the dressing had soaked through twice already.

Doc was already on his way, the older member had said before he left — the club’s own patched-in paramedic, twenty minutes out with a real bag and a real pole. Moving the kid anywhere before then, with hostiles unaccounted for past the fence, was a good way to lose him twice. Twenty minutes. I could hold a bag in the air for twenty minutes.

The door opened.

Reaper stood in the doorway. Didn’t cross the threshold. Just planted himself there, one hand on the frame, and his eyes did a quick circuit of the room: the prospect on the cot, the IV bag in my hand, the blood on the floor where we’d tracked it in from the yard. His jaw was set. The particular set that happened when something had cost him, and he was already converting the cost into motion. His knuckles were split fresh—I could see the blood dried in the creases, darker than the old blood that had been there before. The cut on his forearm where the knife man’s nails had dug in had been cleaned and left open, no bandage, the skin around it red and angry.

He looked at the prospect for three seconds. Counted the breathing. His eyes moved to the gauze, the stain, the way the kid’s fingers gripped the blanket. Then he looked at me. Not at my face—at my arm holding the IV bag, the way my shoulder had locked from holding it up too long.

He didn’t say anything. Didn’t step into the room. Just held the doorway for the exact amount of time it took to confirm the kid was alive, and then he pivoted and was gone, footsteps carrying down the hall before the door had fully swung shut behind him.

Doc came in on his heels, already shrugging out of his jacket, a real bag swinging from his other hand. He took one look at the missing hook, swore under his breath, and had the IV properly hung from a ceiling pipe in under thirty seconds — hands moving fast and sure in a way that told me this wasn’t his first infirmary and wouldn’t be his last. He listened to the prospect’s chest, frowned at whatever he heard, and started working before I’d finished stepping out of his way.

My arm came down at last, the blood rushing back into the muscle with a pins-and-needles burn that made me wince. The prospect didn’t stir, but under Doc’s hands the wet rattle in his chest had already started to thin into something less frightening.

I followed.

The corridor was narrow, concrete under my boots, the same diesel smell layered now with the sharper tang of recent violence. Radios crackled through the walls—coordinates, status reports. Someone was running the perimeter.

Reaper was in the main room when I reached it.

He moved through the space the way something mechanical moves—precise, clipped, each motion serving the next without wasted energy. Checked the deadbolt on the front door, tested the reinforced glass at the side window for give. His eyes never landed. They scanned, assessed, moved on, the way you scan terrain when you’re looking for the angle of approach.

A club member stood by the kitchen door. Cut on his back, beard thick, forearms mapped with ink that had blurred with age. Reaper approached him, exchanged three words I couldn’t catch, and the member nodded once and moved toward the hallway. Reaper’s chin jerked toward me. Not looking at me. Just a quick directional gesture, the kind you make when you’re already thinking three steps ahead and the person in front of you is an obstacle to clear.

The member changed course. Headed for me instead of the hallway. His hand came up, palm out, the universal gesture for stay put, and his mouth opened to say whatever Reaper had instructed him to say.

I stepped around him.

Reaper was already at the far door. Hand on the handle, weight shifting to push through, and I called his name. Not loud. Just his name, the way you call someone who’s walking away from a conversation that isn’t finished.

He stopped. Didn’t turn. His hand stayed on the door handle, fingers curled around the metal, and the set of his shoulders told me he’d heard me and was deciding whether answering was worth it.

“Reaper.”

He turned. Slow. Deliberate. His eyes found mine across fifteen feet of scarred floorboards and weak overhead light, and what I saw in them wasn’t the man who’d kissed me in the concrete room. Wasn’t the man who’d held my wrist in the kitchen and traced the edge of my bruise with his thumb. This was the man from the gravel lot. The man from the fence. The particular version of him that showed up when the choices narrowed to one and the only answer was violence.

“Stay with him,” he said, nodding toward the member behind me. “Stay inside. Yard’s off-limits until I say otherwise.”

His voice was flat. Functional. Stripped of everything except the necessary information, delivered in the tone of a man who’d already moved past the point where explanations mattered.

“Pushing me away isn’t a security measure,” I said. The words came out before I could soften them. Flat. Direct. A truth that didn’t soften, no matter how it was said. “It’s a choice.”

Something moved across his face. Fast. Controlled. Shut down before it fully surfaced—a flash of something that might have been recognition, or might have been the frustration of a man who’d been read accurately and didn’t have time to deal with it.