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I was in pure fight-or-flight response right about then. And all I could think about was running, getting away, not letting him drag me wherever he was planning to, do whatever he wanted to me while I was helpless but to endure it.
I didn't even hear him approaching.
But I felt his fingers sinking into my upper arm, the strength in them hurting, bruising.
I didn't think of anything but yanking away.
Because had I thought about it, I might have realized that the momentum would have sent me shooting forward, that I couldn't brace myself properly thanks to the cuffs, that I would be helpless to do anything but fall
And crack my head off the ground.
And slip into the inky blackness of unconsciousness.
So, yeah, that was exactly what I did.
Chapter Three
Ace
"Did you kill her?" Drex asked, coming up behind me as I leaned over the woman whose body was very still on the ground.
"She fell," I told him, reaching out to flip her onto her back, brushing her hair out of her face to look at the bloody wound on her head.
"You realize she's not going to be able to help Red if she's bleeding in her brain, right?" he asked, sounding amused as he rocked back on his heels.
"You're not helping."
"I'm not known for it," he agreed.
"Make yourself useful then, and get Lenore. She might not be able to help Red, but she can probably do something about this," I said, waving at the woman's head.
Hearing Drex move off—even if it was at a snail's pace—I looked back at the woman, turning her head each way to make sure she hadn't hurt herself anywhere else before letting my gaze slip down, seeing a laminated hospital badge hanging from a clip low by her hip.
Curious, I grabbed it, finding her name there.
Josephine Walsh.
RN.
I'd been hoping for a doctor. But I figured the nurses did a lot of the work at any given hospital. They certainly did most of the wound care. She should have been able to handle whatever was going on with Red.
"Oh, no," Lenore said, rushing forward, taking in the handcuffs, the wound on the woman's face. "What did you do?" she accused, dropping down, fingers pressing around the cut.
"Got someone to heal Red."
"And who is going to heal her?" Lenore asked, frustration clear in her voice.
It was no secret that she'd never been a fan of mine. Over her time with us, she'd developed relationships with most of the others, maybe especially so Daemon and Aram, the least cold of all of us. But she'd also gotten close with Minos. I'd walked down to get coffee many-a-morning to find the two of them talking in hushed whispers in the kitchen. She also often asked Seven for help with some task or another. She tolerated Drex and his sarcastic indifference. And she kept a wide berth around Bael. Like all of us did, to be honest. The man was not someone who wanted to get to know anyone, form any sort of relationships.
But me?
She openly disliked me much of the time.
I rarely gave her reason to feel otherwise.
"You," I told her, reaching down to lift the nurse off the ground. "It doesn't look that bad."
Lenore followed me inside, mumbling under her breath the whole time as I brought the woman into my bedroom where Red was still on the bed, bleeding, screaming against her gag.
"Fix up her head. Stay with her. Then call me when she wakes up," I demanded to Lenore as I placed the nurse on the couch, then made my way toward the door, needing coffee, to sit in front of the fire, to get some warmth back in my body after being outside for so long.
"Barking orders at her," Ly said as I moved into the kitchen, shaking his head at me. "Easy with that shit. You're my boss, not hers."
"If she didn't talk shit to me all the time, I wouldn't need to bark at her," I shot back as I went to the coffee maker, brewing a pot.
We didn't get a boost from caffeine like humans did, and I found myself envious of their susceptibility to mind and body altering chemicals as the day started to weigh on me. It was early to feel tired, but as I cradled my coffee in my hands and moved in front of the fire Bael was stoking, I knew that this tired wasn't as simple as needing rest.
I was a different kind of tired.
Just life tired.
Exhausted, really.
After finding out Lenore was capable of what generations of witches never could manage—opening the mouths of hell for us—I'd started to let myself hope for something I'd scarcely let myself truly hope for before.
A return home.
It had always been my goal, one I worked doggedly toward, one I obsessed about, but a part of me had always been doubtful it would be possible. Or, at least, that it would be possible for several generations yet.
