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“Malik,” Shade croaked. “Malik!”
Cruz, summoning courage she did not imagine she possessed, lifted Malik into a fireman’s carry, draping his arms over her shoulders, lifting his weight with her legs, ignoring the drops of burning human fat that fell onto her shoulders and neck.
“Malik,” Shade cried. “Malik!”
A morphed Armo came then and took Malik from the struggling Cruz, lifting Malik’s weight as if he was a small child.
“To that van!” Cruz panted, nodding exhaustedly toward the damaged van. She ran ahead and opened the back door, and Armo slid Malik in.
“Good luck,” Armo said, and ran back to Dekka.
Shade, feeling like a drunk, arms and legs working but not well, slid into the driver’s seat. “Map, Cruz. Hospital.”
Before Cruz could respond, Shade floored the accelerator and turned so sharply the van was momentarily on just two wheels.
Get him there alive, Shade told herself grimly, just get him there alive!
But driving was hard with numbed limbs and blurry vision and the howls of unspeakable agony behind her.
“Saint Mary Medical Center,” Cruz said. “Right at the Forty-Seven. It’s seven miles. Malik, hold on, hold on, we’re going to the hospital!”
The van went tearing erratically through the port, weaving almost miraculously through a stream of LAPD cars all rushing the other way.
The battle had drawn the curious, and traffic was dense as drivers slowed to gape at the pillar of smoke and the circling helicopters of the LAPD and three separate news stations. But now Shade was morphing again, head clearer, awkward limbs stamping hard on the accelerator, and the world around her slowed. With complete indifference to the damage, she pushed through every gap, tearing off side mirrors, leaving great gouges in paintwork.
I’ve killed Malik!
Perdido Beach, all over again. Her mother and now Malik. If he somehow survived, he would never be the same, he would never be the beautiful boy she’d once loved.
Still loved.
Seven miles took them just six minutes. Shade pulled the van to the emergency entrance, leaped out, grabbed Malik’s shoulders as Cruz grabbed his legs. They ran him inside, yelling, “Help him, help him!” The triage nurse stared in confusion. Shade pushed past, kicked open a swinging door, and found herself in the midst of chaos. Wounded police officers and dockworkers, some horribly burned, some with blood-soaked bandages, and doctors and nurses with heads down rushing from patient to patient.
There were no empty beds, so Shade and Cruz set Malik down on the counter of the nurse’s station.
An ER nurse yelled, “What the hell are . . .” before she saw Malik’s condition, and then, as if someone had thrown a switch, she was rapping out orders and demands. A young doctor rushed up and began yelling his own instructions.
Shade stood back, panting, human again.
“Is he going to die?” Cruz asked, sobbing.
“I don’t know,” Shade said. “I don’t know.”
Now Malik was concealed by half a dozen doctors, nurses, and technicians. Needles plunged into veins, a tube was pushed down Malik’s throat, status reports came in rapid succession. Pulse, oxygen level, blood pressure.
“Is he allergic to anything?” a nurse demanded.
“No,” Shade said. “Can you—”
“We’re trying,” the nurse snapped.
?
??You’ve killed him, Shade.”
Cruz’s flat statement was a knife in Shade’s heart. Time froze as the awful reality became a new and insidious poison in her veins.
The medical team lifted Malik onto a gurney and, still surrounded by white coats, he was wheeled away.
