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I couldn’t call an ambulance. Protocol was always the vet.
Hospital records were too difficult to scrub and surgeons too wealthy to afford to pay off.
“Now,Corv.” Rook commanded, his black eyes fixing on mine with the promise of violence. “There’s no time. She won’t make it to the vet.”
No. She wouldn’t.
And we couldn’t let her die.
“I need you to hold this.”
I bent, ignoring the stab of pain in my abdomen as I took over holding the wad of soiled satin to Rebecca’s chest while he focused on getting air to her brain.
“Hold on,” I told Rebecca, as if by commanding her alone, I could will her not to die. Not to leave the friend who still needed her. “You don’t get to die. Not today.”
I dialed, lifting the receiver to my ear, ready to threaten the worst kinds of violence if the ambulance didn’t arrive in the next two fucking minutes.
“We’ll meetyou at the hospital,” Corvus told the paramedic as they loaded Rebecca into the back of the ambulance, like it was a threat instead of a promise.
“If she dies, so do you.”
The paramedic paled, giving us one terse nod as he climbed into the back with Rebecca, closing the doors behind him. Lights flashing and sirens blaring, they sped down the road into Thorn Valley, leaving a plume of sand in their wake.
I turned and decked Corvus in the jaw, catching him off guard. He stumbled back a step, hand going to his chin with murder in his eyes.
“Rook, what the fuck?”
“That’s for being a fucking idiot,” I spat at him, practically preening at the sting in my knuckles, salivating with the urge to hit him again.
“What—”
“She was alive,” I shouted in his face. “And you just stood there like a lump of dead flesh.”
“I—”
“Save it, man. What is going on with you? I’ve never seen you so fucking out of it. Where’s my brother? Hmm? Because we need his ass here right now, not this motherfucker who stands there like a mute statue instead of doing literally anyfuckingthing useful.”
His mouth pressed into a thin line, a knot forming between his brows. I could see it. That thing inside of him that he liked to keep locked up. There it was, right fucking there, tormenting him, begging him to be let free. But he clenched his fists against it. Swallowed it down. Snuffed it out.
I shoved him in the chest. “Come on,” I egged him on. “Let it out, Bro. If you don’t, your brain’s going to be drowning in it, and we need you right now. We need this.”
I jabbed the side of his temple twice with my fingertips, making him recoil, his upper lip curl.
“We need to call this in,” he said through gritted teeth. “Don’t push me, Rook.”
I laughed, but the sound of it was violent even to my own ears. I’d never been so fucking tired and so wholly unable to sleep in my entire miserable life.Wireddidn’t even begin to cover this feeling and the fact that thethingsquatting in my chest was hungry again wasn’t fucking helping.
My hands ached for violence. To dosomething.Anything that might bring me closer to my Ghost. Bring my Ghost back to me.
I was ready to go door to door with an AK and blow the heads off anyone who didn’t have her face. I’d find her eventually. And when I did, we’d sharpen our blades together and gut the filth that hurt Becca.
A shuddering breath escaped my lips at the beautiful, bloodstained imagery playing like poetry across the backs of my eyelids.
“Fine,” I said, the reel of promised revenge with my Ghost like ASMR to my fractured soul. I shakily brought a cigarette to my lips and lit it up, inhaling deeply. “Call it in. While you do that, I’m going to go back in and make sure we didn’t miss anything.”
I blew the smoke in his direction, watching the flashing lights in the distance vanish.
He should’ve been the one to do the looking, but he wouldn’t find a damned thing, not with his brain soaking in unspent testosterone-fueled rage.
