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“My son.”
The anguished cry was a shock, and as Shuli looked back to the sound, the male he recognized, and yet did not know in this moment, jumped up and pushed his way forward, elbowing the healer aside.
“Oh, my son,” Arcshuliae said as he bent down and gathered Shuli up in his arms. “You live.”
After a moment of utter confusion, Shuli hugged back—“Oh, no, I’ve got blood on your shirt—”
The male touched Shuli’s face. Then his shoulders and his chest. Finally, he inspected the arm. “You will tend to this?”
Shuli was about to answer the question, when the human who was actually being addressed nodded. “Yup. He’ll be fine—provided I can close it right now. Otherwise, it’s going to heal wrong and he might end up with irreversible nerve damage.”
“See that you do your best.” Eyes that were the precise color of Shuli’s refocused on his own. “I am just glad you live, my son. Praise unto the great Virgin Scribe.”
“I’m sorry, Father,” Shuli choked out. “I am so sorry—”
His sire put a trembling hand on the side of Shuli’s face. “I still have you. That is all I care about the now.”
* * *
Standing just outside the mobile OR, Nate couldn’t get the smell of blood out of his nose, and every time he blinked, he saw fragments of the fight in slow motion: The lesser making an appearance around the corner, shambling along like something from TWD, that horrible fucking smell floating over and cutting out the metallic undertone of city stink in the air. And then Shuli yelling those names, and the slayer attacking that civilian, and…
But all of that was just a preamble to what stuck with him the most.
He was never going to forget the image of that gun pointed in Shuli’s face, the lesser in complete control of the ground game. The jolt of fear that had gone through Nate had been violent enough to break through both his anger at the world and the ringing concussion he’d suffered when he’d been thrown across the parking lot. Yet even as he’d been determined to jump back into the fight, his body had refused to listen to any commands, his legs useless as ribbons, his arms slapping at the pavement under him.
If Rahvyn hadn’t exploded onto the scene when she did?
Cursing, he shook his head and stared at the ground. How was she that strong? And how had she known about what to do with that knife? It wasn’t something she’d just magically thought up in that split second of chaos. No, she had known exactly what to do, not just to incapacitate, but to end, the undead. Meanwhile, he and Shuli had gotten snowed, and an innocent person had been killed, and…
“Son, do you want to go back with Shuli in the RV?”
As he heard Murhder’s voice, he couldn’t look at the Brother. Shame, thick and sour in his throat, cut off his air passage, and he couldn’t believe—couldn’t comprehend—what the fuck had been going through his head earlier in the night.
Like leaving his room clean could have made up for him killing himself? With a gun he’d stolen out of this male of worth’s arsenal in the basement of that home?
And what the hell had come out of his mouth when he’d been talking at Shuli, about his… parents.
“Nate.”
At the insistent tone, he reluctantly shifted his eyes over. When the familiar, harsh face in front of him got wavy, he thought, Ah, shit, I’m crying. What a pussy.
“Come here.”
Heavy arms pulled him in, and he resisted only because he knew what he had done earlier in the night, and guilt was a physical barrier to the kindness shown by the ones you’d betrayed, wasn’t it.
“I’m just glad you’re okay,” Murhder said. “And don’t worry, I called Mom. She’s at the clinic working, and I told her to stay put. That we’d be there soon.”
Pushing himself free, Nate scrubbed at his face and paced around. When he finally stopped, he realized he was standing over the burned spot on the pavement where the lesser had exploded. Between one blink and the next, he saw Rahvyn’s arm rise above her head. The arc with which she’d brought that steel blade down had been perfect.
Couldn’t have been any better if she’d practiced it.
Maybe she had.
Fuck. He had to pull it together somehow. If she could keep her mind in the game under those circumstances, he was a total loser if he fell apart now, surrounded by Brothers who were packing more weapons than an army battalion.
Then again, what was scrambling his eggs wasn’t about any mortal threat—
The box van that presently arrived on the scene was shiny and black, and had no windows in its rear compartment. After bumping up the lip of the parking lot, it did a couple of turns to reorient itself for an exit, and then it backed in close to the rear of the club. As the driver’s side door opened, a little old male in a butler’s outfit emerged.
