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Odin stopped but recovered quickly. They made it to the room on the fifteenth floor, and when he entered, he found Jita hooked up to various machines.
“He’s in a coma now,” the doctor said, “but it’s medically induced. The head injury was severe, and his brain had swollen. We won’t know the full extent of the damage there until he wakes up.”
If he woke up.
“Only allow trusted staff in here from here on out,” Odin demanded. “If anything happens to him or goes wrong, I’ll hold you responsible.”
“Of course,” he bowed his head.
“My men will be stationed throughout the hospital,” he added. “Go about your business as usual. They won’t get in your way.” This hospital was within Odin’s territory, but so was Jita’s apartment complex. He wouldn’t take any risks.
After a few more words, the doctor left, leaving Odin, Corbi, and the two soldiers alone with the unconscious Jita.
He’d been given a private room with a waiting area that had a couch with a coffee table and even a full-sized table in the other corner. One door led to an attached bathroom. The blinds to the windows were all closed, and Odin moved them to peer out into the night, noting how close the other buildings were, trying to see if there were any places for a snipper to hide.
Satisfied that there weren’t, he sighed and finally addressed the two soldiers, Grom and Te.
“Where were you?”
“He’d sent me home for the night,” Te answered.
“Me as well,” Grom replied.
Odin had supplied the protection, but it was up to Jita whether or not he wanted it. As a lawyer, especially one who worked for the Brumal, there were things that he needed to keep private to do his job properly. There’d also never been any real reason to believe he was under threat. No one had dared attack him before.
“It was Isa,” Odin announced, turning to Corbi. “The thigh wound is proof.”
His mind wandered to the scar he had on his own thigh, the one given to him by his step-brother when they’d been teens sparring, and things had gone too far. It’d been Odin’s fault then, as he’d been the one who’d pushed things, using his powers against Isa to the point that he’d almost lit his hair on fire.
In retaliation and to get him to stop, Isa had pulled a four-inch dagger from his boot and slammed it straight down into Odin’s flesh to the hilt.
It’d taken weeks to heal, and that’d been with blood from Odin’s aunt, who at the time had still been alive to give it. His father hadn’t bothered, telling him it was Odin’s fault for losing the match.
Blood from a relative didn’t work nearly as well as ash from their body. And was nowhere near as potent as blood from a Whisper. Odin vaguely wondered how quickly the injury would have healed if he’d ordered Hunter to his bedside back then and drank from him.
“Isa wouldn’t have gone himself directly,” Odin said, a second before the door to the room slid open and Vetle walked in.
“We’ve got a face,” he announced. “Only one. There was a group of six of them, but they avoided the cameras as if they knew where they were all located.”
Meaning this attack had been planned out ahead of time, in detail.
“A dashcam attached to a hovercar two streets over managed to catch them leaving the scene, though only one of them looked long enough in its direction for facial recognition to ID them, I sent the image to your multi-slate.”
Odin reached for his pocket before it hit him that he’d left his device on the floor in his bedroom. He’d need to send someone to retrieve it for him. “Hunt that guy down,” he ordered Vetle, “and bring him to me.”
Vetle nodded his head and left as quickly as he’d come.
“I’ll order more men here,” Odin told Corbi next. “You’re in charge. Don’t leave the hospital. I don’t trust anyone else alone with him.” He looked to Jita, furious to see how badly they’d gotten the other man. “This was plotted out, which means they might have already considered he’d be brought here. I doubt they’ll return, but just in case.”
“I won’t leave his side,” she promised, sounding every bit as angry as he was. She and Jita weren’t particularly close, but they were friendly with one another and had been in the same company for enough years a closeness of some kind at least had developed. And she was the vengeful sort.
Odin could count on her not to allow anything else to happen to his Counselor while he was away. “I’ll get to the bottom of this.”
“Make them pay,” she told him.
Chapter 5:
Screams echoed through the warehouse, but Odin hardly noticed, watching as one of his group bosses, Yule, lit a cigarette. The ember glowed in the dim, practically dark, lighting of the night.
