FORTY-TWO

As the mobile surgical unit rumbled through the streets of downtown, heading for the bridge to Caldwell’s other side, Jane went into one of the overhead compartments and took out a clean sheet. Flipping the soft white fabric free of its folds, she laid it across the body and then pulled things up so that the civilian’s face and head were covered. Then she took a seat next to Vishous.

When he reached over and clasped her hand, she looked at him. “I didn’t know how to bring him back.”

“His heart couldn’t take it. There was nothing else you could have done.”

“I know.”

“Come here.”

V pulled her into him and she leaned on his strength, his big body catching her. In her head, she reviewed everything in sequence, from her arriving and making the assessment to the transfer onto the table…to the chest compression…the defibrillator…the drug protocol.

“Did he have any identification on him?” she asked.

“Q?” V called out. “Did you find ID?”

“Yeah, I got it,” Qhuinn said from behind the wheel. “No one I recognized so I texted it to Saxton.”

Jane spoke up. “I want to talk to the family. When they’re found, I want to be the one who’s there for them.”

“You got it,” V said.

Qhuinn glanced over his shoulder. “ETA at Havers’s is about twenty minutes.”

“I texted them we were on the way,” Jane muttered. “But should we call, too?”

V shook his head. “Let’s just take a breather. They know we’re coming.”

“All right.” She exhaled her sadness. “God, that’s someone’s son. Maybe mate. I just…I really hate to lose a patient.”

“That’s why you’re such an amazing doctor.”

As she stared at the body, she started to frame what she was going to tell the next of kin, trying out a couple of different approaches. Typically, family members needed to know two things: namely, that everything possible had been done, and that the suffering had been kept to a minimum—

V’s fingertip under her chin brought her eyes to his.

“You know how tight I am with Butch, right?” he said. “How that cop is like…”

“You are brothers, the two of you.” She smiled a little. “You couldn’t be closer.”

“When we were in that alley the other night, and Butch was injured”—V cleared his throat—“and I couldn’t get to him? I was terrified that he was dying. And then you were there—and as I watched you take off to go treat him, I thought…”

There was a long pause, those diamond eyes searching her face. “I thought there was no one else in the world, and that included myself, who I would rather have taking care of him. I trust you that much. I believe in you that much.”

Jane found herself blinking away tears. “You have the best ways of saying I love you.”

“Nah.” He stroked her face with his gloved hand. “I speak sixteen languages, true. And even with all those words, sometimes I don’t know how to put what’s in here”—he touched the center of his chest—“out to you right.”

“I think you do just fine—”

Out of the corner of her eye, something moved and she glanced over to the treatment table.

Probably just a shift from the surgical unit hitting a bump.

She refocused on V. “When we arrive at Havers’s, we need to go with the body to the morgue. I think it’s important to just—I don’t know, I want to see him there safely.” On that note, she leaned around her mate. “Hey, Qhuinn? Has Saxton gotten back to you—”

The sound that percolated through the RV was like that of a pneumonia patient gasping for oxygen, the rattling a combination of loose fluid in the lungs and bronchial tubes that were clogged.

And then the dead body sat up with the sheet over its face.

“He’s alive!” she barked as she jumped forward and went to pull the cloth away. “You’re awake—”

Everything went into slow motion: her hand reaching out to the sheet and pulling it back, the cover dropping, the face…the gruesome, distorted face exposed.

And swiveling toward her like that of an owl, the neck vertebrae snapping one by one.

Jane screamed.

---

As the dead patient sat up and looked over at his mate, Vishous’s brain, great and powerful though it was, took a second or two to catch the fuck up with reality:

“Qhuinn! Stop!” V shouted.

But the brother was already stomping on the brakes because of Jane’s scream, everything jerking forward from momentum—and that included the dead male.

As the corpse’s torso slammed back down to the exam table, Vishous put himself in front of Jane, shoving her away.

“Get out of here,” V hissed. “I don’t want to worry about you.”

“You don’t have to, remember?”

The patient had been tied down at the waist and the ankles for transport, the chest band having been left free so they could work on him. And this was a bene. That dead sonofabitch made like he was going to come at V—only to find that he was stuck.

An unholy screech came out of that throat, and then the thing was tearing at the binds that kept it in place.

Just as Qhuinn jumped into the back with his guns drawn.

“No bullets!” V yelled. “No fucking bullets! Oxygen!”

Before Vishous could marshal an attack, those heavy, nylon straps got torn off and that corpse came at him like something out of Evil Dead, head shaking back and forth a million times a second, the body moving all wrong as if its joints were frozen.

As V got pile-driven toward the back doors, he wrenched around and caught the latch, releasing the lever so that he and the patient fell out of the surgical unit onto the snow together.

The thing landed on top of him, and talk about strong. The kid had been built okay when he’d been alive, but whatever this shit was had given him superhero powers: V couldn’t hold off the attack long enough to get his daggers out—or a gun, now that they were free of the van.

That snarling face was way too close for comfort, those jaws snapping, the teeth clapping together like in its head it was already tasting V’s brains after it made an egg cup of his skull. And goddamn, a foul stench came out of its mouth, as if it were already rotting from the inside out, the digestive tract spoiling, the organs liquefying, the bones the only thing that stayed.

Enter Qhuinn the Magnificent.

All at once, V got a reprieve, and for a split second, he had no fucking clue why. But then he saw Qhuinn’s arms around the chest, the brother’s face grimacing as he hauled back with all of his strength.

The dead guy went crazy, letting out another of those howls, and he thrashed that head around, trying to bite at Qhuinn’s face.

V instantly knew that was a bad idea. “Don’t let him get you with his teeth!”

Qhuinn shifted his grip, slapping one of his palms on the patient’s forehead and pulling back to expose the throat.

Fucking perfect.

Except as V went to unholster both his daggers, something entered his head and would not leave.

He bit off his lead-lined glove, unleashing his curse.

“Release!” he ordered Qhuinn.

When the brother didn’t comply, V nearly slapped the guy. “Fucking let him go!”

Qhuinn caught the gist, and still hesitated, but then the thing nearly got him as it jerked its head and teeth forward to bite.

“On three!” Qhuinn hollered over the snarling and the screeching. “One, two—three!”

The brother went hands-free, jumping out of range.

And Vishous hit the chest of the patient with a nuclear defibrillator, his glowing palm going right on the sternum—

The shrill noise was so loud, V went deaf—and talk about your shakedowns. The body of the patient slapped, flapped, kicked, bucked—and took Vishous along for the ride; the energy exchange forming a lock between the body and V’s palm.

Just when he thought his arm was going to be ripped out of its socket, there was a pop, like a balloon, and the patient was no more, a soft rain of particles falling on V. But that wasn’t what he focused on. An entity seemed to escape into the night—and it was a shadow.

Or a part of one of those entities.

Something had transferred to the civilian during the earlier attack. And either it killed the kid, or was harbored within him to be released when the second “death” came.

In the silence that followed, there was nothing but his and Qhuinn’s harsh breathing in the cold air.

“What the fuck was that?” Qhuinn asked.

As Jane appeared beside them, Vishous stripped off his leather jacket, his movements jerky and uncoordinated. The second his left sleeve was down, he wrenched his arm around, and his heart started to beat hard.

Looking at his skin, he measured the angry red stripe that the shadow he’d fought before had left in his flesh.

Had the wound faded? It seemed like it had faded. Did that mean he was safe?

Or had some of that gotten into him?

Jane knew exactly what was going through his mind, even if Qhuinn didn’t. She leaned down and discreetly inspected things.

“It’s definitely improved,” she whispered. “I can tell. I remember exactly what it looked like.”

A cell phone went off. Ringer, not a text.

With his brain jammed up, Vishous looked around in confusion—but then Qhuinn took out his own phone and answered it.

“Hey, Sax. You did—okay. His brother’s with Havers at the clinic? Right, well, we’re on the far side of the bridge.” The brother’s mismatched blue and green eyes swung around and locked on V’s. “But we’ve had a little…there’s been…let’s call it a complication.”