Gray Night (36 page)

 I slipped my arms in, wrapped it around me, and was the most comfortable I’d felt in ages.

 “Thank you,” I whispered in his ear. “Umm, where are we?”

 “Think it’s an old cold storage closet. Couldn’t shut the door though. Body in the way.”

 “Is that what you dragged me over?”

 “Sorry.”

 “Plan?”

 “Roman’s gun. Do you see it? There in the light?”

 “Yes.”

 “I distract the big guy. Draw him off to the back. You grab the gun and shoot him, okay?”

 “Is that even a good idea? You can barely stand. Is there any way out without you having to confront him?”

 “Sure. You distract him and I’ll go for the gun.”

 “You know what I mean.”

 “I can’t make a run for it. He’d catch me. But you might—”

 “I’m not leaving.”

 “You’re an idiot.”

 “Deal with it.”

 “Then be a doll and go get the gun.”

 “Okay.”

 I felt him step around me to get closer to the door.

 “Claire?”

 “Yes.”

 “One more thing. It is critical, absolutely critical, that you not shoot me.”

 “If you don’t get a move on I will,” I said, hoping the banter would help suppress the nervousness trying to take hold.

 I couldn’t be sure in the dark, but I thought he smiled at me before hobbling out into the half-light.

 I went to the doorway and waited as he limped around Roman’s body and further back to the wall.

 “Hey!” he yelled. “Hey tiny! Right here big guy!”

 The man roared from the other room.

 “Yeah!” Adrian screamed. “Come get some!”

 The man charged through, limping himself, straight at Adrian. I didn’t hesitate and ran right behind him, sliding to a crouch at Roman’s body to pull the gun free.

 I had it in seconds and waited for a clear shot to fire. Both men were wounded. Their struggle looked like an awful choreographed stage fight as each of them struck the other back and forth in turn with slow, powerful blows as they closed. I still didn’t have a clear shot.

 Adrian and the man grabbed and shoved and punched, maneuvering for position. Adrian was winning when both of them jerked their heads around.

 “No,” Adrian sighed. “No.
Noooo!
” he screamed.

 I glanced down the row beside me into the dark. I saw the eyes first. They grew as they came closer. The sound of heavy breathing and dragging feet followed.

 Adrian and I caught each other’s eyes and I was very sad, very sorry. But he was terrifying. His eyes were full of fury and hatred—and madness. Adrian threw his head around and smashed his crown into the man’s nose who howled and fell to the floor.

 I twisted to face the darkness between the tables and brought up the gun. I waited a second, maybe two, while I aimed right between those eyes in the dark.

 Click.

 Nothing.

 The man in the dark flinched for a half second then charged.

 Oh god.

 Adrian dove forward, bellowing. He stretched out and grabbed the man’s ankle, tripping him. The man fell short, but still crashed into me, knocking us down with him on top. He wriggled his way up my body, smelling of disinfectant and rot.

 The gun was empty, but I still had a big piece of iron in my hand. I struck him with it. Once, twice, then he swatted it out of my hand and grabbed me by the hair to pull himself up on top of me. He wrenched my head to the side exposing my throat. He opened his mouth wide and peeled his lips back away from rotted teeth.

 As he struck, Adrian yelled and the man slid down my body a few inches, filling his mouth with nothing but leather from Adrian’s jacket.

 “How do you like it!” Adrian screamed, throwing one leg over both of us as he grabbed the man by the jaw from behind and exposed his neck.

 Adrian roared over the man atop me, “
How! The fuck! Do you like it!
” and tore into his throat. The man gurgled a scream as he threw himself back. Blood welled in his mouth and spilled down his chin. Adrian held him fast, flexed, and ripped his throat out, tossing the body to the side.

 I tried to move, but shivered and couldn’t remember how to breathe. Adrian Knight stood over me, a wet, dark red, blood god of nightmares. He leaned over and wiped off the saliva that had fallen onto my neck as well as my face, but his body was covered in so much blood it didn’t matter.

 “Are you okay?” he asked.

 It took a moment to form words. It’s Adrian, Claire. It’s just Adrian.

 I nodded but could not take my eyes away as he checked me for injuries. His breathing was heavy and he moved slowly. His arms were nothing but dark, glistening reds, and his hands and wrists were shredded and swollen. He winced, unable to hide it when he put weight on his left hip, and I saw blood run from the wound in his thigh that looked ominously in rhythm with a heartbeat.

 Before he was through, his hand slipped and he fell on top of me, slow to get up.

 “Adrian?” I asked.

 “I…” he looked around behind him by the tiny storage room we’d hidden in. “Help me.” He pointed towards it.

 I rolled to my knees, careful not to slip on all the blood, and let him lean some of his weight on me as we crawled to the body in the doorway.

 “Belt,” he said, trying to undo the buckle on the dead man’s waist.

 I understood and gently took over from him. He needed a tourniquet on his leg or he’d never make it to a hospital. He laid back down and waited for me to finish. That was not a good sign. It was a fight all its own for him just to stay conscious now. He was slipping away.

 No, I wouldn’t let that happen. I yanked the belt through the last loop, slid it under Adrian’s leg on, and just above, the wound, and pulled it tight as I could, slipping the end into a knot.

 I smiled, just for an instant, that I had saved my patient, might have repaid some small part of the debt for him having saved me, twice. And then the man Adrian had left to save me stood at the end of the light. He looked from me, to Adrian on the floor.

 I cried. Just cried. I didn’t have any more feeling left in me. Did it never end? Desperate miracle after desperate miracle and for nothing.

 I looked at Adrian who was now rolling his head back and forth in slow motion trying to keep his eyes open. He was as helpless as I had been chained to the table. Maybe worse.

 His body was gone and his mind somewhere else entirely. He had been broken trying to spare me the exact same thing.

 He whispered, ‘Evy’, and something inside me snapped.

 “No,” I stepped over him and held my hand out toward the man limping toward us.

 “You cannot have him,” I cried. “You will not touch him!”

 I didn’t know what I would do. Probably die horribly, Adrian too, but I sure as hell wasn’t just going to let it happen.

 The man hunched lower as he drew in close to see what I would do. Which was nothing. I stood my ground for whatever would come and tried to ignore the sounds and smells of his friend’s mouth I remembered along my throat. He took a deep breath and coiled his body to strike a killing blow and—

Baoom!

Baoom!

 
A gun cracked twice in quick succession right next to me. Dark, wet shadows sprayed from the side of the man’s head and his body collapsed to the ground at Adrian’s feet, dead.

 I turned to see who was standing in the doorway between the two main rooms, while my ears still rang, and saw a middle-aged man in a black suit and tie I didn’t recognize.

 “Ma’am?” he asked, holstering his weapon. “Dr. Spurling?”

 I didn’t respond and realized I was holding my breath.

 “Y… yes,” I said.

 I looked at Adrian and shivered.

 “A… Adrian,” I stammered, pointing down. “He needs help.”

 The man pulled up the hem of his pants as he knelt.

 “Adrian,” he said.

 “I take it back,” Adrian said with his eyes closed.

 “What’s that?” the man asked.

 “I am glad I stopped to make that call,” Adrian said.

 “His leg,” I said.

 The man looked and whistled when he saw it.

 “Don’t suppose anyone wants to tell me exactly what the hell happened in here tonight,” he said, looking back at me.

 “Everything… after,” I said.

 The man looked back at the leg then nodded.

 “You okay to walk, Knight?” he asked.

 “I’ll bloody well walk out of here,” Adrian said.

 “So, now you’re immortal?” the man asked.

 “That’s me. Should swing by the hospital though. You know, to keep up appearances,” said Adrian.

 The man laughed. I laughed. Adrian’s eyes rolled back in his head and his body went slack, sliding over the dead man to the floor.

Chapter Thirty-Two

 I awoke in the hospital. Warm sunlight filled the colorless room and I decided it was a very good day, mostly because of the waking up part. I rolled my neck and wrists around until a dull pain tightened around my body. It wasn’t sharp or hurtful just intense discomfort. Sort of like when you haven’t moved in a long time. Which I guess is what it was. That, and the IV in my right arm didn’t like being jostled. Neither did my left leg in the stirrup.

 “Easy there, Captain,” Special Agent Bob Coughlin said. He sat in the chair next to my bed reading a newspaper.

 “Not anymore, Bob,” I said.

 He put the newspaper down. “Funny, sure seemed like maybe you forgot that part when you rushed in before backup arrived. What were you thinking?”

 “I was thinking I didn’t know if I had any backup coming or not and wasn’t going to let someone remain in there one second longer than I had to,” I sighed. “But I didn’t have a choice either.”

 “The drugs?”

 “Yeah.”

 “Doc said you were pretty messed up inside. Major overdose inundated your whole system. Would’ve come down hard and fast.”

 “Bingo.”

 He nodded and asked me to tell him how it all happened. I did. Then he told me a story of what all he thought happened, and how based on the testimonies he’d gotten from Djimon, Diamond Jack, Sheriff Clark, Detective Harris, Claire, and others, he seemed satisfied with how the accounts lined up.

 “Claire. How is she?”

 “Brought her in with you. She spent about a week down the hall there. Detox and observation. She’s been fine for several days. Looks a hell of a lot better than you.”

 “She did even before all this mess.”

 “I don’t doubt it,” he chuckled.

 “Is she still here? I’d like to talk to her.”

 “She was released yesterday. Detective Harris picked her up.”

 Right. “The missing girls. Did you see them?”

 “Djimon took me to Stratford. He was uncomfortable and repeated that you would be upset about me being there, to which I responded by letting him know how much I didn’t care what you think.”

 I grunted at him. “They all right?”

 “Looks like it. Ms. Summerfield and Djimon brought in several physicians, Dr. Page among them, and saw to their treatment. Most needed detoxification, not unlike you and Dr. Spurling, but it will take longer according to their length of exposure. They suffered from dehydration and malnutrition as well. I’m told most should make a full recovery but, well there’s no good way to say it, there’s some who won’t make it.”

 “I suspected as much.”

 “Mm-hmm. Care to tell me why you never mentioned Stratford?”

 “There was a time when someone, anyone, connected to me would be in danger, would be used just to get at me. The less involved, the less connected, the safer everyone else is.”

 “Made a lot of friends over the years, I see.”

 “Lots and lots of them.”

 “I wasn’t thrilled at first, but when I calmed down I started thinking maybe it was something like that. The women, the Auction, action taken during and after, have to go in my report, but maybe I don’t need to be so specific there near the end.”

 “Thank you.”

 I looked around the room and noticed an elaborate display of flowers with a card, and an open book face down on the bedside table.

 “Djimon was here. Irish Page as well. Stayed the night and next day with you while you were in surgery.”

 “Surgery? On my leg?”

 “Good call, Sherlock.”

 “Bite me. I was hoping I’d just need stitches.”

 “You’re lucky to be alive. On TV, guys always get shot in the leg lucky to have missed the femoral arteries. This,” he pointed to the stirrup, “is what happens in real life when you get hit in the middle of the leg.”

 “It cut the artery?”

 “Nicked it. The surgeon was furious and wanted to know who’d let you move around on it after being shot because it ripped open more whenever you moved.”

 “Makes sense.”

 “You don’t seem concerned.”

 “I was a half second away from being eaten alive. Thanks, but I’ll take the blood loss any day. Who are the flowers from?”

 “Makes sense,” Bob said, handing me the card. The design on front and back was the front and back of a Jack of Diamonds. Inside was simply printed:
Get well soon!

 “I think maybe we need to talk about that, don’t you?”

 “Not really.”

 “Good thing you can’t go anywhere, because I do. I’m aware of Diamond Jack’s involvement in this business and for his cooperation he was granted immunity.”

 Immunity? Bastard belonged in prison as much as anyone. Yes, I’d needed his help. The world wasn’t all black and white and I’ve worked with worse, but then I remembered all those glass walls I’d built and how I needed to keep my love of throwing stones in check.

 “Yeah,” Bob scowled. He must have seen something in my own expression. “I’m not thrilled either, but we got a big win. A big win. The Vitale organization undone, the auspicious Auction busted, the Gray Night spreading across the city stopped, and several missing women found alive. The Governor and the Mayor both gave a speech and everything. Bailey got a promotion.”

 “A promotion? What about you?”

 “Me?” he grinned. “I got the satisfaction of watching the director of the New York field office, my superior, commended on allowing Bailey and I such a free reign with our CI’s, and being encouraged to go above and beyond the call of duty. Never seen anyone so pissed off and honored at the same time. It was a thing of beauty.”