Ethan reached into his waistband and pulled out the revolver. He raised it and pointed it right at the clerk. Watched the guy’s expression change just the way he’d thought it might. It felt as good as he’d imagined.
“What kind of car do you drive?”
CHAPTER 32
The air was cool and smelled faintly of ammonia.
There were sounds. There had been for some time, he realized, although he hadn’t been conscious of them. Just drifted in their currents. A hum and beep.
He opened his eyes. Light. Painful and purest white, no shapes or definition, light like the pearly gates, like the one at the end of the tunnel.
Is this heaven?
An image flashed across his memory. Todd’s face, inches away, his eyes blank and staring.
Hell.
Cooper sat up with a gasp. The world canted and wobbled, and he reached a hand out to steady himself, banged his right hand on something, the hand clumsy, and agony flashed up, slammed into the bubble-wrap feeling of heavy narcotics and punched right through. Searing pain dilated the world and took away everything but the throbbing.
Breathe, just breathe, breathe through it.
Slowly his vision widened again. A room, a bright light, hard surfaces and an ugly chair. He was in a bed, high, with rails. His right hand was a mass of bandages, and there were IVs running into his arms and a cable snaking into his chest.
It was real, then. It had happened. That man had come out of nowhere, a demon in the shape of a man, and had killed the guards and stabbed Cooper in the chest—a fatal wound, no way around that, so how was he alive?—and worst, worse than anything, had hit—
Todd’s head snapping sideways, too far, and his bright eyes going glassy.
Cooper gasped again, a sob coming from some deep place, splitting him. He started to reach with his right hand, remembered the bandages, used his left to grasp the IV tubes, started pulling them out. Next was the cable running into his chest, which slid out with a weird, slick, sick feeling. At the end spidery robotic arms no wider than a thread glistened and twitched. He fought the urge to vomit, kept it down. The beeping sounds had turned to shrieks. Tangled in blankets and drugs, he spun. Managed to get one leg out of the bed, then the next. Stood, wobbling.
The door opened. A woman in green scrubs hurried in. “What are you—”
Cooper staggered forward, grabbed the woman’s bicep with his left hand. “My son.”
“You need to get back in bed—”
“My son! Where is my son?”
The door was open and through it a hallway, and Cooper pushed past the nurse, barely on his feet. A hospital, yes, but not like any he’d seen, the hall too nice and too short, only a few doors, no nurses’ station, a side table with flowers, a chair, Scrubs coming behind him trying to grab his shoulders, and Cooper shrugged her off and pushed open the next door.
Another room like the one he had just left. Hard surfaces, bright light, beeping machines. A woman standing beside the bed, whirling at the sound. Natalie, her eyes red and cheeks wet, and in the bed . . .
In the bed, his son.
Natalie said, “Nick?” and there were volumes in that one word. It started with surprise, and he could imagine it from her perspective, the door banging open and a madman in a hospital gown staggering in, and then the pleasure at seeing him, at the fact that he was alive at all. But that was quashed by fear, fear for their son, fear that the gods were watching and any happiness tempted them. And then, last, the questions, the same asked by any parent standing over a child in a hospital bed:
How did we get here?
This can’t really happen, can it?
Will you take me instead?
He stepped forward and swept her into his arms, wrapped them around her slightness and squeezed, the two of them holding onto each other as though against gravity. Her body trembled, and her face was wet against his neck.
“Is he—will he—”
“I don’t know, I don’t know, they don’t know.”
The words hurt more than the dagger had. He leaned into her, and she leaned back. Behind them the nurse started to say something, then thought better of it.
After a long moment, he released her. “Tell me.”
Natalie wiped at her eyes, smearing tears around. When she spoke, he could hear the quaver in her voice. “He’s in a coma. There was internal bleeding.”
“Do they know when he’ll wake up?”
She shook her head. “They don’t know for sure if he will. Or if . . . if . . .”
He closed his eyes, squeezed them hard. The nurse said, “Mr. Cooper, please.” He ignored her, stepped forward. Todd looked tiny in the big hospital bed, his limbs slender under the sheet. Tubes snaked into his arms. Bandages wrapped his head, and they’d shaved the hair on one side. Todd would hate that, the weird haircut, would worry about what other kids would say.
Cooper reached out and took his son’s hand in both of his, the physical pain that rocketed up from the right nothing compared to the howling inside him. Then a thought hit. “Wait a second, where’s Kate? Is she—”
“She wasn’t hurt. She’s sleeping, finally.”
“Finally?” Of course. The cable in his chest, the elaborate bandages on his hand, the drugged feeling. He glanced at the clock on the nightstand, saw that it was five in the morning. Twenty hours since they were attacked. “Did they get him?”
Natalie shook her head.
The nurse said, “Mr. Cooper, it’s amazing that you’re even alive. The left ventricle of your heart was torn open. The surgery that saved you is beyond radical. You have to go back to bed.”
“No.”
“Sir—”
“I’m not leaving my son.”
There was a long pause and then a dragging sound, Scrubs bringing a chair from one wall. “At least sit. Please?”
Without taking his eyes from Todd, he sat. Natalie stood beside him, one hand on his shoulder, one on Todd’s shoulder.
The machines beeped and hummed.
He sensed them before he heard them. A tingle in the back of his mind, his gift patterning relentlessly away, even as he did little but stare at the rise and slow fall of his son’s chest while thoughts brittle and dry as autumn leaves chased themselves in pointless circles. Prayers and bargains and threats, but beneath it all—and he hated himself for this—his mind patterning away.
It wasn’t long before he heard the nearly imperceptible sounds of elite security personnel, rubber-soled boots and efficiency. A trained voice, vaguely familiar; Patricia Ariel, the NCH’s communications director. From unseen staff, the murmured tones of sycophancy. And finally, two pairs of shoes: the click of Italian oxfords counterpointed by the squeak of Chuck Taylors. He listened to them walk down the hall, listened to them step into the room and stop.
Without turning around, Cooper said, “Give me one good reason I shouldn’t break both of your necks.”
“Your son.”
He rose fast to face Erik and Jakob Epstein. “Are you threatening—”
“No,” Jakob said, his hands up. “We’re not. But the most advanced medicine on the planet is being practiced here. You want that for him.”
Natalie said, “Nick, calm down.”
“Calm down? I brought you here. I trusted the security of our family to these two. And some asshole waltzed in and . . .” He saw the point of the man’s elbow driving into the soft hollow of Todd’s temple, lost his breath. “I don’t think I’ll be calming down anytime soon.”
“Good,” Erik said. “Your efficiency is improved when angry.” He pulled a d-pad from his pocket and uncrumpled it with a flick of his wrist. A photo filled the monosheet, a plain man with hollow cheeks and dead eyes. “Soren Johansen, tier-one temporal.”