Concussed, but he had this watch. And truthfully, concussed or not, he probably had a better handle on it now than I did. “You’re okay?” I persisted. “Because you . . .” Because he hadn’t been. He’d bled like a stuck pig and had been barely responsive. He hadn’t known who I was. Was asking for a fourteen-year-old version of me. He hadn’t been okay at all. “You’re all right?”
“Cal.” He pointed at the empty other bed. “One hour and I’ll wake you. Go.”
I gave in. Nik was Nik again, and he knew what he was capable of. I got out of the chair, took off my sneakers, and climbed onto the other bed on top of the blanket and sheets. God help me if I messed up Nurse Panties in a Bunch’s clean bed. My head hit the pillow, and the sharp smell of industrial-strength bleach sent a spike of pain like an ice pick through my brain. I didn’t mind. The pain faded, and all I could still smell was bleach. No death or rot or creeping decay. It was such an utter relief that I slept instantly and slept hard, dreaming of sheets hung out to dry in the sun, of a thousand hungry rats tearing them down, of a living statue with blazing gold eyes, and of red snow.
It was everywhere. Bloody flakes falling from the sky. Piling so high you could drown in it.
And I dreamed of being watched. Of someone standing beside the bed, looking down at me. Someone who didn’t belong.
I might sleep hard and it might take me a while to get up to full speed in the morning, but if the situation calls for it, I can wake up instantly and razor sharp. In this case all it took was the shuffle of a rubber sole. I was awake, across the room, and in the chair just as the Nurse Bitch on Wheels walked in the room. She did have a real name printed nice and neat on her name tag. I’d read it and forgotten it instantly. It hadn’t said Satan’s Bedpan Pusher of Despair, so it was wrong anyway. No point in committing it to memory.
She eyed the slightly wrinkled empty bed, narrowed that gaze at me, but checked Niko’s vitals without comment and told him he might be discharged tomorrow. Maybe. If he stayed alert, there were no setbacks, the follow-up CT scan was good, the neuro doc agreed, and the planets all fell into alignment . . . it could happen.
When she left, Niko looked at me. “Exactly how shut-down are the roads?”
I checked the window again and shook my head. “Unless we can rent skis in the gift shop, it’s not happening.”
He studied me, weighing the pros and cons. I had to look like shit; I knew that. There’s only so much overload you can handle before you shut down, but I wasn’t leaving Nik alone either. No way, no how. “All right,” he said. “Take us back to Rafferty’s.” He didn’t want to ask, I knew. Hated it, in fact, to have me do what he’d rather I never did again. Didn’t want to put me in that situation, but he also knew the situation I was in now wasn’t much better.
I could’ve stood and went to the small closet to get the clear plastic bag that held his clothes, shoes, phone, and wallet. Could’ve scooped up my jacket from the floor, cradling it and the bag under one arm and placing a hand on Niko’s shoulder. I could’ve taken us out of here in a heartbeat.
I didn’t.
I sat, unmoving, in the chair. The hell with my situation. He was in one of his own. “Yeah, right. Traveling when you’re perfectly healthy has Robin puking and you five shades of green. It used to have blood coming out of me like a faucet. We’re not risking it with you having practically cracked your skull open. We wait for the doctor and the scan. By then the roads will be clear and your brain won’t be oozing out your ears from me dragging you through a gate. Hell, that’s probably on your discharge instructions. No traveling through rips in space for at least a week. The hospital cannot be held responsible for unnatural horrors of the supernatural world.” I saw the pain pills in a small paper cup on the table beside him. “So take your pills, and in the morning we’ll be out of here.”
In the end, after a lot of squabbling—that would be bitching on my side and calm, forceful logic on his—we compromised. He took one of the pills and I took the pillowcase from the next bed, wadded it into a ball and took a deep whiff whenever the other smells, smells straight out of a slaughterhouse, got to be too much. Niko finally slept after making sure I was hanging in there, and I think I ended up slightly buzzed from the bleach.
It definitely kept me awake and alert, which was good because when Niko woke up at about seven a.m., he wanted every detail I could dredge up about Oshossi and the battle. Other than almost killing my brother, I hadn’t been concentrating on those little personal details that make monsters so gosh-darn interesting. Like acid spitting, leeches for intestines, liquefying your internal organs and drinking them like Lipton’s Cup-a-Soup—fun stuff like that. When it came to Oshossi, I’d been preoccupied with my brother sprawled and bleeding in the snow, so I didn’t pick up much new from what I’d noticed at the car lot.
“I hit him several times with the Glock, I know that,” I said as I swiped his blueberry muffin from his breakfast tray. He’d been upgraded to food for people with teeth by the day-shift nurse. Nurse Tiger-Stripe Thong/See-through White Pants Combo. I called her Tigger for short. For that and for her bouncy nature. You know the wonderful thing about Tiggers? Nothing. Not a damn thing. They’re annoying as hell with all that bouncing and good cheer.
“He flinched but he didn’t go down,” I added before chewing and swallowing. “As a matter of fact, he grinned.” I picked out a blueberry—it smelled a whole lot better than bleach—and fiddled with it. “Good teeth. Just as sharp as before. His dentist would be proud. Bet he flosses like crazy.” Yeah, flossed pieces of punks like me out of those back molars like nobody’s business. “Cyrano,” I said seriously. “He is bad fucking news.”
“Because he rolled, then flipped our car?” He regarded the fake scrambled eggs and hockey-puck sausage with the same distaste he showed flesh-eating revenants. “It would take serious strength and physical framework to do something like that.”
“Yeah, but”—absently I gave him the last half of the muffin—“more that, hell, Nik, he wasn’t even trying that hard. It was like at the car lot. Like he was fishing, caught us, and thought, Nah, too small. Not worth my time. And tossed us back. You were down. My gun wasn’t putting him away. He didn’t even draw his bow on me. He just took the bullets, smiled with those freaky teeth, and disappeared. We might’ve killed his cadejos and ccoas, but he doesn’t think we’re much of a threat. I think he’s telling us to mind our own business.”
“From what you say, it wasn’t our best showing, and he is a hunter. Has been one for thousands of years. He might consider us unworthy prey.” He considered the muffin, sighed, and ate it. “I think I’m embarrassed for us.”
“I think I’m glad I’m not a head mounted on his wall somewhere.” I focused on the smell of the blueberry muffin and nothing else and managed to keep it down. “You want to get cleaned up? There’s a shower in the bathroom. If Promise sees you like that . . .” Bloodstained hair, Betadine, a bruise spreading across his forehead to match the fading black eyes I’d given him.
“No good?” he asked. “I’ll definitely enjoy being clean, but I hardly think it would matter to Promise. I never claimed to be as vain as Robin.”
He missed it. Niko, who hardly ever missed anything. “You look human, Nik,” I said bluntly. “You look way too human right now.” Blood, bruises, faint lines of pain. Human. Vulnerable. Promise had seen it before, but not to this degree and not in a hospital. It was a reminder that couldn’t do anything but hurt her. I knew I wasn’t enjoying it.
He could’ve died. Could’ve bled to death in the snow. My family, my only damn family.
Which led to something I was far better at than meditation. Denial. Very big, very bad denial. I took the tray and started in on the leathery eggs. One bite was enough. Jesus. That was physician-assisted suicide right there. “There’s shampoo and crap in there. Try not to flash me on the way.”