“Tomi,” I said again. “Are you hurt? Do you know what happened?”
’Cause, yeah, asking the crazy chick with the big bloody knife if she was up on current events was a great idea.
Nothing.
Davy wasn’t breathing well enough for me to wait around for her answer anyway.
I had to get him out of here. To the hospital. I bent and picked him up, swore at the pain in my injured shoulder that shot down my back. I tried to lift him as carefully as I could, which is to say, not very.
He made a moaning noise.
Tomi blinked. Focused. Looked over at me.
“I told you they’d kill him,” she whispered. “See what happened? See?”
She gestured with the knife and blood fell from the blade into the circle of ash. The magic in the circle, in the spell, rippled with shadows of indigo and bloodred.
“Tomi, listen. Davy’s not dead. I need to take him to the hospital. Put the knife down and come with me.”
Tomi just stared at me and jerked the knife in a couple haphazard strikes through thin air. No, not strikes. Drawing. She was working Blood magic, casting a spell. Oh, this was not good. Not good at all.
I didn’t think I could get him up into a fireman’s hold, so I pulled his arm over my shoulder, which also hurt like hell. It was good he wasn’t a heavy-built guy. Still, deadweight is deadweight.
I gritted my teeth and grasped him by the waist, then started to sort of half drag him back along the path to the car.
I thought about putting him down so I could tackle Tomi and drag her butt along with me, but I didn’t think Davy had that much time, and I sure as hell didn’t have the strength to haul them both back to the car.
“Tomi,” I called. “Follow me. Let me help you.”
She looked up away from the circle of ash, her expression blank. “Me?” She shook her head. “You don’t understand. He’s coming,” she said. “He’ll kill him. Don’t. . don’t let him hurt him.”
The circle in front of her seemed darker, more shadowed, and filled with flashes of things that moved.
Shit.
Tomi went back to casting the spell. I saw yellow eyes in that circle, fangs.
I moved as fast as I could, across the park, through the trees. Not easy, not fun.
I so needed to start going to the gym.
Davy kept right on breathing. Jerky, slow, but breathing. And that was all I could ask for.
Well, that, and maybe for Tomi to snap out of the crazy and stop casting magic. That chick was messing around with dark magic-something she should not know about. No wonder Davy said she was different.
I picked up the pace and made it to the car. It was raining and I was shaking from fatigue and anger. I unlocked the back door, lay Davy half in the car, ran around to the other door, and pulled him by his armpits the rest of the way across the seat.
Davy’s breathing wasn’t doing so hot now. I needed to stop Tomi, save her, but Davy didn’t have any time left.
This pissed me off to no end. I couldn’t go back to save Tomi, and I would not just drive away and let her die.
Then I remembered I had friends in low places. Time to call in a favor.
All I needed was a phone.
Something moved at the edge of my rearview mirror. I looked up.
Creatures ghosted across the grass, dark, transparent horrors of indigo, midnight, blood, low to the ground, nightmare beasts like the Necromorph but compact, muscled, all claw and fang and burning yellow eyes. Running my way.
“Shit, shit, shit!” I gunned the gas.
The creatures were fast. Too fast. Before I was even out of the parking lot they were behind me, beside me, then past me, silent as poison, spreading out, half a dozen or more, into the streets, the rain.
Crap. Nightmare creatures chasing me was bad. Nightmare creatures loose on the street was worse. Maybe they were what had hurt Davy. Maybe they were the “him” Tomi was talking about.
Maybe I didn’t have time to find out.
I pulled up in front of Mama’s place, a two-story brick and wood building with a diner on the bottom floor and some living space on the top. I ran up the stairs and pushed open the door.
Boy, the one who was always behind the counter, didn’t bother to pull his hand away from the gun I knew he kept hidden. As a matter of fact, he pulled out the gun and casually aimed it at me.
Oh, how fandamtastic was that?
“Where’s Mama?” I asked. He lifted the gun, just in case I hadn’t noticed it the first time.
“Out,” he said.
Yeah, we had history. The bad kind.
“Give me your phone. There’s a woman hurt. In the park. She might be dead.”
He didn’t seem very impressed with the news. And I supposed if you’d grown up in this part of town, the report of a dead person in your backyard wouldn’t exactly hit the headlines.
“Give me the phone, Boy. I’ve got a kid dying in my car.”
Mama stormed out of the kitchen, five feet not much of street and attitude. She stopped, obviously surprised to see me.
“Allie, girl?”
“I need your phone,” I said.
And that, I knew, was very familiar. I’d told her the same thing just a few months ago when I was still Hounding for her and trying to get her to call 911 for her youngest, Boy, who had been hit by an Offload from my father. Well, not my father, but at the time I’d thought it was his spell.
Instead of arguing with me, she handed me the phone from where it hung on the wall next to the kitchen. That was new.
“Is it bad?” she asked as I dialed.
“I think so.”
She nodded and waited, watching me.
I dialed Detective Stotts. He would be the one they’d call in on the case anyway, because there was no way that was a run-of-the-mill magical crime.
After one ring, he answered. “Stotts.”
“This is Allie Beckstrom,” I said. “You need to get to Cathedral Park as soon as you can. There’s a woman hurt there. Tomi Nowlan. Magic is involved.”
I noted Mama tensed at that, and I was not about to give him any more details with her listening. “I’m on my way to the hospital with Davy Silvers. If you need me, you can find me there.”
I hung up before he had a chance to ask me anything.
“Police are on their way,” I said to Mama. “Detective Stotts. He’ll know what to do. Lock the doors and keep Boy, your youngest, off the street for a while, okay?”
She bit her bottom lip and nodded. Her hands were laced together in front of her, her body language saying she was trying hard to hold something back. I didn’t know what she wanted to say to me, or do to me, and sure as hell didn’t have time to find out.
I straight-armed the door open. Just before it closed behind me, I heard her say, “Good luck.”
And I hoped she meant it in an innocent sort of way, and not in a she-knew-more-about-what-was-going-on-than-I-did kind of way.
The whole thing in Mama’s had taken a minute, tops.
I jumped back in the car and tore off toward the hospital as fast as I could, hoping I hadn’t taken one minute too long to save Davy.
Chapter Thirteen
I was amazed I didn’t get pulled over by the police on my way to the hospital. It all went by so fast, and yet every pause, every second I had to brake or work my way around someone in traffic, felt like a lifetime. I raced up to emergency, and ran inside to get help.
Two people rushed out to the car with me, and between the three of us we got Davy moved onto a gurney that was wheeled into the ER.
My heart pounded so hard, I was breathing as if I’d run the entire way.
I followed Davy, but was stopped by a petite nurse.
“Are you a relative?”
“No. Friend.”
“Do you know family we should contact? Insurance information?”