"Hey! Anybody there? We need help," I yelled.
"Z. Thank goodness." It was good to hear Trip's voice. The screen door opened and he stepped out. A smaller figure stood behind him, totally cloaked in what appeared to be a black burkha. "Come on. We have a spot ready. Earl said Gretchen here's as good as any doctor." The robed figure nodded. Only a small patch of her face was showing through her hood, and even then her eyes were covered with large mirrored sunglasses. She gestured for me to follow.
I cradled Julie's limp form against my chest as we hurried down the entry hall. The interior of the home was undergoing serious renovation. Flooring had been pulled up and was in various states of repair. Some walls had been painted, while others were a work in progress. Sawdust and miscellaneous tools littered the floor.
Gretchen led us across the spacious parlor, through a huge dining room complete with chandelier and twenty-foot table, down a small hallway, and into what was probably meant to be a guest bedroom, though right now it looked a bit like an extemporaneous field hospital. A small table had been moved into the room, covered by a white cloth, and littered with strange surgical-looking implements and jars filled with unknown fluids. Gretchen nodded toward the bed and I placed Julie down as gently as possible.
Julie's eyes peeked out from under heavy lids.
"I can't see," she said.
I began to panic. The blow to her head… had it blinded her? Was Julie going to lose her sight? She was a lover of art, and an amazing marksman. Going blind would kill her. I grabbed her hand and squeezed.
"Don't worry. It's going to be okay. I'm here for you. I'm sure your sight will come back."
"Owen." She closed her eyes and sighed. "You big dummy. Of course my sight will come back. My glasses are on the floor of the ambulance. Be a dear and grab them for me… Is that Gretchen?" The robed woman came over and patted Julie's forehead. I had not noticed that the strange woman was wearing surgical gloves. "Hey, Gretchen honey. I'm glad you're here. I'm going back to sleep now…" she mumbled as she drifted off.
Gretchen took her gloved hand from Julie's head and immediately started to remove the blood-stained bandage. The petite robed woman examined the injury. The wound path actually started behind the point of Julie's shoulder and traveled down into the muscles over her shoulder blade. It was a nasty puncture. I had seen a few knife wounds like that while I had been bouncing, but never one that big or at such an angle. The mysterious woman must have then realized that I was still in the room. She looked up until I saw my reflection in her mirrored shades and she made a shooing motion.
"Me?" I pointed at myself. She nodded and kept waving her hands at me. "Sorry." I backed out of the room and gently closed the door behind me. Trip was waiting for me.
"Don't worry. Earl said Gretchen's the best. She's supposed to be able to fix any injury. Milo and Sam swear by her. I guess we're supposed to leave her alone to do her thing."
"Any relation to Skippy? They share the same fashion sense."
"Yeah. They said she's one of his wives. I think she's like the tribal healer," he said.
"Wives? With an S? As in plural?" That was a bit surprising.
"Sam said he's got like five of them. Hey, different cultures. Whatever works, I guess."
"Dang. I don't even have a girlfriend and Skippy has extra wives," I replied.
"No wonder. You look like shit," Holly said from behind me. Between her sultry looks, her swimsuit model's body, and the.308 Vepr in her hands, she looked like she should have been in a James Bond movie. "You're bleeding all over the carpet. What the hell did you do to yourself this time?"
I turned to regard her and smiled broadly. "I fell out of the van. While it was moving."
"You should stick with accounting. Holy crap. You have gravel stuck in your arms. Sit down, I'll grab some iodine. Trip, get a towel, and by the way, the property is clear. I didn't see anybody out there."
"Julie's dad is strapped down in the back of the ambulance. He's out cold. You should probably see to him first," I told them as I studied my shredded arms. They looked almost as bad as I felt.
"Is he hurt?" Trip asked. "I'm no Gretchen but I know first aid."
"Mildly concussed probably. Crazy son of a bitch tried to drive us into a train so I clocked him in the head until he quit. Watch him. He's nuts. Find a room to lock him in, and keep him tied up. Preferably chained to something heavy."
"You really are a people person, aren't you? Give me the keys too, I'll hide the ambulance around back." I tossed them over. He left to retrieve Ray.
"I'm not kidding. Lock him in the attic if we have one," I shouted after him. "And check the room to make sure there aren't any weapons in it."
Holly forced me to take a seat in the kitchen while she raided the extensive first aid kit. I sat next to the marble sink with my shirt off while she painfully removed each piece of bloody gravel with a pair of needle nose pliers. The kitchen was also under construction, someone had pulled down most of the cabinets to be restained, and a pair of sawhorses and some plywood served as the kitchen table. Mercy was not Holly's strong suit, and after violently ripping each piece free she dropped them into the sink with a clatter. It was not a pleasant experience.
She told me about how after Julie had called from the asylum, Earl had immediately loaded up a response team in the chopper to come to our rescue, only to be intercepted and forced to return to the compound by the Monster Control Bureau's helicopters. While the Feds were watching them land, Earl had called to check on our status and had gotten Ray instead. Since Holly and Trip were considered mere untrained Newbies by the Feds, and not really important in the grand scheme of things, he had given them directions to the Shackleford family home and had them sneak off with Gretchen.
"What's this stuff? Looks like you got splashed with slag from a cutting torch or something," she asked as she removed a chunk of metal from my arm. It left a small hole that immediately began to well up with blood.
"Gargoyles bleed molten. I beat one of them to death with a fifty barrel. It kind of got on me."
"No kidding?" I flinched as she jerked out a particularly pointy piece of asphalt.
"No biggie. It only had one arm. And it was stuck under the van. It was the bastard that stabbed Julie. I lost the barrel, so I finished it off with a tire iron. When I cracked its head it kind of just squirted everywhere."
"You rushed a giant monster with an empty gun to save her?" She jabbed me with the pliers.
"I guess. Ow. Careful." I grimaced as she grabbed a chunk of flesh instead of rock.
"Hold still, you big sissy… Look, Z, let me be honest here. I'm getting a little worried about you. Seriously." Holly sounded earnest. She paused to wipe her brow. It was uncomfortably warm and stuffy in the kitchen. "Back on the freighter you were willing to play chicken with a vampire to save Julie. And now you take on a damn ten-ton gargoyle with a stinking tire iron to protect her?"
"It wasn't that big. And on the freighter I pulled that grenade to save all of us, not just her."
"Sure…" She did not sound convinced. "Z, I'm not stupid. I can see how you get all dopey around her. Whatever. I don't want to see you do something stupid and get killed for her is all."
"Nothing that I wouldn't do for anybody else," I said defensively.
"I don't doubt that either. You would probably do something stupid to save anybody. You and Trip both. Idiot wannabe heroes who would probably run into a burning building to save kittens or some shit. I'm surrounded by idiots."