"I didn't know you cared." I grinned. She stabbed me again.
"Trust me on this one, Z. There'll come a time when you're going to have to make a choice. Somebody who you can't save, no matter what. And then you're going to have to choose, you can either save yourself, or you can die trying. Sometimes the choice is between running like a coward, or fighting like a fool." Holly sounded angry as she said that.
"What are you trying to say?"
"Just something I learned the hard way is all. You know, before…" She trailed off, then changed the subject. "I think that's the last of it. I'm going to put some iodine on this now. You're missing a ton of skin, so this might sting."
"Before what?" I pressed. "You're the only Newbie who has never told us how you got into this business. Everybody knows about my werewolf, or Trip's zombies, or Lee's spiders. Holly, you're tough as nails, and you don't take crap off of anybody, but you're buttoned up so tight about your past. What happened before? You know you can tell me any… Yeeaaarrrgghhh!" I screamed as horrible burning pain ripped through the raw nerves of my arms.
"Oh, my bad. That wasn't iodine. That was rubbing alcohol. All your babbling distracted me. Now shut the hell up," she ordered.
I did as I was told. I wasn't going to push it while she still had that bottle of liquid pain. Damn, that hurt. The iodine stung, but it was nothing in comparison. Trip returned after he had secured Ray and had hidden the stolen ambulance.
"What did I miss?" he asked. "Holly, you don't look happy."
"Nothing," she replied stonily. "Hold still. Some of these holes are going to need stitches."
"Gretchen could do it, probably?"
"She's busy. Julie has a real injury, this is just a boo-boo. Besides, I know what I'm doing. This won't hurt a bit. Well, actually it'll probably hurt like a son of a bitch. Bite down on something," she suggested.
Trip pulled up a chair and sat down next to the improvised table. "I put Julie's dad in a bedroom upstairs. I checked the room for weapons, found this. I think Julie has loaded guns stashed in every room of this place." He placed a.45 Beretta in front of him. "Don't worry though. I've got him handcuffed to a wrought-iron bed frame. He isn't going anywhere."
I thought about that for a moment. It beat thinking about the needle that Holly was running thread through. I hated getting stitches. I had done it plenty of times without local anesthesia. Illegal fighting rings did not exactly have the best insurance. "Where exactly did you get handcuffs?"
He shrugged. "They were in one of the gear bags."
"They're mine," Holly said. Trip jumped. She looked up at us in consternation. "Get your mind out of the gutter. Damn, I am supposed to be the support person, remember? I was just thinking ahead. Earl said we had a dangerous crazy guy to baby-sit."
"Sorry," Trip said.
"Bible thumper," she muttered under her breath as she stuck the curved needle through my skin.
"No really, I didn't mean-"
"Whatever, Trip. Just because I danced naked for money doesn't make me a whore."
"Sorry. That wasn't even what I was thinking," he replied, raising his hands defensively. Holly was quiet as she continued stitching me up. Trip was too dark to blush, but he was obviously embarrassed. "I'll go check on Gretchen." He left the room in a hurry.
I watched as the tear in my flesh gradually closed. She did good work. I felt the need to defend my friend. "I don't think Trip was judging you. He's real religious, but he isn't that way at all."
"I know." She continued stitching. "He's probably the nicest guy I've ever met. And he's real innocent at heart. At least as much as somebody can be in this job." She finished closing the gash.
"You're pretty good at that. I should know… I've been stitched up plenty of times. I've even done it to myself when I didn't have help," I told her.
"Thanks." She tied off the end. "I learned how in nursing school."
"You were in nursing school?"
"Yeah… don't act so surprised. You think I took a degrading job because of the quality people I got to hang around? I needed to pay bills, you know."
"I'm not. I understand."
"I was at UNLV. I only had a couple of semesters left is all… And don't ask."
"Got it." I understood. There seemed to be no shortage of Monster Hunters with secrets in their past. She finished stitching me up and wrapped clean gauze over my arms.
"That's about all that I can do," she said. "You need to get some rest, and you probably need to eat. I saw some food in the fridge. Trip and I will keep watch tonight."
"Thanks," I told her. She stood and stretched, then retrieved her rifle and slung it over her back. She paused on her way out of the kitchen.
"Think about what I said earlier. I don't want you getting killed for no reason."
"I promise I won't," I replied.
"Whatever… Stupid heroes." She left the room. "Sweet dreams, Z."
I picked one of the many bedrooms on the top floor. The plan was for all of us to sleep in the same general part of the house. Splitting up seemed like a stupid thing to do considering that we did not know how safe we were here from the Cursed One's minions.
It was a small room, and the walls were bare sheetrock, but the bed was soft and I was exhausted and still in pain. I popped a handful of Tylenol and hoped that it would help. There were plenty of stronger painkillers in the ambulance, but the last thing I wanted to be was groggy. It took me a few minutes to find a comfortable spot on the bed where nothing was rubbing a scabbed-over patch of missing skin. That was rather difficult considering the extent of my road rash.
The Cursed One was coming. I knew that. I could feel it in my bones. I knew that he was close, I was not aware of how I knew that, but somehow I knew. Ray was the key. Something in the man's head was the secret that Lord Machado was looking for. Some bit of knowledge gleaned from his own forbidden studies in breaking the laws of nature and bringing back the dead. I would kill Ray Shackleford myself before I let him fall into the hands of the enemy. I did not relish the thought of murdering a human being, but it beat the alternative.
I was asleep in minutes.
My dreams that night were brief. The Old Man did not pay me a visit, and thankfully I did not have to see the world through the lens of the Cursed One's memories. For most of the night I slept like a normal man, not bound by strange visions or plagued with old prophecies and mysteries.
I had a brief nightmare, a panicked, disjointed chase through the halls of the Appleton Asylum. This time the gargoyles were much faster. This time I could not save Julie from them. They took her from me and tore the life out of her with their stone claws. A well of rage and hate opened up inside of my soul. Every bit of anger that I had ever possessed was uncorked and unleashed upon my enemies. I crushed the massive unnatural beings into dust with my bare hands as if they were nothing. My rage continued, until finally in my wrath I destroyed everything around me, leaving nothing but a smoking wasteland of death.
I slept.
I woke up late the next morning, sunlight streaming through my window. I felt remarkably good considering how badly beaten up I was. Despite my hectic schedule over the last few weeks, and my total lack of down time, I felt downright refreshed. Rolling out of bed, I could already tell it was going to be a great day.
A horrible odor assaulted my senses. My bandages were missing and had been replaced by something foul. A green, tarlike substance was smeared all over my arms. It stunk of dead road kill and body odor. I gagged reflexively as it hit my nostrils like a hammer.
"Hey! There's something going on!" I bellowed at the top of my lungs. Considering the weirdness we dealt with in this business, I figured that if you woke up to find yourself coated in strange secretions, it was probably best to alert your co-workers. Unlike most polite jobs, of course.