“Good work,” Divine praised them quietly when she was done. “Perhaps you should go see if they need help with the Tilt-A-Whirl.”
The words were accompanied by a mental nudge that had them nodding, turning toward the RV, and heading away to find the others.
Shaking her head, Divine turned back to the trailer. The door was stuck, or appeared to be at first. After a moment, though, she got it open enough to realize that Marcus was lying in front of it. She called his name, but when he didn’t respond, she forced the door open, pushing his body across the metal floor inside as she did. Once she could slip in, she did, and then let the door slide closed and bent to examine Marcus.
The smell of burnt flesh was overwhelming in the small space and Divine had to hold her breath as she examined him. Fire was one of the few things that could kill one of their kind, although it took special circumstances to succeed with it. Trapping someone inside a burning building or vehicle was special enough . . . so long as that someone didn’t manage to escape before combusting. Marcus had managed to escape, badly burned but before the temperature had got so hot that he combusted.
Divine shook him gently, not really wanting to wake him to the pain he was no doubt in, but needing to know how bad he was. When he didn’t rouse at all, she shifted him away from the door, straightened, and peered out. The night sky was lit up not just by the fire, but by both red flashing lights and bright white ones, and she could see water arcing into the air around her RV. The firemen were hard at work.
“Blood.”
Divine glanced down at that word as Marcus suddenly caught her ankle in a hard grip. Easing the door closed, she knelt next to him again. “How bad is it?”
“Blood,” Marcus repeated.
Divine sighed, but nodded. “I’ll find someone.”
“No.” His hand tightened on her ankle. “My SUV.”
“What about it?” she asked with confusion.
“Blood . . . there,” he gasped.
Divine frowned, her confusion only deepening, and then she recalled the bags he’d carried into her RV and that he had even slapped one to his mouth and drained it. She asked with amazement, “You mean that bagged stuff?”
He grunted and Divine shook her head.
“We can’t survive on that, Marco. The nutrients die the moment it leaves the body. You need—”
“No,” he hissed. “Bagged.”
“Your bagged blood is in the refrigerator in my RV,” she said, and then added dryly, “And I am not going in there to get it.”
“More,” he gasped. “SUV.”
Divine clucked impatiently. Bagged blood would not help him through this. He needed live blood to give him strength and help him heal. However, she knew without question that the man was stubborn enough to refuse to feed from a mortal if she brought him one of the carnies. Besides, the trailer was tiny and hot and stank of burnt flesh. Getting him out of there and to his SUV was rather attractive just then. And once she had him in the SUV she could take him elsewhere to find donors to feed from. It was never a good idea to feed where you lived. Divine avoided that as a rule.
Decision made, she bent and scooped him up.
“What . . . doing?” he almost moaned the unfinished question, but Divine got his drift.
“Taking you to your SUV,” she said grimly, turning to the door and cracking it open with the fingers of the hand at his shoulders so that she could peer out.
“Bring . . . here,” he gasped.
Divine snorted at the very suggestion. “I’m not bringing anything here. You need blood to heal, but once you get it, you’re going to scream your head off and thrash like a landed fish. I’m getting you the hell out of here and somewhere you can’t alert the whole town to the agony you’re going through.”
Marcus groaned but didn’t protest further so she supposed he thought that was the right decision. It didn’t matter if he did or not, though; it was what she was doing, Divine thought grimly and slipped out of the trailer once she saw that the way was clear.
The first problem Divine encountered was that she had no idea where his SUV was. It took some hunting to find it and then she only knew she had the right vehicle because it had Canadian plates. That should have raised a lot of questions with the carnies. The only way it couldn’t have was if Marcus had controlled some minds and such, she thought as she finally paused beside the vehicle.
“Keys?” she asked, glancing to the man in her arms.
“Pocket,” he said, or at least she thought that was what he mumbled. Using the back of the SUV to help hold him up, she quickly patted him down until she found the keys in his pocket, his jeans pocket of course. Rolling her eyes, she slid her hand into the tight space to snatch the keys out, doing her best not to feel anything but the contents of his pockets. Dear God, she was an old woman, she shouldn’t be shy about digging around inside a man’s pocket . . . should she?
Shaking that worry away, Divine eyed the key fob on the chain with other keys and then pressed the broken lock symbol twice and heard the clicking as the locks were released. She then immediately slid the keys into her pocket, debated how to open the door she had leaned the man against, and then sighed to herself. There was nothing else she could do; she hefted him over her shoulder, wincing at his cry of pain, and then used her free hand to open the back door. She leaned forward then, easing him off her shoulder and onto the SUV floor, then shifted his legs inside and followed to close the door behind them.
There was a small refrigerator built into one corner of the back of the SUV. It was locked and she searched briefly through his keys until she found the right one and opened it, but then simply stared at the contents. Six bags of blood, almost ice-cold. Divine grimaced at the sight. Junk food for immortals. It held little in the way of nutrients, but it was what he wanted and she supposed at this point, even a small amount of nutrients were better than none.
Shaking her head, she grabbed a bag and turned to Marcus. He was still conscious and his fangs slid out as soon as he spotted the bag in her hand so Divine popped it to his mouth, waited for it to empty, and then replaced it with another. There were six bags in the refrigerator and Marcus went through them in maybe a little more than six minutes. He began to thrash and groan even before he finished the last bag. The healing was starting and it was obviously going to be nasty.
Divine peered at him with concern for a moment and then cursed under her breath and began to shift over the backseats to the driver’s seat, his keys still clutched in her hand. They couldn’t stay here. She had to get him the hell away from the carnies and anybody else if she didn’t want him drawing attention to them.
That thought uppermost in her mind, she started the engine and managed to maneuver them out of the back lot and onto the road. Marcus began thrashing and shrieking in the back almost the moment she got the tires on blacktop.
Divine ground her teeth and did her best to ignore the tortured sounds, as well as the way the vehicle rocked with his wild thrashing. She needed to concentrate. She needed to find someplace secluded enough that his screams wouldn’t be overheard.
Marcus was suffering. His entire body felt like it was on fire, from the tips of his toes to the ends of the hairs on his head. Everything seemed to be screaming in agony. He’d taken enough damage that the six bags in the truck hadn’t been enough. He needed more.
“Divine,” he croaked, writhing on whatever it was he lay on. He really had no idea, and didn’t care. All he cared about in this world was making the pain stop. He’d give her Bastien’s number and have her order more blood brought at once. He needed it. That was the only thing that would end this agony.