“Lukas?”
The car jerked to the left as the blazing lights careened off to the right. I went with them, pulled along in their wake until I was lost. They flew around me, brilliantly glowing butterflies. I soared with them long and far until I sailed off the edge of the world. Beyond that, it’s been said, can be nothing good. Beyond the end, I’ve heard, lies only the abyss. Beyond can be only darkness and monsters.
Big deal.
I’d already lived through both.
Chapter 17
In the tenth grade I played football. I wasn’t particularly good or bad, but I was quick. Outrunning slow-witted assholes who wanted to rip me to shreds had come in handy later in life while working for Konstantin. But there had been one occasion, one game where I hadn’t been quite fast enough. For that, I’d paid the price, and it was one that the three-hundred-pound gorilla who sat on my head was more than happy to collect. It was a feeling I would never forget. A giant fist had tightened on my head until I thought I could hear the literal cracking of bone. The pain was so intense that it froze the air in my lungs, turned thoughts into congealed mud, and sent jagged shards of glass splintering through my brain.
I would have given anything to be experiencing that cakewalk again. “He needs a doctor.”
Insistent; the words were very insistent, with a calm that sounded stretched to a jaw-locking tightness. There was a pause as I floated in an ocean of black agony, and then came more words. “I can’t put him on. Are you even listening to me? Do you need the Merriam-Webster dictionary definition of unconscious?”
Lukas. It was Lukas’s voice, and from the sound of it he was giving someone hell. Now who . . . ah. Random neurons collided with a spark. Saul. I’d told him to call Skoczinsky if he ended up on his own. Apparently the situation we were in was close enough to qualify.
I levered up eyelids that fought me every millimeter of the way. The slice of dusty yellow light that rewarded me was a cheerful ice pick drilling through the liquid mush that used to be my brain. Hissing with pain, I tried to cover my eyes with a clumsy and uncooperative hand.
The conversation continued unchecked as my heroic efforts went unnoticed. “He’s been shot and he hit his head. He may even have a skull fracture, and the first aid I know doesn’t cover that.” I could guess how those biology and anatomy lectures went at the Institute. Here’s the best location to inflict damage; don’t worry about fixing it. It won’t ever be an issue.
From the feel of the surface slick and cool beneath me, I was still in the backseat of the car. And from the sound of Lukas’s rigid annoyance, he was right by my head. He was probably standing in the open door with his back to me, but I wasn’t about to shift the watermelon substituting as my head to see, so I did the next best thing.
Holding up my hand, I croaked, “Phone.”
Instantly Lukas popped into my view, his face directly over mine. From what I could see of the god-awful purple and gold shirt, it was stained to a darker color, almost black, from blood—my blood. He might disparage his medical skills, but it was obvious he had tried. “Stefan.” His face brightened fractionally. “You’re awake.”
“More . . . or . . . less.” Every single word was a molten lava of misery. “Phone.”
He hesitated, then put the cell phone in my hand. “Better you than me.”
Stubborn paranoia meeting paranoid stubbornness; talk about your rock and a hard place. Lukas and Saul were born to butt heads. I fumbled the phone to my ear. “Saul?”
“That is one smart-ass little shit, Korsak.” Saul’s voice, slightly tinny, stung my ear. “Are you sure you don’t want to toss him back?”
“He’s not . . . fish.” I wanted to be amused. I settled on queasy. “Saul, we’re in trouble.” True enough, and the last thing I wanted to do was involve Saul. He’d done more than enough already, gone far above and beyond. Dragging him deeper into this mess was not the way to thank him. Unfortunately, I didn’t see any way around it, not if Lukas and I were going to survive.
“Yeah, I gathered that from the Boy Wonder.” He exhaled and I heard the sound of a hand rubbing over a face. “Tell me, Smirnoff. How bad are you, really?”
“I’m not dying.” At least I didn’t think I was. My eyes were beginning to focus with glacial speed. Through the car windows I could see a low, squat building and weeds as high as a man’s waist. It looked as if Lukas had done a good job of finding us somewhere off the beaten path. “But Lukas is right. Think I need a doctor. Someone who can keep his mouth shut.”