Wraith had paid for their father’s transgressions as well, and some would say that in comparison, their father had gotten off easy. Eidolon and Shade knew their father had gotten off easy. They’d been the ones to put Wraith back together, literally, after finding him strung up by vampires in a Chicago warehouse they’d been led to by Wraith’s distress, which Shade, Roag, and Eidolon had felt like a homing beacon.
If only they’d found him sooner. But Shade, Eidolon, and Roag had found each other years earlier, had been content to wait for Wraith to come to them if he wanted to. Had Eidolon known the reason Wraith hadn’t come to New York was that his own mother had held him prisoner until he broke out of his cage at twenty, Eidolon would have gone to him. Instead, Wraith had gone on the run until the vampires caught up with him in Chicago, and by then, it was too late.
Before the threats began, Eidolon dragged his brother into the hall.
“E, don’t let them take her.”
“I won’t.”
“Let me put her down. I’ll do it now.”
“No,” he snapped, and then, aware that his brother was offering mercy, not getting off on killing, Eidolon took a calming breath. “I meant what I said. We can use her.”
Wraith brushed his shoulder-length hair back from his face with a sharp, impatient shove. “Bro, in case you hadn’t noticed, everyone in this hospital is ready to either string her up or slit her throat, so whatever you do, it had better happen fast.”
The door to Tayla’s room flew open. Hellboy stalked inside, looking unfairly sexy—and human—in tan cargo pants and a black button-down shirt that hung loose at the waist and clung to his broad chest to reveal sharply defined pecs.
“You’re being discharged.” He tossed a folded set of green scrubs into her lap.
“What, no hello?”
His expression tight, he freed her wrists from the restraints. “We don’t have time.” The ankle restraints popped loose with a deft flick of his fingers. “Get dressed.”
She glanced down at the scrubs. “What happened to my clothes?”
“Cut off.”
“Crap.” The Aegis issued an allowance for battle garb, but the next sum wouldn’t come for another four months and she was down to the dregs.
She eased off the bed, her stiff muscles protesting with twinges of pain. The only exercise she’d had for—days? hard to tell when there were no windows—had been to shuffle in chains to the bathroom to bathe or brush her teeth, and her body was telling her all about it. She didn’t bother asking him to turn around while she dressed; she’d never been modest, and besides, he’d seen—and touched—pretty much every inch of her body, inside and out. For his part, Hellboy watched with such intensity that she finally snapped as she tugged the pants up over her bare ass.
“Like what you see?”
If she thought she could shame him into looking away, she’d been dead wrong. His gaze snapped up to hers. “Yes.”
“I swear, I’ve never met any demon as annoying as you are.”
“You haven’t met my youngest brother.”
“Oh, good. There are more of you to kill.” She tied the drawstrings on her pants. “Speaking of which, where are my weapons?”
“Do you truly believe we’d return the tools you use to slaughter us?”
Yeah, dumb question, and man, were her bosses going to be pissed at the loss. “Did you cut off my boots, too?”
“They were destroyed. You’ll go barefoot.”
“What about my ring?”
“I told you—”
“Yeah, yeah. I’d so sue you if this was a human hospital,” she muttered. She didn’t need the ring for the powers it bestowed—she had great hearing and night vision without it, and she’d always possessed a natural and rare ability to see through the invisibility cloak that prevented average humans from seeing the demons among them. But dammit, she didn’t want demons keeping anything that had been her mother’s.
“Hurry up.”
Reluctantly, she followed him out of the room and down the hall.
The same black floors and graffiti-scarred gray walls she’d had in her room were everywhere, except that out here, deep drains ran along either side of the corridor, and every so often they passed an iron cage or a stretcher. Nearby, the steady beeping of medical equipment droned; somewhere else, someone or something screeched over the grating sound of metal on metal. Tayla suppressed a shudder. If Castle Dracula screwed a hospital, this would be the bastard offspring.
“Where are we going?”
“Parking lot.”
“Parking lot?” Sounded so normal.
“You were expecting to ride out on a river of fire? On hellhounds, maybe?”
Heat seared her cheeks, because that was exactly what she’d been thinking. “No.”
“We do have means for regular patients to leave, but the exit points are all in territory unfriendly to you, so I’m taking you home.”
“In a car?”
“Only because my flaming chariot is in the shop.”
“You don’t have to be such a smartass.” She paused to gaze at a row of skulls lining the walls, some suspiciously human in appearance, others clearly demon, the bony protrusions and wicked teeth hinting at dozens of different species. “How do you keep this place hidden from humans?”
“I’ll tell you if you tell me how The Aegis keep their headquarters hidden from demons.”