I bit the side of my tongue, tasted the copper tang of blood. The ensuing pain must have set off a chemical reaction, releasing all kinds of goodies, because I received the boost I needed. The ringing faded, and tendrils of strength wound through me.
“—at war right now, and that makes you a target. Ali won’t be the fighter I know she can be, needs to be, if she’s worried about you.” Mr. Holland possessed the same iron-hard determination as his son, making the words sound as though they’d been chiseled from ice. “You’re going and that’s final.”
I cracked open my eyelids, then blinked rapidly to clear the blur. Meanwhile, memories banged at the door of my mind, demanding entrance. Before I could decide whether to accept or decline, the door splintered and I was bombarded. Cole, shot. Gavin, missing. Kat and Reeve, sedated. Trina and Lucas—
No.
No!
But there was no erasing the knowledge. They were dead. Shot and killed. Gone forever.
My mind shied away from the devastation. I couldn’t allow myself to grieve. Not now. Later, though...
Yes, later.
Right now, it was time to start compartmentalizing again. Nine of my friends were out there, targets to the madmen running Anima, and they had to be found.
Moaning, I sat up. Dizziness struck, as if it had been waiting for me.
Another memory took root. I’d broken down and cried. Mr. Ankh had approached my side and, while cooing comforting words at me, withdrew a syringe from his pocket and injected me with something. A sedative, I thought now, my jaw clenching with irritation.
“Easy, dear.” The sweet scent of Nana’s perfume teased me as a gentle arm wrapped around my shoulders to keep me upright.
My hands quaked as I rubbed my gritty eyes. The dizziness faded, the room and the people in it coming into perfect view. Nana, with her black bob brushed and gleaming, her nightgown replaced by an oversize T-shirt and a pair of sweatpants. Mr. Holland, standing beside her, his face cleaned and bandaged.
Beyond them, Kat and Reeve paced inside a small room surrounded by glass. Probably two-way mirrors. I met Kat’s gaze, but she looked away, as if she had no idea I was there.
“Are they confined?” I asked, and a second later Reeve beat at one of the walls.
“Yes. Frosty and Bronx have yet to be found, and the girls are determined to hunt them,” Mr. Holland said. “They tried to sneak out.”
Of course they did. “Release them,” I commanded. “Now. Kat’s not even a target. We can send her home.” Where she’d stay safe.
He gave a single shake of his head. “She is Frosty’s biggest weakness and one of yours. Of course she’s a target. And we both know she won’t go home. She’ll go after her boyfriend, no matter what we tell her. Reeve, too. And while both girls have had some training in self-defense, they aren’t ready for an all-out war, which is exactly what they’ll get. They stay.”
Stay, yes, I conceded. Locked away? No. But we’d come back to that. “Where’s Cole?”
Nana squeezed me tight. “Don’t you worry about him. He’s doing well. Better than any of us expected. Ankh hauled him to the house to feed him.”
Relief was, oh, so sweet. “So it’s safe to go back?”
“Safer by the minute,” Mr. Holland said with a nod. “When Ankh isn’t playing doctor, he’s working on the security. As soon as he’s satisfied there are no other hidden vulnerabilities, we’ll be able to go in and out the front door. Until then, we are to sneak through the tunnel.”
“What about the other slayers?”
The vim and vigor seeped out of him, and his shoulders slumped. He looked away from me, no longer able to hold my gaze. “We don’t know where they are.”
But he knew something. He just didn’t want to tell me what it was. Hands beginning to sweat, I said, “Text them. Tell them to come here and—”
“I want to,” he interjected with a shake of his head, “but I won’t. Anima could have their phones.”
He was right. Dang it!
He scrubbed his fingers through his hair. “Every news station has been running a story about last night’s eruption of ‘gang violence.’ They claim Cole is the leader of one gang, and his rival, a street thug named River Marks, decided to get rid of him and his crew.”
“Wait. How did they know Cole was any kind of leader?” And did the police know I’d shot and killed someone in his home?
I sucked in a fiery breath. Oh, glory, I’d shot and killed someone.
Compartmentalize.
“No.” Mr. Holland’s features softened as he computed the direction my thoughts had taken. “I snuck back to the house this morning. Someone had come by and cleared away the, uh, collateral damage. The cops saw that the house was broken into, and Cole’s blood was on the wall, but nothing more.”
Anima had gone back, then.
“For now,” he added, “we lay low. We let Anima wonder who survived.”
And who didn’t, I finished for him, taking a few seconds to breathe. The problem with such a plan was that we had to wonder, too.
“Again,” I said, “I’m unsure how the police connected the dots to Cole. They should have just assumed he was a victim.”