“Don’t you touch me!” My hand went sailing and slammed into his chest in a wing chun–style punch. A move he’d taught me. The hit landed hard. I felt bone crack on impact. Talbot flew backward and hit the stair railing with the satisfying crunch of body impacting with metal. He cried out, clutching at his rib cage. I had no doubt I’d broken at least one of his ribs.
The wolf in my head whispered promises of all the things it would do to Talbot if I’d just let it free, and I wanted to do more damage.…
No. I couldn’t. I clutched that moonstone to my chest and willed its calming power into my body. I couldn’t let Talbot cause me to lose control. I had to get away from him. Away from his deceit. Away from his lies.
“I never want to see you again.” I pulled open the stairwell door and burst through the doorway into the lobby outside the ICU.
I hit the Call button next to the ICU door. I told the nurse I’d left my car keys in the waiting area, and she let me into the unit. I stormed down the hall, past my dad’s room, and kept going deeper into the ICU until I was certain Talbot hadn’t followed me. I stopped and leaned against a window, clasping the moonstone against my chest, trying to get ahold of my senses. That is, until I noticed a shrill beeping noise, like the one from my father’s monitor that had gone nuts after I’d tried to heal him.
I was about to bolt back to his room when I realized the noise actually came from the room behind the window I leaned against. I peered through the glass and watched as a doctor used two large defibrillator paddles to shock the chest of a guy lying in the hospital bed. The guy’s body arched and shuddered with the jolt of electricity, but then it collapsed, limp and lifeless on the bed. Something about the guy looked familiar.…
He was young. Maybe my age or a little older…
I concentrated my superhearing beyond the high-pitched alarm so I could hear what was being said by the small army of medical personnel in the room. “I don’t understand it. He was fine last time I checked on him,” one of the nurses said frantically. “His cousin was just here to visit.”
“Clear!” someone else shouted.
I stood and watched in shock—no one noticing me at the window—as the guy in the bed was jolted twice more. His face looked like a bloated mask, but beyond the bruises and bandages, recognition finally clicked in my head.
“It’s been too long. It’s time to call it,” one of the nurses said.
The doctor pulled off his latex gloves and placed them on a metal tray. He looked up at the clock above the bed. “Time of death: eight twenty-three p.m.”
I stumbled away from the window and ran down the hall, down the empty stairwell, and out of the hospital—knowing I’d just watched Pete Bradshaw die.
Chapter Ten
TENDER MERCIES
A FEW MINUTES LATER
By some small miracle, he was outside the hospital. The white wolf lingered in the grove of trees beyond the parking lot. He watched me as I watched him, my eyes locked with his glinting ones in the evening moonlight. Did he know what had happened? Was he here because I needed him? Did he know I had the moonstone now?
I took a step in his direction. He turned and disappeared into the grove. I wanted to shout to him to stay, but I couldn’t draw attention to him in such a public place. I was about to take another step to go after him when April’s red hatchback pulled up in front of me. Slade and Brent waited for me inside. I hadn’t seen Slade since he’d refused to follow me into the fire. I wondered how many hours he and Brent had been sitting out here in the parking lot.
“He wants us to take you home,” Brent said solemnly through the open window.
I tucked the moonstone into the small pocket of my scrub shirt, just over my chest, before approaching the car. After Talbot’s betrayal, I was hesitant to let anyone know I had the stone now.
I slipped into the backseat and could almost taste the dark mood that radiated off the two boys in the front. I gathered that they knew what had happened to Marcos. They’d known him so much better than I had, and I didn’t know what to say. So nobody said anything, and Slade started the car and headed back toward Rose Crest, driving much slower this time.