“What are you giving him?” I slowly eased closer to the bed. The beads of sweat on his forehead gave him a clammy look, and I realized he was far too pale for normal. Camille moved to where she was beside me, and as we stood there, the door opened and Delilah came in.
“You’re here. I was getting something to drink.” She joined us, watching as Chase struggled with his breathing. He wheezed from beneath the oxygen mask.
Mallen turned back to us. “A powerful cocktail of antivenins—we had to synthesize something that would work because the Shelakig’s venom doesn’t quite match anything we have available. But lucky for Chase here, one of our residents is skilled in magical alchemy and she was able to blend the antivenins against rattlesnake bite and a funnel web spider bite into a cocktail that seems to be working. But he’s had several convulsions and every time that happens, the venom spreads a little farther. We’ve got him on restraints so that when he does seize, he doesn’t hurt himself or thrash around too much.”
The elf was calm as he spoke, but the look in his eyes told me that Chase was still in danger, and that Mallen wasn’t altogether certain of the treatment plan.
“If he hadn’t taken the Nectar of Life and if it hadn’t had so much time to work through his body and effect the cellular changes that it has, I’m afraid we would be out one detective.” The elf paused. “You can talk to him, but only for a few minutes. I don’t want him excited, nor do I want him tired out any more than he already is.”
I nodded. “We hear you.”
Yugi scurried in at that point. “Before you talk to him, talk to me. That way you can conserve your questions and he won’t have to go over anything he already told us.” He motioned for us to follow him out the door and down the hall to a break room. I glanced back, reluctant to leave Chase alone, but the nurse and Mallen were there, and we could trust them.
As we gathered around the long table, Yugi took the head chair. He motioned for us to sit down. “I know you’re in a hurry to get out there, to find Nerissa, but you need to know what happened before running off.”
As much as my heart was screaming Get on with it, I forced myself to sit down and listen.
“At two-twenty-five a call came in for Chase. The person said he had been attacked by a group of bikers and that he was sure it was a hate crime. He said his girlfriend had been with him and that she had been sexually accosted and needed help, but they didn’t feel comfortable going to the hospital—not even here. Chase asked him if it had been the Freedom’s Angels who attacked them, and the man said yes. So he wrote down their location and called Nerissa, since she’s our victim’s advocate, and told me he’d drop by to pick her up. He said that the FAs were up to their tricks again and that we may have to run a sting on them to get rid of them. He left here right after that.”
Camille cleared her throat. “He got to our house at a little before three, because I happened to glance at the clock when Nerissa ran out the door. She said she had to go out with Chase on a call and that he was picking her up.”
“That’s what Delilah told us. Chase called me at three twenty to tell me they were en route to . . .” Yugi consulted the file. “316 Chamber Hall Drive, which is a small private lane off California Way SW, out in West Seattle near Discovery Park.”
The wheels were turning in Camille’s head; I could see it on her face. “Let me guess, there are no houses on Chamber Hall Drive?”
“Right. It’s a relatively new street so there are no houses, yet. Developers are preparing to tear out the greenbelt, but they haven’t yet. They got there at three fifty—there was a lot of traffic. Chase radioed in that there weren’t any houses, and they were going to poke around a little in the wooded thatch. I called his cell twenty minutes later, worried when he hadn’t checked in. I sensed something was off. He managed to answer, but he sounded terrible. He said a giant scorpion had attacked him, and that some freak show one-legged creature had grabbed Nerissa. We immediately headed out there. By the time we arrived, Chase was going into convulsions. He managed to tell us she was alive and unharmed the last he saw of her, and that he had tried to stop them but the giant scorpion hit him hard with the stinger. Then he had a seizure and passed out.”