Santiago drags the mask from his face, leaving a smear of blood.
I’m not sure what I was expecting, but he’s just a man. Sweaty, bleeding from the nose and mouth. He hacks up more blood over his chin and stains his suit coat.
Quentin walks over, leaning on the sword like a cane, then takes it in two hands.
“Wait,” Santiago says, lifting his hand.
Quentin says nothing. He swings the sword like a golf club and it goes through Santiago’s hand and then his neck. He clutches his open throat as if he can shove the gouts of blood rushing between his fingers back into his veins.
“Don’t look,” I tell the girls. Kelly listens, Karen doesn’t. She watches.
Santiago goes still.
Behind me I hear a groan.
Lily is on the floor, clutching her stomach.
“I got shot,” she says.
21
Quentin
Place is going nuts. Must be fifty women screaming. Rose and the girls are on the floor, Lily’s hit, Santiago’s men are on the floor. I’m bleeding pretty bad and starting to get dizzy.
I get up on my hands and knees and crawl to Rose. She’s not hurt, she’s not hurt, she’s not hurt. She throws her arms around me and recoils, wide-eyed, at all the blood on her hands. I’m not sure how much of it is mine.
“We have to get out of here,” she says.
“Have to get the girls out,” I rasp. You know you’re in trouble when you stop forming coherent sentences.
I look back at Santiago. He’s dead. He’s fucking dead.
He looks…smaller than I remember.
Lily lies against the wall, clutching her belly. She’s bleeding bad but it doesn’t look fatal. Rose helps me up, grabs her girls by the arms and pulls them along. Karen is still looking at Santiago’s body.
I kneel by Lily and almost fall down. I hate to do it but I have to pull her hand away. She’s not gut shot, buy the look of it. The bullet mostly grazed her left side, but it’s a bad wound and she’s bleeding a fair bit.
Grunting with effort, I tear a strip of cloth from my shirt and wrap it around her middle, pulling it tight against the wound. She clutches the cloth and presses it in.
I try to help her and slump against the wall. Rose grimly pulls Lily to her feet and all four of them help me up.
“Women,” I rasp, “can’t leave the women.”
“I’ll take care of that,” Lily says calmly. She’s not talking to me anymore. She’s addressing Rose. “Take my keys. Get him out of here. He needs medical attention. There’s a first-aid kit in the trunk. Get some pressure on his wounds.”
Rose snatches the keys.
“I have no idea who you are, but thank you,” she says. “Come on, Quent. Girls, help us.”
Rose gets under my arm on one side and Karen on the other, and I stumble with them back to Lily’s car. I drop on the backseat and sit while Rose pulls out the first-aid kit and starts pressing bandages to my fresh cuts and one of the old ones that broke open while I was fighting.
Bandages aren’t going to do the job. A couple of them soak through immediately. I’m getting lightheaded. Rose lifts my legs and Karen helps pull me into the backseat. Rose backs the car out and starts driving, clutching the steering wheel in shaking hands.
“I’m going to be okay,” I grunt.
“You fucking better be,” Rose whimpers.
Karen’s eyes flash with momentary shock, that Mom-said-fuck look that kids get on their faces when their mom cusses. Kelly clutches her sister for dear life, shaking. Good God, these kids, what have I brought into their lives?
“It’s a long way to the hospital.”
“No hospital. Somebody’ll kill me. I’ll tell you where to go.”
“Are you insane? Quentin, you’re going to bleed out.”
“Nah, I’ll be fine. Just drive, Rose. Go where I say.”
The next half hour is hazy. She takes a few wrong turns and it’s my fault. I’m headed for one of Dale’s places, from the list. There will be some gear there, medical shit. Rose gets visibly nervous driving into the city.
She looks panicky when she parks in the dusty lot behind the place and I drag myself out and lean on the car door to keep from falling. All three of them swarm me and usher me inside. Karen does up all five locks on the door and follows us up the stairs, hugging herself.
The place is above an old disused garage. Mechanic probably used to live here.
“You need a nurse or something,” Rose says as I flop onto the couch.
“You’ll do. I’ll tell you what to do.”
Rose looks at me wide-eyed. “I keep telling you I’m not a nurse.”
“Welcome to nursing school. Please hurry up and do what I say so I can pass out.”
Getting my shirt off is agony. Rose uses blunt-tipped scissors from the kit to cut away the legs of my jeans. I wince as she cleanses the wounds, and rest my hand on her back as she holds the hooked needle in her hands and forces herself steady.
“Karen, take Kelly in the kitchen and get her some food.”
“But—”
“Now,” I snap, too harshly.