Reagan stumbled forward, reaching to help Niklaus as he struggled to his feet, but out the corner of her eye, she caught Luka dashing forward, running for the car that was backing out of the alley.
He ran like a man without fear, or maybe like a man that wasn’t rational. “I got him, coach!” Luka shouted out a second before he fired at the car’s tires, preventing the man from going any further.
He jumped onto the hood of the car sliding across before dropping down on the other side as he yanked the driver’s side door open, pulling the lone man from inside and dragging him to the mouth of the alley.
He was a grown man, one that Reagan recognized as one that hung around Liam and Rourke, but with the way Luka handled him, it was like he was handling a child.
Stowing his gun away, Luka pulled out something else, something metal and tapered to a point. It glinted in the soft light of the waning twilight, but before Reagan could see what Luka would do next, Niklaus turned her face away, forcing her attention on him.
Judging from the cry of pain that split the air, Reagan was sure she didn’t want to see what was happening anyway.
“How bad is it?” she asked, reaching for the part of his shirt that was torn and saturated with blood. From what she could tell, it was still bleeding.
“It’s a flesh wound,” he said easily, too easily, making her think that he wasn’t being completely honest. “Luka! Stop playing with your prey. We need to go.”
“Aww, but—”
“Now, you little shit!”
Reagan couldn’t begin to understand the relationship between Niklaus and Luka. She would have thought Niklaus hated him, just because of what had been done to him, but beneath the insults that he seemed to keep throwing in Luka’s direction, they seemed more like friends—good friends—than enemies.
“Fine,” Luka said as he came back over, swiping his hands along the front of his shirt, uncaring the he was leaving bloody finger marks behind. “That looks bad.”
Luka accentuated the remark by poking Niklaus’ wound, jumping back when Niklaus moved to grab him.
“There’s no need to get feral, Red. Give me your keys.”
“Not on your fucking life.”
Luka, whose expression had changed to one of sarcastic patience, gestured to his own truck. “Can’t drive mine—it’s shot to shit at the moment. If we’re going to get out of here, you have to let me drive.”
It was beyond clear that Niklaus couldn’t want anything less, but ultimately, he tossed him the keys. “You chip my paint, I’m shipping your ass back to Albania.”
Luka shot him a middle finger, but didn’t respond as he climbed in the driver’s seat, waiting for them to climb in after him before he reversed out of the garage, then down the alley. He had his phone out and was dialing a number before they were ten feet away.
“Sorry, your day off is cut a little short. I had a little accident that I need you to clean up.” Luka rattled off an address to whoever he was on the phone with, then said, “I’d clean it up myself but someone’s bleeding out next to me and that’s a little more important. Oh, and there’s one I left alive, take him to the wet rooms.”
Reagan didn’t know what the wet rooms were, but she was sure she didn’t want to find out either.
Niklaus made a sound from the front seat, a mix between a groan and a grunt, as he rolled the sleeve of his shirt up, revealing the torn and bleeding flesh of his arm. The sight of it only made the nausea churning in her stomach grow worse.
“Shit, I think she’s going to be sick,” Luka muttered, glancing at her through the rearview mirror. “And it’s hard cleaning vomit out of things. Trust me, I would know.”
Ignoring him, Niklaus looked to Reagan, trying to shift his expression into something other than pain.
“You need a hospital,” Reagan said, too afraid to touch him, even in comfort, in case that only hurt him worse.
“Not at all,” Luka chimed in. “Lauren can get him stitched up in no time.”
Who was Lauren?
But Reagan didn’t get a chance to ask before they were pulling into a parking structure in the middle of Manhattan, the building it was connected to far nicer than Reagan’s own place. This was the kind of place she’d dreamed of living in—a definite improvement than the closet she was currently living in.
But she knew even in Manhattan, the places were tiny, but at least they were nicer.
Reagan was worried, wondering how they would just walk through the front doors of a building like this. Niklaus was bleeding, and Luka…well, he looked like the reason for the blood, but instead of going through the front, they circled the building and took the elevator up to the top floor, to a penthouse apartment that had Reagan more curious as to whom they were there to see.
“Should I even ask what you’re doing here, Lu—”
But the girl who was rounding the corner, who looked around the same age as Reagan, stopped when she caught sight of the three of them. Then, with uncanny precision, her gaze locked on Niklaus’ wound, a flash of fear in her gaze before she reached for him.
“Let me see.”
“I’ve been shot before, you know.”