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“It’s okay,” he told her. “It’s okay. It’s not as bad as it looks.”
“What … what’s that light? What are you doing?”
The glow intensified, just as it always did at the end of a healing. It grew brighter and then died, just that fast. Like the flash of a firefly on a summer country night.
“Get the fuck off her, pal!”
A pair of hands gripped his shoulders, jerking him bodily up and away from her. He’d been unaware, for a few ticks of the clock, of what was happening around him. Other black coats had emerged—some from the studio, others from the dark-colored vans that were lining the street. An ambulance had backed up to the curb, and the medics sprang into action the second James was no longer blocking their way.
He was weak. He was always a little weak after a healing, and this made two in one night, only a bit more than an hour apart. He felt disoriented, too. Il-logically, he didn’t want anyone else near this woman, and he started to push his way back to her, but his sister touched his arm.
There’s nothing we can do now, she said, mentally. Too many witnesses, and we don’t want these suits to know who the hell we are, J.W. Not if they’re who I think they are.
But they’re taking her—
We’ll get her. We will. But later. This is too risky.
Even as they carried on the mental conversation, one of the medics looked up. “There’s not a mark on her. I don’t understand. Where the hell did all this blood come from?”
“Just get her into the ambulance,” one of the men in black ordered, and then he turned, scanning the crowd—in search, James knew, of him.
The man had a scar running from the outer corner of his left eye, across his cheek, reaching almost to the center of his chin, and eyes the color of wet cement.
“You,” he said loudly, pointing at James, who was some twenty feet away. “I want to talk to you.”
Brigit tugged his arm. “We have to go. Now.”
He knew she was right. But it was killing him to leave Lucy Lanfair. Even as his sister tugged him toward her waiting car, James was looking back, watching them lift the gurney on which the beautiful professor lay, strapped down now, into the back of the ambulance.
She was looking straight back at him. She didn’t reach out, and she didn’t speak, but she couldn’t seem to take her eyes off him, either.
And then they closed the doors, and Brigit gave him a shove.
“I said wait!” Scarface commanded. He was reaching into his coat now, and James had little doubt he was about to pull a gun.
They’d made it back to the car, and James reached for the passenger door just as Brigit started the motor with a roar. Her window was down, and she was looking back at the man. As James predicted, he was leveling a gun.
“Freeze! Don’t make me—”
Brigit lifted a hand, palm up, fingers loosely touching her thumb.
“Don’t kill him!” James shouted.
She flicked her fingers open as her gaze intensified, and a beam of light pulsed from her eyes toward the man. Something exploded, shaking the sidewalk, and even the street, so powerfully that several onlookers fell down. Dust and rubble rained down as people ran screaming for cover. At the same instant, Brigit was gunning the motor again, spinning the tires, shifting rapidly through the gears as she sped away.
James turned in his seat, wondering if the debris falling on the crowd included bits of Scarface. But no, it seemed to be a magazine stand that had stood a few yards from him.
“Don’t worry,” Brigit told him. “The vendor had left his post to gawk at the lady who was gunned down on the sidewalk. No casualties, though I think letting that scar-cheeked bastard live was a mistake.”
“You sound just like Rhiannon, who, I think, originated the phrase ‘Kill them all and let the gods sort them out.’”
“Funny you should mention her.”
He closed his eyes. “Tell me that’s not where we’re going.”
“Who the hell else is going to be able to tell us what’s going on, J.W.?”
“I keep telling you, I go by James now.”
“Yeah. You do keep telling me that. It’s irritating. I wish you’d stop.”
She took a corner so fast that he was mashed up against the door, and he knew there was no going back now.
He’d been sucked back in. Just as he’d always pretty much known he would be. His family were not the kind who let go easily.
The ambulance attendant was sticking a needle into her arm the second the doors swung shut, and Lucy gasped at the unexpected pinch of it. Then she looked up at the young man and said, “I really think I’m all right.”
“Just relax, Professor Lanfair. You’re in good hands.”
“How do you know my na … uh …” Ocean waves came washing into her brain, crashing and then slowly sucking her logical mind back out to sea again. “What did you … give me?”
“Just relax now. It’s all fine. Just relax.”
He was smiling and his eyes were kind and sort of hazel. But they weren’t those other eyes. Those piercing, electric-blue eyes she’d been lost in moments before. And this medic’s hands, while soothing and strong, were not the same hands she’d felt on her before, either. That other touch had been so powerful she’d felt it in every cell of her body. A touch that she knew had somehow … healed her.
And that man. That face. That familiar, beautiful face. Something in her, something deep inside her, had recognized him—though she knew she had never seen him before in her life.
Perhaps, she thought, he was an angel.
“Time to wake up now, Professor. Come on. You’ve had a good rest. Wake up. We need to talk.”
Lucy opened her eyes. But the white room was tipping slowly one way, then the other, growing on one side, shrinking on the other, then reversing itself before just spinning slowly. There was a woman. Black hair with a white streak. A man with a big scar on his face. It must have been his voice she heard.
That was all she noticed before she slammed her eyes closed again.
“I’m going to be sick.”
“No, you aren’t,” the woman said softly. “Do you remember who you are, dear? Hmm?”
“Am in the hospital? Did I die?” God, she was so disoriented.
“You’re safe, and you’re fine, and you’re going home soon.”
Her voice was deep. A little gravelly. A Stevie Nicks voice. Lucy loved Stevie Nicks, mainly because her mom had.
“Now, tell me your name,” Stevie Nicks said.
Lucy smiled, remembering the soundtrack of her childhood, before it had all gone so dark. “Lucy. Dad used to call me Lucille. But I hated it. I wouldn’t hate it now, though. I’d love to hear him call me Lucille again.”
She tried opening her eyes again, but the room was still all out of sorts. She saw the man with the scar leaning close to Stevie—no, that wasn’t Stevie. She wasn’t wearing a scrap of lace or fringe, or a single trailing shawl. No, she was wearing mannish blue trousers with a white shirt tucked in, a thin belt, and a white lab coat, like a doctor.
“Can you get her to focus?” the scarred man said.
“If you get what you need, does it matter if it’s couched in her life story?”
“Time is of the essence here, Lillian. All hell’s breaking loose out there, in case you hadn’t noticed.”
“Maybe your containment team should have considered not having their work televised, then. Back off and let me do my job.”
The scar-faced man huffed, but he moved away from the bed.
Oh, Lucy thought. She was in a bed. And that white lab coat—yeah. Okay, this must be a hospital, then.
“Lucy, what’s your full name, dear?”
Lucy tried to focus, because for some reason she was afraid of making that man angry, and he already seemed awfully impatient. “Lucille Annabelle Lanfair.”
“Very good. And what do you do, Lucy?”
“I work in the Ancient Near Eastern Studies Department at Binghamton University,” she said, wondering why her tongue felt too big and her esses were lispy.
“And what does that work entail?”
“I teach classes about ancient Sumerian culture and the Sumerians’ written language. It was the earliest form of writing, you know.”
“No, I didn’t know that. That’s fascinating. Why don’t you tell me about this most recent translation of yours? The one that got you noticed by Will Waters.”
At the mention of the talk show host’s name, she cringed, squeezing her eyes tightly shut once more, and hearing again the gunshots, seeing the chaos, feeling the horror. “He’s dead, isn’t he? And that crazy old man, Folsom, too? I saw it.”
“Yes. Yes, they’re both dead. Some crazed fan. Did you meet Mr. Folsom?”
Keeping her eyes closed, she said, “In the greenroom.”
“And did you talk to him?”
She nodded. “He was … a little crazy, I think. Said vampires were real.”
“That is crazy. Did he say anything else to you?”
“Said this involves me, too. Said my translation wasn’t about humans, that it was about vampires, and about … them.”
“Who?”
She shook her head. “Twins, he said. Mongrel twins. Crazy.”
“I see. And did he say who or where these twins are?”
“No. He had to go.” Lucy felt her heartbeat quicken, and her breath came a little faster. “And then someone shot him—” Her voice broke as her throat went too tight for words to fit through, and hot tears surfaced in her eyes.
“It’s all right, Lucy. It’s all right. You’re safe here,” the woman who sounded like Stevie said softly. Lucy wished she would sing. “Now I want you to think about what happened right after that terrible shooting. What did you do?”
Lucy kept her eyes closed, but the scalding tears slipped through anyway. “I ran.”
“And why did you run?”
“It’s what I always do.”
The woman was silent for a moment. “When have you had to run before, Lucy?”
But before Lucy could answer, the man spoke, his voice deep and low and rough, like sandpaper. “When she was a kid. Eleven, I think. On a dig with her archaeologist parents in the Northern Iraqi desert, by special arrangement with the government. Bandits raided the campsite by night, shot the entire team and took everything that wasn’t nailed down. She was found cowering in a sand dune, sole survivor. It’s all in her dossier.”
Lucy felt the woman’s hand covering hers. “That must have been awful for you.”
“It was the worst day of my life. Until today.”
“I’m very sorry, Lucy. And I’m sorry to have to make you relive this, too. But we’re nearly done. Now, I want to get back to what happened at the studio. You were in the greenroom, but you saw the shooting. How did you see it, when the greenroom is so far away from the soundstage?”
“I … I saw it on the TV.”
“I see. So you saw it happen on the TV in the greenroom, and then you ran.”
“Mmm-hmm.”
“And then what happened?”
Lucy sniffled hard and wondered why she was spilling her guts this way. But she couldn’t seem to stop herself. “S-Someone told me to stop. He was dressed all in black, I think. And he had sunglasses. So I froze, and I tried to stay still, like he said, but I just … I just couldn’t. My legs just wouldn’t obey. And I ran. And he … he shot me. He shot me.”
“But you’re all right now,” the woman said.
“There was all this blood. It was everywhere. And I fell down, right in it. And it started to hurt. And then … and then he was there.”
“Who was?”
“I don’t know.” She frowned, her eyes still closed, as if to keep the memory inside. “He touched me, and I felt like I knew him. And he had these eyes …”
“And what did he do to you, Lucy?”
“Nothing. He just touched me.”
“How, Lucy? Where did he touch you?”
“My chest.” She lifted a hand to press it to her own sternum, where she was sure there had been a gaping, jagged hole before. But there was only soft fabric, not her own clothing, and though she explored with her fingers, she felt no sign of any injury beneath it. “And then the man who shot me and … other men who looked like him were pushing him away and putting me in the ambulance. And now I’m here.”
“But you don’t know his name?”
“No.”
“But you said you felt like you knew him?”
