He drank three cupfuls, and the taste was magical. Cool and pure. No chemicals.
“Water retention,” he announced. “Or maybe retentive, if that’s a word.”
His parents looked at him in a way that made him wonder if they’d be less surprised if his head spun around.
Patting his tummy, he said, “I’m holding water. No leaks.”
His mom sniffled and wiped her nose with a paper towel. “That’s right. No more leaking.”
“We thought we’d lost you,” Murhder whispered.
Meeting the stare of his father, Nate had a thought that he didn’t really grasp or appreciate what had happened to him. It was as if his parents had been watching a different movie: His had been on cable, where there were commercial breaks that were kind of boring, and a storyline that had a little drama, but nothing that knocked your socks off or was all that revelatory or surprising.
Theirs had been a raw documentary on war atrocities that had won an Oscar for Worst Heartbreaking Thing on Film Ever.
“Are you okay?” he asked, looking back and forth between them.
“We are now,” his father said. “Now… we’re okay.”
It was at this point that he could finally see them properly. His adoptive sire was still so menacing-looking in all that leather he always wore outside of the house, his red-and-black hair sticking straight up as if he’d been pulling his hands through the stuff and nearly ripping it out. His mom was smaller, but no less strong, even if her normally direct honey-colored eyes were watery and her I’m-a-scientist clothes were rumpled.
“I feel all right,” he told them. Mostly because he was trying out the response in case, consciousness and lack of pain to the contrary, somehow he wasn’t. “I really am.”
On the floor, all around the table he was on, there was bloody gauze and discarded medical equipment. Clearly, someone had saved his life—and worked hard doing it.
“I really am okay.”
Nate hugged both of them—and then wondered how long he had to wait before he could ask to speak with Rahvyn. He didn’t want to be insensitive to his parents, but he had to see her. He just really wasn’t going to believe anyone but himself when it came to making sure she was all right—and not just in a not-been-shot sort of way.
If he’d seen her almost die in front of him like that? Even if she wasn’t that into him, it would be terrifying. Especially as he knew she’d had trauma in her previous life. Lots and lots of trauma.
“Thank God Rahvyn called for help,” he said, by way of easing into a discussion that would involve leaving them and finding her. Or them breaking up this family moment by including her. “I mean, quick thinking, right? Did Dr. Manello operate on me out in the field? Because it happened outside of the club?”
As he glanced back and forth again, he saw their expressions change, subtle tension replacing the open love and powerful relief.
“What,” he said. “Did someone else patch me up?”
When they still didn’t respond, he cleared his throat. “Listen, I’m worried about Rahvyn, okay? She must be so freaked out. Can you just… can you bring her here?” He looked around. “Wherever ‘here’ is? I really need to make sure she’s not in shock or something.”
“You don’t have to worry about her,” Murhder murmured. “Ever.”
Nate frowned, some instinct flaring, not that he could exactly decipher what it was trying to tell him.
“I need to see her,” he demanded. “Right now.”
* * *
Back at the Brotherhood’s garage downtown, all Balz was thinking was that he needed to see Erika again. Right now. He had to go after her, and jump in front of that silver Honda, and beg her to…
Beg her to do what, he thought. Forgive him for being exactly what he was? For living as he did, with people like him, in the middle of a metaphysical battlefield?
While a demon had thrown a pup tent up on his personal back lawn and moved in with her Coleman stove and her cast-iron frying pan?
The farther away Erika was from him, the safer she was going to be, and that was why he’d given her the implant of total terror if she tried to come back to this garage or look for him. And if for some reason she could override that, which she couldn’t, it didn’t matter if she attempted to find him. Even though he’d let her go home with her memory box full, and in spite of the fact that she had video footage on him from that trailer, he didn’t legally exist in her world. He was a ghost who lived and breathed among humans like her, and there was no way she could drag him over onto her side of things.