Sarwat Chadda - Devil’s Kiss

But it looked so small! She tried to cover the injury, but her hands just slid all over the place because of the blood. Tears dripped out, and her dad took hold of her hand. Each time he breathed there was a grotesque sucking sound coming from the hole. Her fingers trembled over his cold belly. The blood looked so black under the dim light, and there was so much of it. She couldn’t stop it. He was going to die. Oh God, what had she done?

‘You have to plug it, Billi,’ he whispered. He struggled to hold his eyes open; they were fluttering and hugely dilated. Billi searched the chamber frantically. She needed to seal the lung. She emptied out a desk and found what she wanted: a reel of Sellotape and a sheet of plastic. When she turned back her dad was unconscious. She could just hear the sticky hissing as air bled out of his lungs. Eyes blurred with tears, she bit off strips of the tape and squared the plastic, covering the hole. She used almost the entire roll to fix the sheet into place until eventually it held. Her dad looked white and his breath was only the slightest breeze. She took his hand; she didn’t know what else to do. It sat in her palm like dead meat, no warmth, no life. Just dead meat.

Then she heard something humming: her dad’s mobile. She found it in his pocket and flicked it open. She recognized the number immediately.

‘Percy, come quickly! It’s Dad!’ She looked at the pale, sweat-soaked face. ‘It’s my dad.’

‘What happened?’ Percy’s voice was tense and the line crackled.

‘He’s been stabbed. It’s bad, Percy, really bad. An ambulance is coming.’

‘An ambulance? Billi, you know you should have checked with me, or Gwaine. The Rules -’

‘Dad’s dying! I don’t give a damn about the bloody Rules!’

‘All right, Billi. That’s all right.’ She could hear him talking to someone, who? Gwaine? ‘How? What happened?’

‘We’re at the reliquary. Dad’s killed the Watcher.’ She forced herself not to look over at the headless body in the corner.

‘There’s a body there? Listen, Billi. You’ve got to move Arthur.’

Move him? She couldn’t. What if he started bleeding again?

‘Percy, he has to stay here. I can’t.’

There was a long pause on the other side. ‘Billi, you’ve got to understand. Your dad’s just murdered someone. That’s how the police will see it. You’ve got to get him out. It’ll be prison otherwise.’

Jesus, this is insane. But Percy was right. She looked at her dad. ‘OK, Percy. But be quick. Be quick.’

‘I’ll be there in five.’ The line went dead.

Somehow, between them, they got Arthur outside. They laid him down just in front of the shop door and soon Billi heard the unmistakeable roar of Percy’s motorbike and, true to his word, he was there in five. The wheels screamed to a halt, he tossed his helmet on to the ground and ran to their side. Only then did Billi let her dad’s weight fall and with Percy eased him to the ground. They folded Percy’s biker’s jacket under Arthur’s head, and finally shifted him in to the recovery position.

‘Hang in there, Art,’ Percy said as he took his pulse. He put his hand on Billi’s own. ‘Now listen, we’ve got to get our story straight. Nothing complex. What have you got?’

Kay pointed at the broken door. ‘We’ll say we were walking with Arthur when he saw someone trying to break into the shop. He crossed over the road, there was a fight and he fell.’ Kay looked over at Billi. ‘We were too far to have a good look at the attacker. Average height, average build. Just average.’

Percy nodded. ‘That’ll do. Got it, Billi?’ She couldn’t believe it; they were making up stories while her dad was dying.

‘Got it,’ she said, her throat dry.

The ambulance sirens and lights brought people out on to the street. They loitered outside their porches and doorways, coats slung over their pyjamas and nighties, watching the paramedics bundle out of the ambulance and around Arthur. Percy pulled Billi back to let them work, and then the police arrived. The next few minutes were a blur of questions, flashing lights and conflicting emotion. Her dad had been stabbed. She fed the police the story: the mugger, a scuffle and then him collapsing. No, she couldn’t really remember what the mugger was wearing, or what he looked like, or which way he fled. The police constable soon got weary and took down her details; they’d be in touch.

Billi joined her dad in the ambulance, holding his hand while the paramedic hooked him up to the portable monitors. Percy hugged her. Kay stood some metres away.

‘I’ll be right behind you,’ said Percy.

‘What about Mike?’

‘I’ll take care of it. The others are on their way.’ He squeezed her one last time. ‘You just look after your dad.’

By morning they’d moved Arthur out of the operating theatre into a hospital bed. Billi stared at him; he looked so old. The dawn sun was weak, giving him a corpse-like pallor. He seemed so small and pathetic in the hospital bed. Ugly yellow tubes dribbled out of his mouth and nostrils. His eyelids were half closed, those bright blue eyes, usually so full of power and life, just dull and empty glass.

Had she brought this upon him? If she hadn’t been so consumed by hating him maybe she would have realized Mike was the Dark Angel. And now her dad was lying here.

This is all my fault.

Billi forced herself to look at him. His breath was a thin wheezing, followed by a brittle sucking; the sound tortured her ears as much as his pale face did her eyes. She hated hospitals. The tepid odour of pre-warmed food, the rattle of the steel-framed beds. She looked at her dad’s white hands, how thin the skin seemed now, and how blue his veins. She reached out and took them, frightened by their coldness. They were limp and damp. She squeezed as hard as she could, begging for some reaction. Just the smallest twitch, the slightest sign.

Please, just one sign. Just one.

There was a knock at the door.

Kay entered.

‘You OK?’ he asked. He held out his hand, stuck between touching her and embracing her. His eyes were narrowed, not like he was trying to read her mind, but like he was concerned, normal. Billi stared at his hand until he lowered it. ‘I’m sorry.’

‘You really didn’t know?’ she asked.

‘What?’

‘About Michael being the Watcher?’

Kay shook his head. ‘No. How could you think that? I would never have let him near you, Billi.’

‘So you weren’t even strong enough to see who he really was. Read his aura or something?’

‘You can’t read them just like that. And it’s not totally accurate.’ He looked uncomfortable. ‘Anyway, I don’t go spying on everyone I meet.’

‘No, just me,’ Billi snapped.

That wasn’t fair. She knew it wasn’t. But Billi had to blame someone. She wanted to believe it wasn’t her fault, but, try as she might, she knew this mess was hers alone.

Kay stepped closer. ‘Billi, don’t torture yourself over this.’ He’d heard her thoughts. ‘No one could have known -’

‘That I would lead a Dark Angel straight to the Mirror?’ That’s what she’d done, wasn’t it? No matter how she tried to justify it to herself, she’d led him there. And Kay had saved her. Some Templar she was turning out to be. The longer she stayed the more harm she might do. She didn’t want that sort of burden.

‘Where’s Percy?’ she asked.

‘Downstairs with Gwaine and the others. They’re waiting for you.’

‘They’re all here? Why?’ She caught Kay’s guilty look, just before he turned away to look out of the bedroom window, and understood. ‘Jesus, they can’t wait, can they?’