Илона Эндрюс - Emerald Blaze (Hidden Legacy)

“Yes, I do. I’m taking you to a hospital. That was our agreement. Pick one.”

I gave him the address of Rogan’s private physician. He plugged it into his phone, and we were off.

I stared out of the window at the Pit.

“Does it hurt?” he asked after a while.

“A little.” The painkiller was wearing off. The four wounds in my side burned like someone was hammering red-hot nails into me.

“We’ll get there soon.” He reached over and squeezed my hand.

“I don’t like threatening people to get what I need.” And I shouldn’t have said that. We weren’t in a position to have a heart-to-heart and I had no business looking for support in him.

“Marat is . . . un mulo . . . a mule. He’s strong and stubborn. He won’t listen to reason, but he understands consequences and authority. He didn’t recognize yours because you’re younger and female and he didn’t recognize mine because I’m young and spoiled Eurotrash.”

“Well, that shirt was a bit much. I kept waiting for you to strategically unbutton it to display your chest.”

He looked at me. “Are you interested in my chest?”

“No.” Why did I even open my mouth?

“I can take my shirt off for you, if you’d like.”

“No.”

“I had no idea the presence of my shirt has been bothering you all this time.”

“Alessandro!”

He laughed. Then his smile died. “Is showing Marat the badge going to carry consequences for you?”

“No. Linus allows me to reveal who I am when it’s absolutely necessary. It was necessary. That’s the only way to keep Marat quiet.”

“I don’t think that was it. I think you did it to reassure him, because you felt sorry for him.”

“Think whatever you want.”

“Arkan has a pet telekinetic,” Alessandro said.

I reached over and rested my fingers on his forehead. “Strange. No fever.”

“Why would I have a fever?”

“Because you just shared information without prompting.”

I took my hand off and he leaned slightly, as if he wanted to prolong the touch, but caught himself.

“I jumped into the nasty water for you and you still don’t trust me. I probably do have a fever from that. You don’t even know what’s in that water . . .”

“If you have a fever, Dr. Daniela will take care of it.”

“I don’t think Dr. Daniela can do anything for my kind of fever.”

Yeah, right. “Tell me about Arkan’s telekinetic.”

“Young, very powerful. Arkan is grooming him as his protégé.” Alessandro frowned.

“How powerful?”

“He lifted a semi once and threw it.”

“Threw it where?”

“At me.”

Don’t ask. Don’t ask how or where. Don’t tempt yourself to care. “Did you dodge it?”

“I did.”

“Good.” I nodded and looked out the window.

Dr. Daniela Arias ran a state-of-the-art private clinic located in a bunkerlike building that was guarded better than Fort Knox. She was none too pleased with the condition of my wounds.

“So, you got clawed by an arcane construct, then you ran around the Pit, and for an encore you jumped into the filthy, magically tainted water that’s probably full of sewage?”

“Exactly,” Alessandro volunteered.

Dr. Arias turned to him. She was six feet tall, built like an Amazon, and when she scowled at you, you wanted to become very small and squeak “yes, ma’am” to anything she said. The stare she leveled at Alessandro was withering.

“And you didn’t stop her why?”

“Yes, why didn’t you stop me?” I demanded.

Alessandro gave us a dazzling smile. It bounced off Dr. Arias like a laser beam from a mirror.

“I did try to stop you. I jumped into the water instead of you to keep you from drowning and being eaten. How was I supposed to know you would follow me?”

“You’re expected to use common sense.” Dr. Arias glared at the two of us. “The two of you are old enough to know better. I need to run some tests and fix this mess. Catalina, make whatever calls you need to make before I start, and you, whoever you are, occupy yourself with something. She’ll be here for a couple of hours.”

I texted Arabella. Are you there?

Is you dead?

No. Need clothes.

Did you have sexy times with Alessandro?

No, I fell into the Pit. Don’t tell Mom. Don’t tell Nevada either. I need clothes to see Cheryl Castellano.

Where are you?

Dr. Arias.

Okay.

I called Bern. It was faster than texting, because when he concentrated on something, he ignored the texts. “Hey. Could you please do an aerial surveillance of the Pit and compare it to any records we have of it in six-month intervals?”

“How far do you need me to go?”

“Three years should do it.” Three years ago, the Pit looked normal, and I wanted a baseline. “Thank you.”

Alessandro parked himself by the door, leaning on the wall.

“You might want to go home,” I told him.

“I don’t think so.”

“You smell like a swamp and I’m safe here. This is Mad Rogan’s private clinic. He provides the security.”

Alessandro sniffed his sleeve and grimaced.

“I won’t leave without you,” I promised.

“If you try, I’ll find you and I’ll be angry.”

“Is that supposed to be some sort of threat?”

“No, it’s a warning. Don’t leave without me.”

“Go away.”

He left.

The CT scan detected no bleeding or swelling in my brain. I escaped without any broken bones, but there was a lot of soft tissue bruising and some arcane bacteria decided to throw a party in my lacerations, which we found out when Dr. Arias removed the bandages and neon-green pus leaked out. She shot me with another dose of antivenom and set about cleaning my wounds.

“Did the pretty boy patch you up?” Dr. Arias asked, working on the cuts.

“Yes.”

“He didn’t do a terrible job. He has some training.”

“I’ll tell him that you think he’s pretty. That will make him happy.”

Dr. Arias smiled. “I have a feeling he knows he’s pretty.”

My sister showed up, accompanied by Runa and two of our security people. They delivered clothes and makeup. I told them about the telekinetic and Marat being pulled into the swamp, and then Runa used her magic to purify my cuts and accidentally neutralized the antivenom, and Dr. Arias kicked them both out. On the plus side, my cuts were now taken care of and infection was unlikely. On the minus side, I received my third injection of antivenom “just to be safe,” and the skin on my left side felt like it was about to give up and peel off my skeleton.

I kept the existence of the Abyss to myself until Dr. Arias left me to rest, and then I called Linus.

“Yes?” He sounded like he was in a helicopter.

I kept my voice low. “There is an alien mind in the Pit. It’s beyond anything I’ve ever felt and it’s malicious.”

He pondered it for a few seconds. “Do you want me to shut the project down?”

“Not yet.”

“Keep me updated.”

I hung up and stared at the phone. I needed to get the hell out of this bed. It was almost 2:00 p.m. Cheryl expected me in two hours. But I was so tired and my whole body hurt.

I picked up my purse, which Alessandro had brought into the room, took out a piece of chalk, and drew a charging circle. The base charging circle was one of the easier designs to draw: a large circle, a smaller circle inside that, then three circles inside that inner circle arranged in a triangle, and finally three outer circles opposite the inner triad. In the past six months, I’d begun to develop my own version. Eventually it would become a Key, a complex charging design particular to our House. For now, it was about two-thirds of the way there. I drew it so often, it took me less than three minutes to complete it. On a good day, when everything didn’t hurt like now, I could do it in half the time.