Lauren Dane - Wild Darkness

“She’s been shot. Four times. She’s lost a great deal of blood. Your mother will meet us at the hospital in case she needs a transfusion. There’s more. The enclave was stormed. She used her magick. I’m frankly not even sure what she did, but none of them will be a threat ever again. I need to go, we’re arriving at the hospital now. Your dad has more details.”

“I’m coming down. Take care of her.” Lark hung up and he turned back to his female, covered in blood and drugged to the gills.

SHEcame to several hours later.

Faine rested, his head on her bed. Her hospital bed. She remembered then what had happened.

He looked up, a weary smile on his face. “You’re awake.”

“I am. I guess I’m alive huh?

“You’re forbidden to joke about such things.”

“Is everyone all right? At the enclave?”

“One of the guards got out of surgery about twenty minutes ago. They’re saying he’s got a good chance of survival. Other guards surround this room and this wing of the hospital. You were shot four times. Your hip is shattered so they’re going to have to replace it. You lost a great deal of blood. Your mother gave you a lot of hers.”

Tears ran down his face and she got worried. “Is my mother all right?”

“Why are you worried about her? My goddess, Helena! She’s fine. She’s in another room, resting.” He burst from his chair and started to pace.

“Why are you mad at me?”

“You. Could. Have. Died. I was pinned down and you looked all right. You didn’t even fall, hell, you didn’t even register pain at first or I’d have felt it through the link. And then you were gushing blood and I couldn’t get to you fast enough and fuck fuck fuck , Helena. I can’t even think about how scared I was.”

“I’m sorry.” And she was. She could only imagine if it were him who’d been shot and how that would have made her feel.

“I know you are. But you’d do it again.”

“Well, next time I’d shield myself better. Obviously.”

He muttered something in his language and she caught a few choice words about crazy women.

Lark burst into the room at that moment and threw herself at Helena, who screamed at the feeling of her leg and hip being jostled. Faine lifted Lark up and off and there was some snarling when Simon came in and saw this happening.

Lark barked orders at them both as a nurse rushed in and, undeterred by the two giant men and the blue-haired woman, gave them all a lecture about jostling, alarming, or disturbing Helena in any way that was detrimental to her recovery.

“They attacked four enclaves. They killed kids, Hellie. Little ones.”

“I thought we agreed this could wait?” Simon sighed.

“I told you not to say anything.” Faine inserted himself between the sisters.

“She needs to know. She’d want to know.”

“It’s too late anyway. I do know now. Tell me the rest.”

“There are riots in Seattle, Bakersfield, Miami, Cincinnati, Boston and Chicago. The Others are on the warpath and every time the humans push, we push back harder. It’s a bloody damn mess. The data sticks you brought back were full of stuff. Plans to attack different cities and groups. Information about the purchase of large amounts of explosives. Biological weapons! They had this silver stuff, like from a damned movie, it exploded and sent tiny shards of silver into the air. They tried to use it on some Vampires up in Alaska. But no one ever heard from them again.”

Ha. She bet. Vampires didn’t mess around.

“What’s going on in DC?” Her tongue was thick and felt two sizes too big for her mouth. Whatever substance they had her on really did a number on her. But the horrible pain in her leg and hip when Lark had come in had settled back on a far distant shore so she was all right with that.

“Those plates you sent? On the trucks that attacked the enclave? One was registered to a bigwig in PURITY. PURITY and Humans First have been tied to multiple attacks. Tosh is urging the president to finally make a stand. He and several others on Capitol Hill have demanded an investigation into what part Senator Hayes played in all this. His name is all over that data. Bastard. There’ve been some pings from the spells you laid at his office and at PURITY, but there’s not a lot we can use legally. We did find the location of a few of the turned witches and a mage or two who escaped. The wolves are handling that for us.” Lark’s smile was vicious.

“Good. But what’s wrong with the president? The country is on fire and she hasn’t spoken yet?”

“Her chief of staff did about two hours ago. He announced she’d be issuing a statement later today. The governors of the states involved have spoken out, urging calm. Right now it looks like humans, most of them anyway, are coming down against PURITY for this mess.”

It was hard to stay awake. Faine took her hand and squeezed gently. “Rest. You’re doped up, alamah .”

“I have stuff . . .”

He smiled and kissed her. “You will have stuff when you wake up again. Until then, your sister and her big mouth will have things handled.”

TOSHIOhad had enough with waiting. He’d been standing around in an anteroom of the Oval Office for the last hour. And before that, another hour earlier in the day. He’d left and given multiple press conferences demanding an investigation of Marlon Hayes.

He’d been kept apprised of Helena’s condition as well as the status of the thousands of Others and humans who’d been injured in the riots. Insanity, all of it. And the president had remained silent and unreachable behind closed doors with the attorney general and White House staff for most of the day.

But he was totally and completely done with this nonsense. When the door opened and the attorney general came out, Tosh simply swept past the secretary and into the Oval Office.

“Madam President, I’d like a moment of your time.”

Those sharp green eyes of hers landed on him. “Senator Sato, I’m really quite busy.”

“Pardon my bluntness here, Madam President, but you’ve been too busy to meet with me for months as this situation has grown worse and worse.” He tossed multiple newspapers and sheets of paper detailing all the riots onto her desk. “How much longer will you remain silent on this? How many more children will die because you’re afraid to anger PURITY? They didn’t vote for you to begin with, they’ll never be all right with a female leader. But millions of Americans did. You won this office. The nation is starving for leadership right now. Be a leader. Do your job.”

He knew he was going too far, but someone needed to say it.

“Senator Sato, I’ve got this.” She stood. “I wanted the people of this country to work this out. I wanted them to have a national discussion on this so we could move forward without large segments of the population feeling they’d been ignored or steamrolled. I waited too long. I know that. My biggest mistake was in trusting those in the House and Senate to manage this in an appropriate way.”

“Senator Hayes has betrayed his office. He’s got to be dealt with.”

She raised a brow his way. “You’re not unbiased in this matter.”

“I don’t need to be. I didn’t truck with terrorists and aid them in attacking American citizens. He did.”

She shrugged. “You’re right of course. The attorney general has sent people over to have him picked up and brought in for questioning. He’ll be investigated, as will others who worked with PURITY. You know, of course, that a lot of the evidence we’ve been given is inadmissible.”