Sava takes me again without breaking stride, my weight settling against her chest.
“Out,” Sava says into my hair.“In three.One—two—” She doesn’t make it to three.A shape lunges.My vision whites out.When it snaps back, the shape is choking on nothing, Havoc’s hand twisted in his jaw, the neck at a wrong angle.My head rocks against Sava’s collarbone.She’s steel and leather and smoke.Under it, something warm, like clove and it anchors me.
“Cassius,” I try.My mouth won’t shape the sounds right.“I need…”
“You’ll see him outside,” she says.“I promise.Keep breathing.”
And then I see him.
Not standing.Not stubborn.Limp.
Nikola has Cassius under the arms.Marco’s hooked at his waist.Between them they haul his dead weight, sleeves black with blood.His head lolls against Nikola’s shoulder.His shirt is ruined—dark, wet, spreading.His mouth is parted but there’s no sound.His eyes are closed.
“Cassius.”The word tears out of me, raw.The hallway reels.I lunge toward him on instinct.My body forgets it’s broken and suspended above the ground in Sava’s arms.
“Easy,” she snaps, catching me hard against her.“Melinda, focus.He’s knocked out, not gone.Do you hear me?Notgone.”
I can’t breathe.The world narrows to the line of his throat, the slack in his jaw, the way Nikola’s grip tightens like he’s holding a man from falling into a grave.
Gideon falls in beside Nikola and Marco, shadow marching with Cassius like a pallbearer-in-waiting.“Don’t you take him,” I rasp at him, raw and useless.He tips his brim once, solemn, unreadable, and keeps step.Red-blazer, mascara comet-streaked, sets a phantom palm to my cheek like she can hold my face steady.
“Let me go.Let me go.”The words crumble; panic claws up my ribs.
Sava shoves me back to her shoulder, forearm iron across my spine.“Breathe.”Her mouth is at my ear, steady as steel.“In.Out.Now.”
I drag air that doesn’t want to come.It scrapes.It burns.Cassius’s boot bumps the doorframe as they angle him through, and the sound knifes me more than the pain that possesses my body.
“He can’t see me.”I choke.“Sava.He can’t see me.”
“He will,” she says.“But only if you stay with me.Eyes open.”
I wrench them open.Night air hits my face.Sava adjusts her grip and runs.
“I’ve got you,” she says.“We’re not losing either of you tonight.”
Outside is another planet.Headlights blur into shooting stars.Motorcycles idle, thunder bottled.Someone is yelling for gauze.Someone else is swearing about exits and a second car and gridlock.Gravel bites my bare feet when they catch the ground.Sava lowers me beside a black SUV and drops to her knees so fast the ground jumps.
“Lower left,” she says, already tearing my shirt with trauma shears.Cool air kisses hot skin.Then her fingers find the hole.She’s unflinching, so sure, unshaking.
“Exit?”Dominic calls.
She rolls me just enough to check my back.“No exit.”Her jaw sets.“Okay, Melinda, this is going to burn.”A foil-wrapped roll appears, gauze dusted with something gritty.She shoves it deep into the wound and the world detonates.I bark a sound that isn’t a scream only because there’s no air left to make one.
“Good,” she says.“Again.”She packs more, fist over fist, until the bleeding slows from a flood to a seep.She slaps a huge bandage across my shoulder that’s heavy like cloth and drags elastic tight around my hips, cinches the pressure until stars pop at the edges of my vision.
“Bend her knees,” Sava orders as she lifts me off the ground again.She slides me into the backseat and someone shoves a rolled jacket under my legs.The tearing pull across my belly eases by a hair.
“Do not fall asleep,” she says, palm steady on the bandage, her body braced to keep pressure.She rips open a crinkling blanket, tucks it over me.“You’re going to feel cold.That’s shock.You’re okay.”
I’m shaking.No matter how hard I bite down, I can’t control my teeth chattering.
“No water,” she adds when someone tries to press a bottle to my mouth.“Turn her head if she gets sick.Keep the pressure.We move now.”
“Copy,” Dominic says.Doors fly open.Sava climbs into the SUV with me, one knee on the seat, one hand welded to the bandage, the other gripping the oh-shit handle for leverage as the car lurches forward.
Before her door shuts, a voice cuts through the chaos.“Melinda.”
My head jerks toward it.Outside, under the wash of headlights, Nikola and Marco are loading Cassius into another SVU.There’s a dressing pressed to his chest by Dmitry’s red-slick knuckles.His eyes slit open, unfocused, trying.
