“Oh,” she blinked. “That was a lot of Russian words for only seven English ones. See why I’m having issues with the language?”
He growled loud and long into the quiet of the room, sounding like a pissed off lion instead of the Pit bull he had sounded like earlier in the evening.
She dropped the gun and patted his cheek with her blood-crusted hand. “Maybe we should try yoga. Helps to calm people down, I hear.” And her hand dropped to her chest, her eyes closed.
Grigori stilled. “Ember?”
She didn’t move.
Grigori cursed, his hands immediately going to her head, searching her, but it was going to be hard as fuck to tell exactly where as injured as she was.
Daniil said more clearly than he had before, “Her shoulder for sure.” He wasn’t moving yet, but at least he could speak. “Hit at least twice that I saw.”
“Fucking goddamn it!” Grigori shouted, grabbing a knife from his pants and lifting her shirt, cutting it off her in less than five seconds. I tested wiggling my fingers and toes, happy that I could—just barely—while he removed the tatters of her shirt.
My attention was on Ember’s wounds. Her black bra hung precariously on her breasts since she had a clear shot to her shoulder, the strap evidently getting in the way, so it hung over her stomach. She had a flesh wound on the same shoulder, probably the last shot I had seen. But the most disturbing wound was the one on her right side, down toward her hip.
That must have been the very first time she screamed from upstairs. And yet, she had still kept going, protecting us all. She fucking had to live just so I could tell her how much of a badass she really was.
Grigori’s hands hovered over her, his body starting to visibly shake before he shouted, “Call 911! And Dr. Benedict at Donovan Hospital! Now, goddamn it!”
As two people got on their phones, he rolled her onto her left side, his hands gripping her tight as he stared at her back, whispering, “They both exited. She’ll be fine.” His hands clenched before steadying, and he lowered her onto her back again. He ripped his shirt over his head, his muscles flexing and quivering he was so tense and doped up. He cut his shirt with his knife, tying a strip tight around her shoulder and did the same for her stomach.
He moved down, yanking her shoes and socks off, and started stripping her pants from her legs even as they clung to her. He left her underwear on but stuck his hand under them feeling around before nodding. He checked her legs out, alternating between checking her pulse and breathing when it wasn’t so obvious as his hands roamed over her. She didn’t seem to have any other wounds.
“How long until the ambulance gets here?” Grigori barked, jumping from the ground, and grabbing a blanket from a basket nearby.
“Probably less than ten minutes,” Cole stated softly, staring hard.
Grigori nodded, wrapping her up in the blanket. He gently picked her up, but she still jarred awake. She choked, “Hurts.”
“You’re in so much fucking trouble,” he spewed.
She coughed, and clenched her jaw. “Had to make up for my failure today.”
“Shut up and stay awake,” he ordered harshly in broken English, stalking from the room. He stepped on dead men in his path, seeming not to even notice, disappearing out the door. “You will live, or I’ll follow you to Heaven and drag you straight to Hell.”
The carnage was unbelievable. I rode shotgun in a new armored limo with Daniil, Artur, and Eva less than an hour after the invasion. We were headed to Donovan Hospital where Ember was, all of us just sitting there in mute silence, a long line of vehicles following behind us as everyone that had been in the house traveled to the lone woman who had wreaked so much death in an effort to save us all.
We had searched the house as quickly as we could, everyone putting in a helping hand, and no one found a single living individual that wasn’t supposed to be there. The foyer, stairs, and the balcony had been so littered with bodies we’d had to use the hidden staircase to travel upstairs to check the rooms. I had lost count after forty men. She must have made sure every bullet and knife blade hit its mark. I had never seen that kind of carnage before.
And we had just left it there to make our way to the hospital. There wasn’t anything to be done with the bodies right now anyway. We were all hyped up on whatever drug Stash had ordered Zane to inject us with, and all of the employees who had entered the house just stayed out of our way as we stormed around as quickly but efficiently as we could.
Artur cleared his throat, holding Eva, who was staring blindly out the front window. “I think we need to have a little talk with Ember about the new skills she has acquired.”
Daniil grunted. “She was death’s whisper on the breeze.”
“Poetic,” Eva mumbled, her eyes glassy.
Artur started rubbing her arm with his good hand. “Are we sure she’s at Donovan Hospital?”
“That’s what the receptionist said. She’s in surgery. Benedict’s the surgeon,” I answered factually. Grigori must have carried her all the way to the gate because none of us had heard the sirens.
My head felt like it was a balloon, floating above as shock still flooded my system.
“All those bodies,” Eva mumbled. “I can’t even imagine what would have happened if Grigori had been fighting with her.”
Artur shushed her. “I’ve said it before, just be happy they’re on our side.”
