I jump to my feet, sending my table crashing into the group of noisy young men beside me. Their shouts barely register as I mentally scramble for a way to reach Rosa before her brother can do any more damage.
I’m still trying to come up with something when Rosa’s scream pierces the air. My attention flies to the balcony in time to see Pietro hurtling toward the ground, limbs flailing. A sudden rush of mental static tells me our connection has come back online. At first, there’s only an incoherent jumble of noise and terror, but I immediately open my mind to her.
Help him!she yells.If you’re out there, please don’t let him die.
His body slams down on the roof of a car, bounces, and rolls to the sidewalk with a sickening thud.I will try, bella, I send back, hoping she can hear me. I’m not sure I can help him, though.
There’s a split second of shocked silence, and then all hell breaks loose. People start shouting and howling, traffic screeches to a stop, horns blaring, and finally one man breaks free of the communal stupor and runs toward Pietro’s broken body.
I look up at the hovering sun. This will hurt, but I need to do it. I pull my I-heart-Chicago cap down low on my forehead and dash out into the chaos.
I grab the bystander who is attempting CPR on a body already twitching in its final death throes and hold his cheeks. Panic flares in his eyes as he looks at me.
“I’m a doctor,” I say calmly, letting my will smother his, “and all you will remember is that I tried to help.”
When I release him, he sinks to his ass, nodding silently, and I turn back to Pietro. Ignoring the heat searing the bare skin of my hands, I listen. It’s faint, but there’s still a heartbeat. For one fleeting moment, I consider letting him go. He deserves to die, and it would be better for her if he was gone—but I can still hear her in my head, babbling at me, telling me she’s coming, she’s on her way, begging me not to let him go.
I growl and tear into the flesh of my wrist with my fangs. Ignoring the twitches and the limbs twisted at wrong angles and the blown-out pupils of his eyes, I pull Pietro’s mouth open and drip blood between his lips. It flows freely and some spills over his chin, but I shove myself close enough that a red trickle reaches his mouth.
It might work, might not. I don’t give a shit either way, but she does, and that’s what matters.
Rosa appears at my side, her panic palpable, a scent that hovers over her. She must have jumped down whole staircases to get here so fast, and she lands on her knees next to me, skidding into her brother’s trembling body.
“Is he alive?” she asks, her voice a jagged line of pain. “Will he be okay?”
“I don’t know. But we need to get out of here. Someone will have dialed 911 by now, and I need to get out of the sun.”
She whips her green eyes toward me and takes in the burns on my hand, the smoke that I know is rising from the back of my neck, and the sun that still isn’t quite low enough in the sky.
“Umbrella,” I mutter. “On the patio of the restaurant.”
She leaps to her feet, understanding immediately. Within seconds, she’s back and holding the damn thing over me. Feeling stronger straight away, I take it from her, only now realizing how close I came to my own death. All because of her love of this battered piece of shit lying on the ground between us.
I grab her chin and force her to look at me instead of her brother. Her breathing is too fast, too ragged, her chest heaving and her eyes huge with shock.
“He might make it, but we need to move. Now. If he gets taken to the hospital, you’ll lose him. You won’t help him if you break down. We need transportation—can you manage that? Can you go and get whatever you need from your apartment and then find us a way out of here?”
Her expression clears, and her heart rate slows. She runs her fingertips over the singed skin on my cheek and gives a firm nod. After telling me to deal with crowd control, she dashes back inside her apartment building.
There are more people around now, and this isn’t like where we burned the Spider—this is the middle of the city, and first responders will be here in no time.
Most of the crowd hovers in the background, looking on in various stages of shock, but there are a few who venture closer with their phones out. I look into each of their eyes and tell them a similar thing to what I told the first guy: “I’m a doctor. I’m going to save him. You will not remember any of this, and you will delete any footage you have.” I wait until I’m sure, until I see the tell-tale numbness, the combination of confusion and acceptance, and then I turn my attention back to Pietro.
He’s still alive, but barely. His legs are twisted, his ribs fractured, and his eyes stare unseeing at the slowly darkening sky, his pupils blown. Fuck. What have I done? I have no idea whether vampire blood can bring someone back from this state. Will he be stuck like this forever?
“Luca!” She shouts my name aloud this time, and I look beyond the small crowd to the entrance of her building. She has an overnight bag on her shoulder and is gesturing for me to come to her.
I drop the umbrella, hoist Pietro’s body into my arms, and run toward her, keeping my head down. The cap shields me from the worst of the dropping sun. Fuck knows what damage I’m doing to her brother, carrying him like this, but it can’t be helped.
Inside the lobby, Rosa is standing with a middle-aged guy in a gray uniform. He’s under her thrall, his expression showing the same low-level confusion as the people outside. Her powers are weaker than mine but sufficient for nudging someone in the right direction, and he probably knows her well enough to trust the face she wears for the rest of the world.
“Brian, thank you again,” she says, nodding at me. She’s all business now, her breathing settled and steady, no sign of her earlier panic. She’s the Capelli Seer, not a fragile and traumatized woman. “Don’t forget now, the maintenance van is supposed to be gone for a few days. It was all arranged, and there’s no need to report it stolen, is there?”
“Not if you say so, Ms. B. Is everything… all right?” His eyes flick to me, and I know how I must look. Burned skin, red rings blazing around my pupils, blood still dripping from my torn wrist, an injured man in my arms. I can see him trying to escape her control, trying to figure this shit out.
“Everything’s fine, Brian. This man is my friend. He’s not the one who hurt me, and you don’t need to worry. I’ll be away for a while, just like normal. I’m leaving you and Jed a little tip, okay? In case I don’t see you before Christmas. You take care now, you hear me? You’re a good man.” She stands on tiptoe and plants a little kiss on his cheek, and despite the strangeness of the situation, Brian manages a happy smile.
After placing a bundle of bills on the desk, she leads me down a flight of stairs to a quiet underground parking lot. I follow her toward a small white van that has the words “McManus Maintenance” painted on the side, along with cartoon pictures of a ladder and various tools.
