“Eww, too much info!” I plugged my ears as I beat feet through the woods as if I was running a marathon. We made it to the little clearing where the jagged rocks were, when I smelled the first sign of smoke. My heart dropped to my feet as I ignored Addy’s questioning look and took off in the direction of the shelter.
“No,” I screamed as I ran the rest of the way with what little strength I had from not sleeping. Adrenaline kicked in as I stopped cold in front of the shelter. Bodies were charred and littered around the front of it, burned beyond recognition.
“Grayson!” I screamed as loud as my voice would go, pain lanced through me with the realization that I’d been screwing a vampire while the shelter had been under attack. “Grayson! Answer me!”
“Oh my God. Who would have done this?” Addy asked as her eyes searched the charred walls of the entry to the shelter.
“Grayson!” I shouted as I stumbled into the charred opening of the shelter, but beyond that point it wasn’t burnt. It was spattered in blood, and Grayson was there, sitting beside Maggie. “Grayson, oh my God,” I said as I fell to my knees beside him and pulled him into my arms.
“Where were you?” he accused, tears tracked down his cheeks. “You talk all this shit about protecting us but where the hell were you when we needed you!? Emma, where the hell were you! You left us!”
“I need to get Maggie to the medical center. Help me, Grayson,” I pleaded as I swiftly turned his rage against me into help. I deserved it, I got it. I’d fucked up, big time. “Who did this?”
“I don’t know, I didn’t see. Maggie hid me, and locked me in your bedroom. I just heard the screams, oh, Emma, the screams were so bad. They were looking for us I think. Maybe Dad is alive? Maybe he sent them. Maybe it went bad, and he thought they were good guys.”
“Grayson, dad wouldn’t send anyone who would attack us to find us,” I assured him. It didn’t bode well for us either way. “They take anything? Food, supplies, weapons…anything like that?”
“I don’t know, I just heard them.”
“Okay, help me get Maggie up, Addy, check for pulses on those people outside. Try to get everyone organized—those who are wounded worst, in for treatment first. I’ll do what I can.”
I did a surface test on Maggie, which included running my hands over her looking for any blood wounds, or anything protruding. She had blood leaking from her chest, and a lot of it. Grayson brought the gurney I’d stolen from the med center, and together we hefted Maggie up and on to it.
When we got her to the sterile room, I stripped out of my clothes and into the scrubs before I washed and put on gloves and a surgical mask. It wouldn’t be perfectly sterile, but I had some pretty good antibiotics I’d taken from the CDC when they’d deserted their post. I put on the surgical headset, and flipped on the light before working to intubate her after I discovered she’d stopped breathing.
I had been finishing my training to be a surgical tech so I knew I was in way over my head. However, I was Maggie’s only chance right now and I was working against the clock, since I didn’t have a time-line and I was pretty sure the Golden Hour was well over by now. I sealed the room with the pedal and set to work the moment I got her hooked up to the machines to read her vitals.
I removed her clothes, and then quickly rewashed and gloved my hands. I couldn’t allow her to die, even if it meant fighting God for her soul. I’d asked her to protect my brother and she’d ended up hurt because I’d given in to temptation.
I was startled when Lachlan pounded on the door. His eyes were filled with worry, but I spared him only a quick glance before getting to work. The red light was on outside the door, so hopefully he could figure out that this was a sterile room.
He was male, so it was possible he wouldn’t.
I cut into her side and searched for the wound, only I couldn’t find anything. I was so busy in the task at hand that I didn’t hear Lachlan when he entered or when he stepped on the suction tube pedal and started assisting. I looked up at him and almost moaned with relief when it became apparent that he knew what he was doing. He was scrubbed, gloved, and gowned just like I was.
“I don’t really know what I’m doing,” I admitted as I continued to search for a visual on the bleed.
“I do, ye will need tae assist me, Lass.”
“So, you could have helped your brother with that trap on your own?” I asked sourly.
“Aye, I wanted tae see if ye would, or if ye would leave him tae die. I also wanted to ken what ye were aboot in the house,” he said and cracked a little grin behind the mask which dimmed as he took in the damage of Maggie’s body.
We worked for hours, neither one of talking more than was needed. He didn’t ask what happened and I didn’t ask where the hell he’d been. I couldn’t because he’d flip it back on me and I wasn’t ready to admit what I’d been doing while my people were being slaughtered.
Maggie was stable when we placed her in in the nearby recovery room and started on the next person, and then the next. It felt like days before Addy finally told us that no one else had made it long enough to need surgery. The shelter still had residents, but all had been wounded, had fled, or had been hidden on the other levels and weren’t discovered by our attackers.
No supplies had been taken, nor had they come for our things. Had they come for me and my brother? I felt sick at the senseless acts, because I couldn’t think of anyone who’d want us dead, but there were always people trying to take what others had by force, and the possibility of the attackers being sent by my dad were close to zero.
“Lass, what the hell happened?” Lachlan asked as Liam fell in step beside him.
“I don’t know. I wasn’t here,” I croaked as tears choked my words.
“Where were ye?” he asked gently, but I could hear it in his voice that he already knew.
“I fucked up, okay? I’m human unlike everyone else here!” Tears slid from my eyes as I turned around only to find Jaeden standing in the doorway. “Close the doors,” I snapped and took off to wash the blood from my face and body.
“Emma?” he called as he got closer.
“Go back to your wife! Leave me alone, Jaeden. Just get the hell out of here. I can’t deal with you and this right now,” I growled angrily as yet another body was brought inside to be prepared for burial. They’d been burned with gas, which meant we could actually bury our own for once. I couldn’t handle him and do what needed to be done at the same time. I felt like two different people, or as if I had to be in order to be around him.
There was me with him, where I was careless and a little wild. Then there was me when I was here, and I had to be in full control, I had to lead. I didn’t know how to be both at the same time, and even if I didn’t believe his murderous, plotting whore of a wife, he’d left me without so much as a goodbye, and well, then there was the guilt I felt for being with him, instead of the people I was supposed to protect.
“What the fuck happened here?” Jaeden asked me, and then Lachlan when I refused to answer him.
“I dinnae smell any other vamps, or wolves. This was human or something else,” Lachlan said as I left them to discuss it without me.
“No human could have done this,” I heard Jaeden hiss at Lachlan as I retreated.
No, but whatever kind of monster I was, could have done this. Easily. From the timeline where Lachlan and his men had left, and from what Grayson and the other residents had told me, it had taken seconds to do this much damage in the attack.
We were getting caught up in an all-out war with rogue werewolves, but now I had to face the fact that I was going to have to find the person who had done this and kill them. I felt a bone deep coldness inside of me that would never go away. I’d done this. My careless, selfish actions had brought this upon us. Whoever it was had come to do harm, and had killed people who trusted me. Whatever the fuck they were, I wanted nothing from dirt bags that would harm innocent people.
Chapter 24
I’d slipped away to the shower room to get away from the males and the stench of the day. My mind was a mess of confusion and my heart felt as if it was bleeding. We’d been attacked, and I’d been in his arms for it. I couldn’t have stopped it from happening, but I could have given them a fight. Grayson told me it happened in the early morning hours, which meant the door had to have been opened by someone inside.
They shouldn’t have gotten through the doors, period. After I showered and changed into a fresh set of scrubs, I sat on one of the shower benches and pulled my legs to my chest as I mulled through the different scenarios. The thought that someone inside had allowed this to happen haunted me. Maggie was obviously off the list, and Lachlan and most of his men hadn’t been present for the attack. Those wolves he had left behind to protect the shelter had been wounded in the defense of it. The number of people on the shelter’s roster made it difficult to narrow down who had betrayed us.
I kept thinking over the concept map my father had in his room, and the lines which pointed to various people from around town. Others he’d suspected enough to question their motives, and their interactions with my mother. Some of those people had been in the shelter, and they’d made it through the attack without so much as even a scratch.