Talk about having your head up your ass, though. V was crazy if he thought Wrath was putting his beloved’s life at risk by impregnating her when she went into her needing a year or so from now. Females died on the birthing table, more often than not.
He would give his own life for the race if he had to, but no fucking way was he putting his shellan’s at risk like that.
And even if she were guaranteed to live through it, he didn’t want his son ending up right where he was…trapped and choiceless, serving his people with a heavy heart as one by one they died in a war he could do little if anything to end.
SEVEN
The St. Francis Hospital complex was a city all unto itself, the sprawling conglomeration of architectural blocks erected from different eras, each component forming its own mini-neighborhood, the parts connected to the whole by a series of winding drives and sidewalks. There was the McMansion-style administration section and the suburban simplicity of the ranch-level outpatient units and the apartment-like inpatient high-rises with their stacked windows. The sole unifying feature on the acreage, which was a godsend, was the red-and-white directional signs with their arrows pointing left and right and straight ahead depending on where you wanted to go.
Xhex’s destination was obvious, however.
The emergency department was the newest addition to the medical center, a state-of-the-art, glass-and-steel facility that was like a brilliantly lit, constantly humming nightclub.
Hard to miss. Hard to lose sight of.
Xhex took form in the shadow of some trees that had been planted in a circle around some benches. As she walked toward the ER’s bank of revolving doors, she was at once in the environment and utterly away from it. Though she altered her path around other pedestrians and smelled the tobacco from the designated smokers’ hut and felt the cold air on her face, she was too distracted by a battle within herself to notice much.
As she entered the facility, her hands went clammy and cold sweat bloomed on her forehead, the fluorescent lights and the white linoleum and the staff milling around in their surgical scrubs paralyzing her.
“You need some help?”
Xhex wheeled around and brought her hands up, snapping into fighting position. The doctor who’d spoken to her held his ground, but seemed surprised.
“Whoa. Easy, there.”
“Sorry.” She dropped her arms and read the lapel of his white coat: MANUEL MANELLO, M.D., CHIEF OF SURGERY. She frowned as she sensed him, smelled him.
“You okay?”
Whatever. None of her biz. “I need to go to the morgue.”
The guy didn’t seem shocked, as if someone with her kind of moves might well know a couple of toe-tagged stiffs. “Yeah, okay, that hallway over there? Take it all the way back. You’ll see a sign for the morgue on the door. Just follow the arrows from there. It’s in the basement.”
“Thanks.”
“You’re welcome.”
The doctor walked out the revolving door she’d come in, and she went through the metal detector he’d just passed through. Not a peep, and she shot a tight smile at the rent-a-cop who was once-overing her.
The knife she carried at the small of her back was ceramic and she’d replaced her metal cilices with ones made of leather and stone. No probs.
“Evenin’, Officer,” she said.
The guy nodded her along, but kept his hand on the butt of his gun.
Down at the end of the hallway, she found the door she was looking for, punched through it, and hit the stairs, tracking the red arrows like the doctor had said. When she hit a stretch of whitewashed concrete wall she figured she was getting close, and she was right. Detective de la Cruz was standing farther down the corridor, next to a pair of double stainless-steel doors marked with the words MORGUE and AUTHORIZED STAFF ONLY.
“Thank you for coming,” he said as she got closer. “We’re going into the viewing room farther down. I’ll just tell them you’re here.”
The detective pushed open one side of the doors, and through the crack she saw a fleet of metal tables with blocks for the heads of the dead.
Her heart stopped, then roared, even though she told herself over and over again that this wasn’t her damage. She wasn’t in there. This wasn’t the past. There was no one with a white coat standing over her doing things “in the name of science.”
And besides, she’d gotten over all of that, like, a decade ago-
A sound started off softly and grew in volume, echoing from behind her. She spun around and froze, fear so strong it stuck her feet to the floor…
But it was just a janitor coming around the corner, pushing a laundry bin the size of a car. He was leaning forward against the rim, throwing his back into it, and he didn’t look up as he passed.