The alley was a ruin. The clinic blackened and charred, it's wall half-standing.
Flames crackled. Black smoke spilled from the bowels of the ruined clinic. Kincaid slowly lowered his arm from his face, his bare forearm blistered from the heat, and his head aching where he'd been slammed against the wall. "Harricks?" he yelled.
The doctor was buried beneath a mound of rubble. His boots kicked frantically.
"Ava? Are you unhurt?" Kincaid demanded.
"What?" she asked loudly.
Her acute hearing would have suffered more than his. He cupped her chin, checked her over, finding no trace of injury, before he urged her to stay there and hurried to the doctor's side.
Harricks, mercifully, looked like he'd sustained a broken wrist, and little else other than bruises.
"What happened?" the doctor kept gasping, staring at his burning clinic like a banked fish.
Kincaid helped him to his feet. "Someone planted a bomb inside your service drone. There was a pressure sensor attached to one of the wires, and the second I touched it, I activated the bomb."
"But why?" Ava came out of the shadows, her face sooty and her dress streaked with dirt and burn marks.
He'd never forget how close she'd come to dying. Kincaid glared at the clinic. "Probably to cover their tracks. I think someone tampered with the vaccine vials, replacing some of the vaccine with live samples, from what I could gather. I'd assume the same person planted a bomb in the drone. It had a remote detonation charge upon it, so I'd guess they meant to return one night-or day-and set it off, except I got to it first."
"But why blow up the clinic?" Harricks still looked shocked.
"Why tamper with the vaccine?"
Ava met his gaze, rubbing at the skin in front of her left ear. "It sounds like someone wanted to make people scared of the vaccination clinics."
"Sounds like someone we know," he told her pointedly.
Because both Ulbricht and the dhampir had been trying to cause chaos last month. Maybe this wasn't connected-Ava would demand proof-but he had a gut feeling it was.
* * *
They found the same circumstances at two of the other clinics.
Tampered vials of vaccine. And another automaton drone that smelled like Nobel's blasting powder, according to one Nighthawk. The clinics were cleared and locked down, the Nighthawks sent to examine the remaining four clinics within the city, and a message sent to the Council of Dukes. Reporters lingered at each clinic, shouting questions, but Ava kept her head down and tried not to make eye contact as she directed the Nighthawks to remove the vaccine vials carefully and transport them to Dr. Gibson's lab at the guild.
She found Kincaid carefully removing the back panel of the automaton drone in the alley outside, where he pronounced this particular model to be free of explosive devices. Several Nighthawks breathed sighs of relief, and took it into custody to examine further.
"We're finished here," she finally announced, stepping in front of Kincaid and forcing him to come to an abrupt halt. "Which means it's past time for me to have a look at that arm."
"It's nothing-"
"Don't you give me that nonsense." She gestured to the evacuated clinic. "Sit. And roll up your sleeve!"
To her surprise, Kincaid gave her a wry smile, and then collapsed into a chair. Smoke stained his face, and runnels of sweat had made tracks in it. This only served to highlight the intensity of his eyes. "As you wish."
Ava unwrapped the linen bandages she'd applied earlier, when they'd been in a rush. The sight of his blistered skin made her wince. She'd washed it thoroughly under cold water earlier, and the extent of the damage wasn't too bad. Fairly minimal in fact. But his skin was reddened, and hot to the touch, and there was one blister she didn't like the look of. He'd borne most of the heat wave when the clinic exploded, protecting her with his body.
"This is going to be a little disgusting," she said, spitting into her handkerchief, "but a blue blood's saliva can heal most wounds. Could you please not look?"
He obediently looked away as she pressed her saliva against his skin. "Can't infect me, can it?"
"The craving virus is blood-borne. And I would never risk that if it wasn't." Still, the fact he'd asked bothered her a little.
"I trust you," he muttered, wincing a little.
"Thank you," Ava said quietly, as she used the clinic's bandages to redress his arm once she'd checked it. The redness was already fading, but she hated seeing him hurt like this. "I think you saved my life today."