“All night?” Harper muttered with surprise.
Teddy nodded. “I was surprised myself. Once we cleaned away the blood, there didn’t seem much wrong with you compared to the girls, but the knock your head took must have caused some internal damage that needed repair or something. We fed you a couple of bags of blood, but didn’t want to give you too much and cause other problems.” He frowned, and asked, “If I go fetch a bag for you, will you sit your arse down and wait for me to get back before trying to—?”
“I need to see Drina,” Harper interrupted impatiently, staggering past the man.
“That’s what I figured,” Teddy said on a sigh, and caught his arm to help him to the door. “I’ll see you down to the girls’ room then before I fetch that blood.”
Harper muttered a “thanks,” but then remained silent for the rest of the walk down the hall, the flight of stairs, and up the second floor hall to the girls’ room. He knew he definitely needed blood by the time they reached it. He was unsteady on his feet and exhausted by then. Obviously, there had been more damage done inside his head than it had appeared, but then his brain had probably bounced around inside his skull like jelly in a bowl during the accident.
Teddy reached past him to open the bedroom door, and Harper staggered eagerly forward, almost desperate to see for himself that Drina was all right. He spotted an exhausted Mirabeau and Tiny sitting in chairs by the window, and then his gaze dropped to the first bed, and he let out the breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding. Drina was pale, but otherwise appeared fine, with no sign of the shredded skin or smashed body he recalled in his memory.
Of course, she was under the covers, so there might be injuries still mending, but she would heal, he assured himself, his gaze now moving to Stephanie. She had been seated directly behind Drina on the impact side as well, and had no doubt taken equally severe injuries, but like Drina, the girl appeared pale and still but otherwise fine. There was an IV stand between the two single beds; two bags of blood hung from it, each with tubing. One long tube dropped down, and then curved into Stephanie’s arm, the other trailed down from the second bag and led into Drina’s.
“Sit down before you fall down,” Teddy said gruffly, urging him to the bedside as Tiny and Mira-beau stood up.
“How are you feeling?” Mirabeau asked, coming around the bed toward him.
“I’m no expert on your people, but I think he needs blood,” Teddy answered for him as he forced Harper to sit on the side of Drina’s bed.
Mirabeau nodded and turned back toward the windows, but Tiny was already opening a cooler that sat under the window ledge and retrieving a bag.
“What happened?” Harper asked as he accepted the bag, and then clarified, “After the accident. How did you get us out?”
“I was first on the scene,” Teddy said grimly. “Got the call in my car and headed right over. Didn’t realize it was you three at first. Between injuries and the burst bags of blood all three of you were unrecognizable.” He grimaced at the memory. “I thought it was people at first and as good as dead, but then you moaned Drina’s name, and I took a second look. Once I realized it was you three, I blocked off the road and called the house, then started trying to get you all out. I thought we’d need the Jaws of Life, but then Beau and Anders got there and started pulling the metal away like it was toffee. Even so, it took a long time to get Stephanie and Drina out. They were both a damned mess. Never seen a body so mangled, let alone two, and it was hard to tell where flesh ended and metal began,” he added with a shake of the head. “Never want to see anything like that again so long as I live.”
“I had no brakes,” Harper said fretfully, his old familiar friend, guilt, creeping over him as he wondered if there was something he could have done to prevent the crash.
“Yeah, I know,” Teddy said, surprising him, and then explained, “I took witness reports, and when they kept saying you didn’t even try to stop, I knew something was wrong. I had the car towed down to the garage to be looked over. The mechanic, Jimmy, called me just a few minutes before you woke up and reported that the brake lines were cut.”
“Cut?” Harper asked with a frown, and then muttered, “We didn’t have any trouble on the way into London. It must have been done in the parking lot while we were in the mall.”
“Most likely,” Teddy agreed. He then added, “The news, though, immediately made me wonder if that Leonius feller didn’t track down the girl here after all.”