Marked (4 page)

CHAPTER SIX

C
acy gave her face a quick wipe as she stared at her battered reflection in the bathroom mirror. Lovely. At least the bruise on her chin would only last an hour or so. She unzipped her uniform and turned around to check out her shoulder. Ugh.
That
bruise, which blossomed like a hideous indigo flower from her shoulder blade, would take a bit longer to heal—maybe the rest of her shift. Its purple tendrils fanned out across her skin, intertwining with the black raven’s wings tattooed across her back. The Mark of the Ferry. It kept her safe from the vengeful Kere, some of whom would happily Mark a Ferry for death just so they didn’t have to share the commission. The Ferry Mark was one of many conditions set by the ancient treaty between the Keepers of the Afterlife, and Moros, Lord of the Kere.

Cacy winced as she pulled her uniform back on. Her limbs were heavy and aching with fatigue. She wanted to lie down in the back of her rig and get her hour of daily sleep. Or maybe let Eli examine her again. The thought of her new, understated, ass-kicking partner brought a smile to her lips. Maybe
he’d
let her watch him eat another piece of mockolate. God, the look on his
face . . .
She wondered what else might make him look like that, because what she wouldn’t do to see that expression again. It might even be worth breaking her man-fast, for a few minutes at least. Or maybe several hours.

She shook her head. A fling would be bad, even if it was just meaningless fun.
She’d
have to work with the guy afterward.

Plus, she had other things to attend to right now. Sometimes duty sucked.

The Scope was frigid in her fingers as she swiped her thumb over its surface. She pulled its edges wide, lowered the ring over her head, and stepped into the Veil. Her feet sank into the gel-like floor as she stepped outside the boundaries of the ring and compacted it into a disk. Then she stretched it open again, creating another portal. This one would take her to the souls she needed to guide.

The skyscrapers were the first thing she saw as her head emerged through the intra-Veil portal, and she stepped out onto the sidewalk next to the High Street Canal. The normally colorful, sweltering atmosphere was dry and frigid in the Veil. The canal was filled with dull-gray boats and AVs, and the sidewalks were packed with shadowy, transparent people, all bustling and scraping and praying and sweating. The Veil muted their voices and scents, the quiet wrapping around Cacy like a layer of ice as they walked through her like ghosts, oblivious to her presence. Oblivious to the nine souls sitting patiently on the low canal wall, shivering silently in the cold.

“Hi, folks,” Cacy said. “I’m here to show you where to
go.” She
repeated her statement in Spanish and Mandarin. As a Ferry,
she could
speak whatever language was understood by the
souls she
was guiding—but only when she was in their presence. At first it had been a strange experience, hearing those foreign words roll off her tongue, but she had long since grown used to it. And since she mostly guided souls in the Chinatown emergency response zone,
she’d
actually managed to pick up some conversational Mandarin over the years.

The people in front of her all nodded in response to her re–assurances. Newly departed souls were often oddly numb and passive—until they found out where they were going to end up for eternity. After that, things sometimes got interesting. She flipped her Scope, watching its tiny center as she walked along the line and passed each soul to get a preview of where
she’d
be sending each one. She always opened portals for the Heaven-bound first, because if she started with the Hell-cursed, everyone else would panic and scatter, scared
they’d
be next. And then she would have to hunt them down before they became rabid.

The last thing they needed in the Veil was more Shades.

And the last thing Cacy needed tonight was drama. Her shoulder hurt like a bitch, and she wanted to get back to Eli.

Just to make sure he had cleaned up the rig properly, of course.

Fortunately, only one of the souls was headed for Hell—the portly driver of the amphibious SUV, who had recklessly plowed into a boat of refugees. Unsurprising.

One by one, she flipped her Scope and opened a portal to Heaven for each of the souls. Their gasps of pleasure brought a smile to her face. It always made her think of her mother and what she might be doing. Cacy pictured her sitting in a sprawling meadow of flowers, the kind her mother had always had her father import from Siberia, lacy white blossoms with buttery yellow centers.

When it was her turn, the girl whose body had been thrown against the storefront sat unbroken in front of Cacy, looking nervous.

Cacy smiled at her. “You’re going to love it there.”

“Have you been?” the girl asked in a wispy little voice.

“No. Hopefully someday, though.” Heaven was no guarantee, even for Ferrys.

The girl bit her lip. “Okay then.” She held still while Cacy lowered the ring of the Scope over her head, letting Heaven swallow her whole. As soon as she was gone, Cacy caught the heavy gold coin that flew out of the Scope’s center.

“Hey,” called a deep voice behind her. Trevor had come to collect his share of the commission.

“I’m not quite finished yet,” Cacy said, eyeing the SUV driver, who was looking eagerly at her. She couldn’t tell if it was because he thought he was going to Heaven or if he wanted the gold in her hand. Probably the latter.

Trevor’s footfalls behind her were nearly silent, but the heat from his body chased away the chill of the Veil and told her he was close. “You got a little beat up,” he commented.

“No shit.” She didn’t bother to turn around, too busy marshaling her strength for what she had to do next. “Give me a sec.”

The warmth disappeared as Trevor gave her space. He probably knew from the flat sound of her voice that she wasn’t about to open a window to Heaven.

“Are you ready, sir?” she asked the driver. She held the Scope behind her back, flipped its Afterlife side—the one engraved with a set of scales—faceup, and ran her thumb over the insignia. She grabbed the edges carefully to keep from getting burned by the intense heat now emanating from its center.

“I guess. Are they gonna have clothes there? I’d love to take a shower and get cleaned up.” He plucked at his bloody tracksuit and leered at her. “But then again, if there’s anybody there who looks like you, maybe I don’t want clothes after all.”

“Oh, they have
exactly
what you need there.” Cacy yanked the Scope wide, swung it over her head, and looped it over the driver before he could say anything else. His scream cut short as she drew the fiery ring all the way down to his feet with a whoosh of acrid smoke. “Whoa. Stinky.” Coughing, Cacy stood up and dodged the red-hot coin as it leaped out of the center of the portal. It landed several feet away, cooled instantly on the frigid sidewalk, and she trudged over to retrieve it.

“Your break is probably almost up, and I’ll bet your new partner is waiting for you.” There was an impatient edge to Trevor’s voice, like he had somewhere to be.

Cacy turned around. He was leaning against the very storefront where the girl’s crumpled body had landed. His eyes glowed red as he watched Cacy come near. He held out his hand. She dropped four gold coins onto his palm and handed him the fifth. “Split that for me?”

He grinned, baring daggerlike fangs. The Kere looked like normal people in the real world, but in the Veil, there was no mistaking them for human. She was glad
he’d
kept his mouth closed while the souls were still here.

“No problem, Ferry.” He put the coin between his teeth and snapped them shut, slicing it down the middle. He handed one half to Cacy, its edges scalloped with the curves of his fangs.

“Thanks. Are you done for the night?”

He shook his head.

“You said nine! Didn’t you do all these?” She waved her hand at the wall where the souls had been sitting a minute ago.

“I got a last-minute assignment,” he replied, staring at her with those glowing crimson eyes. She couldn’t tell how he felt about it. “Go back, Cace. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

He turned in place and disappeared.

“At least you could have done me the courtesy of telling me if it was in my response zone!” she shouted at the space where
he’d
been.

The gold coins were heavy in her pocket as she flipped her Scope again and opened an intra-Veil portal back to the EMS station bathroom. She walked through the jellified closed door of an empty stall and then stepped through the final portal—back into the colorful, warm, messy real world. She sagged against the now-solid wall of the stall.

“—here, Lieutenant?” called Eli, his voice echoing off the tiles.

“I’ll be right there,” she answered, flushing the toilet.

The bathroom door clicked shut again.
Good boy.
She emerged from the stall and carted her gold into the locker room, where she stashed it in her bag and set the laser snaptrap. The guys were unlikely to go snooping, but if they ever did . . . well. Fingers could be easily reattached with a little vascular glue.

Eli was in the back of their now-sparkling rig when she returned to the garage. He hopped off the rear deck and met her halfway. “I was getting worried that you’d collapsed or something. You hit your head pretty hard, Cacy.”

His concerned expression reminded her how beat-up she looked. She tried to give him a reassuring smile. “Good thing my skull is so thick.”

“I’ll remember th—”

The wireless alert beeped.
“Assault at Tremont and Boylston. One police unit on scene; additional units requested but not available. Casualties confirmed. Four EMS units requested. Caution advised.”

Cacy turned to the videowall in the alcove. A lone police cruiser was pulled up against the curb, wedged in front of a limo with its doors hanging open. Thick red smears covered one of the windows. One figure lay in the street and three others lay on the sidewalk. Another was slumped against the side of a building a few feet away. She ran up to the wall screen and circled her fingers around the area where the victims lay, then punched the center to enlarge it.

And screamed.

One of them was her father.

CHAPTER SEVEN

L
en,” Cacy shrieked as she sprinted toward the rig. “Three other units. Now!”

Eli ran after her, wondering what on earth had freaked her out like that.

She threw open the door of the cab and jumped in, immediately punching the ignition and opening the ambulance garage doors. The sirens were already on. It looked like she was about to take off without him.

He jerked the passenger door open and leaped into the seat as the rig started to roll forward.

“One of the victims,” Cacy choked out, “is my father.” She hit the accelerator and lurched into the street, nearly winging a bus.

“Shit. Do you want me to drive?”

Her silence was the only answer he needed. He scooted into the back and started to prepare, thoughts racing. Her father. The CEO. Or former CEO. What the hell had happened? He seemed like the type to travel with an entourage, including a full security detail. But there had been only one vehicle at the scene, plus a police car.

He flicked his eyes up to the front. Cacy was gripping the steering wheel so hard it looked like her bones would split through her skin. Behind them, the shrill sirens of the other units screamed out. As the rig streaked down Kneeland and circled a sprawling shantytown, Eli tried to remember details from the video feed. There had been a lot of blood at the scene, and the limo had been pockmarked with shrapnel.

The wireless came to life. “EMS units are advised that the scene is not yet under control. Please hold your positions.”

“Shut the hell up,” Cacy muttered as she ran a red light.

Eli leaned forward and touched her shoulder. “Maybe we should take one of the other patients.” A personal connection to the patient didn’t usually lead to clear thinking. He knew that from experience.

She shrugged him off. Eli wasn’t surprised, remembering her face as
she’d
watched her father give his retirement speech.
She’d
looked so protective, like it was her job to keep him safe. Whether that was true or not, this had to be killing her.

Eli retreated into the back again and double-checked the contents of his med kit, determined not to let her down.

Cacy screeched to a stop less than half a block away from the intersection where the assault had gone down. Eli peered through the rear window and held his arm out to bar her way as she came barreling through. She hit it with a huff and stumbled back. He turned to her, hating that he had to keep her from her father for even a few seconds. But her own safety was more important. To him, at least. “With all due respect, Lieutenant, this is a hot scene, and I’d rather neither of us got shot.”

She flipped open the cabinet to her right, pulled out a tranq gun, and aimed it at him. “With all due respect,
Sergeant
, get out of my fucking way. If we don’t hurry, the pirates are going to drag them into the Common.”

He held his hands up. “I’m on your side, Cacy. I want to get out there, too. But we can’t help your dad if we’re perforated.” Still holding one hand up, he reached out with the other and popped open the rear door. He picked up his med kit and nodded at her hands, which were still clutching the tranq gun with
white-knuckled
determination. “At least get your gloves on.”

With quick, impatient tugs, she zipped on her gloves and grabbed her kit. Together, they pulled a stretcher out of the back. Eli used his size advantage to push her behind him and was relieved when she didn’t fight him. He rolled the stretcher in front of them as they ducked low next to a row of junked cars. The street was eerily quiet. Eli reached back and pressed Cacy against an amphibious sports car with busted-out windows and dried blood on the seats.

“Wait a second.” He raised his head and took in the scene. “The cop’s gone, but his car’s still there. I don’t see anyone else, though. Maybe he chased the attacker off?”

Cacy peeked around Eli’s shoulder. Her gaze focused on a lean man hunched against the stamped-concrete wall of the building at the corner. Her father. Patrick Ferry. He was still wearing the dark suit
he’d
worn to the press conference. His head was bowed, and his gray-streaked hair hung over his face. Eli felt nothing but relief as he watched the man’s chest expand with a shuddering breath. It wasn’t too late.

On the street in front of them lay a man with a gaping wound to his head, his gray matter scattered on the asphalt. A definite black-tag. A few feet away lay a woman with glazed eyes set in a deathly pale face. She was alive, but in shock. Red. Two other men were crumpled on the ground in front of Cacy’s father, both red-tag status. One of them was bleeding profusely from a neck wound, while the other was curled into a ball, moaning softly. Possible gut wound.
They’d
probably been trying to protect their boss. It looked like all of them had been shot, but Eli couldn’t figure out how it had gone down. Why had they left the safety of their bulletproof limo?

Footsteps thunked along the pavement behind them, accompanied by the squeak of ungreased stretcher wheels; Len and the others were on their way. Cacy twisted out of Eli’s grasp and was at her father’s side in less than a second. Eli took a moment to check the vitals of the other victims before handing them over to Len and the other crews. He looked up in time to watch Cacy wave a shaking cardiac wand over her father’s chest. It beeped.

“Daddy. I’m here.”

Patrick Ferry moaned. The fingers of his left hand, lying limp at his side, flexed. “My . . . darling,” he rasped. His head rose briefly from his chest but then bobbed back down, too heavy for his weakened body.

“Tachycardic,” she whispered as Eli squatted down next to her.

“The others have been shot. Is he bleeding? Did you assess for trauma?”

“I . . . I don’t know,” she said, her eyes filling with tears.

Eli’s hands closed gently around her shoulders. “Cacy, move aside and let me help him.”

She scrambled backward, and Eli got to work. Patrick Ferry’s lips were gray with shock. The streetlight above them reflected off the blood that soaked his dark suit.
Shit.
He yanked the man’s shirt open to reveal a puckered hole in the lower-right quadrant of his chest.

“Cacy, hand me an autostaunch.” Eli held his hand out as he leaned around to check for an exit wound. “Wait. No. Make it two.”

Cacy let out a low sob and began to dig in the med kit as Eli maneuvered his patient onto his back. “Shears too, please.”

Cacy handed him the shears and bandages. Eli cut the perfectly tailored suit away from her father’s arms and chest, wishing to God she didn’t have to witness this. The soaked fabric soon lay in a pile next to them. He hoped the autostaunches would do their job and keep Patrick Ferry from bleeding out before they could get him to the hospital.

Eli glanced up and saw Len and the two other teams carting victims away. He could tell by the urgency of the paramedics’ movements that the patients were at serious risk if they didn’t get to the CMC fast enough. He focused on prepping Cacy’s father for the same journey. He clipped an oxygen minipump to the man’s nose and a blood-pressure ring to his neck.

The cardiac wand chirped. A disruption in the patient’s heart rhythm. Patrick Ferry’s eyelids fluttered. He turned his head toward his daughter. His hands shifted restlessly at his side, and his eyes went wide. “No,” he mouthed.

Eli whipped around to see Cacy staring back at her father, her full lips open in a silent scream. Her eyes were wild. She clutched her round pendant in her hand. Tears coursing down her beautiful face, she looked down at the engraved metal disk as if it had betrayed her.

Eli’s hand shot out, and his fingers closed around her wrist. He yanked her close and spoke right into her face. “It’s going to be all right, Cacy. I’m going to take care of him. But you’ve got to help me.”

He released her arm. “Get over here and help me get him on the stretcher.” He kept his voice firm, trying to snap her out of panic mode. Cacy obeyed him, and together they lifted her father onto the stretcher.

Eli looked down at Cacy as they jogged toward the rig. She was steering the stretcher while he injected chemical defib into her father’s chest. She looked shaky and pale, like
she’d
seen a ghost. “You’re going to drive, all right? I’m going in the back with your dad.”

She nodded. They loaded her father into the ambulance. Eli grabbed the suction device and got to work, but when he looked up again, Cacy was still standing in front of the open rear doors, staring at her father. She touched her tearstained cheek and looked blankly at her fingertips, like she hadn’t known she was crying.

“Cacy, dammit, get up there and drive!” Eli reached forward and slammed the rear doors in her face, praying she would understand.

The driver’s side door opened, and Cacy climbed into the cab. A second later, they lurched into motion.

Eli’s heart pounded as he worked.
He’d
never wanted to save a patient more than he wanted to save this one. Anything to chase that pain out of Cacy’s eyes. It shouldn’t have mattered as much as it did—
he’d
only just met her—but he didn’t have time to analyze his feelings.

Patrick’s breathing was rapid and shallow, his heart rate fluttering and unsteady. Eli turned up the oxygen on the minipump and grabbed an oropharyngeal airway, in case his patient lost consciousness.

Suddenly, Patrick’s eyes opened and fixed on Eli with a burning intensity. His lips began to move. Eli tilted his head and bent close, trying to catch the whispered, faltering words. He understood only one, but it was enough to send his own heart rate sky-high. “. . . Galena.”

Eli leaned away and stared at Patrick, who looked back at him like he knew exactly who Eli was. Like he could see straight through him.

Why had Patrick Ferry just said Eli’s sister’s name?

Cacy slammed on the brakes and cursed at the traffic. Eli caught himself against the ambulance bench and broke eye contact with Patrick. The cardiac wand screeched.

Cacy’s father had gone into cardiac arrest.

From the front seat, Eli heard a broken, hitching sob. And all he could think was
No. No. I will not let this happen.

His hands flew over the equipment; he inserted the airway in less than five seconds, injected self-perpetuating saline gel, positioned the autocompression device to keep the heart going, suctioned beneath the autostaunch, and checked blood-pressure-ring readings. They weren’t good.

His eyes flicked up and caught Cacy’s in the rearview mirror. “Eyes on the road,” he barked. “I’ve got this.”

But he didn’t.

Cacy pulled up to the front of the hospital and cut the sirens just as the piercing scream of the cardiac wand fell silent.