Moon Bound (25 page)

Shrugging, Amy Jo looked away. “Okay, then. I seem to keep bringing down the mood.”

“Then let’s forget about that for a while. So are you in the mood to cry, laugh or both.”

Amy Jo’s smile returned, just a little less than bright. “Definitely both.”

“Alright, let’s see what sickeningly sweet movie we can find.” Bella turned on the TV and began flipping through the pay-per-view movies. “Ugh. Do they show nothing but porn and action film? Why—”

The pop of gun fire cut her off mid-sentence. It caught her off guard because it sounded so close. She froze and gasped as she heard another.

Then the commotion started and she heard a name that made her heart freeze.

“Oh, Goddess, no.”

“Bella? Bella, what’s wrong?” Amy Jo asked.

She didn’t stop to answer. Instead she ran for the door, only to find it locked.

Banging on it, she tried to rip it off the hinges but her
praetorian
had spelled it from the outside. “Luca, goddamn it, let me out!”

“No way.” His voice sounded clearly from the other side. “Stay put! They’re going to bring him up.”

“Bella, what’s happening?” Amy Jo again, her voice calm, controlled.

She felt terror creep like silver through her veins. “This can’t happen again. I don’t think I could stand it again.”

“Bella, come sit down. Tell me what’s going on.”

But she couldn’t sit down. She paced by the door, frustration building, fear eating at her insides. She heard men shouting downstairs, so many voices. So much confusion. That confusion fed her fear until it felt like a snake had coiled in her stomach and now gnawed at her to get out.

“I can’t lose him, too. I can’t.”

She didn’t realize she was speaking aloud until Amy Jo said, “Oh no. Your brother.”

Yes, her brother. Like their parents and older brother. Shot.

A buzzing started in her ears, getting louder until it drowned out everything, as if she were in a vacuum.

She nearly jumped out of her skin when Amy Jo put an arm around her. “Breathe, Bella. You’re not going to do your brother any good if you faint.”

Amy Jo was right. She had to pull herself together before—

The door flew open and a mass of people rushed in, all of them talking at once.

She only had eyes for Cole. And the blood.

Bright red and running from the hole in Cole’s chest, dripping from the exit wound in the back.

Two men carried Cole between them, Dorian holding his head, snapping orders as they placed him on the bed.

“Bella, get over here,” Dorian snapped over her shoulder as she stood frozen to the floor. “Dr. Kent’s coming but it’s going to take him about ten minutes to get here. You have to take care of Cole until then.”

Her jaw dropped as she rushed to Cole’s side, her hand reaching for his. She heard his breathing, slow and shallow.

“What?” Her gaze snapped to Dorian as her words sunk in. “I’m a vet, not a doctor.”

Dorian turned and ordered everyone else to leave the room. “The principle’s the same.” Dorian grabbed her shoulder and shook her. “Snap out of if, Bella. Come on. You’re all he’s got right now. You’ve got to stop the bleeding. The bullet went straight through. I don’t think it nicked any major arteries but I’m not sure and it looks like he’s lost a lot of blood.”

So much blood. All over him.

“Arabella!”

She looked into Dorian’s eyes and saw steady confidence. In her.

She took a deep breath. “I need whatever med supplies Dr. Kent has in the hotel. Amy Jo, I need the towels out of the bathroom.”

She grabbed hold of Cole’s shirt and ripped.

* * *

Steven woke with a pounding headache.

Vaffanculo.
What the hell did he drink last night?

Swinging his legs off the bed, he rubbed at his temples—

And didn’t recognize the rough-hewn wooden walls or the single bed in the center of the room.

What the fuck?

Where was he? The last thing he remembered was sitting in the hotel bar, talking. Then shouting, a commotion—

Cole.
Shit
, Cole had been shot. Adrenaline pumped through his veins as he jumped to his feet. He had to get out of here.

His gaze roamed the room. No windows, no doors. No way out.

Christ, this was bad. Really fucking bad.

He walked to the wall across from the bed and put his hand against it. Magic hummed through the rough boards. But not like any magic he’d ever come up against before. Not
Malandante
. Not
strega
. Not
lucani
.

No, this was something…purer.

He had to get out of here. But first he had to figure out where here was.

“Hey! Where am I? What the hell’s going on?”

His voice echoed in the room as he trailed his hands across the walls, looking for a seam in the boards that would indicate a door. He covered the entire room. Nothing.

“What’s going on? Let me out.”

He pressed his ear to the wall. Nothing.

He looked up. There. A trap door in the middle of the ceiling. Out of reach, even if he stood on the bed.

Panic he couldn’t afford clogged his throat. He had to get out. He needed to get back. Cole was hurt, could be dying. Bella would be terrified.

He wasn’t too steady himself. Fear burned in his gut, compounding his headache. He needed a plan of action.

Pulling the bed away from the wall, he positioned it under the trap door and climbed on.

Shit, still out of reach.

He started to yell again, screaming until his throat felt like he’d swallowed glass. He continued for as long as he could. He had no concept of the passing of time. The room’s only illumination came from two circular fixtures embedded in the ceiling.

By the time he was ready to throw himself at the walls in pure frustration, screaming every curse he knew, he heard footsteps above him.

The trap door opened and a human figure stepped into the light.

A woman’s voice—young, maybe no older than a teenager—called down, “Alright already. Jeez, you’ve got a foul mouth on you. You kiss your girlfriend with that mouth?”

He stared at the woman for several seconds before he found his voice again. “Where the hell am I? Get me the fuck out of here!”

“Oh wow.” The woman shook her head and saw long hair spill down. “She said you were gonna be pissed. Guess she wasn’t wrong. Hey, you want something to eat? Some water?”

“Just get me the hell out of here.” Damn, his throat hurt like a bitch. “What’s going on? Where the hell am I?”

“Hang tight a minute. I’ll get you a water bottle. Your voice sounds a little scratchy.”

“No, wait—”

The girl disappeared only to return a few seconds later. “Here you go. Catch.”

The bottle dropped straight into his hands. He thought about tossing it back, maybe knocking her out, but that still wouldn’t get him out of this hole. He was going to have to talk himself out.

So he swallowed all the profanities that wanted to spew out of his mouth and said, “Thanks.”

“No problem. You ready to talk?”

What the hell? He shook his head, trying to recall anything that might help him figure out what was going on. “Since I don’t know where I am or what I’m doing here, maybe you could talk to me.”

“Okay.”

And she jumped through the hole.

* * *

Time held no meaning for Bella.

Once she got past her fear and could think of Cole not as her brother but as a patient, she was able to work.

She knew she needed to stop the bleeding first and she couldn’t stitch him up because it could trap infection. So she packed the wounds, front and back, with clean towels and applied pressure.

But there was so much blood. Cole’s face was pale and his skin clammy to the touch. He was in shock but she couldn’t deal with that yet. With the heel of her left palm jammed against the chest wound and the heel of her right on his back, she pressed, until she couldn’t feel her own arms anymore.

She didn’t know how long she stood there, holding her brother together, praying he’d be okay. When she finally took a deep breath and pulled back the towels, she nearly fainted in relief. The bleeding had stopped.

Now she packed the wounds with gauze and wrapped it as tightly as she dared. She stared at the wounds for several seconds, but only a tiny bit of blood seeped through. With a sigh, she turned for the bathroom, closing the door just before she lost the contents of her stomach into the toilet.

After flushing, she sat on the floor between the tub and the toilet, waiting for the adrenaline to work its way out of her bloodstream. Her muscles snapped, tiny little explosions under her skin. She moved her jaw, trying to work out the stiffness that had set in from clenching her teeth as she worked on her brother.

It was blessedly quiet in here but she heard voices in the other room—Amy Jo, Dorian. That must mean Dorian had found Dr. Kent.

She should get out there. She needed to talk to Dr. Kent.

She wanted to talk to Steven.

Her brow furrowed. Was Steven out there? She didn’t remember seeing him but then everything had been one big blur when they’d brought Cole in.

Where the hell was Steven?

“Bella?” Amy Jo’s soft voice came through the door. “Are you okay? Can I come in?”

Was she? Hell if she knew.

“Sure. Come in, Amy Jo.”

The door opened only long enough to let Amy Jo slip through. Then she closed the door behind her and sat with her back against the tub wall, staring at Bella. “How are you?”

She didn’t know how to answer that question. “Is Cole okay?”

Amy Jo nodded. “He appears to be sleeping fine at the moment. His breathing is pretty steady. Dorian said the doctor will be here in a few minutes.”

Relief washed through her, relaxing more tense muscles. “Thank the Goddess. He’ll need blood. I’ll have to give up some of mine.” Though it wouldn’t be enough. “We’ll have to find another donor, though how—”

Amy grabbed her hand and squeezed. “The other woman, Dorian? She said not to worry. She has the same blood type, too.”

That was…interesting. She and Cole shared the same, rare AB-negative. For Dorian to have the same type…that was almost too much of a coincidence. Which didn’t mean a damn thing right now.

“Where’s Steven?”

Amy Jo’s blink gave her away and fear grabbed hold of Bella’s lungs and squeezed the air from them.

“No, no …”

Amy Jo’s hand tightened on hers. “No one can find him. He just seems to have…disappeared.”

Her breath started to come fast and shallow. Hyperventilation wasn’t far behind. “What do you mean he disappeared? Was he shot? Was he taken? Did he just vanish? No one saw anything?”

Amy Jo shook her head. “Diego and Marco just got back from looking for him. They said Steven was the first one out the door. But when Diego got to your brother, Steven wasn’t there.”

“Maybe he ran after the shooter. Maybe he was shot, too.” She stood, wiping her clammy hands on her pants. She had to get outside, find Steven. He could be lying in a gutter somewhere, hurt, bleeding.

Amy Jo stood, putting her hand on Bella’s shoulder. “Some of the men are already out looking. You can’t go out there, Bella. What if the person who shot your brother is just waiting for you to show yourself?”

“There’s no way I’m going to sit on my hands. You have to get me out of here, Amy Jo. I can’t just sit here. Would you be willing to be left behind if someone you loved was out there?”

Amy Jo dropped her gaze and shook her head. “Bella, there’s something else.”

“What?” How could this get any worse?

“Some of the other men…they think Steven was involved in Cole’s shooting.”

* * *

Shock held Steven in place as the girl dropped to the floor.

It had to be at least a twelve-foot drop but she landed on her feet like a cat then drew herself up to her full height—maybe five feet. She wore ripped-at-the-knee jeans and a red halter top and her feet were bare.

He could have been wrong, though, because he was distracted by her pale pink wings.

He actually felt his mouth drop open as she grinned at him.

“Pretty cool, huh?” She turned to the side so he could see those wings more clearly. “They’re good for flying, in addition to silencing the natives.”

They appeared to be extensions of her shoulder blades, maybe two-feet long and a little shy of that across. Without thinking, he reached out to stroke the closest wing—and she slapped his hand with the tip.

He retracted his hand with a snap. Then awe started to creep in.

“You’re
folletti
.”

The girl clapped her hands together like an excited two-year-old and squealed. “Very
good
. I told Rainey you would figure it out right away. Rainey wasn’t too sure of your intelligence but I knew you’d be smart. You’ve managed to keep yourself out of trouble this long. You have to have some brains to do that.”

Steven heard her talking but couldn’t make sense of what she was saying. He couldn’t think about anything other than those wings. They were beautiful. And so unusual.

Yes, the woman he loved changed from human to wolf, and he could manipulate aspects of the weather, but this girl had
wings
.

Shaking his head, he forced his gaze to focus on her face. And had to rethink his age estimate. He’d thought teenager but, on second thought, she looked at least as old as Bella.

“I didn’t think there were any
folletti
left in North America,” he said.

The woman rolled her eyes. “Well, sure you didn’t. It’s not like we go out and announce our presence to the world. Wouldn’t be very smart. Most humans aren’t ready to face the fact that they can’t pay their monthly credit card bills much less acknowledge
versipelli
,
streghe
and
folletti
. Don’cha think?”

Yeah, he did think. Still… “What do you want with me?”

Her expression said he’d just asked a stupid question. “You’re needed.”

“What?” He shook his head. “What are you talking about? Needed for what?”