Razed, page 8
“I can leave if you prefer to be alone.”
I shook my head and glanced back at her. “Sometimes, being alone sounds like exactly what you want until you are, and then you realize—”
“—You wish someone else was around,” she finished.
My head bobbed up and down in a nod.
“I’m sorry,” she said. She spoke once she relocated to stand next to me.
Her arms wrapped around her stomach. She shifted her stance to face me, and the wind danced a lock of her hair across her face. She stared up at me and gave that soft smile again. Her shoulders hunched a bit to burrow deeper into the warmth of her coat. Standing there she reminded me of Pippa.
Our daughter inherited my large chocolate chip eyes, but she had her mother’s smile.
“I remember when you proposed to me.” I didn’t need to see Pilar to know the smile remained.
I nodded and replied, “The fortune cookie.”
“It was very romantic. I remember wondering how you managed to get the ring inside the cookie. Still do sometimes.”
Again, I bobbed my head up and down in a nod. “Do you wanna know what I remember?”
“Mmm. Tell me.”
“I remember the look of ecstasy on your face when I walked in on you and Kenny.”
All traces of her soft smile disappeared.
“It’s the first thing I remember when I look at you now.”
Silence stretched in the seconds that followed my words. My reminder of her infidelity let her know exactly what her days’ worth of flirting amounted to. I tolerated her for the good of my sister, but if Ace got hurt because my unwillingness to put Pilar in her place caused Amina to shift, I’d never forgive myself. Or Pilar.
“And you think a werewolf is going to be faithful?” Hints of venom leaked into her voice.
“What are you talking about?”
“If I’ve heard about the orgies that happen during a full moon after their pack hunt, I know you have.”
Ace made no secret about not belonging to her mother’s pack, but she hunted with them on the second night of the full moon. I never asked if the orgies were rumors and assumptions spread by humans to sexualize werewolves, or if they were true. I didn’t want to know. I told myself even if they were true, Ace wasn’t pack so it didn’t apply to her. Besides, they didn’t come any more loyal than Amina.
“You have no idea what you’re talking about,” I replied lamely.
“I thought we were telling truths.”
This was the Pilar I had gotten used to over the years after her affair ended our marriage. The vicious Pilar. The one that blamed my job for her infidelity. The one that threatened to keep my daughter from me. My parents didn’t know this, Pilar. I suspected if they did, the reception she received would be considerably colder. Perhaps mother would even stop telling Ace she longed for a reunion between us.
“Pilar, if you have something to say, I suggest you get on with it.”
“That was terrifying,” she gestured to the trees. “She is terrifying, and you have her around our daughter.”
“Pippa has nothing to do with this.”
“She has everything to do with this. Werewolves are called monsters for a reason, and you brought one into our lives. I knew you would date again. I never dreamed you would go outside your own species.”
I glared at my ex. Her pale face flushed red with anger. Lyla saved Pilar from my wrath, and me from myself.
“Excuse me, Mr. Beto, but there is a call for you.”
“Could you take a message, Lyla?”
I tried to think of who might attempt to reach me on my parents’ phone, but everyone of importance in my life, had my cell.
“It’s an officer Hackle, sir.”
My body was in motion before my brain fully processed the words.
“This is assistant district attorney Dacal,” I spoke after I snatched the cordless handset from Lyla’s fingers. I used my rank as a modified weapon. I wanted the person on the other end to know they dealt with a court officer, not a civilian.
“Beto Dacal?”
“Yes.”
“Do you know a Mina Reeves?” He spoke like he read her name from something.
“Amina Reeves,” I corrected. “And yes.”
I looked up when Will entered the kitchen. It took every ounce of control not to grill Officer Hackle.
“Someone spotted her walking naked along the side of the road and called the police. A great deal of what she said was incoherent. We couldn’t tell if she was speaking another language, gibberish, or both. We did manage to get your name from her.”
“Where is she now?”
“St. Mary’s Hospital.”
I rested my left hand to the island countertop and lowered my head. “How bad is she?”
I didn’t need to look up to know the hand on my shoulder belonged to Will.
“She doesn’t appear to be injured, but it’s best if you come down here.”
“Of course.”
“I can send a car—”
“—Thank you but that won’t be necessary. I can be there in...” I looked at the clock on the microwave and saw my parents' reflection in the glass on the door. “Fifteen minutes.”
“What is it?” Mother asked as soon as I disconnected the line.
“They found her.”
Will clapped his hand on my back. “Is she okay?”
I nodded. “She was, naked—”
“—Oh, for heaven’s sake. What am I going to tell them at the country club?”
“Yes mother, that is the most important thing right now.” I snapped.
“That girl is not my concern.”
“You’ve made that perfectly clear.”
“I do not want her back in this house.”
“Yes, you’ve made that perfectly clear, as well.”
“Blanca, we are not going to turn her away. Regardless of what happened, we are descent people.” My father said.
“Where are you going?” Mother demanded, following me as I headed up the back stairs.
“I’m going to pack our things, go to the hospital, and take her home.”
“I’ll go with you,” Will offered and climbed the stairs behind my mother.
“I appreciate the offer, but it’s already late. I doubt there’s anything you can do.”
He waved off my protests. “There’s always something for a doctor to do in a hospital.”
6 – Beto
Officer Hackle blocked the door to Ace’s room.
From the way he peered inside through the tiny window five times in the thirty seconds it took Will and me to reach him from the elevator, it became apparent he guarded the outside from her, and not the other way around. Once we got close enough, I cleared my throat to grab his attention.
Balding, pudgy, and with more white hairs in his beard than brown, Hackle appeared old for an officer, but the number of chevrons displayed on the shoulder of his uniform confirmed his position.
“Officer Hackle?” I asked.
He scrutinized me for at least five seconds. “Dacal?”
“This is Dr. Li.” I introduced and gestured to Will.
Will underwent the same scrutiny I received.
“How exactly do you know, her?” Hackle demanded.
He said her with the emphasis of an insult. His eyes darting towards the room removed any doubt about who he meant.
“She’s my girlfriend,” I answered and held his gaze. All on its own I felt my left eyebrow edge upward. An unspoken challenge. “But then you knew that already, right? Otherwise, how would you know to call me?”
Hackle’s lips thinned when he pressed them together.
“Beto, why don’t we check on Amina.” Will gestured to the door with a nod.
“Before you go in,” Hackle raised his hand to stop us. “You should know your girlfriend wasn’t just found naked, but bloody as well.”
“Excuse me?” Renewed panic surfaced. “When we spoke on the phone earlier you said she wasn’t hurt.”
“They cleaned her up but didn’t find any wounds,” he stated. “The amount of blood on her suggests it belongs to someone else. Her kind heal fast, but not that fast.”
I glanced over Hackles shoulder but could make out very little through the glass cutout in the door. I momentarily closed my eyes against the memory of her skin rippling under my hands only a few hours ago. If Hackle was correct in his assessment, who had she hurt?
“Did you find anyone else?” Will voiced the question I couldn’t bring myself to ask.
“Not yet.” Hackles glare suggested disappointment. “We followed her trail back to the woods and found, substantially more blood, but—”
“—Haven’t been lucky enough to find a body yet.” I finished for him and added my own glare.
“Could be more than one.” He tossed the inference at me, along with a vicious smirk.
Unconsciously, I took a step closer and squared off with him. I refused to display my inner concerns that Ace might have harmed someone. I wouldn’t give him the satisfaction. Police like Hackle provided those fighting for equal rights for supernatural entities the ammunition to lump all law enforcers into the asshole category.
“Sounds like right now, all you’ve got, are assumptions.” I challenged.
“And visual evidence.” He fired back. “Maybe it was an animal that she ate.”
Will’s fingers curled around my upper arm. He knew me well enough to know, I perched on the precipice of punching Hackle in the mouth. I took a step to walk around him and enter the room. Hackle leaned his body to the right to block me.
“I heard things got hairy out there at the country club today.”
“Gossip is the only way you would know. With you not being invited and all.”
His eyes narrowed, but my next attempt to move around him went unchallenged.
“We’re not holding her for anything yet,” his voice trailed behind us. “That’ll change when we find something.”
I wanted to snap back, but with my adrenaline on the decline, my wit failed me. Once inside, the sight of Ace pushed all concerns about the owner of the blood found on her to the back burner. An ashen parlor took the place of her vibrant rich sienna complexion. The braids were gone from her hair, replaced by the tangled, black mass of hair that consisted of her natural curls. Under the hospital gown, I noticed the gleam of the chain in the florescent lights that belonged to the gold pendant with five phases of the moon embedded in it. Since the day we met, I’ve never seen her without it on.
When I reached under and pulled the pendant out to rest on top of the gown, her skin felt exceptionally warm.
“Ace?” I whispered her name and touched her forehead.
She grumbled. Behind her closed lids, her eyes moved, but never opened.
“Sweetheart, can you hear me?”
Will moved to the other side of the bed, raising her eyelids to examine her pupils. With the intention of taking her hand, I pulled down the blanket from where they tucked it under her chin.
“What the hell?”
Thick metal restraints encased her wrists. Pulling the blanket back further and completely off revealed the same type of shackles on her ankles.
“Will, help me get these off of her.”
We each went to work, unbuckling the metal clamps imprisoning her arms.
“What are you doing?” I paused and turned as a stout middle-aged man, dressed in a white coat entered the room. “It’s against policy for you to remove those.”
“And yet...” I snapped and resumed freeing Ace. “What kind of policy chains a woman to a bed?”
“That woman broke a nurse’s nose and nearly gave another a concussion. She was out of control. We had to sedate and restrain her.”
“What sedative did you give her?” Will asked.
I moved to the ankle restraints while Will rested his fingers on the inside of her left wrist. He raised his other hand and studied his watch.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
“She has a fever, and her pulse is sluggish.”
“Her temperature is within range,” the man I assumed to be a doctor informed. “We administered diazatine within the recommended dosage.”
My concern rebounded when horror mixed with surprise widened Will’s eyes. “Patients don’t typically lose consciousness on diazatine. She should be groggy, but lucid.”
“We had to administer a higher dose for her, then the standard for humans.”
“What’s diazatine?” I asked.
“It’s a sedative,” informed Will. “I’ve only ever heard it used in the psyche ward, to calm agitated patients.”
Will placed his hand on her forehead, frowned, and peeled back her left eyelid again.
“May I see your light, doctor?”
The stranger approached and extended a slim penlight to Will, while his eyes remained fastened onto Ace. When my friend took the light, the man moved back. His eyes left her long enough to glare at me when I freed her completely.
“Exactly how much did you give her?”
After a moment of hesitation he answered, “15cc.”
“She shouldn’t be this out of it. Even with that high a dosage.”
“We mixed it with aconitum.”
I returned to the head of the bed and smoothed my right hand over Ace’s forehead. Even with her tendency to run on the warmer side, a fever heated her flesh. I tried to keep the panic at bay, but my fingers took up trembling once again. She barely stirred.
“You gave her aconitum?” Will snapped.
“Of course. It’s standard procedure when administering medication to werewolves, to add an aconitum cocktail.” The unnamed doctor’s tone changed to one of indignation at being questioned.
“How much aconitum?”
“8cc.”
Will froze and glared at the doctor. “What?”
“I told you. She was out of control.”
“What’s aconitum?”
I directed the question to Will, but it was the other doctor who answered, “Wolfsbane.”
“Is that bad?”
A beat passed with Will giving me a questioning look before he answered. “It makes werewolves’ more susceptible to, well, just about everything. It’s like their kryptonite. It makes them less resilient. If the dosage is high enough, it can kill.”
The fuck! It did what? And more importantly, why had Ace never told me about the weakness wolfsbane created? Did Will know because he was a doctor, or had Dorian told him? I added that to the list of Never Have We Ever talked about.
“The dosage we gave her was well within range.”
The doctor’s words resurged my anger. I clenched my fingers into a fist. It did nothing to abate the shaking, but it kept me from curling my fingers around the man’s neck.
“You gave her aconitum mixed with a powerful anesthetic. You didn’t just sedate her, you tranquilized her.” Will snapped the words out in a crisp voice.
He shone the light in one eye, then the other.
“She’ll be all right.” I asked. “Right?”
“Her pupils show signs of lethargy and her pulse is sluggish, but I don’t believe she’s in any real danger. If the medication were going to induce a coma, it would have done so by now. The drug just needs to work out of her system.”
“We are flushing her with fluids,” the doctor commented and pointed to the IV. “And while she is not in any real danger, I cannot say the same for my staff.”
“You sure you’re not flushing her system to remove traces of the drug you and your staff recklessly used?” Will questioned.
“I stand by my diagnosis.”
“Can we move her?” I asked Will.
“I advise against it,” Dr. Death baulked. “She should remain here overnight.”
“I am not leaving her here,” I said. Anxiety almost transformed my words into a roar.
“She needs to be monitored,” Will said.
“I’ll take her to Gisselle’s.”
The doctor reclaimed his penlight from Will and shoved his hands into his pockets. “I don’t feel comfortable signing off on her release.” He protested. “She’s not stable and—”
“—Sounds like you and your staff are the reason for her instability.” I pointed out.
“She was quite unstable prior to her arriving here. Once she regains consciousness, we need to assess her mental state. If you insist on taking her, I will put her on a forty-eight-hour psych hold.”
Will parted his lips, but I held up a hand to stay his words and turned my body, so I faced the other doctor.
“Here’s my counteroffer. You do that, and first thing Monday morning I’ll have a conversation with my boss, the district attorney of Chicago. I’ll tell her to contact her friend, Greta Hamilton, the Attorney General of Illinois. I’ll relay to them what I witnessed firsthand, and express my suspicions of St. Mary’s practice to over medicate supernatural beings. That along with Dr. Li’s deposition, will be enough to secure a warrant to go through every supernatural admission. Maybe they’ll find other inconsistencies, maybe they won’t, but I can guarantee I will make sure that you, personally, come under scrutiny.”
“You wouldn’t dare.”
“I hope your malpractice insurance is up to date.” I concluded and rested my fingers on my hips.
The doctor swallowed. His eyes darted to Will, maybe hoping for some sort of medical solidarity from the other doctor in the room. Finding none, he returned his attention back to me.
“If- if you insist on having her released, you will need to sign a waiver.”
“Why don’t we go get the paperwork,” Will offered before I could respond. “I’ll sign off on the waiver for her discharge.”
I waited for the click of the door closing before I turned my attention back to Ace. With the threat removed, exhaustion and fear flooded my muscles and mind. I collapsed into the chair by the bed, slipped my hand into hers, and squeezed. Her helplessness terrified me almost as much as the possibility of what she may have done earlier in the evening. Did the blood belong to an animal she hunted, killed, and consumed as Hackle suggested? Did she hurt someone? Kill someone? Eat someone?
