It was something that made my stomach churn, that made my heart shoot upward. It was something that made a tingling, helpless sensation grip my system.
Fear.
This was what the humans talked of when they spoke of fear.
"What happened to her?" Drex asked, trying to brush the hair out of her face, cringing when he found her familiar features were unrecognizable. She was a swollen bruise.
"I don't know," I said, pulling off my coat, trying to cover her with it. "But we have to get her out of here."
"We have to get her a doctor," Aram insisted as he carefully bent down, scooped her, and pulled her to his chest.
"She'll heal," I reminded him. Because that was what we did. We healed. And usually pretty quickly.
I was trying to convince myself that she was so damaged from her trip, that coming through the Earth's core like that had roughed her up. Even as my logical side tried to remind me that Bael and Daemon had come from hell relatively unscathed, that all of us had once.
"We're going to have to gag her," Drex said as we made our way back out of the depths of the canyon, getting closer toward the area the humans were allowed to frequent. And despite it being the middle of winter and humans having no real natural defense against the cold, the idiots still went out and camped and shit no matter the weather.
Drex was right.
We had to gag Red.
Because despite being out, despite likely starting to heal, the screams were as ear-splitting as ever no matter how far we walked.
"Here," Bael said, ripping off a piece of his shirt, shoving it in her mouth.
"Lenore, give her your cloak," I demanded, getting a raised brow from Ly.
"We need to cover her completely or the humans are going to call the police. We all know that Red can't end up in a human hospital."
"It's fine," Lenore insisted, pulling off the antiquated garment I'd told her at least a dozen times made her stand out in human society—and not in a good way. She insisted it was something that reminded her of her upbringing, that she didn't care if it made her stand out.
Eventually, we made our way back to the SUV we'd rented to take this trip, none of us wanting to be on our bikes in the freezing cold if we could help it.
"What?" Aram asked, still holding Red on his lap in the car.
"I don't understand. She's not healing," I said, watching one small cut I'd been keeping an eye on for the whole drive back to our rental house. It was hardly more than a scratch. It should have healed in moments. But we were an hour into our drive and it was still bleeding and open.
"If you don't know, that's not good, right?" Daemon asked from the row behind us, looking over my shoulder. "You're the resident brain and all that."
He wasn't wrong.
And I had no answers.
"Maybe they just need to get cleaned out," Aram suggested. "Can't Lenore do some of her magical first aid on her?"
The only problem was, when we got back to the house and put Red down for Lenore to fuss over, not only did nothing she knew how to do work, but Red fought her every inch of the way. With fingernails, with teeth, with her fists and feet. Even with several of us holding her down, we could barely keep her still.
"I don't know what else to do," Lenore said later that night, so covered in blood that it looked like she'd been in one of those horror movies the humans loved so much. "I'm no healer," she added. "I only ever handled minor injuries in my coven. I... I don't know how to help her."
But someone needed to.
No, we couldn't die.
We could suffer, though.
And, clearly, Red was hurting.
She still needed to be kept gagged in case anyone within earshot could overhear her. Even with something muffling the sound, her screams were unrelenting.
I gave Lenore a nod, dismissing her, as I moved into the bedroom where Red was on the bed, a blanket draped over her damaged body.
"You gotta get someone," Drex said, moving in beside me. "You know what happens when someone is hurting for too long."
I did.
Because I'd done it to people over and over in the past.
Pain could drive someone insane a lot more quickly and easily than most would realize.
Drex was right.
This could go bad—worse—fast if we didn't help heal her.
"Alright. You get some drugs to get in her," I suggested. "I will find a doctor that can do something."
"How are you going to do that?" Drex asked, following me out of the room. "We're not like humans. They are going to realize. And then there will be questions."
"You let me handle that," I suggested, grabbing a coat that wasn't drenched in blood, and making my way out toward the car.
I didn't have a great plan. Which was unusual for me. Planning was what I did best. But there had been no way to prepare for this.
All I knew was Red needed someone to heal her.
And that I had to get that for her.
The consequences of it could be dealt with later. In a very final sort of way.
I rummaged in the SUV's trunk to find the couple of supplies I needed, shit normal people never kept around, but we always made sure we kept a supply of.
You never knew when you were going to need some handcuffs.
Or a gag.
Or even a suitcase big enough to stuff a body inside.
We'd learned that all the hard way over the years. So we were never unprepared if we didn't need to be.
And I needed to be prepared for this.
You didn't just go and snatch a human being off the streets without the right supplies.
At least not anymore.
Not with their alarm systems and large populations of do-gooders who wanted to step in and save someone in need.
I had no plan on who to take.
I watched two men in scrubs walk out first. Together. And each of them much harder targets.
It was an ugly but unavoidable fact that human women were just easier targets. Smaller, lighter, usually not as strong.
Then, like she was the one I'd been waiting for all along, a lone woman moved out the doors of the hospital, her hand raised, toying with the ends of her almost white-blonde hair, her brows drawn together, her lips pursed.
Beautiful.
There wasn't really any other way to describe her. Short, slight, with a pretty face with a sharp jaw, high cheekbones, and a lightly cleft chin, she practically looked half-fae under the harsh overhead lights in the parking lot.
She was lost in her own thoughts as she made her way down the lines of cars, making her way toward me, in fact.
Like fate.
If I believed in that bullshit.
You'd likely think I should have felt bad about my intentions.
Planning on snatching an innocent woman right off the street, taking her back to the house, using her to heal Red, then disposing of her because we couldn't exactly leave witnesses around who knew who we were, that we not only existed, but were part of their world.
That could never stand.
When we eventually all got back to hell, it would be the end of us.
We might not be able to die, but we could be made to suffer for all of eternity for that kind of fuck-up.
I had no intentions of having that be my future.
I didn't feel bad.
I had to heal Red.
Even if that meant sacrificing this human.