Page 63 of Salt Kiss
I’ve come in on the second floor, thinking I’d want the better sight lines, and I don’t give myself time to reconsider. I tear to the railing as fast as I can, grab it, and swing myself to hang from my hands on the other side. I drop the single story to the dance floor, which is sprung wood and absorbs a decent amount of the shock, although my knees and ankles still yip at me as I start moving again.
Gunshots tear into the balcony where I was just hanging, and they haunt my steps like vengeful ghosts. I can’t risk leading the shooter’s aim to Mark, and so I take a sharp right, following my intuition to the bar, where I see my attacker. He jerks back and I’m running at him at full-tilt, my own gun up, firing enough to make him duck, second-guess.
I’m tackling him, I’m on top of him, and then I squeeze my trigger and he’s dead.
I don’t spend a second more there, already stealing his gun and shoving to my feet to run to Mark. I turn just in time to see the flash of his attacker’s knife in the club’s dizzying lights, just in time to see Mark miss the chance to block it and then stupidly, incomprehensibly, step forwardintothe attacker’s range.
I turn just in time to see Mark get stabbed in the chest.
Twenty-One
I roar,primal fury and fear gripping hold of me, more than I’ve ever felt it before, even with McKenzie, even with Sims, and I’m running and shooting my last bullet and the assailant falls dead. I toss my gun aside, lifting the other one as I run to Mark, shooting at someone in the corner who’s now started paying attention to me.
He drops just as Roz and Isaac bust through the doors upstairs, just as Goran appears at the railing on the third floor with his pistol out and his aim steady. The air is all pops and snaps over the dreamy synth music still playing on repeat. I ignore it all, falling to my knees next to Mark and making a shield of my body the best that I can.
“Sir,” I say, my hand on his arm. He’s on his side, facing away from me, and I roll him onto his back, expecting vacant eyes or a blood-slicked mouth.
“Fuck off,” I hear as I roll him over.
He is white-faced and shaking and very, very much not dead.
The knife I thought had gone into his chest is actually closer to his shoulder, which is good, but it’s buried to the hilt.
Which is less good.
Blood is everywhere, his black tux is drenched in it. It’s all over my hands now, and I have to blink away the memory of my hands against Sims’s slippery neck.
“When you’re done panicking, a little help would be nice,” Mark bites off in a voice that could flay the skin right off a person’s body. And that’s when I know for sure that he’s not dying.
He’s something worse.
He’s furious.
Two hours later,and I’m in Mark’s bedroom with Mark, Sedge, and a small, trim man with light olive skin and a dark beard. The man—Dr. Sutcliff—is currently stripping off his gloves and walking over to the trash can. A shirtless Mark watches him from where he’s propped up in bed, his shoulder now stitched and bandaged, his hair tousled and hanging over his forehead.
“You’ll need to rest for at least four days,” the doctor says. “IV antibiotics the whole time. After that, we can move to oral antibiotics and talk about what you can and can’t do. Hint: the last list will be very long.”
“Are you still sure we shouldn’t go to the hospital?” I ask from my post at the foot of Mark’s bed. The knife was buriedso deep. And Dr. Sutcliff sutured it all on Mark’sdining room table, with only a chandelier and a headlamp for light.
Mark bore the whole thing silently, mouth wrenched shut, every muscle etched in rigid pain. The only noise he made was a closed-mouth groan when the doctor sanitized the wound.
“The hospital?” Dr. Sutcliff asks. His expression is dubious as his gaze swings back to Mark.
“He was a prom king,” Mark says to the doctor in tones of apology. “And he was in the army.”
“Ah,” the doctor says and starts gathering up his things. “Well, he’ll get used to your way of doing things quick enough.”
“As opposed to doing things with, like, scans and operating rooms?” I ask. Dr. Sutcliff is just as competent and skilled as any trauma medic I’ve ever seen in Carpathia—but I’m exhausted and I’m terrified. I keep seeing that knife sticking out of Mark’s shoulder, keep feeling his soaked tuxedo jacket ooze blood like a pressed sponge as I held him.
Dr. Sutcliff finishes packing his bag. “I’d love to take him to the hospital, prom king. Do you think he’d let me?”
I look back to Mark, who somehow looks more dangerous bandaged and propped in a bed than most hardened soldiers I’ve seen in my time. “Mr. Trevena—” I start.
“No,” Mark interrupts. “No hospitals. I’ve already been stabbed. I don’t have the energy to worry about some nurse with too much student loan debt willing to let someone into my room to finish the job for a fee.”
“Despite everything, it will be safer here,” Sedge points out. “We can ensure more security and more surveillance than a hospital can provide.”
I guess I see the logic in it...but what if Dr. Sutcliff missed something? What if I wake up tomorrow and Mark is in horrible pain or his wound is infected or he’s dead—
