Unhappily Ever After

Chapter 70 - Unlikely Allies

"Lee's not with you," Tom said. "Did they take him, too?"

I looked up at him and couldn't find the energy to be tactful about it. "Lee's dead."

He stopped breathing. It did take him a minute to absorb that, because Lee had been a good friend of his. A foster brother, almost. When he did finally speak, his voice was low and rough. "Humans or flockies?"

"Both."

"We'll make them pay for that," Tom said, running a hand through his hair. "And your sister?"

I closed my eyes for a moment. It should have hurt, and I almost wished it did, but the shock had bitten deep by then. Nothing felt real — not Eira, not Lee, not any of it. "Also dead."

Maggie didn't even look up, but I saw the frown on her lips. Beside her, Tom blew out hard and shook his head. "I'm sorry, Rhodric."

I acknowledged him with a distracted nod, and then my attention wandered back to the needle and thread in my skin. The doctor was in the process of fixing the mess Dad had made of my leg. By the time I'd got to the castle, I'd been too dizzy even to walk inside, so the surgery was taking place on the grass outside. My back was resting against the car tyre.

"Are you done yet?" I asked her shortly.

Hailey dropped the needle and stared at me incredulously. "Am I done yet? Your femoral artery is shredded. I'm not even sure how you're still breathing. This is going to take another twenty minutes at the very least, so I suggest you get comfortable."

For Goddess' sake. It was one stab wound. Artery or not, my healing should have done its work by now. It was hard to sit still. There were so many thoughts in my head at once that it was difficult to separate them, but I had the gist.

There was a voice that reminded me it could already be too late. There was another voice that reminded me that it might not be too late, but I was going to do the wrong thing or move too slowly and time would run out. And last but by no means least, there was the background noise of what if, what if, what if.

Because I didn't know. I didn't know where they were. I didn't know what the hell Scott wanted from them. I didn't know the extent of his psychopathy. I didn't even know if they were still alive. And that was the hardest part of all — the not knowing, those horrible gaping holes which my imagination was only too happy to fill.

"Just tie off the artery," I told the doctor. "Don't bother with the rest. I've got shit to do."

"There's plenty you can do from here," Doctor Hailey retorted. "What's the point in having hundreds of rogues if you can't boss them around?"

Fair enough. They would probably do what I told them, but only to a point. Searching the forest was one thing. Picking a fight with gunmen was another. They had no reason on earth to die for my family, and I wouldn't ask them to.

Besides, I needed Eira. Not some random raiders whose talents didn't stretch far beyond running fast and killing flockies. Someone needed to go to the police and force them to run a search on vehicles near Silver Lake this morning. It had to be a tapper, and as of this morning I was the only tapper left at Lle o Dristwch.

I considered Gwen, but only for a heartbeat. Firstly, she wouldn't risk leaving the island for that long. And secondly, if I called her, I would have to explain why I couldn't just send Eira. And that was not a conversation I was ready to have.

No. It would have to wait.

"Where's Mort?" I asked Tom.

He could only shrug at me. "On his way."