The Invisible.

(8) Tear Me To Pieces

"But love don't exist when you live like this ,

That Much I know."

My heart stopped when his eyes closed. My chest tightened, stars burst behind my eyes, and I couldn't breathe or hear my heartbeat anymore.

"Artemis.." James called softly. I didn't even notice he was here...he sounded far away. "Love.." Why was he so far away?

Suddenly there was a searing pain in my shoulder, bad enough to make me cry out. Air flooded my lungs as I gasped, clamping a hand over the tender skin. I could feel tiny craters in my skin - teeth marks.

"Sorry, Love." James said, pulling off his jacket and zipping me into it. "You were fainting."

"You...bit me?"

"Yeah." He sighed, helping me to my feet. "Can you walk?"

"Why wouldn't I be able to- " Suddenly the floor rushed up to meet me very quickly.  He caught me just before I hit the ground.

"Shock. Here, keep your hands on my shoulders. Tight."

I nodded, digging my fingernails into the tough fabric of his shirt. He leaned down and lifted Shayne's mangled body into his arms, muscles rippling with effort. Shane was at least a hundred and fifty pounds, and I was one hundred and twenty. I admired his strength; he walked us both to the garage door in about half a minute.

You couldn't even tell that it was a garage anymore - Kendall had completely transformed it into the set of Grey's Anatomy. Antwan and Karma were nowhere to be seen. "Kendall!"

Kendall was a good-looking guy in his early thirties, (a lot older than us, but you couldn't tell unless you asked) your typical blond haired - blue eyed hottie. He sometimes had a bad attitude, so of course I nicknamed him Bones. He was just as rich as us, too, being a dirty doctor and all. People like us were injured almost all the time, and he was the person you called if you wanted to live. Other doctors were good, but Kendall was the Bruce Lee of the game. He was pricey, but people were willing to pay. He'd never lost any of his patients, and about nintey-nine point nine percent of them were more than halfway over the threshold of death's door. 

He took his bag off of the makeshift table, turned around and waved us forward. "I got this. Where's the wound?"

James laid Shayne out on the table and took a step back. "I don't know. There was blood everywhere.."

"His neck..close to the collarbone. " I said, my voice barely above a whisper. "But he's...he's dead." I let out another coarse sob, and James pulled me into his side.

Kendall pressed two fingers to Shayne's chest, then sighed. "He's not with the angels yet, darlin', but he's almost there. " He reached into one of his jacket pockets, pulled out a pair of scissors, and deftly cut open his shirt. "Dear God! Broken collarbone.."

For the second time today, I was almost sick. The part of Shayne's body where his collarbone was supposed to be wasn't normal at all. I guess it had been broken in several places, and his skin rose up into jagged points where the bones pushed up against the skin. James clapped the hand that wasn't around my waist over his mouth.

"Darlin', was his breastbone ever removed?" Kendall hooked two different bags of something onto an IV rack, then stuck a needle into Shayne's arm. 

"No."

He placed a breathing mask over Shayne's face, then tipped something into the tank that he was breathing from. Anesthesia, probably. "He special to you?" 

"Y-yeah. He's my best friend." I took a shaky breath as my hopes began to rise. "Will he live? I thought he was...dead."

He reached into his pocket again, pulled out a vial, unscrewed the top, put it to his nose and sniffed hard. Cocaine.  I'd seen him do this before - it meant that he'd be working through the night and far into the morning. "He's not dead, and I'm gonna keep it that way. I'll take care of him for you, and when he's stable I'll move him into the house, and you'll be the first to see him, darlin'. Now get out." He grinned, handed James a tiny  brown bag and looked at me pointedly. "I've got this. Close the garage door behind you."  

~;~

~;~

As we crossed the lawn to get back into the house, I threw back my head and let out a wild scream of relief.

~;~

~;~

"Coke, Valium... There's enough ambien in here to knock out a wooly mammoth." Antwan said, setting the bag on the dining room table. "Oh, he's good. He knew you were gonna be half out of your mind, Artemis."

Didn't know we did drugs, huh?

After Tatiana had been taken care of (We'd put her in a room with two tylenol and a glass of water for her head) everyone decided to take half a valium and start cleaning up. Karma had already cleaned up the gore, and dissolved the bodies in an acid bath. Antwan sent some of Shayne's goons to go and replace whatever had been broken or ruined from the gunfire, and the rest were to make new living arrangements for Shayne and Tatiana. He was on the phone, trying to pull some strings and get the shootout off the news.James was upstairs making up the spare rooms that we were gonna stay in until Shayne recovered.

Me?

I was over the moon, high as a kite, and starting a bonfire to burn all the ruined furniture in the house. Karma was watching me, making sure that I didn't fall face-first into the flames.

"And...and she said it was my fault that Pasha's down there all fucked up. I love him, I swear I do, but I don't know what the fuck he was thinking when he brought her here. Cheap bitch." I slurred, feeding the fire with a bloodstained tablecloth.

Karma grinned. "I heard you pistol whipped her."

"I did. She was trying to strangle me!" I threw the last of the scraps into the flames. "Was that it?"

"Yeah, that was it. It'll burn out in a few minutes. Come on inside."

When we got inside, I could hear muffled shouting.

"Where is she?! Tell me now, before I blow out your brains!"

We both stopped in the doorway of the dining room : Tatiana (who'd apparently woken up) had taken a handheld and pressed the muzzle against Antwan's head. They standing with their backs to us, but James was facing forward. His eyes caught mine, and I pressed a finger to my lips.

Years of creeping around in secrecy had given me a velvet footstep. I kept this in mind as I walked across the mahogany floor with a gun and complete confidence that I wouldn't make a sound.

★★ ★★ ★★ ★★ ★★
Soooo,

Shayne's alive. (April Fools for everyone who thought that he was dead!)  I know...I'm cruel.

I Left you with a cliffy!

Ha, love you badasses!

-Nikki