Pure Blood_ A Nocturne City Novel - Caitlin Kittredge [87]
It didn’t come. He was talking on a phone I couldn’t see. “Yes, it’s Joshua Mackleroy in the O’Halloran Tower. Yes, the security office. Could you send over a change of clothes? I’ve had an accident.” He slammed the receiver down and cursed again.
I rolled so my body covered the cell phone. Everything was still either in agony or nothing at all. I felt like a log, but I had broken through Seamus’s working. I remembered how hard it had been to force Benny Joubert to kill himself. Seamus’s magick wasn’t perfect yet.
“Un-fucking-believable,” Joshua said to me. “Half an hour for a freaking dress shirt. Guess that means we’ve got more quality time together, eh, Luna?” He crouched down and lifted one of my eyelids, checking the pupils with concern. “Don’t go into shock, woman. I’d be disappointed if that’s all it took. You haven’t even seen half of what I can do.”
He’d had a big mouth when I’d first met him, and it hadn’t changed. Normally, someone rail-skinny and cocky like Joshua wouldn’t even register as a challenge to me. I could subdue suspects twice my weight even when it wasn’t close to a full moon. But I was bespelled, grievously injured, and trapped.
So as Joshua reached out to feel my pulse, I did what any self-respecting girly-girl would do and poked him, right in the eye.
Joshua howled and went back on his butt, clapping a hand to his face. “You bitch! You fucking blinded me!”
Get up, I commanded myself in a dead voice, knowing that if I didn’t move now the Coast Guard would be fishing me out of Siren Bay. My legs screamed, stiff and heavy, as I stumbled like a drunken prom queen across the room. Joshua grabbed for me and I went down, clutching the edge of a plain steel table. I levered myself to my knees and saw a neat row of walkie-talkies in chargers on the table, as well as three stun guns plugged into outlets, green indicator lights winking merrily.
Groaning, Joshua got to his feet and came for me. I snatched up the closest stun gun and depressed the firing button, lashing out blindly as Joshua’s hand closed on the back of my neck. There was a zap, and a fizzle of smoke, and the room filled with the scent of burning hair. Joshua screamed, a high animal sound of pain, and crumpled in a ball, unconscious. The stun gun gave off a last spark and fizzled out.
I hauled myself up, using the table and then the wall. Joshua lay on his side, the zipper on his suit pants fused into one strip of silver from the shock. I’d nailed him right in the balls, and that was as it should be.
“Fucker,” I muttered thickly, too feeble to offer a kick to go with the epithet. I knew I should check and see if he was dead, but right at that moment, with my face bleeding and my ribs spasming every time I took a breath, I not only did not care if Joshua was shuffled from the mortal coil, but I would have helped him along by shoving him in front of an express bus.
A door stood to my left, steel-reinforced. I stumbled over and jiggled the handle. Locked. A keypad glowed at my hand and I cursed, which came out as a grunt. Needed the code. I cast a glance back at Joshua. He wasn’t moving, but who knew how long that would last? I couldn’t be here when he woke up.
Seamus had dragged me into a hidden elevator to get me into the room—I just had to find the panel to call it. My vision was still somewhere in the region of Piss Drunk, blurry and vertiginous. I ran my hands over the wall, cheek pressed against the cool plaster, until my fingers brushed a button. Not really caring if was an alarm or to call the elevator, I pressed it and let my aching body sag.
After a few seconds the elevator door slid open. I scooped up my badge and gun and phone and half fell through the sliding door. The crap would certainly hit an industrial-sized fan if someone found those in here with Joshua’s zapped body.
Inside the elevator I hit the down button and went to the floor, my legs finally saying “Enough