Pure Blood_ A Nocturne City Novel - Caitlin Kittredge [88]
He came running over, catching the door before it could close and bending toward me. A red silk tie dangled in my face. “Are you okay, miss? I’m Marty, from corporate accounting. Do you work here?”
I tried to talk. My tongue was sticky and coated with blood, and it was a few tries before I managed, “Help me up?”
Marty and I struggled to our feet and he regarded me like I was the climax of a horror movie. “Geez. This is just awful. Do you want to stay here while I call the police?”
“No police,” I muttered, bracing myself on the wall.
“Look, if you’re worried about pressing charges or filing a suit…” Marty started. Hah. Good one. If anything, Seamus O’Halloran would be suing my ass for trespassing when this got out. That would be my luck.
“Just let me leave,” I told Marty. The words hurt. My jaw was throbbing and I had that sharp sprinter’s pain that told me some ribs were broken.
He stepped aside, helpless in his thousand-dollar suit and handmade tie, and let me stagger out of the washroom and into a hallway where I saw an EXIT sign glowing like Promethean fire. Centuries and a thousand gray stairwells later, I exited a side door and almost walked into the traffic on Yager Way.
“Thank the bright lady,” I muttered. Now I could collapse on the sidewalk and wait for a beat cop to find me. They’d call Mac, and I could explain, and someone would go after Seamus O’Halloran.
I didn’t like the feeling of having lost, not at all, but there was precious little I could do in this state except sit on a pile of recycled newspapers and tally up the number of my body parts that hurt.
“Luna?”
My head snapped up. Joshua. No, couldn’t be. Who was I kidding, of course it could. Well, this time I would kill him. I decided then and there that if I saw Joshua again I was going to rid the world of his carcass and call it finished.
Someone grabbed my shoulders and I lashed out. “Seven hells!” Dmitri shouted, catching my wrists. “Luna! Calm down!”
I stared into Dmitri’s face and couldn’t help it. Tears started, making bloody rivulets down my ruined face. A thin pale line formed around Dmitri’s mouth when he got a good look at me.
“Hex me. Who did this to you?”
“How—how are you here?” I asked stupidly. Dmitri checked my pupils and touched a spot on my cheek that stung.
“You called me. Well, my phone rang with your number and I heard someone talking about the O’Halloran Tower, and then a bunch of noise. Figured I’d better haul ass. Are you all right?”
“No,” I said, pleased to have a question I could answer with one word. And Dmitri had been the last person I’d called the night before. One of the buttons I’d punched on my phone must have been send. “No, I’m as far from all fucking right as one can get. And I think I might get sick…”
“Might” became a moot point as I bent double and vomited into the gutter. Dmitri steadied me and held my hair out of the way. “Shit. You need a hospital.”
“No. No hospital,” I said vehemently. Seamus could easily track me there, and I’d have nowhere to go.
To Dmitri’s credit, he just nodded in that unflappable way of his and looped one of my arms over his shoulder, taking baby steps while half dragging me. “Bike’s this way. I parked it. Wasn’t sure if I’d have to go in after you.”
“I don’t think Irina would like that,” I grumbled. Anything I said now would be put down to pain-induced rambling, and I was going to make the most of it. “Fake bitch. Bleaches her hair.”
“You make it real difficult for people to help you sometimes,” Dmitri said. “And Irina’s not like that. She’s a good girl.”
“I hate her,” I muttered. “Her and her big fake chest. Smuggling water balloons … do people believe they’re real? And her teeth…”
“How about we just not talk?” said Dmitri. “Save your strength and all that.”
“You know what I hate more?” I slurred. “I hate that she gets to touch you and be with you when