As the man charged toward him, with no time to do anything more than simply react, Alex thrust the knife straight into the man’s center mass.
It didn’t stop him. The big man crashed into him at full speed, knocking Alex back.
As Alex rebounded off the side of the truck, the man swung his own knife. Alex ducked, seized the arm, and took it with him as he circled around the orderly. Once behind him he rammed his blade into the man’s lower back several times in rapid succession. He didn’t hit anything immediately vital, and his stabbing only made the man angrier.
The man twisted around, driving Alex back with his feet as well as his fists. More than one connected, staggering Alex back. The man was a fury of nonstop lunges and slashes. With the drugs, Alex had difficulty focusing.
The man was a good head taller than Alex and must have been sixty or seventy pounds heavier. Despite his size, he was quick. Not only was he hard to handle, but his size seemed to help keep the knife wounds from slowing him.
Alex made another attack. The man threw him back. As he rebounded, Alex ducked under a swing, threw a shoulder block into the man, and at the same time grabbed a leg. He pulled with all his strength, upending the orderly. The man landed flat on his back, but bounded back up as if on springs.
His arms seemed to be everywhere at once. Alex was having trouble keeping track of the furious attacks. He picked his openings and cut whenever he had the chance. One slashing cut across the man’s thigh halved the muscle, making him stumble.
Alex used the opening to dive in to try to finish the fight. He seized the man’s knife-wielding arm and stabbed again, but the man was strong enough to push him back. Alex felt like a child trying to fight a grown man.
When the man spun around, pulling out of Alex’s grip, his arms were spread in an angry fighting stance. He looked like a bear on its hind legs about to charge. Seeing the opening, Alex used all his strength to drive his knife like a punch straight into the middle of the orderly’s throat.
He felt the blade sink in and hit bone.
The furious fight seemed to freeze in place.
Then the man started to corkscrew toward the ground. As he collapsed, his weight pulled him off the blade.
Panting, catching his breath, his exhausted arms hanging, Alex tried to gather his wits. He was so drained, so bone-tired from the fight, that he was ready to drop.
Jax was suddenly there beside him, putting her arm around him, holding him up.
“Almost there,” she reminded him. “Hold on.”
He smiled at her words, words he had used to encourage her not to give up.
Alex felt like he was watching himself in a dream. He realized then, by the way Jax was bent over, that he was on his knees. He didn’t remember going to his knees.
“Stay still,” she said.
Jax turned away to the open door of the truck for a moment. She was frantically doing something. He couldn’t figure it out. It finally dawned on him that she was ripping cloth. It was the rag the knives had been in. She was tearing off a long strip.
She put the strip around his upper left arm, wrapping it tightly around several times. She used her teeth to split the end and then tied a knot. She made another knot and drew it tight.
“What are you doing?”
“He cut you. I’m tying a bandage around your arm to keep the wound closed. I need to stop the bleeding.”
Alex only then realized that blood was dripping off his fingers. He wondered how bad it was. He didn’t really feel any pain, but at feeling a warm, wet sheath of blood running down his arm he suddenly began feeling sick.
“It’s all right,” she assured him. “You’ll be fine.”
By the way her voice sounded, though, he didn’t know if he believed her.
“How bad is it?”
“It’s dark. I can’t tell,” she admitted. “But I don’t think it’s too bad. Can you move your fingers?”
Alex tried. “Yes.”
“Then you’re fine. As long as your arm still works, it can’t be too bad.”
“Thank you,” he said in a numb voice. “I don’t understand why he was trying to kill me. If I’m dead they can’t get the information they need.”
“He wasn’t trying to kill you. He was trying to capture you. If he had wanted to kill you I think he could have.”
“Well, from my side of it it sure felt like he was trying to kill me.”
She only smiled as she adjusted the bandage on his arm. Alex liked the feeling of her taking care of him. It made him feel calm, feel like everything would be all right.
She gently took the knife out of his hand. “I don’t ever let anyone use my knife. Not this one.”
Alex saw in the dim illumination of the dome light in the Jeep that it was the knife with all the elaborate engraving on the silver handle. Now it was covered in blood as well.
“It seemed rather important at the time,” Alex said. “Do you think you could make an exception to your rule this one time?”
“Well,” she said, glancing down at the dead man, “I guess that, in this case, I could.”
With a concerned, gentle look, she smoothed the hair back off his forehead. Her face warmed with the special smile she gave only him. Her hand cupping the side of his face made everything better.
“Considering who used that knife,” she said in an intimate voice, “I guess it’s all right. You’re welcome to use it anytime you’d like.”
Alex swayed on his knees. “I think I’m going to throw up.”
“Do it in that direction, will you? I need to send him back to my world.”
Alex was going to tell her not to bother, that they could just drive away and leave him. But as his mind started working again he realized what a bad idea it would be to leave a body lying in the street. With so many people around, the man would be discovered in short order. Alex could see people off in the darkness. Fortunately they didn’t see what was going on.
The dead people they had left in Mother of Roses would be burned up. There would be little evidence of what had really happened. But if they left this man’s body out on the street it would look like murder and raise a lot of questions.
By the time he had come to the conclusion that Jax was right, the man had already vanished. Her knife was shiny and clean.
Jax put a hand under his good arm to help him up. “Come on. Let’s get away from here before any of his friends show up.”
Alex was regaining his senses. He helped boost Jax up into the truck. The adrenaline of the situation seemed to have given them both a shot of strength. He didn’t know how long it would last. He ran around to the other side and hopped in.
When he turned the key in the ignition and the truck didn’t start, he wasn’t the least bit surprised. Trying the key had been nothing more than a token gesture. He had expected it not to start. That was just the way the world worked. For some reason it seemed that things tended not to work when you needed them the most.
Fortunately, he had planned for the eventuality. He’d parked on a hill, and he’d parked at the end of the block so that no one could park in front of him and block him in.
He turned the wheels away from the curb as he put in the clutch. The Cherokee started rolling, gathering speed. When it was going downhill at a good clip he let the clutch out. The engine turned over and caught. With a minimum of fuss, he had the truck running, but he was more determined than ever to get it fixed as soon as they got the chance.
Alex drove slowly down the hill through the residential neighborhood. There were no cars, but there were people wandering all over the place. Here and there a person in pajamas or a robe would walk out into the street without looking. In the darkness it was difficult to see them all. Alex kept a sharp lookout for any of the staff who might be hunting them.
When he turned right onto Sixteenth Street, traffic was moving slowly, pulling over at intervals for emergency vehicles. Fire trucks, ambulances, and police cars raced through the night toward
the hospital.
Alex stayed in the right lane, pulling to the curb and stopping for every one of them. He didn’t want to be stopped by police and have to answer any questions. At that moment, he couldn’t imagine what he would tell them about what he was doing there at that time of night. He couldn’t say he was visiting his mother, not at night.
He was too tired to think. Best to avoid the problem altogether.
When the traffic cleared, he stayed close to the speed limit of forty-five as he headed toward the interstate. The interstate would be the fastest way to put some distance between them and anyone who might be looking for them. The older part of town was quiet that late at night. He kept an eye on the rearview mirror, checking to make sure that they weren’t being followed. The road behind was empty. Most of the people out that late were interested in seeing the fire.
Alex was sure that the fire department had shut off the gas to the hospital and that had minimized the explosion. It had been bad enough, but not anything like it could have been. He hoped everyone had gotten out safely. He guessed he knew that not everyone had.
Jax was slumped in her seat, leaning against the door, her hand resting on her leg. He reached over and squeezed the hand.
“We’re safe now. If you want you can crawl in the back seat to lie down and go to sleep.”
She pulled her hair back off her face and hooked it behind an ear. “Where are we going?”
“I want to find us a motel or something, some place we can rent a room for the night. We’re near the interstate highway. It shouldn’t take long to get safely away from here before we stop. We both need rest and time to let these drugs wear off.”
“I’ll wait, then,” she said. “Before we sleep, though, I’m going to need a needle and thread.”
“What for?”
“To stitch up that gash on your arm. It needs to be closed up.”
Alex nodded, but he didn’t like the thought of having her sew on his arm, at least not without some kind of local anesthesia. He didn’t want to stop in at an emergency room, though. They would have questions. He wasn’t in the mood to think up answers to questions.
He tested his injured left arm a little. It was beginning to ache in earnest. The pain throbbed with each beat of his heart. He couldn’t hold the wheel with his left hand alone. The pressure needed to turn the wheel hurt.
He glanced in the rearview mirror to look back at the fire.
Just as he did, there was a soft thud to the air that Alex felt as a thump deep in his chest. He’d felt that thump before.
In the mirror he saw a dark smudge swirl in the air behind them in the back seat. As soon as he saw it, the indistinct, dark swirl of night changed into a vortex of vapor.
The vapor condensed into a shape.
A man in a dark leather vest and no shirt lunged at them from out of the back seat, from out of another world.
42.
THE MAN IN THE BACK SEAT threw an arm around both Jax’s and Alex’s necks at the same time, pulling them back against the seat, choking them both. His bare arms were massively muscled. Alex’s vision dimmed down to a narrow, dark tunnel. The powerful arm was cutting off his blood supply as well as his air. Out of the corner of his eye he could see Jax’s arms and legs flailing and he knew the man was hurting her even more.
Alex tried to reach the steering wheel. The way the man’s arm had him around the throat, pinning him back to the seat, Alex couldn’t pull away. Try as he might, he couldn’t reach the brake, either.
He was only able to sporadically get his fingertips on the steering wheel. The truck slowly started taking an arcing course across the road, toward oncoming traffic. As Alex brushed the wheel with his fingertips, it started back the other way, toward the right side of the road. He struggled to correct with the wheel to keep them from crashing into a light pole.
He couldn’t get a breath. He tried to twist enough to steer with his left hand and pull at the arm with his right, but the fingertips of one hand weren’t enough to steer. Alex used his knees to steady the wheel and switched to using both hands to try to pry the arm away. He reached back, trying to get ahold of fingers, but couldn’t reach them.
His lungs burned for air. He was starting to have difficulty focusing his vision. He knew that if he didn’t do something, and soon, he would lose consciousness. If that happened, it was all over—they would have him.
He could hear strangled sounds coming from Jax as she desperately struggled to breathe. Out of the corner of his eye Alex could see her face turning red. He could also see that her arms were hardly moving anymore.
The powerfully built man growled with the effort of keeping his arms clamped around them both. In the position he was in, Alex had no chance to gain the advantage.
He tried again but couldn’t reach the brake. He couldn’t reach the gas pedal, either, but since they were going down a slight grade the truck wasn’t slowing.
In his rush to get away from the hospital, he hadn’t retrieved his gun. He had figured that once they were safely away he would then get it out from under the seat. He had thought that if any of Vendis’s men tried to stop them he would have enough time to get the gun out. He hadn’t figured on a man materializing in his back seat.
He could think of nothing else but to try to reach under the seat for his gun. Try as he might, though, he couldn’t get to it. It might as well have been a mile away.
He abandoned his attempt to get the arm off his throat. He pushed back against the man behind them to force him to change his hold a little. Just as the man loosened and moved his arm a bit to improve his hold, Alex lunged forward with all his strength.
Alex managed to grab the steering wheel with both hands.
He immediately cranked the wheel to the right. They were going slow enough that the front tires stuck and the truck cut violently to the right, hitting the curb and going up over it.
Between the sudden right turn and bouncing up over the curb, the man was thrown hard to the left. He probably didn’t know anything about riding in a truck; it didn’t appear that he was prepared for such a maneuver. He had such a hold on Jax that as he was thrown to the left he took her with him, pulling her by the neck, half between and half over the seats.
As he slid across the back seat, his head slammed into the metal of the door along the bottom of the window. The blow caused his stranglehold around both of them to loosen a little. He didn’t let go, but it was enough that they both could at last get desperately needed air. He could hear Jax gasp several times.
Being pulled up out of her seat as she was, and with enough air to regain her wits, Jax was at last able to reach around and pull a knife from the small of her back. When the man had fallen over to the left, he not only pulled her back, but turned her a little, facing more toward Alex. She brought the knife around and sliced cleanly through the upper ligament of the biceps of the arm holding Alex. Their attacker cried out in pain and rage as his slack arm slipped off Alex.
Alex immediately slammed on the brakes. The man, already off balance, slid off the seat, down onto the narrow floor area. He lay sideways, stuffed into a space that was too small for him, but despite everything, his beefy arm remained locked around Jax’s neck.
Pulled over as she was on her back, between the seats, and held by the throat, she was unable to maneuver. He had pressure on her throat again, cutting off her air. Her movements slowed as she started to lose consciousness. The man was obviously intent on breaking her neck, but being on the floor with her partly on top and somewhat behind him, he was having trouble accomplishing that task. He appeared perfectly willing to simply strangle her.
As the man fought to gain his balance and get up, Alex yanked the syringe from his pocket and popped the cap off with his thumb. In one swift movement he turned and thrust the needle down into the side of the man’s bull neck. He pushed the plunger home.
The man kicked and bellowed in rage, struggling to get up. Alex stabbed the gas and slammed on the brakes, jerk
ing the truck to keep him off balance. With his injured arm, he still managed to grab Alex’s hair in his fist. Alex could tell that he was slowing from the drugs, his movements becoming less coordinated.
Still, Jax was in desperate trouble. She, too, was hardly moving as she lost consciousness.
Alex stripped the silver knife out of her hand. He pulled away from the fist holding his hair, turned, and leaned over the back of his seat to stab down at the man. As the man came up from the floor he met Alex’s blade on its way down. Alex added all his strength to thrusting the knife through the side of the man’s throat.
By the sudden spurts of blood, Alex knew that he’d hit an artery—the same one he’d managed to hit with the syringe. By the sounds of the man’s breathing, he knew that he’d also hit the windpipe. The heavy volume of blood pumping from the severed artery flowed down into the deep gash and into his lungs as he gasped for air. The man started drowning in his own blood.
In the grip of the drugs and the throes of death, he finally let go of Jax. She gulped in air. Even as she was gasping and regaining consciousness, she took the knife back from Alex. As the man’s arm flailed weakly about, his hand trying to grab her, she stabbed it. He reflexively, slowly, pulled the hand back and pressed it against the gaping wound in the side of his neck and throat. It appeared he was trying to stop the bleeding.
Alex was sickened by the messy act of killing a human being. It was a difficult, gruesome task.
As the man’s struggles slowed, Jax began cutting symbols in his forehead. She wasn’t waiting until he was dead. He managed to get out a gurgling curse as she gouged the lines of the design into his flesh.
Alex turned his attention to getting the car off the grass and back on the road before anyone came to see what was happening. With all the police cars in the area that was all too real a risk.
He didn’t see what Jax did, but the burbling curses died out in muffled grunts.
In mid-grunt, it suddenly went silent inside the Jeep. A glance back between the seats confirmed what he thought: The man was gone, along with all the blood.