Hudson motioned, and I did what he wanted, taking her outside so there’d be more room to work, and so if he died she wouldn’t have to see it happen. Please, God, let me have saved them in time.
Of course, outside had other problems. The zombie I’d shot was shrieking. She seemed upset at the huge gaping hole in her side. There wasn’t much blood, so her shattered ribs were very white in the dark, and her lungs were still moving in her exposed chest.
Connie yelled, “Estrella!”
I turned her away from the two team guys trying to figure out what to do for a wound that big that really wasn’t bleeding much, and a victim with a hole in her that should have been fatal, or at least made struggling and screaming not possible. They’d hunted enough vampires with me that they knew she wasn’t human now, but she still seemed like an attractive young woman who just wasn’t quite human. If she’d been a vampire they’d have done first aid, so they were trying.
Turning Connie away from the zombie meant she could see Max where he lay bleeding out on the grass with Hill and Montague standing over him. Connie ran at him, yelling profanities that I was betting Rosita didn’t know she knew. I couldn’t blame Connie, but I caught her arm anyway and tried to turn her away. She fought me the way she’d fought the men in the crypt, and for someone without training she was pretty good. Maybe I’d give her some self-defense pointers after we all survived the night. I finally picked her up around the waist, having to bow my back a little, because she was inches taller than me.
She was screaming wordlessly, in between threatening to kill Max, and she was seriously trying to get away and get to him. I wasn’t a hundred percent sure she wouldn’t try to kill him when she got there, so I held on. It would be a bitch to save her life and have her spend the rest of it in prison for being the one that struck the final blow on Max’s ass. At least she didn’t kick.
The ambulance came down the gravel road in full lights and sirens. The paramedics spilled out and started to go for Max, but the guys waved them off and pointed to the crypt. I thought the paramedics might argue, but in the end they went in to see what SWAT wanted them to triage first. It actually wasn’t a good sign that they brought Tomas out first on the gurney, with all the damage visible on the grass out front. It meant he was hurt enough that they chose him over Max, who was lying in a pool of blood almost bigger than his body, and a “woman” whose side was blown open.
I put Connie down and let her run to Tomas. They didn’t argue with her getting in the ambulance with the one paramedic and the stretcher, though there’d be precious little room for her in the back. I was left to call Manny and tell him what hospital they were headed to, and then the ambulance was off in a spill of gravel, lights decorating the night, sirens leaving the night quieter than it actually was just by getting farther away.
Manny thanked me, and it was all I could do not to say, don’t thank me yet, thank me after your son wakes up, but I knew better than that. I took his gratitude and turned back to the two problems lying on the grass among the graves—Max and the zombie. Connie had said her name was Estrella. It was Spanish for star. Jesus.
She was still screaming, and I guess I couldn’t blame her. We’d need to find the jar, or whatever had been used to hold her soul, but if it was in her body now, would destroying the bottle free her soul? Would she end up like Warrington, put back in the ground, but alive and aware down there? I didn’t know. I just didn’t know enough about what he’d done to her, but I knew how to find out.
I walked toward Max where he lay in a dark pool of his own blood. If he could still talk, he’d tell me everything I wanted to know, because a warrant of execution meant I could kill him any way I wanted to do it. If I chose carefully, it could hurt a lot before that last moment. People tell you all sorts of things if you scare them enough, and pain scares most people.
Sutton was in front of me like a black wall, because I was staring at about his upper stomach. Why were so many men on special teams, police or military, so damn big? “Hudson called an ambulance, Blake.”
“She’s a zombie and he’s a dead man walking,” I said.
“You don’t have a warrant of execution, Blake.”
I stopped trying to walk around him. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d shot someone and hadn’t had a warrant for their death. It meant that I had almost carte blanche on what I did to him, or how I did it.
“We need him to tell us how to set her soul free before the ambulance gets here, Sutton. He’s bleeding out, scared, and in pain; this is our best chance to get him to tell me how to free her so she won’t be scared anymore.”
“I couldn’t have taken the shot tonight, Blake. I couldn’t have shot her.”
“I knew she was already dead, Sutton. I’d seen her picture as a zombie, you hadn’t.”
“He was going to put that knife in Connie Rodriguez’s heart and I would have hesitated, because I didn’t want to shoot a zombie.”
“Lucky you had me to take the shot,” I said.
“Hudson greenlighted you, but you still didn’t have a warrant of execution. You’ll be seeing Internal Affairs on this one, Blake, and you won’t have the warrant to keep them off your back.”
“Whoever shot him inside the crypt will be seeing them, too. What’s good for the gander is good for the goose. Are you delaying me from questioning Max over there for a reason?”