Page 55 of The World Undone

Unless she wasn’t able to.

My heart beat an angry drum, and I tried to swallow the premature panic threatening to escape. She was okay. Maybe she went out for a bit, forgot to lock the door, and a gust of wind or dazed patient had made their way outside, forgetting about the door entirely.

It was an improbable course of events, but not impossible.

I followed Darius’s gaze to the ground.

Small red divots carved into the snow, the heat from the blood melting through the ice as it stained the ground.

“What the hell is that from?” Wade’s posture straightened, and he took a subconscious step in front of me as he scanned the area, looking for any sign of life.

“Not what,” Darius’s voice was soft, but clipped, “who.”

Finding blood inside of the medical center was nothing new, nothing unexpected. But Greta and the rest of us volunteers were pretty good about keeping it cleaned up, contained so as not to tempt any of the vampires around or startle anyone over the direness of some of the injuries we were treating.

“Where were you before you found us?” Wade asked, his eyes leveling on Darius.

“I don’t know.” Darius’s jaw was tight, his hand clamping down around mine. “In the woods, I think. I wasn’t exactly aware of myself, if you recall.”

“This wasn’t him,” I said.

Wade’s eyes softened, but I could see he wanted to push the matter.

“It wasn’t. I’m sure of it.”

I wasn’t. Not empirically anyway, there was no evidence to suggest otherwise, but I knew Darius like I knew the others, like I knew myself. He may have walked a dubious path in the past, and maybe he made some questionable choices along the way, but I knew with a deep certainty he wouldn’t do anything to compromise our safety here, to jeopardize our chance at saving everyone. The stakes were too high and he’d more than proven himself to us all.

“It could have been,” Darius whispered, his voice cracking slightly—a sound that cut through me like an icicle.

“Looks like the path heads over there,” Wade nodded, “opposite direction from where you found us. And there’s a lot of blood here,” he turned back to Darius, scanning him from head to foot, “none on you. Chances are this wasn’t you. I doubt you would have cleaned yourself up mid-sleepwalk. Hopefully just a patient who decided to wander.”

Darius’s jaw was tight, and I could tell that he wasn’t completely convinced, but he nodded once. “We need to go in there, see if anyone is hurt, find out what the fuck happened.”

I took a step forward, ready to do just that—and was met with resistance as they both reached for a shoulder and pulled me back.

“I can teleport.” I shook out of their hold, ignoring their icy glares and tense postures. “And literally conjure hellfire. If anyone needs protection, it’s them, not me.”

Wade took a deep breath, his eyes meeting Darius’s above my head, as the two had a silent conversation I wasn’t privy to. As much as they liked to poke and prod each other, they’d developed the same silent repertoire and strategy that the rest of Six had.

“Fine,” Wade bit out. “We go in together. But if anyone attacks, or anything seems even slightly out of place, no holding back. You get out of there and don’t be wishy-washy about defending yourself, yeah?”

I turned to Darius, expecting him to be on my side, my shoulders shrunk when I found him watching me with the same steely resolve as Wade.

“Darius, you literally watched me burn down Guild Headquarters single-handedly.” I shot him a glare, but when I saw that neither of them was relenting, I let out a frustrated exhale. We were wasting time. I groaned. “Fine.”

Without another word, we moved into the dark entryway of the building. The floorboards were coated in thick stripes of blood, and something in the air felt off—dark, almost.

Wade’s hand moved towards the dagger that I knew would be fastened at his waist.

Several of the beds in this first entryway were uncharacteristically empty, but most of them were filled with patients too deep in recovery and sleep stasis to be bothered by the frigid chill brought in from outside.

It’s too quiet in here. I sent my thought through our bond link. The hospital is usually a tornado of chaos.

Darius nodded, and a ripple of pleasure went through me that I was getting the hang of this communication thing.

There was a small creaking sound and we all froze.

I turned back towards the cabinet at the far end of the room to find a pair of wide, familiar eyes set in the face of a young girl meeting mine.

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