Page 47 of Valkyrie Unknown

“Hey.” I barked out as loud a shout as I could.

Everyone around us stopped.

Rather than question it, I rushed forward, to help the fallen woman to her feet as gently as possible while still moving quickly. I pulled her out of the flow of foot traffic. “Thank you,” I muttered at the crowd.

The mayhem whirred to life as if someone had unpaused the world.

As we pressed against the outside wall of a bus stop, I looked her over. Deep red flowed from the cut on her head, matting her dark hair and making it difficult to tell how bad the wound was. I reached into my bag and grabbed a small stack of gauze.

“Are you all right?” I pressed the bandage to her wound and held it in place. I carried a few more instruments for patching myself up, thanks to a steady diet of Davyn’s random attacks.

She stared at me with wide eyes. “You were glowing.”

I frowned. “Does your head hurt? How’s your vision?” I didn’t want to assault her with too many questions, but if she had a concussion, my makeshift bandage wouldn’t fix it. Even if she didn’t, she needed this head wound cleaned and someone who wasn’t used to mild magical healing to determine if she should have stitches.

Fortunately, the blaring sirens were directly on top of us, and a fire-ambulance parked by the curb a few feet away.

“Can you walk?” I nodded toward the emergency vehicle.

“I think so.”

Good. I helped her toward one of the men climbing from the cab. “She’s hurt.”

His gaze fell on my arm. “So are you.”

Was I? I glanced at the gash across my bicep and the dried blood around the wound. Like her head injury, this likely looked worse than it was. The enchants on my knives were likely knitting it together.

“It’s not my blood.” I pushed the woman toward him and stepped away.

Police were arriving. More emergency vehicles. Officers were cordoning off sections of the sidewalk. Herding people this way and that.

What now? I’d dealt with plenty of injuries in my life, but most of were mine or those of fellow students. I’d never been in the middle of this kind of public, mass event. How did I help without getting in the way?

I stood at the edge of the crowd, taking it all in.

The police were working on directing foot traffic, and the paramedics were grabbing the most obviously wounded and doing a sort of triage. The people who were quietly lost or hurt, who were scared but didn’t stand out… No one saw them.

I did, though. I moved from one to the next, helping some find their way out of the mess, sitting with those who were panicked until they were able to move on, and checking the lesser injuries to grab an EMT if needed.

Time slipped away, but that didn’t matter. As long as I could make things better for at least a few of these people whose mornings had been turned into a terror they never thought they’d experience.

“Excuse me, Miss.” A uniformed officer grabbed me as I was heading for another scared person.

A shock of pain raced through my bicep at his touch, and I cringed.

“Sorry.” He let go. “Did you see what happened?”

“No.” I was walking, and things exploded. That wasn’t useful information.

He frowned. “Were you here when the explosion and gunshots went off?”

There were gunshots? There was no way this had been about me. Loki sent the undead. Shadows. Not assassins. “Yes, but?—”

“We’re asking everyone for any details they remember.” He gestured toward a tent at the edge of the scene. “Come talk to us for a minute.”

“Now’s not a good time for me.” Helping was one thing, but talking to police meant they’d want my information. They’d get my legal name. They’d have my location. Everything I learned growing up told me leaving traces of myself behind was a bad idea. “Can I get your card? I can come into the station.”

“We need to talk to everyone now?—”

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