Luke came to in an unfamiliar room, a soft beeping in the background. He tried to sit up but couldn’t move. Forcing his eyes open, he quickly shut them at the blaring light. This time, he opened them slower, allowing them time to adjust to the light. He ached all over. He tried to take a deep breath but gave up before completing it when his ribcage refused to respond without excruciating pain. The soft beeping sped up slightly. He felt brittle. Frail. Broken.
“Luke?”
“Hmm?” Luke’s lips felt glued together as he tried to pry them open.
A warm cloth dabbed at his lips.
“Where am I?” he croaked, his throat feeling raw and swollen. The battle! He attempted to lurch up, but something held him in place. He collapsed back into the bed, groaning in pain. “Fight…”
“The fight’s over Luke. We won.”
He thought the voice sounded familiar, but his addled brain wasn’t putting the pieces together. When he felt acclimatized enough to open his eyes again, he started with a bare squint until he felt ready to risk more light. The light illuminated Maggie’s hair, giving the blonde Polish doctor a golden halo. The worried furrow in her forehead coupled with the dark rings under her eyes spoke volumes to Luke about his condition. Still, the sight of Maggie’s face drew a small smile to his lips. Even that hurt.
“Hi, Maggie.”
“How do you feel, Luke?” Maggie ran her hand from his forehead down to his cheek, caressing it.
“Like I got hit by a semi-truck. Why can’t I move?” He feared what her answer might be, but he needed to know.
Maggie chuckled. “We had to strap you down. You kept trying to get out of bed. We finally had to sedate you. We couldn’t get through to you or make you understand what was going on. It was scary… I was scared.”
“Can you untie me?” He looked down, spotting the black strap across his chest. It looked loose over the bandages his body was wrapped in. A cast covered his left arm. The arm appeared immobilized beyond the cast.
“Only if you promise not to get up.”
“I think my faculties have returned enough to make that promise.”
Maggie smiled softly. Standing up, she unbuckled the strap and pulled it away from Luke’s body before returning to the chair beside his bed.
Luke tipped his head to the side, leaving it resting on the pillow so he could make eye contact with Maggie. “So, what’s the damage?”
“Well, a broken collarbone, your left humerus, most of your ribs were broken. The surgeon removed two bullets from you, one from the broken arm and another from a partially healed wound on the leg. They also stitched up a gash on the underside of your left arm, a through and through gunshot wound on the left forearm, and several less serious slashes on your legs and arms. You have severe bruising around your neck, and your larynx and trachea are swollen. You should, by all rights, be dead.”
He nodded, then groaned from the motion. The last moments of the fight flashed through his memory. “I think I would be, if not for the quick thinking of Delilah and the protection of my armor. That was a full magazine I took to the chest. Only two rounds found flesh.”
Maggie nodded, her mouth dipping into a frown as she blinked her eyes rapidly, the furrow in her forehead deepening. She carefully grasped his hand, squeezing it gently. “I’m really glad you didn’t die.”
“Me too,” Luke replied, meaning it for the first time in a long time. He squeezed back. “Where’s Gwen?”
Unshed tears sparkled in Maggie’s eyes. “She’s out to dinner with Sam. Zel and I tried to keep her at our house, but she kept sneaking out and coming here, so we set her up with a bed on one of the couches upstairs. She spends most of her time in here waiting for you to wake up. She’ll be relieved to see you conscious.”
He was delaying at this point, fearing to ask the question he needed answered the most. “How is everyone else?”
“Cut up and shot. The wounds caused by bladed weapons pretty much healed up before everyone got back to town, with the exception of a few bad ones. The gunshots, well, we had to cut a lot of bullets and buckshot out of people. The wounds heal over too fast. But all the werewolves who took wounds are healed by now, at least enough to go about their lives normally until their bodies can take care of the last of it. Delilah isn’t doing too badly. We’ve got her left arm immobilized to let it heal better. Most of the sword slashes she took were shallow. We’ll be able to remove most of the stitches next week.”
“How long was I out?”
“It’s been eight days, Luke.”
He sighed. “And Archie?”
“They weren’t able to recover his body from the helicopter wreckage. The flames burned too hot. We held his funeral a couple days ago.” Tears painted wet streams down her cheeks.
Luke blinked the tears out of his eyes, letting their hot tracks run down his face. He was just getting to really know Archie and considered him a friend. He’d liked the man; now he’d never get a chance to develop their friendship. Maggie held his hand, and when the tears stopped falling, she wiped his cheeks with the warm, damp cloth, brushing some of his hair off his forehead so she could lay a kiss on it. Motion out of the corner of his eye drew his gaze toward the door of his room opening.
“Luke?” Gwen asked timidly.
“Hey, little one. How are you?”
“Are…are you OK?”
“I’ve been better, but I’ll live.”
Gwen have him a half-hearted smile. “When can you come home?”
“I don’t know.” He looked toward Maggie.
“We need to have a talk about that,” Maggie replied. She turned to Gwen. “If you can give us a few minutes, sweetie? Then you can come see Luke some more.”
Gwen nodded but walked further into the room and patted Luke’s good arm before turning and leaving. Sam stepped into the room when Gwen had vacated it, shutting the door behind her.
“How you doing, Sam?” Luke asked.
“Not bad. Sore in some spots, but alive and well. How about you?”
“Well, I’m alive. What I wouldn’t give for a vampire right now, a nice, docile one.”
“We might be able to help you with that request.” Sam sat in the chair on the opposite side of his hospital bed.
“What do you mean?”
“Pablo gets credit for this, but when we were wrapping up, he stopped us from staking all the… Let’s just say ‘partial vampires.’ We removed their heads and brought their bodies with us. There’s a walk-in freezer with eight vampires in it. We didn’t know how many you would need, especially since you said beheaded ones don’t give you the full power up. That’s about all we had the space and time for,” Sam replied.
Maggie, rubbing her thumb idly over the back of Luke’s hand, asked, “Will old, frozen vampires work?”
“Yeah. That’ll do. I’ve used a frozen vampire corpse before. I’ll have to thank Pablo. That was a great idea.”
“What all will you need, Luke?” Maggie asked.
“I’ll need my rudis and some help. I don’t think my body’s in any kind of shape to crawl around and stab frozen corpses, at least for the first few.” He looked at Sam. “I mean, if you have the heads, we could reattach them. I’m not sure if it’ll work being frozen, but it’s worth a shot.”
“Should we thaw them out first?” Sam asked.
“No, let’s not risk it. If it doesn’t work, I’ll use what I’ve got. We’ll need a private place with a drain, though—someplace where the remains can be washed away.” Luke’s eyes drooped, partially lidding his eyes.
“How are you feeling, Luke?” Maggie asked.
“I’m getting tired.”
“We’ll let you get back to resting soon. While you sleep, we’ll make arrangements.” Sam pulled a soda from her pocket and opened it, taking a sip.
“Thank you. Um, what happened after I passed out?”
Sam laughed. “Reinforcements came. Holly rallied the East Portland Pack, the Coast Pack, and Hood River, in addition to our pack. They all converged on Mt. Hood and fought their way through the blockade of cop cars the vampires had set up.”
“Did I see Owen in the bed of a pickup truck with a machine gun?” Luke asked.
Sam shook her head, a smile spreading across her face. “Yeah. That pirate showed up with his ‘farm truck.’ He uses it to patrol their pot fields. He’s got a tall machine gun stand set up in the bed. It was probably a lot more useful before the state legalized weed. Anyway, Lauren and he drove up in it. When he met us before we moved in, he mounted up the machine gun and climbed in back. At least he had the good sense to install a safety harness and a roll cage so he wouldn’t fall out.”
Luke chuckled, then groaned at the pain the light laugh had caused. Recovered, he added, “Lauren probably made him do it.”
“You’re probably right. He and Lauren were all over the place with that four-wheel-drive monstrosity. He was having a merry old time blasting away at vampires in cop uniforms. Toward the end he had N.W.A. blaring over the PA speaker on that thing.”
“I suspect Lauren may be just as much a pirate as Owen,” Luke replied, restraining his humor to a grin to avoid more pain.
Sam nodded. “She’s his sister. She has no love for cops or authority figures, but she’s much more level headed and responsible than Owen, even if she has the same mischievous streak he does. Anyway. After we took out the elite vampires and Delilah cleaned up Cassius, the rest of the vampires broke ranks and it was every toothy bastard for themselves. We took out what we could, staked every vamp we’d downed, cleaned up all the weapons, and got the fuck out of there so we could take care of our wounded.”
“What’s going on with the cops?” Luke asked.
Sam snorted. “They’re in complete disarray trying to explain to federal investigators what they were doing. The Portland Bureau is down a bunch of officers as well as several surrounding agencies. I hope someone thought to catalog what departments were participating so we can investigate later. Right now, Bealer’s in a ton of hot water. His poll numbers are plummeting, not that they were great, but this should effectively end his candidacy.”
“Good.” Luke’s eyes drifted lower. He forced them back open only to have them drift down more. “Do we need to worry about investigators?”
Sam shook her head. “I don’t think so. The vampires had all the security cameras shut down. And any agencies that used body cameras had them switched off. I think their desire for secrecy worked in our favor.”
“Sam, I think we need to let Luke rest.” Maggie stood up and checked Luke’s pulse and temperature.
“Sure thing. I’ll get with Pablo and organize Luke’s ‘medicine.’” She used finger quotes for “medicine.” “Luke, I’m glad you’re back with us. When you get healed up, we need to meet up at the pub to mourn and celebrate.”
“Yeah. See you later, Sam. Thanks for everything.”
“Bye, Luke.” Sam disappeared out the door.
When the door closed, Luke turned back to Maggie. “You should go home and get a good night’s sleep.” He didn’t know how much time she’d spent there with him, but she looked tired and worried.
“You mind your own business, Luke. Zel has company tonight, and I’m staying here with you. I’ll have the surgeon examine you in the morning if Sam and Pablo have your vampires ready.”
“Aren’t you my doctor anymore?”
Maggie shook her head, giving him a soft, closed-mouth smile. “No. I can’t treat you anymore. I’m too emotionally involved.” She brushed her hand over his cheek before leaning down to give him a gentle kiss on the lips. “I’m here because I want to be here with you so you don’t have to be alone and so Gwen doesn’t have to bear this on her own.”
“Oh…” Luke nodded, her words hitting him hard. He felt warm inside as the depth of Maggie’s words and feelings permeated his being. “Thank you, Maggie. It…it means more than I can convey.”
Smiling, Maggie changed the subject. “I’m going to put the restraint back in place, in case you try to get up in the night.”
“That’s probably a good idea until I can heal a little more so my body will quit looking for vampires.”
“You’ll have to explain that to me sometime when you’re not so sleepy.” Maggie walked to the door. “I’m going to grab Gwen so she can say goodnight to you.”
“Sure.”
A few moments later, Maggie returned with Gwen. She didn’t say anything but sat in the chair near his right hand, holding it while he fell asleep.
* * *
The next day, after getting cleared by the surgeon, Maggie, Pablo, and Sam loaded Luke into the back of an ambulance and moved him to the hospital where a few of the other medical professionals in the pack worked when not taking care of the pack’s medical needs at the clinic.
They’d transferred the fanged popsicles down to the morgue and had it closed so they could work uninterrupted. Luke could barely move, so Pablo solved the problem by laying the cadavers on the floor and holding Luke in position. Maggie helped by holding Luke’s hands in place on the handle of the rudis and provided a shoulder he could use to prop his head against.
After he spoke the incantation and the light returned to his head, he felt better but still a long way from whole. They decided to repeat the procedure since it’d had worked well enough before. By the time they’d gone through four, Luke felt spry enough to move on his own and drain the last four. He reveled in his chest muscles expanding as he drew in the first deep, pain-free breath in over a week. He still wasn’t one hundred percent, but not feeling broken felt amazing.
Even though the heads weren’t reattached to the frozen bodies, several of the bodies they’d used were older vampires that provided a significant boost to Luke’s healing.
“How are you feeling, Luke?” Maggie asked.
He smiled and pulled her in for a hug. She gingerly wrapped her arms around him as he stroked her hair.
“Better.” He kissed her forehead and stepped back. “Sam, Pablo, thanks for everything.”
“Luke, if you don’t mind, I’d like to get some x-rays and some scans to make sure you’re OK. Also, the other pack doctors are curious about how you heal,” Maggie asked.
“Sure. Better safe than sorry.”
Pablo pulled Luke into a hug. “I missed you, buddy.”
Luke grunted. “A little gentler, please. I’m still sore as fuck, but I missed you too, Pablo.”
Pablo let him go. “Sorry. Hey, want to meet at the pub for lunch? On me.”
“Sure. I’ll swing by the house and grab Gwen. Maggie? You free for lunch?”
Maggie nodded.
“Good. We’ll let you know when we’re on our way.”
“Sounds good. I’ll let Delilah know. Sounds like she’s getting a little stir crazy after staying in to rest up.” Sam squeezed his hand as she walked by, following Pablo out of the morgue.
Maggie took Luke upstairs for x-rays and an MRI scan. After they finished, they picked up Gwen at Luke’s house and met at the pub for lunch. When Delilah walked in, she looked stiff with a bit of a limp in the leg where she’d taken the slash. Luke felt guilty that he’d healed mostly, as had the werewolves, but Delilah was forced to endure healing as a human with all its inconveniences.
Luke skipped beers, not feeling in the mood. He also guessed it would be a good idea to hold off on imbibing after whatever they’d had him on to kill the pain and keep him sedated. The chemicals were probably out of his system after eight vamps, but he felt caution was a better choice. After eating nothing but an IV drip, Luke ravenously ran up Pablo’s tab, ordering a hamburger, fries, another sandwich, and then dessert.
Gwen, relieved to have Luke back, giggled and stared as he snarfed down the huge lunch. While he worked through his food and listened to the banter of Pablo and Sam, he kept an eye on Delilah, trying to gauge how she was doing after exacting the revenge she’d worked so hard to achieve. He’d have to ask her when they had some time alone. When she joined in with the banter, he smiled, hoping it was a sign of positivity.
He was still too tired to feel like participating. He was just happy to be there with his friends, watching them joke with each other. When he leaned back in the booth, Maggie snuggled up next to him, holding his hand under the table and resting her head on his shoulder.
“Luke?” Maggie asked quietly
“Yes, Maggie?”
“I’d like to stay with you tonight, just to sleep by you…if that’s OK?”
A small smile tugged up at the corners of his mouth. “I’d like that.”
Maggie kissed his cheek and squeezed his hand, laying her head back on his shoulder.
“Hey, Luke,” Pablo said. “Now that you and Delilah are back on your feet, the Pack wants to have a bit of a celebration. Holly thinks the weekend after next will be good if you’re good for then?”
“Yeah. I could do with a celebration after the year I’ve had.”
“Dude, It’ll be awesome! I’m gonna do a pit roasted pig. We’ll have all kinds of other tasties for the halal, kosher, and veggie folks. Of course plenty of kegs. We’ll have live music. There are plenty of musicians in the pack.”
Sam jumped in. “You can meet some of the other kids in the pack, Gwen. There’s several about your age. It might be nice to hang out with someone besides us old fogies.”
“OK.” Gwen looked nervous but slightly interested.
Luke smiled at her, nodding. She’d come a long way in the half a year since their paths had crossed. Even three months ago, she probably wouldn’t have wanted to go to an event full of werewolves, but now she was considering it.
Seeing Gwen’s nervousness, Sam reached across the table and patted her arm. “Don’t worry. You’ll have your normal room when you visit so you can have some alone time if you need it.”
That seemed to mollify Gwen for the moment. Luke made a note to check in with her later so she didn’t feel pressured. He wanted her to expand her world beyond Luke’s friends, even though he knew all of them cared deeply about Gwen, but he imagined young people like her needed peers closer to her own age. She’d probably make friends when she enrolled in school, but having some werewolf friends her age would be good so she could explore being an adolescent, both as a wolf and a human.
Luke yawned, losing the thread of the conversation. When Maggie squeezed his hand, Luke jolted back to alertness.
“You OK, buddy?” Pablo asked.
“Tired. I don’t think being out for a week with most of my bones broken is what one would call restful. If you don’t mind, I’m going to head home.”
“Get out of here, dude! Catch some Zs.”
Maggie slid out of the booth, letting Luke out. Everyone else stood up and insisted on hugs, happy that Luke was truly on the mend.
When it was Delilah’s turn to hug Luke, he held her shoulders after she stepped back. “Let’s get coffee soon and chat.”
“OK. I’d like that,” Delilah replied.
Maggie said her goodbyes and fell in with Luke, Gwen trailing behind. Maggie drove since Luke didn’t have his car.
“I don’t know why I only thought of it now, but do you know where my Volvo is?” Luke asked, strapping himself into Maggie’s passenger seat.
“I think Pablo had it towed, but I’m not sure where.”
Luke reached into his pocket to pull out his phone but found nothing. Sighing, he shook his head. He’d have to get another most likely—another thing he should order multiples of to keep on hand. If only Mithras’s armor blessings extended to his mobile devices. When they got back to his house, he spent some quality time with Alfie, the big orange tabby insisting on making up for all the scritches Luke had missed over the last many days.
Luke yawned. “I’m exhausted. I think I’m going to go take a nap, if you two can manage without me.”
“I think we can keep ourselves entertained.” Maggie smiled at Luke before turning to Gwen. “Gwen, why don’t you find us a movie to watch? I’m going to go tuck Luke in.”
Gwen wandered into the kitchen to get refreshments while Maggie followed Luke into his bedroom. As soon as the door closed, she pulled him into the fiercest gentle hug he’d ever received.
“I’m mostly healed. You won’t break me.”
Maggie shed her caution and squeezed him, resting her head against his shoulder. “I was so scared.”
“Me too.” Luke stroked her hair, enjoying the silky texture against his palm. “I’m happy to be here. Alive. With you.”
Maggie stepped back, pulling Luke’s face down for a kiss. “You should lie down. I won’t let you sleep too long, although you’ll probably fall asleep quickly tonight. Gwen and I will think of some delivery options for dinner.”
“That sounds perfect.” He stripped down to his boxer briefs and slid under the covers.
Maggie bent over and kissed his forehead, then departed, shutting the light off before closing the door.