“Daphne?” Thay said, his fumbling hand moving for my waist. “Daph! Behind you!”
“They’re almost here. You’re going to be okay.” But wrenched the gun from the makeshift holster I had created out of my waistband and fired a shot at my back.
I didn’t understand what had happened at first, not as I stared into the center of his fading eyes. There was a slight pressure between my shoulders, maybe a sting or a strip of cold rushing into my chest like ice water, but it all felt foggy. Ghostlike. Almost the way dandelion wisps flutter in the August wind.
Thay took a shot.
Wait? I thought he already had.
I collapsed against his heart, the slow beat of it struggling to keep its rhythm when my mouth sank to his lips in a sleeping kiss.
Thay breathed.
I breathed…
And the last thing I remember is the rush of Thay’s breath filling my chest with the flavor of smoke and rain.
forty
Thayor Milo Gavros: Home
The smell of antiseptic and sodium chloride filled my nostrils when a man with a thick mustache hung a bag of blood over my head.
“Call Second Presbyterian and alert them we have two gunshot wounds coming in. Tell them to have GI and cardiothoracic on the floor. I’m almost certain they are both fatal, and if this girl doesn’t get a heart soon, she won’t make it.”
Was my girl’s heart dying?
My eyes drifted to the body next to me, to the way her pretty fingers fell over the side of the gurney.
“Hey,” I tried to speak, dragging my hand down Mustache’s arm with what little strength I could muster.
“You are in the back of an ambulance,” he said, as if it were Tuesday. “We are going to get you help.”
Lying to a dead man? If I could punch him in the dick, I would.
“My name is Thre...” I stopped myself cold. “Thayor.”
“Try to rest.” He tapped something on the screen next to me and scribbled on his pad.
“Listen, fucker,” I ground out, and his eyes shot up. “My name is Thayor Milo Gavros, and Daphne is my wife.”
He had to know what I was. If not by the tattoos, then by the fact they pulled me out of an Underworld clubhouse after a shootout. That was fine. I didn’t care. I just didn’t want them to think she wasn’t worth saving.
“She is a midwife and not one of us.”
“Mr. Gavros, I don’t judge.” He smiled, pointing to the tattoo of a wolf on his forearm. It was old, but still there, and I couldn’t tell if Karsten’s man was about to kill me or if this motherfucker actually got out.
Because no one gets out. No one.
“My birthday is October 27, 1998. My Social Security number is 555-31-0000, and I am of sound mind when I tell you that I understand my wounds are fatal.” I coughed, trying to catch my breath. “When I go under, don’t bring me back. I want you to put my heart in Daphne’s chest.”
Mustache blinked, his Tuesday turning into Wednesday with a violent shove.
“Mr. Gavros.”
“Do you understand me?” I went for his scrubs and yanked. “Give Daphne my heart. You save her.”
“I bear witness,” the young man nodded, the salt in his eyes looking something like tears before he wiped them away.