Page 31 of Concluded (The Bureau #13)

D ee had been run over by a freight train.

That’s what it felt like, anyway, and although he didn’t think anything was broken and he didn’t seem to be bleeding, he couldn’t move.

Untangling his body from the other two nude bodies was far more than he could manage. He couldn’t even pry his eyes open.

But he could hear.

“Holy shit !” exclaimed a gravelly male voice.

Another male voice, smoother and more refined, responded. “What is that ?”

“I think… he’s an angel.”

The response from the smoother voice came in a Slavic-sounding language and had the cadence of a prayer.

Then Achilles, who was mostly underneath Dee, groaned. “Help Ish. Please.”

Dee managed to get his eyes open in time to see a familiar pair of vampires stepping toward them.

The vampires were naked, which was a puzzle to be worked out later.

Clay White, who was the bulkier of them, scooped Ish into his arms as if he were a child and carried him out of the room.

Which was, Dee now realized, a tastefully decorated living room.

He’d managed to transport all three of them back to San Francisco, exactly as Achilles had wished.

“Oh, thank fuck,” he said. And then blacked out.

* * *

“You are goddamn amazing, Damnation Martell.”

Achilles sat on the living room floor, staring at Dee, who was laid out on the couch like an invalid.

Dee was naked under the soft plaid blanket; Achilles wore sweatpants and a gray T-shirt, both possibly borrowed from White.

Which implied that vampires wore sweatpants, an image that made Dee want to break out in hysterical giggles.

Instead he asked, “How’s Ish?”

“Sort of comatose. I’ve never seen any living creature look that awful. But he is alive. And he’s out of the black hole. Thanks to you.”

Dee took a few deep, shuddering breaths. “Now what?”

“Now you rest.”

That sounded like an excellent plan. Dee felt as if he could give Rip Van Winkle a run for the record. “Is Ish really Charles’s dad?”

“Dunno. Chief’ll be back from Seattle tomorrow. We were gone for five days.”

“ Five days ?”

“They feared we might be gone for good. And when we did return, Clay says we popped back in with, like, a sonic boom.”

Dee turned this over in his head for a moment. “I’m hungry.”

“Yeah. I ordered a whole lot of delivery because our hosts' diet doesn’t quite suit us. Want me to bring you some Korean fried chicken and/or pizza and/or pad Thai?”

“All of the above,” Dee answered, laughing.

“I got donuts too.”

But the conversation had sapped the last of Dee’s strength, and his lids slid closed. “In a little while,” he mumbled.

Achilles tucked the blanket slightly higher under Dee’s chin. “I’m here to serve you, Dee. Your wish is my command.”

* * *

They had arrived in San Francisco midmorning, which explained their hosts’ nudity: the vampires had been fast asleep at the time.

Apparently vampires—these two, at least—eschewed pajamas.

It was well after dark by the time Dee felt capable of prying himself off the couch, and even then, it was all he could do to totter around in jeans and a sweatshirt that Achilles had somehow procured for him.

“I hate being so weak,” Dee complained as he sank back onto the couch after a bathroom visit.

Achilles sat next to him. “I know what you mean. I was laid up for a while after the bear attack—the first bear attack—and I hated it.”

“Who took care of you?”

“The Bureau has— had —its own little hospital wing. Top-notch care by people who are used to treating weird injuries and weirder patients. But it’s still a hospital, and I hate those places. I got out of there ASAP.”

Although Dee was glad that Achilles had received proper medical treatment, he didn’t like the sound of the rest of it. “So who took care of you once you were out?” He was pretty sure he knew the answer.

And sure enough, Achilles shrugged. “I managed okay on my own. I always have. You too, right?”

“Until recently, I never had to. I hardly ever get sick, and I spent forty years with nobody trying to kill me. When I made charms, they were little ones. Not enough to drain me.”

Achilles, who was looking pretty drawn himself, nodded and leaned back against the cushions. Dee wanted to ask what had happened to him in the black hole, but Dee had raised the subject twice already today, and both times Achilles had shuddered and shaken his head.

Maybe it was time to distract Achilles with a different painful subject. “Orson,” Dee ventured.

Achilles looked sharply at him. “What?”

“Tell me about him.”

“Ugh.” Achilles lolled again, closed his eyes, and kept them that way.

“He was a really good guy. Smart. Working on a grad degree in some kind of biomedical thing that I totally didn’t understand but knew was important.

We met right after I graduated college and started Bureau training.

He was… I don’t know. Wholesome. Normal .

He had a supportive family who were nice to me, a cat named Scan—because CAT scan, ha ha ha.

He liked to play video games, go snowboarding, and yell at the TV. ”

Dee felt a small pang, but couldn’t tell whether it was jealousy, envy, or both. “What happened to him?”

“On one of my very first assignments, my partner and I had a surprise run-in with an anzu. Injuries ensued. I detoured by that hospital I was telling you about and came home late, after some treatment for third degree burns. I mean, they were just small ones. I wasn’t very close to the anzu when it spit fire.

But Orson freaked out. Gave me an ultimatum—the job or him. ”

Well, Dee knew how that had turned out. “He shouldn’t have forced that decision on you.”

“No, I get it. He couldn’t deal with constantly worrying that I’d die. So… he died instead.”

“From the anzu?” Dee asked, horrified even though he didn’t know what one was.

“No. From Los Angeles. A couple weeks after we broke up, he was driving back to my apartment to pick some stuff up—it had been our apartment—and got in a wreck. He was a good driver, too. The other guy wasn’t.”

Achilles was clearly trying to be flippant about the whole thing, as if it didn’t matter anymore, but the pain on his face said otherwise. Dee patted his knee slightly awkwardly. “Thanks for sharing with me.”

Achilles started to say something, stopped, and then shot to his feet. “I should check on Ish.”

“Can I come too?”

“Can you make it upstairs?”

“Yes,” Dee said with far more certainty than he actually possessed.

In fact, it took him about a thousand years to climb the single flight, but he managed. Achilles came up right behind him, as if prepared to catch him should he fall.

The upper story looked as if it hadn’t been changed much since the house was constructed.

There were some built-in cabinets and drawers, a bathroom, and two bedrooms. The one to the right overlooked the street and was likely the one where Clay and Marek slept.

The other currently contained a bed, a chair, a dresser, a vampire, and an angel.

Until Dee and Achilles entered, at which point it also contained a hero and a djinn.

“How’s he doing?” Achilles asked Marek softly. Clay had left the house soon after dark to fetch dinner for himself and Clay. Dee hadn’t been brave enough to ask what that errand entailed.

Marek, who’d been sitting in the chair, stood. “He rests.”

There was more whispered conversation, but instead of trying to follow it, Dee tiptoed forward.

Ish lay on his side, his back slightly curled and a blanket pulled up to his waist. His skin was nearly as white as the sheets, as was his long, matted hair.

His eyes were closed, pale lashes over razor-sharp cheekbones, and his mouth hung slightly open, revealing razor-sharp teeth.

One hand was loosely curled near his face, which lent him an air of innocence sharply at odds with his skeletal features.

And his wings…. They were as enormous as Tenrael’s but with snow-white feathers. They were terribly ragged, however, the flesh torn and swaths of feathers reduced to nothing but naked barbs.

“Hi,” Dee said, because he felt as if he should say something. “It’s Dee. You’re among friends now.”

Maybe he imagined it, but he thought that perhaps Ish’s eyelids fluttered a little.

Then his own exhaustion hit him like a wave, and he came damned close to swooning like a Victorian maiden. Fortunately, Achilles noticed and acted fast, catching him before he fell and then half carrying him down the stairs. Dee made it to the couch and was asleep before his head hit the cushion.