Page 23 of The Sirin Sisterhood (The Sons of Echidna #2)

Klein

Klein was anxious. There was nothing to clean, nothing to mend, nothing to distract himself from what had happened. He’d made hot chocolate for everyone in a last-ditch effort to be useful, refusing the help of the automated coffee machine. Now, they all drank in sullen silence.

Klein watched absently as Xim squeezed Lucy’s hand, trying to calm her. He could feel the fury and worry radiating off the girl from halfway across the room. He was angry, too, though it didn’t show so easily on his face.

At a time when careful strategy was paramount, a third of the family had run off on a suicide mission and thrown all of their plans into jeopardy. No one even had a chance to stop them; by the time Lucy had been found napping in the elevator, Lai and Aris were long gone.

Al joined them at the high-rise after a text from Lucy.

She filled him in on the details, the embers of her fury igniting his.

Klein listened to them complaining about Lai and swapping stories and wondered if he should join in.

He had plenty he could add, but ultimately, he decided the fire didn’t need more stoking.

The pair were doing just fine at riling each other up.

Besides, Lai might have been reckless, but he was correct. They needed to pay off their debt before asking for more. Klein only wished they’d consulted him before taking such reckless action.

The ding of the elevator announced another arrival. Klein was at the door before anyone else had even managed to stand, ready to rip into his father. But his anger evaporated, leaving only dread as the elevator slid open.

Lai staggered out, holding his bundled-up jacket in one hand and a bloodied bandage to his face with the other. His lavender hair was crudely hacked off, now barely reaching his jawline.

Klein seized Lai as the man stumbled and fell, the bloody cloth peeling away, revealing a face that was.

.. The only way Klein could think to describe it was torn in half ,a gruesome wound stretching from the right side of his mouth all the way up to his eye.

The deep cut had split Lai’s face to the bone.

The stunned silence was shattered with a scream. Lucy fell to her knees next to Lai, her hands reaching for his wound.

“I can heal him,”she offered, raising her shaking hands to touch. Klein shook his head, pulling Lai out from her reach.

“No.”Al caught her and drew her back. “Remember, magic will only hurt him. He needs to go to the hospital.”

Lucy’s struggling stopped, and she slumped in defeat, looking to Xim for help. Xim was already on her phone, barking orders at whoever was on the end of the line.

Something was wrong. With the drama of Lai’s arrival, no one else noticed the conspicuous absence, but Klein rarely missed anything.

“Where is father?”He pressed a clean kitchen towel to Lai’s face.

He knew his brother couldn’t answer with a wound like that, but all he needed was a nod.

Something to let him know that Aris was still alive.

He didn’t believe Eleanore would go that far.

She hated the man, but she wouldn’t kill him, surely.

But seeing Lai as he was, Klein suddenly wasn’t so sure. Lai didn’t say a word to reassure him, pressing something into his hand. Klein glanced down.

A note. Tightly folded and bloodstained.

“Can’t he transform? If he dies, he’ll just change, right?”Lucy sniffed, keeping her distance. “Then, when he turns back to human, he’ll be all better! Aris did it, didn’t he?”

Al answered, shaking his head. “Usually, that would work, but he last shifted a few days ago, and there’s a cool-down period. His body hasn’t recovered enough to survive the strain of transforming again so soon.”

◆◆◆

The paramedics arrived quickly, and a few minutes later, Lai was being wheeled back into the elevator, strapped to a gurney. Klein had wanted to follow him, but the EMT shook his head.

“Not enough room in the helicopter. Meet us at the hospital.”Klein was pushed gently but firmly out of the elevator.

Panic gripped him. For a split second, he was a boy again, scared and alone, watching helplessly as another brother died.

He was glad Aris wasn’t there to see Lai, not after his father had already buried Louis’s twin.

The anguish of that loss had never lifted from Aris’s shoulders.

Another son dying might break him forever.

He shoved the memory aside. It was different this time. He had help. He wasn’t alone.

Lai wouldn’t die.

“You lot go. I’ll stay with the kids.”Xim offered, snapping him from the swirling storm of panic he’d been sinking into. Lucy nodded solemnly, pushing Klein into the elevator and standing beside him as Al rummaged for his car keys.

Finding the jingling bunch in his coat pocket, he waved them in front of Lucy and Klein, demanding their attention.

“Hey, you two. Look at me. Lai is hard to kill. The man lives off chocolate and spite, and we only need to grab that first one on our way to the hospital; he’s got plenty of the latter.

Really, the only thing on him that’s truly injured is his vanity.

Now, let’s go. He’ll need us to tell him he’s still pretty when he wakes up. ”

Klein envied Al’s ability to find just the right thing to say in a crisis. His bold words energized Lucy, who stopped sniffling and nodded.

“Besides,”Al added, pointing to the gnarly scratch along the red paint of his car, “I need him to stay alive so that I can fucking kill him . I’m going to strip him, chase him through the woods for hours, and not fuck him after. It’ll be all cardio.”

“He’ll hate that.”Lucy managed a smile, climbing into the car.

Klein could tell she was barely holding it together.

He sat next to her, immediately pulling her into a tight hug, hoping she wouldn’t notice just how much he needed it, too.

Losing his home had been upsetting. Losing his family.

.. He didn’t think that he could endure that.

So he held on to what he had left. Lucy was one of them now, and he was never going to let her get hurt. Not on his watch.

“Why didn’t he just wait? ”Lucy finally sobbed, her body shaking against his. “Why were they both so damn stupid?”Tears rushed down her face, and she angrily wiped them away.

He didn’t have any answers for her. He wanted to know, too, but knowing wouldn’t fix anything right now.

“I’m tired of losing people,”the girl mumbled weakly, her shoulders still trembling.

With difficulty, Klein navigated the delicate balance between presence and restraint, struggling with words that seemed feeble in the face of such profound grief.

He failed to come up with anything. All he could offer was a gentle touch, a reassurance that she wasn’t alone in her sorrow.

“Hey, hey. You are not losing them, okay?”Al glanced at them in the rear view mirror. “The hospital will take care of him. He’s going to be fine, and once he is, then we can go find Aris.”

“Fuck Aris! That stupid, stubborn asshole!”She hit the back of the seat with her fists. “He’s a fucking bastard for making me care!”

Klein wanted to share Lucy’s pain, but he couldn’t partake in her anger. He had none left, all he could do was support her as she howled.

He looked down at his bloodstained hands. He was still clenching the note. Slowly, he unfurled it.

Lucy glanced at the parchment, frowning as she read it out loud.

“Aris for the Witch. Twelve days.”She whispered, seeking Klein’s eyes for clarification. “What the hell is this?”

“A ransom note.”Klein stared at it. He recognized the handwriting, hopes and fears confirmed in a confusing crush of emotion. Aris was alive. Eleanore wasn’t going to kill him.

Eleanore wanted Lucy.

The woman grabbed the note, reading and re-reading it. “Does she mean me?”

“I assume so.”

“Then I’ll go, and make her regret ever asking for me.”

Lucy’s voice had a knife’s edge, a coldness Klein had never heard before. The silent car radio flickered into life as Lucy’s fingers flexed and clenched, the channels skipping wildly over the waves as the street lamps above them went dark.

“Lucy, stop,”Al warned as he pulled the car over. He raised his hand, and the gathering magic sank into him, safely nullified. He shook his fingers with a grimace. “That stings. You need to calm down; I’m not stopping to do that every time you get upset.”

“Save it for when you need it.”Klein took Lucy’s hands in his.

“Don’t repeat my father and Lai’s mistake.

Eleanore is counting on you being just as reckless as they were, and I won’t let you go charging off with a fistful of magic and a half-baked plan.

”His hands cupped her face, lifting it to meet his eyes.

He saw her pain and her desperation and her mule-like stubbornness as plain as day in the worried crease between her eyebrows.

He almost smiled. Lucy wore her heart on her sleeve as though there was no other way to exist. Klein guiltily hoped that Bird couldn’t read his heart as easily as he could read Lucy’s.

“If we want to save them, we need to be smart. Our numbers were already low; tonight, we’ve lost another two. Don’t be another casualty. We need you.”