Ravaged (Vampire Awakenings, Book 7) Read online

  “Survivors?” Roger asked.

  “Yes, but don’t ask me how.”

  Maggie frowned at that response and glanced toward the alleyway. Blood didn’t bother her; in fact, it had always held a strange fascination for her, and she’d never been squeamish. Both of those things had led her to this career. She also liked helping people.

  She’d probably still be bouncing from one hated job to the next if she hadn’t witnessed a car hit a woman one day while walking home. The scene repulsed the other witnesses, but Maggie ignored the blood and the jutting leg bones to care for the woman until an ambulance arrived.

  Roger had been working that ambulance. Impressed with her ability to handle what she’d seen, and to tie a tourniquet the best she could based on what she’d watched on TV, he’d given her his number. Roger told her to call him if she ever decided she might like to try her hand at being an EMT.

  She’d called him the next day and enrolled in an EMT program the following month. She’d hated school while growing up and vowed never to return after she graduated, but she’d plunged into EMT training. Roger helped her get a job with this company when she finished. He trained her, and when she’d applied to paramedic school after a year of being on the ambulance with him, he’d tutored her through it. Never once had she regretted her decision or been spooked while on a call. She had the unreasonable feeling that might end tonight.

  Glancing nervously at the alleyway, her nose twitched when she detected the coppery tang of blood and the faint hint of garbage on the air. A lot of blood odor wafted out of that alley.

  CHAPTER 5

  Maggie stepped forward. Multiple someones required their help, and no matter how crazy the scene might be, she and Roger would do what they’d been trained to do. Harding’s voice halted her before she could go any further.

  “I saw the end of what happened in there, and I still don’t believe it. It… it couldn’t have been real,” he muttered.

  He removed his hat to run a hand through his hair. It startled her to see the shine on the top of Harding’s head; she’d never seen him without a hat before. The few times she’d gone to watch Roger and some of her other coworkers bowl, Harding had always worn a Red Sox hat. Somehow, seeing him without one made him seem vulnerable in an odd way, and made what waited for them more unnerving.

  Harding shoved his hat back on and assumed his usual brusque attitude of business. It helped to embolden her.

  “This way,” Harding said in the crisp voice she recognized well. “There’s one or two still alive.”

  She exchanged a look with Roger, who shrugged and followed Harding into the alley. Maggie spotted two bodies on the ground, with police officers standing beside them and more yellow tape marking off the area. Maggie tried to ascertain if the victims were alive or not as Harding led them past.

  “They’re dead,” Harding said, as if he’d been reading her thoughts.

  “Are you sure?” Roger asked.

  “One was stabbed in the heart, and the other had his heart torn out, so yes, I’m sure,” Harding retorted.

  “Did you say he had his heart torn out?” Maggie blurted.

  “Yes.”

  “As in out of his chest?”

  “Yes.”

  “What happened here?” Roger asked as Maggie’s skin crawled.

  “I don’t know,” Harding replied.

  Maggie gazed around the macabre scene. The blue strobes of the police vehicles flashing over the blood-splattered walls and the river of red beneath her feet reminded her of a grisly Pollock painting.

  Nothing could have survived what happened here, yet Harding continued leading them toward a body lying prone on the ground. As they neared, she realized the victim was a man from his short black hair and the width of his broad shoulders and the size of his large body. His arms, still inside a black trench coat, were spread over his head.

  Two police officers stood guard beside him, and on the other side of the alley, two more officers knelt beside another victim. Maggie blinked and stumbled when she spotted the slimy trail of intestines poking out from under that victim.

  “We don’t think that one has a chance,” Harding muttered and waved at the eviscerated man. “This one might have a chance, but….” His voice trailed off.

  Despite the icy air, a fresh sheen of sweat beaded Harding’s face. He pulled a white, handkerchief from his front pocket and wiped the sweat away before shoving the cloth back inside. Maggie’s sick feeling grew when half the handkerchief remained dangling from Harding’s pocket. He’d always been fastidious about his appearance, and a ball buster to any of the officers who slacked in that department.

  “Are they all stabbing victims?” Roger asked, trying to learn what they were dealing with here.

  “No knives present,” Harding said in a clipped tone, and Maggie suspected he was trying not to vomit.

  Not much in life unnerved her, but she felt like she was having some strange out-of-body experience as she surveyed the surreal scene. Drying blood streaked sections of bricks, and it had slid down to puddle on the asphalt. She searched for any weapon or drugs left behind, but she didn’t see any.

  “Gunshot wounds?” Roger asked incredulously as he gazed at the intestines lying on the ground.

  “I haven’t seen any bullet wounds in any of the bodies, but I haven’t done a close inspection of them. We’ve found no weapons at all, but there were others here when we arrived. They grabbed some things before fleeing.”

  “There were other people here?” Maggie asked.

  “Yes, seven of them. We shot at them. I know I hit at least one, and I saw a few others get hit, but they all ran off.”

  Maggie’s head rose at Harding’s reply. “They ran off after being shot?”

  “They did. I don’t know what kind of drugs they’re on, but being shot didn’t slow them down.” Harding stopped beside the prone man in the trench coat. “I don’t think he has much of a chance, but his vitals were stronger than the other victim.”

  It didn’t matter which one of the live victims were more likely to survive anymore as her coworkers, Glenn and Walt, had also arrived. They were making their way toward the eviscerated man.

  When they stopped next to him, Maggie focused her attention on the man lying before her. Her heart leapt into her throat when she saw the flesh of the man’s back had been peeled back like some fucked-up banana.

  “Is that his spine?” Roger demanded.

  Harding gulped and lifted his hat to wipe the sweat from his brow. “You would know better than me.”

  They all knew what it was; it was impossible not to know. A kid could recognize the white, curving bone of someone’s spine. What had been able to do that, who had done it, and why?

  Maggie shuddered. The only thing that ever bothered her about this job were the calls involving children, but this… well, this was pure torture.

  A pool of blood spread out from beneath the man. Within the coppery tang of his blood, she detected a hint of clove too. It made her stomach turn that she found the aroma almost pleasant when any rational human would find everything about this repulsive. Yet, she couldn’t deny she wanted to get closer to the man. Her fingers tingled with the urge to brush his hair back so she could see his face.

  The face of a dead man, she realized.

  Harding or one of the other officers had to have made a mistake about this guy being alive. She didn’t fault them for their error, didn’t care she’d missed dinner because of it. This whole scene was disturbing, and for the first time in her life, she was grateful she hadn’t had a chance to eat.

  Harding settled his hat back into place. “I took his pulse myself. He’s alive, or he was alive before you arrived.”

  “Fine.” Roger nodded to her, and together they set their equipment down, careful to keep it out of the blood.

  She knew Roger was placating Harding; this victim had to be dead. Not even Superman could lose that much blood and survive. Roger knelt beside the body
and took hold of the man’s wrist.

  When fingers gripped his wrist, Aiden’s bones felt as if they were fracturing into pieces. He gritted his teeth as he tried to recall what had happened to him and what was going on now. Was someone taking his pulse?

  Lights flashed across his closed lids, voices sounded around him, but he couldn’t separate one from the other.

  Maggie studied the alley as Roger continued to check for a pulse. The officers stood further than normal away from the two dead victims. Three feet away from her, and near the hand of one of the dead, Maggie spotted what looked like a smooshed tomato. It took her a second to realize it was the brutalized remains of a human heart.

  She was never eating again after this, and she may never come out of the shower she planned to take as soon as her shift ended. She would give anything to be somewhere else.

  In the side of the brick building to her right was a metal door. Blood streaked the door, there was no knob, and nothing indicated what lay beyond. Near the door, Walt and Glenn were talking to each other as they set to work on their victim.

  “Shit,” Roger breathed beside her. “He is alive.”

  CHAPTER 6

  Maggie barely managed to keep herself from gawking at Roger as he leaned back and rested his hands on his knees. His skin had become a pasty color she’d never seen on him before, and his brown eyes were troubled when they met hers.

  It didn’t make it any easier that Roger and Harding were as unsettled by this as she was; it made it worse. That meant she didn't imagine this was all wrong; it meant it was all wrong.

  For a second, they stared at each other, and then their training kicked into place. They’d been riding together for so long they didn’t have to speak as they went to work on their patient. In the victim’s condition, the best thing they could do was get him loaded up and to the hospital as fast as possible.

  Kneeling at the man’s side, Maggie got a closer look at his back. The skin had been pulled back about three inches on each side from the center of his spine. The wound ran from beneath his shoulder blades to the middle of his lower back. Through the blood, glistening pieces of his spine were visible. The flow of his blood seemed to have ceased as none pooled within the wound and the puddle beneath him wasn’t spreading.

  No one can survive this. The pain, the shock to his system, the blood loss. This is impossible. Then, she saw the small rise and fall of his back.

  She had the unsettling notion she’d tripped headfirst into a Pink Floyd song and someone was about to start screaming at her that she couldn’t have her pudding until she ate her meat. She then cursed Roger for making her listen to Pink Floyd.

  Maggie’s head twisted to the side as she inspected beyond the wreckage of the man’s back. Through the blood and the tattered remains of his shirt and coat, she noted raw slices arcing across the man’s flesh. Beneath those reddened slices she saw the faint white lines of what appeared to be scars.

  It looked as if he’d been… whipped?

  “What is going on here?” she whispered.

  The man’s bloody fingertips twitched on the ground when she spoke. Maggie gazed at his hand, waiting for further movement, but it remained still.

  “Drug deal gone wrong would be my guess,” Harding said. “I think they were teaching this guy a lesson before they decided to kill him. They picked the wrong place as a group of young bar hoppers stumbled across them and called it in. I was right down the street and the first to arrive.”

  “Wrong place for them, good for him,” Maggie said, and the man’s fingers twitched again.

  Harding grunted. “I picked the wrong decade to quit smoking.”

  “You and me both,” Roger muttered as he worked. “Let’s get him loaded, Mags.”

  “On his back?” she asked as she gazed at his spine, and the man’s fingers jerked toward her.

  “Yes,” Roger said. “We need access to his chest in case he codes, which with the amount of blood he’s lost, is a very good possibility. He’s barely bleeding anymore, so I don’t think he’ll bleed out if we put him on his back.”

  “I don’t think there’s any blood left in him,” Harding muttered, and as improbable as it was, Maggie silently agreed.

  Maggie gazed from the open wound to Roger and back again. “If we put him on his back, it’s really going to hurt him.”

  “He’s probably so far into shock, he’s not feeling much pain anymore,” Roger replied.

  “If it helps, I plan on cuffing him,” Harding interjected.

  “Are you kidding me?” Maggie blurted.

  “No.”

  “So we won’t be able to roll him. He has to go on his back, and if we have any chance of saving him, we have to get him out of here, now,” Roger said.

  “Shouldn’t we bandage him or pack the wound or something?” she asked.

  “With his spine the way it is, I’m not risking putting anything in there and causing more damage. Besides, I think it’s best if we just get him out of here, instead of taking the time to bandage him.”

  “I agree with getting him out of here,” Harding said.

  Maggie sighed in resignation; Roger was right. The longer they stood here and debated a situation they’d never been trained for—because no one ever could have prepared them, or thought to prepare them, for this—the more likely it was they would never get this guy to the hospital alive.

  Together, she and Roger lifted the man and placed him onto the stretcher. She winced for him as his weight settled on his back. If he had enough sense left to register pain, this had to be agonizing for him.

  She nearly shrieked when the man groaned. If she’d been a gambler, she would have bet money on this guy never making it to the hospital, never mind making a sound again. Her eyes shot to Roger, who gazed back at her with a dumbfounded expression she was sure matched hers.

  She couldn’t stop her hands from shaking as she strapped the man down. Harding stepped forward, captured the man’s wrist, and handcuffed it to the stretcher.

  A vaguely familiar, sweet odor pushed aside the stench of garbage and blood clogging Aiden’s nostrils. It took him a moment to place the scent as butterscotch. There had been a girl in his high school who sucked endlessly on butterscotch candies. The scent made him recall how sweet butterscotch tasted on his tongue.

  That high school girl had been the first one he kissed and felt up. She might have become his first everything if her family hadn’t moved to England. She existed back in the days when he’d dreamed of living a relatively normal life for a vampire residing amongst humans. He’d gone to college for a time, back in the day when sports and video games had still been fun and important to him. However, he soon realized he’d been a fool for believing he could fit in as his father and the Stooges had in college.

  His father and the Stooges were turned vamps. He loved them all, but they didn’t have a clue what purebred, male vampires endured when they stopped aging. He hadn’t had a clue either.

  But none of that mattered right now. That was the past. Something was happening in the present he had to focus on.

  Why was his mind so jumbled? Why was he thinking of a girl he’d completely forgotten until now and college days he’d given up?

  If he was in this much pain, he was in danger. Hands gripped him, lifting him and rolling him onto something. He was jostled again, and then someone grabbed his wrist. Cold metal enclosed his wrists; he tried to jerk away, but he didn’t have the strength.

  His body felt like he’d been stretched on a rack before being repeatedly sliced open by Carha’s whip. Why was he so weak?

  Bits and pieces filtered through his mind. Had Carha just chained him? He’d kill the bitch if she had. It didn’t matter if she was the only one willing to flay him open as he needed, he’d warned her not to play games with him.

  Then he heard the butterscotch woman speak again. Her voice dragged him back toward full consciousness. Despite the tremor he detected in it, strength resonated in her tone. His h
and jerked against the metal before someone clasped his other wrist. He turned his head toward the voice and tried to open his eyes. He didn’t like the fear he sensed in her, and if he could look at her, if he could see where he was, then maybe he could remember.

  “I really don’t think he needs to be cuffed,” Maggie said to Harding. The metal handcuff rattled when the man’s hand jerked against his restraint.

  “Until we know what happened here, this man is also a prisoner,” Harding said briskly as he walked around the stretcher to cuff the man’s other wrist too.

  “In case you haven’t noticed, he’s not exactly in the condition to jump up and run off on us,” she retorted.

  “Don’t care.”

  “Officer Harding—”

  Her words broke off when Harding’s eyes met hers, and she saw the wariness in them. It hit her that Harding wasn’t handcuffing their patient out of concern the man might make a miraculous escape; Harding was doing it because he worried for them.

  What have we walked into here? She wondered for the hundredth time since entering this alley.

  “Let’s go, Mags,” Roger said.

  Without speaking, the two of them lifted the stretcher and started to carry it out of the alley. There was too much blood to wheel it out of here. She and Roger would be scrubbing the ambulance for hours afterward if they attempted to wheel it, and she wanted as little to do with this whole mess as possible.

  When she got the chance, she was going to scrub her skin raw. Until then, she would have to be content with getting out of here, getting this guy to the hospital, filing their report, and forgetting any of this happened. Tomorrow, she and probably all the others who’d been here would feel foolish for being so creeped out, but right now all she felt was the impulse to bolt like a rabbit.

  She met Glenn’s eyes when she walked by him. His black skin glistened with sweat as he gave her a nod of greeting. Glenn had been on this job for longer than Roger, yet she saw the alarm in his brown eyes before they shifted to Roger.