“Jules!” Forest twisted around under Connor. “I’ve got to find Jules.”
“Lay there,” the cop ordered as he got up into a crouch. Forest wondered numbly where the gun Connor had in his hand came from and when the lazy Irish burr had suddenly hardened into a rough-edged bark of authority. “Don’t move.”
The buzz of bullets seemed to have ended, but the burn of sound continued to echo in Forest’s ears. For a short moment, he debated getting up, but the heat of Connor’s hand on the small of his back remained, a searing reminder of the order he’d been given.
“God, scared shitless and I’m fucking hard,” Forest whimpered, resting his forehead on the floor.
With his head down and close to the floorboards, Forest got a good look at the underside of the Amp’s bakery case. Sniffing, he inhaled a sting of pine-scented cleaner and sent a mental thank-you to his night crew for mopping thoroughly. Then he turned his head, saw the carnage of the Amp’s dining room, and threw up all over a pool of blood.
Chapter 3
The Devil’s waiting for me behind that door.
She’s got my heart, lay waste to my soul.
Nothing I do can make her let me go.
Hard to touch a heart as black as coal.
—Devil’s Waiting
THERE WAS so much blood. Forest could taste it in the air.
But what was more frightening was the silence—a still, weighty silence where he could hear every little shiver of the dying.
Outside of the Amp, the world somehow stopped turning. No wind-blown leaves, and the flicker of the sun through the trees produced nothing but cold shadows. Forest heard everything in that sickly quiet. A few feet from him, a man struggled to breathe, his lungs gurgling and bubbling as he sucked in air through newly pierced holes. There was no telling where all the blood came from—or who it came from. All Forest knew was it made its own special noise, a squicking wet pop when he pulled his hands up from the floor.
“Forest.” Connor’s voice shattered the quiet, and the world took a breath. The noise—all of the ugly, glorious noise—flooded back into it and it began to turn, once more ignoring the death splattered all over its face. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah,” he gulped, and a new fear stroked his spine. “God, how—Oh God, Jules.”
Because he didn’t know where to start or who to reach for first. The man’s chest stilled, and he crawled quickly over, ignoring the new squicks his hands made or the slide of his knee through a puddle of vomit and blood. He didn’t know who to help, the man whose chest lay splayed open like an eighth-grade frog experiment or the gray-haired woman lying slumped against the bakery case, her temple turned crimson with blood.
“Check that guy there. Check his breathing.” Connor’s bark broke the ice of Forest’s fear. “See if you can press your hands over his wounds. Stop the bleeding.”
“He’s not breathing.” Forest didn’t know where to put his hands or whether or not the sluggish flow of blood cooling along the man’s side was something he should be worried about. “I don’t think he’s—”
“Switch with me. Jules is over there. You go help her. Just keep her company.” The cop was next to him in a second, an enormous mountain of calm amid the chaos. “She’s going to be fine.”
It was as if the coffee shop suddenly came alive, now that its predator was clear of the area. The more ambulatory began to stir, and Connor directed anyone who could walk or function. A couple of men—regulars if Forest remembered right—moved from person to person to help Connor assess the injured. Shakily getting to his feet, Forest lurched off balance, and Connor’s hands came up to catch him.
“I’ve got you, Forest,” Connor promised. “I won’t let you fall.”
There was that hug again—the same one—the same kind of never-ending safety he’d felt when Connor’d held him after Franklin’s death. In the middle of the horror, Forest hugged back, then let go, taking some of Connor’s strength with him.
“Thanks.” The cold set in when he broke from Connor, but his heart settled, catching only a riff of excitement when he spotted Jules lying on the ground under a table. “Jules. Oh shit—”