disclaimer: we do not own the Bloodlines world or characters.

Jill's POV

Sometimes, all it takes to make you feel better is a grease stained paper bag filled with Chinese food. Sometimes, it takes more than that.

"Well, it seems you've had an eventful night," Abe Mazure said, his dark eyebrows drawn with worry. He held the paper bag in one hand and was already rushing forward to take Rose from Neil with his other.

"I'm fine," she slurred.

Neil put his attention back on Sydney,, who he was carrying. Rose had been leaning against him and keeping herself steady with his arm, but Sydney couldn't do that. She looked awful. Her hair and face were covered in blood and she was shaking now. Probably from the cold.

It was freezing out here. Luckily, they hadn't put us in hospital gowns. I wasn't sure why. Maybe they didn't have to. But they'd cut my pants into shorts and my legs were numb. That didn't help me support Adrian.

I really wasn't good at this. Adrian felt a million times heavier than he should have, and I didn't have the energy for this. Especially not with his weakness coming through the bond.

I stumbled over an empty soda can and almost fell forward, but caught myself.

Christian was pulling Eddie along. Christian looked three shades paler than usual, and I was anxious that he was going to be the next one dragged.

The car was another minivan. An army green Honda with a bench seat in the middle as well as in the back. That meant unless we put Sydney in front, we were going to have to put her right next to someone. And I was pretty sure blood needed to be kept behind tinted windows.

Abe helped Rose sit against the side of the car. She rested her head against the open sliding door. Neil set Sydney in the window side of the bench seat and rushed over to me. When Adrian's weight had come off me, I let out a sigh.

"Thanks," I said softly and leaned against the car.

While he was helping Adrian into the seat beside Sydney's, he said, "Are you hurt?"

I'd been pushed and knocked over, but I didn't think it was anything serious. My elbows hurt. I'd probably scraped them. But that was it.

"Yeah. I'm fine. You?"

He shrugged. "Fine."

"Rose isn't," Abe said, sounding almost Angry. He was kneeling in front of Rose and touching the area around a deep cut in the fleshy part of her lower leg.

"I'm fine," she tried again.

"She got shot in the shoulder too," Christian said, lowering Eddie so he rested beside her.

"Back of my shoulder," she slurred. Her eyes looked unfocused. I knelt in front of the two of them.

"What about Eddie?" He just looked bloody. Blood everywhere. There wasn't a specific spot.

Abe leaned over Rose to get a look at him. "Looks like a bullet nicked his jaw."

"All that blood from a nick?" Christian was leaning against the front of the car, rubbing his wrist.

"Did you hurt your wrist?" I asked.

"Yeah. I think it'll be fine. Just sore."

He'd been knocked down like I had. But I was certain he'd been kicked in the side. I wasn't going to bring it up. I remembered him in the hospital, complaining about bruises and holding his side. It must hurt now. He was hiding it well.

Rose had closed her eyes. I shook her good leg a little. She blinked open her eyes enough to glare at me. I looked at Abe. "We can't really go back to the hospital. We kind of broke out."

He pressed his lips into a thin line and slid the bag over to me. "Here, take this." He stood and walked around to the other side of the car. I craned my neck to watch him lean in the open window and say something to Sydney.

"She isn't talking," Christian said, going around to where Abe was standing, looking in the window. "I don't know what you're asking her, but she hasn't spoken once since we got her out."

He stood up straight again. "Tragic."

He took a few steps away from the car. Christian leaned against it, covering my view of Abe. I looked back to Eddie and Rose. Eddie was unconscious. Or just not talking. Rose was looking at me.

"Where is he?" She probably meant Abe.

"He was walking away. I can't see him anymore."

"Don't go back. We can't risk it."

"I know."

I climbed into the back of the minivan, craning my neck over Sydney and Adrian to see Abe, a few yards away, on the phone. I couldn't hear what he was saying.

"I wonder who it is," Christian said, not a hint of sarcasm in his voice for once.

"Yeah."

Adrian was sleeping and it looked like Sydney was trying not to. Her eyes kept drifting closed and struggling open.

"Lissa maybe? She won't be happy we've got more problems," he guessed.

"She's not going to trust us to travel alone anymore."

He laughed. "She already doesn't. That's why we've got Eddie, Rose, and Neil."

Neil. Where was he? I turned around to look for him and he was sitting a few feet away. He would have been behind me when I had been kneeling. He was writing in his notebook again.

"Yeah," I replied again and climbed back out of the van. I went and sat beside Neil. He glanced up at me, then back down at the notebook.

"What are you writing?"

"A letter," he said.

"To who?"

"Olive."

"Really?"

He nodded.

"You've been working on it for a while."

He nodded again. "I don't really know how to say it without sounding... vulnerable."

I smiled a little. "That's what makes it authentic. Vulnerability."

"But I want to be strong. She is."

"Vulnerability does make you strong. Not everybody is strong enough to let it show."

He seemed to think about this before starting with his pencil again.

"How has that not broken yet?" I asked.

"The pencil?" I nodded. "Oh, it has. I have a sharpener in my pocket."

I laughed.

Christian's POV:

I was tired of trying to read Abe's lips. I was awful at it. Like, as bad as I am at compulsion. So I went back around the car and found the Chinese food Abe had been carting around at the beginning of our encounter. It had a smiling Chinese guy on the front. Which told me the restaurant probably wasn't actually run by anyone Chinese. The bag was heavy enough that I quickly transferred it to the wrist that didn't feel like it was being pulled out of it's socket before I dug out a piece of pork. The food was good, even though it was a little cold.

Jill and Neil were talking off to the side and I felt it would probably say a little too much about my social skills to sit with the mute kids, so I went and sat on Neil's other side.

"Egg roll?"

"What?"

"I don't like them." I put the greasy thing on top of the page of his notebook and he grabbed it immediately.

"Don't put it on my paper!"

I laughed. There was a small grease spot, but I didn't see what it mattered. The writing wasn't legible anyway.

"Can I have a fried shrimp?" Jill asked. I nodded and dug one out for her. She nibbled on it slowly, watching Neil eat his egg roll like he was tearing apart his enemy, not whatever gross smelling green stuff was in there.

"What's got your panties in a twist?" I asked.

"He's writing a letter," Jill supplied, "And now he's going to have to write it again."

"I have to anyway," he said, "This one's terrible too."

Jill shook her head and started to take the notebook, but Neil grabbed it back.

"Please?" she asked, "I can help you make it better."

He frowned, but let her take it. She read it slowly, her hair falling over one shoulder. I watched the four vegetables sit there and bleed. Most of them were bleeding at least. Adrian was just as out of it with half the blood.

"God, if I got this from-"

Abe came around the car then, cutting off Jill's longing statement, and we all looked to him expectantly.

"I'm coming up short for once," he said. If Rose could, she'd tease him for the statement. "The only hospital nearby is the one you came from."

"And that's out of the picture," I said.

"Rose knocked a nurse and a doctor unconscious," Jill said like she was tattling on a bully in kindergarten. I hated kids who tattled in kindergarten, but at least what she was saying was true.

Strigoi kid bit me!

No I didn't!

Strigoi kid! Strigoi kid!

"So what are we going to do?" Neil asked. He'd flipped the notebook closed on Jill's lap.

"Drive faster," Abe said. "Court's two hours away."

"Well look where driving faster got us last time," I rolled my eyes.

"You think we'll make it?" Jill asked, "Or, well, they'll make it?"

He walked over to Rose and lifted her easily. "No. I hope they'll make it."

Abe slid Rose into her seat and slid the seat belt across her chest. It clicked loudly. He loaded Eddie up next, and then I climbed in. All there was in front of my seat was space. The bench seat didn't extend that far. I let my leg stretch forward until my foot brushed Adrian's ankle. Then I thought about it more, and decided to put my foot up on the arm rest next to him. Jill got in the passenger seat and Neil got in the driver's seat.

Two hours in the back with the dying ones. Fun.