CHAPTER TWENTY SEVEN: SUNRISE
They waited. Sunrise wasn't long in coming and Wilson watched in amazement as the two hairy monsters slowly morphed back into forms he quickly recognized. One was a young man, dark hair, pale skin, twitching painfully on the ground. The other was the tall, stern body of Brenda Previn, the Hitlerlike ruler of the nurse's station.
House inspected the injuries. Cuddy had done a good job of missing any vital organs. Still, Gerard's injuries were extensive. There was a large, gaping hole where his throat should have been. As House watched him, the body stopped convulsing and lay completely motionless. "He's dead." House informed the room.
"Where's Foreman?" House looked around. He wanted Foreman to run some tests on Brenda, while she was still in that in between stage.
"You sent him home, remember?" Wilson spoke hollowly. He was just an oncologist; he wasn't trained for this kind of thing.
"Right." House looked up at Cuddy. She looked pale and on the verge of fainting. "You didn't kill him." He knew that would be important to her.
"Right," she nodded, not really registering his words. She had never wanted this. She'd run away from it years before. Now it was all coming back to her.
The door swung open and Harry hurried in, Murphy and Bob's trusty old skull in tow. "Is everyone alright?" He breathed heavily in the door. Murphy scanned the room with her gun before lowering it and sliding it back in it's holster.
"What happened?" She looked at the two bodies laying on the floor, then at the group of frazzled doctors scattered around the room.
Cuddy finally snapped back into the present. "We've got to get Brenda out of here. If she wakes up and sees...she knows what's happening to her. I don't want this boy to be the first thing she sees."
"She knows?" House looked up at Cuddy. "What did she say? What's it like?"
Wilson headed out into to find a gurney. When he returned he motioned Harry to help him move Brenda onto it. Cuddy had filled House in on the cage and the events at the Previn home while they were gone.
"Are you sure?" House seemed concerned about something.
"Yes House, I might not practice medicine regularly, but I can still tell when someone is dead."
"You're telling her." House was never a fan of bad news. Not so much because he didn't want to hurt people's feelings, but he really didn't like them blubbering all over him and trying to drag him into a hug or telling him their life story.
"Just go help her." Cuddy's eyes followed Brenda out the door. House obeyed and hobbled along after the gurney. He had given up on the wheelchair and shoved a few extra Vicodin down his throat to deal with the increased pain.
House ran Brenda through a series of tests with Wilson's help. He didn't call in the Ducklings like he normally would. He didn't have time for their questions and blank stares. He needed to get this done and quickly.
"How did this happen?" Wilson placed some diodes on her chest while House prepped one of the hospitals many high priced machines.
"That's what I want to find out." House checked that Wilson was done, then started up the machine.
"I still can't believe..."
"You think I can?" House was frustrated with the lack of a rational explanation. Everything in his life could be explained through some scientific reasoning, but this...this was beyond the world he was comfortable with. This challenged every belief he had, and he didn't like it.
"Those vampires, the ones you said attacked you, they were real, weren't they?" Wilson was finally putting it all together. He couldn't pretend it was all an elaborate prank anymore. House wouldn't have gone through this much effort and expense just to prank him.
"Ya think?" House gave Wilson an exaggerated duh face. Sometimes his friend could be painfully slow.
"What the hell is going on House?"
"I think I can answer that." It was a voice unfamiliar to Wilson. He turned to see Harry Dresden standing in the doorway. Cuddy was with him. He had his arm around her waist. Wilson glanced over at House who looked up, scowled and went back to what he was doing.
"By all means," Wilson motioned the tall stranger in.
"Have you ever heard of Hellento?" He noticed the blank stares. "Right, of course not." He shook the stupidity out of his head. "It's basically, sort of, well..."
"It's what you'd call Hell," another voice finished. It was a clear, strong voice with the hint of a posh accent. Wilson watched as the body that went with the voice materialized out of a big messenger bag on Harry's hip.
"What the hell!" Wilson stumbled back.
"That's Bob," House said with a hint of contempt.
"What's a Bob?" Wilson crashed into the table Brenda was laid out on and quickly steadied himself against it.
"Bob," the man who's name it was spat, "is a centuries old sorcerer who could, in his glory days, have killed you with a thought."
"Bob," Harry warned.
"Alas, now I am a ghost of my former self, and must obey the commands of this wreck of a wizard." He motioned his head toward Harry who just grinned helplessly. "And I have been ordered to inform you that you are all in deep shit." Bob folded his hands in front of him and waited for this to sink in.
There was a lot of stuttered mumbling, fidgeting, and Wilson nearly fainted, but things settled down fairly quickly and Bob continued. "A demon, or more precisely a pair of demons seem to have a price out on HIS head." Bob shoved an ominous finger in House's direction. "Every hound from hell is now after the bounty that has been placed on it."
"Why?" Cuddy knew it was a silly question. House had pissed off plenty of humans, what was to stop him from making enemies of a couple of demons as well.
"That I cannot say. It is very hard to get information out of Hellanto. It was only by shear brilliance that I managed to find out this much." Bob glowed proudly, but not literally as one might expect. "The demon are Eitak and Erohs. A nasty duo. If you ask me..."
"No one asked you Bob," Harry informed him.
Bob ignored him and went on. "You're best bet is to high tail it out of here and go into hiding." He glared at House.
"Yeah, well..." House looked hopefully at Cuddy. She was his guardian angel, she always had been.
"We're not going to run away Bob." Cuddy had found a new strength. No one, not even a pair of maniacal demons were going to threaten one of her doctors. "Fine another solution."
"Well, the only other solution is you fight them, lose and get horribly murdered." Bob wasn't a big Plan B kind of ghost.
"That's not acceptable." Cuddy answered.
"It's all I've got." Bob threw up his hands in defeat.
"Go find another solution Bob." Harry ordered. With one last look and an unspoken understanding, Bob vanished.
