Chapter 12.
Morgead sank down into the front seat of the car that some of the other Daybreakers had gotten for him and Winnie. It was a convertible. Fire engine red. He liked the car, even if it wasn't exactly practical if Gillian turned out to be injured, but it was perfect for the devil-may-care vampire and witch Night Worlders they were impersonating – and that he had once been. He longed for his motorbike, almost as much as he did Jez, but that would have been even less practical. Or at least that's what Winnie said, he didn't think much about practicality.
Now, he was even less practical than ever. He was beyond pissed off, and that was never a good thing with him, he was now in what Jez called 'one of his very excited states'.
"I give up!" he announced so loud that the car next to them probably knew, he didn't mean the words, knowing he couldn't give up, but ranted them out anyway, "we've looked in every club in Vegas and no one – I repeat, no one – has seen Lennox. She's a Harman for heaven's sake! She's pretty hard to miss, damnit!"
"I give up," he announced, not meaning the words but ranting them out anyway, "We've looked in every club is Vegas and no one has seen Lennox. She's a Harman for heaven's sake, she's pretty hard to miss, damnit!"
Beside him, Winnie nodded her agreement, "Yeah, but they could have been lying, and besides…" she paused, patted her own now-dark hair for affect, "we did change our appearances quite a lot, she hardly looks like a Harman."
"Yeah, I know," he wasn't just saying it, he did know, he'd been telling himself the same thing ever since they started searching for a girl with auburn hair and bright blue eyes – instead of her platinum blonde hair and violet eyes that he was used to, "but I promised David we'd get her back, and what in hell are we supposed to do now?"
Winnie frowned, "I think we're gonna have to go back to the mansion, Morgead, get a proper search party together, maybe a few other witches who can track her better than I can."
He nodded, grabbing the gear stick before ramming the car into reverse and making a U turn in the middle of the road while horns blared out at him, Winnie grabbed onto the door handle, ready to bolt out of the car in a second if he somehow toppled it, but he was perfectly calm "you're right. David wont be happy. Jeez, I'm not happy, but you're right."
As soon as they got to the hospital – a surprisingly normal, human hospital – Thea and Holly were risked away and Eric was ushered to the waiting room. He had been asked to give details for both girls, even though he told them again and again that he barely knew Holly and didn't know a contact address or her birthday. He didn't want to put Thierry's mansion in case there were night people about and they realises who she was. For Thea's contact address and number he put his own house, her grandmother had been killed…Blaise had been killed…she really didn't have anyone else anymore but him and his family.
Once the annoying people following him about with forms had gone, Eric had amused himself reading the various leaflets around the waiting room for the first hour since Thea had come in, although he didn't care about diabetes or pregnancy or deafness, he was just trying to keep his mind off what he was do…if…if she didn't make it… now he was a nervous wreck, couldn't sit still for more than a minute.
He paced from one end of the waiting room to the other, and back again. He looked at his watch, two hours had gone by since Thea and Holly had come in, and the nurse hadn't come back to tell him about either like she promised she would, but he felt a vibration against his hip and jumped, yelping, eventually pulling out a cell phone. He was surprised that he'd actually brought it – it was a running joke with him and Thea that he had a phone but never took it anywhere, and if he did he wouldn't answer it or it wouldn't be charged. Now, he stepped just outside, where he could still see the waiting room through the glass doors if the nurse came back. He answered the phone, hoping it wouldn't be Thierry telling him to come back.
"Eric!" a familiar woman's voice was on the other end, she sounded worried, with probably good reason – Eric thought bitterly – the hospital had probably phoned her, "what's wrong with Thea, honey? The hospital phoned to tell me you were there, but they didn't tell me much else, just that I was to come, and…do you need me to come down?"
he was silent for a few seconds, wondering what to say to her. His mother didn't know about the Night World – Crazy, seen as how even Rosemund knows, so he stuck to the story that he had told the doctors and the receptionist, "she was out with a friend, Holly, and hey got attacked. Thea got stabbed in the stomach, I don't know much more than that, they wont let me see her…"
"Oh Eric, I'm coming over, you shouldn't be alone right now…"
"It's alright, mom," he assured her, although he felt like begging her to come. He didn't want to worry her more than necessary, didn't want to put her in danger, and he certainly didn't want Rosemund begging him to tell her what really happened. Through the glass doors he could see the slightly overweight, brown haired nurse of about thirty or forty who had talked to him before, "but I have to go, the nurse has come back."
"Okay honey, but call me if you hear anything, anything at all," his mother sounded tearful as he clicked of the phone, not bothered if he was being rude, and sprinted through the doors before the nurse could go, thinking he'd left. He burst into the waiting room and she turned around, the look on her face changing from disappointment to surprise to amusement, then going back to sombre again.
"Ah, Mr. Ross," she said, directing him to a chair. He didn't like that at all. They generally told people to sit down when they were going to be given bad news. He half felt like standing up, hoping against hope that that could save Thea, but decided he wouldn't be able to stay standing up if there was something wrong with her, he sat down slowly. "Thea's going to be fine," he breathed out a sigh of relief and opened his mouth to speak. The nurse cut him off, "but she's lost one of the babies. It's actually surprising that the other one is fine, after that…" she trailed off, seeing Eric's expression as he stared at her, mouth open. He tried to close it painfully.
Is she trying to tell me what I think she's trying to tell me? He wondered dumbly, then shook his head quickly. Thea couldn't have been pregnant, she just couldn't have been. She would have told him, and she didn't look it.
"she was pregnant?" he asked incredulously.
"Well, yes, we assumed you knew," suddenly, the nurse pressed her hand to her mouth as though she'd spilled some terrible, terrible secret, "oh dear. Eric, how long have you and Miss Harman been going out?"
Dumbly, not knowing what she was getting out, he shrugged, "a year maybe."
"Oh good. She's five months pregnant, I can't see how she wouldn't have known," the nurse fretted, "twins. They should both have died, we're lucky really that the other has such willpower."
He stood up, paced the room a moment. He didn't know how he could grieve for a baby he hadn't even known existed, but he did, not quite as much as he wanted to see Thea though, "I need…I mean, can I…?"
The nurse nodded, "don't stress her too much though, she needs the rest," Eric translated this perfectly in his mind to "don't ask her why she didn't tell you." The nurse gestured for him to follow her and bustled along the halls so fast that he could barely keep up.
Along the way, he tried to figure out what to say to Thea.
Poppy drove faster than she had ever drove in her whole life, James was in the backseat, all three seatbelts securely fastened over him, groaning every time she went over a bump in the road. She couldn't help it – the road happened to be bumpy. "Oh goddess, Jamie, just hang on til we get to Thierry's mansion," she begged, not turning to face him, "I know it hurts, I can feel it, but please hang on."
She got no answer in reply, but he didn't argue so she thought that was probably a good thing.
"Let him be alright," she begged loudly, not knowing who she was begging, but wanting them to hear her, "I'll stop fighting, I'll sit at the mansion and never kill another person again. I'll do anything, but let him be okay…"
For the first time ever since they set off from the warehouse, Poppy came across a set of traffic lights that weren't on green, instead on red. She flew through it, swerving as to avoid the accidents that the lights were actually there to avoid. She didn't worry about getting a ticket; being technically dead, she didn't even have a licence, but Thierry could sort anything out for her. All that was important was James.
She wished he could have gone to a normal hospital like Thea and Holly, but they would have noticed that he had completely different blood, and when he needed to feed, the icky hospital food that Poppy had endured wouldn't be substantial.
He wasn't critical yet, she knew. He wasn't going to die on her in the next half an hour that it would take her to get to Thierry's mansion, but if the poison couldn't be stopped from entering his bloodstream straight to his heart, he would die. No question about it.
He'd saved her from death once, and now, she thought grimly, pressing her foot down even harder on the accelerator, I'm going to save him.
