Chapter 54

They looked at Nate appraisingly. Ryan had laid him across the back seat, careful of his broken leg, and now he was slowly coming to.

“Hey, Ryan,” Aleda said. “I hate to ask, but…”

“No.” He shook his head. “If it was just some cuts and bruises I could do it, but not a broken bone. It’s too much for just one person.”

Nate, hearing their voices, opened his eyes wider and groaned. “Hey, where am I?” he asked. He moved a little and winced. “Ohh, my leg is killing me…”

“Try not to move around too much,” Ryan warned him gruffly. “Your leg’s broke.”

“I was in the hospital…”

“You’re going home now.”

“My, um…” Nate grimaced, the rest of the night coming back to him. “My parents are out. Date night. No cell phone.”

Ryan and Aleda looked at each other and exchanged a shrug.

“My house it is,” Aleda said. “Think he’ll be okay for the drive?”

Ryan frowned thoughtfully.

“I’ll dose him, just a bit. Stop the bleeding anyway.” Though the hospital staff had returned his ruined clothes, he was still dressed in the hospital gown from being in surgery. Ryan was glad of that—taking off the boy’s pants to get to his leg held no appeal to him. He bent over the injured boy, carefully setting an opened hand on his leg, just above the splint on his shin.

It was hard to see a difference in him, even though Ryan kept his hand on the boy for nearly a full minute. Nate was covered in bruises and bandages, and several stitches laced up the skin over his eye. A larger bandage, half-soaked with blood, covered his left shoulder entirely. His left hand and arm, smelling of antiseptic, was covered in shallow cuts. It must have been hit with glass from the window.

When Ryan took his hand away the boy’s face, though still bruised and cut, visibly relaxed.

“Well, he’s not perfect,” Ryan said, standing a little unsteadily, “But that should hold him until we can get back to your parents.”

Satisfied that the boy would be all right for the short car ride, he climbed into the driver’s seat and waited for Aleda to do the same. She lingered at the back seat for a moment, studying Nate’s leg. Ashton hadn’t given the doctors enough time to put on a real cast, and the splint did little more than hold his leg steady until a cast could be applied—or his leg healed. When Nate had first come out of the emergency room, the skin on his leg had been badly discolored and slit along the shattered bone, held together with a long row of stitches. She could practically see where the pieces of bone had come too close to the surface. Now the welt was gone, along with the cut; instead of a neat row of stitches, loose bits of thread lay scattered across unbroken skin. He still didn’t move his leg—it must have hurt like hell—but it looked much smoother than it had only seconds ago.

And yet his hand and face were still covered in cuts.

She made sure he was strapped in, crisscrossing the seatbelts across his prone form, before finally going around the car and sliding in next to Ryan.

It only took half an hour to get back to Keeney. Newark was very close to the little town, and though the hospital was well in the middle of the city, there was almost no traffic to delay them. Ryan scooped the boy out of the back seat and unenthusiastically carried him up the path and onto the front porch. Aleda hurried in front of them and opened the door.

“Mom! Papá?” she called into the house. Behind her, Ryan took Nate to the couch and set him down in what might have been a comfortable position. There were some embarrassing and hurried noises from the master bedroom. A minute later both parents had made it out and into the living room.

“Aleda! What happened?” Mom asked, her eyes wide when she saw the bandaged boy laying across the couch.

“YOU!”

Aleda nearly jumped out of her skin at the roar that echoed across the hallway. Her father had just seen Nate. Papá stormed across the room and shoved an extremely startled Ryan into the wall. “I warned you,” he growled furiously. “I warned you not to let anything like this happen. I do not care how well you fought in a war twenty years ago. Leave this house, and never let me see you again, or I swear upon all that is good and holy in this world I will—”

“Papá!” Aleda yelled. She pulled at the fabric of his shirt, trying to get him away from Ryan. “It wasn’t him! Nate was in an accident, and we found him! Papá!”

Hearing his daughter’s voice, he finally released Ryan and ran his eyes over her, looking for any sign of injury or hurt. “Are you alright, little angel?”

“I’m fine. I told you. He was in a car accident,” Aleda explained. “We got him out of the hospital. But please, can you help him?” Ryan, annoyed, forced himself to be calm anyway and moved next to her, rubbing a hand along her back.

Papá hesitated, his mind trying to shift gears too quickly, then nodded. “Of course”.

Mom had already hurried to Nate’s side and opened her hand for him, pressing it above his heart. “Alejandro?” she called from the couch. “I’m going to need your help.”

Papá looked over and immediately went to sit by his wife’s side. Aleda looked over at them as well. Papá knelt by the side of the couch while Mom held her hand against his heart, concentrating. Aleda could almost see the blood pumping from her arm into his chest, tracing a path of light along her veins. It spread out from his chest in a wide flush, healing as it went. A few seconds later, Nate was already visibly better—the gash above his eye was gone, as were the myriad of cuts and bruises along his hand and arm. She couldn’t see his left shoulder, since it faced the back of the couch, but she could tell that Mom had removed the large bandage that had been strapped across it. The other bandages were gone as well. Mom, however, was much, much paler even than usual.

“I’ve gotten him almost healed,” Mom said, breathing a little unsteadily, “But his leg was pretty badly broken. I think they put a screw in his bone at the hospital, and it’s not coming out. We’re going to have to get it out.”

Nate, now quite awake, went white as a sheet.

“It’ll be quick,” Ryan assured him. “She’s done this sort of thing before… except the guy didn’t mean to have a rebar through his knee.”

Aleda, who had walked over to stand next to Ryan, coughed at this morbid mental image… and, frankly, at the fact that he had actually reassured the boy. In his own way.

“Alejandro,” Mom said again, though now he was kneeling right next to her. “Do you think you could hold him steady?”

“Of course.”

Although she was now far too drained to actually heal Nate any more, her hand was still steady and her claws were still sharp. Papá put one arm across his chest and the other hand on his leg, holding him steady in an iron grip. Mom prodded the leg for a second time before unsheathing the claws of her right hand. With Papá keeping an opened hand on his leg to stop the bleeding, she sliced carefully and deep. Through the flesh. Into the bone. Aleda hurried out of the living room and into the kitchen, feeling faint.

She leaned against the counter for a second, willing the image out of her head. Finally, regaining her senses, she busied herself getting a few glasses out of the cupboard and filling them with milk. If it was taking three called hunters to patch Nate up, there was a good chance they’d need some replenishing afterwards. She managed to juggle all three glasses in her hands and the crook of one elbow and took them back out to the living room, pointedly not looking at Mom. Who was rummaging around between half-healed splinters of bone to detach the bloodied metal screw. Oh, geez.

She swallowed, and steadied herself. She handed one of the glasses to Ryan; Mom and Papá were still too busy with Nate to have any hands free, so she set the other two glasses on the floor next to them. Mom reached for hers with her free hand; Papá nodded to Aleda in acknowledgement. Nate, the lucky one, had passed out.

A few minutes later, it was done. Mom finally fished out the offending screw and handed it off to a horrified Aleda. To make matters worse, she then poked the bits of bone back into place. It was at this point that Aleda buried her face in Ryan’s shirt, and didn’t see the rest of what happened. His scent overpowered the lingering smell of blood and antiseptic and did wonders to calm her down. He chuckled softly, knowing what had caused her sudden affection, and wrapped a reassuring arm around her back. A few seconds later he touched her arm.

“Hey,” he said. “They’re all done. You can look now.”

She reluctantly pulled away and turned her head to see. Papá, now quite pale as well, had taken his hands from Nate’s chest and leg and was now practically chugging the glass of milk Aleda had poured for him. Mom’s color was already returning.

Papá stood up and approached Aleda.

“We had a call from the new Organizer not two hours ago,” he told her, thoughtfully. “One of our cousins had reported an injured hunterborn, and the parents could not be reached. He asked us to drive to the house of Matt and Laurel Burns, to see if they could be found.”

Aleda nodded. “They’re on some sort of date night. Simón sent another cousin, with some kind of paperwork, to get Nate out of the hospital.”

“I thought it was you, at first,” he continued. “Before he told me the name. But it was you who made the call, was it not,” Papá said. To her surprise, there were tears forming in his eyes. She nodded. “You made the call,” he said again, “And made the arrangements, and brought him back home.”

She nodded again, wondering what was wrong.

“And you did all this instead of going to your dance,” he continued. He smiled slightly, though his eyes still glistened. “I… I am sorry I doubted you.”

“Papá?”

“I know I have not done as much as other fathers, to instruct you,” he said with a sidelong glance at Ryan. “I only meant to keep you safe. I should have thought to let you keep yourself safe.” He glanced at Ryan again and cleared his throat. “I am sorry, little angel, for my reaction. I was surprised, that is all. I did not expect…” He shook his head. “I am very proud of you.”

Aleda’s face broke into a surprised but happy grin. “Really?” she asked. Papá nodded.

On the couch, Nate came to.

“Oh, man,” he groaned loudly, pulling himself up to a sitting position. “What happened this time?”

“You fainted,” Ryan informed him with a slight smirk.

“How do you feel?” Mom asked.

 Nate frowned, and appeared to take some sort of internal inventory. “…Good,” he finally said. “Nothing hurts, anymore. Is my leg…?”

“The screw didn’t want to come out,” Mom told him, “But you’re all patched up now. Good as new.”

Nate ran a hand down his leg. Under the skin, the bone flowed smoothly from knee to ankle, unbroken and whole.

“Wow… Thanks,” he said, dumbly. He looked at his leg again and realized there was nothing covering it. Then he realized what he was wearing. He was still wearing the hospital gown. “Aw, s**t… where’s my clothes?”

“What do you mean?” Ryan asked. “That’s a perfectly nice dress you’ve got there. Suits you. Is that what you were going to wear to the dance?”

Aleda stifled a giggle and poked him in the ribs. “Shh!” she scolded him. “Be nice!” She turned to Nate. “I think I left your clothes in the car, although they’re kind of shredded now.”

“Better than this thing,” Nate said, and made a face. “I look like a sitcom.”

“Yeah, yeah, alright. Hold on,” Ryan told him, and went out the front door. He returned a minute later with an arm full of bloodstained clothes. “Put them back on, if you really want to,” he said, and dropped the stack onto Nate’s lap.

“We’d better get you back to your house,” Aleda said.

“Mind if I…” he swung his legs over the side of the couch and gestured towards the stack of torn cloth in his hands.

“Yeah. Yeah, of course,” she said. “You know where the bathroom is.”

Ryan stiffened at this mention of Nate’s familiarity with the household, but he waited patiently as the boy hurried out of the room to the small bathroom across the hall. Not a minute later Nate reemerged looking like an action-movie extra on a coffee break. Ryan eyed him critically.

“It’s a good thing it’s dark out,” he said dryly. “You’re a mess.”

Nate scowled at him. Unfortunately, Ryan was right. His left pant leg was torn from the knee down; his left sleeve was completely shredded. The whole thing was spotted with drying blood, especially his collar where the gash on his forehead had dripped onto his shirt.

Once upon a time it had been a tuxedo.

Speaking of clothes, Aleda realized she was still wearing her long scarlet dress. Back at home, and she hadn’t even made it to prom. Before they left again to drive the disheveled Nate home she looked at the clock. It was still only ten o’clock.

“We have a little time,” Ryan said to her. “We could still make it, if you wanted.”

Aleda looked dubious. “For all of ten minutes?”

“Well… I know you wanted to go.”

She chewed on her lip for a moment, thinking. After all the drama of the last few hours, spending a few minutes in a hotel dancing to bad music almost seemed… anticlimactic. For all of the effort she had put into her dress, and her hair, and her makeup, all she really wanted was a little time to herself.

Well, to themselves.

She gave Ryan a knowing half-smile. “You want to grab a cheeseburger?”

He let out the breath he had been holding. “Oh thank goodness,” he said, causing Aleda to snort in laughter.

“I knew you didn’t want to go!” she said, bumping his arm playfully.

He answered her snort with one of his own. “Are you kidding? Spend four hours in an economy hotel eating cheap steak and dancing to the latest in form-press pop music? If you can call it ‘dancing’?”

He took her hand and pulled her happily out to the car. A cranky Nate trailed behind.