Chapter 158 Redemption
Chapter 158 Redemption
Consciousness came back to Enzo in pieces.
The smell arrived first. Antiseptic, recycled air and the staleness of a room that had been closed for too long. Somewhere behind it, was the faint chemical undertone of the machines that had been keeping track of him. He lay with his eyes closed and let the smell tell him where he was before he opened them.
Hospital. He was definitely at a hospital.
He opened his eyes.
The room was dark, but the window across from the bed let in a strip of moonlight that fell across the floor and stopped short of the bed. The machines beside him were beeping steadily, proof that this wasn’t the afterlife at least.
He did not know how long he had been out, so he lay still and took inventory. The venom was gone, and what was left was just deep exhaustion. His arm ached where the drip went in. His leg, where the snake had bitten, was tender but sealed.
He thought about the tunnel, about Grace carrying him on her back through a cave, her breathing audible, her footsteps slow but continuing, and he thought about the way she had said “you don't get to die yet” with the conviction of someone who was not making a suggestion. He had been mostly gone by then, operating on the thin edge of consciousness, but he had heard her voice and followed it.
She had gotten him out.
A smile arrived on his face before he had decided to let it, he lay in the dark hospital room and did not fight it because there was no one watching.
He wanted to apologise to her.
He had been sitting with that want since before the tunnel, since the moment he had lashed out at her for the Matteo conclusion and watched her expression absorb it. She had come back to the pack asking for his help, had risked everything she had, yet, he had put her in a cell.
He was aware that an apology was not sufficient for the sum of what he had done. He was also aware that insufficient was not the same as unnecessary.
Enzo turned his head to look at the chair beside the bed.
Empty.
He stared at it and felt strangely about everything. She had refused to let him die in that tunnel, refused to leave his side, now he'd caught her absence.
“Dammit,” he muttered in a hoarse tone. “She dumped me here.”
He pushed himself to a sitting position and the drip pulled slightly at his arm, he looked at the room properly, the chair, the window, the door with its small square of glass showing the corridor beyond.
That was when the room's atmosphere changed.
Enzo did not hear anything. That was the thing that irked him.
There was someone in this room.
He let his gaze slowly move to the corner near the door, it was darker than the rest of the room, he looked at it and looked at the moonlight on the floor, he looked at the corner again and understood.
That someone was in the corner.
He was off the bed before he thought about it.
The needle in his drip tore through his vein on the way out, the pain of it caused him to immediately wince.
In that same breath, the bed broke.
Enzo heard it behind him as someone—or something—attempted to attack him but ended up a second too late.
Enzo was already moving, already across the room. He didn't stop to study what had attacked him.
He had no idea what it was or how strong it was. Yet, he knew he didn't have the strength to fight it, and that it wasn’t Grace.
The window was right behind him. The decision took less than a moment as he drove his shoulder into the glass, and felt it give way beneath him.
The window shattered.
The cold air hit him instantly and then, he was falling.
Enzo was falling down the three stories of the hospital building, which seemed very high up when you didn’t expect it. Then the ground hit him, and he lay on his side.
He felt his left arm was immediately broken. His left ribs had taken the impact and were broken too. His head had hit something on the way down causing his vision to remain blurry. But he could have sworn that he was the attacker glance down at him for a few seconds, then pulled back slowly.
He pressed his right hand flat against the ground and breathed.
He needed to move. Whatever was in that room would definitely follow him out here. He tried to get up as his left side immediately objected, the pain excruciating. Enzo was already sweating, he groaned and forced himself up on his knees.
He needed to shift.
The change would start the bones knitting themselves back together, forcing his body into the shape it was supposed to be in. It was not a process he would recommend to anyone who had a choice in the matter. It hurt like hell, but it was faster than waiting for his body to heal on its own.
And right now, faster was all he had.
He let the shift begin.
It started somewhere deep inside him and spread outward, his body changing piece by piece. Bones shifted with sharp, ugly cracks, muscles pulled and stretched, every part of him rearranging itself into something else.
It hurt as much as it always did. Maybe worse.
He dug his fingers into the ground and held himself there, letting it happen. There was no point fighting it. Stopping halfway would only make it worse.
Then, suddenly, he was on all fours, running.
Through the car park and across the concrete out onto the road beyond it, the city at this hour was quiet enough that the road was empty, he crossed it without slowing, found the far side, and kept going. His side still ached and the reconstruction was ongoing as he ran, his body was finishing what the shift had started, the running helped in the way that movement sometimes helped things that were in the process of healing, giving the body something to do while it worked.
He had not gone far when something hit the side of his neck without any warning, there was no sound, no movement in his peripheral vision, just the sharp puncture of something that had been aimed at him from somewhere he had not been watching.
His legs lost the coordination they needed to keep moving at speed, and he went down slowly, his front end first and then the rest of him, the road came up to meet him as he hit it and lay there.
He had been hit with a tranquilizer like some animal.
"Fuck," he managed.
He heard voices get closer, then footsteps, he turned his head and saw figures approaching through the blur that was spreading across his vision, the language they were speaking was not one he recognised.
He tried to get up, though his body declined.
As he lay on the road in wolf form with the dart in his neck and the night sky above him gradually going to morning, his last coherent thought was about Grace and where she was.
If it was possible to redeem himself.