Many Bloody Returns by Charlaine Harris Schulz and Toni L. P. Kelner

Author:Charlaine Harris Schulz and Toni L. P. Kelner
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: Penquin
Published: 2007-08-20T04:00:00+00:00

I walked away from the smoking wreckage. Staggered, actually, coughing and carrying the limp body of Miranda; she was alive, bleeding from the head but still alive.

My brain wouldn’t bring up anything about Trent, Jane, or Guy. Nothing. It just…refused.

I walked until I heard sirens and saw flashing lights, and dropped to my knees, with Miranda in my lap.

The first cop on the scene was Richard Morrell, the son of the mayor. I’d always thought that even though his family was poisonous, he was kind of a nice guy. He’d been kind to me when I’d had to testify against my brother, after Jason…did what he did. Richard proved it again now by easing Miranda out of my arms and to the ground, cushioning her head gently to keep it from bumping against the pavement. His warm hand pressed on my shoulder. “Eve. Eve. Anybody else in there?”

I nodded slowly. “Jane. Trent. Guy.” Maybe I’d been wrong. Maybe I’d imagined all of that. Maybe they were about to crawl out of that twisted mass of metal and laugh and high five….

Too much imagination. I imagined dead, bloody bodies crawling out of the wreck and swayed. Nearly collapsed. Richard steadied me. “Easy,” he said. “Easy, kid. Stay with me.”

I did. Somehow, I stayed conscious even when the ambulance drivers wheeled the gurneys past me. Miranda was taken first, of course, and rushed off to the hospital with flashers and sirens.

They didn’t bother hurrying for the others. They just loaded the black zippered bags into one ambulance, and it drove away. They wanted me to go with them, but I told them no, I was fine, because no way was I getting in there with the bodies of my friends. I couldn’t.

The fire department hosed down the wreck, and it smelled like burned metal and reeking plastic, alcohol, blood….

I was still kneeling there on the pavement, pretty much forgotten, when Richard finally came back, did a double take, and looked grim. “Nobody came to get you? From your family?”

“You called them?”

“Yeah, I called,” he said. “Come on. I’ll take you home.”

I wiped my face. The white makeup was almost gone, and my skin was wet; I hadn’t even known I was crying.

Not a mark on me.

Sit here, Miranda had told me. Right here. Like she’d known. Like she’d picked me over her own sister.

I couldn’t stop shaking. Officer Morrell found a blanket in his patrol car and threw it around my shoulders, and then he bundled me in the back and drove me the five miles home. All the lights were on at my parents’ house, but it didn’t look welcoming. I checked the time on my cell phone. Three a.m.

“Hey,” Richard said. “This is the big day, right? I’m sorry about your friends, but you need to focus now. Make the right choices, Eve. You understand?”

He was trying to be kind, as much as he knew how to be; must have been hard, considering the asshole genes he’d been given. I tried to think what his sister Monica would have said in the same situation.

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