A Perfect Blood

need a pain amulet. Does anyone have a pain amulet?” Ivy had a pain amulet. Ivy was somewhere else.
    “I’ll get you to an ambulance,” Trent said softly, the obvious cost of his clothes granting him passage to the surface as he went up the stairs against a tide of uniformed people flowing underground.
    “Rachel?” came Glenn’s voice as our heads broke the surface and the wind blew my tangled hair into Trent’s face. “Jenks said . . . My God! What did he do to you?”
    “I’m fine,” I said, feeling dizzy as Trent stopped and the two tall black men peering at me coalesced into one. “We played chicken with his bullets, and I won. You mind getting that light out of my eyes? I can’t see crap.”
    Glenn and Trent exchanged uneasy glances, and I realized it wasn’t a light in my face, but the sun. “Close your eyes, Rachel,” Trent said, and I did, a faint feeling of fear sliding to the back of my head and making me shut my mouth, too. Some of those blows had been to my head.
    “Is she okay?” Glenn whispered. “How did you get down there, Mr. Kalamack?”
    “She tried to jump out and jumped me in instead,” he said simply. “She just needs some shade. I’ve got her okay. Can you get those reporters out of here?”
    “Lord have mercy, they found us already,” Glenn said, and I cracked an eye, almost smiling at the phrase and the hint of his southern background showing. “Ah, the ambulances are over there. You got her?”
    “Yeah, we got her,” Jenks said, and I winced as his dust hit my face.
    “No ambulance,” I whispered. “Trent, no. I want to see Eloy put in a car and leave. If you put me in an ambulance, they’ll take me to a hospital. Promise me.”
    “No ambulance,” he said, and I relaxed—until I realized I was still in his arms as he marched through the stopped traffic to a bus bench and set me down. His arms slid from me, and I shivered in the heat of the afternoon.
    Slowly, bleary and blinded by the sun, I started to notice things. Traffic was stopped both ways, and Trent slowly sat down beside me, propping me upright without appearing to. Jenks was between us on the back of the bench, dusting in worry. FIB guys were everywhere, their successful mood making it feel like the Festival of Honking Horns. I could see the opening into the tunnels and the official vehicles arriving on the scene. Numb, I sat and shallowly breathed the good Cincy air, the late afternoon thick with the scents of a million people. The delicate scent of cinnamon and wine laced with green sherbet seemed to grow stronger.
    “Ah, Trent? I think she needs an ambulance,” Jenks said suddenly, and I sighed, my eyes closing.
    “She’s fine,” Trent muttered, propping me back up. “Can you point out any of those men you saw earlier? The ones that weren’t FIB or I.S.?”
    Jenks’s wings clattered, and I touched my cheek, warm where Eloy had smacked me. “Ow,” I murmured, and Jenks rose up, his dust falling on me a worried black.
    “I’m going to find Ivy.” Jenks darted off.
    Trent shifted uneasily, squinting even though we were in the shade. The wind moved his fair hair fitfully, and I started to reach for it, to brush it out of his eyes, but he beat me to it. My chest hurt, but I smiled, wondering if he missed his pointy little ears. They would hold his hair back better than what he had now.
    “Rachel, I don’t see anyone here not FIB or I.S.,” he said, oblivious to the fact that I was slowly starting to slide into shock, the pain from my ribs making it hard to breathe. “How confident are you in your assessment?”
    “That’s because the guys with the radios bugged out when Eloy got free,” I said as I flipped the useless radio earbud hanging down my front, and he reached for it, his gaze sharp on its construction. “You want it?” I said, and he nodded, reaching back for the battery pack as I dropped the bud down my shirt and he pulled it through, scraping my skin. “Alpha and beta teams are meeting up at the bird nest,” I said, almost slurring. “Beaters and receivers. Personally, I would think they were HAPA’s extraction team. If HAPA had any money, that is.” I pulled my head up. “Look, Glenn isn’t having a very good day, either.”
    The unlucky man had clearly been hijacked by Dr. Cordova in his quest to dissuade the newspeople. She looked pissed as she chewed him out in front of an FIB van, her arms pointing wildly. We had recaptured Eloy, so I don’t know