Taste a Thousand Deaths (Marionettes of Myth #3)

Chapter Seventeen

Even after the other three vampires had come to, Jason slept. Elliot suspected it was because he had so much lost ground to make up for. The last good sleep he'd had was after their last catastrophe of a work mission that landed Jason face-down on the bed, out cold even before his head had made a successful aim for the pillow.

Seemed like so long ago now.

The others came in and out. Ave at one point took up the guard post at Jason's side to give Elliot the opportunity to see Nekane and her slowly healing face. He held her hand, and he couldn't tell who shook more.

There wasn't much he could say. There wasn't much she needed to hear either, not so much as she just needed to not be alone, to not be in that blinding cell.

This wasn't exactly the first time she'd endured cruel and unusual punishment, but that didn't make it easy on her.

Not when she was supposed to be free.

When he returned to Jason's bed, Jason's body hadn't shifted. He remained as still as a bleached plank beneath the papery sheets for longer still. Elliot sat back in his seat, turning over Kirin's words, since he had very little to chew on otherwise.

"He pissed off Cassius for interfering, and then he showed Cassius why he did it. He filled a grave with the dirt from another grave."

There wasn't much guesswork involved, not when one peek into Kali's brain would show Cassius exactly why Orion had done it. The way Orion looked at Ave left no question that she was the one building block Cassius could slide out from under Orion. And Kirin.

And Elliot.

Movement caught his attention. He drifted back to his body as if he'd been a specter floating outside of his own corpse. He blinked the fog from his eyes and focused on Jason, stirring little by little, fighting his way back to the surface.

It took effort on Jason's part. A great deal of wrestling with the drug in his system. Every blink held his eyes open a little longer at a time, and after a few minutes of struggle, he finally rolled his head to look at Elliot. And then at the vase of pink tulips on the window ledge.

Jason could only manage a grunt at first. Even after another moment of battling, his words were slurred when he pushed out, "Tian spreading...Jesus flowers again...?"

Elliot smirked. "Next time I'll make sure he braids them into a crown for you."

Jason squinted at him. "That doesn't even...make sense. There's no...thorns, I don't..."

Chuckles squeezed through Elliot's tight throat. "Thorns aren't your style. Don't achieve martyrdom, just stick with the tulips."

Drunken laughs shook Jason in turn, until he grimaced. "Ouch. I think that hurt." He lifted the blanket and shifted around underneath until Elliot assumed he got a good look at the hole in his body, or the gauze that covered ugly stitches. He stared at it, eyes fairly crossed, brow wrinkled. "Oh, right. That happened. What else happened?"

"Do you remember Orion saving you?"

He had to think. Hard. He tried to sit up more but the chasm in his body stopped him, so he laid there at an obtuse angle with his arms at his sides, palms-up. "Was that...Orion? The same Orion that..." He couldn't finish that thought. "All I remember was...the bullet, and then it gets blurry, and then..." He couldn't finish that one, either.