Viscera, punctured bowels. A gut wound, as Achilles had said. I let the smell pull me forward, to the kitchen. Tad lay on the table, a sheet covering him from the waist down. Beth leaned over him. “Stay with me, Tad. I’ve almost got you stitched up.”

Sandy stood at his head, holding him. “Keep breathing.” Her eyes flicked up as I entered the room. “Your sister is here.”

He didn’t move, and his skin was chalky and white. I stumbled to his side and pressed my hands against his chest. His heart beat slowly, and the rise and fall of the air in his lungs was sporadic. I looked to Beth. “How bad?”

She didn’t lift her eyes, only kept on with her stitching. “Bad. We need a doctor, a blood transfusion. Painkillers, antibiotics. We need a hospital, Alena. And there is no such thing here. Supes don’t need doctors, according to the world.”

I closed my eyes. “We were the same blood type, before we were turned. Will that work now?”

“He’s going to die if we don’t give him something,” Beth said. “Dahlia, you and Remo get in here.”

The two vamps came to the door, and Beth fired off instructions like a surgeon. “Remo, clean up Alena’s arm with whatever alcohol you have in the house. Dahlia, I saw a transfusion kit in the bathroom, grab it.”

Remo took me by the hand and led me to the kitchen sink while Dahlia ran out of the room. “Why do you have a transfusion kit in the bathroom?”

“This is a safe house. Vamps sometimes come in so close to death that they can’t take enough blood by mouth to survive. We keep the kit on hand.”

The warm water sluiced off the blood and mud, showing the open wound in my wrist. It had begun to heal, though it was hardly needing to be reopened. Pain sliced through me as the water kissed the edges of it. I sucked in a sharp breath.

“The vodka is going to burn worse than the water.” He turned and pulled the vodka out of the fridge and unscrewed the cap. “Ready?”

I nodded and he poured the alcohol over my arm. The pain of the water was nothing to the heat and sting of the high-proof booze. I closed my eyes and bit back the whimper. For Tad, I could do this.

“All done.” Remo took me by the hand and led me back to the table. Dahlia already had one end of the IV hooked into Tad. She held the other to Remo. He took it and carefully threaded it into the open vein in my arm. A slight pinch and then he took the piece of clean cotton she offered.

He was incredibly gentle, and to say it surprised me was an understatement. “You’re good at this.”

“I should be. I was a doctor at one point.”

Beth’s head snapped up. “What? Why aren’t you helping me, then?”

Remo’s eyes met mine. “Because Tad is beyond any surgeon’s help, even mine. His sister’s blood will either save him or kill him. Supernaturals don’t respond to traditional methods of healing.”

Someone pushed a chair into the back of my knees, prompting me to sit down. Remo tightened his hold on me. “Don’t sit. Stand, you need gravity to help you with the blood flow.”

I stepped up onto the chair and looked down to my brother. My sparkling red blood flowed through the vinyl tube and into his arm. “How long before we know if it helps?”

Remo shrugged. “I’d guess not long.”

The room was silent except for the steady thump of the hearts of those waiting with me, and the sporadic kick and thump of Tad’s as it fought to keep going.

“Why aren’t you still a doctor?” I asked, breaking the silence, needing someone to talk to distract me from my brother’s slide into the darkness.

Remo cleared his throat. “There was a time I believed the world could be changed. That there was a way to help the humans and supernaturals come together. I was wrong.”

Bitterness, and more than that, fatigue, flowed with his words.

I stared down at him. “You can’t give up.”

“Why, because you said so?” He arched an eyebrow. “You can’t change this world, Alena. The humans are too many. The laws too unfair. The only thing that is certain is death. Even taxes can be evaded if you know what you’re doing.” He smirked at that last, but I didn’t laugh.

“Tad isn’t going to die.”

My words were met with silence. I looked at each face around the table. Beth wouldn’t meet my eyes. Sandy’s were full of sadness, and Dahlia continued to cry. Tad’s heart still beat, though. I straightened my shoulders. “Until his heart stops we are not giving up.”

“What do you suggest, then?” Remo asked. “There are no healers here. We’d need a satyr for any real help.”

I bit my lower lip, and the thought hit me like a boot to the head. “The fauns who were searching for Zeus! Damara was a satyr and she owes me!”

“Who?” Dahlia blinked up at me. My heart raced.

“Damara. A satyr Tad and I helped escape the SDMP. She said I could call on her if I had need.”

“How are you going to do that?” Remo asked. “There is no way—”

“Hermes!” I hollered the messenger’s name, not knowing if it would work. The others slapped their hands over their ears, and Tad gave a shudder even in his unconscious state.

“What the hell?” Remo snapped. “That is not how you—”

Hermes zipped in through the kitchen window and saluted me. “Drakaina, you have a message you need delivered?”