Shapeshifter Ch. 06

The assassin tried to get his gun hand away from my grasp, fighting hard against my grip and failing to move me more than an inch. I looked waifish and my attacker had a good half foot on me, but in this, I beat him. I could probably lift him above my head and throw him a good few feet without breaking a sweat if I wanted to. Unfortunately, that didn't make the damage his bullet had caused any less.

I started coughing up blood as soon as he hit the wall, and it didn't seem to lessen as I held him there. I could hear Noom crashing against the front door through the gauze-like haze my hearing had become, but it felt like an eternity to wait for him breaking down the door. The guy in front of me, having been subject to an almost constant spray of foamy, coughed-up blood, was screaming, his face showing a comical expression of sheer panic. He had seen the bullets hit, and he could still see the holes his shots had ripped into my hand and the flesh above my clavicle, but here I stood, holding him against the wall like he would do with an unruly five-year-old, spitting blood from a place people usually didn't tolerate that well without having a case of death.

I liked it. He should be afraid, he should shit his pants for what he had almost done to me. He'd be dead as soon as Noom got through that door, anyway, but those last moments of his existence had better be filled with regret.

My vision started to go fuzzy around the edges, when Noom finally got the door open. It couldn't have been more than a minute, but my boiling blood had made it feel like an eternity and then some. Although everything seemed to move in slow motion, I was stunned by the sheer speed with which Noom cocked the stolen gun, pointed it at the guy, and shot him right there, in our small hallway. As I stumbled back from the collapsing, dead man, Noom dropped the gun and charged forward, catching me as I went down myself.

There was a look of bone-deep panic and anguish on his face, when he finally realized the extent of my injuries. He pulled me into the kitchenette, eyes wide and glassy with shock and tears, babbling something I couldn't yet understand. My head was still fuzzy due to the blood-loss, but lying down and not having to physically exert myself helped. I stared at the white ceiling above me, plagued by waves of dull, throbbing pain, unwilling to move and still exhilarated to be alive, when Noom appeared in my vision with his cell phone, ready to dial.

I grabbed it with my right hand and threw it away, coughing up another crown of red foam.

"No," I gasped, unable to articulate myself properly, "hospital."

Noom was livid. He grabbed my collar, yelling at me loud enough to make me understand him. "I won't let you die like this!" he screamed, almost slapping me before he remembered I was hurt.

A short burst of regret hit me. I should have told him after the last gun fight, when I actually had been able to talk instead of gasp. "Won't," breathe, "die." I coughed for a moment, and the world got darker. My time was running out. "Can't die. Head's fine. Head's fine, won't die."

I got one last impression of Noom's helpless, teary face, then I finally blacked out.

~*~

A rush of pain finally got me to gain consciousness again. It was followed by a wave of sounds, telling me that at least my hearing had decided to come back, not that it helped that much. I tried not to move and make the pain worse, but I twitched when someone wiped my forehead with a wet cloth. The sudden movement made me groan, then cough, and it just multiplied the hurt.

"He's awake," I heard Mike say from right behind my head, and I rolled my eyes up to give him a confused look. What was he doing here? And where was here?

Noom appeared in my line of vision as he stepped up behind Mike, gazing down at me with an exhausted expression and a cell phone pressed to his ear. Our eyes met and he smiled tightly, then spoke into the phone.

"You were right, he seems to be getting better already." He half turned, a look of concentration on his face as he listened to whatever the voice on the other end of the line told him, and threw in his own bits and pieces.

"So we just... wait, and then feed him, and everything will be alright?" Pause. "I honestly don't give a fuck, I won't hustle him into talking to you when he's in pain." Another pause. "I don't care who your family is, I'm here and you're not, so get over it. I say you'll have to wait until he decides to call you." Another pause, then Noom grinned, tugging at his hair with one hand. "Did you just call me a dickhead in French?"

The conversation went on like that, but listening in just confused me, so I turned my eyes back to Mike and his blood-dotted wash cloth. I wanted to ask him what was going on, but I was too afraid of new pain to talk. He seemed to get it, though.

"We didn't know what to do with you," Mike explained, frowning. "So Noom had me kinda assault that old lady you talked to today, and she mentioned the French people. That wasn't the most fun thing to do, but I get it. You looked... dead. You still do, you know?" He hesitated for a moment, squishing the wet cloth and staring down at the pinkish drops of water that appeared between his fingers.

Shaking himself, Mike continued. "We had us a fucking good time finding your Frenchies, you know? There are too many people with similar names over there. Took us a good three hours to find the right Gael Lagrada, and then another half hour to convince him we weren't crazy. When he finally decided to help, the first thing he asked was if your head was still attached." Mike stared at nothing with wrinkles on his forehead, a mixture of confusion and dismay on his Norse face. I agreed with his expression. It was a damn strange thing to ask. Carefully, I nudged my chin up, a silent invitation for him to continue.

"When Noom said yes, that Gael guy told him to get a scalpel and go hunting for the bullet in your body. Can you believe that? With a straight voice, too. 'Cut the bullet out of him first,' he said, like it was no big deal. Noom said no, well, actually, he screamed no. They had a good fight over that, but Noom wouldn't be moved. He said, you had lost too much blood to go butchering around in your body. So now we're in a tight spot."

Mike took a breath to continue, only to be interrupted by the sound of Noom saying good-bye and crouching down next to me. Instead of telling me the tale of Gael, Mike looked at Noom and gave him an expectant look. "So, what did the Frenchie say?"

"We're supposed to get shitloads of food for him, and lock him in. If he blacks out and changes, we're supposed to run before he eats us, and he's expected to call that pompous ass back as soon as he can," Noom summed up, then looked down at me. His face twitched, unable to decide on one single expression, and the muscles across his arms and shoulders rippled with tension, as he tried to hold on to himself instead of touching me like he wanted to. "And we're gonna have a talk about this, as soon as you're well," he promised me. There was real anger in his voice, but beneath that was a joy weighing much more than any anger ever could.

I couldn't help it, I smiled, then grinned, although I probably looked frightening. My mouth tasted like coagulated blood, and Mike had already told me I was in a bad shape. But who cared? I was alive, and not in a hospital.

Mike interrupted our short moment. "We need to get that dead guy out of your room, and quickly, before someone discovers your dead friend in the back alley."

Noom looked torn. "I don't want to leave Kel alone," he grumbled and finally gave in to the urge to touch me. His fingers brushed my head and I closed my eyes, relishing the small contact. I still hurt all over, but pain was a fleeting thing, and an old friend of mine. I would heal, sooner or later.

"Noom, you can't just sit here and hold his hand, waiting for the police or another one of those fuckers," Mike barked and slapped the side of his head.

Noom jumped up with such speed, I blinked at his knees for a moment before realizing he had moved at all. When I finally found his face again, he had one hand bunched into Mike's collar, while the other hand hovered above the spot at his back where I knew his gun had to be. At least he didn't pull it, which told a lot about the amount of respect he felt for Mike. He would have pulled the gun on me, for sure.

Mike just stood there, watching Noom sneer at him with that twitchy face, waiting for him to decide how he wanted to proceed.

In the end, Noom let go of Mike and moved his hand away from his gun at the same time, sighing. He didn't look happy, but the short burst of rage had burnt out just as quick as it had come. "Fine," he murmured, "fine. Let's carry assassin-boy over there down to the street. If we're lucky, they'll think they killed each other."

Mike and Noom got to work quickly, efficiently and in silence, carrying the dead guy down the flights of stairs and into the back alley, where they stayed for a good half hour, probably rearranging the scene. I closed my eyes, concentrating on keeping my breathing even and calm. It still hurt, but my lung was healing just fine. My hearing was fine, too, and I listened to the distant noises on the street below, feeling numb and disconnected.

I didn't know how much time had passed, but when the door opened once more, I sat up instinctively and only felt a short, sharp pull in my chest, instead of the blinding pain from before.

Me sitting up had Noom freeze at the entrance to the kitchenette. His eyes went wide for a moment, then he tensed his shoulders, shook himself and came closer. Very close. Crouching before me, he touched the half-healed hole above my clavicle, tracing the edges of the obviously healing wound with wonder in his face.

"I wouldn't have believed this, if I didn't see it myself," Mike murmured from the door. He was back to keeping his distance, as it seemed, which was fine by me. I felt weak and hungry and not in the mood to be crowded or pawed by anyone but Noom.

"I still don't. But man, it would be great if I healed like that," Noom replied, then leaned forward to kiss me just as I started to feel like a third wheel. It was a short, soft kiss, nothing but a quick touch of lips against lips, then he was back to staring at my face.

"We need to leave, right now. Can you walk?" he asked, already grabbing my arm.

Could I? I wasn't sure, but I tried. Getting up made me hurt in so many different places, I didn't bother counting them, and I did have to lean heavily on Noom to get on my feet, but I found out I could. I didn't want to start from scratch though, so I held on to Noom and pointed to our half packed shopping bags. "We need to take those," I explained, and Mike inched closer to pick them up.

"We need to clean this place thoroughly, your blood is everywhere," Noom retorted, "those bags are the least of our problems."

I shook my head, wobbling my way towards the door, tugging Noom with me. "No, we don't. My blood won't come back as human. They'll think a cat has been slaughtered here, unless they bring in experts. And if they do, those experts will probably declare the samples corrupted, because there's no way human and cat DNA could ever get mixed like this." My chest stung with every breath, but my voice sounded okay.

Noom followed my pull reluctantly. "That the reason why you didn't want to go to the hospital?"

"Yeah. They won't believe DNA such as mine could exist, until they see me with their own eyes."

As we reached the door, Noom finally sped up, wrapping an arm around my waist to help me stay upright. Mike was already at the bottom of the stairs, carefully peeking around the corner to keep an eye out for onlookers. We walked down with Noom holding me to his side and me on grabbing-duty; his other hand was busy holding on to the butte of his gun on his back, because you never knew when the next killer might jump out of the bushes.

My heart hurt as I looked back at the bright red door, hobbling down the stairs as I was. We had only slept here one night, but I had liked it, and I missed it already. How many times would I have to run? How long was this going to last? I clutched harder at Noom, trying to keep frustrated, exhausted tears from my eyes as we joined up with Mike, hurrying away from the two dead men lying splayed in the street, towards nowhere.