Vinny

There were sirens. Millions of them, wailing, shrilling in my ears. There was blood, hot, silvery, on my tongue, sweat on my forehead; it felt as if I was enclosed in a box, no air in my lungs. Everything was too stuffy.

I opened my eyes.

The first thing I saw was the night. The sky was starless, clear black, the tree limbs looming shadows stretching toward the pallid moon. The sirens were still wailing, and I thought I could see them, red and blue and white piercing the dark.

My gaze shifted towards myself; I saw the edge of an oxygen mask upon my face, my body stretched out upon a gurney. I coughed, sputtering, trying to sit up.

"Ah!" came a voice I was admittedly startled to hear. Caprice came into view, craning over me, the black strands of her hair falling over her golden forehead. A half-smile played at her lips, which tonight were a deep maroon. "And Lazarus awakes yet again."

When I tried to sit up again, a jolt of pain shot through my left arm, like a knife twisting into the bone. I let out a gasp. "C-Caprice...?"

"Easy, tiger," she said softly, pulling the gurney up a bit, then setting me neatly back against it. Now that I was sitting up, the view was clearer. The street had been marked off with yellow police tape, and an array of personnel moved about: there were policemen clad in black and blue, firemen with their bright red truck, and the EMTs buzzing around the ambulance Caprice I were near. "I came as soon as I heard; I tried to get a hold of your mother, but she didn't respond."

My arm was wrapped up with tape, and in a sling. I looked at it, puzzled, then at Caprice, more puzzled. "Is it broken?"

"No, honey," she said. "They just put it in a sling because they thought it looked cool."

My eyes narrowed.

"It was a joke," Caprice said tiredly. "Yes, it's broken. You'll need a cast on that ASAP, according to all these doctor folk."

"Great," I muttered, then lifted my eyes towards the sky again. It was black, all black, only interrupted by the alabaster marble that was the moon—

"Cian," I said, all of me seeming to jerk to life. With my good arm, I reached to tug the oxygen mask free, gasping into the chilly air. "Cian. Where is my brother? Where is he, what happened to him—"

"We don't know."

"You don't know?" I exclaimed. I gripped the side of the gurney, rattling it with a white-knuckled grip. "What do you mean you don't know?"

Caprice's dark eyes were hesitant, solemn, yet she didn't take them off of me. She just sighed, folding her arms across her chest as if in disappointment—whether at herself, or at Cian, I couldn't be sure. "I mean that he's missing, Vinny. So you're going to have to tell me just what went down before the car crashed, because we've got to find him, and now."

Any remaining breath in my chest went out of it. Suddenly I understood how Cian had felt, waking up that morning, knowing his brother was gone. It was like waking up with a severed limb, with a constant and unbearable ache that refused to go away.

But he'd known then, that I was dead. Not knowing was so much worse.

It was all I could do to hold back my tears as I met Caprice's gaze. "He couldn't fight it anymore," I explained. "It's like—he lost it, just lost it. He was...angry, and then his eyes went dark and he jerked the steering wheel. I don't remember much else after that."

Caprice paused, then stomped the asphalt with a heeled foot. Then she cursed, cursed so much I thought I could see a pocket of steam rising from her tongue. She finished off the lengthy shebang with: "Goddammit, little one! The bastard, the bastard—he never listens to me, and then he runs off and—ugggghhh."

"We should have seen it sooner," I said gravely, heaving a long breath. Sweat and blood stuck my shirt to my chest, clumped in the strands of my hair. I had the sudden urge, a terrible one, to go home. I couldn't take another second of this: of this night, of this gurney, of this agonizing pain.

This was it. I was...alone, and I was terrified of it.

"I hate to be the bearer of bad news," said Caprice then, and I glanced up at her, "but we have another issue on our hands. You know, besides MIA demon brothers."

I didn't appreciate her summary of the situation, but was too tired to comment about it. "What could possibly be worse than this?"

Caprice looked at me for a moment, then just shook her head and held out her hand. After a moment, I took it, my bare fingers unsteady within her ringed ones. She helped me down off the gurney; EMTs yelped at us, but she waved them off, releasing me.

I followed her down the road, stepping around debris: jagged shards of metal, shattered glass, puddles of viscous oil. The debris thickened as we walked, until finally Caprice drew me up beside the police car, pointing at the road's shoulder. "See for yourself," she said.

My eyes found the Escalade—at least what was left of it. It was in about as many pieces as I was in, the car's hood dented and and unattached, the tires flattened. Three doors were unhinged, one had fallen off completely, and every single window was a hole edged with keen glass. What had once been sleek, chrome metal was now gruesomely unrecognizable, bent out of shape and streaked with dirt and leaves. It had been so much more than a car—it was the Hornes' car, Cian's car, the leather seats like our limbs and the messy glove compartment like our hearts. It had been anything and everything that was us.

Then my gaze shifted, and I saw her there, seated on the curb with her legs pulled up. I had to do a double take, my heart skipping and adding beats. I knew it was her even before she turned around. No one else had the curls that she did, dark and resilient, settling like rolling clouds upon her shoulders. She sat up straight, too, clad in her favorite plaid shirt—red, white, black.

I said, stunned, "Lucie?"

She half-turned, a stud glittering in the cartilage of her ear, and then got to her feet, facing me. Something collapsed within me, but it wasn't from relief. She stood there, wearing the same outfit she'd been wearing when she'd been shot, dried blood like paint splatter on her combat boots. "Vince," she said, and gave me a rueful smile. "Hey."

I sputtered, and then I surged towards her, grasping for her. I should've felt something, but I didn't. Her arms were around me and my arms were around her, but it didn't feel like I was holding anything at all.

Confusion, then frustration, then grief all settled within me.

"Vinny..." Lucie said as she detached herself from me, her brown eyes dismal. "I'm sorry. I'm not exactly..."

For a moment, I just stared at her, and then I fell on my knees to the pavement.

And I burst into tears.