As the man charged toward him, with no time to do anything more than simply react, Alex thrust the knife straight into the man’s center mass.
It didn’t stop him. The big man crashed into him at full speed, knocking Alex back.
As Alex rebounded off the side of the truck, the man swung his own knife. Alex ducked, seized the arm, and took it with him as he circled around the orderly. Once behind him he rammed his blade into the man’s lower back several times in rapid succession. He didn’t hit anything immediately vital, and his stabbing only made the man angrier.
The man twisted around, driving Alex back with his feet as well as his fists. More than one connected, staggering Alex back. The man was a fury of nonstop lunges and slashes. With the drugs, Alex had difficulty focusing.
The man was a good head taller than Alex and must have been sixty or seventy pounds heavier. Despite his size, he was quick. Not only was he hard to handle, but his size seemed to help keep the knife wounds from slowing him.
Alex made another attack. The man threw him back. As he rebounded, Alex ducked under a swing, threw a shoulder block into the man, and at the same time grabbed a leg. He pulled with all his strength, upending the orderly. The man landed flat on his back, but bounded back up as if on springs.
His arms seemed to be everywhere at once. Alex was having trouble keeping track of the furious attacks. He picked his openings and cut whenever he had the chance. One slashing cut across the man’s thigh halved the muscle, making him stumble.
Alex used the opening to dive in to try to finish the fight. He seized the man’s knife-wielding arm and stabbed again, but the man was strong enough to push him back. Alex felt like a child trying to fight a grown man.
When the man spun around, pulling out of Alex’s grip, his arms were spread in an angry fighting stance. He looked like a bear on its hind legs about to charge. Seeing the opening, Alex used all his strength to drive his knife like a punch straight into the middle of the orderly’s throat.
He felt the blade sink in and hit bone.
The furious fight seemed to freeze in place.
Then the man started to corkscrew toward the ground. As he collapsed, his weight pulled him off the blade.
Panting, catching his breath, his exhausted arms hanging, Alex tried to gather his wits. He was so drained, so bone-tired from the fight, that he was ready to drop.
Jax was suddenly there beside him, putting her arm around him, holding him up.
“Almost there,” she reminded him. “Hold on.”
He smiled at her words, words he had used to encourage her not to give up.
Alex felt like he was watching himself in a dream. He realized then, by the way Jax was bent over, that he was on his knees. He didn’t remember going to his knees.
“Stay still,” she said.
Jax turned away to the open door of the truck for a moment. She was frantically doing something. He couldn’t figure it out. It finally dawned on him that she was ripping cloth. It was the rag the knives had been in. She was tearing off a long strip.
She put the strip around his upper left arm, wrapping it tightly around several times. She used her teeth to split the end and then tied a knot. She made another knot and drew it tight.
“What are you doing?”
“He cut you. I’m tying a bandage around your arm to keep the wound closed. I need to stop the bleeding.”
Alex only then realized that blood was dripping off his fingers. He wondered how bad it was. He didn’t really feel any pain, but at feeling a warm, wet sheath of blood running down his arm he suddenly began feeling sick.
“It’s all right,” she assured him. “You’ll be fine.”
By the way her voice sounded, though, he didn’t know if he believed her.
“How bad is it?”
“It’s dark. I can’t tell,” she admitted. “But I don’t think it’s too bad. Can you move your fingers?”
Alex tried. “Yes.”
“Then you’re fine. As long as your arm still works, it can’t be too bad.”
“Thank you,” he said in a numb voice. “I don’t understand why he was trying to kill me. If I’m dead they can’t get the information they need.”
“He wasn’t trying to kill you. He was trying to capture you. If he had wanted to kill you I think he could have.”
“Well, from my side of it it sure felt like he was trying to kill me.”
She only smiled as she adjusted the bandage on his arm. Alex liked the feeling of her taking care of him. It made him feel calm, feel like everything would be all right.
She gently took the knife out of his hand. “I don’t ever let anyone use my knife. Not this one.”
Alex saw in the dim illumination of the dome light in the Jeep that it was the knife with all the elaborate engraving on the silver handle. Now it was covered in blood as well.
“It seemed rather important at the time,” Alex said. “Do you think you could make an exception to your rule this one time?”
“Well,” she said, glancing down at the dead man, “I guess that, in this case, I could.”
With a concerned, gentle look, she smoothed the hair back off his forehead. Her face warmed with the special smile she gave only him. Her hand cupping the side of his face made everything better.
“Considering who used that knife,” she said in an intimate voice, “I guess it’s all right. You’re welcome to use it anytime you’d like.”
Alex swayed on his knees. “I think I’m going to throw up.”
“Do it in that direction, will you? I need to send him back to my world.”
Alex was going to tell her not to bother, that they could just drive away and leave him. But as his mind started working again he realized what a bad idea it would be to leave a body lying in the street. With so many people around, the man would be discovered in short order. Alex could see people off in the darkness. Fortunately they didn’t see what was going on.
The dead people they had left in Mother of Roses would be burned up. There would be little evidence of what had really happened. But if they left this man’s body out on the street it would look like murder and raise a lot of questions.
By the time he had come to the conclusion that Jax was right, the man had already vanished. Her knife was shiny and clean.
Jax put a hand under his good arm to help him up. “Come on. Let’s get away from here before any of his friends show up.”
Alex was regaining his senses. He helped boost Jax up into the truck. The adrenaline of the situation seemed to have given them both a shot of strength. He didn’t know how long it would last. He ran around to the other side and hopped in.
When he turned the key in the ignition and the truck didn’t start, he wasn’t the least bit surprised. Trying the key had been nothing more than a token gesture. He had expected it not to start. That was just the way the world worked. For some reason it seemed that things tended not to work when you needed them the most.
Fortunately, he had planned for the eventuality. He’d parked on a hill, and he’d parked at the end of the block so that no one could park in front of him and block him in.
He turned the wheels away from the curb as he put in the clutch. The Cherokee started rolling, gathering speed. When it was going downhill at a good clip he let the clutch out. The engine turned over and caught. With a minimum of fuss, he had the truck running, but he was more determined than ever to get it fixed as soon as they got the chance.
Alex drove slowly down the hill through the residential neighborhood. There were no cars, but there were people wandering all over the place. Here and there a person in pajamas or a robe would walk out into the street without looking. In the darkness it was difficult to see them all. Alex kept a sharp lookout for any of the staff who might be hunting them.
When he turned right onto Sixteenth Street, traffic was moving slowly, pulling over at intervals for emergency vehicles. Fire trucks, ambulances, and police cars raced through the night toward