The Bride in Blood

Damian saw Julian lean across the passenger seat.

He saw the white veil, Clara's bowed head, the man's arm moving around her.

He couldn't hear a word.

The phone in his hand had stopped ringing. He didn't remember when he'd stopped calling her.

The temporary driver looked toward him.

"Boss?"

Damian's chest hurt.

He'd already said something vicious on the way out of town. Get him out of there. Wreck his damn car if you have to. The angry, careless words of a man who expected everyone around him to understand the limits he hadn't bothered to name.

Now the driver was talking again.

"Do you want me to move them?"

"Wait until my wife—"

The engine roared.

Damian turned.

"No!"

The collision threw him against the seat belt.

A hard white flash. Metal folding. The airbag bursting between him and the windshield.

For a moment there was no road, no sky, only a ringing so loud it seemed to have replaced the world.

Then he saw the Mercedes ahead of them, its rear crushed, its front angled down toward the drainage ditch.

"What did you do?"

The driver stared through the powdered air.

"You said—"

Damian seized his collar.

"My wife is in that car!"

The man shrank back.

"I thought—"

Damian shoved him away and fought the jammed door.

Someone outside pulled it open. He stumbled onto the road and ran.

Clara's veil hung from the Mercedes door.

Blood marked the edge of the driver's window.

He stopped for one terrible instant.

Then he was shouting her name.

Vince reached the car with two men. They braced it while another vehicle was brought forward with a tow strap, keeping it from slipping farther down the ditch.

Damian caught the damaged door with his bare hands.

"Clara."

The metal edge cut his palm. He didn't feel it.

"Answer me."

"Is it moving?" he demanded.

Vince glanced toward the front wheels.

"We're holding it."

"There's water down there."

"I can see it."

Damian tried to reach farther into the damaged opening. Vince caught his elbow before he put his weight against the unstable door.

"Look at me. If you drag her out and she's hurt, you'll make it worse."

Damian stared at him without recognition.

Then Clara's hand shifted against the dark seat, and everything in him narrowed to that small movement.

"She's moving."

"Good. Stay here. Talk to her."

It was the first instruction he had been able to understand.

He bent close enough for her to hear him without needing to move.

"I'm right here. You don't have to do anything. Just open your eyes."

His voice shook on every word.

Someone was calling emergency services behind him. Owen's voice, arriving breathless, was giving the location.

The door moved.

Inside, Julian lay crooked across the seats, one arm around Clara's shoulders. Her face was hidden against him.

Her dress was red.

Damian made a sound none of the men had ever heard from him.

Vince caught his shoulder.

"Wait for the medics. Don't pull her."

"That's my wife."

"I know. Let them get her out."

Clara moved.

It was hardly anything. A hand lifting, her face turning toward the open door.

"Damian?"

He dropped to his knees beside the car.

"I'm here."

She blinked at him.

He wanted to touch every part of her and couldn't tell where the blood came from.

"Don't move," he said. "Just look at me."

Julian groaned.

She tried to turn back.

"He—"

"They're coming."

The siren reached them then, thin at first, growing louder.

Damian kept saying her name as if it were the only word he had left.

***

Clara remembered the seat belt coming off.

Julian leaning toward her. Her hand rising to stop him.

Then a blow so enormous she hadn't understood it as a collision.

His arm had closed around her. His hand had caught the back of her head. There had been noise, pressure, the world turning into something with no directions.

Now there were people at the door, a light in her eyes, questions she could answer only slowly.

Her neck hurt. Her head hurt. Nothing seemed broken, but the paramedic wouldn't let her stand until they had checked her.

Across the road, someone cut Julian's sleeve.

"That's his blood," she said.

Damian's hands hovered beside her shoulders.

"Clara."

She looked at him.

His boutonniere was crushed. Dirt marked his shirt. His palms were bleeding onto the ivory skirt between them.

She remembered the engine behind them.

She looked toward the wrecked wedding car.

"You were in that?"

He didn't answer quickly enough.

Owen came beside them.

"The driver misunderstood. He wasn't one of our regular people."

Clara stared at him.

"Misunderstood what?"

Damian lowered his head.

"I didn't tell him to hit you."

"What did you tell him?"

Vince started to speak. Damian cut him off.

"Enough."

The word frightened her differently now.

She looked past him at Julian, who was being lifted onto a stretcher.

A pearl rolled from the folds of the veil onto the road. The necklace hadn't broken; the box had opened in the crash, spilling its contents into her lap.

She gathered it without knowing why.

"He could have died."

"I know."

"You could have killed him."

His face seemed to fold inward.

"I know."

She wanted to scream at him. Instead everything inside her became terribly quiet.

The paramedic asked her to come to the ambulance for further assessment.

She rose carefully.

Damian caught her hand.

Blood made their fingers slippery.

"Don't go with him."

She looked at their joined hands.

"He needs someone there."

"I'll send someone. I'll pay for everything."

"That isn't everything."

Owen glanced toward the road, where people were beginning to gather.

"Clara, we have another dress at the hotel. We can get you cleaned up first."

She looked down at the blood across the satin.

Then back at him.

Nobody spoke.

She pulled off the veil and used a clean corner to wipe her hands. It didn't help much. She put the pearls inside it and held the bundle against her chest.

"Do you understand who that is?" she asked. "What his family will do when they hear?"

"I'll handle it," Damian said.

"How?"

For once he had no quick answer.

Vince stepped forward.

"Then let them have me."

"You weren't driving," Clara said.

She looked at Damian again.

"You can't fix everything by offering somebody else to take the blow."

He swayed slightly, as if she had struck him.

She had defended him in that car. Told Julian he had changed. Told him she knew the man she married.

She couldn't bear to remember her own certainty.

"You let me down," she said.

The ambulance door stood open.

She climbed inside.

***

Damian took three steps after her before Vince caught him.

"Not like this."

"Let go."

Owen came to the other side.

"She needs to deal with the hospital. You turning up angry and bleeding won't help."

"She's my wife."

"Then let her do what she thinks she has to do."

Damian jerked free, shoving them away with enough force to send Owen's glasses onto the road.

For an instant Vince thought he would hit him.

Instead he looked toward the ambulance, terror draining the anger from his face.

He understood why she was going.

She wasn't choosing Julian's bed. She was trying to keep Julian's family from coming for her husband.

The engine started.

Damian ran.

Vince shouted after him, but he didn't stop. His dress shoes slipped on the gravel. One came loose. He kept going, calling her name.

Inside the ambulance, Clara looked through the rear window.

He grew smaller with every second.

She lifted a bloodstained hand to her mouth.

Then she turned away before she could ask the driver to stop.