Moonlit Mirage

Chapter five

The hospital waiting room smelled like antiseptic and fear, fluorescent lights buzzing overhead in a rhythm that matched the frantic pace of Xena's heartbeat as she sprinted through the sliding doors with Ragnar close behind her.

Joss was already there, pale and shaking, mascara streaked down her face from crying.

"What happened?" Xena demanded, grabbing Joss's shoulders. "What happened to Sin?"

"I don't know, I don't know, he closed up the diner like always and someone...." Joss's voice broke. "There was so much blood, Xena. The doctors won't tell me anything, they just keep saying he's critical and taking him into surgery and I don't understand what's happening."

Xena's mind raced back through everything Ragnar had told her in the past hour, every impossible piece of information rearranging itself into a horrifying new context. A man with wrong eyes following her home. A break in searching for the pendant. A werewolf attacking her outside her own apartment.

And now Sin, one of the only people who'd been there for her since the day she landed in this city with nothing but a duffel bag and a determination to survive, lying somewhere behind those doors fighting for his life.

"This is my fault," Xena whispered.

"What? No, Xena, this isn't...."

"It is." She turned to Ragnar, fury and terror tangled together in her chest until she couldn't separate one from the other. "Tell me the truth. Did this happen because of me? Because of that pendant?"

Ragnar's expression was grim, careful, the kind of careful that told her everything she needed to know before he even spoke.

"I don't know for certain," he said. "But it's possible they're trying to isolate you. Remove the people you'd run to for help."

"Possible." Xena's voice cracked. "Possible isn't good enough. I need you to find out. Now."

"Xena..."

"Now, Ragnar."

Something passed between them, an understanding neither of them had time to name, and Ragnar nodded once before stepping away, phone already pressed to his ear, voice dropping into a low, urgent conversation Xena couldn't quite follow.

Joss watched the exchange with wide, exhausted eyes. "Who is that? What's going on, Xena? You disappear for a day, you don't answer texts, and now you show up with some guy who looks like he could break a person in half just by looking at them, and Sin is in surgery, and I don't—" Her voice broke again. "I don't understand any of this."

Xena pulled Joss into a tight hug, holding onto her best friend like an anchor in a storm that had arrived without any warning at all.

"I don't fully understand it either," she said honestly. "But I'm going to figure it out, and I'm going to fix this."

"Fix what, Xena? What is there to fix?"

Before Xena could find an answer that wouldn't sound completely unhinged, a doctor emerged through the double doors, expression carefully neutral in the way medical professionals trained themselves to be when delivering news that could break a person.

"Family of Sinclair Reyes?"

Joss's hand found Xena's, gripping tight enough to hurt.

"That's us," Xena said, voice steadier than she felt.

The doctor's gaze flickered between them, something unreadable passing behind her professional composure. "He's stable, for now. The surgery went better than we initially hoped. But I have to tell you, the nature of his injuries...." she paused, choosing her words with visible care, " they're unusual. We're still trying to understand exactly what kind of weapon caused this kind of damage."

"What kind of damage?" Xena asked, though some deep, instinctive part of her already suspected the answer.

The doctor hesitated, glancing down at the chart in her hands like it might offer better words than the ones currently failing her. "The wounds have characteristics consistent with an animal attack. Claw marks, primarily. But the bite pattern doesn't match anything in our database. Whatever attacked him wasn't a dog, and it definitely wasn't human."

The waiting room seemed to tilt sideways.

Joss's grip on Xena's hand went slack with shock. "What does that mean? What attacked him?"

The doctor offered an apologetic, helpless shrug, the kind reserved for questions medicine simply couldn't answer. "I wish I knew. We've called animal control, though I'm honestly not sure what they're going to find."

She excused herself to continue her rounds, leaving Xena and Joss standing in stunned silence, the fluorescent lights humming overhead like the world's worst soundtrack to a nightmare that refused to end.

Ragnar returned a moment later, expression carved from granite, and Xena knew before he said a single word that whatever he'd learned on that phone call was about to make everything infinitely worse.

"It wasn't a random attack," he said quietly, keeping his voice low enough that Joss, still reeling, didn't fully register the words. "It was a message."

"From who?"

Ragnar's jaw tightened, amber eyes darkening with something between fury and dread.

"From a pack that's been hunting your bloodline for twenty years," he said. "And this is just the beginning of what they're willing to do to get what they want."

Xena's blood ran cold.

"What exactly," she asked, voice barely above a whisper, "do they want from me?"

Ragnar's silence stretched long enough that Xena understood, with terrifying clarity, that whatever answer he was about to give her would change absolutely everything.