Leroy Watches Jr. & the Badass Bull (Bloodsong Series) by Sandy Nathan Page A

in his arms. He ran for that smaller exit. He could heal him, if he could just be alone.
    The ambulance pulled into the arena right after Leroy Jr. picked up his father and ran. Its lights rotated and flashed; the horn blared. A fire engine followed it, as was protocol. The engine’s lights cut circles in the gloomy corners of the stadium. The siren echoed in the cement building. The vehicles jolted across the hoof-pocked arena.
    Leroy ran, pretending not to notice the ambulance following him.
    “Oh, daddy, I'm so sorry. It’s all my fault.” Leroy shuddered to a stop, sobbing. “I didn’t watch for you. I let that bull get you. It’s just that Grandfather told me that he was dying. He’s dying, pop. Oh, God.”
    He took a step, balancing his father’s weight, and fell to his knee. “Oh, daddy, what am I going I do? He can’t die. And you can’t die.” He looked at his father’s seemingly dead form. “I gotta think about you .”
    Leroy lurched forward. “I gotta get you out of here. If those doctors get ahold of you, they’ll kill you.” He shot a glance behind him and struggled forward faster. The ambulance was right there. And a fire engine, too. “I’ll save you, daddy, don’t worry.” His father was getting so heavy. “We’re almost to the gate, pop. I’ll figure something out.” He hobbled with desperate speed.
    Leroy was almost to the far gate when a Sheriff’s black and white pulled in from the other side and blocked the exit. He stopped, weaving from exhaustion and grief. Two deputies got out and approached Leroy, hands on their weapons.
    “You need to give up your father, Mr. Watches. He needs medical attention. Sir, can you hear me?” Leroy stared straight ahead, swaying.
    One deputy flashed a look at the other. “Is he on something? Could all that cow shit make him sick or something?”
     I dunno. I never saw anything like this.” He gestured at Leroy, who was shifting from one foot to the other. “Look at him.”
    “We need backup.”
    “We have an individual behaving bizarrely,” the cop said into his microphone, “He’s carrying an injured man and isn’t responding. He’s staggering. He’s covered with matter from that exploded bull.”
    Leroy was barely staying on his feet. His dad wasn’t that much smaller than him. He dropped to one knee, and then rose unsteadily. He looked behind him at the ambulance. The two drivers were conversing heatedly, taking into a microphone. He saw them pointing a camera at him. He kept going.
    The ambulance passed him. The vehicle stopped maybe fifteen feet in front of him. Leroy kept going, weaving even more dramatically.
    “OK. Now!”
    The paramedics threw the ambulance doors open and jumped out, bearing a gurney for his father. One carried an elephant-sized syringe. More men converged on him.
    “OK, buddy. Nice and easy. Let him go. Your father needs treatment.  We’re going to the hospital.”
    “And we’re going to get you fixed up.” He injected Leroy in the neck.
     
    Leroy did not know how they got the tranquilizer in him, only that his powers were flaming. He knew that the white man’s medicine would kill his father and that he could save him, given a bit of time. His soul burst through the tranquilizer the instant they were inside the ambulance. Leroy stood up, easily balancing himself in the moving vehicle.
    The paramedics looked at him with terror. “Hey, stay calm, man.” The other guy scrambled for another syringe.
    Leroy scanned the interior of the vehicle. This was as much quiet as he was going to get for a while. He grabbed the paramedics by the throats.
    “You’re going to take a nap,” he said. They fell onto the side benches, out cold.
    Leroy closed his eyes, balancing against his father’s gurney. He went into a healing trance at once. Placing one hand on his father’s chest above his heart and the other on his abdomen, Leroy explored his father’s injuries. He had so many that Leroy could hardly count