Dragon Called: A Slow Burn Sexy Paranormal Romance

by Kara Lockharte

  The lurker charged, and so did he.

  Andi stood staring out at Damian facing off with the lurker like they were in some weird sci-fi Western mash-up, her fists curled helplessly against the glass.

  He just saved my life—again.

  Andi had a faint idea that it might not be okay to be in a relationship where you could lose track of how often the other person had saved your life, but none of that mattered right now—not when Damian was out there, and there was nothing she could do to help him.

  “Andi! Epi!”

  Reality landed like a ten-ton weight, and she took in everything at once. The monitor in the room was blaring all sorts of warnings, while people she knew delivered CPR and had an ambu bag giving whoever was on the bed 100% oxygen.

  “On it!” she shouted, not even knowing who she was shouting it to, only that it was her job to fucking find some. She ripped through the drawers of the crash cart, breaking open all the locks until she found a syringe and cued it up. “Access?”

  “Right AC!” Of course, Sheila was there. She was the nurse most likely to be assigned charge any night she was on because, in a field of bossy women, she was best at it.

  Something heavy crashed outside. The floor trembled. An inhuman sound, almost like laughter, cut through the noise of the monitors.

  Focus. She had to focus.

  Andi danced around the right side of the bed with the epinephrine and a saline flush and realized that she knew the patient too. Jessica? Fuck! She ran the epi through and flushed it, while Matt kept pushing and counting. “What happened?” she asked, racing back to the cart to queue up a second dose.

  “Good…fucking…question,” Matt said, in between pumps of CPR.

  “Giant blue thing. Some kind of demon,” Sheila said, surveilling everything while playing with the cross on her necklace. “Rhythm check!” she shouted, and Matt pulled back.

  “It says if we don’t get her to OR, none of this is going to fucking count,” Ishita said from the front of the bed, momentarily holding the bag off of Jessica’s face so that the EKG machine would track Jessica’s heart—and only Jessica’s heart. The woman on the bed was broken; anyone could see that—one femur was snapped, her shoulder was dislocated, and part of her skull was dented in. It was like something had picked her up and thrown her around like a rag doll—and Andi was guessing something had.

  “Matt, tap out,” Sheila commanded. The rhythm on the monitor was still ominous, and while everyone here knew they were fighting a losing battle, no one wanted to give up.

  “No!” He fought her.

  Andi grabbed his shoulders and bodily pulled him back. “I’m fresh,” she said, jumping on the bedframe to start CPR.

  That monster did this, Andi had time to think while she pulsed. The monster that is still outside. With Damian. She tried to focus on what she was doing, keep her speed up, keep counting, keep making sure the strokes were deep enough to matter.

  “Oh fuck, that thing is back!” Ishita yelped from the head of the bed.

  Andi fought not to look. If she did, she’d get distracted, and then she wouldn’t be doing Jessica any good.

  “More epi!” Sheila commanded, and Matt rushed in to give it.

  “Who the fuck is that out there with him?” he said from his vantage point on Andi’s left.

  Andi bit her lips. Don’t look, don’t look, just pump.

  “There’s no one,” Ishita said, then paused. “Holy shit.”

  “Right?” Matt agreed, then full body winced as he saw a blow outside land. “Fuck,” he said in a guttural voice, and it took all of Andi’s strength not to look. She segued into a Please be okay, please be okay, instead.

  “Rhythm check!” Sheila shouted. Andi paused, hands hovering just off of Jessica’s chest. “Shit, it’s shockable. Everyone back!”

  Andi jumped off the bed and stared outside, listening to the ascending scale of the defibrillator’s charge. The blue monster was pacing back down the hall and away from their room as though he were being lured, but where was Damian? Why couldn’t she see him? She held her breath. Jessica was dying no matter what the monitor said. Her stomach was starting to swell—either her injuries had caused a bleed or CPR had. It happened. You couldn’t just punch organs with enough strength to move blood and not cause collateral damage. And who the hell knew what her intracranial pressure was with that skull fracture—had anyone checked her eyes? Andi could already taste the acid at the back of her throat, the familiar sensation of knowing she was going to fail, no matter how hard she tried.

  “I’m clear, you’re clear, we’re all clear! Shocking!” Sheila said, waving a hand over Jessica’s body like an assistant in a magic act, then hit the button to deliver the charge. The rhythm on the monitor jumped and Matt lunged in, feeling for a pulse because just because your heart was beating didn’t mean that it was working right.

  A heart could beat, but not have enough blood to pump.

  “Nothing,” Matt announced. They’d exhausted all the resources in the room and crash cart. They’d poured liters of fluid into her, but saline couldn’t replace the red stuff.

  “I could,” Andi offered, gesturing to the door.

  “Don’t you dare,” Sheila said. “No one’s committing suicide on my watch.”

  “I can take the stairs; I know the back way,” Andi said, edging around her. Matt had already jumped back on the bed to restart CPR. Then Sheila’s eyes widened, looking at something behind her, and Andi whirled around. The blue thing was back, missing one of its legs, yet still managing to skitter on its remaining three, racing right for them.

  “No, no, no, no, no,” Ishita intoned, as though her words could ward the monster off—when Andi saw the only thing that possibly could.

  “Damian.” She breathed his name and stepped up closer to the glass. The second he was done, she could run for the blood bank. He hadn’t saved her life this many times already to let anything happen to her now.

  The monster leapt onto the glass right in front of her, and she gasped as the force of it shook the window in its hinges. And then he was there, wrapping his arms around its torso like in a wrestling show, prying it off—leaving the glass to rattle as he twisted it to the ground—and put a knee in its back to pin it as he changed his grip to encompass its neck and squeeze. It thrashed beneath him, boneless as far as she could tell, especially by the way all its limbs rehinged to claw back at him, ripping through his shirt and against his skin, making him bleed more of his strange green blood. Andi gasped and tears sprang to her eyes.

  She wanted to beat her hands against the glass, to tell him that she was there, that she was witnessing him do this, to let him know that he wasn’t going through the pain that she could clearly see written across his face alone. But she didn’t want to distract him, and he didn’t look up or over at her—not until the thing was dead, its blue corpse sagging to the ground as he dropped it—just as she heard the monitor on the crash cart behind her sing the monotonous note that meant Jessica was gone too.

  Andi twisted back for a moment, looking at her fallen coworker—definitely wanting to cry—and then looked back outside where Damian stood, panting, the bottom half of his T-shirt ripped away, with gouges leaking green across his chest.

  “Who…the…fuck…is…that?” Matt demanded, still doing CPR.

  “I’m calling it,” Sheila said. “Stand down.”

  Andi swallowed and put a hand to the glass, waiting for Damian to look up—worried that he wouldn’t, that he’d just turn and walk down the hall and leave all of this in her memories. And then with a deep inhale, he did, looking up as though seeing her for the first time, and he smirked, leaning over to match her hand with his much bigger one, smeared with blue and green.

  She shoved the door open. This time no one was going to be able to stop her.

  Chapter 19

  “Are you all right?” she breathed, taking him and the monster he’d killed in, then looking back into the room she’d just been in
.

  He ignored her question and asked his own. “Are you?”

  Andi didn’t think she knew the answer to that right now. “Yes…no…maybe?”

  “Come with me,” he said, gesturing her forward with both hands. She took a step and then he picked her up and over the monster’s corpse, setting her down on the far side.

  “Damian…you…” she tried again, reaching for his stomach where his beautiful abs had been slashed repeatedly.

  “Don’t worry about me.” He caught one of her hands before she could touch him. “This is just my usual Saturday night,” he said, and pulled her down the hall, sweeping his coat up on the way.

  They ran into the last ICU room and found Austin there—and Zach—covered in even more blood, but this time it was red.

  “What happened?” Damian demanded the second they were inside.

  “I’m sorry, I couldn’t stop it, and I couldn’t leave him. There are Hunters here,” Austin was saying, as she ran up to Zach’s bedside. He was torn up again, having given birth to the latest monstrosity. It looked like a war zone.

  “How the fuck is he even alive?” she whispered, looking between the men. “Like, is he part zombie?” She dodged around Austin and dialed the blood pressure medications up. Jessica…was dead. She wasn’t her favorite coworker by any stretch, but that didn’t mean she deserved to die.

  Maybe Damian could do something to save her? He knew magic or something, right?

  “What are you doing?” Austin asked from his position beside Zach, where he was holding pressure on him again.

  “Postponing the inevitable, I hope,” she said, folding up her panic and putting it into a mental box. She’d just cranked up all the medication that might help. “The blood bank’s on the third floor, I can go—”

  “No, you can’t,” Damian said, grabbing her arm to stop her before looking at Austin. “How much longer?”

  Austin glanced at his wrist. “Five minutes. Does he have that, with all those?” he asked, eyeing the pumps.

  Andi looked up at the monitor and felt her nursely exterior sliding back into place. Somehow Zach’s numbers weren’t plummeting downward, not like they ought to be—if she’d lost as much blood as was on this floor now, she’d be dead for sure. So there was some other element she didn’t know at play here. “I don’t know, I’m not God, but maybe?”

  “All right, good,” Austin said, then he stared at Damian. “She shouldn’t be here.”

  “Fuck. You,” Andi told him and reached to take Zach’s pulse. She could see it on the monitor, but she needed to feel it—skin to skin—to actually believe he had one.

  Damian grabbed her hand before she touched him. “Don’t. If that’s real silver, you’ll hurt him.” He held her hand up so that she could see her bracelet and rings. “Tell me everything,” he asked Austin, releasing her.

  “He was fine until an orderly came in and started poking at him,” Austin said. “Waving something over him? Short guy? Bald? Had full sleeve tattoos.”

  Andi cut him off. “But we don’t have orderlies on our floor.” One of the hazards of being an ICU nurse—better patient ratios, but less ancillary staff to help.

  Austin’s jaw clenched, and he looked to Damian again. “Then it was Hunters for sure. I knew it. That guy set all this off. Goddammit, D, this is why I told you the hospital was a bad idea—”

  “Fine, we’ll install some sort of blood bank at the castle for the next time someone has a portal open in them. Oh, wait, that’s never fucking happened before.” Damian’s voice was low and pissed off as Andi’s mind started to churn.

  “I know, I know,” Austin said, his tone an apology. “But how the fuck, D—”

  “What do portals look like?” Andi blurted out. Both of the men turned to look at her. “I think I saw it. This morning.” The thing that had glinted in Zach’s belly before being submerged in blood. Maybe she hadn’t imagined it—maybe it was real.

  Damian grabbed her shoulders. “What did you see?”

  She thought back quickly. “It was shiny like mirror glass—like a little piece of mylar.”

  “An implanted portal mirror? Impossible,” Austin said.

  “And yet, here we are,” Damian said to himself. Underneath the tatters of his T-shirt, his skin was healing—nearly whole—but she still wanted to touch it to make sure. He frowned in thought, then reached a hand out to her as if he’d read her mind, and she bit her lips. “Give me your bracelet, Andi.”

  She inhaled to ask why but didn’t for once, as she took it off and handed it over. Its silver didn’t seem to hurt him as he bent it straight like a blade.

  “Austin, get back,” Damian warned.

  The other man stood his ground. “No. We’re just two minutes away now—”

  “From that thing being stuck inside him again, and who knows when this all repeats itself,” Damian said, advancing on the bed.

  “Maybe he’ll heal it out!”

  “Who knows how long it’s been there? It’s coming out tonight. This is too much chaos to clean up a third time.” Damian pushed Austin aside, and Zach started freely bleeding again. Andi gasped and ran to the IV pumps to dial all of the medications higher, ignoring all the warning alarms. “If he dies, it’s better his death is on me than you,” Damian said, deciding.

  “I can touch it if I put on gloves!” Austin said, running for the boxes on the walls. “I can do it!”

  “Do…do what?” Andi twisted back, clearly missing some vital piece. But then, in a moment of horrible clarity, she understood, because Damian was holding her bracelet up like a scalpel and bringing it inexorably down to Zach’s abdomen. “Oh my God, you’re going to hurt him, aren’t you?” Andi whirled back to the remaining IV pumps—one of them was fentanyl—and she cranked it up. “Do you even know what you’re doing?”

  “Yes. Do you?” Austin challenged her—no, he was challenging Damian—and his voice was low and full of menace that hadn’t been there just before. Something about the man had changed. He was bigger—how?—and his clothes were tighter, and his wristwatch’s band snapped. It didn’t make sense to her, but then nothing for the last three hours really had, had it? She bit her lips to keep her panic to herself, and focused on Damian instead.

  “Let me do it,” she demanded, stopping his hand with her own.

  Damian looked at her darkly. “It’s not safe.”

  “None of tonight has been safe!” Her hand clenched around his. He would have to pry her off to continue. “And medical procedures aren’t safe. That’s why generally you get people’s permission before doing them!”

  “We don’t have time,” Damian growled.

  “He was my patient last night, and he’s still my patient now. You will have to hurt me before I let you hurt him,” she hissed.

  “You don’t know what you’re getting into,” Damian protested.

  She was using all of her strength against him and she hadn’t even made him budge. It wasn’t fair—it would have to be words or nothing. “But I do. This is my job, remember? I’ve had way more experience at this kind of thing than you. So let me help.”

  He was an immovable mountain determined to not let her pass, and his eyes were glazed over. Even though he was looking right at her, she knew he couldn’t see her—he was looking too hard into his past.

  “Just trust me, Damian,” she whispered.

  His attention snapped to the here and now. She thought she saw a stricken look on his face, but then it was gone as if it had never been there.

  “Just this once,” she promised.

  His golden gaze poured over her, and then it was like he was seeing her again—here, in the flesh, beside him—and he swallowed. “Okay,” he said, relenting. He passed the bracelet over. “Do you remember where it was?”

  “I really fucking hope so,” Andi muttered, pulling all of her silver rings off to throw them to the ground.

  Together they worked on Zach. She cut the delicate tissues keeping loops of bowel in p
lace with her bracelet’s edge, attempting to avoid arteries and organ damage. Damian gently pulled the looping organ out of him, putting it in a messy pile beside Zach’s hips as they gutted him like a Halloween pumpkin. Austin breathed down their necks the entire time.

  Where had she seen that glimmer earlier? Was it even there? What if it’d been some sleepless trick of her imagination? What if Zach died right now—because of her? After seeing Jessica die, she couldn’t fucking take that. And how the shit-fuck-hell were they going to get all of these pieces back inside the man? Just because she wasn’t a butcher didn’t mean she was a surgeon. And none of this shit was sterile and…and…and…

  “You’ve got this. It’s okay,” Damian told her.

  She didn’t dare look over at him.

  “Keep going.” He put his hand on hers, and she found the strength to go on.

  “Moon’s nigh,” Austin growled. “Step away before—”

  “I’m not losing him,” Damian said. Oh God, how many times had she heard doctors say that right before they did lose someone?

  “But you lost Michael,” Austin went on, and it was like he was speaking around too many teeth.

  Andi tugged up one more layer. She’d torn a small artery, so the basin of Zach’s abdomen was filling up with a slow bleed, but… “Oh my God,” she whispered, as something small and silver glimmered inside of him like a fish.

  “Found it.” Damian’s hand darted into Zach and lifted a small-shining-something the size of a half-dollar before ripping it into shreds—right before Austin’s fallen wristwatch began alarming. Damian’s expression stayed intense as he took two quick steps away from the bed—even though Zach looked like half of an all-you-can-eat cannibal buffet. What the fuck?

  “Moon’s full,” he told her before she could ask like that was an explanation. “Either it works or it doesn’t.”

  That made absolutely no sense to her. “We can’t just leave him like that!” She ran for the bed, and Damian caught her, picking her up and turning her around so that her back was to the bed.