by J. L. Myers
“Are you coming, or not?”
At the sound of the butch female paramedic’s voice, I wiped at the tears that refused to quit falling. I turned away from the detective’s watchful place beneath the awning roof over the warehouse door. The paramedic hopped into the driver’s seat as her male colleague in the back hooked up and IV to Adamaris’s arm. Cold drops chilled my skin and I craned my neck, hugging my jacket closer over the stab wound that had already been patched up. The sky was dark and stormy, swirling as it opened up and rained down over the crime scene. I didn’t want to stick around for the puddles to form. Having the compact in my pocket already heightened my fear enough, not to mention the fact that Adamaris hadn’t come to yet. The dark glossy stains of his blood on the asphalt remained, painting the place he had collided with the ground.
Calliope, I’m not done with you yet.
My heart leaped into my throat at the monster’s taunt, and with one last look at the detective, Mr. Moustache, I climbed quickly into the back and claimed the bench nearest Adamaris’s head. Puddles grew with every raindrop, a deadly promise of danger, but my darting eyes found no threat.
The lanky blonde male paramedic jumped out and slammed the doors shut, making me jolt. Then we were off as he took shotgun up front, reversing then bumping forward over divots in the asphalt as the siren blared. Rain pattered the roof and streaked down the tinted windows. My hearing focused past the sounds of the wheels spinning on the road, the wailing siren, and the noise of the paramedics as they whispered up front.
I took Adamaris’s hand and gave a squeeze. “Can you hear me? Please give me a sign.” I squeezed his hand tighter.
I hear you, little girl.
I tried and failed to control my breathing now that the voice was somehow with us in the moving ambulance. The blood pressure cuff started puffing up around Adamaris’s arm and I almost jumped right through the roof. A flash of something moved in my peripheral vision. I looked too late, only seeing the beading water falling down the windows on the back doors. That cackling voice rose up, making me gasp. My head flung away from the doors, seeing the stainless steel cabinet overhead—and the face of the smiling monster staring back at me.
“I have you now. There’s no escape.”
The sight vanished and then reappeared in the metal oh-shit handles along the walls that offered stability while in motion. Blondie’s male voice reached me through a dip in the siren’s wailing. “…won’t make it.”
“His life or yours. What’ll it be?”
I gritted my teeth and forced myself to look away from the moving glimpses that shifted from one reflective surface to the next. “Well come on then,” I snarled under my breath, my free hand brushing over the dagger my jacket concealed. If the monster could climb out of those surfaces like it had done with the compact, it would already have been here, finishing this once and for all. “I dare you.”
“I like games, little girl. And our fun is just getting started…”
“Bite me!”
I said it a bit too loud and got twin looks of concern from Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum. They resumed their whispers, spouting “assailant”, “under-the-influence”, “trip to the psych ward”, and “should I cuff her?” like I couldn’t hear them. But I didn’t care. They didn’t matter right now, and neither did their opinions.
The only thing that did matter was lying so perfectly still in front of me. Adamaris’s breaths were shallow, but the connected lead from his finger gave out a weak yet steady blip-blip to show his heart was still working enough not to need intervention.
The monster’s taunts continued, promising me there was only one way to save the guy I was falling for. Threatening to finish him off if I didn’t pay attention. And then promising to end me too, gruesomely.
I ignored it all, letting the raspy voice become part of the background noise, pretending the flashes of black weren’t moving all around me and convincing myself that for the moment I was safe from harm.
But my heart wasn’t. It was breaking apart like it was made of ice.
Leaning in closer, I smoothed the hair back from Adamaris’s face, causing more of his blood to coat my hand from my earlier attempts to wake him. “Please, hear me. I need you. I can’t lose you now.” I sniffed back the tears and pressed my lips gently to his. “Come back—”
A quiet groan trapped my desperate pleas and I jerked up to peer down at him. Adamaris’s eyes cracked open, and I cringed at the sight of his blood red eyes from the impact of the fall. I feared what he would look like inside, what his internal organs had been reduced to. “G-grant…my…wish.”
I shook my head and cupped his face. “You’ll be okay. We’re on the way to the hospital. Hear the siren? We’ll be there any minute.”
“No,” he grated, eyes pinning shut as if the simple action of speaking caused him pure agony. His hand caught my forearm, squeezing with more strength than I expected in his broken condition. “Say it…Call-i…grant…m-my…w-wish. Seal it with…your…kiss.”
“I don’t understand. What wish? How can I—”
Adamaris’s back arched off the stretcher with a horrible gasp. Then he collapsed. Blood-red eyes remaining wide open, his mouth gaped as the heart rate monitor raced.
“Oh, shit! Get back there,” the female paramedic yelled.
Blondie twisted in his seat, the look on his thin face dire as he climbed into the back. Before he shoved me out of the way, I reclaimed Adamaris’s hands and pressed them to my heart. I had no idea what I was doing or how I was meant to do what he had demanded of me. It was impossible, or was it? I’d stayed away from wishing for anything for my entire life, but he wasn’t asking me to make a wish. He wanted me to grant his—because I was Fae.
“Yes, I grant it.” I pressed my lips to his, hot tears spilling free of my eyes and onto his bloody face. “I grant your wish.”
“Move!” I was shoved suddenly out of the way and fell off the bench to the hard floor bed of the ambulance. Blondie didn’t give me a second thought, his fingers going to Adamaris’s throat as he felt for a pulse. The monitor flat-lined. “Shit.” He started chest compressions, huffing as he pressed down over and over again. “Code blue. Code blue! Step on it, Tracy. This guy’s DOA if you don’t.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
The beeping of machines was so slow compared to my racing heart that refused to slow down. The sight of Adamaris quietly stretched out on his back on a hospital bed was anything but peaceful. Cardiac arrest. That was what the ‘Code Blue’ had meant. His heart had stopped dead in his chest. He’d died in the ambulance with me screaming for the male paramedic performing CPR to bring him back to life.
There had been no miraculous gasp of breath that brought him back to me.
No flying open of his bloodshot eyes to show he was even there anymore.
I rubbed at my eyes, the area around them sore and puffy, stinging as I fought to keep the tears from obscuring my view of him. So still, so silent, so not here. His hand in my own was heavy, a dead weight. A bandage was wrapped around his skull, and another covered the stab wound in his broken leg. There were so many bruises and cuts, the sheets and hospital johnny couldn’t conceal all of the ones that had turned his body black and blue. Now that they’d closed his eyelids, the expression on his face was vacant. Muscles slack and no hint of that sardonic smile or cocky, arrogant attitude. I missed it already, the way Adamaris glared and grinned at me, the way he said my name, the way he stalked up to me, making fear and excitement race through my veins, and the way he’d held my body against his and kissed me like I’d die if he didn’t.
I could swear I kept hearing his voice, so weak and so quiet, calling out to me.
Maybe I had finally lost it. Maybe I was dead. Maybe this was Hell.
But I knew it wasn’t as I let one of my hands slip from my tight clasp around his, falling down to his chest. I released a long breath, lungs aching from all the hyperventilated crying. His heart thumped weakly beneath my pa
lm. The tube connected to his mouth breathed for him, keeping his body alive in his unconscious state.
The doctor, Mr. tall, dark, and serious had left me here a few minutes ago with a prognosis. Coma. Self-induced rather than medically. Adamaris wouldn’t, or couldn’t, wake up. With cracked ribs, a broken leg, dislocated shoulder, internal bleeding everywhere, and a split skull, his body was failing him. Despite my many demands, no surgery had been scheduled to fix any of the many issues he was battling to stay in the world of the living. Dr. Serious claimed he was too weak—he had no idea what kind of man he was dealing with—and said they needed to wait and see if he would make it through the…
I gasped a rattled breath. Just thinking what I’d been told minutes ago threatened to turn me into a blubbering mess on the floor, a puddle of tears and screaming that if it started, it might never stop. Would he make it through the night?
“You have to, Adamaris.” Right at his bedside and surrounded by sterile white walls and the scent of that special detergent hospitals always smelled like, I laid my head on his arm, hoping the gentle connection wasn’t causing him more pain than he was already in. There was no space that hadn’t blackened his skin after his fall from two-stories up. “Fight to live, fight to return to me—”
“You poor unfortunate soul. A tragedy that is too much for one so young to face.”
I ratcheted up on the hard hospital chair that must have been designed by sadists. Beyond the intermittent beeping sounds and the surrounding machines on wheels with their flashing lights and the hanging IV bags—I did a double take. There had been something there, a face inside the clear liquid inside the IV. His face? But what I’d heard, that voice…
Not deep and alluring like his. Not raspy and taunting either. Not the voice of a monster that sent shivers down my spine and made my stomach churn. No. This voice was almost musical, soft, and filled with empathy.
“Mamma?”
“No, little princess. I am not your mother. I am a listener, a watcher, and a helper. There is no time to waste, he will not last—”
BEEP-BEEP—BEEP-BEEP—BEEP-BEEP—BEEP.
I covered my ears at the ongoing sound and opened my mouth to scream out for help. Men and women dressed in scrubs rushed in through the doors, as did Mr. Serious. “Stand back!” He shoved me out of the way, tearing back the sheets and ripping down Adamaris’s hospital johnny to expose his mottled chest that was indented on one side. BEEEEEEEP! A flatline replaced the racing staccato of the heart-monitoring machine. “Crash cart, get me a damn crash cart!”
A nurse rushed from the room, doors swinging back and forth well after she left, and all I could do was stare in numb shock. The hospital staff moved like experts, rushing about, injecting things, pumping Adamaris’s chest while the doctor searched for the sudden issue that was killing him.
The crash cart clattered as it was wheeled in. The doc was on it, firing up the paddles as a nurse followed his instructions to set the voltage. “One, two, three, clea—stop!”
Adamaris’s whole body convulsed, mouth gaping around the intubated tube down his throat. His eyes flung wide, bulging and even redder than they’d been in the ambulance.
“He can’t breathe, Calliope. The air is killing him. He’s running on borrowed time.”
I gasped, hearing that same musical voice again. “Who are you?” I snapped under my breath. “What the hell do you want?” The wheelie table at the bed’s end was shoved back into me, splashing water from the jug and the cup I had filled and not left Adamaris’s side to sip from. I jumped back, hitting another sitting chair and catching myself before I fell. Even with all the movement around the hospital bed, I needed to keep him in sight. I needed to believe this wasn’t the moment I lost my sexy, witty, passionate stalker for good.
Don’t listen… The words were so soft and unique that I questioned if I had even heard them at all. Then that soft female voice returned.
“I’m Fae, just like you. I can help, grant you a wish that will save his life. Because he will die. It is only a matter of time. Mer were not meant to live on land. He can’t keep up the transformation…”
The sheet that had been tugged off his leg to check for septicemia revealed a swollen foot beneath the bandaging that wrapped his broken leg bone. I gasped. His toes shimmered, flexing in the commotion as he was pulled and prodded higher up…and they were webbed, sticking together as bruised flesh turned glossy black with a hint of gold.
Scales.
“It doesn’t make sense,” Dr. Serious grated as he tugged the tube from Adamaris’s mouth out. “His lungs are holding form, he’s breathing on his own, but I’ve never seen anything like it. His oxygen levels, they’re failing. He’s suffocating.”
Drowning on air.
The voice had been right, it was all right in front of me, clear as day. Just like the time he’d appeared up through my bathwater, with a hint of what I now knew were his scales vanishing as he drowned on the pure air. “He needs water. A bucket of water. You have to shove his head into it!”
I rushed forward and was pushed back by a stocky female nurse. They had no idea and they were going to stop me. They were going to kill him.
“He’ll be dead in a few minutes.”
“No. Let me go!” I threw up an elbow, only missing the woman’s surprised face because she jerked back.
“Get her out of here before she kills him! And call the detective here now!”
The male nurse came at me too, catching my other arm so both of them could haul me back. I screamed like a crazy person, kicking and scratching and shouting that they were killing him.
“It’s no use. They do not know he’s Mer. Even if they did, they would kill him. Let him die and cut him into bite-sized scientific pieces. But I can help. There is still time to save him. I can stop the transformation, keep him human…for a price.”
I suddenly knew where that calming voice was coming from…
Thrown out into the corridor with the nurse’s station behind me, I stopped struggling as the male nurse ordered the desk nurses to call the cops. “No. Please no. I’m sorry. I’m so scared. I don’t even know what I was saying. I just…please help him.”
Miss Stocky and Mr. Cranky didn’t rescind the order as they shared a look, before rushing back into the room and locking the door from the inside. The nurses at the station kept their eyes on me as one of the four made the call while the other three pretended to be busy on computers, with handheld tablet devices, or by rearranging a vase of vibrant flowers.
Knowing my time was limited, I ignored them, shoving my hand into my pocket and pulling the clamshell compact free. I popped it open with a quick deep breath, staring down into the mirrored surface while cringing in expectation of the monster’s face to appear and its clawed hands to fling out and drag me inside. But the sight was even more shocking than that.
There was no monster, no vile and terrifying creature out to get me. Instead, the most beautiful face smiled back at me. Skin one shade warmer than snow, poreless and perfect, the Fae’s features were so familiar and yet so distinct. Tiny sloped nose, larger than life eyes that held sadness and the promise of help, glossy lips plump and a shade of pale pink, bone structure to make the most beautiful supermodel envious, and cascading pale locks dotted with small flowers that flowed with body and shine over her shoulders and down her lithe body.
She looked like royalty.
“What price?” I whispered, finding my voice over the shock of her appearance.
“I can save your lover’s life and give him the ability to breathe so he can heal and return to the ocean…” She sighed, her massive eyes dropping with a look of regret.
“But?” The nurses eyed me but clearly couldn’t hear the voice that seemed so clear and real to me. Rising up onto my toes to peer through the small square window in the door, I saw the doctor stabbing into Adamaris’s side, releasing a flood of blood over the white sheets and hospital bed. I clapped my hand over my mouth to trap my scream ins
ide. I wanted to bash down the door before they killed him in the name of saving his life. I wanted to do anything, everything, something…whatever would save him.
“But I need power to do it. I need you to agree to come to me. To the Shaede.”
“Calli, no!”
I whirled from the horrific view as the doctor barked orders that I could no longer hear over the pounding in my ears. I’d heard Adamaris’s voice that time, I was sure of it, the same unique one I’d heard before the Fae revealed herself.
A flash of movement appeared in the glass vase at the nurses’ station—his face?—but it vanished before I got a proper look. And then I saw the detective. He had his eyes set on me at the end of the corridor. His lips pressed into a line and his marching steps stalled as he tugged out his phone. The look on his face said, “Don’t you dare run.”
“His heart has stopped, Calliope. Make the wish, or lover boy is dead for good.”
The female voice sounded again, and I spun away from the detective to see Adamaris’s body dead still. His eyes were open, staring lifelessly at the ceiling. Dr. Serious now looked defeated, head hanging as he scrubbed a hand down his face.
I caught my tears before they could escape, spinning back around at the whispered pleading that was almost too soft to hear. And there Adamaris was, his face a disappearing shimmer right beneath the sheen of the glass vase. He was begging me not to agree, to let him die, his lips moving now without any sound—because he was fading right before my eyes.