by Leia Stone
“You should’ve woken me,” Luke scolded him.
Noah waved in dismissal. “I never intended to, just said that so you wouldn’t argue.”
Shea gave Noah her stank face. “Babe, you can’t go all hero and be without sleep. You’re going to collapse before we even get out of here.”
He chuckled. “I’ll be fine. I gave myself a small healing an hour ago. No one saw, and now I feel refreshed.”
Shea just shook her head, as we started to pass out breakfast bars and waters to our small crew.
Chloe was chewing her lip, looking anxiously at the entrance to the cave where we were.
“What’s up?” Noah asked her, obviously noticing her apprehension.
She turned, slightly red in the cheeks. “Hypothetically, if someone had to poop, where would they go?”
Luke, Shea, and I busted out laughing. Chloe reached out and punched Shea in the arm since she was closest. Only Noah seemed mature enough to keep his cool.
“There’s a Porta-Potty up here. I’ll escort you while everyone else eats,” Noah told her with a straight face.
She tipped her chin up in a dignified way, and walked after him. “Thank you.”
It was a funny moment, and yet right then, Sera popped into my mind. If she were here, she’d have a joke to crack as well, but she wasn’t. I was having fun without her, laughing without her, and I felt guilty for it. I was leading a rescue mission for Lincoln and not for her, and I felt guilty for that too.
And then there was Raksha. Did Lucifer suspect that she helped me? Was she okay? I just didn’t know.
I ate the rest of my bar in silence.
After we’d all gone to the bathroom and had our breakfast, we started our grueling walk. After we reached our first scam checkpoint of the day, the clock started ticking. In a few hours, that guy’s money would turn to misshapen pieces of paper, and as soon as he noticed he’d be on our asses to enact revenge. We speed-walked without taking breaks for ten hours, making great time, until Noah collapsed.
He’d been dragging his legs a bit for an hour or so, but that time he fully face-planted onto the hard-packed dirt ground.
“Noah!” Shea shrieked, running to help him. The tunnels were crowded today, everyone who had been sleeping in the night had awoken, and were now making their way out of there.
I ran forward with Luke and helped Shea get Noah to stand. I was tired too, thirsty, and my feet were tingly and swollen, but I’d had at least a bit of sleep, Noah had none.
“I’m exhausted,” he murmured, his eyelids drooping.
We had three to four more hours to go, and the tunnels were too crowded to allow Noah to do a healing on himself. All that golden glowy magic would light up the tunnels like Christmas morning, and get us killed.
Luke looked at the passing people, a slow and steady stream of worn-out-looking humans and demons.
“I’ve got an idea,” he stated, then started to take off his shirt.
I frowned, but when he started to take off his pants, I gasped. “You’re shifting! Down here?” I glanced left and right.
Luke chuckled. “Yeah. I’m demon gifted, so it’s okay. I’m going to carry Noah on my back so he can rest. My bear can easily handle the weight.”
My heart pinched at the kind gesture, but Noah shook his head. “You don’t need to do that, bro.”
Luke waved him off dismissively. “I’m a big emotional softy. I can’t let you keep collapsing. I’ll be fine.”
With that declaration, he dropped his undies and grabbed his junk. A woman passing by stared wide-eyed as his bones started to crack, and huge muscles bulked out on his already huge arms. Fur began to ripple on his skin and he hunched forward, dropping to all fours as his body transformed into the massive bear we were used to seeing.
“I love you, Lukey,” Shea cooed in his ear, stroking the fur on his back.
We helped Noah mount him, leaning him forward to lie on his stomach, so he could wrap his arms around Luke’s big bear neck. Now that he was off his feet, a sigh of contentment escaped Noah ,and his lids started to roll closed.
Shea frowned. “He worked a shift the night before we left. I don’t even know when the last time he slept was. Could be as long as three days ago.”
Chloe was glancing nervously at the tunnel behind us. “We’ve stopped for too long. Let’s keep moving.”
We started forward once more, Shea and I on either side of Luke, each keeping a hand on Noah’s back to make sure he wouldn’t slide off while he got some rest. I’d gathered Luke’s clothes and backpack and was carrying it for now. Walking the tunnels with Luke’s wide form meant that when we passed someone, they had to kiss the walls and stare in shock at the big bear carrying a sleeping man on his back.
The next two hours were grueling. I was so exhausted that I felt sick to my stomach. My legs ached, and I knew I was extremely dehydrated. We’d only brought so much water, and the more you drank the more you had to stop and pee, so we were trying to just push through it.
We were just wondering how much longer it would be, when I saw another scam stop ahead. Our last one by my calculations. He’d just finished with the couple ahead of us, and upon seeing Luke’s big bear, his eyes widened a little and he grabbed his gun.
“Noah.” I shook him awake, wanting him coherent for this in case any shit went down hard.
Noah’s eyes sprang open and he bolted into a sitting position.
“Hello, friends,” the man said cautiously, his eyes never leaving Luke. Beast Shifters were rare, bears even more.
“Yeah yeah.” Chloe waved her hand, dismissing his shitty suitcase of unusable items as she handed him five hundred dollars. When she went to step forward and pass, his associate who’d been blocking the hallway stopped her.
“Hang on, friend. Just a little test to ensure the money is real,” the man, who I now recognized as a Dark Mage with green glowing magic, informed her.
We all looked to Shea, who mouthed one word.
“Run.”
With that single command, Chloe drove her knee into the balls of the man before her, and he collapsed onto the ground with a groan. Shea and I burst forward after her as Luke trampled the man and his suitcase, coming in right behind us. Noah had tucked himself forward and was gripping Luke’s fur with white knuckles. We’d run all of twenty feet, when I heard the loud and terrifying burst of a gunshot.
Luke let out a strangled bear yelp and Noah screamed.
Pivoting in place, I could see Luke had been shot somewhere in his left hind leg, because he was now dragging it with a limp. In one swift move, Noah pulled out his gun and returned fire as he slid off Luke’s side, taking his stance on the ground. Shea positioned herself next to Noah, and a thick black smoke began to pour from her palms, fogging up the tunnel so no one could see.
“We’re going to have to run the rest of the way,” Noah barked to all of us.
“Can you?” I asked Luke, who’d clearly just been freaking shot!
His reply was to start running forward, so I took that as a yes. Noah fired two quick shots into the black smoke, and then we hauled ass.
Running was not my thing, especially after spending the last God knew how long down in Hell, where I was usually drugged up and bedridden. Every muscle in my body rebelled against what I was doing, and my lungs were burning like they were on fire.
“Move!” Chloe shouted to people who were in our way as we sped past them all.
After what seemed like forever, we started going up; the tunnel was slowly arching upward, and the width and height were narrowing. I hadn’t heard any more gunshots, but that didn’t mean they’d stopped coming for us. I couldn’t breathe, so out of shape from not doing cardio in what felt like decades. I was starting to feel dizzy from the short bursts of air.
Mercifully, a staircase rose into view up ahead with a man standing before it.
“Exit fee! Pay your exit fee. One thousand each,” he called.
A few people ahead of us
grumbled that they didn’t have the money, when Chloe went into vampire speed mode, and I skidded to a stop behind Luke’s bleeding bear ass. Suddenly Chloe was there and then she wasn’t. The man arguing with the couple trying to leave, as well as his heavily armed friend, were violently thrown backward, and Chloe materialized again standing over him. Then Shea was there, red and purple magic crackling in her hands.
“Night night,” she stated, and threw the magic over them.
The one man was struggling to sit up after Chloe had knocked him over, but when the colorful spell hit him, he slumped over, unconscious.
“Go!” Chloe shouted to the couple who’d been unable to pay.
Needing no other motivation, they burst forward up the stairs, Chloe right behind them. I eyed the skinny hallway and then my large bear friend. It was going to be close.
“He can’t shift. I need to take the bullet out first or it’ll cause more damage,” Noah told me.
I nodded.
Just then, our past came back to haunt us. I was looking at Noah, who’d just been speaking, when half a dozen of the armed con artists we’d been screwing over all day, burst from the end of the hallway and raised their guns.
It was like everything went into slow motion then. Shea was pushing Luke’s big-ass bear through the tiny stairwell, trying to make him fit, and I was standing beside Noah as he raised his gun. I didn’t know much about guns, but I knew a pistol was subservient to a semiautomatic.
Without thinking, I just reacted. Pulling on my powers, regardless of dark or light, I dropped to my knee and shouted, holding my hands out before me. A creamy silver, pearl-like magic poured from my palms, and immediately formed a shield before Noah and me. The magical substance was thin, so we could still see through it, but mercifully strong as bullets started to slam against it.
It held.
“Holy shit, Bri.” Noah’s comment brought me back to reality.
I breathed in and out slowly, holding my concentration on the shield, while more and more bullets rattled the front.
“I got Luke up top. What’s our exit plan?” Shea’s steady voice sounded behind me.
I had an idea, but I had no clue what it would do. “Get ready to run,” I commanded them both.
With one more deep breath, I pushed the shield outward, letting it leave my hands and float toward the group of armed men. It sailed through the air and then slammed into them, knocking them backward before dissipating.
“Now!” I screamed and turned to run, Shea and Noah hot on my heels.
We burst through the door to find we were inside of a crowded subway station. Luke was the center of attention, his bear bleeding everywhere, and half a dozen demons staring at him.
Shit.
Chapter Twenty-Three
San Francisco wasn’t like LA. Back home in Demon City, there would’ve been a hundred questions for the group surrounding the bleeding Beast Shifter, but instead, people got their look in and then left to get on the train.
“Let’s get out of here and find a safe place,” Noah shouted.
The scammers from the tunnels were going to recover quickly, and no doubt they’d be looking for us.
“I’ll meet you up there!” Shea shouted, then dipped her feet in Luke’s blood and walked toward the train, leaving bloody footprints on the white tiled floor.
Genius. They’d think we took the train.
Shea quickly slipped off her bloody shoes and followed behind us, throwing magic at Luke’s backside to keep any more blood from spilling on the floor.
Now that the train had left, the station was emptied out, and we were able to take the stairs up to the ground floor easily.
When we reached the top, I didn’t know what to expect since I’d never been to San Fran, but I didn’t expect this. Every single streetlight had been replaced with red so the entire city had a rosy hue. The one nearest me was decorated with a hanging human body; a sign around his shoulders read ‘Angel Lover.’
I whimpered, lowering my head, and trying to look elsewhere.
Shea’s hand slipped into mine and she squeezed.
“Over here!” Noah called, jogging down the street to a motel whose sign said ‘Rooms by the hour.’
“Uh, Noah?” Chloe called after him. “That’s a brothel.”
He nodded. “I know.”
Shea shared a raised-eyebrow look with me and shrugged. Luke was barely able to walk the final fifty feet, his back leg giving out, but we helped him along. A few people we passed on the street looked at him suspiciously, but minded their own business in the end.
By the time we’d reached the motel, Noah already had a key and was shepherding us inside. The man at the desk looked mildly curious at our bleeding bear, but then he simply went back to his reading material.
After a short walk down a hallway, Noah opened the door to room 106. It took some difficult squeezing of Luke’s massive body, but we eventually got him inside, where he promptly passed out on the ground.
“Shit!” Chloe shrieked, throwing herself around Luke’s furry neck.
I locked the door behind me, and went to the window where the curtains were parted, giving us a nice view of a busy roadway. The second I pulled them closed, a blinding golden light filled the room.
Spinning around, I saw that Noah had pulled his wings out and was kneeling over Luke doing two things simultaneously, a healing scan and a rapid healing. It was something you did for serious cases.
“Bri, can you assist?” he asked me.
His words shocked me. I’d spent so long down in Hell with Lucifer fighting, killing, and being drugged that I’d forgotten I could heal people. Tears pricked the corners of my eyes as I walked over to kneel beside him.
“It’s… been a while,” I confessed. Other than a mild self-healing, I hadn’t done anything along those lines in months.
He looked over at me, all glowy and golden, and took my palm in his. “One doesn’t forget what they were made to do.”
With that, my palms started to heat up. Noah placed them on Luke’s back leg, while the healing light began to pour from me in a steady stream. I’d forgotten this feeling, the almost heady bliss of being able to help save another person’s life. It was one of my life’s greatest passions, something I wanted to get better at and learn more.
Taking a deep breath, I scanned the tissue in Luke’s back leg as Noah had taught me. “No arteries were hit, but the muscle is deeply torn,” I stated, surprised at how much I remembered.
Noah grinned. “Correct, and that’s something we can heal, don’t you think?”
I nodded, my own grin in place.
Luke was going to be okay.
We’d made it to San Francisco, and everything was going to be okay.
After a four-hour intensive healing, we got the bullets out of Luke’s hind leg and stopped the bleeding. Now he was shifted into his human form, with a bandage dressing Shea bought across the street at the pharmacy. I stared at his sleeping form curled in one of the two beds. Noah’s eyes were rolling in his head he was so exhausted, but the sounds of people having sex loudly next door was keeping us all awake. All except for Luke.
“Why did you have to pick a seedy brothel?” Chloe asked as we waited for Shea to return with earplugs.
Noah lay back on one of the beds. “Because they didn’t ask for ID, and they won’t ask questions. They just want their money.”
Chloe groaned, slipping into the bed next to Luke, while I collapsed on the couch.
Finally the lock turned, and Shea came in with a couple bags full of snacks and five pairs of earplugs. Her hair was bright green now. She’d been changing her identity each time she went outside in case the tunnel thugs were still after us.
“Any trouble?” Noah peered at his woman with concern.
She shook her head. “No, but this place is… hardcore. There’re people strung up everywhere. They absolutely hate angels here. You and Brielle need to be extra cautious.”
I didn’t eve
n have the brain power to respond. Running through those tunnels, healing Luke, it had taken everything out of me. I simply held out my hand for her to deposit the earplugs.
“Oh, and I paid the motel owner a hundred bucks to say we were never here if anyone asks,” Shea added.
Noah nodded. “Smart,” he mumbled, putting the earplugs in, and closing his eyes.
Within thirty seconds, he was snoring and Shea looked at me with a giant grin. “Does Lincoln snore?”
Such an innocent question, but it tore me open inside. I hadn’t slept next to Lincoln in forever. “No, but he steals the covers,” I offered.
Chloe had drifted off as well, and now it was just Shea and I.
She knelt next to my little couch bed, taking my hand firmly in hers. “We’re going to find him and get him out of here. I truly believe that.”
My throat tightened with emotion at her words. Sometimes when you felt like you were losing hope, you needed others to hold the hope for you. Shea was my strength in that moment.
I squeezed her hand and nodded.
“Night, Bri.” She placed her earplugs in and I did the same.
I was going to wake up in the morning with a kickass idea to find Lincoln.
The next morning, we all woke refreshed. Well, everyone except Luke, who was doing okay but would be on the mend for a little longer.
“Shifter healing is good, but those bullets chipped the bone too, so it’s going to take some time,” Noah explained after scanning him again. Our healing had stopped the bleeding and mended the muscle, but Luke’s body needed to do the rest.
Luke nodded. “Awesome. I’ll just stay here and listen to the sex through the walls.”
Noah chuckled, and reached over to the nightstand, grabbing the remote. “Watch some TV.”
After getting Luke settled in bed, Chloe, Shea, Noah, and I all sat around the couch and tossed around a billion different ideas on how to find Lincoln.
“I know he’s using a fake name here. It’s Tray Fox,” Noah interjected.