Damian grunted. “Jamison, get their hopes up.”
“Everyone hold on,” the man warned, before veering the SUV across all the lanes, like it was fighting a blown tire. Damian heard the helicopter getting closer, could feel the gusts from its blades, and the shots from above became less frantic and more precise—straight through to where a driver would be if the car currently had one, leather splitting open and upholstery stuffing popping out.
“Speed up, and then stop!” Damian demanded.
Jamison did as he was told, and as he stopped, the helicopter kept flying low overhead, unable to maneuver as quickly as the car. Damian quickly took the harpoon up on one shoulder and stood, bracing himself between the seats of the car, half his body outside of it. He threw the spooled rope out behind himself on the SUV’s back hood, took careful aim, and threw the harpoon like a javelin.
It sailed over the helicopter, the nylon rope streaking behind it like a comet’s tail.
“You missed it!” Stella exclaimed, having dared to look.
“Not at all,” Damian said, as the rope fell from the sky to land atop the helicopter’s blades. Their rotation wrapped it up instantly, the helicopter began to drift and then fall, as the weight of the harpoon at the rope’s far end swung nearer and nearer like the end of a flail, until it reached the falling body of the helicopter itself and an explosion lit overhead as the harpoon made heavy contact with the helicopter’s side.
“Kaboom!” Austin whooped. Damian sat back down inside the SUV as Stella cheered.
It would’ve been more fun my way, his dragon complained, watching the flaming helicopter drop from the sky.
“Jamison, keep driving, please,” he said aloud, sinking back to fasten his seat belt. Stella saw him do that and laughed but did the same, as Austin closed the sunroof overhead.
“Are you all right?” Stella asked.
Damian didn’t know. People in the Realms had wanted to kill him because of who he was, not what he was. Now, between the harpoon and the helicopter, it was obvious that the Hunters would never stop.
Andi was right.
“I’ll be fine,” Austin answered Stella, and Damian realized that’s who she’d been talking to all along, and he got out of his own head enough to scent Austin’s blood. “Just a flesh wound,” the wolf went on, one hand clamped to his opposite arm’s bicep.
“Are you sure?” Damian said.
“Yeah, yeah, go,” Austin said, blowing off his concern, before catching Stella’s eyes in the rear view. “How many did you kill?”
“Twenty, I think. I reloaded three times and took two out by hand.”
“Twenty with the rest of the night? Or twenty more?” Austin pressed.
“Twenty on the bus,” Stella said, with a roll of her eyes.
“I knew Starry Sky was a bunch of liars, but I had hopes for you, Stella,” Austin tsked.
“Shove your hopes, Wind Racer,” Stella taunted, before hoisting the bag she’d taken with her on the bus up to empty it. Talismans poured out, bits of bones and skins and feathers, and the dusty scent of assorted dead unearthly beings flowed out with them.
“Hmmph,” Austin complained.
“Too bad you had to be a decoy,” Stella said, sounding entirely sincere, even as Damian saw her eyes flash.
“Too bad they didn’t shoot your tongue,” Austin muttered, then settled back in his seat with his eyes closed for the rest of the ride home.
Chapter 8
For the second time that night, Andi was being driven at completely unsafe speeds in silence. She wasn’t sure what—if anything—to say. She hated how comfortable it was to be around Danny again, how easy it was to fall back into old habits, how she had to remind herself continually how much she hated him—and why! So many reasons why! The lying for half her life, for taking Uncle Lee’s side, for letting them do horrible things to him and for him doing horrible things to other people. How human was it to want to make excuses for him, and how nauseating was it that she couldn’t turn that part of her brain off?
Andi reached for the El Camino’s old-fashioned stereo dial and popped it out, then rolled the antique piece of machinery up and down the radio spectrum so she could listen to music instead of her thoughts.
“And in breaking local news, police are racing toward a freak helicopter crash outside of town—”
Danny’s hand reached over and tapped the dial in, turning the radio between them off. “What’re you thinking?”
“You don’t want to know.”
He took a turn at speed, the El Camino’s engine roaring. “The answer is five.”
Andi blinked and looked over at him. “What?”
“I’ve killed five people. Just…five.”
“Just,” Andi repeated, before biting her lips, as bile rose at the back of her throat. She waited, looking over at him, and when he didn’t say anything she asked, “Well?”
“Well…what?”
“Aren’t you going to…I don’t know…make excuses? Tell me the story? How it was them or you and you were lucky to survive?” She rolled her eyes. She was used to her slick brother Danny, who always had a reason for being late, and if he didn’t, the reason was that it was your fault somehow.
“Depends. Do you want me to lie to you, or not?”
Last chance to get off the truth train before it crashed. “I think our family’s had more than enough lies.”
Danny nodded and stared straight ahead at the road. “All right, then. You remember when we were sixteen?”
Andi kicked off her shoes and curled up in the car seat. “The whole year, or some specific part?”
“When we started hustling people for money at pool halls, after I got us fake IDs.”
“Yeah.” She shrugged.
“And do you remember the third or fourth time we did it? That angry blond guy?”
Andi sucked air in through her teeth. “Yeah.” The guy’d been twice her size and utterly convinced he could beat her, but it was like he’d just started playing pool yesterday, whereas she’d been playing ever since she could hold a cue in her hands. He’d kept doubling down until they gotten him for five hundred bucks; it was a lot of money now, and even more back then. He’d gotten in her face, and she and Danny had beat a hasty retreat before him and his friends could come after them.
“You remember what he said when we were leaving?” Danny asked her.
Andi paused a moment in thought. “No.” She remembered the guy clearly, between his beer breath and his popped collar, but she couldn’t remember a word he’d said.
“He promised he was going to come after you.” Danny spared her a glance. “Not me. You.”
Andi met his gaze. “So?”
“So I went back that night to make sure he couldn’t come after anyone, anymore,” Danny said with a shrug. “Only…I didn’t know my own strength. The medicines Mom was giving me…they affected me at weird times, in weird ways. It was like going through puberty all the time—”
She finally heard what he was saying and realized how come he’d made it through all those bar brawls unscathed. “Wait! You killed a guy for drunkenly threatening me? Who wasn’t even an Unearthly?”
Danny blinked. “Is that what they call themselves? Not just monsters?”
Andi swept a hand between them like she was erasing what he’d just said. “No! You don’t get to make this about me, Danny! I’m not the reason you killed a man!”
She saw him wind himself up to fight like they always did, then he collapsed like someone had put a pin in him. “You’re right. Protecting you was just a convenient excuse. But…after that…that’s how I knew I had the rest of them in me.” He went back to staring at the road.
Andi watched the racing streetlights cast her brother’s face in shadow, like the flickering beat of her heart. “Did Mom know?”
“No. But I told Uncle Lee. He helped me hide things. Like always.” Danny sighed. “I know you’re not proud of me. I’m not proud of myself, either, if
it makes you feel better now.”
Andi bit her lips, feeling the silence between them taking on a life of its own, a quiet wall that pushed them further and further apart. “I don’t think we can come back from this, Danny,” she whispered, and she knew she was crying, again. How many tears did she have in her? It wasn’t fair she had to lose Damian and Danny too, although she could argue that Danny’d already been lost to her for years.
“We have to, Andi-bear,” Danny said, looking at her again. “Because it’s destiny…I know it—”
“How?” Andi asked, throwing her hands up in the air, burning the backs of her hands on the ratty upholstery above her. “How come you’re so sure?”
He pulled his car off at the exit for her hospital. “Because Mom told me so.”
“What?” she asked, wiping away her tears.
“Mom gave me all her notes, Andi. She not only did this to me, but she was training me to do it to other people. And her notes say that you’re gonna fight by my side. Quote-un-fucking-quote.”
“There’s no way, Danny,” she protested, as he turned into her hospital’s roundabout, pulling on the brakes.
“Are you going to argue with a woman who lived for four centuries and turned her son into a dragon?” Danny asked her. He gave her a pointed look and then stuck his tongue out. She closed her eyes rather than watch him try to make her laugh and turned to open up the door. He caught her wrist before she could get out though. “At least let me show you her notes, Andi. She talks about you in them.”
Andi knew she should be strong—just cut the cord already!—but she wavered.
“Tomorrow night. Just let me show you them, all right? And then after that, if you never want to talk to me again, I understand,” he said, letting her go.
“I’ve gotta go to work, Danny. I’m already late.”
“Don’t answer now, just think about it!” he shouted after her, as she slammed the door shut, and wished that closing off her past could be so easy.
Andi settled herself in the hospital elevator and wound her hair up into its official work bun. She hadn’t been crying that hard, had she? She wiped her eyes and straightened her shoulders. No time for crying now; she had a job to do.
She stepped out of the elevators and onto her bustling floor, heard people shouting orders down the hall, and then one of them turned to shout at her.
“Andi!” Sheila bellowed. Andi ran down the hall to her, ready to get yelled at and get it over with, so that she could move on.
“Sorry about being late—” she said.
“Devastating break up, eh? We’ve all been there before.” Goddammit, Sammy. Her charge nurse grabbed the strap of her bag off her shoulder and chucked it down on the ground. “I’ve got just the assignment for you,” she said, jerking her head back to indicate the chaos happening behind her. “There was a helicopter crash outside of town. Somehow, this guy survived it.”
Andi glanced past her into the room where nurses were hanging medications as doctors placed central lines. “You’re…sure?”
“Never more so. You’re the kind of woman who rises to an occasion regardless of her personal life, and I’m not above abusing that when we’re short-staffed.” Sheila clapped her shoulder, and then stepped aside.
Andi tossed her coat onto the nearest counter and grabbed some paper and a pen from her bag to start taking notes as the ED nurse—who’d wheeled the patient in—shouted at her. “Intubated, crush injury, pneumo, chest tube, you’re getting a central line right now, hypotensive, levo—” Andi caught every third word while looking at the man himself, who was badly injured. “And we took these off of him. Don’t ask me why, just give them to his relatives if they show up.” The ED nurse swung a patient belonging bag at her. She caught it and set it aside. “Why the fuck did he have a bird skull on him? Was he eating a whole entire chicken before they crashed? Who the fuck knows.”
Andi nodded, acknowledging the weirdness of the hospital and the people drawn into it, and started taking over care.
The man was her only patient, which was good. He was on the verge of crashing. It took an hour for her to get him settled, and then he was only alive because of the ventilator that was breathing for him and the medications going in. Luckily, she had plenty of help, because surviving a helicopter crash made him a bit of an ICU celebrity, as her coworkers hoped that he was one.
“Was he a radio person?” Dominica wondered aloud. She’d come up from the burn unit to help with the dressings on his face.
“No, those people are total fakers. No one uses a helicopter for traffic reports anymore. The gas is too expensive,” said Lovely.
“Plus, what kind of traffic is there this late?” Faizah said, scoffing.
“NBA player, then?” Dominica guessed.
Lovely made a sound. “Grim…but possible. Any visitors yet, Andi?”
Andi looked up from the charting she was desperately trying to catch up on. “What, huh? No.” She spotted the belonging bag though and put some gloves on. If the man’s wallet was inside, they could do a google search, which’d cool her coworker’s jets some, until social work could hunt down next of kin come morning. She opened up the plastic bag and gagged.
The scent of burnt bone wafted out at her—worse than the man himself smelled, which was saying something. But the ED nurse hadn’t been lying. Andi reached in and found a bunch of bones—including a bird skull—strung on chains. Like gruesome trinkets.
Talismans like what Xochitl and her fellow Hunters had worn.
That explained how this man had managed to survive the helicopter crash. He’d been wearing a 90’s rapper’s worth of magical amulets. As for why he’d been in the helicopter to begin with, it was all too easy for her imagination to run wild.
Because what better way to fight a creature that could fly than from in the air beside it? Her pulse started to pound in her ears. What if something had happened to Damian? Did he need her? Was he all right? Had he been injured? She’d seen Damian get hurt before—that one time with the succubus stinger, and she’d seen Xochitl’s sword work on Eumie earlier in the night. And if fighting Damian had been the reason Xochitl had run away….
It was one thing for her to step back to protect him and another to think that he might be out there, somewhere, hurting without her.
“Andi? You okay?” Lovely asked.
Andi snapped the top of the bag closed. “Yeah. No wallet.”
“Well, between no wallet and no face right now, it’s gonna take a while to ID him,” Dominica said, but she was wrong.
He was a Hunter. That was all Andi needed to know.
Andi shooed her coworkers out the door so she could think and then went into the room’s en suite bathroom to catch her breath. Damian had to be okay. There was no other option. Surely if he was hurt, someone else on his team would’ve reached out to her.
Unless they were all dead, too.
What if he was hurt somewhere…dying alone?
The terror of not knowing clung to Andi like a fog, and it wasn’t something she could just push through, not like the other times she’d been emotionally messed up at work before. She appreciated Sheila’s faith in her, but right now she wasn’t sure she could manage her own shit, much less a dying man who’d most likely been trying to kill her ex-boyfriend.
She splashed cold water on her face in a desperate attempt to stop panicking, and then blotted herself with flimsy paper towels. She swore she saw flashes of red between blots and wondered if it was an oncoming migraine, and then felt a burst of cold air ahead of her, like someone had opened up a freezer. Andi blinked and saw a woman on the other side of the mirror that was not herself.
“Why aren’t your mirrors reasonably placed?” the woman complained after ducking through. She jumped to the floor, landing lightly even though Andi had seen a flash of heels beneath her skirt. A red bird followed the woman and started spinning in tight circles against the ceiling.
“Ryana?” Andi had only seen her after
her injuries in the Realms and had never met her once awake. But she was too like Damian to not be his sister; her chin was narrower and her brow less defined, but they shared the same full lips and haughty cheekbones. She was half-a-foot taller than Andi was, though not as tall as Damian, and had the kind of generous curves Andi had longed for her entire life. She was holding a wicked looking knife with a jeweled hilt and a twisting blade.
“Princess Ryana,” the woman corrected her.
Andi ignored the knife entirely. “Is Damian okay?”
One of her eyebrows arched up. “Of course. Why wouldn’t he be?”
“So, that’s not why you’re here?” Andi pressed, because she needed to hear the words.
“Not in the least.”
“Then why are you here?”
“Because I am a person of action,” Ryana said, pointing her knife in Andi’s direction. “Regardless of what anyone else thinks.”
Andi backed up. “What does that mean?”
“Currently? That I’m threatening you.” She looked Andi up and down disdainfully. “Common human that you are, you need to make up your mind.”
“What?” Andi blinked helplessly as the other woman took up more space with her anger. Ryana’s arrival had done nothing to help the already high levels of adrenaline in her blood.
“You’re hurting my brother, and for what? Your pride? You think he doesn’t have pride, too?”
“But…he’s alive?” Andi heard herself asking softly, as if from far away.
“Yes,” Ryana said, then lowered the knife slightly, as her green eyes narrowed. “Why do you keep asking?”
“Because…helicopter,” Andi said, pointing through the wall behind her.
Ryana frowned. “What is a helicopter again?”
A voice interrupted them both from inside the room behind her. “Visitors incoming!” A pause, and then a question. “Andi?”
Her charge nurse shouting her name brought her back to life. Andi reached past Ryana and hit the wand to make the toilet flush. “Just emptying the urinal!” she shouted back.
Dragon Mated: Sexy Urban Fantasy Romance (Prince of the Other Worlds Book 4) Page 13