by Jasmine Walt
It made me glad she’d had Luc’s coat even though I wasn’t quite sure how Danae had managed to snag it. Then again, she had gotten the governor to let me out of supernatural jail, and I hadn’t even known the governor knew about the supernatural, let alone had a prison for its denizens. This would be exactly the kind of thing I’d have written in a report, you know, if I hadn’t run away.
“If you’re visiting a friend, why did you come out of the janitor’s closet?” he asked, gesturing at the door behind me. He rubbed his stubble covered chin as he watched me carefully. “People don’t usually do that when they’re just visiting a friend. Just saying…”
“Wait,” I said, waving my hand in front of me as I felt my cheeks flush. “We’re allowed to see patients in here?”
“Uh, yeah,” he replied, confusion filling his face as he stared at me. “It’s visiting hours after all. Who are you looking for?”
“Um…” I said because I was a little thrown off by not having needed to sneak around. “I’ve been trying to sneak in here for the better part of an hour, and now I find out I could have just asked to see my friend?”
He gave me a weird look and shrugged his massive shoulders. “That’s how visiting hours work. I should probably turn you in, but I’m inclined not to do that. Besides, what sort of trouble a teenage girl could get into sneaking into a hospital to see her friend?” The words he said sounded ridiculous even to me, which was probably why he gave me a weak smile. If only he knew.
“Yeah, okay,” I replied, trying to figure out what his deal was. “I’m trying to find my friend, Luc. He’s supposed to be here somewhere.”
The nurse pulled a strange gadget from his back pocket and poked at it with one slender finger. “Luc what?”
“Luc what?” I repeated, dumbly.
“What’s his last name?” the nurse asked, staring at me over the top of his device so all I could see of his face were his eyes and salt and pepper hair.
“I have no idea. We just met a couple days ago. We were in a car accident together,” I said, totally realizing how bizarre I sounded. “You know what, I’ll just find him on my own.” And yes, that’s when I began whistling and trying to walk off.
“You expect to find someone here when you don’t know his last name? You’re aware we have quite a lot of rooms, right?” he asked, walking up beside me. Even from here, I could feel the heat coming off his body. He had to be really hot for me to feel his warmth almost a foot away.
“What are you?” I asked, glancing at him as my right hand curled into a fist. I could smash him with a magically infused punch and be down the hall before he pulled himself up from the ground. Probably. Depending on what he was.
“I’m a nurse,” he replied, looking at me like I was totally crazy.
“Yeah, fine, whatever.” I waved my non-clenched hand dismissively. “What type of shifter are you? Wolf? Cocker spaniel?”
He stopped so suddenly, I actually made it several paces past him before he cleared his throat. “How did you know? I’m pretty good at hiding what I am,” he said in a low voice. “Wait, are you a Dioscuri?” His jaw clenched.
“Yes,” I said because what was the point of hiding it?
“Bear,” he said, jogging over to me like it was the most natural thing in the world to admit you were a werebear. It wasn’t like there were only thirty-six of them on the whole planet. “And if you’re a Dioscuri, I’m guessing you’re looking for Jean Luc. What’d he do this time?”
“Wait, you know who he is?” I asked, stopping at staring at the shifter.
“Yeah, I was hired to keep him safe,” the werebear replied, giving me a thin-lipped smile.
“Is that why you’re off the werebear preserve?” I asked, wondering who hired him. “I hear it’s nice there.”
“I’m not going back there,” he growled. His voice had changed to a low rumble as yellow spilled around the edges of his eyes. Great, so he was thinking about shifting. That was exactly what I needed. “You can’t make me.”
“I don’t give a rat’s ass about taking you back,” I said. “Ariel’s in this goddamned city and you shouldn’t be. I don’t care how much you feel like you owe it to Luc to protect him, you need to be gone. Now.” Normally, I’d be more than willing to let a werebear help me since they were like hell with claws in a fight, but I was not about to be responsible for getting one of the only creatures of his kind left on the planet killed.
He visibly shook at my words like he hadn’t realized one of the most powerful vampires in the world was in town. “Room 237,” he said before spinning on his heel and making his way back down the hallway as quickly as he could. “Make sure you keep Luc safe.”
Well, that was weird. I mean I knew some shifters had integrated into society and all, but it was still a little strange to see a werebear providing guard duty. They were endangered after all. Why had he left the preserve? Why didn’t he want to go back?
Most of them seemed happy to live in what amounted to an all-inclusive Caribbean resort. It had been set up because they had been hunted to near extinction. Besides, what better way to increase the population than with copious amounts of free alcohol?
Many of the Dioscuri had long suspected the reason werebears in particular were nearly gone was because they were solitary. Werewolves tended to form packs, even within the city, but werebears were almost always solo creatures. Sometimes, survival was a numbers game after all.
I watched the werebear disappear down the hallway before glancing at the closest room number. 215. So I was close. I grinned, reached under my borrowed trench coat, and felt the familiar weight of Shirajirashii. Just touching the weapons gave me a surge of confidence as I moved down the hallway toward Luc’s room. I wasn’t sure what would be waiting for me in there, but something told me it wouldn’t be good. If Ariel really was watching Luc, then she’d have guards around here somewhere. Just because I couldn’t see them, wouldn’t mean they weren’t there. Then again, there had been that werebear here. Maybe Luc was all alone inside the room?
Still, the thought of engaging a bunch of vampires inside the hospital wasn’t exactly appealing because magic didn’t exactly play nice with most modern technology. If I started throwing spells around, I’d short out equipment. I most certainly did not want to cause someone’s mechanical lung or dialysis machine to give out.
Which was why instead of using my magic to check for traps or hidden assassins, I held my breath and reached toward the knob on Luc’s door, hoping it wasn’t rigged to blow me to smithereens. As soon as my fingers touched the brass, something smashed into me like a goddamned freight train, flinging me across the cheap laminate floor like I was a broken doll. I bounced, once, twice, three times before smacking into a metal cart filled with towels and other miscellaneous objects. The cart fell over with a horrific crash as I laid there dazed and confused.
“I forgot something,” growled a creature that sort of looked like a fifteen-foot-tall panda, you know, if that panda was hewn from a nightmare realm of indescribable fear, fangs gleaming in the light as its jowls curved into a smile. “I’m supposed to kill you first.” His yellowed toe claws carved gouts in the tile as he raised a paw the size of a tennis racket into the air. “Good bye.”
“Pandemonium,” I murmured, and he seemed ever so pleased that I knew who he was. That was why he hadn’t been on the reservation. Pandemonium was a werebear assassin. He was said to be older than dirt itself because a witch had placed a curse upon him that stopped him from aging until he found true love or something stupid like that. Only he was a soulless killing machine who enjoyed ripping the hearts from people before they died because they tasted better when they were still beating. I wasn’t sure who his true love was supposed to be, but she’d have to be a hell of a beauty to tame this beast. “Let me guess, you’re working for Ariel?”
I flung myself to the side as his claws tore through the cart in a shriek of steel and gouged inch deep holes into the floor where I’d bee
n.
“Yes,” he growled, whirling around and swinging with all his bulk. I scrambled out of the way as his claws cleaved gashes into the wall beside me. The hallway was so narrow it was sort of to my advantage because he couldn’t move that well, but I wasn’t exactly keen on close combat with a freaking bear. I may have been magical and all, but so was he. At the end of the day, it was still me fighting a goddamned bear and that was pretty scary.
Even still, I pushed down my fear before it could bubble over and paralyze me. With a battle cry, I threw myself at the enormous creature and drove my knee into the two-ton monster’s gut. He looked down at me like he had barely even felt the blow. Which was probably because he hadn’t felt it. At all.
Pandemonium tried to wrap his giant arms around me, but I dropped beneath them and slid between his tree-trunk-like legs. I came up behind him as the creature tried to whirl around, but he was too bulky to do it quickly, even with his supernatural speed.
“You know, I always wanted a bear skin rug,” I said, ripping my swords from their sheaths and driving the blades into the backs of the werebear’s knees with authority. The creature howled in agony as I tore them sideways in a spray of blood and cartilage. Pandemonium toppled beneath his own immense weight and hit the floor with a crash.
I knew I didn’t have long before he healed the damage and got back up, so I leapt upon the evil panda’s back and hacked at his spine, trying my best to separate his vertebrae. It wouldn’t paralyze the monster, but it’d sure take a while to get all those nerves back in order, or so I hoped.
Pandemonium screamed in pain as I leapt off his ruined back and sprinted toward the door to Luc’s room. I wasn’t sure how much time I had left, but I was sure it wouldn’t be a lot if the werepanda was working with the vampires. For all I knew, he’d already alerted Ariel to my presence, and her people had already evacuated him through the window or something. There was a thud as I grabbed the knob. I turned in horror to see the werepanda pick itself back up and pop his neck. All the damage I’d just done to him was gone. Just gone. It wasn’t fair.
“That tickled, little girl,” he said and licked his lips with his overly large tongue before rushing straight at me. So much for needing his spine to, you know, do whatever a spine did. Pandemonium was upon me a second later, batting me across the hallway. My teeth snapped together with so much force, I was pretty sure I’d have to see a dentist to repair the damage. I cartwheeled across the floor before crashing into the elevator all the way down the hallway.
The werebear came barreling toward me as I got slowly to my feet. There was a ding, and the elevator doors opened behind me. One quick glance was enough to reveal a woman in crisp pink scrubs. She took one look at the creature and started screaming. I reached in, hit the door closed button, and sprinted toward the Pandemonium, hoping I could reach him before he slammed through the still closing doors and killed the lady inside by accident.
“I’ll see you in hell!” I said, sheathing my katana and pulling Luc’s shotgun from beneath my coat in one smooth motion. I hadn’t been sure how his trench coat seemed to be able to hide so much gear, but I wasn’t about to argue, though I was going to make a point of asking him about it later.
I blasted Pandemonium full in the face from half a foot away, obliterating his snout in a hail of silver buckshot. I cocked the shotgun again as fast as I could, unleashing another five shots into the creature from point blank range. Silver fire erupted from the werebear’s wounds as he staggered backward, roaring in pain.
“You should have stayed on the reservation,” I growled, smashing the superheated barrel of the empty weapon into his groin as hard as I could. I probably shouldn’t have bothered since the werebear was wobbling backward with half of his flesh gone and the other half consumed by silver flames, but it felt right so I did it. Besides, he’d just healed having his spine hacked to pieces. I wasn’t taking any chances.
The creature crashed to the ground with enough force to shake the building. I let out a little whoop of victory, you know, before the door to Luc’s room opened and vampires started shooting at me with machineguns. Which was pretty lame of them, let me tell you.
18
Here’s the thing about bullets. They’re fast. As much as I’d have liked to fling a magic shield in front of myself, it was hard to do with bullets already flying down the hallway toward me. I tried to throw my body out of the way, instinctively covering my head with my hands and bracing myself for the impact.
Agony ripped through my body as bullets slammed into me… and bounced off. I lay there, pain radiating through me from each shot as I crawled the rest of the way into the alcove on my hands and knees. Bullets continued to chew up the wall for a moment before stopping. My ears rang in the sudden silence of it.
I wouldn’t have long before they were down the hallway and blasting me with even more lead. Still, why was I alive? I’d been hit more than enough times to have been turned into Swiss cheese. I looked down at my borrowed trench coat and gasped. It was flaring with light from a billion wards etched into the blue leather. I don’t know how I hadn’t noticed it before, but evidently Luc’s trench coat was somehow spelled to overcome bullets. It still hurt, but not nearly as much as it would have if I’d been shot. Well, that was cool.
“Well, that changes things,” I said, dropping the empty shotgun to the floor. I stood and gripped the twin blades of Shirajirashii. It was time to take this fight to the vampires, and while the trench coat was nice, it wouldn’t exactly keep a bullet from splitting my head like a cassava melon. If I was going to face vampires with machineguns I wanted to be one hundred percent bullet proof.
“Kongounonikutai,” I murmured, unleashing the power of my swords. Like before, my body became sheathed in alabaster. I was still a little worried about my magic short circuiting things, but at the same time, of all my spells, this one was pretty compact, if powerful. The magic was only a few millimeters from my skin. I’d just have to make sure I didn’t bear hug some sensitive equipment.
The vampires came around the corner and fired as soon as they saw me. Bullets pinged off my chest of my trench coat like I was Superman. Evidently, it wasn’t what the creatures expected because fear flashed across their features as I crossed the distance between us and calmly removed the head from the one in front. His body collapsed in a spray of blood as I surged into their group, slashing outward like a deadly ballerina as I spun through them.
Crimson splattered across the walls as I dropped the last vampire and stepped back into the hallway. I sheathed my katana because it was too long to be super effective in the close confines of the room and scooped up one of the vampire’s machineguns. I wasn’t sure what kind it was, but I’d been trained with various weapons so I was pretty certain I could point it at a target and fire.
I sprinted toward Luc’s room, keeping my guard up, but not seeing anyone at the same time, which was a little weird because Pandemonium had been laid out on the floor before. Where was he?
A howl tore through the air as the werebear assassin leapt from the open doorway in front of Luc’s room and slammed into me with bone crushing force. My head smacked against the far wall as my wakazashi slipped from my hand and clattered to the floor.
Pandemonium batted my head like it was a softball, his claws scratching against the magic of my shield. I tumbled across the linoleum before skidding to a stop. Ichor and blood dripped from his flesh as he ran at me, jaws bared. My heart hammered in my chest as I unloaded the machinegun in his direction. It didn’t even slow him. He just kept coming as bullets tore into his flesh. It’d be hard for him to heal the damage around the metal embedded inside him. His flesh would have to push out the bits of metal first. That was something, right?
He leapt the last several feet, intent on bringing his two-ton frame down on my small body. I may have been encased with a magical shield, but I still didn’t want to get pinned if I could help it. Besides, assuming I wasn’t driven through the floor, it would hurt li
ke hell, shield or not.
I rolled to the side as he crashed into the spot where I’d been. The linoleum cracked, and his left foot plunged through the floor. I got to my feet, pulled my katana from my sheath, and set myself into a two-handed fighting stance. The creature roared, tearing himself free of the punctured cement, evidently not caring about the flesh he left behind. Blood ran down his black and white panda fur, but as he turned to face me, the last of the bullet holes puckered and healed over. Great.
“Look, if you leave right now, I won’t kill you,” I said in my best tough girl voice. I was actually impressed because I even kept the tremor out of it.
The giant werepanda regarded me for a moment, head cocked to the side before booming laughter rippled out of its throat. It was loud enough to hurt my ears.
“You’ll spare me?” Pandemonium asked incredulously. “You have sliced me open, shot me with silver, riddled me with bullets. None of that has mattered, and you still think you can kill me?”
“Well, I was barely trying before.” I grinned, tightening my grip on my katana and reaching out toward the blade with my mind, begging it to lend me its power. “You haven’t even seen me use my serious face. It’s a real bear.”
“You think you’re funny?” The werebear snorted. “How about this deal? I eat your heart and mail the rest of you back to your mother in a box.” His lips curled into a strange grin. “I’ll leave your face alone so your parents can enjoy an open casket funeral.” Instead of waiting for a reply, the massive creature came at me, crossing the distance between us in a heartbeat.
I shut my eyes and concentrated on letting Isis do her thing. Air rushed by me as I felt the goddess’s hands on mine, guiding my strike. My katana leapt through the air like it had a mind of its own, blue energy cascading off the blade as I stepped beneath Pandemonium’s first strike, allowing his momentum to carry him into the weapon’s deadly edge. My magic infused muscles screamed as I shifted my hips and swung upward. Blood sprayed across the walls. He moved a few steps past me before collapsing to the ground, a sapphire slash of light burning across his body from crotch to shoulder.