by Nolan, Kait
“I don’t want to leave you.”
“I can hold my own,” she insisted. “We’re not gonna get out of here without help. See what you can do to snag Gage and get him out of harm’s way, then go release the cavalry. And pray to God they’ve got something here that can walk through iron walls or teleport.”
He embraced her again. “Be careful.”
“You too.”
In an instant he was gone, swallowed up by the shadows.
Time ticked past, measured by the syncopated rhythm of gunfire and explosions, punctuated by screams. From time to time, she ceased fire to draw the next line of soldiers in, hoping to draw more of them to her, to give Gage a chance.
Please, dear God, let Dad have gotten to him in time.
Her father’s words echoed through her head. The shadows couldn’t hold him. What if her father couldn’t carry Gage away from danger? Why the hell couldn’t the shadows hold him? The only creatures that couldn’t be carried in sustained shadow were of the light. Creatures like her elemental mother. Gage was a Shadow Walker. Or at the very least human.
She flashed back to the night before, lying sated in his arms, feeling the beat of his heart and of her flame inside him.
Oh God.
Rising up, she sent out a stream of flame to heat up the guns the front line men held.
In her mind, she saw the dojo, saw the stream of her power shooting inside him. What have I done?
The guns glowed a vicious red. Palms blistered, the men dropped their weapons just before the rounds inside exploded. The shrapnel drove them back. And for a moment no more soldiers came to take their place.
What the hell? They can’t be falling back.
Embry crept forward to the remains of the next generator to get a better look. A series of unsteady tremors rocked the facility. Almost like… footsteps? Men screamed. More soldiers took position in the doorway, but not before she saw two others fly into the wall at the junction down the hall. The men in the doorway looked over their shoulders, and Embry took advantage of their distraction to knock them back.
Something roared, a high, vibrating screech somewhere between a T-rex and a banshee.
No way. Not possible. Surely the human military hadn’t managed to find and imprison one of the Drakyn. The dragon-shifters had gone deep underground during the modern era. There hadn’t been a reported sighting in over a century.
But something big kept coming, and whatever it was, it was drawing fire away from her. The cavalry, such as it was, had apparently arrived. She’d take all the help she could get.
With a spark of hope freshly lit in her chest, Embry stood to let off another volley of fire. And she saw him.
Emerging from around the bend in the hall, Gage fought amid a half dozen armed soldiers. He was bloody, favoring his left side as he systematically disarmed them with fists, feet, elbows. One went down a victim of the butt of his own gun. Two more were distracted by another roar of the Drakyn, but the remaining three converged on him at once.
Embry fired off a quick succession of charges, but not before one of them managed to dislocate Gage’s shoulder. He didn’t make a sound as he went down to his knees. He scissored his legs, dropping his assailant to the ground. Gage swarmed over him, using his one good arm to get the guy in a choke hold. As his face purpled, his hands clawing frantically at Gage’s arm, the others took aim.
“No!” Panicked terror had her stepping out from cover, fire flying from her hands, rippling over the rest of her body as the rage took her.
No one would take him from her again. Not like this.
The fireball hit the three soldiers. When the smoke cleared moments later, nothing remained but the blackened stumps of their legs. But more were coming. The endless stream of soldiers always kept coming.
Gage was on his feet again, already swinging. But he was slowing down. With no opportunity to reseat his shoulder, how much longer could he last? Without his abilities as a Shadow Walker, what chance did he have to escape? She had to fix this. She had to undo the botched attempt at protection she’d made a decade before so the shadows would take him back.
She lifted her hands, focused on the pulse of energy she could feel inside him. It beat like a second heart, calling to her.
She hesitated. What if it didn’t work?
She generated energy. Expelled it. Unlike other firecasters, unlike her father, she didn’t draw from sources outside herself. She was too much elemental for that. But what was inside him originated with her. It was still a part of her, so shouldn’t she be able to control it?
There were no rules, no guidelines, no training for this. She’d never heard of another case like his. What if she did more harm than good? What if I kill him for real this time?
The pain bloomed bright and hot in her chest, a shock to her over-taxed system. And she understood that the time for indecision was over. It was now or never, or neither of them would walk out alive. Body swaying, she lifted her hands and called to the light.
Chapter 11
Embry was nearby. Gage hadn’t seen her yet. He’d been too busy fighting and couldn’t see past the smoke. But the blackened remains of those three soldiers and the fireballs that intermittently flew by him proved that she could see him.
The creature screeched again, whipping its long tail in a brutal arc and slicing through two more men. Gage didn’t know what the hell it was, but it was keeping the influx of soldiers from getting beyond it into the narrow hallway, so he was grateful. A couple of others had joined him. To the left, just beyond the creature, a shrunken woman with dry, desiccated flesh slashed razor sharp nails, leaving gaping furrows in the chest of her nearest attacker. Her eyes flashed crimson and fangs descended as she fell on him, drinking greedily. A dozen feet away from the starving vampire, lightning speared out from the hands of an angular man in bloody clothes. A galvanic fae. Handy. Both of them tore through the crowd, exacting vengeance for whatever tortures they had endured as prisoners here.
Gage drove an elbow into the face of his nearest attacker and the motion jarred his dislocated shoulder. His vision flickered with black for a moment as agony threatened to take him to his knees. He needed enough cover to reseat the joint, not only because of the pain but because his left arm hung useless at his side.
Where the fuck was Adan?
Turning his back to the corner where the hallway turned, Gage surveyed the remaining soldiers. There were fifteen between him and the entrance to another room. He moved forward, intent on taking out the nearest one, when his body burst into flames. The shock and pain were so great, not even the oblivion of unconsciousness could cut through it. Staggering forward, still driving a reverse knife hand into his opponent’s throat to crush his windpipe, he was surprised not to see flames swirling over his skin. The fire was within him.
Embry.
He stumbled to the nearest wall for support, to keep from going down.
Embry, what the hell are you doing?
Something inside him ripped loose, as if an invisible hand had reached in to grab a vital organ and tear it out. Nausea and pain immobilized him. Unable to even breathe, Gage’s head dropped back against the wall. And through the heads of the cluster of shooters at the doorway to the next room, he saw her.
She was on fire. A living, breathing flame in the shape of a woman. Her hands were outstretched toward him, and he could feel the pull from them. His body fought it. He slumped down the wall, doubling over against the knife-sharp spasms, trying to hold on to whatever she was trying to yank out. He lifted his head to look at her. “Embry, don’t—”
Her body bucked. Once. Twice. She staggered a few steps, then stubbornly regained her footing, continuing whatever she was doing. Gage’s brain was locked down in agony and took too long to process what was happening. Then the flames covering her body began to flicker and die. And he saw the blood.
It flowed down from her shoulder and her side, dousing the flames as it ran.
She’d been shot.
Twice.
“Embry!” Gage roared her name. Rage burned through the pain, giving strength to muscles gone weak, propelling him to his feet.
He drove his way through the soldiers, his body dealing death blows as his mind focused on only a single, tangible fact. Embry was down, unmoving on the floor of the generator room.
When the bridge of black appeared, he didn’t pause to think or question. He took it, bypassing the remaining fighters, to drop down by her still form.
“Embry! Ember.”
She made no response, and he almost stopped breathing again.
Blood. There was so much blood. He wanted to examine her, but they were totally in the open here. Bullets continued to fly around them. She cried out in pain as he dragged her to cover, and his heart leapt that she was still alive. He looked back at the hallway to see if anyone was following him, but the recovered vampire and the fae had engaged the remaining soldiers. They were safe enough for the moment.
Her eyes opened as he dropped to his knees beside her. Their sunburst was dim, the light waning.
“Ember, hang on.” He sat back, linking his hands around his angled knee and bent his neck back, rotating both shoulders forward. The shoulder didn’t pop back into joint, so he shifted directions, rotating backwards. On the fourth agonizing rotation, it slid back in with a click. Taking no time to immobilize it, he moved back to Embry and ripped open her shirt, hissing a breath at the sight of the ugly wounds. He pressed his hands firmly on both of them to staunch the flow of blood. He tried to sound calm and matter-of-fact. “We’re gonna get you out of here.”
She made a choking noise that he realized was supposed to be a laugh. “Always the optimist. I’m finished, Gage.”
“The fuck you are,” he snapped, pressing down harder on the wounds. “That shoulder is a through and through, and I don’t think this side shot hit anything vital.” But blood continued to trickle steadily through his fingers.
“Gage, get out of here. Save yourself.”
“Get this straight, woman. I’m not going anywhere without you.” Terror whipped fury into his voice.
“Gage, stay away from the light.”
He blinked at her. “That’s my line. You’re the one that’s bleeding.”
“No. You had too much of me inside you.” She paused, her breathing labored. “From… before. It’s why you couldn’t Walk. I pulled it out.”
The shadows had taken him back. He’d been able to Walk to get to her. “Then I can Walk to get you out.”
“We both know you can’t carry me all the way out of here before I bleed out. And even you can’t teleport or walk through iron walls.”
The truth of it continued to seep beneath his hands.
“There has to be some way.” Gage looked frantically for help. “Where the hell is your father?”
“I sent him after reinforcements.”
“Reinforcements? Who? The other prisoners?”
“Seemed like the thing to do. We’re kinda outnumbered.”
That explained the unexpected backup. “Understatement of the century.” She was so pale. “Look, can’t you cauterize these wounds? Stop the bleeding?”
“I’m sapped, Gage. And even if I could, the internal bleeding from this second shot would kill me. Get out of here while you can.” She tried to shove him away but didn’t even manage to budge him an inch.
“I’m not leaving you,” he growled.
At the scrape of feet on concrete, Gage whirled to put himself between Embry and the newest threat.
The fae stood well back, his hands lifted in a non-threatening posture. “I’m on your side.”
Gage glanced behind him. The vampire was finishing off the last soldier. Around the corner, out of visual range, he could still hear fighting. But there were no immediate threats. He dropped his fists, crouched back down to put pressure on Embry’s wounds.
The fae took a few steps closer. “I think I can help,” he said.
“How?” demanded Gage. “Last time I checked, electrocution wasn’t on the list of approved medical treatments for gunshot wounds.”
A crackle of energy jumped across four of the fae’s fingers as his lips curved in a grim smile. “I’ve got better control than that. A low level electrical charge can be used, under the right conditions, to stimulate tissue regeneration. In essence, I can try to make her body heal itself.”
The right conditions probably didn’t include the filthy concrete floor of a burned out generator room, surrounded by shrapnel, thought Gage. But, desperate times…
He looked down at Embry. Her dimming gaze was focused on the fae. “Well come on, Sparky,” she said. “We’re running out of options here.”
* * *
The fae’s lips twitched as he knelt beside her. “It’s Orrin.” At his signal, Gage eased back, taking his hands and the pressure off the wound in her side.
Embry saw rather than felt when Orrin carefully felt around the injury.
Not good. Not good at all, she thought.
Gage’s face was caught somewhere between fury and shock. He was unraveling. It was in the set of his shoulders, in the shaking of his hands. She tried to reach for him but didn’t get any further than turning over her hand. Shit. She wiggled her fingers. “Gage.”
He started to take her hand, then stopped to wipe the blood—her blood—on his pants before curling strong fingers around hers.
“We have some planning to do,” she told him.
“I know. We have to figure out what our assets are and how we’re going to get to the surface—”
“No, no,” she said. “We’ll figure that out. We have some vacation planning to do.”
He blinked at her, icy blue eyes clearly trying to ascertain when she’d taken that sharp left turn away from reality. “Vacation planning?”
“Yeah.”
Orrin probed within the wound, and a bolt of pain seared through the numbness that had taken over.
Embry hissed, her hand clamping down on Gage’s as she breathed through it. “Yeah, vacation. I’m thinking something not beachy because I have a feeling that this is gonna leave a wicked scar and that’s just not going to rock the sexy bikini look.”
“Baby, I will take you anywhere you want to go when we get out of here.” He placed the slightest emphasis on the “when,” and Embry knew that he knew she was trying to distract him.
“You ready?” asked Orrin.
Embry took a tighter grip on Gage’s hand and nodded.
At first she felt nothing. The web of energy that crackled between Orrin’s hand and her abdomen looked more like the harmless light show of one of those electrostatic globe things that made your hair stand up when you touched and it. Then came the prickle. Needle-sharp and faint, as if her body had gone to sleep and was only now waking up. It felt strange and uncomfortable. She resisted the urge to stretch or flex to try to restore circulation lest she do more damage.
Sweat ran in fine streams down Orrin’s temple, but he was rock steady as he worked. As damaged nerves came back to life, so came the pain, a red hot poker scrambling her guts. Her body arched, trying to curl up and protect her belly.
“Hold her down!” ordered Orrin.
Gage pushed her back, and on the other side came her father, soundless, wordless as he took her free hand. The pair of them held her down by the shoulders as Orrin continued.
This was worse, much worse than getting shot. It was worse than the torture training she’d endured when she joined the IED. Her body screamed and fought the hands that pressed her into the ground. Biting back a cry, Embry bore down on Gage’s and her father’s hands and prayed for it to be over.
Dimly, Embry was aware of the earth trembling. Or maybe that was her. That was definitely her screaming. Some part of her was detached, observing the procedure. Gage was praying, his words a tumbled mix of half-remembered litanies from his Catholic youth. Her father muttered curses in the language of the elementals. Their voices blurred, blended, losing all sense
or meaning.
Then it was done.
Orrin sat back, gray and trembling. “It’s not pretty, but I think you’ll live.”
When she tried to sit up, her father and Gage shifted, assisting rather than restraining. She winced as she came vertical. Growing new muscle and tissue and who knew what else was painful business. The new skin was smooth and pink and very tender beneath her exploring fingers. But it was whole. And though what lay beneath ached, it no longer felt mortally damaged. She looked at Orrin. “Thank you.” And if her voice cracked, she blamed it on the screaming.
A small crowd had gathered, Embry realized. Fifteen or so other Mirus were scattered through the remains of the generator room. The remains of their impromptu army of prisoners. No one was fighting.
“Not that I’m looking a gift horse in the mouth, but why aren’t there more soldiers beating down the door?” she asked.
“I collapsed the access to this room. They’ll be digging through rubble for days.” This from a slant-eyed man who might’ve been cast as a Nordic god. The Drakyn she guessed.
“It’s nice to have a reprieve, but now we’re trapped. No food, no supplies. It’s only a matter of time before they capture us all again. And you know they’ll come in with more backup and more firepower now that they know what we’re capable of.” The feline tilt of the woman’s head suggested she was some sort of cat-shifter.
Others added their voices, their concerns and complaints, until the babble echoed off the concrete walls and crashed around Embry’s aching head. A piercing whistle cut through the cacophony and made half those present cover their ears.
“Arguing isn’t going to get us anywhere. Now we’ve got a wide variety of the races represented here. Surely there’s someone among us who has an ability or a skill that will help us to get out of this God forsaken bunker.” Gage surveyed the faces gathered. “Can anyone teleport?”
“I could, if not for the iron shielding,” said Orrin.
“Anybody walk through walls?” No answer. “What about Persuasion? Can anybody control whatever guards we might encounter?”