by Amelia Jade
It was facing backward, but it had been dragged. In fact, as he followed it, it looked like Nina had managed to drag the one foot the entire time.
Clever girl.
She’d known this area was infested with Cadian shifters, that Aksel or someone else would come after her sooner or later. All she’d had to do was leave a mark, a way for them to find her.
And she had.
Aksel charged ahead, until they came to a flight of stairs that led to a basement door.
The door looked recently altered.
There was no room for him to get a running start at the door, so he went down several steps, and then tried to force his shoulder through it.
The big door just boomed, but it held.
***
Nina
Through the fog that had descended over her mind, she heard a sound that wasn’t her blood leaving her.
It sounded like…
Boom.
Boom.
“Come in!” she said deliriously. “It’s unlocked.”
How lovely, someone was knocking at the door. She had company coming, right?
“I’m just in here.”
Boom.
Why weren’t they coming inside? Dinner was being served, and they were going to be late.
“You’re going to be late for the meal,” she slurred.
Boom.
“Come in!” she shouted with all her remaining strength.
***
Aksel
The door wasn’t budging.
“There has to be some sort of steel reinforcement on the other side,” he cursed.
There was only one option remaining to him.
“Back up,” he told his men.
“Boss…” one of them said warily. “That’s against the rules. Surely we can find another way?”
Aksel just snarled at him. The rules be damned! Nina was in there, and she was in trouble. Right then, he would have broken any damn rule that it took to get to her, to make sure she was safe.
Including this one.
Power, flush with rage, flowed through his veins like water shooting from a pressurized faucet. His limbs shook and practically crackled with energy as his entire body took on the monstrous proportions of his animal, a two-ton beast that was ready to tear anyone in his way limb from limb if they so much as tried to slow him down from getting to Nina.
With a deep, rumbling growl instead of his normal full-throated roar, Aksel surged down the stairs and threw his entire weight against the door.
The impact blew the hinges right off and the door fell flat as he charged into the room, ready to do battle.
But the sight that greeted him turned his white-hot blood to ice, nearly stopping his heart.
With a near howl of agony, he shunted his bear aside and returned to his human form. The rest of his squad was piling in, and they were all slowly coming to a halt, appalled at what lay before them.
Strapped to a metal chair was a bloody apparition. It was laughing deliriously while saying something that sounded like “Come in.”
Aksel slowly approached. “Nina?” he asked, horrified.
His eyes began to catalog her injuries.
Broken bones.
Knife wound to her abdomen.
Slit wrists.
Broken orbital bone.
Fractured jaw.
His foot slid across the concrete ground and he looked down to see the pool of blood he’d just stepped in.
Nina’s blood.
Aksel finally came around in front of her. One eye was so swollen shut he knew she couldn’t see a damn thing out of it. Her other was unfocused. She was no longer seeing anything, her mind living in its hallucinations.
“Nina,” he said more firmly, hoping his voice would make it through to her. He ripped his shirt off and then into two, tying one around her wrist to cut off the flow of blood, and the other around her knee, which also had a huge gash in it.
Two of his men tied their shirts together and carefully wrapped them around the wound in her stomach, to try and staunch the bleeding there.
“Hello?” she said as they touched her, still unseeing. “Did you finally make it inside?”
“Yes, Nina, I did. It’s Aksel, I’m here,” he said, his hand shaking as he reached out, trying to find an injured place to settle it.
He almost put it on her shoulders, until he noticed they’d been torn from their sockets, hanging limply several inches below where they should.
So he instead put his fingertips on her chest, just below her collarbone. “I’m here,” he repeated.
Her one good eye fluttered.
“Aksel?” she asked, her voice so soft he almost choked on the tears that sprang unbidden to his eyes.
“I’m here,” he said once more. “I came for you.”
Focus returned to her eye, and it slowly oriented on him.
“Aksel,” she began, but he hushed her, reaching up to gently wipe away the single clear drop that rolled from her good eye.
“What do I do, Nina?” he asked, practically pleading with her. He needed an answer, to know what he was supposed to do.
“I’m going to die, aren’t I?” There was a slight shake to her voice that betrayed her fear at the idea.
Aksel didn’t respond. There was a lot of blood on the ground. One of his men had already gone flying up the stairs to summon help, but it would be far, far too late.
Behind him, one of his men cleared his throat.
“What is it?” he half-snarled. Then he sighed. It wasn’t his team’s fault. “What?” he repeated in a calmer voice.
“There is…one option.”
He spun so fast he almost slipped on the pool of blood. “Talk,” he snapped.
“Sir, I’ve taken the medic course recently. They do a human section now, just in case,” the private said, speaking rapidly. He shook his head to indicate he could tell she wasn’t going to make it.
“So, what’s your option then?” he growled, having already come to the same conclusion.
“Turn her.”
“She’s too weak,” he snapped, but the idea had occurred to him.
“If we can slow the bleeding and get her to focus on what needs to happen, she might have a chance,” his man said persistently. “But right now, she doesn’t have one.”
Aksel thought about it for a split second. He was right. She was dead if they just tried to wait.
“Nina,” he said, turning back to her, his heart aching at the sight of the woman he cared so much for covered in blood, her body broken and torn, all because of him.
It was, after all, his fault. They’d gone after her to get to him, he knew that.
Aksel also knew their scents now. He would track them down and kill them.
But first he had to try and save Nina.
“Yes?” she asked, still lucid.
“Nina, if we wait for human help, you’re going to die. But there is a way that you might survive.”
“I’m going to die. I knew it,” she muttered helplessly.
“There is one way,” he repeated, trying to get through to her.
“What’s that?” she asked, sounding remarkably coherent for a moment.
“There is a way that can turn a human into a shifter. It’s tough, and people die from it when they’re uninjured. But, if your mind is still strong, you can fight through it, and if you do, you’ll live. A shifter could heal from this.”
“A shifter? Me?” she asked, and he saw her losing her focus.
“Nina!” he said, raising his voice to get her attention.
“Do it,” she slurred, her mouth not responding.
But her working eye was focused on him with an intensity that surprised him.
“There’s something you need to know. If it works, your animal will manifest itself in your mind, Nina. It will be another entity within you. You must build a prison in your head, a cage, a container. Something to lock it away in. It has to be big, and it has to be stro
ng. Do you understand me?”
“Cage. Keep the bear in. Otherwise, I die. Got it,” she said, her words suddenly crystal clear.
Maybe there was hope for this after all.
“We need to stop the bleeding first,” his man said. “The fever will make her blood flow faster, pushing more of it out of her.”
“Shit,” he said, wondering how the hell they were supposed to do that.
“If I had your blood,” she said, “then it wouldn’t matter. I could stop the bleeding so fast, like you did.”
Aksel stiffened as she spoke in a sing-song voice.
“Will that work?” he asked, looking at his squad. “Has anyone heard of that working before?”
“I’ve never heard of it being tried.” The others all agreed.
“No time like the present,” he said.
Opening his mouth, he tore a chunk of skin from his wrist. Blood began to spurt everywhere. Aksel directed it onto her wrist first, smearing it into her wound and then into the makeshift tourniquet of his shirt, soaking it in his shifter blood, so that it kept it pressed to the opening.
He repeated that on her stomach and knee, even spraying some on her forehead to help with a bad cut there that might reopen as she struggled with the fever and the bear.
Not waiting to see if it worked—if it didn’t, she was dead no matter what—Aksel backed away and once again summoned his bear.
He didn’t hesitate once the change was complete. One of his shifters was holding her head to the side, and he quickly sank his jaws in deep. There was no time to waste.
Immediately Nina began to scream and writhe as the virus worked its way through her system. The Turning, as it was known, was not a pleasant or enjoyable experience. It was extremely painful, and horribly dangerous. People died as often as not during it, which was why it was so infrequently used.
Back in his human form, he slumped against a nearby wall, the energy drain of two quick changes making him weary for a moment. His wrist had clotted already, and he risked a quick peek at Nina’s wounds.
To his shock, they had clotted around his blood. It was working!
But then his fingers registered the next problem.
“Shit, she’s burning up,” he cursed. “We need to cool her down.”
“The snow!” someone suggested.
“Right,” Aksel agreed, ripping her restraints free and gingerly scooping up her broken body.
Nina cried out and made all sorts of pained sounds as he carried her outside. Laying her on the ground, he and his men began to gather as much snow as they could from the darkly lit alley, packing it around and over her skin in a desperate bid to keep her cool.
“More,” he commanded, still feeling her temperature rise as she began to thrash about, dislodging their efforts.
The movement opened the hole in her stomach once again, and it began to bleed.
“Hold her still!”
While two of his men leapt to the task, Aksel opened his wrist once more and poured more of his blood onto the wound. He kept it up until finally Nina settled back, allowing it to stay in place.
“You’re losing a lot of blood,” someone commented, but Aksel just snarled them into silence as he pressed the cut on his wrist closed, waiting for it to heal as he watched Nina try and fight her way through the fever that was the first stage of the Turning.
“Come on,” he whispered over and over again. “Come on Nina, you can do it.”
Around him, he heard the others giving their soft-spoken support as well.
It was going to be close.
Nina moaned, but her eyes stayed closed, the sounds the only indication that she was still fighting it.
“Come on Nina, I believe in you!” he growled. “You can’t die. Not yet.”
You can’t leave. I haven’t told you how much I care for you yet.
But he kept the words to himself, bowing his head over her.
Chapter Thirteen
Nina
It burned. Flames ate at her, searing hair from her body and beginning to melt her skin in places as she tried to run away.
No matter how fast she ran, however, the fire always seemed to be there, in her way.
Left, right. Forward, backward. She tried it in random order, but the fire was always there.
Nina screamed as her arm got caught in a violent burst, skin burning and melting from her forearm.
At least here, wherever here was, she was mostly whole again, minus the burns. But her bones were healed, the knife wounds gone.
The only question was, where was she? Outside of the fire it was so dark she couldn’t see anything to make out her surroundings. It was simply a black abyss.
“This is ridiculous,” she growled, trying to sidestep the fire once more, only to have it move with her. “Fire is not alive. It can’t anticipate my moves. That’s not how fire works in the real world.”
Are you in the real world?
That thought slapped her across the face with such force she stumbled backward, barely recovering in time before the fire leapt for her.
“Am I in the real world?” she asked aloud, having a conversation with herself. “I know fire can’t do this. And beyond it, there’s literally nothing.”
Were there any other explanations, she wondered. Anything that might explain what the hell was going on.
“Okay,” she said to herself once more after a minute’s thought. “So I’m not in the real world. Where am I, and why am I here?”
She tried to think, to remember where she’d been.
Right.
It came to her. Dying. She’d been beaten and broken, abused and tortured. For information. Information which she’d given.
“Oh no,” she groaned as memories appeared one by one. “I need to tell Aksel. He needs to know what they know.”
Fire lashed out at her and she was burned once more.
“Ow. Stop that,” she snapped at the fire.
It shrank back at her words.
“What the fuck?”
Could she control the fire?
“Go out,” she snapped, pointing at it.
The fire in front of her winked out.
“Well that was easy,” she said and turned to the fire on her right.
But before she could say anything the flames on the other three sides of her burned bright.
“If I only had some water, this would be over in a heartbeat,” she growled, backing away cautiously as she waited for fire to materialize behind her.
Not only did it not, but Nina was suddenly aware that she was carrying a water bottle in her right hand.
Odd. She didn’t recall ever having that. But that wasn’t enough. She needed more. Like a firetruck’s worth, perhaps.
Something hard and unyielding pressed against her back as she took another step away from the fire.
“Huh?” She turned her head to regard the big red fire engine just sitting there.
Okay. This is getting really weird. Next thing I know, the hose is going to be in my hands and I’ll know how to use it.
Nina looked down, and lo and behold, the nozzle to the fireman’s hose was in her hands. Thoughts popped into her brain.
“So all I have to do is pull thi—”
Her fingers yanked on the release and a huge torrent of water gushed forth. The flames shrieked and rose ever higher, but Nina was ruthless. She hosed them back and down, never once giving up even as the flames fought against her.
She was in control now. This was her world, or whatever. Maybe she could be badass enough to control two water hoses. As if by magic, her hands fell away, and a hose was in each.
Nina turned on the flames with renewed vigor, and one by one, the flames to her sides vanished, and then after a final battle, the last of the flames vanished.
“And fucking stay there!” she shouted at them, looking back down at the nozzles once more.
“You know, I seem to recall these things having a lot of pressure whenever I see them on T
V. The firefighters usually have both hands and work to hold these tight.”
Nina suddenly found herself tossed to the side as the hoses bucked and hurled in her hands.
“Yikes!” she shouted and let go.
The nozzles vanished, as did the truck.
“This is getting really, really weird. What the hell is next?”
A noise filled the air around her. It sounded like the hum of an engine from a souped-up pickup truck. Or perhaps from a monster truck. A deep rumbling noise, like the sound the avalanche had made when she watched that nature documentary.
Nina whirled around, looking for the source of the sound.
The ground shook under her, spilling her back to the ground.
The noise stopped, and she heard the sound of air rushing. Then it started again.
Then the ground shook just as she was getting to her feet.
“Light!’ she shouted, and the darkness began to retreat as light shone forth from her hand like she was a wizard of legend.
Nina almost immediately regretted her decision as the source of the noise suddenly came into view. Or at least, part of it did. It took her a moment to realize what she was looking at. It appeared to be a giant mountain of fur, but as the light grew stronger, she realized that it was attached to something else, something taller.
But then she looked up. And up. And up.
It wasn’t a mound, it was a paw, the size of a battle tank.
And it was attached to a leg the height of a small office building. Which was attached to—
Nina stopped making references in her head as the gigantic bear came into view. Each time it stepped, the ground rocked underneath her.
Okay, Aksel. Time to stop playing games now. What the fuck is going on? Why are you in my dream?
But the animal didn’t stop. It kept coming closer to her, looking down at her like she was a morsel of food to simply be snapped up.
“I can control a lot of other elements,” she said at first. “I wonder…”
She snapped out her other hand. “Shrink!” she yelled, focusing the thought on the bear.
Nothing happened, except the animal seemed to come more alive, its body becoming more animated and lifelike, losing some of the robotic rigidity it had had.
“Uh-oh. Think, girl. Think. Shrinking it didn’t work. What can you do?”