by SA Magnusson
“Come on,” she said. “I’ll probably regret this, but no one has been in to see him and he’s getting a little irritable.”
I glanced over at Aron, smiling as we followed her. I could easily imagine how irritable a shifter might be, especially when he awakened to find that he had undergone surgery. Were he able to shift, it might not be a problem, but in a hospital and surrounded by nurses and others who would see him shifting, it was a wonder there hadn’t been a problem before now.
The sound of thrashing greeted us outside the room. The nurse looked back at us. “I’m afraid you’re going to have to wait.”
When she disappeared into the room, I tried to peek behind her, but she pulled the curtain closed.
“If he begins to shift…”
Aron nodded and his spell began to build. “I should be able to hold him, but I don’t know how long it will linger when we’re gone.”
What would happen if he shifted after we left? Nothing good would come of that. It was possible nurses or others in the hospital would even be harmed.
The alternative involved something I wasn’t eager to do but wasn’t sure what choice we had.
“We’re going to need to take him with us,” I said. “And you’re going to have to make sure I’m not seen.”
“I will do it,” Aron said.
The sound of thrashing within the room had subsided. Aron’s spell held him from shifting, and I suspected the nurses were administering some sort of sedative to keep him calm. That could be either a good or a bad thing, depending on how sedate he ended up. We needed to get answers from him, and if he were completely obtunded, there wouldn’t be any way for us to get them.
After a few minutes went by, I began to look up and down the hallway. If it was past visiting hours—and each floor had their own set hours—we would draw attention by being here. We didn’t need any more attention than what we already had, and I didn’t need anyone who might recognize me. I had rotated through this unit before and was lucky that I hadn’t been recognized so far, but how long would that last?
“I’m not comfortable with this,” I said.
“Why not?”
“I don’t need to lose my residency position over this.”
“You won’t.”
“Yeah, you can say that, but I know the type of people I work with. Anything too unusual is not tolerated.”
Aron watched me for a long moment, and the corners of his eyes twitched as it seemed as if a debate raged behind them. He wanted to say something, but he refrained from doing so.
The curtain pulled open and the nurse poked her head out. “I can give you a few minutes. Not much more than that. He’s going to be plenty sleepy.”
“What did you give him?”
Even as I asked, I cursed myself. That was the physician in me challenging the nurse, and I needed to be careful. While it wasn’t all that uncommon for family members to question what was administered to their loved ones, I had to be careful with how much I presumed to know.
“Just something to help him relax.”
I bit back saying anything else. I could easily log on and find out what they’d given him.
The room was a typical hospital room. A monitor hanging above the bed showed his heart tracing, a completely regular rhythm. His blood pressure was normal. Pulse oxygenation was also normal. I looked down at the shifter. His eyes were closed and he breathed slowly and steadily, snoring occasionally. He appeared comfortable. A sheet was pulled up to his mid chest, exposing the bandages on his shoulder. They were clean and white, and probably unnecessary.
Aron stood over the bed, looking down at him. He pressed his lips out in a tight frown.
“What is it?” I asked softly.
“I know this man,” Aron said.
“I gathered that from your reaction up north.” I glanced over at the nurse, worried that she might be listening, but she ignored us as she headed out of the room. “He’s one of Ariel’s?”
“He is. This is John, Ariel’s second in command.”
“So… like her beta?” With his tattoos, John didn’t strike me as a beta.
“I’m not sure he’d appreciate being called that. And he shouldn’t be here, not like this.”
At least that confirmed the answer to the question of how he had come with my name. I had suspected it was Ariel, but without knowing for certain, there was always the possibility she hadn’t been the one responsible for sending this shifter here.
“The entire upper portion of his shoulder was chewed,” I said, pointing to Aron’s right shoulder. “The collarbone was splintered, and much of the muscle and nerves were injured.” It was possible that an injury like that would prevent him from ever being able to use his arm again. I could only imagine how expensive the plastic surgery would have been, and that’s if they were able to do anything with it at all. It might’ve been that they chose to fix the fracture and stabilize any bleeding, attempting to go in later to complete the surgery. “Even the largest shifter shouldn’t have been able to do something like that.”
“There are some who could,” Aron said.
“Like what?” I immediately thought of the grizzled wolf I had seen that had chased the other two shifters away from me. Even he wouldn’t have been large enough, would he?
“There are some, but they haven’t been seen in quite some time.”
“What are they?”
“They are the Great Ones. The predecessors to the shifters. Enormous and powerful, and unlike the shifters that we know of today.” Aron looked over at me, holding my gaze with his intense blue eyes. “And they shouldn’t be here.”
“Why shouldn’t they?”
“Because the Veil holds them on the other side.”
There it was. The Veil and another failure.
In the time that I had known Aron, how many times had it seemed as if the Veil failed? Too many times. Why should it suddenly fail like this, and so often?
First it was the demon king, and then it was the gorgon. Now it would be the Great Ones?
“What does it mean that they could be here?”
“Like I said, they shouldn’t be.”
“When we were in the forest, I saw a massive wolf. He was larger than any I’d seen before, and he chased two of them away, allowing me a chance to escape. At least to get back to the car and gather the sword.”
Aron was watching me. “You saw a Great One?”
“I’m not sure what I saw. I saw a massive wolf, and it was unlike any I’d seen before. If that was a Great One, then maybe. I don’t know. Either way, even that wolf shouldn’t have been large enough to do this.” I looked down at the shifter’s shoulder again, trying to envision the size of jaw that would be needed to have chewed on his shoulder. Could a bear have done that? “What other kind of shifters are there?”
“Wolves are the most common, but there are others,” Aron said.
“Such as bears?”
“It’s possible.”
“You don’t know?”
“When it comes to shifter magic, what’s known is different. The shifters keep it to themselves, afraid that if the mage council learns too much about it, they will use it against them.”
John was beginning to move around, and it wouldn’t be long before he awoke. I was curious what they had given him, but anything should have lasted much longer than a few minutes. That suggested shifters had an increased metabolism to burn through sedatives. How much anesthetic must he have required during surgery?
He opened his eyes and took in Aron and then me. “Archer.”
“Do you know where you are?” Aron asked.
“Apparently in some place that won’t let me change.”
“Do you remember how you ended up here?”
“Ariel sent me.”
“Why did she send you here? What did she think I could do for you?” I asked, standing on the opposite side of the bed.
He rolled his head toward me, and when he smiled, there was a wolfi
sh quality to it. “I was dying. She knew shifting wouldn’t even change that, so she tried the only alternative she could think of.”
“Why me?”
“I’ve learned not to question Ariel.” His eyes drifted closed for a moment before slowly blinking back open. Turning his head to the side, he looked down at his shoulder. “You see what it did. It fed off me.”
“What do you mean that it fed off you?” I asked again. Was that why his magic had been draining out of him?
“You tell her, Archer.”
I looked up at Aron. He was gripping the railing of the bed. “They shouldn’t be here. They are held on the other side of the Veil.”
“Not a Great One. Their power. Fed on me,” John said.
“What does he mean about the Great One feeding on him?” I was getting annoyed that neither of them answered, and I raised my voice a little higher than I wanted. Would the night nurse hear me? I would come across as a crazy person if she did.
Aron turned to me. “The Great Ones grow stronger by feeding on magic.”
“Like the gorgon?”
“Something like that, but this is different. The gorgon used that magic to draw itself across the Veil while the Great Ones use the magic of others for a different purpose.”
“What aren’t you telling me?”
“They shouldn’t be here.”
“You keep saying that, but now that we know one is—” and possibly more than one, depending on what it was that I saw in the forest—“we need to understand what that means.”
Considering what had happened already with respect to the Veil, I thought I knew what it meant, much as I suspected Aron knew what it meant. Neither of us wanted to admit it.
There was another attempt to bring down the Veil.
Worse, the mage council didn’t seem to know about it. Or if they did, they weren’t doing anything to stop it.
“It means the shifters are in danger,” Aron said.
I studied John. He was awake, which was good, but without the ability to shift and restore himself, which was bad. “You need to get him out of here and see if he can shift,” I said to Aron.
“What about you?”
What did I want to do? Sleep came to mind first. But then? “There’s not much I can do right now. Find out what the council knows. I’m going to head home and get some sleep before my shift tomorrow.” I glanced over at John. “Do you have someplace you can bring him?”
Aron stared down at the shifter. “There might be a place.”
“What do you intend to do about Ariel?” I doubted he would leave that alone. He had too much of a relationship with her to abandon her, and while reaching her within the northern forest would be difficult, I wouldn’t put it past Aron to attempt to go after her. The only problem was doing so would put him in too much danger.
“Nothing.”
I arched a brow at him. “Nothing?”
He shook his head. “There isn’t anything I can do. She was successfully challenged.”
“Not successfully,” John said. He hadn’t opened his eyes, so I hadn’t even realized that he was still awake.
“What do you mean that she wasn’t successfully challenged? Who challenged her?” Aron asked.
“Challenge is one on one. This… was not.”
“How do you mean?” I asked.
“Morris challenged, but he’s never been strong like that before. The power… it was not his. Borrowed. Cheated in the challenge. Used… Great One.”
The sudden surge of magic coming from Aron told me just how angry that made him.
“You can’t go in by yourself.”
“I don’t intend to.”
“What do you intend to do, then?”
He squeezed his eyes closed, taking steadying breaths. When he reopened them, the sense of magic from him faded. “Nothing. This isn’t my fight. I serve the council.”
John stiffened slightly, and I wondered how much of the conversation he was aware of. Enough that he knew that Aron had no intention of going after Ariel.
“Do you know how to find her?” I asked John. When he didn’t answer, I touched him on his good shoulder. “Can you find her?”
“Maybe.”
“If you’re going to go after her, at least bring him.” I thought about what would be involved, the power that it would take to prevent a shifter attack, knowing what I had experienced and barely survived earlier in the day. “And wait for me. If you let me finish my shift tomorrow, I can go with you. Besides, you need to get word to the council.” By that, I meant my grandparents, but John didn’t need to know.
“They won’t help. This is shifter politics.”
“Even if the Veil is threatened?”
Aron sighed. “It will take some convincing.”
“Then convince them. Wait for me, and—”
Aron shook his head. “This isn’t your fight, Kate. You shouldn’t be involved in this.”
“She sent him to me. She got me involved.”
“That doesn’t mean you need to take this on. There’s no reason for you to do this.”
If I did it, and if I allowed myself to get dragged into some magical fight, it meant I was committing a part of myself to the magical side of the world. It was something I had avoided for so long, thinking I could hide that side of myself, but there was no hiding it. Even when I tried to hide, it came for me. Either I had to embrace it willingly or something would come around and force me into it.
At least this way, I had some control over what decision I made.
“Get him out of here. See what you can do for his shoulder—” There had to be something magical that Aron could do for him—“and give me tomorrow to finish my shift.”
Aron watched me for a moment before nodding.
I slipped out into the hallway right in front of the nurse. She gave me a dark glare of warning. “Just getting ready to go. He was just going to say a few more things to his brother…”
Footsteps thundered down the hallway.
Not only footsteps, but two police officers headed straight toward us.
Of course they would. The shifter had been attacked, and if no one had come before Aron and me, they wouldn’t have had anyone to question other than the shifter himself.
“Like I said, we’re just getting going,” I said, raising my voice. Hopefully Aron took the hint.
I pushed past the nurse and headed in the opposite direction. Having spent some time on this floor gave me the knowledge of where to find the staircase, and I raced toward it but changed my mind, heading toward one of the call rooms instead. I punched in the code and leaned back, sighing. Thankfully, the room was empty. I’d be able to hide here for a little while.
It was late enough that the bed was inviting. Considering I had to be back here at six o’clock in the morning, maybe it was best—and safest—to simply rest here.
I wouldn’t know what happened with Aron, but then I trusted he would manage to get away before the non-magical police got to him. Hopefully he managed to break the shifter out of here, too.
When I laid down, sleep claimed me quickly.
5
The alarm sounded far too early, the steady beeping from my phone sharp in my ear. I glanced over at it, wishing for another hour, maybe two, but this was all I’d be allowed. And I was already on thin ice after what happened with Dr. Allen when the gorgons attacked, so I needed to be careful about angering my attendings any more than I had. Maybe there would be a slow time during the day that I could get some rest, but that seemed too much to hope for.
After rubbing sleep from my eyes and thankful there was a shower in the surgical call rooms—not all were so equipped—I stuffed my clothes into a pillowcase and got dressed in scrubs. As I headed down to the ER, I wandered past the shifter’s room. It was empty. The unit was quiet, which could mean many things, but hopefully it meant they had managed to get away.
At one point, I thought I saw the nurse from the night before. I turned away f
rom her, making my way toward the stairs and to the ER. At least here I felt safe—as safe as I could be—and stuffed my dirty clothes into the locker. It would be a long day.
“Kate. You’re here early.”
I looked over from my locker as Jen entered. “Couldn’t wait to get started. You know me.”
“Is it because you didn’t get any sleep last night?”
I shook my head. “It’s not like that with him.”
“Maybe it should be.”
“I’m not sure. I think he’s still stuck on someone else.”
“Really? Maybe you need to work a little harder.”
The idea of competing with Ariel for Aron’s attention didn’t appeal to me. Even a few months ago, I would have denied any interest in wanting to compete, but the longer I knew Aron, the more I began to feel… something.
Thoughts like that were dangerous. Aron was fully invested in the magical world, and for the two of us to even have anything meant I would need to be willing to leave the safety of the non-magical world. I simply wasn’t willing to do that.
“Maybe that’s it.”
She shook her head, laughing at me. “If you need pointers, I’m sure I could help you.”
“Great. Just what I need.”
“Hey, did you hear anything about that patient from yesterday?”
“No, why?”
“I thought to check on him when I got in, but he’s gone.”
“Oh yeah? You think he recovered that quickly?”
Jen frowned at me, staring at me for a moment. “You saw the injury the same as I did. There’s no way that he would have recovered that quickly. You think he didn’t make it through surgery?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know. I suppose it’s possible.”
“I’m going to call ortho later and find out. I’m sure they’d love to tell us what happened.”
I’m sure they would too. And stories would come out, the kind that involved a man who Jen would recognize, and maybe even me. There wasn’t anything that could be done about it, but I had hoped to get a little more time before those stories began to creep out.