I was held there for long moments as I tried to get my wits about myself, and I knew instantly that something had happened to Brooklyn.
“Motherfucker,” I wheezed.
Keifer offered me a hand up, and I hastily stood while yanking up my pant leg.
There, at the base of my ankle, were two twin marks, where what looked like two sets of fangs pierced the bony part of my ankle.
Mother.
Fucker.
“We gotta go,” I said hurriedly, hobbling as I ran/limped out of the gym.
“What happened?” Keifer asked.
“I think Brooklyn was bitten by a snake,” I uttered hurriedly.
Keifer blanched.
That was one of the drawbacks of having land. With land came snakes. And with snakes came the potential of getting bitten.
I ran through the pain, making it down to the pond even as I listened to Keifer hanging back because he was trying to make Skylar understand what was happening over the phone.
I made it down to the pond in time to see Blythe running towards us.
She froze when she saw me, then turned around and started running back toward the pond where I could see Angus crouching down next to Brooklyn.
Brooklyn was crying, dark streaks ran down her cheeks from where her mascara was running with her tears.
“It hurts,” she said.
“What happened?” I asked as I made it to her side. “You’ll be okay. I know it hurts right now, but the healing will start to take place…”
A dragon’s magic will help heal the body, but it only repairs. If there’s something that destroys the body’s cells before the repairing can begin, then there’s more at work there than a dragon’s magic can handle, Angus said.
Keifer nodded.
“That’s what Skylar said, too. We’ll have to take her to the hospital,” Keifer agreed.
“Shit,” I said. “What could get worse?”
You know that saying that says ‘it can always get worse?’ It’s something that nobody should say aloud. Why? Because if you do, then there’s a possibility that it can, indeed, get worse.
“I think that the snake was being controlled…” Blythe said. “By something similar to a dragon rider.”
“Controlled by what?” Keifer asked.
Then realization dawned on me.
The Purists couldn’t find us…couldn’t pierce through the veil to get to us.
But animals could.
I’d made sure of that with my own two hands.
I felt sick to my stomach at having put my mate and family in jeopardy.
“They’re working with fucking dragon riders?” I asked in shock. “Are you fucking kidding me?”
Keifer rubbed the bridge of his nose.
“How do you know it was a dragon rider?” Keifer asked Blythe.
“Well, it had to be something, because that was no ordinary snake,” Blythe said. “Slithered right past me from clear across the field. Angus clocked it before it even started moving, and stepped in the way. The snake moved fast around Angus before he could even react, heading straight toward Brooklyn like it was a homing missile angling for one person, and one person only. Brooklyn.”
“What happened to the snake?” Keifer asked as I slowly scooped Brooklyn up into my arms.
“Angus ate it,” Brooklyn smiled for the first time since I’d arrived two minutes ago.
I leaned down and kissed her head, turning around to see Perdita land not but five feet from us all.
Let’s go, she said, offering her tail to me.
I nodded and walked towards her, climbing up her tail like one would a hill.
She helped us up to her back and we rose at the same time Declan, Keifer’s dragon, landed beside him.
He and Blythe rose almost as fast as Perdita and I did.
“Wait!” I said, halting our forward movement. “If the Purists really had something to do with this, we can’t just go flying in there without a plan. They’re going to be ready for us the moment we cross over the border. We need to put up a veil,” I said to Perdita.
Perdita shook slightly, vibrating with pent up energy as what I said penetrated her rage fueled brain.
You’re right, she agreed.
I could no longer see Keifer anymore. He had the ability to cloak himself.
My power wasn’t such as his.
I could ‘cloak’ to an extent, yes, but it was nothing like Declan and Keifer could do.
Perdita, however, had learned to adapt, and she could make anyone see what she wanted them to see.
Which was why, in the next moment, she made it seem like we were nothing more than a bird flying through the air.
“Alright,” I said. “Let’s go.”
The ride to the hospital was quick and efficient.
At one point, we passed over the border where the land seemed to ‘disappear’ and I thought I saw movement below, but I couldn’t be quite sure.
We went to the furthest hospital in hopes that if the Purists did bring forces to the hospitals, then they’d check the closer ones first.
Perdita landed at the helipad, and I had to thank my lucky stars that we were able to land there since a helicopter followed right behind us.
I waved to Keifer as I went in, and he flashed only briefly to me before he disappeared once again, set to recon the building in hope that no enemies followed us, as well as to prevent any from coming in if he could.
I walked straight into the ER and moved up to the first person I saw, which happened to be a security guard.
“Sir,” I said.
The man turned, surprised at me just showing up. Then blinked at me as I held a getting-more-incoherent-by-the-second Brooklyn in my arms.
“Yes?” he asked, moving out of his little office.
“My wife was bitten by a rattlesnake,” I offered without preamble.
He blanched.
“Come with me,” he said, directing me to a big brown door.
Brooklyn didn’t protest being my wife.
What she did protest, however, was me trying to place her on the gurney.
“When was she bitten?” a doctor asked after the security guard led him into the room.
“About half an hour ago,” I admitted.
Although I knew it wouldn’t look like it was only a half hour.
The wound was already healed.
What wasn’t healed, however, was the poison slowly seeping through her veins.
“I’m not seeing an entry wound,” the doctor said in bafflement.
I closed my eyes and concentrated, fabricating a wound on her leg like the one I’d seen earlier, and the doctor hissed once my illusion hit his mind.
“Ahh, I see it now,” said the doctor, then turned to me. “What kind of snake was it?”
I opened my mouth to tell him, but Brooklyn beat me to it. “A six foot long Diamondback Rattlesnake.”
The doctor blanched, but, nonetheless, relayed the information.
“Nancy, we need anti-venom!” he called to a nurse.
I leaned down until my forehead was touching Brooklyn’s.
“I’m sorry,” I said roughly.
She picked her hand up and let it rest on my face.
“It’s okay,” she said. “You didn’t do anything.”
How true that statement was.
I didn’t do anything.
Mostly because I hadn’t known that I’d need to prepare for that kind of threat.
Now, though, I would prepare.
They wouldn’t slip past me that way again.
“Alright, Mr…” a woman at the front of the room said.
I turned. “Vassago.”
“If you’ll come with me to fill out this paperwork,” I held up my hand to stop the woman.
“I’m not leaving her right now. You can ask me in an hour or so, then I’ll give you whatever you want,” I said, trying no
t to sound rude, but coming off that way anyway.
The woman smiled congenially. “That will be fine.”
“Anti-venom is expensive as hell,” Brooklyn said. “And I don’t have insurance.”
I snorted. “I got you insurance a day after you came to stay with me. And, as for the money the anti-venom will cost, that’s not an issue. I’ll have that money before you can even spell billionaire.”
She looked at me with wide eyes.
“I suppose we never really got to talk about that part of our relationship, did we?” she asked, holding her arm out as the nurse put an IV into her wrist.
I shook my head.
“No. Not yet. But it doesn’t matter, what’s mine is yours,” I offered.
She grimaced.
“You know, I have a degree. And I passed my boards. And I want a job,” she said stubbornly.
I suppressed a smile as I watched the nurse that the doctor had yelled at earlier hook up multiple IV lines…more than I’d ever seen run into a person before.
The nurse followed that up with a bag of filmy looking liquid in a clear bag and hung that up connected to the first large bag.
“It’s called a piggyback,” Brooklyn said, seeing where my attention had gone.
I looked down at her.
“What?” I asked.
“That smaller bag will run first until it’s completely empty because it’s higher than the big bag. Once the smaller bag is finished, then the bigger bag will resume,” she informed me.
“Ahh,” I said, even though I technically didn’t see.
I was too busy watching as the filmy liquid dripped into her veins.
One tiny drip at a time.
“How long will it take to know if there’s been any damage?” I asked the doctor.
He shook his head. “Days. Hours. I don’t know. It shouldn’t be too long, though. Diamondback Rattlesnakes are very rare, but since you got her into the hospital within two hours, I don’t expect any complications.”
“What kind of possible complications are there?” I asked, watching as Brooklyn’s eyes slipped closed.
“Common symptoms include swelling, severe pain, tingling, weakness, anxiety, nausea and vomiting, hemorrhaging, perspiration and eventually, heart failure,” he said. “But, like I said, it’s very likely that nothing will come of the bite.”
I breathed a sigh of relief.
“What’d you give her?” I asked.
“A sleeping medication to calm her down and relax her. We don’t need her heart pumping anymore because she’s anxious. We need her calm and relaxed to give the anti-venom the chance to work,” he explained patiently. “This would be a good time to go get her paperwork taken care of. We’ll need to know of any allergies. Whether there’s a possibility she could be pregnant. And old medical records. Anything you can think of would be helpful and useful information.”
Shit.
Pregnant.
No, she couldn’t be pregnant.
She was on the shot.
She’d mentioned that...hadn’t she? Or had I made that up? Only thought she’d said that.
There was no way she could be pregnant.
But that didn’t alleviate my fears.
I knew nothing about her medical records before I met her.
Literally, I knew nothing.
Not whether she broke her arm, nor if she ever had the chicken pox.
“Alright,” I said. “I need to make a call, though, first.”
He nodded. “The registration clerk is the first door on your right once you reach the end of the hallway.”
I nodded and leaned down, giving Brooklyn a soft kiss on the lips before I exited the room, stopping right outside the door to call Blythe.
“Hello?” Blythe asked urgently.
“Hey. They got the anti-venom started. But they’re asking medical history, and I don’t know anything about it.”
“She had surgery when she was eighteen for a broken arm. She has pins in her left tibia,” Blythe said instantly. “She’s not on any medications, and she’s allergic to Vicodin.”
“Alright, thank you,” I said and hung up.
I caught the first nurse I could find and told her that Brooklyn was allergic to Vicodin before I went down to registration and filled out paperwork.
I was in the middle of the fourth form when the whole hospital exploded in a flurry of activity as a ‘Charlie Brown’ was called over the loud speaker above my head.
“What’s that mean?” I asked the registration clerk.
“That there’s a combative patient,” she answered instantly. “Nothing to worry about.”
My brows rose.
Something told me not to let this go, some hidden instinct.
Something’s going on, I relayed to Perdita.
There’s nothing going out here, Nikolai. How’s Brooklyn? she asked, her smooth voice calming some of my fears.
I finished up the last form in my hasty scrawl and walked out the door, immediately spotting where the commotion was coming from.
I was just in time to see Brooklyn’s prone body disappear around a corner with an orderly in green scrubs pushing her away.
I hurried towards her, wanting to know where they were taking her, and was held up by the combative patient.
I managed to push past, but only in time to see the orderly cross into a bank of elevators at the end of the hallway and the doors close behind him. No Brooklyn in sight.
What the fuck?
Chapter 10
Calm down, Mr. Mechanic! I’m just here for an oil change. If I wanted to know about all the other things wrong with my car, I’d turn the radio down.
-Things not to say to an auto mechanic
Nikolai
I started opening doors, and began to get worried once I’d opened the fourth door, not finding her.
Brooklyn’s missing, I thought to my brother and Perdita.
Haven’t seen her out here. What happened? Keifer asked.
Some orderly took her out of her room. I followed but, by the time I got to the hallway, the orderly didn’t have her and was getting on the elevator alone. I can’t find where he dropped her off.
My heart was pounding as I opened the last door, only seeing a laundry shoot and a linen cart.
The floor’s empty, I said. There’s no sign of her.
I hurried back to the room, hoping I’d somehow been wrong, but when I got there, she wasn’t there either.
I walked back into the hall.
“Where’d you take her?” I asked the first nurse I saw, pointing into Brooklyn’s now empty room.
She frowned. “Nobody took her anywhere.”
And with those words, I knew we were in deep trouble.
***
I ran my hands through my hair.
After a thorough look through the hospital, I was officially about to throw up.
“I can’t find her,” I said desperately.
“We’ll find her,” Keifer promised.
It’d been over two hours since I’d lost her, and my mind was practically screaming at me to find her now, or it’d be too late.
“Did you find any more on the fucker that sent the snake?” I asked.
Blythe shook her head. “No. Angus was looking by his own means using the forest animals, and he couldn’t find anything.”
“Fuck!” I yelled, pulling my hair.
A soft hand on my bicep stilled my thoughts, and I looked down into Blythe’s eyes.
“Try using your bond,” she said.
I closed my eyes.
“I did. They gave her some sleeping meds right when I left the room. It made her go under quick, and I haven’t been able to hear her in my head for well over two and a half hours now,” I explained tensely.
“Shit,” she whispered.
I closed my eyes and tried again, just in case.
And found myself in a
basement.
I blinked, looking around, and realized that I was tied to what looked to be a laundry bin.
I looked around, my stomach roiling when I realized I was in a bucket of dirty linens.
“Oh, gross,” I whispered.
Except it wasn’t my voice.
It was Brooklyn’s.
“Nikolai?” she asked.
I’m here, I said.
She blinked. “You’re not here.”
You’re missing. I’m trying to find you. Look around and let me see what you see, I ordered her.
She did, looking around the room and showing me the massive washing machines along one wall of the concrete lined room. The other side held the dryers. The back wall was covered in tables where there were stack after stack of clothes.
Shelves lined the middle of the room, and not one single person was there.
Where was everyone?
“Where is everyone?” Brooklyn echoed my thoughts.
I don’t know, I said, whisper soft.
She tested the bonds around her wrists, finding out quickly that they were tied too tightly to get any wiggle room at all from them.
That pipe above your head has a bolt in it, rub the cord along the edge of the bolt, I ordered.
She did as she was told, and I watched her struggle, hoping that the anti-venom had time to work before she started to get her heart rate up again.
She bit her lip in concentration and stared at the bolt, working for well past ten minutes before she saw the first fray in the cord.
“Got it,” she said, renewing her effort when she saw the progress she was making.
With another four minutes of vigorous rubbing, the entire thing popped loose from her hands, and she was able to stand.
“Okay, now what?” she asked.
“Hide,” I urged.
She dove out of the laundry basket and ran across the room, climbing into a huge machine, closing the door softly behind her.
The man that entered was the same man I saw leaving with Brooklyn earlier, and it was then I realized how he’d gotten her out without me seeing.
He’d dropped her down the laundry shoot.
We were lucky she wasn’t dead.
Brooklyn’s heart pounded, and I jolted out of my in between state, startled to see Keifer directly in front of me, looking me straight into the eyes.
Dragons Need Love, Too (I Like Big Dragons Series Book 2) Page 9