I was near a row of shops. The smell of burning caused me to look down. The acid was burning through my clothes. I tossed the ruined leather jacket in a dumpster on the way back to the car, shoving my phone and tonfas in my hoodie's pockets.
Flashing red and blue lights lit up the sky nearby. Leaning against the brick wall next to the dumpster I tried to breathe normally. It still came in a whooping noise.
I couldn't catch my breath. My vision grew blurry. I needed to leave. I kept my eyes open. My hoodie had spots of smoke trailing on it, as did my jeans. I could feel the cotton of denim give way, as three spots of slime hit my thighs. I needed out of these clothes.
I stumbled. I'd run too fast for too long. Everything swayed. Or was that me?
Approaching the rental car, I saw his long legs first. He rested his fine ass on the hood of the small rental.
"What's a girl like you, doing in a place like this?" Dominick quipped. His face was lit by the street lamp. His eyes sparkled, but his face still held no trace of a smile.
I wondered why there was two of him. Focus, he and Alec cannot be harmed.
"Have to hide," I muttered.
Dominick looked at me, "Are you drunk?"
"No." Pain had me hunched over as I struggled to stay conscious. The wound from the Shadowed Man had reopened. It had been regenerating.
My blood poured down from my waist to the pavement.
Dominick caught me as I fell towards the pavement. His eyes weren’t cold anymore.
"Worst week ever." The dark threatened, pushing at the edges of my vision. I lifted a hand and touched his cheek.
Dominick said, "Hang in there."
He picked me up like I was as light as a pillow, holding me under the hips and the back. It made the wound shift just wrong, and I howled in agony.
"Dianna, hold on." His car was parked behind my own. He opened the doors with a remote keychain. The back door of the minivan opened on its own.
Dominick was warm and smelled nice. "I wish you liked me."
He made a grunt and lifted me to the closest rear seat. He buckled me in and grabbed a blanket from the back to help staunch the blood flow.
Groaning in pain at the pressure on the wound, I wondered if this time I'd die. Had I finally lost to the specter?
"Keep pressure on it," he demanded. Dominick closed the door and went to the driver's seat. He started the van and bitched at the same time.
"Are you always this much trouble?" He took off his coat and gloves. "How did you manage to get acid on you?" He sighed loudly. He cursed.
I didn’t know the language, but the tone was unmistakable.
I didn’t want to fight. Something was wrong. It hurt. My stomach was silent. That wasn't normal.
"Dominick," my voice was small.
He growled back, "What?"
"You might wanna. Hurry." Blood came from my mouth as I said, "Some. Thing wrong." Trying to concentrate on the back of his head and stay conscious.
Stay awake.
Will not pass out again.
I watched the blood fall from my mouth to my jeans. Some hit the van's seat. Dominick was going to yell at me for that, I bet. I snickered.
My eyes drifted closed. I opened them to listen to Dominick. He sounded off. It was like time had slowed down. His words seemed stuck in slow motion.
"Stay with me."
I giggled. Dominick sounded silly.
Wow. Cars were slow.
I looked down at the blanket and saw all the blood it was absorbing. That couldn't be good. But I had to stay.
I had to fight. I needed to be slow, not fast. Breathe deeply I thought, slow down. Breathing in, slow. The world shifted again.
The lights from traffic seemed like streaks from time elapse film and were too bright to watch. I closed my lids, but it seemed to take forever to shut out the illumination.
The van stopped, and the side door opened. It seemed like we flew into a warehouse type building. It was hard to tell, it went by too fast. Gray. Maybe.
Dominick looked gray too. He still held me. His arms felt nice. I closed my eyes again and thought maybe he wasn't such an asshole after all.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Dr. Yamada was next to me wearing a surgical mask. She flicked me on the forehead between my eyes. She said, "Don't be dumb. Say when you’re hurt."
Frowning I tried to concentrate. My arms were strapped down. The room was wrong. Why were we surrounded by wooden crates? That didn't seem sanitary. I tried to tell Dr. Yamada, but the arguments faded as the world went black.
Opening my eyes, once again everything still appeared in a gradient of grays. The room had peeling paint, stacked crates, and odd lighting. Trying to sit up, I was tied down with an orange bungee cord.
The eyes of Dr. Yamada peeked up from a mask. She made a tisking noise at me and muttered in Japanese.
I couldn't hear Whisper, but I could smell her scent of cloves. Dominick's sandalwood lingered nearby, but it was too hard to focus.
"Got it!" Dr. Yamada shouted.
Looking, I saw her pull a piece of a tiny writhing tentacle from the open wound in my stomach. It shed paper-like skin as they put it in a tube.
Seeing it, and knowing it had been in me wasn't freaking me out. Instead, I felt calm. My wounds were sore, but there was no fresh pain.
Dr. Yamada stitched while Whisper talked to Dominick while placing the fragment in a mason jar. Whisper wanted to keep it.
I tried to reach out to the piece of the nightmare. It reminded me of the Shadowed Man. The creature seemed unstoppable; this might hold a clue to beating it.
Dominick leaned over me, and put his hand to my cheek, "How on earth did you manage before we met?"
Pissed, I tried to answer but whatever Dr. Yamada injected in my veins had me passing out. Again.
Everything was warm. Waking up, I snuggled into the warm arms holding me. The muscles felt nice wrapping me and smelled good. They were hard but welcoming. Muscled, but not squeezing or hurting by trying to prove how strong they were.
Sandalwood was so sexy. Moving my hips against the hairy thigh in between mine I moaned.
"If you keep doing that, I'm not going to be responsible for my actions," Dominick's voice was sleepy.
This wasn't a dream. Opening my eyes, I found myself looking at Dominick's bare chest, in a small bed. My lips were tickled by his chest hair. Well, too small a bed for the two of us not to be on each other. The room was familiar.
The walls had been decorated in strange graffiti that resembled the runes from a show about Vikings that Whisper loved. The smell of salmon lingered in the air.
Food from Whisper. I started to push Dominick away, and his solid arms hesitated before loosening to let me go.
I was nude except for a pair of underwear. Was Dominick nude? Part of me was hopeful. I tried to squash it, reminding myself of the rejections he'd been happy to dish out.
"Why aren't we wearing any clothes?"
Dominick's eyes lit up, "You don't remember last night?" The merry twinkling in his eyes at odds with his stern face made me certain nothing had happened.
"No. Seriously, what am I doing next to you in the buff?"
"Dianna, you really need to get a sense of humor."
"Right. I'll put that on my to-do-list the same time you put remember to smile on yours." Holding up my pointer finger I asked, "First, where are my clothes?"
He pointed to a pile of clothes on top of a shipping crate. Grabbing the sheet, I got up. Taking the sheet exposed Dominick. He had on black boxer briefs.
They fit him really well. Very defining.
Forcing my eyes back to the clothes, I winced while walking. I dropped the sheet and looked at the wound. It was nasty, still the width of my waist. The hit to the gut had been far worse than I'd felt at the time. The stitches were precise, and if they were like the last ones they should fall out as it healed. No marks from acid, so the healing power could repair whatever that slime-acid had been
.
“Lucky,” I said under my breath.
“What,” Dominick asked.
“Nothing.”
There was a note in Whispers precise handwriting.
These are the darkest clothes I own.
Love ya ~W
As I got dressed in dark rinse skinny jeans with a fancy glittery fairy on the rear pockets, a sparkling black tee that almost met the low top of the jeans, and a black leather jacket that had a pair of barely visible black stitched angles wings on the back, I felt pretty stupid.
At least the boots were mine. I kept reminding myself of that as I leaned on the crate to put on the sparkly socks. Never look gift clothing in the glitter.
The jeans were snug, but at least I didn't have muffin-top. My body was in shape, but curvy compared to Whisper's. The jacket was super soft. I wondered if I could get home and changed before it got ruined. It felt expensive.
I heard the noises of Dominick getting dressed. Ignore his sexiness, I looked around for the food. My stomach growled loudly, and cramps of hunger gnawed at me. Holding onto the crate, my eyes located the sushi.
It was on a folded table with three chairs at it. There were about twenty small takeout boxes. Shambling over to it, I opened a lid and shoved some in my mouth.
The taste of the uncooked meat hit my tongue, and the world shifted again. Everything was brighter. I used a hand on the chair to slowly lower myself down.
"Did Whisper take the piece from my stomach?" I asked.
"Yes." Dominick sounded like his head was in his shirt.
Feeling less awful, I glanced behind me. The show was over; he was clothed.
"We will have it analyzed," he said.
I returned to eating. As I finished off boxes of sashimi, I paused. "Wait. We? Say that again, we who?"
Dominick sat down in the chair across from me. "The Order. Whisper is one of our contacts. She isn't a descendant, but she is someone who helps."
While chewing, I wondered if he knew that Whisper had visions? Dominick had said the order considered the world them and not them. Where did that put my bff?
"Dominick, what do you know about-" Shit, if I asked, and hadn't said anything, would Whisper be in danger?
Dominick said, "Whatever Whisper is, the Order sees her as one of us."
I sighed, relieved. "Okay." I kept eating.
Dominick drank from a water bottle. It said the intelligent choice on the label. That made me giggle.
Dominick looked at me with his eyebrows raised, "Are you okay? Should I call back Dr. Yamada."
I held up a hand, "No. I am okay. Just whatever mojo I have is all haywire." Passing out wasn’t doing me any favors. I said, "I'm glad your club is okay with Whisper. She is someone I would go to war over to protect."
My eyes met his. His widened.
I kept looking at him. "She helped save me."
Dominick nodded. He remained silent but looked curious.
"After everything happened, I stayed in school. I got my bachelors but spent my nights hunting. Although there weren’t many, I killed any monster I found. Grad school sounded too hard; too much faking being normal. So, I took the first job offered. It was a temporary placement agency for starting accountants. I worked there days before and after graduation."
Dominick took a drink from his water.
"I kept seeing creatures on the bus." I stacked the used containers and picked up the trash. "Two small boys got on with backpacks. They had a piece of paper. A list of which stops to take." I leaned back, remembering the night it happened. "The bus stopped. They got off. So did this creature. It looked so alien with red skin and long, clawed hands, and fish eyes. On the monitor up front, recording us passengers, he looked human. Just another businessman taking city transit."
Dominick said, "What happened?"
I picked up the plastic and put it in the recycle bin, and the trash in the metal trash can. "I got off too. It was this warehouse area." I gestured around. "We ended up here. In front of this place. Whisper's warehouse for her café."
My hands clenched, "The creature tried to grab the younger boy. He was maybe three or four." I ran up and hit the red monster so hard he flew about ten feet away. “I helped the boys. Destroyed whatever that thing was." The impact had killed it. "The children hid in here. Whisper was here doing inventory."
Dominick said, "What happened then?"
"Well, I ran in here, and they were telling her that I'd killed the devil man. She held them, saying everything was going to be alright. That I'd saved them and was aligned with the angels. She didn't question them. Or me. We took her car and got the boys to their destination.”
“Where,” he asked.
“Their Grandmothers. She was supposed to meet them and then ride with them to her place.” Whisper had told the young Grandmother off.
“She took me to my apartment and asked, 'You see the monsters too?'"
Dominick nodded, "She knew."
"Yes. But it isn’t just that she knew. It is so much more that has come after.” How many lives had she saved by telling me where and when a creature was lurking? Her visions saved lives. “So, if your boys get their panties in a twist over her, just warn them, I'd come for them before they could breathe on her."
Dominick shook his head. "We see her as an ally."
"For now," I said. "If it changes, so does my apathy about your club."
He growled, "Always teeth with you. Try honey sometimes. It will get you far better results."
"Sometimes. But the world has taught me that trust leads to disappointment, pain, and often death."
Dominick looked sad. "The Order stands for humanity when it doesn't even know it is hunted. Is humanity worth saving? I say yes. Even today. Even after finding out that the Music Man was not a monster but the work of three men and a woman. Humans. Not monsters. Not evil creatures."
He looked away. "Just garbage humans."
I knew the feeling. When you knew about real monsters, humans doing horrific things to each other made you question if humans were worth saving. But even after all I'd been through I had one thing that kept me going: faith. The faith that we’re worth saving and with the fiends gone, humans would act with love, kindness, and compassion. Most days I had that faith.
He looked back at me, and I saw his belief in his eyes, "We are the children of God. And faith is not the belief God will do what we want. It is the belief that God will do what is right."
I smiled involuntarily. He sounded like my Grandfather Erik quoting scripture. Dominick was a rock. A solid ground that I'd finally found. Someone besides Whisper that could help win the day. Unable to stop, I realized the dangerous truth.
Something horrible had happened. I'd fallen for Dominick.
Putting the leftovers in the mini-fridge as we cleaned up to head out, I couldn't stop looking at him. If he asked me to do something, I'd probably grump at him. Ultimately though, I'd probably do it.
Scowling as I shut the door behind us as we left, I wondered if it was too late to run, and maybe take up as a recluse in the nearby mountains.
Chapter Twenty-Five
The snow was falling steadily. Already about two new inches had accumulated. It was the type of snow where fat flakes would fall on your coat, and if your coat was dark enough, you could see the shape of each flake as they piled together. My small rental car wasn’t outside, but the Zachar minivan was.
The minivan had over an inch snow on it. It was still dark out. Too many times I'd shown weakness and needed help from Dominick. My pride hurt, but I had grown weary of the never-ending battle. Looking at the snow land on Dominick’s hair as we got into the van, I knew that I would stand by him.
Dominick's powers were nice, but what made him special was his faith that good would ultimately win over evil. Brushing snow off by banging my feet on the passenger door before closing it, I took off the pink wool scarf.
Another piece of clothing borrowed from Whisper.
Dominick said, "I
t's only been a couple hours." He started the engine, switched on the heater and defroster. “Alec took your rental car to the parking garage by your place. He has your keys, so I planned on heading there. Unless you need me to come with you somewhere else?"
I shook my head. It was well after closing time for the clubs. Maybe taking Dominick with to see Kian would help? Dominick being there would help keep my head clear, and I would not immediately jump on Kian demanding sex. However, the two of them meeting would be a monumentally bad idea.
I needed to deal with Kian and figure out what he really was. Did Max die and he rose as Kian that awful night so long ago? Had he'd gotten his powers then too? Better to not involve Dominick or Alec, and their order.
"Okay. We'll head home." He put on the radio before we took off for their home.
I looked at his profile. "You listen to weird, indie crap don't you?" Before the words finished coming out of my mouth, loud thumping music came on with a screechy voice shouting, "The system is down."
Dominick pressed a button on the dash, and holiday music sounded out.
Laughing I looked out the window.
Dominick snorted. "That indie disc is Alec's."
The storm was growing. Snow swirled on the ground dancing merrily. I thought of the jazz music in his kitchen. "Sure, Dominick," I said teasingly.
Dominick made a remark in a language I didn't know. It sounded very rude.
I glanced over at him.
He ignored me and focused on driving. I wasn't sure if he had taken it personally or not. It was hard to tell with a person that didn't smile.
Giving up on teasing him, I asked, "So, what do you know about the new drug in town and which group's pushing it?"
"Hovno. Dianna. What is it with you? I need to focus on driving in this weather." His words were clipped, in a slight staccato pattern.
I decided that it wasn't just his face that could be bitchy. I didn't know the word he’d used but was certain he was swearing. You just can't tease some people. "Dominick, I am sorry for teasing you. It is a knee-jerk reaction. I grew up with a Grandfather that showed love through teasing."
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