Hypnos

by RJ Blain

  Luke pushed my parents into the room. “How are you feeling?”

  “Like a kraken got a hold of me, took a nibble, decided I tasted bad, and spit me out—after having a nuke dropped on my head. I showed that nuke who was the boss, though. I might get out of prison tomorrow, but if I do, apparently, I have to take it easy for a few weeks. I don’t know how to take it easy, Luke. This is going to be a disaster. An even worse disaster than my hair before Raymond fixed it. Someone needs to give him a raise for putting up with that mess.”

  My father sighed. “You’re rather uppity for someone who spent ten hours in surgery.”

  I took my time thinking about that. “Obviously, they were performing experiments to find out why I’m such a badass. I could’ve told them water elementalists are the true supreme beings on this planet.”

  Luke snorted, poked his head out of the room, and encouraged the loiterers outside to come add to the mayhem in the room, which wasn’t large enough for a lot of people to pack in. I stopped counting my minions after ten, deciding if they wanted to pack themselves in like sardines, that was their choice.

  “How are you really feeling?” my father asked.

  “Pretty good, but I’m really hungry, and I sent the hot cop off to feed me. I’m not sure he’ll succeed on his mission, but I haven’t had enough pizza yet.”

  “Seriously, Olivia? Pizza?”

  “It’d be a bit much to ask Mom to make more duck. And my babies better be okay.”

  “Your ducks are fine. Everyone’s been taking turns spoiling them,” he promised. “I even took them to a vet appointment to make sure they were healthy and see what we could do about Dumbass’s gimp leg and eye.”

  “Dumbass is fine just as she is.”

  “I’m glad you think so, as there’s nothing that we can do for her eye or her leg. She’ll always have limited mobility, and she won’t be able to fly; there’s an issue with her wing the vet discovered.”

  “Well, that’ll make it easy to keep her in my yard, I guess.”

  “The vet also clipped Esmerelda’s wings so she won’t fly off. I figured you’d want a professional to handle the clippings. That’ll let them run free in your yard without wandering off, although I’m going to work on installing some form of covered pen for them. It’s a challenge making the pen without trashing the yard.”

  “Run rose vines over the pen,” I suggested. “I like roses.”

  My father’s expression eased. “I can do that. So, no crying today, is it?”

  “I told Raymond you could cry all you want while I’m napping. If you want to cry, you can wait until I’m released from here and my wonderful parents are feeding me as much duck as I can fit in my stomach.”

  My mother closed her eyes and rubbed a temple. “We have a defective child. I want to blame you for this, but her love of duck is all me.”

  “If you hadn’t wanted me to love eating duck, you wouldn’t have fed it to me.”

  “She has a point, babe,” my father muttered.

  “As evidenced by the discussion we’re having, I’m not dead, I’m not even close to dead, and I’m planning on camping on my new chair at home for at least a week, as I think I deserve to camp out on my new chair at home for at least a week. I want to know if there have been any leads on Euthal and the general situation in San Francisco. After that, I want to eat myself into a stupor.”

  Luke sighed. “There were sixty-seven deaths, the injuries are in the thousands, but there shouldn’t be any additional casualties at this point. Everyone else hit has made full recoveries; as far as we can tell, the sheer number of people prevented any one person from being hit too hard with Hypnos’s power. So, in a way, we were fortunate Euthal struck as he had. If he’d taken only a few hundred again, the death toll would probably be higher.”

  “Causes of death?”

  “A few car accidents, a handful of heart attacks, and an apartment complex fire. There were a few other fires, but fortunately, the building’s sprinklers contained those until the fire departments were functioning again. For healthy people, recovery only took a few hours.”

  I considered Luke, narrowing my eyes. “Where’s Rachel and her quad?”

  “Headed back to San Francisco. She was freaked out you two were getting along and needed some normality.”

  The more some things changed, the more they stayed the same. “She said we’ve got a bunch of trainees and some imports from Washington?”

  “Yeah. I’m saddled with your work until you’re back on your feet. Please get back on your feet soon. Your job sucks.”

  “Where’s Eddy? I have to beat her so she can go beat her brother on my behalf.”

  “Eddy is busy beating her brother already. They’re duking it out as dragons right now.”

  When the dragons were reduced to beating on each other, it meant their human halves had completely lost control, and someone—probably me—would have to go knock sense back into their thick skulls. “Are you seriously telling me there are two out-of-control dragons rampaging somewhere?”

  Luke chuckled. “They’re rampaging away from civilization, so it can wait until you’re released from the hospital. They’re being tracked, and they aren’t causing any harm. A crew from Washington is babysitting them.”

  “I told that bastard to do work, not go rampage as a dragon! Do you have any idea what their feeding bill is when they do this shit?”

  “Washington is covering the cost. They’re taking the blame for them being dragons. From what we can tell, when Hypnos hit Eddy, she snapped, and when she woke up, she influenced her brother, who likewise snapped. Since you were busy with Euthal, and Washington got the nuke authorization, which knocked you out for a week, they’re accepting the blame for the situation. Eddy and the boss are now duking it out for who gets to control a hill somewhere. As long as they keep their trouble contained, nobody cares. I’ve been told to tell you to not worry about the idiot dragons.”

  “I have to worry about the idiot dragons. Half the time, I’m the only damned one who can get Eddy to take a chill pill. I am not up for the type of magic needed to tame both of those assholes. Drug a cow with sedatives and let the bastards sleep it off.”

  My father tossed his head back and laughed. “You haven’t even left the hospital yet and you’re already being bossy. Come on, Olivia. At least pretend you needed ten hours in surgery. If I can’t cry, at least let me baby you a little.”

  “No. I don’t want to be babied. I want to be fed pizza and escape this joint. And I don’t want to have to deal with my damned boss and his sister being stupid.”

  Luke sat on the edge of my bed and dared to laugh at me. “You’re just mad you have to stay the night here, aren’t you?”

  “Definitely.” I wrinkled my nose. “What’s the news on Euthal?”

  “We don’t have any news on Euthal. He ran with his tail between his legs, and nobody has seen a sign of him since you grabbed him and gave him a shaking he’ll never forget. He’ll probably go into hiding until he’s ready to stir up more trouble. The nuke authorization has been revoked. They’ve been sending divers down trying to recover what they can of the bomb. They think it’s a dud. It should’ve detonated before hitting you in the head.”

  I contemplated making an early escape, but decided the masses crowding my room would stop me. “You know, did it ever occur to anyone that maybe that’s what Euthal had wanted? To become an actual survivor, and not just some fringe survivor with mediocre powers?”

  Luke and his quad exchanged glances, but my suspicions were confirmed by my father’s unwillingness to look me in the eyes.

  I waited.

  Nobody said a word.

  I sighed. “Someone figured that out, and you cowards are waiting for me to get pissed I dealt with having a nuke dropped on my head.”

  My father sighed and bowed his head. “You’re too smart for your own good, Olivia.”

  “Fault’s on you, old man. You raised me that way.”

&
nbsp; “I can live with that.”

  Raymond smuggled in three large pizzas loaded with meat for my enjoyment, and my surgeon tolerated it because he didn’t want the crazy, half-starved water elementalist, AKA me, to try to bust out of the dampeners and go on a rampage. I ate all three and promptly passed out, which made the wait for release somewhat pleasant. I was still half asleep during the discharge process, which involved a ridiculous number of forms and waivers proving I knew I was escaping the hospital despite having so many fractures and internal injuries.

  The hospital even included a form stating I was a menace and a danger to everyone in the hospital, thus refusing to continue treatments in their institution.

  Sometimes, being a water elementalist sucked.

  To complicate matters for me, my insurance initially didn’t want to cover the costs of treatment, but some angel of mercy in Washington suggested they should, else they would be losing every contract dealing with the United States government.

  According to my brief search on the internet, my insurance company covered seventy-five percent of the government’s employees.

  The win ultimately went to me, and the insurance company didn’t even hike my premiums over the incident.

  At noon, I made my escape, and while my parents bickered with Luke over who’d get to drive me home, I wandered off to where Raymond waited, spinning a set of keys around a finger. Hypnos, who’d done a good job of flying below the radar, floated near my feet. “If we leave now, they might not notice I’ve left until it’s too late for them to stop us.”

  Raymond pointed at his cruiser, which was parked in the visitor’s lot near the gate. “I’ll even let you sit in the front this time.”

  I limped to the vehicle since walking like a dignified person would take another week or so. “I was told I didn’t need crutches, but honestly, I think they’re wrong.”

  “Sore?”

  “I got tenderized by a kraken.”

  “Some fights you just can’t win. I don’t even know if a nuke could kill that thing.”

  “Is it bad that I don’t know if I want to go back into the ocean anytime soon?”

  “I can think of a better place for you.”

  “Does it involve you, me, and my bathtub?”

  “As a matter of fact, yes.”

  “I like the way you think.” I checked to make certain my parents were still arguing with my minions. They were. Slipping into the cruiser, I slouched in the seat until I stood half a chance of going unnoticed by casual observers. Hypnos hovered near my feet, and with a faint flash of golden light, he vanished. I could live with the fish disappearing for a while as long as he didn’t turn up and cause me trouble later. “Okay. I’m ready.”

  “Seatbelt, Olivia.”

  “Can I put it on after we’re out of here?”

  “No.” Raymond reached over me, grabbed the buckle, and snapped it into place. “There. Any requests for lunch?”

  “Plentiful.”

  “Italian it is.”

  “I like Italian.”

  Raymond started the engine and eased his cruiser out of the spot, and the employee at the gate waved him through. “Sometimes, there are perks to driving the work vehicle to hospitals. They waive the parking fees. Are you up for picking up a new phone today?”

  “I’m going to need one, so that’s a good idea.”

  “I have off work today and tomorrow. I told the station captain I’d be keeping an eye on you, and the chief thought it was a good idea, as you’re more likely to cooperate with me. They’re utterly baffled as to why.”

  “Obviously, they are not very good at judging when a woman is interested in a man. A woman interested in a man is far more likely to cooperate with him, especially if there are seductions on the agenda.”

  “If they thought you could be swayed so easily, they might have thought of that, but you have quite the reputation.”

  “As what? A stick in the mud? I mean, that’s fair. I don’t do the dating thing well, and I wasn’t kidding about missing dates, especially of the blind variety.”

  “To be fair, I’d skip blind dates, too, especially now that I know what they are. If I wanted to have some stranger introduced to me for dating purposes, I’d just go visit my grandmother and tell her I was tired of being single.”

  “Huh. My grandparents died when I was little.”

  “My grandmother lives to spite my father, I think. She’s my mother’s mother, and she absolutely hates my father. It’s entertaining when we get together.”

  “What do you mean by entertaining?”

  “I pop some popcorn, get comfortable outside of the blast radius, and watch. They’ve spent my entire life sharpening their barbs.”

  I chuckled. “I’d like to see that.”

  “The instant my relatives find out I’ve moved into a house with someone of the opposite gender, they’ll descend like vultures.”

  “The house has a security system, and I’m not above hiding until they go away.”

  Raymond chuckled. “They may not be packing much of a punch in the magic department, but don’t underestimate my family. They’re persistent.”

  In his way, so was he. “I’ll keep that in mind.”

  Chapter Twenty

  It took my parents twenty minutes to figure out I’d given them the slip, which was when Raymond’s phone rang. “Answer it if you want,” he said, nodding towards where his phone rested between the seats.

  “Don’t mind if I do.” I confirmed the number did, indeed, belong to my father before I swiped my finger across the screen. “You snooze, you lose, old man.”

  “You ran away with my cop.”

  “He was available, he wasn’t arguing with anyone, and he’s taking me to get something to eat. I’m hungry.”

  “When aren’t you hungry?”

  “When I’m actively being fed.”

  “You were supposed to wait for us to finish deciding who was driving you home.”

  “Your cop is obviously driving me home.”

  My father sighed. “I was going to tell you we have a formal event tonight.”

  “There is no way in fucking hell we have a formal event tonight.”

  “We have a formal event tonight,” he repeated.

  Raymond sighed and shook his head. I glared at him. “Did you know there was a formal event tonight, you?”

  The detective snorted. “No. I’m just marveling over the base stupidity of some people.”

  “In that, we’re agreed. Dad, I am not up for a formal event tonight.”

  “You need to be. I was told early this morning. When I pick up the phone, and a woman instructs me to please hold for the President of the United States, it’s the sort of formal event we can’t skip.”

  My father had spoken to the President? The President lived in Washington. Going to Washington meant going uncomfortably close to New York City. “Excuse me? Could you repeat that in a way that doesn’t make my brain shut down in complete and total terror?”

  “You don’t have to go to Washington for the formal event.”

  “And he called you?”

  “Well, your boss is currently in a territory dispute with his sister, and despite you being an FBI agent rather than a cop, I am your father, so he thought talking with me might cut through the bullshit.”

  “I’m running away from home starting now.”

  “Olivia, the President is expecting to see you at a formal event tonight. You can’t run away from home.”

  At the rate my heart was pounding, I wouldn’t need to run away from home to get out of the formal event. I’d die of a heart attack. “I’m busy tonight.”

  “Doing what?”

  “Sleeping with your cop.”

  Raymond choked, pulled over, and slumped over the steering wheel. The bastard laughed so hard he could barely breathe.

  “Why are you laughing? Hey, stop laughing. This is not funny. Raymond, you asshole!”

  My father chuckled. “I take
it my cop isn’t on board with you sleeping with him?”

  “Don’t you sound so smug about this, old man.”

  “It’s a mandatory formal event. Wear a dress. Your mother’s already suckering me out of a designer gown, which she’s picking up tonight.”

  “How the hell did she get a designer gown today when you only found out about this bullshit this morning?”

  “Don’t ask me how your mother operates, Olivia. Try to wear something nice.”

  “I have one dress, and it’s that Chinese one Mom foisted on me.”

  “What happened to your other dresses?”

  “I burned them in the last wildfire.”

  “Why would you do that?”

  The last time I’d dated, the jerk had goaded me into burning my entire dress collection. I figured if I had to go help extinguish wildfires, I could use them to my advantage first. “Some asshole said I’d be prettier if I wore dresses and smiled, so I burned all my dresses except that one because Mom would cry.”

  “Hey, babe? Is the Chinese dress you gave Olivia suitable for formal? She burned the rest of her dresses because of a bad date.”

  My bastard father was laughing at me. I could hear it in his voice.

  My mother’s laughter, while faint, made it clear she found my misfortunes amusing.

  “She says that one is fine for formal. Wear a pair of heels. If it makes you feel better, bring the cop along, assuming he’s not already running for the border. You’re allowed a plus one. We’re expected at eight.”

  “Why didn’t you tell this to me earlier?”

  “You would have done something, anything, to avoid being discharged.”

  He was probably right. Grumbling a curse, I considered my options. None of them appealed. If I ran, someone would retrieve me and force me to the damned formal event. “But seriously, Dad? The President?”

  “Sorry, baby. There’s nothing I can do. My hands are tied.”

  I bet. My mother would kill him if she missed a chance to go to a serious formal event. “I’m hanging up on you, and I swear, the next Saturday you’re not working, you and Mom are making me a feast of every single food I like, I’ll be bringing a plus one, and you will feed me until I’m incapable of swallowing another bite.”