“And I won’t remember being here?” How was such a thing possible? “What about taking the job?” She’d emailed herself a reminder! And it was in her personal calendar even—the old school one she kept in a notebook in her bag!
“Every remnant of me and this place in your memory will be erased.”
“Then…how are you going to pay me?”
“There will be a bank error in your favor.”
“How very Monopoly of you.”
He snorted softly in response. They were both at waist height now, and she took the risk of looking over. Goddamn. Everything about him was amazing, and soon it wouldn’t matter because of magic fire.
“Wait! What about the burn?” She pulled her hand out of his and twisted to see herself again. “Will that go away too?” He inhaled but didn’t speak, and she squinted up at him. “It won’t, will it? Because if you could magic it away, you would’ve just magically healed your friend.” The longer he was silent, the more she knew that she was right. “So now you’re going to put me back into the world with an unexplained scar? No.”
“What do you mean, no? Andi—” he began.
“I mean, no.” She backed into the water. Even if it was still cold and unforgiving—it was farther away from wherever it was that he wanted to take her. “Are you really going to fuck around in my head and erase my memories without my permission?”
“It’s for your own good. I promise.”
“Just the tip, right? Do you know how many times I’ve heard that one before?” She took a strong backstroke into the pool, farther away from him, and it was a shame he was being an asshole right now because he looked like a fucking Greek god. “No. I say no. I’ll leave here—you’ll definitely pay me—and I’ll go home, and I’ll never say another word about any of this to anyone. Your secret will be safe with me. But you’re not messing with my mind.” She was out where she’d begun now, where she could only barely touch the ground, sweeping her arms beside her to boost herself up.
He stared at her—through her, almost—like he was communing with something inside himself. “You won’t even remember,” he finally said.
She stopped swimming and let herself sink, so the water brushed beneath her chin. He’d saved her life. He was a good person—dragon, whatever it was that he was—he had to be. So, she played her only card: “I may not remember it, but you will.”
Either he would come out and swim after her and grab her…or…. She watched his face, trying to read him, wondering if she could really trust him even if he agreed not to erase her memories.
Damian stood halfway in the water and watched her swim away. She had to know there was no way she could win a fight between them, and yet she wouldn’t back down. Could he really go out there and drag her to shore, take her through his house screaming, and throw her in the room with the Forgetting Fire—even if it was for her own good?
He remembered the other side of his mother’s history—a woman only a shell of herself—forced to forget parts of her past “for her own good” too many times.
“Fine,” he said quietly. Her eyes widened, and she didn’t move, not quite believing him.
“Promise it.”
“My word is my word. You can take it or not,” he said and turned to finish striding back to shore.
He heard her follow him, splashing in behind. He didn’t bother to dry off—only yanked clothing out of his closet roughly. She caught up with him when he was half-dressed. Grimalkin had put a fresh replica of all her original clothing on his bed. He picked it up and tossed it to her the second she reached the door. She caught it, and he turned his back on her again.
“Interesting décor. You like to look at yourself a lot?”
Damian glanced up and saw himself in twenty different reflections. “Stop asking questions,” he said, tucking in his shirt.
She was still afraid of him—he could tell by the way she skulked around the edges of the room, staying out of arm’s reach, trying to find someplace to change where she wouldn’t be reflected. Thank God all of the mirrors were closed right now. What would happen if his stepmother was looking through? She’d never let him live this down.
Or, she’d come here and kill Andi herself.
He ground his teeth together in frustration and looked back at her. “I’ll be waiting outside. And if you touch anything in here, I can no longer guarantee your safety.”
She nodded. Her long, wet hair had soaked through her shirt, clearly showing the nipples he’d seen earlier as if to torture him. “Understood.”
He growled again, resisted the urge to pick things up and throw them, and went into the hallway, slamming the door behind himself.
You should never have told her, his dragon rumbled.
I’m different than you. And that’s why I’m in charge.
For now. Now that there was no sex or violence in the offing, he felt his dragon’s presence subside.
“Grimalkin meowed in this direction,” Austin said, rising up the far stair and looking around. “Where’s the girl?”
“Forthcoming,” Damian said.
“As in, not unconscious?” Austin’s head tilted like a particularly thoughtful hound. “Wait…what?”
“She’s still her.” For better or worse. Austin would find out momentarily, better to confess. He watched the other man smell the air. Damn him and his werewolf nose.
“And…you didn’t sleep with her?”
“No.”
Austin worked his jaw several times before speaking again. “I’m just having a hard time figuring out how this happened.”
“I’ll save you time. She’s her own person, and I am unconscionably unlaid.” Damian ran a hand back through his wet hair. “Do you mind taking her home? It’s been a rather long night. Or…maybe Mills?” His secretary wouldn’t be happy as a chaperone, but she would be a whole lot less threatening than Austin to the girl after this morning. “And how is your brother? Did he make it through the night all right?” He didn’t need rest so much as he just needed to be away from Andi. The faster he could throw himself back into his work, the faster he could push everything that happened tonight into the past. He knew Jamison had gotten good data off of their last gate, so at least Zach’s injury hadn’t been for nothing. And if they could just predict the next one’s arrival and seal it before it opened, none of his people would get hurt again.
“Mills isn’t up yet.” Austin eyed him warily again. “And Zach’s fine…but are you?”
Andi’s arrival interrupted any response. She stepped out into the hallway tentatively, fully dressed down to her coat, which was zippered and buckled up to her neck. It didn’t matter though, parts of him had already memorized how she looked, she could never truly hide from him again. Austin looked between them and made a shoving gesture. “We could still—"
Andi caught Austin’s meaning and stepped quickly behind Damian.
“He’s taking you home,” Damian said, sidestepping to reveal her.
“Am I going to be safe with him? He’s not going to try to make me forget, is he?” she asked him, without taking her eyes off of Austin.
“You’ll be as safe as you are with any of my men.”
“After last night, that’s not comforting.”
Damian closed his eyes. He didn’t have time for this. It had caught him off guard how hard the human half of him experienced the strange shining moment of hope he’d had with her earlier—and how hard it was to extinguish now, crushing it back into his dark heart like a spent cigarette. “Look, I could’ve just picked you up, thrown you into the room, and closed the door.”
“But you didn’t because you’re not an asshole.”
He whirled on her. “You don’t really know what I am.” He grabbed her shoulders with both hands, turned, and propelled her toward Austin. “Go! Now! And never speak of this again!”
He watched her open her mouth—and he wasn’t sure if she would fight or agree—when a distant alarm started beeping, somehow stopping
her. Concern flashed across both her and Austin’s faces. They looked at each other as the sound continued, found confirmation in one another’s expression, and both started racing downstairs.
Unsure what was going on or what they’d find, Damian raced after them.
Chapter 10
Andi knew an oxygenation alarm meant one of two things: a patient was scratching themselves and messing up the sensor, or they were decompensating—possibly dying. She reached the bedside a half second after Austin, who for once seemed totally stunned. He was mesmerized by the screen’s report of dropping numbers, turning white as a sheet.
She whirled and pounded her fists on his chest. “Get it together! Where’s your ambu bag? And your O2 tank?”
Her violence startled him to activity. He cursed and ran off for the crash cart he’d apparently put away. Andi looked around. If this house was as magic as she thought, couldn’t it just conjure things up? The cat ran in and looked at her expectantly—as did Damian.
“What’s going on?” he asked, his concern written all over his face. She ignored him.
“Suction?” she asked aloud, and heard something large land behind her. She turned and found an entire suction set up—canister, tubing, and all—and heard its portable generator start to whine. This house! She grabbed the end of the tube and stuck it into the patient’s mouth, hoping that if there was something in there blocking his throat, it’d suck it out. His saturation was in the seventies. If Austin didn’t hurry up….
At that moment, Austin raced in, shoving the cart ahead of him. He laced the oxygen tubing between the portable tank and the ambu bag that they’d start to use to breathe for the patient—if it worked. “Catch!” he said, throwing the ambu bag at her after it was attached.
She tossed the suction aside—it hadn’t seemed to help—and she put the mouthpiece around the patient’s mouth, jerking his chin up to clear his airway, and started squeezing. He was getting 100% oxygen now. If he was going to get better, now was the time to do it—and if this didn’t work… Andi looked back at Austin. “When’s the last time you intubated anybody?”
“Been a while,” he admitted, ripping through the crash cart drawers for the intubation kit.
“Grab the defibrillator pads while you’re there,” she told him. The patient’s oxygenation saturation was at 60% now—soon, the cells of his heart would start freaking out about not getting enough air.
Damian shoved forward. “What’s going on?” he demanded.
“You sure you’re not a doctor?” Andi said, as sarcastically as possible. “Get out of the way,” she said, shoving at his hips with her own. He danced aside, and she yanked off the sheet she’d placed over the patient’s freshly-dressed chest in between squeezing the ambu bag.
His heart rate shot up, setting a different monitor blaring.
“Pads! Pads! Pads!” she shouted as Austin reached over to slap them on.
And then Damian grabbed her wrist.“Get back.”
She twisted to look at him in annoyance. “I am breathing for him. Until Austin hurries his ass up—”
He grabbed her shoulders and picked her up to set her behind him. “Fucking stop doing that!” she yelled and punched his arms. Everyone’s ability to pick her up any time they wanted to was entirely unfair.
But Austin was stepping away as well, his hands reaching behind him for a holstered gun she hadn’t clocked earlier.
“What?” she asked again, more quietly, stepping out from behind Damian where he’d placed her.
The men were watching something underneath the dressing on the patient’s chest surge—like a wandering hand.
“You’ve gotta be fucking kidding me,” Austin said. “Reinforcements!” he shouted to the room at large, although Andi had no idea what or who was listening.
“Back! Back! Back!” Damian said, and she knew from his gestures he meant her. Grimalkin’s ears flattened as he joined their line, hissing at the bed.
Andi swallowed. What…on…Earth… She realized then that the phrase Unearthly was right.
The dressing peeled aside and a small hand—a goddamned hand, although it had talons on the ends of each finger—reached out.
Another well-armed stranger ran into the room, as what was in the man’s stomach pulled itself out, bracing itself against his pelvis as it wriggled free.
Why aren’t you shooting? she wanted to scream—because what she was watching was so improbable it was bending her mind. The child-sized creature was all the shades of blue, covered in mucus; its face was missing eyes, and she could count its teeth at twenty feet. But below it, their friend was still—somehow—alive, or so the monitor claimed.
“Take it when you’ve got it,” Damian commanded as a dark-skinned man came in. He was wearing an armature across both shoulders to brace a silver weapon, and he had a sight-piece folded out in front of one eye.
“Charging!”
There was a high-pitched whine, and Austin looked warily at his comrade. “If you so much as singe a hair on my brother, Jamison,” he warned, his voice low.
The man with the gun nodded. “Understood. Firing!”
For a long second, nothing happened. And then what she could only describe as a beam of blindingly red light flashed out of the gun—turning it for a moment into almost a light saber—and it clipped the creature.
The monster screamed and jumped up to the ceiling, revealing a long tail behind it—how was it possible that entire thing was inside her patient?—then it started skittering toward them like a spider, making horrible sounds. She dropped down, covering her ears and shrieking as the thing’s mouth opened and a tongue as long as its tail dropped out, lashing toward the man with the weapon. Austin started emptying his handgun into it, while Damian shouted, “Jamison!” and bringing out a gun of his own.
“Charging!” the other man shouted back, and again that high-pitched whine. Andi fell to her knees—all the better to hide from whatever the fuck was happening, anything to get away from her rising sense of terror.
And then the patient’s monitor began beeping ominously. A small geyser of red started shooting out of the hole the monster’d left behind—a severed artery. The monster was swiping at them, swinging from the ceiling like some demented spider-creature, leaping from bookcase to bookcase—its tail and tongue swirling around it. They tried to take shots without hitting one another in the enclosed space, waiting for the laser beam weapon to charge, and then it ran across the ceiling into a hall.
“Goddammit!” Damian cursed.
“Stay human!” Austin shouted. The three of them chased after it, followed closely by the cat.
“Grimalkin!” Damian shouted, but his castle’s avatar was already on it, rearranging the house’s alignment so the hallway they were in connected with an empty garage—an almost smooth cube of a place, with no furniture to hide behind. The lurker ran in—dodging shots from Austin’s gun—snaking up and down the wall. Damian lined up beside Jamison, ready to protect the man from the monster as he readied his weapon. “Why’s it taking so long?” Damian demanded.
“I’m charged, but I’ve gotta wait for the barrel to cool down so the metal won’t deform.”
“That’s unacceptable,” Damian growled.
“It’s physics!” Jamison shrugged, making the armature around him bob. “I’ll work out a way to cool it off, next rev—now that we know that it works.”
Damian grunted. Jamison’s weapon was the runner-up project to gate sealing and the culmination of years of high-level experiments on killing Unearthly creatures. Because if they couldn’t get ahead of the gates opening, the next best solution was to be able to obliterate whatever came through from the other side. The knowledge that there was only one of him and a near-infinite amount of Unearthly ready to pour through if the gates ever stayed open weighed on him—just as he knew it did the other gatekeepers. If they could finally get it right—get it down to a one-shot, one-kill situation—then he would never have to worry about someone else get
ting hurt like Michael or Zach again. But what the fuck had happened to Zach? How the hell had the lurker gotten in?
“Ready!” Jamison shouted, kneeling down for a better shot. The lurker reached the end of the garage and twisted back—looking for an escape—and then all three men watched the creature disappear.
It didn’t evaporate entirely, but it changed all of its colorations to merge perfectly with its surroundings, and since everything in the room but them was a sterile-white, it was impossible to see. “Grim!” Damian shouted, jumping in front of his people, letting his dragon rise up inside.
Ceiling, left, his dragon noted, then strained against his will. Free me, it commanded.
“Upper left,” Damian grunted, holding his dragon back with a, No. “Quickly,” he warned his men.
Jamison and Austin did as they were told, as Grimalkin paused behind. A door to the left opened up, summoned by the housecat, and swung open loudly. Damian saw the ripple of the lurker running out against its trim. Jamison took his shot—and a good patch of the ceiling. But no blue creature appeared in the falling rubble.
“Fuck! Where next?” Austin shouted, running in.
“Charging!” Jamison said, heading right after.
The men ran after it, and Damian had no doubt that Grimalkin had sent them into a room with better visibility. He ran for the door as well.
His dragon chose then to attack. Free me! it demanded, struggling to take over. Damian caught himself against the door’s side and held a fist to his stomach.
This was the real reason they needed the weapon.
Because someday the dragon in him would escape, and he wouldn’t be able to fold it back inside himself again.
“Cut it out!” he growled and ran after his men.
Andi wondered momentarily where the house would take them, and then she ran for the bed. The center of her patient was open and raw and flooding with blood, but he was breathing now, so that was good, at least? If somehow birthing whatever-the-fuck that thing was hadn’t killed him, she’d be damned if he died now.
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