Then all of the Hunters paused as one, like a squad of adults playing red-light green-light, and several of them reached for their ears.
Xochitl was the first to recover, and then clearly curse in a language that Andi had never heard before.
“We can finish here first,” said the man nearest her.
Xochitl’s eyes narrowed. “No. If we don’t participate in taking the beast down, we can’t lay claim to the spoils.” The woman stared up at Eumie, who was weaving gently back and forth, staying in motion, ready to evade any attack. “Until next time, Mother.” She saluted Eumie sarcastically with her sword, and then licked the blood off the blade before sheathing it and running for the theater’s exit.
As the doors opened, Andi heard the honk of a car approaching outside. It kept honking—Sammy!—as the Hunters rushed out and Eumie sagged to the tile, holding themselves off of it with their braced hands.
“Are you all right?” Andi asked, crouching at their side.
Eumie looked over at her. They’d lost an earring in the battle. “Are you?”
“Yeah…may I?” She already had her hands hovering over Eumie.
“Please,” Eumie said, flipping over onto their back and then clutching their chest with one hand tightly as they groaned. Sammy was still honking the horn of her car outside for them, as Andi pulled up Eumie’s shirt and saw small pulses of blood. Something arterial was cut inside. She ran to the napkin dispenser, popped it open, and grabbed all the napkins inside.
“Are you going to heal?” she asked, returning to apply pressure with a fistful of them.
“I’m not entirely sure. It slows down the older you get, and I am very old. No hospitals, though, promise me.”
What could a hospital possibly do for Eumie anyhow? Andi bit her lips before answering, “Okay.” Eumie’s close cropped gray hair and easy smile were so familiar, and yet, everything else…. “Who are you, Eumie?” she asked. They only had moments before Sammy would come in with too many questions, surely.
“Eumie, your neighbor, the owner of the Greek bakery below your apartment.” They put their hand over Andi’s and squeezed. “Because I am now who I choose to be. I am no longer constrained by my past—periodic attempts by my past to murder me aside.” A faint smile traced their lips.
They both heard footsteps running up outside. It would only be moments until Sammy could look through the glass. Eumie groaned and writhed and Andi realized why Damian hadn’t wanted her to see the wolves change at the hospital that night long ago. It was a disturbing sight to see. Like a Transformer transforming…only with flesh. Their tail parted violently, like Eumie was being torn, and then the scales inverted as it lost mass, becoming the legs Andi was familiar with seeing in summertime—still showing every one of the wounds the hunters had given them. They looked even worse on a human-sized scale. Sammy barged in and stopped three steps inside the door.
“Whoa,” Sammy said, eyes wide, taking in the sweeping bloodstains on the floor, the chandelier hanging by a wire above, and Eumie’s half-naked form. “What the fuck happened to Eumie’s jeans?”
“Nevermind that,” Andi said. “How close can you get the car?”
Sammy brought her car right up to the doors outside, jumping the curb, as Andi found an apron in the back to wrap Eumie in, and then it took both the girls efforts to get the baker out the door and into the back seat of Sammy’s car safely. By the end of it, they were smeared with so much blood, how was there any left inside of Eumie?
At least their blood is red, Andi thought. One less thing to have to explain.
Sammy started driving like she was racing again, and for the first time as a passenger, Andi didn’t complain. She sat with Eumie’s head in her lap in the back seat, leaning over Eumie, still applying pressure, hoping that whatever healing processes Eumie had were working inside.
“What the hell happened?” Sammy asked, eyeing them in the rearview as she yanked her Subaru WRX onto the freeway.
Andi looked down at Eumie, whose eyes were closed. It would be impossible to explain, and it wasn’t her story to tell.
“If someone doesn’t start talking by the time I get to the hospital….” Sammy threatened, wringing the steering wheel anxiously.
“No!” Andi exclaimed.
“No?” Sammy twisted her head back—which was worrisome at their current rate of speed—to gawk at Andi.
“Just home,” she said, and tried to fight down flashbacks of telling Damian the same thing at his castle.
“Eumie’s bleeding in my back seat with no jeans on and you want to go home?” Sammy said, her Irish accent rolling each word.
“Yes. It’s what they wanted.”
“Did they have more blood in them at that time?” Sammy pressed.
“Sammy, I’m sorry, you just need to trust me. Shit’s weird, all right?”
There was a harrowing moment as Sammy shifted gears and blew past other cars on the road, before downshifting and taking the appropriate exit. “This is such a bad idea,” she muttered, still driving at speed.
“I know,” Andi said. “Believe me, I know.”
Sammy’s car squealed to a stop in their parking lot, and Andi helped navigate Eumie back out of the car, doing the best she could to apply continuous pressure to the wound on Eumie’s chest. The baker woke up enough to hiss in pain, and it didn’t look to Andi like anything about them had improved.
“Are you getting better?” Andi asked, feeling frantic. It wasn’t too late to call 911—and what were they going to tell the authorities if Eumie did die?
“Not really, no,” Eumie admitted, grunting as they tried to help the girls get them up the stairs.
“How can I fix you?”
Eumie inhaled and gave a harsh laugh. “That boat sailed long ago.”
“Cut the crap, Eumie,” Sammy said, using her keys to open up their apartment. Andi saw her hands were shaking, and knew it wasn’t from the land-speed record she’d set getting them home. Her roommate and best friend was scared because their other best friend was dying. “I know you hate authority and all, but now is not the time to become a conscientious objector to modern medicine.”
They dragged Eumie to the couch and lay them down, and Andi realized all of her couches were destined to be biohazards, only if Eumie died tonight it wouldn’t be something that flipping a pillow could solve.
“There has to be something. Some way,” Andi pleaded, stroking Eumie’s short cropped hair back.
Eumie’s eyes closed again and Andi’s free hand searched for a pulse. “Can you get some cao wu?” the baker murmured.
Andi blinked. If she’d just heard Eumie right, she’d asked for a Chinese herb. In really excellent Chinese. Jesus Christ, did everyone secretly speak Chinese better than she did? “Eumie…what the hell—”
“You know,” Eumie said, opening their eyes to pierce Andi with a look.
“Cao wu?” said Andi hesitatingly, achingly aware of how terrible her accent was. She’d had no one to practice with ever since her mother’d died. She and Danny never spoke Chinese with one another.
Eumie nodded subtly. “It looks like pieces of burnt tree bark.”
“Almost all Chinese medicinal herbs look like burned tree bark!”
One of Eumie’s eyebrows rose. “You know that I know that you know.”
“Well I don’t fucking know!” Sammy said, throwing her hands up in the air, pulling out her phone. “That’s it, I’m calling 911.”
Andi caught her wrist. “No.”
“Why?” Sammy said, beginning to fight with her.
Andi let go and got in Eumie’s face again. “You’re like one hundred percent this is going to work if I get some?”
“As sure as I can be, considering,” Eumie said, gesturing at their current state with one hand.
Andi rocked back on her heels. “Fuck my life.” She grabbed Sammy’s hand and put it where hers was. “Hold here.”
Andi ran out onto the small stoop outside with her
phone. She knew she was wasting time—time Eumie might not have!—but she needed to think things through. Because what she was thinking about doing was a huge-ass risk.
Her first instinct was to call Damian and tell him to get Austin over here right-the-hell now, but if the sinking feeling in her gut was right, the only thing that would’ve detoured the Hunters trying to kill Eumie was bigger prey, and the only thing she knew about “worth” killing more was Damian. If she called and distracted him…no. This was why they were broken up. Even if she was holding his necklace through her shirt as she paced.
So with her free hand she found Danny’s number. He was dangerous, too, but a known danger.
Danny? she texted him.
His response was instantaneous. I’m dealing with some things right now, Andi.
Andi bit her lips. What if he was also on his way to fight Damian? If he was, then wasn’t distracting him a good thing?
Then why did everything about the situation make her queasy?
I need your help, she texted quickly.
A slightly longer pause, then an onslaught of questions. Where? Why? Are you all right?
At my apartment. Because a friend is hurt. And I’m pleased you care.
What kind of friend? Danny asked.
She frowned at her screen. The kind of friend that needs you to bring me some cao wu. It looks like burned tree bark.
Andi watched the dots at the bottom of the screen whirl for an uncomfortably long period of time before the next message resolved: Almost all Chinese medicine looks like burned tree bark.
I know! Andi blinked at her phone, her fingers typing faster than she could stop herself. Did Mom feed it to you?
A second later, Danny replied. Yes.
She had another irrational pang of jealousy, feeling left out all over again, even now that she knew the truth of things, as Danny sent another text: On my way.
Andi went back into the apartment and found Eumie and Sammy the same as she’d left them. She went to their small kitchen and grabbed some fresh dish towels. “Okay,” she announced, retaking her spot beside Sammy. “The thing you asked for is on its way.” She saw Eumie’s eyelids flutter in response.
Sammy glared between the two of them. “Don’t code-word me. What’s going on?”
Andi shook her head, suddenly realizing why Damian had found using the Forgetting Fire on her so tempting after she’d first seen his dragon. “I want to, Sammy, but….” Andi let her voice drift.
“You think I’m so innocent, Andi? Remember when you met me!” Sammy said.
Andi did. She’d first met Sammy when she’d been dating Danny, and about thirty seconds afterward she realized Sammy was too good for him. That didn’t stop them from dating for the next eight months though, during which Danny’d been stealing cars semi-professionally, and taking them to the roving chop-shop Sammy worked at. She’d gotten straight after she’d dumped Danny, but Andi would be a fool to think Sammy hadn’t seen the underside of life.
“So, those people in black were clearly trouble, and…?” Sammy prompted.
“They were after Eumie,” Andi began. “But that’s not my story to tell, and besides, they could’ve just as easily been after me.”
Sammy’s head tilted practically sideways, like a dog that’d just watched a magic trick. “What?”
Andi calculated the value of their friendship, divided by the cost of lying to Sammy now, and decided it was too steep. Plus, if Sammy was going to be put into danger by virtue of just knowing Andi, didn’t Andi owe her the truth? “If I tell you a secret, do you promise to take it to your grave?” Andi asked.
“Of course,” Sammy said, crossing her legs, settling in to listen.
“Okay, so not everyone’s what they seem, Sammy. I know you know that.”
Sammy rolled her eyes. “Yeah, Danny told me about you and him going off to hustle frat boys at pool halls back in the day. If that’s your dark secret, I’m not impressed.”
“No. I mean more different than that. Like a lot more. My most recent ex-boyfriend wasn’t just like a normal rich dude, Sammy. He was also a dragon.”
Sammy’s eyes narrowed, then she rapid-fired questions. “Why was he dating you then? Were you like, what, his Asian side-piece? And why the fuck would you let anyone from the KKK touch you?”
“No! Not that kind of dragon.” Andi went to press her hand to her forehead, but caught herself in time; it was covered in blood. “Like a mythical being, big wings, claws, teeth, scales. A Lord-of-the-Rings kind of dragon. Like a werewolf but a dragon version. He could change back and forth at will.”
“What…the fuck?” Sammy’s ginger eyebrows went high in disbelief, and then she guffawed. “You’re like the world’s worst liar, Andi. Jesus.”
“That’s why I’m not lying!” Andi groaned, watching her roommate utterly disbelieve her, as she wanted to melt into the ground. “I just never thought I’d be saying anything like that out loud.”
“Oh, I can’t imagine why,” Sammy said, shaking her head before she scoffed. “I’d be pissed at you if it weren’t so ludicrous.”
“Just because it sounds bad doesn’t mean it’s not true,” Andi said, wincing. “But whatever. The thing is, he’s got enemies, and so does Eumie, and that’s why those people attacked us tonight. And that’s also why I dumped him.”
Sammy pursed her lips tightly. “So that random groups of ninjas wouldn’t stalk you?”
“Pretty much. I was worried for him. He has to fight a lot of people. And I didn’t want to get in the way.”
“Which is why he keeps texting you that he’s alive?”
“Yeah.”
Sammy sighed deeply, as if from the bottom of her soul. “Were you high when he told you all this? No judgment, honestly.”
“No, I wasn’t high. I was,” Andi began, inhaling, feeling the words and emotions choke her throat. “I was in love, okay?” She looked between Sammy and Eumie—she’d finally gone and said it out loud for real, in front of witnesses. Only one didn’t believe her, and the other was possibly dying.
But that didn’t make it any less real for her, and it wasn’t past tense. The intervening weeks since she’d seen Damian hadn’t changed a thing about her feelings. She’d loved him then and she loved him now, and she was probably cursed to love him forever just like he was cursed to become a dragon for how hollow she felt when she stopped to let herself think about it—like there was a hole inside her that not even the thrill of saving lives or pints of high-end ice cream could fill.
The tears she’d kept at bay outside of her bathroom rushed up and threatened to jump out of her eyes. “I loved him, and people were going to try to kill him, and I got scared that protecting me from them or something was going to get him hurt, and—”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” Sammy said. “For reals?”
“Yeah. Even if you don’t believe the dragon part, you saw what those assholes did to Eumie.” Andi sniffled to control herself.
“Not that part, Andi. You mean, you fell for him? That hard?” she asked, her eyebrows high, as Andi nodded. “And…you weren’t just dick-ma-tized?” Sammy went on lightly.
Andi blinked and stared blankly at her.
“It’s a medical condition! I read about it on the internet. As a nurse, I’m surprised you don’t know more about it,” Sammy said with a snicker and a leer.
Andi rolled her eyes to their popcorn ceiling and snickered, too, tears banished. It felt so good to talk about him finally. And to tell someone else she loved him. It made her feel a thousand times less alone. “Yeah. Okay? Maybe I was. But I was everything else-ma-tized too. He was a good man, Sammy, and I had to leave him behind. Because if this happened to him because of me,” she went on, looking forlornly at Eumie, “I just don’t know.” She laced her hand through the baker’s and squeezed. Eumie gave her a fluttering squeeze back. “Hold on. Please.”
“Wait,” Sammy announced. “That photo…I saw…does he dye his spunk green?”
; “Oh my God, no, it’s not green, but his blood is, and fuck you for asking, Sammy.” She waited for Sammy to laugh again, but this time her roommate just swallowed instead, and then the doorbell rang. “Stay here,” Andi told her and ran to get it quickly.
Andi darted outside and hauled the door shut behind her, pulling it closed and keeping her hand on the knob as her brother came near. He looked a little better than he had the other night…tired, but significantly less jaundiced. Still angry, though, and tense. “Did you bring it?”
“Yeah,” he said, handing a small paper bag over.
“It’s not for my dragon friend, if that’s what you’re thinking.”
“Friend?” Danny asked archly, like they were sixteen again and he was the man-of-the-house, interrogating her dates, and then laughed. “Nah, I know.”
Andi’s heart lurched. She wanted to ask him how he knew, what he knew, but instead she said, “Thanks. I owe you.”
He broke into a sly grin like she remembered from their childhood, while also rolling his eyes. “I’ve heard that before.”
She rolled her eyes right back. “Yeah, you’re still ten thousand bucks in the hole with me, technically. So what’s the street rate on this,” Andi asked, shaking the bag, “and I’ll take it off your tab.”
The door knob in her free hand twisted hard. As Andi’s hand was still slippery with Eumie’s blood, it was nothing for Sammy to shoulder bump the door open. “I heard someone that…Danny?” she said, stepping out and crowding the already small space further. Andi reached behind her to reclose the door, keeping Eumie hidden. “You’re…alive?” Sammy asked him, then looked to Andi. “And you knew?” she asked accusingly.
Danny cut off anything Andi could’ve said to save herself. “Hey, Samantha,” he said, giving her a nod and an appreciative glance. “You look good. Still working at the shop?”
Dragon Mated: Sexy Urban Fantasy Romance (Prince of the Other Worlds Book 4) Page 10
