by Chant, Zoe
“Shift form?” Janet said, her eyebrows raised almost to her hairline.
A chorus of voices arose. “He turned into a dinosaur!” “A huge black lizard with fangs!” “A giant velociraptor!”
Janet held up a wrinkled hand. Silence instantly fell. “Merlin, is this true?”
“Yes. I got turned. It’s a long story.” For once, he didn’t seem inclined to tell it immediately. Dali could see that there was a whole lot of family history behind the glance he and his mother exchanged.
Janet rose to her feet. Turning to address the crowd, she said, “My heir has returned. As you saw for yourselves, he’s a shifter. I trust that there will be no more objections.”
The silence was broken by a cough from Merlin as he gingerly touched the side of his head. He’d had a hell of a bad accident, whether as a raptor or not, and he was obviously in pain.
“Shall I call an ambulance, or would you rather have me drive you to the hospital?” Dali asked.
Imperiously, Janet said to the crowd, “Fetch a stretcher and take him to the infirmary.”
“I don’t need a stretcher.” Merlin coughed again, more loudly, and again rubbed at his temple.
The cough worried Dali. Once might be dust in the air, but twice seemed significant. It could even be a sign of internal injuries.
“A stretcher!” Janet ordered, snapping her fingers. “Step lively!”
Several of the circus people hurried out.
Dali took out her cell phone. “I’m calling 911.”
“No!” The exclamations came as one, from Merlin and everyone else there with a human throat.
“Hospitals aren’t safe for shifters,” Merlin said. “If a doctor notices anything weird and passes on the info, I could get kidnapped and experimented on.”
He didn’t say again, but he didn’t have to. Reluctantly, Dali put her cell phone back in her purse. “Fine, but...”
Merlin staggered to his feet, then swayed.
She jumped up and steadied him. “You shouldn’t have.”
“It’s done.” He managed a smile, first for her, then for his mother, and finally for everyone else. “She’ll take me to get help. Safe help. I know where.”
Janet gave him and Dali a baleful glare. “You can get safe help here, Merlin. This is your home—your family!”
Merlin coughed so loudly that it sounded almost like a seal’s bark, and pressed his entire hand to the side of his head.
That did it. No more dilly-dallying, Dali was taking him to the ER. Once he was there, she’d call his team to protect him from any kidnapping attempts.
“Come on, Merlin.” They began to walk away, with her supporting him.
Over his shoulder, he said, “I’ll call you tonight, Mom! I’m fine, really!”
Dali didn’t want to rush him, but he picked up the pace himself, walking briskly despite periodic stumbles. When they got to his car, he fished in his pocket and pressed the keys into her hand. She opened the door and helped him into the passenger seat, then took the driver’s seat.
Once she was settled in, she looked anxiously at Merlin. He was sagging in his seat, his head tilted back, his eyes half-closed. Bruises were coming up on his face in red and purple blotches, and both his head and his lip were bleeding.
Dali took out her phone to look up the address of the nearest hospital.
“I’ll give you the address,” Merlin said, and told it to her.
She fed it into GPS and began driving. The tiny sports car was incredibly responsive, and she didn’t resist the urge to zip in and out of traffic. After all, she needed to get him to the ER as fast as possible.
“Fun, isn’t it?” he said.
“Well, not now!” Then Dali looked into her heart, and admitted, “All right, it is. Or it would be under better circumstances.”
“You can have better circumstances,” Merlin said. “Drive it on our date, if you like.”
The date! In the terror of the accident and her worry over him, she’d almost forgotten about it. At his words, the delicious anticipation, sexual thrill, and unexpected intimacy that she’d experienced with his kiss returned to her.
She didn’t dare take her right hand off the wheel, and it would be too awkward to try to pat him with her left, even if it wasn’t a prosthetic. She waited till the next red light, then leaned over and pressed a kiss into the side of his throat. He turned his head and kissed her back, and then she lost track of everything until a blast of angry honking informed her that the light had changed.
Dali jerked away and hit the gas, vowing not to kiss him again until she’d delivered him safely to an ER. It was obviously a driving hazard. But she was less worried that his injuries were serious now—not if he could kiss like that.
“Hey,” Merlin said. “Good job catching my signal.”
“What signal?”
“The signal to pull me out.” When she didn’t reply, he said, “I cough and touch my ear, and you come up with a reason I have to go. Though I didn’t expect you to have a reason as plausible as ‘I have to rush him to a doctor to treat him for trapeze injuries.’”
Dali groaned aloud. “Was that what you were doing? Merlin, I’d totally forgotten about the signal. I thought you were coughing and rubbing your head because you had a concussion and bruised lungs or something.”
Merlin burst out laughing, then winced. “Ow. I don’t think I have bruised lungs, but I’m sure I have bruised ribs. No, I was trying to signal you. I kept making it louder and bigger because I wasn’t sure you’d noticed it. By the end I felt like I was barking like a seal.”
“You kind of sounded like you were,” Dali said. “Sorry I didn’t pick up on it sooner. I was distracted by the accident.”
“Accident?” The sharp note in Merlin’s voice alarmed her. “That was no accident. Someone tried to kill you.”
“What?” A cold stab of fear jabbed itself into Dali’s belly. “How can you be sure?”
“Because I’ve set up that trapeze apparatus myself. An earthquake wouldn’t bring it down. There’s no way the entire thing could come loose unless someone made it come loose.”
“You think someone from the circus tried to kill me?” Dali exclaimed, horrified. Then, realizing the unlikeliness of that, she said, “Merlin, are you sure they weren’t trying to kill you? We were walking right next to each other. And you’re the heir, not me. Maybe someone wants you out of the way so they can have a chance.”
Then it was Merlin’s turn to be appalled. “Oh, I’m sure they wouldn’t—”
“You thought someone there set up a death trap for me,” she pointed out.
“Well...” Merlin rubbed his forehead. “Either way, I don’t think it’s the best place for us to be right now.”
“You can say that again.” Following the GPS directions, Dali pulled up in front of...
...a little house in a residential neighborhood. That couldn’t be right.
Merlin reached for the car door handle.
“Wait,” Dali said. “I must’ve given GPS the wrong address.”
“No, you didn’t.”
“We’re going to an ER,” Dali said patiently, once again convinced that he was concussed. “This is someone’s house.”
“Right.” Merlin gave a faint smile. “Mine.”
Before she could stop him, he got out, then braced himself with a hand on the roof. Since Dali couldn’t haul him back inside from the driver’s seat, she was forced to get out too.
“You need to go to a hospital,” she said.
“Nope.” Lowering his voice, he said, “Shifters heal faster and better than non-shifters. And Zane Zimmerman really does know his stuff. If he says I just need a little rest, then I just need a little rest.”
“You can’t even walk by yourself!”
“Sure I can.” He began to make his rather wobbly way up to his front door. Aggravated, Dali chased after him, managing to grab him by the arm just as he started to trip over the front step. Regaining his b
alance, he gave her a sweet smile. “Thanks, Dali.”
She glared in return and said, quietly but with force, “Someone tried to kill me! Or you! How are we supposed to be safe in a regular house when you can’t even stand up on your own?”
“We’ll be safer than if I got kidnapped for another stay in a secret lab,” Merlin pointed out. “Also, Carter did my security system, and he’s a technical genius. If anyone tries to get in, not only will alarms go off that will wake the dead, but it’ll send alerts to my entire team.”
He was leaning against the door as if he hadn’t a care in the world. Dali suspected that it was actually to make sure he didn’t fall over
“And what about before your team makes it here?”
“I was a Marine before I was a velociraptor,” he pointed out. “I have a gun, and I can shoot sitting down.”
Dali found that more reassuring than the security system. Merlin was a veteran Recon Marine. He undoubtedly could defend himself and her if he was flat on his back.
He punched in a security code, fumbled out his keys and opened the front door, then stepped inside. Dali had to either let go of his arm or go with him, so she went with him. As soon as they crossed the threshold, something metal fell down and bounced noisily across the floor.
“Oops,” said Merlin. “I forgot about that. Don’t move until I turn on the lights.”
He flipped on the light switch and shut the door. While he re-set the alarm, she got her first look at his house. She felt her own eyes bulge as she surveyed the array of cunningly constructed traps all over his house. They were similar to the one that had briefly imprisoned Cloud, and they lurked everywhere. There were even several hanging from the ceiling.
“You live here?” Dali exclaimed. “It’s a death trap!”
Merlin gave her a pained glance. “They’re all live traps. They’re completely harmless.”
“Not if they whomp you over the head!” She pointed an accusing finger at a contraption balanced on the half-open bathroom door.
“That one’s mostly netting. There’s nothing to whomp. Anyway, I have lots of stuff other than traps.”
It was true. Merlin had lots of stuff, period: too much to take in all at once. Dali found her gaze fixing on small parts of it, one at a time.
A collection of little Day of the Dead figurines: clothed skeletons getting married, drinking in bars, and playing in a band.
What looked like hundreds of circus posters on the walls, not just of The Fabulous Flying Chameleons, but also Ringling Brothers, Barnum & Bailey, and, rather out of place, Cirque du Soleil.
Shelves and stacks of battered paperbacks in every genre imaginable, romance included; Dali spotted The Gladiator Platypus’s Curvy Librarian and Bought by the Billionaire Blink Dog on the seat of a chair, sharing space with The Care and Feeding of Your Kitten and what appeared to be a teenage angst novel called Loneliness and Other Large Molecules.
“Do you have a kitten?” Dali asked.
“No, but I’m hoping to catch one. Or a dragonette. Something little and cute to perch on my shoulder.”
Which reminded her that she had left her own kitten in her apartment. It had only been a few hours, but it felt like weeks. But she didn’t want to leave Merlin alone, no matter how fine he claimed he was. Making a mental note to call Tirzah to check in on Cloud, she said, “Are you really dead-set on not seeing a doctor?”
“I’m dead-set on not staying at the circus or going to a hospital. I wasn’t kidding about hospitals being dangerous for shifters.” When Dali felt her eyebrows start to pull together with her intent to make sure he got medical care somewhere, Merlin said quickly, “Tell you what. If I’m not fine tomorrow, we can go to the office and Roland can call in some friends of his. They’re shifter paramedics, from the west coast branch of Protection, Inc.”
“Why not call them now?”
Merlin already looked fragile, with the bruises on his face and blood in his hair. But when he raised his eyes to hers, the vulnerability she saw in his clear blue gaze made her heart hurt. “Because my teammates already think I’m a joke. And I don’t want to give them more reasons to feel that way.”
“If they really do, they’re dicks and they don’t deserve you,” Dali said. “But I bet you’re wrong about that. Anyway, you got hurt saving my life! You didn’t do anything wrong.”
“Maybe I could’ve moved faster. I don’t know. I...” He let out a long, fluttering breath. “I just want to stay here and not have to see anyone but you.”
At that, Dali felt bad for arguing with him. He obviously wasn’t in any immediate danger, and all she was doing was hassling him when he was already feeling bad.
“Hey. Let’s get you cleaned up, okay?” She unhooked the net trap over the door and draped it over a stack of books for lack of a better option, then returned to Merlin and took his arm.
He leaned against her as she helped him to the bathroom. She could feel the hard muscle of his body, and she’d seen his astonishing grace and the steadiness of his hands as he’d balanced that absurd amount of circus food he’d bought for their lunch. That made it all the more alarming to see his trembling hands and feel how he leaned against her, both needing and trusting her support.
His silence worried her most of all. She’d gotten so used to his chatter.
Not just used to it, she mentally amended. If she was honest with herself, she liked it. Merlin was charming and entertaining and fun, not to mention surprisingly thoughtful and insightful. The quiet felt so wrong.
The bathroom mat had an alarming realistic design of piranhas lunging upward from a pond, fanged mouths opened wide as if they were going to bite off your feet. But it was thick and fluffy, so she helped him sit down on it and lean back against the wall. He closed his eyes.
Dali thought he was worn out, not actually asleep or unconscious, but she still hated to disturb him. He looked so exhausted, and he’d gotten hurt protecting her. Instead of asking him if he had a first aid kit and where it was, she checked in the closest place where someone might keep one, which was the cupboard under the sink.
Something sprang out at her from within the dark cupboard. She recoiled with a yell. Merlin lunged forward, eyes still half-shut, instinctively seeking to shield her with his own body. The next thing she knew, she was lying on the bathroom floor with Merlin sprawled on top of her and a net entangling them both.
“Ptah!” Merlin tried to spit out a strand of webbing that had gotten in his mouth. “Sorry, sorry...”
He struggled to untangle them, but only succeeded in drawing it tighter. It took both their efforts to extract themselves, and by the time they were done, a trickle of blood was running down his face from the wound on his head and the bath mat piranhas appeared to have made a fresh kill.
Dali wasn’t sure whether to laugh hysterically, scold him, or kiss him and make it better. “Please tell me you have a first aid kit I can get to without setting off a magical pet trap.”
Merlin leaned over and slid open a drawer under the sink. Nothing jumped out or slammed shut or fell over, though she couldn’t help noting that in addition to the kit, the drawer contained a screwdriver, three Snickers bars, and a plastic Tyrannosaurus rex eating a plastic pterodactyl.
The kit was not a commercial or even military one, but had obviously been hand-assembled from parts of both, plus some stuff Dali didn’t recognize. She picked up a stoppered glass vial containing golden liquid, with a hand-printed label reading “Heart’s ease. For dragonsbane poisoning.”
“Dragonsbane?” Dali said.
“It’s an herb that’s poisonous to dragon shifters,” Merlin said.
Part of her quietly boggled at the fact that she wasn’t being sarcastic at all when she said, “Are there dragon shifters at the circus? Or on your team?”
“Neither. There’s one on the west coast team, Lucas. And another guy on the west coast team has a mate who’s a dragon shifter. Both of them have been poisoned by dragonsbane, so I figured I’
d better keep the antidote around.”
“Do they visit your team often?” Dali asked.
“Raluca came once. Lucas hasn’t yet.”
“So just in case one of them is here or you come across some other dragon, and in case they get poisoned, you wanted to make sure you could help them?”
He nodded as if it was the most logical thing in the world. She thought it was the most Merlin thing in the world: that he’d think of a wildly unlikely but not actually impossible chain of events, and just on the off chance that it might happen, go to what was probably a significant degree of trouble, not to mention risking people thinking he was a lunatic, so he could help someone—possibly someone he hadn’t even met yet.
Dali spotted other odd things in the kit, but chose not to ask about or examine them. It was clearly an endless series of rabbit holes (which was also very Merlin), and she didn’t want to get distracted from her task.
“I hope you’re not too attached to that shirt,” she said. “Because I think it’ll hurt a whole lot less if I cut if off.”
Merlin experimentally tried to lift one arm over his head, and put it down with a wince. He glanced down at his blood-spattered Tea Rex shirt, gave a regretful sigh, and said, “It’s a goner away. Put it out of its misery.”
She used the shears from the kit to slice off his T-shirt and tossed the scraps in the trash. His chest and shoulders were more muscular than she’d realized—he was so well-proportioned, it was only obvious with his shirt off. His golden tan and light dusting of blond hair made the blackening bruises stand out even more; just looking at them made Dali wince.
“Let me see your back,” she said.
Merlin turned around. She could actually see the outline of a trapeze bar across his back, like he’d been struck with a crowbar.
That was the blow he’d taken for her.
“Are you all right?” Merlin asked unexpectedly. He turned back around, his sky-blue eyes wide and anxious as they peered into hers. “I can take care of myself, you know. You don’t have to do it, and you don’t have to watch. Why don’t you go into the living room and read a book or—”
