Torture him?
No. That was ridiculous—that’s only what it felt like.
“So, are you going to see her again?” Zach asked him, and he had to blink himself back to reality.
“Who?”
Zach looked bemused. “The nurse who saved my life? Twice?”
“Oh…yes…I mean, no,” Damian said, wondering if Zach had been able to read his thoughts on his face. “We’re…incompatible.”
Zach’s eyebrows rose and invited Damian to further discussion. Even if Zach’s concern were idle curiosity, it was nice to have a reason to think about Andi without driving himself crazy. “She’s human,” he confessed, skipping the part where Andi had walked out on him. “And you know what we do. It’s too dangerous.”
“That didn’t stop you from banging that Guinevere chick,” Zach said, naming the daughter of another Warden, halfway around the planet.
“She’d been battle trained since birth.”
“Ehh,” Zach said, raising one hand to waggle it in midair so-so.
“And, Guinevere knew what she was getting into,” Damian went on, trying to prove his point. “We just threw Andi in the deep end, on accident.” He considered everything they’d gone through, all the times she almost died. “It’s a miracle she survived.” He realized the truth in the statement as he said it. Was it a point in her favor? Or…was she truly capable of some epic deception?
But if she had been…why would she have left him?
Zach inhaled to say something, but Austin interrupted him from the front seat.
“Gentlemen, can I just propose that for the purposes of this mission, we pretend that all women have cooties and get our heads in the fucking game?”
“Except for Mills, of course,” Jamison added, glancing meaningfully back at Zach and Damian in the rearview mirror.
“Thank you, Jamison,” Mills said on the intercom overhead, and into each of their earpieces. “I didn’t think anyone would mind my listening in and watching via satellite feeds. Little did I know that Austin thought that I had cooties.” It was as close as the truth-telling witch could get to telling a joke, and all of them knew it. Jamison snickered, and Damian grinned.
“Oh my God, Mills, clearly you don’t count,” Austin said.
“And that’s better?” she said archly, before laughing and letting him off the hook. “So, were you all just going to roll up on that apartment complex like midnight handymen or what?” she asked.
“Yeah, all we need to do is write Mike’s Plumbing on Zach’s T-shirt,” Jamison said.
“Just because I don’t want to dress like a ninja—” Zach began.
At the same time, Austin said, “Like I was saying, about the mission—”
“You’re not the only group making house calls tonight,” Mills interrupted both of them, her voice infinitely more serious than it had been. “Two blocks north, one block east. Black van. Not as nice as the tour bus, but every bit as ominous. I’m running the plates now.”
Jamison’s driving slowed to give her time to catch up, and Zach reached behind Damian to open up a weapons locker, pulling out a Taurus Judge revolver.
“Oh, now you want to be armed,” Austin snorted.
“It’s different,” Zach said, aptly loading ammo into chambers. “She might need protection. Just. Like. She. Said.” He punctuated his words as he pulled on a holster for the weapon.
“I’m three shell corporations deep,” Mills announced. “I can’t tell you who owns the van yet, but I can tell you it doesn’t belong here. Heat signature’s negative; it’s empty. Anything you can do, D?”
“Drive us past it,” Damian said.
“On it,” Jamison said and took a right-hand turn as Damian unbuckled his seat belt and prepared to jump out.
Damian waited until there was a gap between the parked cars to their right and threw himself out of the vehicle as the tour bus rumbled on. He hid behind the parked cars on the opposite side of the street before Jamison pulled away. Mills was right. This neighborhood was run-down. This van belonged to either a very tax-shelter conscious drug dealer, or it was Hunter related, exactly like Zach’s girl had said.
He crouched and tapped his dragon. Any magic onboard?
His dragon had been waiting to be of use. It’d been a long week since his dragon had helped him fight the lurker in Andi’s hospital. His dragon pulsed out his senses, and Damian had the sensation of a few glittering specks against a field of red, like panning for gold in blood.
Parts, his dragon growled and surged forward to take control and destroy the van. Damian shoved him back just in time.
But not people? Damian pressed.
His dragon reluctantly slid into predator mode and scanned for life the old-fashioned way—by scent and heat.
Nothing but iron…and parts, his dragon growled.
Damian knew better than to ask his dragon to determine what things the Hunters had left behind. They parted out magical creatures almost completely—pelts or hides or scales, teeth, claws, bones—and anything they couldn’t make magic of they often ate to ritually consume its power. If Damian’s dragon ever sensed anything draconic in what they had, they would need God Himself to stop him, and Damian was an atheist.
“Damian?” Mills whispered in his ear.
“Definitely Hunters,” he confirmed and heard Zach cursing loudly in the background. “There’re talismans, but your satellites were right, nothing alive. Tow this fucker to a secure location for me. I want to slag it later.”
“Of course,” Mills said, and he had no doubt it would be done.
The van hadn’t driven itself here, and if Zach’s intel was correct…. He held his hand to his ear. “How far am I from the complex?”
“Three blocks south,” Mills responded.
“Don’t wait for me; I’ll catch up,” he said, racing north in the darkness.
* * *
The driver let her off in the emergency roundabout at her hospital with a pleasant wave, and Andi took a second to look up and breathe in the crisp darkness before heading inside.
The hospital was lovely at night in a way it couldn’t be during the day. In daylight, it was just one of many tall buildings downtown—all of them overshadowed by the Blackwood Industries skyscraper in the city’s center. It was tall and overbearing, just like Damian. She snorted and considered her own hospital. Its brutalist-style cement edifice lacked charm, and its landscaping did nothing to soften it. All the bushes were clipped into neat squares, and all the stained cement pathways leading in met one another at precise ninety-degree angles.
Late at night though, once the other buildings had turned off their lights, her hospital turned into a solitary shining beacon. Shadows softened the corners of stone and bush alike, and the circular light of streetlamps turned the ancient blood and puke stains on the asphalt into stippling. On nights when she was feeling particularly poetic, it was like the hospital was the moon, and she was the moth being drawn inside.
But tonight? Tonight, she was tired. It’d be different if she’d been able to sleep solidly, if her dreams didn’t keep exhausting her during the day, and then her foolish hopes didn’t keep exhausting her during the night. But after that text from Damian earlier, any hope she had of that or them working—at all, somehow, against all odds—was dead and replaced by the slimmest of hopes that David might find something on Danny. Andi badged herself in through the first set of doors. She’d just given a drop of her blood to a near stranger. And how insane that was, was just now sinking in. She hadn’t even googled the company he worked for, for crying out loud! But he’d been vetted by her uncle, and surely, he wouldn’t want anything bad to happen to her.
Andi walked over to the elevators and stepped inside, hitting the button for her floor. One floor up, the door opened, and a vented patient in a gurney, a respiratory therapist, and a nurse pushed in along with an IV pole. Andi gave the other nurse the nurse-nod and took her place against the back, pressed against the wall to give
them room. She couldn’t help but remember the time she’d ridden up with Damian. The way he’d kissed her like he owned her, his body against hers, and everything that she knew she shouldn’t feel about him was betrayed because her body wanted that again.
Too bad his body came attached to him. She snorted, and the respiratory tech near her chipperly said, “Bless you!”
“Thanks,” Andi said, not bothering to correct her.
A week later and the break room was still half a shrine to Jessica and half safety warnings to general staff. Missing photos flanked a cross pasted up on the wall made out of printer paper, where everyone had written notes praying that she was safe and coming home. And the break room table had never held so many carbs before for so many consecutive days. The doughnuts and bagels and muffins were endless as everyone ate through their feelings. Because ever since the night that monster had escaped from a portal inside Damian’s friend Zach, Andi’s coworker Jessica had been “missing.”
Only, Andi knew the truth. Jessica had died.
The monster had gotten to her before she and Damian arrived.
Andi’d been part of a small crew that night, working to save Jessica’s life, and…they’d been too late. Jessica was too injured, and too much of the hospital wasn’t available to them—what with the monster stalking the halls outside. Damian killed the beast, but by then, Jessica was gone.
Afterward, one of Damian’s men had come through with some magical thing called Forgetting Fire, which had apparently erased everyone else’s memories and righted the place, undoing whatever damage the monster had done, except it couldn’t bring Jessica back.
Andi took one look at everything in the break room. The weight of the truth settled around her shoulders like the heavy lead vests they used in radiology, and she set her forehead against the cool gray metal of her locker for strength, after she closed it.
“I know. It’s crazy.” Sheila, another one of her coworkers who’d been there that night working on Jessica with Andi, but her memories had been erased—came up behind her and rested her hand lightly on Andi’s shoulder. “I kept telling them they needed more security in the garage. I mean, it was just bad luck she got kidnapped. It could’ve happened to any one of us.” Sheila shook her head deeply, in profound disappointment at the universe. “Hell, Andi, you called in sick that night, remember? That might’ve saved your life.”
“Maybe it did,” Andi blindly agreed, before pushing away from the locker and heading out to the floor.
Andi performed her job on autopilot. She was dimly aware that her patients deserved more of her; she just didn’t have it left to give. Sure, she’d keep them alive, but she couldn’t be bothered to smile or hold anybody’s hand, so it was just as well that she was working nights, when most of her patients and their visitors were asleep.
She went into the break room on her break, hoping to catch some sleep on one of the couches, only to find that her other coworkers were already set up, and, instead of sleeping, they were whispering to one another about Jessica’s disappearance like they were having a slumber party.
“Between this and my car getting broken into last week,” one of them said, like the situations were even remotely similar, “I just don’t feel like management is taking our safety concerns seriously enough.”
Andi inhaled and exhaled through pursed lips. While she wouldn’t mind them installing a few more security cameras, nothing management could do would’ve prepared them for the monster Damian had tackled. She could still remember the way he looked—the claw marks slashed across his stomach. He’d healed quickly, but she’d seen him bleed green first.
“You need a spot, Andi?” One of her coworkers folded up to sit. “My break’s almost over.”
“No, thanks, I’m good. I’m gonna go walk around some.” She turned to open her locker to get out her coat and put it on.
Why the hell had Damian wanted his own coat back anyway?
She frowned and wondered if she should grow up already and block his number.
“Uh, are you sure?” another coworker asked in disbelief. “For all we know, Jessica was kidnapped on campus.”
“Or she fell down a stairwell, and no one’s found her yet,” Andi said with a shrug, as the other women boggled at her. “What? It could happen. Campus is huge.”
The first woman snorted. “That’s dark, even for ICU humor.”
Andi waved her hands as if to erase her words. “Sorry. I’m having a bad day.”
Someone who’d been trying to sleep flipped their blankets back to show their head. “Sister, join the club. Three code browns and then a real code.”
“Jesus,” Andi said with a chuckle, then escaped through the door.
Walking gave her time to think. The hospital was quiet at night. She didn’t want to go outdoors—more worried about mugging than kidnappers—but her badge got her into most of the campus, and she wasn’t lying earlier—it was huge. Their hospital had been around for at least a hundred years, and she’d have made large bets that there were parts of it that’d never been updated.
Despite Jessica’s name being on everyone’s lips for the past week, Andi realized none of her coworkers could quite remember the last time they’d seen her. Not even Sheila, who’d been running the code when Jessica died. It was astounding. After she’d seen Damian’s dragon, the thought of forgetting it—or him—seemed utterly absurd, but after seeing the Forgetting Fire’s effect on her coworkers, Andi believed.
She took a side route after one of the large atriums and took the stairs down to the basement. With gray painted cinderblock walls and wiring trailing overhead like arteries, it was creepy by any definition. It was also cold, which was nice with the coat on, and she was almost guaranteed to be alone. Security had warned them sometimes junkies snuck in to sleep there at night when it was raining, but given all the other dangers she now knew existed, someone looking for a dry place to get high didn’t feel like much of a threat.
She did stop, though, when she heard a voice echo from somewhere up ahead.
“Coming up empty.”
Andi pressed herself against the cement wall without thinking. But surely it was engineering or lab or janitorial or any of the hundred other people getting paid to stay up here all night like she was.
“Me too. It’s frustrating. There’s something just barely on the monitor here, but I can’t pinpoint its location. It keeps moving, and the walls here are damn thick.”
Andi heard metal begin to clang.
“Eh, if it’s that faint, what’s it worth? Probably a ghost besides.”
“I don’t believe in ghosts.”
“And yet you do our job?” The first man laughed at the second.
“Okay…I don’t want to believe in ghosts. Especially not down here.”
“Now that, I can get behind.”
Andi realized belatedly their voices were getting closer, and she was entirely exposed.
What did it matter, though? She belonged down here, and so did they.
Probably.
She glanced down the hall behind her and saw a dresser with a “broken” tag on it, and ran to hide on its far side. The lighting wasn’t good, and she was small, so she curled herself up into a ball, same as any hiding-from-the-weather junkie might and hid her hands in her sleeves and then used them and her hair to shadow her face. She and Danny had played hide-and-seek like it was for money when they were kids. She knew all the tricks to make herself hard to see.
The men walked past her hallway without even looking over, still talking amongst themselves.
“See? There it goes again!” the first one complained. “There’s nothing down here.”
“It’s broken. Definitely,” the other agreed. “Silver’s gonna be pissed if we don’t bring anything back.”
“Not even he can find what’s not there. And others are out tonight, anyway.”
“Yeah. I bet they’re getting some sweet stuff,” the man complained.
Andi uncoiled
and slunk up to the front of the hallway as their voices receded.
“Don’t worry, I’m sure they’ll share.”
She peeked out and saw two men—one short and one tall—dressed in hospital scrubs. She didn’t recognize them, which wasn’t unusual, but what was strange was that the tall one was holding a piece of equipment that she’d never seen before, and the short one…. What was it Austin had said? That an orderly—short, bald, tattoos—had come in and started mucking about with Zach, triggering the portal inside him?
The shorter guy checked all the boxes. She could see a full sleeve of tattoos running down his arm beneath his scrubs’ shoulder, and the fluorescent lights in the hallway were reflecting off his head.
Andi started up to go demand answers, then thought better of it. If they were up in the main hospital somewhere, where there might be other people or security guards around, she'd feel safer. She hadn’t been lying to her coworkers earlier—if anything happened to her down here, it’d be a while before they found the body. So, she crept after them instead, trying to listen for more clues, but they’d stopped talking. She knew they were close to the end of the basement; the men would have to badge up to get into the stairwell. Surely, they had badges?
And surely, they weren’t going to turn around and walk back the way they’d come?
Andi hovered behind them at an appreciable distance, one so far back she could pretend not to be snooping. She thought fast and lifted her fingers to her lips to help her whistle lightly.
“Jogger, coming through!” she announced, and then started running at the men at an easy pace. They both turned, as surprised to find her there as she’d been to hear them earlier, and she did her best to memorize their faces, before darting between them with her badge out to open the final door.
Dragon Destined: Billionaire Dragon Shifter Romance (Prince of the Other Worlds) Page 7
