“The bullet’s titanium,” Alex informed him.
“Then what do you want me to do? If I leave it in he’ll die and if I take it out he’ll bleed to death.”
“We have to change him,” Roy stated in an unbelievably calm voice.
“He’ll die before the change is complete and even if he does make it, the titanium will poison him then,” Dr. LaCosta said apprehensively.
“We have to try, start the transfusion immediately,” Alex ordered, looking at Dr. LaCosta expectantly.
“If we don’t time this just right, he’s going to die,” Dr. LaCosta said anxiously.
“And if we don’t do anything, he sure as hell will!” Travis shouted.
“Will somebody please do something? He’s dying!” I screamed, tears rolling down my face unchecked. There was only so much strength one person could possess, and when it was spent there was nothing left.
They all turned to stare at me, bloodied, bound, and wearing nothing but a slip. I dropped down to me knees, unable to keep standing on my weak and trembling legs. I was so scared, so very scared, that my luck had finally run out. That I was going to lose him.
“Nualla,” Travis said in a voice so sad it nearly broke my heart, if it even was possible for it to break anymore than it already was.
He dropped gently to his knees and reached into a pocket concealed somewhere inside his slate-gray haori. He pulled something out and took my hands in his. In one swift movement Travis clipped the industrial zip tie that had been binding my hands together. And then he pulled me into a tight hug, cradling my head against his chest. “It’s going to be okay Nualla; Patrick’s going to make it.”
I wanted so badly to believe him, I really did. But seeing Patrick lying there, unresponsive and barely breathing, I didn’t trust my heart enough even to hope.
“We should get started,” Dr. LaCosta announced in a quiet voice. “And pray to the gods for a miracle.”
55
Open Your Eyes
Tuesday, July 3rd
PATRICK
I opened my eyes. I would have thought I was dead or dreaming, but everything was too sharp—too bright. The sounds that hit my ears were loud, louder than I remembered sound being. Or maybe it was just that I could hear farther? That didn’t seem right. I looked around a room that appeared to be a hotel suite of some kind and tried to remember how I had gotten there.
No luck.
I took stock of the room. A dresser stood in front of me and a small table to the right of it. I panned my eyes around the rest of the room. There was a short hallway to the left that probably lead to a bathroom and exit. At the right side of the room a balcony door stood open, and I could just see the shoulder of someone sitting there.
I got out of the bed and crept as quietly as I could toward the balcony door. I breathed a sigh of relief when I saw it was Nualla sitting in a chair, sipping what smelled like coffee. Her knees were pulled up to her chest and she was staring out at nothing. I just stared at her, her pale beautiful skin, her loose curls swaying in the breeze, her horns swirling back from that place just above her ears.
Wait, her horns?
I looked at her in shock; she no longer flickered back and forth between her illusion and what she truly was. She just sat there in all her true glory, which meant I was either dead or—
My hands shot up and hit something solid just above my ears—horns. They were small; no bigger than an inch, but they were definitely there. I let out a sound somewhere between a sigh of relief and a shocked gasp and Nualla’s head turned slowly toward me. When she saw that it was me her eyes got wide and she leapt up, the coffee cup smashing to pieces on the ground. My hands flew to my ears and I squeezed my eyes shut.
Geez, when did everything get so loud?
“Patrick!” I opened my eyes in time to see Nualla just before she collided with me. Quicker than I would have thought possible, I moved to cradle her in my arms. “I thought you were going to die,” she sobbed into my chest.
“I thought I was, too,” was the only thing I could think of to say. And then Nualla convulsed in another round of sobs.
I looked over my shoulder and guided her backward to the bed without letting go of her. I was pretty sure if I did she would collapse. At this point a sensible person would have asked questions. But the first thing I did after realizing I wasn’t dead was kiss her. I was so glad I wasn’t dead I couldn’t think of anything else but wanting to be close to her.
Eventually, I did stop kissing her and finally asked, “Nualla, what happened?”
“She shot you; we didn’t think you would make it,” she answered, her lip quivering slightly.
“Nualla, who shot me?”
“You don’t remember?” she asked, looking at me with concerned eyes.
I thought back, what was the last thing I could remember clearly?
Waking up on Travis’ couch the morning of the wedding.
I tried to remember past that but couldn’t. It was all a tangle of images that didn’t seem to make any real sense. “I can’t remember past waking up on Travis’ couch. Since I’m a daemon now did we…did we get married?” It was the first time I had ever hoped the answer was no. I just didn’t think I could live with myself if I couldn’t remember something as important as that.
“No,” Nualla answered in a small voice, she had mostly stopped crying now.
One crisis averted, now to fill in the rest of the gaps in this disaster. “Nualla, can you tell me what happened—from the beginning?”
She took a deep breath. “I was just about to walk out to the temple when Natasha said Alex wanted to talk to me so I followed her. We were walking down the hall and something seemed a bit off, but just as I realized that someone grabbed me from behind and drugged me. When I woke up, Nathan had me tied up in the video surveillance room.”
“Wait, the head of your security is named Nathan?” I suddenly had a very sick feeling in the pit of my stomach. “This Nathan, is the same person who was pretending to be my father, isn’t he?”
“Yeah,” Nualla answered reluctantly.
Now what I had seen the day of the attack made perfect sense. I thought I had seen my father because I actually had. Or should I say the person pretending to be my father, anyways. “Wow, he’s even more of a bastard than I thought he was.”
“That’s not even the worst part,” Nualla said timidly.
If the fact that Nathan was a double agent spy wasn’t the worst part, I was afraid to know what was.
“Nathan had me tied up in the room with a bomb filled with titanium shrapnel. He was going to make me watch you marry her before I blew up.”
I just looked at her in horror, my heart starting to beat uncomfortably fast. “What?”
“He was going to kill me, so she could take my place.”
Then the sick feeling got worse. “Please tell me I didn’t marry her.”
“No, I escaped and got to you in time. That’s how you got shot. She was aiming for me, but you jumped in the way. It was a titanium bullet—you saved my life.”
That sounded like something I would do. I had been protecting her with complete disregard for myself practically since we met.
There was a small pricking of pain in my chest right under my left collarbone. I moved my fingers up to it; there was something there. I pulled up my shirt quickly, and I looked down at a green silvery scar just under my left collarbone in that space that stopped being my chest and sloped upward into my shoulder. I ran my fingers over it slowly, it was a pitted dent about the size of a quarter, the edges of the skin around it silvery green and pulled up around the circular dent like a moon crater. I was fairly certain it must have nicked my lung at least and that I should be dead right now. I released my hold on my shirt and looked up at Nualla in confusion.<
br />
“We couldn’t take the bullet out or you would have bled to death. So we left it in while we started the transfusion and took it out at the last possible moment,” she stated in an emotionless voice.
I just stared at her in disbelief. That was beyond risky; they really must have been desperate.
“We didn’t know what would happen,” she confirmed as she traced a circular pattern across the sheet of the bed.
“But I thought the daemonification process took a week, how did—?”
“We gave you a lot blood. My whole family—even Travis and Shawn and Roy.” I just continued to look at her in shock. “We hoped that if you had blood from a lot of us at once it would change you faster.” Nualla smiled up at me, but then her eyes began to glass up, and she burst into tears again. “But when you didn’t wake up, I thought you never would.”
She thrust herself into my arms, and I held her close. “Shh. It’s okay, Nualla, I’m fine now.” I kissed her hair and held her as close as I could. “I’m sorry I made you worry.”
“You made me worry for weeks, you idiot,” she sniffled.
“Weeks, just how long have I been out?”
“About two and a half weeks.”
“Two and a half weeks!” I said incredulously.
I wondered how many tears she had shed in those past few weeks. I think if it had been me waiting I would have cracked long before now. Knowing Nualla, she had probably held strong till it was all over. She was just that type of person. Some people broke down in the face of danger while others broke down only when they knew they had reached safety.
She wiped her eyes on the back of her hand and sighed. “Come on, we should go let people know you’re okay,” she stated as she stood and starting toward the door.
“Yeah, probably,” I agreed as I stood. “Out of curiosity, what did you tell my friends?” I asked as I tried to run my hand through my hair. But all I did was catch my thumb on my right horn. Sigh, these things were going to take some getting used to.
“That—is a very long story,” Nualla answered with a grimace.
Travis stopped dead and dropped what he was holding. He just stared at me, completely shocked. “I’m not a ghost, I promise,” I said with an uneasy smile.
He closed the distance between us in two seconds flat and all but tackled me. He hugged me so tightly I was pretty sure that if I had still been human it would have broken some ribs. “You idiot, why did you have to go and try to get yourself killed?”
“Me? You’re the one who went to defuse a bomb!” I countered indignantly.
“Yes, but I had enough sense to run away when I knew I couldn’t win.”
“Hey, I had a damn good reason for risking my life,” I replied, looking over at Nualla.
Travis looked over at her as well. “Yeah, I guess she is a pretty good reason.”
“Best reason in the world,” I replied with a huge grin as I pulled her into my arms. I let my lips brush gently against hers before I closed my eyes and kissed her.
We still had a lot of problems ahead of us and even more unanswered questions. I knew the next few months would probably not be easy. In this world I had become a part of, there didn’t seem to be a whole lot of easy to go around. But for now, I just wanted to lose myself in this perfect moment, at least for a little while.
The Marked Ones Trilogy
• Book TWO •
Patrick may have survived the change but his problems are just beginning…
Read on for an excerpt from The Storm behind Your Eyes, book 2 in the Marked Ones Trilogy or get it now at: http://amzn.to/14DUBmA
Excerpt from The Storm behind Your Eyes
Endangered Urban Species
Saturday, July 28th
PATRICK
“So what are we doing today?” I asked Travis as we walked down the driveway of the Galathea estate. It was the first day since I had found out that he was my older brother that it would just be me and him hanging out. No Nikki, or Shawn, or Connor, or even Nualla. Not that I minded hanging out with them or anything, but it was nice to have a whole day with just us. Just the Centrina boys. No amount of hanging out now would ever make up for the fifteen years we had lost, but it was better than nothing.
“I thought we’d go driving,” Travis said casually as he handed me a coffee cup.
“Anywhere in particular?” I asked before taking a sip of the coffee.
“It’s up to you,” he answered as he tossed the keys at me, and I fumbled to catch them, nearly dropping my coffee in the process.
“You can’t be serious,” I said dubiously as I looked down at the keys in my hand.
“You’ve gotta learn sometime,” he said with a shrug and walked around to the passenger side.
I just looked at his Porsche. I wasn’t a car person, but even I had to admit it was beautiful. “You’re seriously going to let me drive this?”
“Yep,” he answered as he popped open the passenger side door and dropped into the seat.
“You know, you’re not half bad,” Travis said as he took a sip of his coffee.
“Really?”
“Yeah, a few more times out and you’ll be better than half the people who drive here,” Travis added as he put his coffee cup back in the console.
“Travis, half the people who drive here are tourists,” I said, flatly.
He didn’t answer, a crooked smile spreading across his lips. I pulled my right hand off the wheel and punched him in the arm.
“Hey, hey, hands back on the wheel!” he shouted playfully as he batted my hand away.
I returned my hand to the wheel and slid the car to a stop as the light turned red. After the first jerky stop-and-go start down Pacific, things had gotten much easier. Even with all the one-way streets, hills, and bicyclists, driving in the city wasn’t proving to be that hard. I mean sure, my driving wasn’t going to win any good driver awards by any stretch of the imagination, but at least I wasn’t likely to get a traffic ticket today.
Hanging out with Travis was really no different than hanging out with Connor or Shawn. Laughing and poking fun at each other and all the other things guys normally did to each other. But there was a whole undercurrent to this day that neither of us was bringing up. Normally one of your parents taught you how to drive, but we didn’t have any. And so in awesome older brother fashion Travis was teaching me in his sleek black Porsche. But who had taught him? I had Travis, but who had he had?
I got the feeling he hadn’t had anyone, and so I didn’t ask. Because I didn’t want to remind him of the fifteen years. Those fifteen years when he had been alone. When he had thought I was dead.
I let my eyes drift to the pedestrians in front of us. People moved through the crosswalk, dark shapes interrupting the brightness of the day. It was too bright; I squinted against the light and the forms of the pedestrians blurred into a flickering dark mass. And then it all seemed to slow to an impossibly slow rate and everything jumped jarringly into sharp focus.
The slickness of a black leather briefcase; forty-seven silver stars dancing across a tight black tank top; the burning ember of a cigarette as the smoke swirled up through the air—all slid by so slowly as if it wasn’t moving at all. And then I saw her—just on the other side of the crowd—bits and glimpses at first. Pale blond hair, bleached white by the sunlight, fluttering in the breeze. Large brilliant blue eyes in a tiny face, looking out at me. Slowly her lips parted, and her eyes filled with fear. The little girl reached out toward me, and I leaned forward even though I had no hope of hearing her.
“Patrick,” someone called, but I ignored them, focusing on the little girl.
“PATRICK, TURN!” Travis shouted.
The scene in front of me sped up and changed in a blink of the eye. The girl was gone, the people were gone, a
nd I realized I was about to drive into oncoming traffic. I jerked the wheel too sharply and went up onto the curb. Before I could even think to hit the breaks, I collided with a payphone.
After Reading
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Future Works by Alicia Kat Vancil
The Other Side of Truth
(title not final)
Marked Ones Trilogy Book Three
Winter 2013
The Avensana Chronicles
Serialized Marked Ones Trilogy prequel series
Coming 2014
The Butterfly Project
(title not final)
a New Adult time travel urban sci-fi
Coming 2014
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Daemons in the Mist was my debut novel, and actually the first novel I have ever completed. As such, there are numerous people to thank, but here are just a few:
Daemons in the Mist (The Marked Ones Trilogy: Book One) Page 33
