Celtic Dragons

by Dee Bridgnorth

  Then she slipped out of the room to make her final call to Ophelia in peace. She needed the woman’s help both in tapping into and controlling Julian’s gift. If this was going to be part of him for the rest of his life, he had to be able to reach for the psychic power when he needed to and to keep it at a distance when he couldn’t afford to connect with someone’s emotions or thoughts. Had he been able to stave off the vision triggered after he was stabbed, he might have been able to get help a lot sooner and lost less blood. And, if he knew how, he might be able to reach out and search for Xander’s psyche whenever he wanted to, so that they could do more to find him.

  Both were valuable skills to have, and Ophelia was the best person to teach him. Siobhan could only hope that the woman was willing to make the trip to the hospital, considering it was time-sensitive, and Julian wasn’t going anywhere for the next day or so.

  She called Ophelia and explained the situation to the woman while she paced up and down the hospital hallways, trying to keep her voice low to avoid raising the nurses’ suspicions. As she talked though, she could tell that the woman was hesitant to get involved. Ophelia had spent many years honing her gift, and she was good at what she did, but she also kept herself largely away from society to avoid inviting problems she didn’t want to have to deal with. Ophelia had never used her gift for fighting or preventing crime, preferring instead to accept that terrible things happened in the world every day in every place, and while she might know about them in advance sometimes, she could not be responsible for changing all of them. She preferred to use her gift to help individual people who came to her, on a case-by-case basis, and Siobhan understand respected the woman’s choice even though it wasn’t the one she would have made.

  The problem was, Ophelia was one of two psychics that she knew, and she didn’t trust the other one as far as she could throw him. She needed Ophelia’s help, even though it meant that Ophelia was going to have to come to them and get involved in things she didn’t want to.

  “I know that it’s asking a lot,” Siobhan said, after several minutes of discussion. “And I know why you live life the way you do. But this is someone I care about who needs to be taught how to use this curse or gift that he’s been given, and you’re the best. And you’re the only one I know who I trust to do this. Please, Ophelia. What will it take for you to agree? I can pay you, if that helps.”

  Ophelia was offended. “I’m not interested in your money, girl! And I want to help you. I already have helped you with your young man. But what you’re involved with now—I don’t like it. I don’t want it in my life. I try to keep the darkness away, and it’s not easy in this world, let me tell you.”

  “Make an exception,” Siobhan urged. “Just this once. I won’t ask you again.”

  Without warning, the nurses’ station near Siobhan began to give off a loud beeping noise that startled her. But she thought nothing of it at first, having spent plenty of time in hospitals—enough to know that it just meant a patient needed help immediately in one of the rooms. She started to walk away, but then she noticed that the nurses at the station seemed shocked, and suddenly they were jumping to their feet as though there was something seriously wrong. Siobhan frowned, hoping that nobody was in serious trouble, and then she froze.

  The first nurse ran straight toward a room, and a second one followed her. Two more were hurrying after them, pushing a shock paddles cart with white, grim looks on their faces. Another nurse stood at the door of the room, looking in, and from all around the third floor of the hospital nurses and technicians stopped to see what was happening.

  Siobhan’s heart was in her chest, the phone lowered from her ear as she stared at Julian’s room, where everyone had gathered, the loud beeping ringing in her ears as she tried to understand how she could have left him with his parents, perfectly fine, and now fifteen minutes later, he was coding in his room and the doorway was so blocked that she would have no hope of pushing her way through. He might be dying in that room at this very moment, and she was watching from down the hallway, unable to reach him. Unable to hold his hand. Unable to tell him how much she cared about him.

  “Ophelia, I have to go. Julian’s coding.”

  She hung up her phone and started walking toward Julian’s door, her heart pounding. They weren’t going to let her in—she knew that. But she couldn’t not try. She had to at least do that much. She had to know and hear and see what was happening and somehow be part of it because that was her man in there. Her infuriating, buttoned-up, brave, loyal, funny, sweet man.

  “What’s happening?” she demanded, approaching one of the nurses by the door. “I want to go in there. That’s my boyfriend.”

  The nurse looked up at her with sympathy. “Oh, honey. Not right now. Let them help him first. You don’t want to see it, I promise, and there’s too many people in there as it is.”

  “See what? What’s wrong with him?”

  The nurse just patted her arm sadly, but the one to her right told her, “He’s coding, sweetheart. They’re trying to get him back. They’re going to try everything they can.”

  The words didn’t even make sense to Siobhan as she stood there, able to see just far enough inside the room to see the nurses and the doctor bent over Julian’s bed. There was nothing she could do. No way to help him this time. She had no medical expertise, no ability to bring back someone who was slipping away, no anything at all that could save Julian in this moment. She was useless, helpless, and terrified.

  She wasn’t the only one, either. To the left of the bed, Alberto and Bellina stood, Alberto’s arms around his hysterically sobbing wife. The only sound that could be heard over the chaos of the alarm system and the nurses’ efforts to stabilize Julian were Bellina’s screams.

  “Dios mio! Dios mio! Mia figlio!”

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Julian

  Siobhan was ahead of him, smiling at him over her shoulder. God, she was beautiful, with her long, blonde hair hanging down her back in beachy waves and her fantastic ass swaying back and forth beneath her beach coverup as she walked down the path they were both on. She held her hand back to him, laughing as she urged him to catch up to her.

  “Come on,” she called, turning all the way around and walking backward as she held both hands out to him. “We’re going on an adventure.”

  He wanted to go more than anything. He wanted to put his hands into hers and let her take him anywhere she wanted. They could jump out of a plane or off a cliff or swim with sharks or go explore vampiric mysteries in Romania for all he cared. He wanted to be with her, doing anything, anywhere, anytime.

  He loved her so much.

  “Come on,” she called again, her eyes soft as she laughed at him for being slow. “Catch up!”

  Julian tried to hurry, but his feet wouldn’t go any faster, and he couldn’t close the distance between them. “Slow down,” he told her. The brief exchanged encompassed the dichotomy of their relationship—her wanting him to catch up and him wanting her to slow down. Would they ever be able to find that balance together where they were moving at the same pace?

  “I’m going to go have fun without you,” Siobhan teased, turning around again and shaking her backside at him. “Don’t you want this?”

  He did. He really, really did.

  Summoning his strength, he tried to push past the invisible barrier between them and reach her, and for a moment, he thought he had done it. The gap between them began to close, and he was almost within reach of her as she stood there with her hands held out for him.

  But then the scene faded, the boardwalk that led to the sandy beach and blue sky disappearing just as he noticed for the first time that it was there. And in place of the idyllic scene, there was a house. A neighborhood appeared around it, drifting into place as though the houses where shimmering mirages rather than solid brick and mortar. A sidewalk rolled out, covering the sandy path that had been under his feet, and as Julian looked up at Siobhan, she was walking along
the sidewalk, her beach coverup replaced by a pair of camouflage shorts, a black tank top, and black boots. Her hair was up in a messy bun, pulled off her neck and away from her face, and she looked ready for business.

  As he watched, no longer able to follow her, she moved around to the side of the house, slinking along the side and peering into the window. She pulled a gun out of the back of her shorts waistband, clicking the safety off with her thumb and gripping it firmly in one hand. He wanted to call out to her, but she disappeared behind the house, casing the backside.

  The fear he felt grew up from deep within him, and he knew, without having any idea what lay within that house, that it was a threat to Siobhan’s life and he couldn’t protect her. He couldn’t move toward her. He couldn’t find her. He couldn’t look anywhere but the house, which stood between him and the woman that he knew he loved, and being trapped in one spot had never before been so frustrating.

  Determined to find her before it was too late, Julian threw himself mentally at the barrier that was keeping him from her, but all that happened was that the scene faded from his mind altogether. He panicked, further away from Siobhan than ever. Trapped within his own mind, he fought to find her, not knowing where he was going or how he was supposed to reach out to her when he had no hands, no arms to draw her close.

  But he wouldn’t let his eyes open to reenter the world, and he pushed, pushed, pushed until he fell out of the darkness, the inside of the same house he had just been staring at from the outside appearing around him. The scene flashed before him for just a moment, vibrating through his consciousness, but it cut him to his core, breaking his heart and bewildering his mind all at the same time. He shouted in the midst of his vision, reaching out toward Siobhan’s beaten, bruised, bloody body as it lay lifeless on the dingy carpet within the house. Just as before, he couldn’t reach her, couldn’t hold her, couldn’t save her, couldn’t hear her. And then she was fading away from him, Xander’s face looming in his mind instead, that giggle echoing in his ears.

  “I’ve been a bad, bad, bad boy again …”

  Julian’s eyes jolted awake, his heart lurching in his chest and his body going rigid as he began to panic, thrashing against the people who were hovering over him. “Siobhan! Siobhan! Siobhan!” He grabbed one of the nurses by the collar of her scrubs and pleaded with her, not sure what was vision and what was real. “Where is she? Help her!”

  “Julian!”

  It was her voice, but he couldn’t see her. “Siobhan?”

  “I’m right here,” she said, pushing through the crowd, despite the protests of the medical professionals all around. “Back off,” she ordered them. “He’s not going to calm down until he sees me.”

  Julian stared into her eyes as she cupped his face in her hands and managed a shaky smile. His hand lifted to cover one of hers, and he drew in a shuddering breath, his body feeling as though it had been to hell and back. “You’re all right.”

  “You’re all right,” she said back. “You coded, Julian. Were you seeing…?” she didn’t finish the sentence, not wanting to expose him with so many people in the room.

  He nodded, swallowing thickly. “Yeah. You were dead.”

  “Shhh,” she urged, kissing him. “I’m not. I’m fine. I won’t be dead. I need you to let them check your vitals right now, okay?”

  Again, he nodded, but he couldn’t let go of her hand yet, the impact of his vision still capturing him in a state of frozen panic. “Don’t leave.”

  “I won’t,” she promised him. “I …love you. It’s going to be okay.”

  Her words eased the terror he felt, and he managed a smile, drawing her down for one more kiss that lingered softly, despite their audience, all of whom had decided to back off for the moment, something beyond their comprehension clearly happening as he emerged from a coding state with no harm done to him.

  “I love you too,” he whispered against her lips. “I always will.”

  “I know.”

  “Don’t go to the house, Siobhan. Please. Promise me. Don’t go.”

  She eased back from him, stroking his cheek. “Shhhh. We’re both going to be fine.”

  “It’s not worth it.”

  “It’ll be fine,” she said again, standing back from him without letting go of his hand. At her signal, the nurses surrounded him again, taking his vitals as he stared up at the ceiling, not knowing and not caring what they were doing. All he could see or feel or think about was that house where Siobhan would die if he didn’t somehow stop it from happening.

  He knew her, and she wouldn’t just not go because it was dangerous. She would be so sure that she could overcome whatever challenge waited for her there, especially if it was Xander. But the things he saw in his mind …he couldn’t get past them. If she went, and he wasn’t there to change what he had seen, it wasn’t just her life that was over.

  It was his too.

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Siobhan

  It took her an hour to calm down Bellina Giordano after Julian returned from his semi-lifeless state. The woman was upset about everything—her son’s episode, the hospital that he was in, how long it would take for him to be released. But she was especially upset that the moment that he had woken up, he had called for Siobhan and not for Bellina.

  Siobhan was exhausted by the end of the conversation, which she was still having even as she walked Bellina and Albert to their car in the hospital parking garage. She had been trying to be a least marginally kind and supportive, under the circumstances, but she was at her wit’s end with the woman and Alberto wasn’t helping. If she and Julian were going to have any future together—and they were—then she had to make sure that Bellina understood early on that Siobhan had her limits.

  “Listen,” Siobhan said, interrupting Bellina’s latest stream of complaints and concerns, interspersed with long sections of Italian that, despite Siobhan’s relative familiarity with the language, she couldn’t completely follow. “You have to stop this. I understand that you love your son, and I called you because I think it’s important that you understand what’s going on with him and have a chance to express that love that you feel for him. But honest to God, woman, you’re off the charts here, okay? Julian was upset when he found out I called you, and now I understand why. I know you mean well and that you’re a good woman, but you need to stop. Take a breath. Back off. Give him a little breathing room. He will love you more for it. Right now, I wouldn’t blame him if he coded just to not have to listen to you.”

  Bellina stood in shock by the car door, but Alberto, with a slight smile, said nothing, just opening the door for his wife and ushering her inside. Seemingly speechless, Bellina sat down on the passenger seat and lifted her legs in while Siobhan waved at her.

  “Okay, thanks for coming. I’ll make sure you get regular updates.”

  Alberto closed the door before Bellina could say anything further, then he chuckled and hugged Siobhan. “Goodbye, little spitfire. Thank you for taking care of my son.”

  Siobhan saluted him. “Aye aye, sir.”

  “How did you know I was in the army?”

  “I’ve never seen such good posture on anyone who wasn’t.”

  Again, Alberto chuckled. “A good investigator you must be. I look forward to seeing you again.”

  Then he was also in the car, and they drove away, leaving Siobhan free to walk back inside and into Julian’s room, where there was a nurse trying to figure out why he showed no lingering effects from his coding episode. Siobhan sat down in her chair, staying quiet until the woman left, shaking her head in confusion, and then she and Julian looked at each other.

  She smiled and reached out, taking his hand. “Your mother is a terror.”

  “Yes.”

  “I might have set her straight a bit.”

  Julian chuckled, and it was a sound much like Alberto’s laugh. “That’s fine. She’s a good woman, but she doesn’t handle stress well. She’s not always that bad, actually. But crisi
s brings out her panicked side and somehow makes her more Italian.”

  “Was she really born in this hospital?”

  “Oh yeah.”

  Siobhan laughed, pressing his fingers. “Okay, then.” They looked at each other for another moment, and the room seemed to grow darker, their reality sinking in around them again. “So, you saw me die, then?”

  He nodded, swallowing hard as he stared at her. “Yes. Or, rather, I saw you dead. I didn’t see what happened to you. But Xander was there, and you were beaten. Bruised. Bloody.” He looked away, his voice cracking. “It was the single worst thing I’ve ever experienced. So much worse than the moments that I thought I was going to die.”

  “I’m still here,” she told him gently, moving from her chair to sit on the edge of his bed so that they could be closer. “Do you think that was what made them think you were coding? The shock you felt?”

  “No,” Julian said, looking back at her. “My original vision was something else entirely. It was a partial dream. One minute I was talking to my mother, but I had closed my eyes because I was getting sleepy. Then I was following you toward a beach, and you looked so beautiful. You were calling to me, but I couldn’t catch up to you. And the scene transformed. You were in a neighborhood; there was a gun in your hand; and you were casing this house. I couldn’t get to you, still, and then you disappeared around the back of the house, and I had this feeling that you were in terrible trouble. It was unshakeable. I knew that you were suffering. The scene started to fade, and I just panicked. I refused to come back to consciousness. I was reaching toward you. Searching for you. I don’t even know how I did it, but I was clawing my way away from consciousness and toward you, and I think that must have been what did it. I pushed my way, mentally, into that house, where I saw you. And then I might as well have died too.”

  Siobhan laced her fingers through his, touched by how much he really did love her. She knew it, the way he had known she was in trouble. The connection between them was undeniable, and she needed to tell him everything. She would tell him everything.