The young wizard snorted. “Naw, he’s not the bragging type. He tries to be discreet. But everyone knows. It’s not hard to notice that one of the famous dragon shifters is leaving the bar with a different girl every night.”
Vicki felt suddenly, inexplicably sick to her stomach. She just wanted to get the wizard out of the store and be alone. “Here,” she said, going to the section of her store with premade bouquets and grabbing a Farmhouse bouquet. She’d been planning to use this to fill one of the orders she’d received this morning, but she would just have to make one more bouquet. She didn’t care, as long as she got this guy out of here. “You can take these to your grandma. I know it’s a premade arrangement but it’s all I can offer. Take it or leave it.”
The wizard seemed surprised, then happy. “Thank you,” he said. “This…this is fine. It doesn’t have to be a custom arrangement. How much do I owe you?”
“It’s on the house,” Vicki said. “Please, just go. I have a lot of work to do.”
The wizard hesitated, and Vicki waved him away. She desperately wanted him to leave before she lost it. She should not care what Mitch had done with other women, but somehow it mattered a great deal to her.
Maybe I’m not as much of a free spirit as I thought.
She breathed a sigh of relief when she’d finally managed to shoo the wizard out the front door. She locked the door behind him and pulled all the window shades down, then sank to the floor. She didn’t have time to cry, and it was ridiculous that she wanted to. Mitch was supposed to be a one-night stand, but his unexpected profession of love, followed by the wizard’s casual announcement that Mitch was playing the field, had left Vicki with a confusing cocktail of emotions.
She allowed herself a few minutes for a pity party, but then stood up and headed to the back room. She had a lot of bouquets to make, and if the virus rumors were to be believed, she needed to make those bouquets quickly or the people they were intended for would die before they saw them.
Vicki turned on the television in the backroom, which flickered like crazy. Thanks to the humid atmosphere back here, electronics in this room never seemed to work normally. Still, the TV worked well enough for Vicki to at least hear the news reports, even if the video footage being played was hopelessly fuzzy.
“The Torch Lake High Council has now confirmed that there is a deadly virus rampant in the city. All citizens are advised to remain at home and avoid contact with the general public as much as possible. If you are sick, please stay home and rest. The hospitals are overcrowded and there is nothing the doctors there can do anyway.”
The TV picture suddenly came in, and Vicki stopped working on her flower arrangement to watch as the camera panned from left to right in front of one of the Torch Lake Hospitals. It looked like a war zone. Hundreds of people were hobbling in, held up on the shoulders of friends or relatives. Almost no one wore protective masks, and Vicki wished she could scream at them through the TV. Couldn’t they at least “attempt” to not catch the virus?
No one seemed to be thinking about the contagiousness, though. They were all fighting for a spot in the hospital, even though it seemed that there was nothing that even the doctors could do.
The screen went fuzzy again, but the newscaster’s voice continued to speak. “Once again, all citizens are advised to stay home if at all possible to avoid catching or spreading the disease. The Torch Lake High Council is planning to send out search teams within the next few hours to attempt to track down a cure. In a few moments, we’ll have an interview with one of the military commanders via telephone. He will be updating us on the attempts to find the Dark Warriors who are believed to have a cure for this virus.”
Vicki reached for the remote and turned off the television. She’d heard enough. The newscaster was just reiterating everything Mitch had already told her. Vicki was starting to wonder if Mitch was right, and she was better off not going to the hospital. She had planned to head over around five to deliver all the flowers, but it looked like the hospital was a madhouse and a good place to catch the virus.
Vicki glanced at her watch. It was ten-thirty in the morning. She had hours of work ahead of her, and she decided to just go ahead with making the bouquets. It would keep her mind busy, and she could decide at five whether she actually wanted to deliver them or not. Besides, she was just as safe here, in her closed, locked up shop as she would be at home. Might as well make the most of it.
Vicki threw herself into the flower arrangements, hoping the time would fly by. But no matter how much she tried to focus on her work, she couldn’t stop thinking about Mitch. To make matters worse, she had a headache that kept getting worse. By one p.m. her vision was blurring and she felt hot. She had started to worry that her symptoms were more than just exhaustion. What did this virus feel like when it came on?
She turned the TV back on, hoping the news would have some guidance. But by now, all that was being reported was riots in front of the hospital. Despite the pleas from doctors and government officials that everyone stay home, sick citizens were still storming the hospitals, convinced that somehow something could be done.
Vicki went to the front of the store and found her cell phone, which she’d left on the front counter. In a fog of delirium, she picked it up to call Mitch. She figured that if anyone she knew could tell her what the symptoms of the virus were, it would be him. But she realized as she looked down at her phone that she didn’t actually have his number. Why would she? He was just a one night stand she didn’t care about, right?
Vicki grunted in frustration. She decided to search for his name on the internet and see if there were any public numbers listed for him. The only listing she found was a business email address at the Dragon Utilization Department. She had no idea if it was a current address. She knew he’d been bounced around a lot from department to department at the whim of the High Council. But with a pounding headache and rising fever, she couldn’t think straight enough to try to figure out another way to contact him. So she typed up a quick email and sent it to the email address she’d found.
Hey Mitch. It’s Vicki. Just wondering if you know what the symptoms are for the virus. I don’t feel so good and am wondering if I caught it.
As soon as she hit send on the message, Vicki felt like she’d used up the last of her energy. She sank to the floor behind the front counter of her shop and closed her eyes, forgetting all about finishing up or delivering any more flower arrangements. The cool floor felt so good against her hot cheeks, and dreams felt better than reality.
She slipped off to sleep within seconds, and never even realized that her phone had suddenly started ringing with an incoming call from the Dragon Utilization Department.
Chapter Eight
On the scale of shitty work days, Mitch’s day was somewhere far off the charts. He’d dealt with emergencies before, but never with anything like this. The whole city was in chaos. Heck, the whole shifter-wizard world was in chaos right now. The virus hadn’t spread beyond the west coast of the United States yet, but it was only a matter of time. High Councils everywhere were on high alert, but being alert wasn’t going to do much good. The only thing that was going to help the situation was finding the Dark Warriors.
Unfortunately, no one seemed to have any clue where they were hiding.
All of the plans to send search parties out today had been derailed when half the military had suddenly come down with the virus. It was probably only a matter of time before the other half got sick as well. Half the High Council had stopped responding to their emails now, and Mitch suspected they were sick as well. He sat alone in his office at the Dragon Utilization Department—an office he only actually used on rare occasions—and hit refresh on his computer screen over and over, hoping for some shred of good news.
But no news came. Even his dragon shifter friends had stopped responding to his texts, and Mitch had no way of knowing whether they were sick or just busy trying to help with the efforts to keep down riots at the hospi
tals. The High Council had given him the option to go to the hospitals for riot control earlier today—wearing full protective gear to keep out biological threats, of course. But Mitch had opted to stay here, closer to military headquarters. He’d hoped that a search party would be sent out soon, but that was looking less and less likely.
Mitch hopped up and paced the room, wondering what he should do. He had access to all of the intelligence info on the Dark Warriors, and at this point he was tempted to just leave Torch Lake and head toward the last known location of some of the larger groups of Dark Warriors. What’s the worst that could happen? He might get killed in a solo attempt to capture a cure? So what? He was going to die if he stayed here. It didn’t matter how careful he was. It was only a matter of time before he caught the virus, too.
Mitch didn’t want to overstep his bounds by going on an unauthorized mission. The Torch Lake High Council had been so kind to take him in, and he didn’t want to disrespect them by going on a mission behind their back. But at what point did he take matters into his own hands? At what point did he need to consider the High Council too sick to make decisions? At what point was he going to stop sitting still and start doing something?
A ping from his computer, indicating that he had an email, made him jump. He ran back to his desk, hoping it would be from the High Council or Military Headquarters, indicating that a mission was going to start soon.
But when he saw the email sender, he did a double take.
“Victoria Newson? Vicki?”
The subject line of the email had been left blank. He opened the message and his heart sank when he read it.
“No!” he said, pounding his desk. “No! Not her, too!”
He let out an agonized roar, and resisted the urge to hurl his computer across the room in anger. He’d been feeling the lifemate bond within him all day long, warning him that Vicki was in danger. But he’d figured he felt that way because the whole town was in danger—so of course she was, too. Now, he realized that she’d probably been infected early this morning. All those people in her shop, coming straight from the hospital…
He roared again, and quickly grabbed his car keys and phone. A madness took over him, a seething rage. He could think of only one thing: he was going to save Vicki. He didn’t care what it took. He didn’t care if he had to join the riots at the hospital. He was going to find a way to help Vicki. He understood now why so many were protesting outside of the hospital instead of staying home as they’d been advised. How could anyone be expected to sit quietly by and watch a loved one waste away?
Mitch was not going to sit quietly by.
He reached the flower shop in record time. Everyone was either home hiding in terror, or at the hospital protesting. The streets were deserted. The door to the flower shop was locked, and the shades were pulled down so Mitch couldn’t see inside. Vicki’s car was still here, though, so he was sure she was inside. He pounded on the door and screamed out her name.
“Vicki! Vicki! It’s Mitch. Open up!”
There was no answer after several rounds of knocking, and Mitch feared the worst.
“Forgive me, Vicki,” he said. “I’ll replace the door for you. Just don’t die on me.”
And with that, he slammed against the glass front door with all of his dragon strength. The whole thing shattered with a spectacular clatter. Mitch rushed in, but didn’t see Vicki at first. He started to run toward the back room, but stopped short when out of the corner of his eye he caught sight of her slumped on the floor behind the counter.
“No!” he roared, and rushed over to her, desperately checking for a pulse. When he found one, he was so relieved that his eyes began to tear up. He felt her forehead, which was burning hot even though she was also shaking with chills. He tried to push back the fear rising within him. She had caught the virus; there was no doubt about that. He carried her to the back room, where he had noticed earlier that she had converted the far back corner into a sort of makeshift office. He lowered her gingerly into the plush desk chair and covered her with a throw blanket that looked like it was there more for decoration than for actual use. He picked up her water bottle from her desk and tried to trickle a little water into her mouth, hoping she would reflexively swallow it. All she did was cough, though, and he stopped for fear that he would choke her.
It didn’t matter, anyway. He could try to keep her hydrated and comfortable, but unless he got that cure from the Dark Warriors, she was going to die. For that matter, so was he. If he hadn’t already been exposed to the virus, he definitely had been now. Not that he cared that much if he died, if Vicki wasn’t going to make it. Now that he had found his lifemate and knew what it meant to love someone, he couldn’t bear the thought of being without her.
No, it was clear to Mitch that he had only one choice: he was going to leave Torch Lake and track down the Dark Warriors to get the cure from them, or he was going to die trying. He pulled out his cell phone and checked his email, but there was nothing new there. The whole town was going under to the virus, and he realized in that moment that it was up to him to save them.
He texted his dragon shifter friends, but he didn’t have much hope that they would reply. They were either sick or busy at the moment. Mitch would have to do this alone. And he would have to make the right guess about where the Dark Warriors with the cure were. There were a few possibilities, and all he could do was head to the most likely location and hope for the best.
One thing was clear: he could not dilly-dally. Every second that passed was a second closer to the virus taking its toll on him as well. If he wanted any chance of saving Vicki, and this town, he needed to get to the cure before he was too weak to fight.
With a heavy heart, he leaned over and kissed Vicki’s forehead.
“I know you’re mad at me right now,” he whispered. “But please do just one thing for me and hang in there. Hang in there until I’m back with the cure, and then you can be as mad at me as you want for as long as you want. Just don’t fucking die on me.”
One more kiss, and then he was gone. He ran out of the shop at full speed, the shattered glass crunching under his feet as he did. He tossed his cell phone into the bushes in front of the store, knowing he wouldn’t be able to carry it with him in dragon form. As soon as the phone was out of his hands, he began to shift. He never slowed his run, not even as his feet made the transformation from human feet to dragon feet. His head grew several sizes and became the horned head of a dragon, even as his human skin thickened into an iridescent green hide. A spiked tail grew out behind him, and then, wings sprouted from his giant dragon back.
As soon as his wings had finished unfurling, he began flapping them as hard as he could. He was airborne within seconds, his dragon form rising high into the air above Torch Lake. He looked back at the flower shop one last time, which was quickly becoming a small speck as he flew. It hurt his heart to leave Vicki behind, but this was her only chance. This was his only chance.
This was their only chance.
Chapter Nine
Mitch had been flying for two hours when he felt the first telltale symptoms of the virus. A deep sense of exhaustion settled over him, and his wings began to feel heavier than normal. He tried to keep his eyes wide open and concentrate on flapping his wings in a steady rhythm, but the more time that passed the more difficult it became. By his calculations, he still had at least a half hour of flying to do before he reached the Dark Warriors, and he was beginning to wonder how he was going to make it.
He felt hot. Too hot. As a dragon shifter, he always felt warm, especially when he was in dragon form. But the heat he felt now was higher than normal. It wasn’t easy to tell while in dragon form, but he was pretty sure that if he shifted back to the human version of himself right now, he’d be burning up with a fever.
And still, he pressed on, flying as fast as he could will his body to go. He tried his best to think only about his end goal—getting the cure—and not about the fact that his vision was starti
ng to go blurry. He could not give up. He would not give up. And yet, with each minute that passed, he grew weaker and weaker. Realistically, he knew there was no way he was going to make it all the way to the Dark Warriors and still have strength to put up any real fight against them. But still, he flew on. He had no choice. If he died trying, which was looking more and more likely, at least he had given every last ounce of his strength to saving Vicki. To saving his lifemate. It seemed so unfair that he had found her just before the whole shifter-wizard world fell into sickness and darkness. But no one had ever promised that life would be fair, and it did no good to dwell on his losses now. At least he’d had one wonderful night with his lifemate. Some people never even got that much.
Mitch found that thinking about Vicki buoyed his spirits and made his weariness a little more bearable. And so, he continued to think about her as he flew. He was so preoccupied with thoughts of Vicki and home that he didn’t see the two dark wizards zooming through the air toward him on their broomsticks until they were only about fifty feet away. The only reason he saw them then was that one of them had shouted out an attack spell. The noise snapped Mitch out of his reverie, and, on instinct, he took in a deep breath and breathed it out as a long stream of fire.
The attack that the wizard had thrown at him bounced off his thick dragon hide in the same moment that the fire he had breathed hit the wizard. The wizard screamed in agony and fell from his broomstick to the hard earth below. The other wizard barely managed to escape getting singed, and he didn’t wait around to give Mitch another chance to fry him.
“Dragon!” the wizard cried. “Dragon! Dragon! Incoming dragon!”
Mitch felt a rush of energy as he realized that he must have been slightly closer to the Dark Wizard camp than he’d thought. He wasn’t sure whether that meant they’d been on the move, or if he’d just miscalculated the time and distance due to his delirium. It didn’t matter. All that mattered was that he was about to be facing an entire camp of Dark Warriors by himself, while deathly sick.
Dragon Battling (Torch Lake Shifters Book 10) Page 6
