Hidden Realms

by Dean Murray

  I turned and gripped Alec’s shirt, my hands shaking and knuckles white. “Alec, I can’t leave Nathan.”

  I didn’t know if it was the tears on my face, the crack in my voice, or the desperation in my eyes, but Alec’s hard glare shifted into something resembling sympathy. His jaw twitched and he looked up at the sky with a shake of his head, like he couldn’t believe what he was about to say.

  “I’ll go back,” he said. “I’ll get him. You stay here.”

  I opened my mouth to argue, but he pinched my lips together with his thumb and index finger, silencing me.

  “No.” He used the gun in his hand to point behind me. “You get to the car and stay there. If anyone other than me or Nathan comes through this door, you shoot them, and go. If we’re not back in ten minutes, you go.”

  He didn’t give me another chance to protest. Nor did he give me fair warning before he pressed his lips against mine. Hard and soft, forceful and delicate all at once, he lingered for only a second.

  And then he was gone.

  I was left with the bright sun, chilly air, and a shut door.

  A shut locked door. I kicked the side of the shed. “Damn it, Alec!”

  Locking the door behind him was his way of protecting me, but I was too frustrated to appreciate the gesture. I hated being left there with no way of knowing if they were okay or not. I hated feeling helpless.

  I looked around for something I could use to help—or pry the door open with.

  The only thing I spotted worthwhile was the Mustang sticking out from behind a cluster of trees fifty yards away. It wasn’t much, but I thought I could pull it closer to the shed so that when they did emerge—and they would—they wouldn’t have far to run. There was a chance they would bring some unwelcome company through that door with them. Every second would count.

  With a newfound determination, I trotted toward the Mustang, only to slow to a cautious crawl when I spied a head-shaped shadow in the driver’s seat. Eyes flicked to the rear view mirror and the door swung open. I set my finger on the trigger and raised the gun, ready for anything.

  Except anything had not been Callie. I dropped the gun to my side as my best friend hurled herself at me with outstretched arms.

  “You are here,” she squealed. “I was starting to think Alec had lied to me.”

  I held her at arm length. “Don’t tell me you’re one, too.”

  “One what?” Her eyes widened in alarm as she took in the sight of the gun. One look at her irises confirmed that she wasn’t a hybrid.

  “Never mind.”

  “What are you doing with a gun? Where’s Alec?” she asked, looking over my shoulder.

  “He went back for Nathan.” And please, God, let both of them return unharmed. I stared at the door, wishing for the ability to materialize them both running safely through it.

  “Who’s Nathan?”

  I didn’t know where to start with that explanation. “Somebody important,” I summarized.

  Callie studied me with a critical eye. She knew there was a story there; she also must have sensed that now was not the time to grill me for it. She let it go, for now.

  I motioned toward the Mustang. “We need to move that a little closer to the shed. They could be coming out any minute and we need to be there, ready.”

  “Ready for what? What’s going on?”

  I gave Callie a look that let her know there wasn’t enough time to attempt an answer at the moment, and jumped in the passenger seat. I wondered how much Alec had told her, and why he had her here. Not that I wasn’t thrilled to see her, but I didn’t want her in danger either. This wasn’t like one of our usual adventures that could get us grounded. This kind of adventure could get us killed.

  “What are you doing here?” I asked her.

  Callie grinned at me. “Alec said I was the getaway driver. Except I don’t know what from. You guys aren’t like, stealing this guy’s tractor or something, are you?”

  Oh, how I wished it were something as simple as grand theft auto. “You didn’t think to ask him?”

  “He said it was to help you. That was all I needed to hear.” Callie shifted the Mustang into reverse and pulled off a sleek turn. “I love this car,” she said as she gassed it forward.

  The car shook as it bounced over the uneven terrain, rattling my teeth and jarring my bones. The closer we got, the more we shook, despite the more level land. Callie glanced at me as it dawned on both of us that it wasn’t the car that was vibrating. It was the ground itself.

  “Is it an earthquake?” Callie shrieked as she brought the car to a stop in front of the shed.

  “I don’t think so.” Something told me it was worse. I jumped out of the car just as another stronger tremor shook under my feet. The earth split beneath me and I hopped to the side as dirt and grass caved in, falling to the depths below.

  Callie climbed out of the car, looked over the roof at me. “We should get out of here. That barn over there looks about to crumble.”

  The shed was situated atop the hill behind the house and overlooked the farm below. From there, I could see that both the house and the barn were shaking violently. The ground cracked beneath them and, in some spots, had started caving in. Deep wide fissures snaked along the length of the property all the way to the main road.

  Something was going on in the complex below us. Something big. Something bad.

  And Nathan and Alec were still in there.

  I ran to the shed door, determined to rip it from the hinges if I had to.

  The ground lurched beneath me, knocking boards off the side of the shed, and sent me sprawling back to avoid being hit by debris. I knelt on the ground, unable to stand as the rumbling intensified.

  “Kris, we need to get out of here!” Callie shouted over the sounds of cracking earth and crumbling manmade structures.

  I paid her no attention. My eyes were fixed in horror on the shed as it collapsed into a pile of splintered wood in front of me. The ground sunk in underneath, and threatened to swallow it whole. There was only one thing on my mind—well, two really—as I climbed atop the rubble on my hands and knees, and started tossing debris to the side, frantically searching for the opening.

  I had to find it. It was their way out. I tuned out the world around me. I no longer heard the rumbling or felt the shaking. All I knew was terror. My only fear was of losing Nathan and Alec beneath this pile of rubble. My only thoughts were of getting them out. My world had stopped turning, and would not start again until I found them.

  Callie grabbed my arm. I shook her off.

  “Kris, the ground is caving in!” she shouted.

  “I have to get them out. Help me!”

  “Kris!”

  “I’m not leaving them, Callie!”

  “No, Kris, look!” Callie grabbed my shoulders and twisted me around.

  I followed her pointed finger to what she wanted me to see. A quarter mile away, in the rolling brown field behind us, two shadowed forms were half running, half limping their way in our direction. My knees nearly buckled under me in relief.

  They were out. They were alive.

  “Get the car, Callie!” I jumped from the shed, and helped her down. Holding on to each other for balance, we hurried to the car.

  I had to admit, Callie was a good getaway driver. As she navigated the Mustang over terrain I would have never expected it to manage, I leaned forward in my seat and kept my eyes on the guys as we approached them. They didn’t seem to be making much progress, which concerned me. From the looks of it, one or both of them were injured.

  Callie skidded to a stop and I jumped out of the car to help them clamber into the back. They were both covered in blood. I didn’t have time to search for injuries before Alec ordered that we had to go now. And when he said now, he meant now.

  “What did I say about ten minutes, Kris?” he scolded from the back seat.

  I ignored that question by asking one of my own. “What’s happening?” I had to put my hands
on the dashboard to steady myself as Callie tore out of there.

  “We blew up the compound,” Alec answered.

  With the way Callie was driving, I couldn’t catch my balance enough to turn around to see his face. I hoped he was joking. Something told me he wasn’t. “While you were still in there?”

  “That wasn’t exactly the plan,” he admitted. “We got held up on the way out.”

  Callie reached the main road and sped away from the collapsing farm. After a few moments on level, non-vibrating ground, she slowed the car to a normal speed.

  That was when I heard the grunting from the back seat.

  Nathan. And he was hurt.

  I looked over my shoulder as Alec held up a knife, dripping with blood, to inspect it.

  “It’s not diamond coated,” he said matter-of-factly.

  Nathan had been stabbed? I twisted in my seat to see him better. He was slumped across the back seat, his head resting against the side behind Callie. Blood soaked the front of his shirt.

  “What about the other one?” Alec asked Nathan like there was no emergency at all.

  “Same knife,” Nathan groaned.

  Other one? “How many times have you been stabbed?” I exclaimed.

  Three sets of eyes turned to me. I seemed to be the only one hysterical.

  “Twice.” Nathan grimaced as Alec poked around his thigh.

  “Sorry,” Alec said absentmindedly. “I’m trying to dig the bullet out.”

  Bullet? “You were shot!”

  “Do you know if it was coated?” Alec asked. The realization of what that would mean was audible in his voice.

  “I think I would know by now if it were.”

  “He’s losing a lot of blood,” Callie observed in the rear view mirror. She wrinkled her nose, but didn’t seem particularly concerned. She didn’t know Nathan. He was no one special to her.

  Not like he was to me. “He needs a hospital,” I said. Why didn’t anyone else see that? I turned to Alec expectantly. “Where’s the closest hospital?”

  His eyes were grim when they met mine.

  “Alec, he needs a hospital,” I repeated, trying to be forceful, but my voice quavered.

  “We can’t, Kris.” This time, it was Nathan being ridiculous.

  “What?” I screeched, well beyond hysterical now.

  “We couldn’t explain this to the humans,” Alec explained. “And walking into a hospital looking like this after a top secret underground compound got blown up is just plain stupid.”

  I gaped at him. I didn’t give a damn what anyone thought or how suspicious anything looked. All that mattered was Nathan surviving.

  “Kris, calm down,” Nathan said.

  He was shot and stabbed—twice—and he was telling me to calm down? “Nathan, you—”

  “I’ll heal as long as I don’t bleed to death.”

  I didn’t understand how he could say those words with such composure. I was freaking out. I surveyed the amount of blood oozing from the hole in his leg. His shirt was covered in so much blood I couldn’t tell anymore where it was coming from. I was sure by now that the blood on Alec was all Nathan’s.

  “Yeah, well, it looks to me like you’re close to bleeding to death.” I couldn’t believe we were having this discussion.

  Nathan didn’t argue with me again. He groaned as Alec’s retrieval intensified.

  “Almost got it,” Alec said, gritting his teeth. With a sigh, he withdrew his hand from inside Nathan’s thigh, with a shiny bullet between his thumb and index finger. He studied it. “Not coated.”

  To the two in the back seat, that was good news. It meant Nathan would not die a slow and agonizing diamond-induced death. To me, it didn’t matter because he could still die, if he bled to death before his body could heal. With the way the blood poured from the hole in his thigh, it seemed a likely possibility.

  My hard-nosed and resilient, but apparently not bullet-proof, hero was in trouble.

  Shoving Alec to the side, I climbed into the back seat and wedged myself between the two. Nathan’s legs were spread out across most of the seat, and I hoisted them across my lap.

  I turned to Alec. “Give me your shirt.”

  He slipped it over his head, surprisingly without a flirty proposition, and I wrapped it around Nathan’s thigh wound. Ignoring the language coming out of Nathan’s mouth, I surveyed the blood-drenched shirt he was wearing.

  The source of the bleeding was not obvious until I lifted his shirt to reveal a deep six inch gash along his right lower rib cage. A steady stream of dark red blood poured from it. I clamped my hands down on the gash in an attempt to slow the blood loss. It merely oozed between my fingers and over my hands, with no signs of stopping.

  “We have to do something,” I pleaded with Alec.

  “I have a bag of clothes on the floor back there Kris,” Callie offered from the front seat. “Use whatever you need.”

  That wasn’t what I had meant, but I took her up on her offer and pressed a yellow flower cami against the gash. It did a better job than my hands, but was still saturated in seconds.

  Turning to Alec again, I said, “He needs a hospital.”

  “Kris.” Nathan’s voice spun me around to him. His eyes were drooping, but held mine as he shook his head no.

  “Even if...” I couldn’t say the words. I wouldn’t say them.

  I looked back and forth between Nathan and Alec. The answer was in both of their eyes.

  Yes. Even if that meant he died.

  CHAPTER 25

  Alec had a place twenty minutes away. While he climbed into the front seat to direct Callie, I was left to tend to Nathan alone. I found the other stab wound in the upper left chest, scarily close to his heart, and wrapped a shirt around his shoulder to cover it. We stopped at a pharmacy along the way and Callie ran inside for first aid supplies. Minutes later, Alec led us into his neighborhood.

  It was in the not-so-nice part of town. Narrow houses lined the street side by side, with no yards, bars on the windows, and broken steps leading to the front doors. The sun had set along the way and, as the darkness crept in, the creatures of the night assembled on the sidewalks in clusters, waiting for trouble, or a car to hijack. Oddly, no one looked twice at the flashy Mustang that passed.

  I got the impression Alec had asserted his authority in the neighborhood a long time ago, and no one was going to mess with us. Nor did anyone bat an eye at the three of us hauling a severely injured Nathan into the house.

  Surprisingly, considering the filthy outside appearance, the inside of Alec’s place was immaculate, with crisp sterling silver kitchen appliances, a big screen TV, and a large plush living room set. It was surprisingly grown up and modern for a teenager. I was starting to think there was a lot about Alec I didn’t know.

  We wrestled Nathan through the kitchen and living room and into Alec’s bed at the back of the house. The three of us worked quickly at getting him out of his blood-soaked clothes, down to his boxers. Callie and I took to wrapping the bandages around his chest and abdomen and covered the two gashes under nearly an inch of dressing. Alec wrapped the gunshot wound in his thigh. When we finished, we laid him back in the bed and pulled the satin sheets up.

  Aside from rushing him to the nearest hospital, which was apparently out of the question, there was nothing more to do.

  “He needs rest to heal,” Alec murmured as he moved to the side.

  I jerked my hand away when Alec reached for it. “I’m not leaving him.” I lowered to the edge of the bed beside Nathan and defiantly tipped my chin up at Alec and Callie. If he died, I would never forgive either of them.

  “Kris...” Callie started. I shut her down with a hard glare. She shifted uneasily to Alec’s side.

  I turned my back on them to look down at Nathan. His eyes were closed, his face pale and streaked with blood. I gathered a bandage from the nightstand, and wet it with my tongue. As I wiped his face, my hand quivered like it had a mind of its own.

&nb
sp; Someone placed a hand on my shoulder. I shrugged it off. “Leave us alone.”

  There was a brief pause before Alec and Callie both shuffled out of the room. The door clicked softly behind them.

  Alone with Nathan, the tears I had been holding back finally found their escape. My body shook from the flood of emotion and I lowered my head, unable to look at him any longer.

  I opened my hands in my lap and, seeing Nathan’s blood all over them, I scrubbed until they were no longer red from his blood, but from my desperate attempt to get it off of me. My vision blurred from the tears, but from the look of his ashen face when I looked up again, it was clear he was knocking on death’s door.

  And it was all for me. He had stayed to save me.

  “Why did you do that?” I whispered as I wiped the tears on my cheeks with both hands.

  He didn’t respond. I pressed my hand to his chest and felt its subtle rise and fall. His breaths were shallow and slow, his heart beat fast and weak. His eyes fluttered open, barely, and struggled to focus on me.

  “Tell me what I can do. Tell me how to help you,” I pleaded.

  His eyes rolled shut, and I hung my head as the overwhelming sense of helplessness crumbled me. He was going to die. Right here, right now, Nathan was going to die and there was nothing I could do to help him.

  Fingers brushed along the back of my neck. I snapped my head up to see Nathan’s eyes slit open and his arm outstretched. His hand cupped the back of my head and tugged, gently guiding me toward him.

  Understanding his intention, I dropped my head to his good shoulder. Doing my best to not hurt him, I stretched my legs out beside his and curled my body around him.

  “Just stay with me.” His voice was barely a whisper.

  “I will,” I murmured, my mouth pressed against the smooth skin where his shoulder met his neck. My tears slid down his chest, and were soaked up by the bandages.

  His cheek pressed against my forehead. The way his stubble tickled and sparked my senses only made me more aware of his battered body against mine. I watched the barely visible rise and fall of his chest and vowed to stay where I was all night, watching. As long as his chest was moving, he was alive.