“Wait here,” Damian told her the second the car was in park outside her hospital.
Was he ever going to get tired of bossing her around?
“Uh, no,” Andi said, getting out ahead of him. “You think they’re just going to let you in?” She stared at him over his car’s roof.
“I have plenty of cash on hand.”
Of course. He assumed that he could just buy anyone. Andi shuddered, almost physically repulsed. What on earth had she ever seen in him? “People at the fancy restaurant may know who you are, but security here doesn’t. And they have a pension and they like their jobs. So, whatever you’ve got in your wallet isn’t going to incline them to break the rules for you.” She stepped out from around the car and started bunning up her hair. “I’m the only one with a badge, so if you want to get in, you’re coming in with me. Or you can waste your time. The choice is yours.” She turned and started walking toward the stairs, and after half a second, she heard him follow her.
She led him down the covered sidewalk to the hospital’s door, where a security guard was waiting at a kiosk right inside, peering anxiously out into the night. She knocked on the door, watched him jump, and then saw him hit the switch to open it inside his kiosk.
“Everything okay, Omar?”
It took him a moment to place her. “Nurse Ngo? Look at you, all fancy!”
“Ha, thanks,” she said, grinning at him. “They put out a robocall. Are we Code Black?”
He leaned forward so she could hear him better. “Getting there, sounds like. Shooting downtown. They haven’t caught whoever did it yet.” He rapped his knuckles against the glass protecting him. “The ICU’s so busy, they stopped answering phone calls. Plus, it’s a full moon, you know?”
Full moons at hospitals were legendary. While she didn’t believe in superstitions, it was hard to not think they were true when every patient who was even remotely psychotic chose the night of the full moon to act up.
“Oh, man. Well…I’d better get to work, then.” She grabbed Damian’s arm. “This is my friend…he’s dropping me off…just coming in to use the bathroom.”
“Sure thing,” Omar said. He hit the button for the next set of doors and waved them through.
Damian waited until they were well down the hall before asking, “Code Black?”
“When the hospital’s too overwhelmed to take any more patients—not enough staff or beds.” She hit the button to summon an elevator. Zach had to be in the intensive care unit, which was her own floor. Hell, she might get assigned to him tonight.
“Then what happens?”
“We start diverting patients elsewhere. We’re not the only hospital in town—just the biggest and best.” An elevator appeared, and they both stepped in. It was hard not to feel trapped in an enclosed space with him. For some reason, it felt like he took up too much room—breathed too much air. Maybe it was the dragon she knew was inside him.
Damian’s expression clouded. “Are you ever in danger here?”
She half-shrugged, waving away his fears. “People have brought guns in here before, yes. But we get amusing ‘violence prevention!’ classes once a year where they try to teach us jujitsu to break chokeholds.”
“You’re kidding,” he said, glowering.
“Not in the least.”
The elevator dinged, the doors opened, and he blocked her exit with an arm. “Okay. Thank you. Go home now.”
“Now? You’re kidding, right?” Andi took a step back and crossed her arms. It was time to set him straight; she’d suffered through too much nonsense already this evening. “I think you misunderstand our current relationship here, Mr. Blackwood. You’re not my employer, not my family, not even a friend. You’re just some brand-new fuck buddy with no say in what I do. And this?” she said, gesturing at the walls around them as the elevator started its ‘stop blocking the door’ alarm, “Is a hospital. Where I am a nurse. There are people here who actually need me, so if you don’t mind—or even if you fucking do—I’m going to work.”
She was darting down to pass under his arm when he swooped her up, pushing her against the back wall of the elevator before she even had time to gasp. And then when she tried to, it was too late. He silenced the sound between his lips as he leaned in—his whole body matching against hers.
Andi grabbed the collar of his coat to hold on as he kissed her, unsure if she was going to pull him in more or push him away. Heat thrilled through her, her whole traitorous body responding to him—as if at his command—and she fought not to let herself moan because his strange physical power over her was unfair. She didn’t need him, she was better than this, she shouldn’t have to put up with—but his hands were in her hair, and he kissed her like he needed her to live and while she didn’t want to get hurt, she wanted to be wanted like that—and she wanted to let go and let herself feel that way too.
The elevator—which had given up on them—returned them to the first floor. As it opened, Damian took a step back and hit the right button again without looking, keeping his eyes on hers. “Just a fuck buddy, eh, princess?” he said with a smirk, his golden eyes full of fire, and it took the strength of every individual atom in her body to not sway as he released her.
“Yes,” she whispered, not entirely in answer to his question but more as a response to what had happened, and as the elevator doors reopened on the right floor, she ran for them.
“Goddammit, Andi,” he said, chasing behind her.
She kept running, trying to stay focused. How come he could make her feel like that? It absolutely wasn’t fair. She quickly redid her hair bun, from where his hands had messed it. “I’m going to work. It will be utter chaos in there—people screaming and dying. This is a hospital, and I’m a nurse. This is what I do,” she told herself more than him. She flipped her badge out to swipe it at the next set of doors and when they opened automatically it sounded like there was an entrance to hell distantly beyond.
“Well, you weren’t wrong about the screaming part,” Damian said and took the lead, running forward.
Damian realized he would have to shove Andi into a broom closet and then tear the handle off the door to get her to stay behind as she ran beside him, swiping them through the next set of doors with her badge. He couldn’t lie, running toward battle with her by his side like some kind of humanitarian Valkyrie was hot as fuck, but he couldn’t take the risk of anything happening to her.
Like we’d let it, his dragon muttered.
Michael? Zach? he reminded his dragon of their failures and felt its anger rise.
She is different!
But we’re the same! Which was why he’d gone one-hundred-percent asshole at the restaurant and had maintained at least eighty-nine percent in the car ride here—until the elevator ride when she’d called him a fuck buddy. Something had changed in her scent when she said the word “fuck,” a hint of arousal that he would have missed had he been human. But he wasn’t. And the dragon within him would not allow such a ludicrous denial of the connection between them. Just a fuck buddy? No fucking way. He’d had to erase the words from her lips with his own.
But she wasn’t wrong about anything else. He—and his dragon—were assholes, and he knew it. Another reason why he knew he was doing the right thing in pushing her away.
They burst through the final set of doors into what he assumed was her ward because she paused and put her hands to her lips and whispered, “Oh my God.”
The screaming was louder, and the nearby furniture was in disarray—computers dashed to the floor—and there was blue streaked against one wall. People—staff and patients and visitors—were huddled inside of rooms with the curtains drawn for what good they would do, and some of those who had strength had barricaded their rooms with the visitor couches.
“Fuck,” Damian hissed, and then whirled on her. “Where’s the safest place here?”
“What?” she responded, blinking quickly.
“The safest place. I’m taking you there,” he said, grabbing her shoulders. “Now!”
Andi snapped out of it, her stance firming. “No!” She glanced around at the chaos and looked at the lone monitor remaining, her eyes tracking something he couldn’t see. “Room three,” she said to herself and started running down the hall.
“Andi,” he growled, chasing after her. She stopped to yank a red cart away from its wall, like the same one that Austin made Grimalkin conjure after Zach’d gotten hurt. He paused in front of it, blocking her path for a moment, as she shoved the cart at him. “Andi—”
“There’s no time!” she shouted, angling the thing around him. “You do your job, and I’ll do mine!”
“Goddammit, Andi,” he cursed, and then he heard it—a sound that wasn’t to human ears, at least—the low, keening subsonic frequency of a lurker, the kind like elephants used to call across the plains. He could only hear it because of the dragon in his blood. It was close, and it was the way Andi’d just run.
Damian hurtled down the hall after her, feeling his dragon course just under his skin.
Free me! it commanded, trying to take control.
No! he told it, shoving it down.
He rounded the corner and saw Andi running full bore with the cart, down to the second from the last room, where a nurse had dared to open the door and was directing her in with both arms like an air traffic controller—completely oblivious to the fact that a lurker was crawling across the ceiling above her as fast as it could.
“COME FIGHT ME!” he shouted at it, and as it paused, his senses heightened, and the world around him slowed. He was either going to get there in time or be scarred for the rest of his life by his failure—worse than losing Michael, worse than watching Zach get hurt. His dragon beat on him from the inside with hot fury and the only reason he didn’t let it out was that he knew there was no time. He raced down the hall with superhuman speed, just as Andi reached the door.
“DON’T TURN AROUND!” he shouted at her, willing her to shove herself inside the room, as he leapt onto a sink counter and threw himself up to where the beast hung, hitting it as hard as he could with his shoulder as a distraction. He thumped into its solid flesh. It was four times the size of the one from this morning—likely because it’d already eaten—and it whirled to face him as he landed, just as Andi let out a shriek of surprise, jerking the door closed behind her.
Relief swept through him. She was inside the room now; he could see her behind the lurker, and the other staff was harvesting the gear from the cart she’d brought, but her hands were on the glass door, and her dark eyes were on him.
The lurker dropped to the ground in front of him, spinning neatly in midair to land on all four feet, sweeping out with its prehensile tail and tongue like some kind of blue demented sea star.
He shrugged out of his coat and tossed it aside, circling the beast, keeping its attention on him. “You know you’re going to lose, right?”
The thing howled subsonically and tensed, preparing to attack.
Damian let his dragon surge just beneath the surface and felt it match him, hungry for battle. He shrugged as he cracked his neck. “All right, then. It’s your funeral.”
The lurker charged, and so did he.
Andi stood staring out at Damian facing off with the lurker like they were in some weird sci-fi Western mash-up, her fists curled helplessly against the glass.
He just saved my life—again.
Andi had a faint idea that it might not be okay to be in a relationship where you could lose track of how often the other person had saved your life, but none of that mattered right now—not when Damian was out there, and there was nothing she could do to help him.
“Andi! Epi!”
Reality landed like a ten-ton weight, and she took in everything at once. The monitor in the room was blaring all sorts of warnings, while people she knew delivered CPR and had an ambu bag giving whoever was on the bed 100% oxygen.
“On it!” she shouted, not even knowing who she was shouting it to, only that it was her job to fucking find some. She ripped through the drawers of the crash cart, breaking open all the locks until she found a syringe and cued it up. “Access?”
“Right AC!” Of course, Sheila was there. She was the nurse most likely to be assigned charge any night she was on because, in a field of bossy women, she was best at it.
Something heavy crashed outside. The floor trembled. An inhuman sound, almost like laughter, cut through the noise of the monitors.
Focus. She had to focus.
Andi danced around the right side of the bed with the epinephrine and a saline flush and realized that she knew the patient too. Jessica? Fuck! She ran the epi through and flushed it, while Matt kept pushing and counting. “What happened?” she asked, racing back to the cart to queue up a second dose.
“Good…fucking…question,” Matt said, in between pumps of CPR.
“Giant blue thing. Some kind of demon,” Sheila said, surveilling everything while playing with the cross on her necklace. “Rhythm check!” she shouted, and Matt pulled back.
“It says if we don’t get her to OR, none of this is going to fucking count,” Ishita said from the front of the bed, momentarily holding the bag off of Jessica’s face so that the EKG machine would track Jessica’s heart—and only Jessica’s heart. The woman on the bed was broken; anyone could see that—one femur was snapped, her shoulder was dislocated, and part of her skull was dented in. It was like something had picked her up and thrown her around like a rag doll—and Andi was guessing something had.
“Matt, tap out,” Sheila commanded. The rhythm on the monitor was still ominous, and while everyone here knew they were fighting a losing battle, no one wanted to give up.
“No!” He fought her.
Andi grabbed his shoulders and bodily pulled him back. “I’m fresh,” she said, jumping on the bedframe to start CPR.
That monster did this, Andi had time to think while she pulsed. The monster that is still outside. With Damian. She tried to focus on what she was doing, keep her speed up, keep counting, keep making sure the strokes were deep enough to matter.
“Oh fuck, that thing is back!” Ishita yelped from the head of the bed.
Andi fought not to look. If she did, she’d get distracted, and then she wouldn’t be doing Jessica any good.
“More epi!” Sheila commanded, and Matt rushed in to give it.
“Who the fuck is that out there with him?” he said from his vantage point on Andi’s left.
Andi bit her lips. Don’t look, don’t look, just pump.
“There’s no one,” Ishita said, then paused. “Holy shit.”
“Right?” Matt agreed, then full body winced as he saw a blow outside land. “Fuck,” he said in a guttural voice, and it took all of Andi’s strength not to look. She segued into a Please be okay, please be okay, instead.
“Rhythm check!” Sheila shouted. Andi paused, hands hovering just off of Jessica’s chest. “Shit, it’s shockable. Everyone back!”
Andi jumped off the bed and stared outside, listening to the ascending scale of the defibrillator’s charge. The blue monster was pacing back down the hall and away from their room as though he were being lured, but where was Damian? Why couldn’t she see him? She held her breath. Jessica was dying no matter what the monitor said. Her stomach was starting to swell—either her injuries had caused a bleed or CPR had. It happened. You couldn’t just punch organs with enough strength to move blood and not cause collateral damage. And who the hell knew what her intracranial pressure was with that skull fracture—had anyone checked her eyes? Andi could already taste the acid at the back of her throat, the familiar sensation of knowing she was going to fail, no matter how hard she tried.
“I’m clear, you’re clear, we’re all clear! Shocking!” Sheila said, waving a hand over Jessica’s body like an assistant in a magic act, then hit the button to deliver the charge. The rhythm on the monitor jumped and Matt lunged in, feeling for a pulse because just because your heart was beating didn’t mean that it was working right.
A heart could beat, but not have enough blood to pump.
“Nothing,” Matt announced. They’d exhausted all the resources in the room and crash cart. They’d poured liters of fluid into her, but saline couldn’t replace the red stuff.
“I could,” Andi offered, gesturing to the door.
“Don’t you dare,” Sheila said. “No one’s committing suicide on my watch.”
“I can take the stairs; I know the back way,” Andi said, edging around her. Matt had already jumped back on the bed to restart CPR. Then Sheila’s eyes widened, looking at something behind her, and Andi whirled around. The blue thing was back, missing one of its legs, yet still managing to skitter on its remaining three, racing right for them.
“No, no, no, no, no,” Ishita intoned, as though her words could ward the monster off—when Andi saw the only thing that possibly could.
“Damian.” She breathed his name and stepped up closer to the glass. The second he was done, she could run for the blood bank. He hadn’t saved her life this many times already to let anything happen to her now.
The monster leapt onto the glass right in front of her, and she gasped as the force of it shook the window in its hinges. And then he was there, wrapping his arms around its torso like in a wrestling show, prying it off—leaving the glass to rattle as he twisted it to the ground—and put a knee in its back to pin it as he changed his grip to encompass its neck and squeeze. It thrashed beneath him, boneless as far as she could tell, especially by the way all its limbs rehinged to claw back at him, ripping through his shirt and against his skin, making him bleed more of his strange green blood. Andi gasped and tears sprang to her eyes.
She wanted to beat her hands against the glass, to tell him that she was there, that she was witnessing him do this, to let him know that he wasn’t going through the pain that she could clearly see written across his face alone. But she didn’t want to distract him, and he didn’t look up or over at her—not until the thing was dead, its blue corpse sagging to the ground as he dropped it—just as she heard the monitor on the crash cart behind her sing the monotonous note that meant Jessica was gone too.
Andi twisted back for a moment, looking at her fallen coworker—definitely wanting to cry—and then looked back outside where Damian stood, panting, the bottom half of his T-shirt ripped away, with gouges leaking green across his chest.
“Who…the…fuck…is…that?” Matt demanded, still doing CPR.
“I’m calling it,” Sheila said. “Stand down.”
Andi swallowed and put a hand to the glass, waiting for Damian to look up—worried that he wouldn’t, that he’d just turn and walk down the hall and leave all of this in her memories. And then with a deep inhale, he did, looking up as though seeing her for the first time, and he smirked, leaning over to match her hand with his much bigger one, smeared with blue and green.
She shoved the door open. This time no one was going to be able to stop her.