Andi sat outside her single patient’s room. She was all caught up and open for an admit, which gave her altogether far too much free time to think. She couldn’t stop herself from flipping back and forth between the texts she’d had with her uncle and David’s name in her recents list, plain as day.
It made her wish, as she so often had, that she possessed some ability to see into the future.
People at the hospital were always asking her for prognostication: “Should I take a pain pill now?” “When will I walk again?” “How long will I be here?” Or, the worst ever, “What’s going to happen to Grandma?” and the thing was, there were very few circumstances under which she could say, with one hundred percent authority, what the answer was. Not when people were in critical condition in the ICU. Not when she didn’t know their entire medical history or them personally. She could calculate odds like a Las Vegas bookie—but if the consequences of being wrong were somebody pulling the plug on a loved one—doing a family’s emotional bedside triage shit was hard.
So, she knew now that she didn’t have a snowball’s chance in hell of figuring out the outcome of anything having to do with David, her uncle, or Danny herself, without more data—but for some reason, she couldn’t stop trying.
“Andi!” Sheila said sharply, walking down the hall. “Check the board online—you’re up!”
Andi stifled a groan and wiggled her mouse so the computer in front of her would flash back on. There was a likely ICU admit in the emergency department downstairs. A twenty-nine-year-old guy’d gotten into a fight. Fractured ribs, possible internal hemorrhaging.
Well, it’d at least be good for one trip to CT. Which wasn’t usually a thought she relished, but anything to kill time faster tonight and get her closer to tomorrow morning with her uncle and some answers.
“Got it.” She waved Sheila off, hopping into the chart. Her in-hospital phone rang, and she knew from the number it was the emergency department already calling to give report.
Andi was waiting by the bedside as her new admit came rolling up on his gurney, and at seeing him, she blinked.
“Julian?” The ED nurse had said his name, but she assumed he was surely one of the hundreds of other Julians in this city and not the only one she knew. His face looked like he’d hit a wall at speed—swollen and bruised—and he was covered in scrapes and scabs. But his eyes opened as she said his name, and he grunted.
“Yo, Andi.”
“You know this fool?” her coworker asked her.
“Only barely,” Andi said, frowning to take all of him in.
“Yeah, well, it’s like I told you on the phone,” her coworker from the emergency department said disparagingly. “We can’t get a clear story out of him. Either he got beat up, or he was in a car wreck—I don’t know which—good luck.”
Her other coworkers and the tech the ED nurse had brought with her were already pulling him off the gurney and into his ICU bed, switching his IV lines to the ICU pumps and replugging in his monitor cables. Andi took a fast listen to his lungs, trying not to press hard against his fractures, and heard the tiny popping sounds of crackles in his alveoli from where fluid was building up.
“You need anything else?” the ED nurse asked.
“No, thanks, I’ve got him,” she said, dismissing all the extra staff. The second she was alone with Julian, she whipped the curtain closed. “Julian! What the fuck!”
Julian twisted his head to look over at her. “Your ex-boyfriend fucking sucks,” he said.
Andi’s eyes widened. “Shut up,” she said, going over to the belonging bags that’d been tossed onto the couch. Sure enough, Damian’s coat was inside, in shreds from where either paramedics or emergency department personnel had cut it off of him. She whirled back to the bed. “Did he…do this to you?”
But Julian’s head had already sunk back onto his pillow. She walked over and shook him gently. “Julian, Julian, wake up.” His eyelids didn’t flutter, so she reached and pinched his trapezius muscle, hard, and shouted, “Julian!” His body winced and flinched, but his eyes didn’t open.
“Goddammit!” she hissed. If he wasn't awake enough, they'd have to intubate him with a breathing tube to protect his airway, and it’d be a few days before they could take it out again and she could get any answers. She pinched him again, harder. “Julian, wake the fuck up right now; I mean it,” she said.
This time he didn’t even wince. His head just lolled in her direction, and a thin trickle of silver poured out of his nose.
Andi stepped back from the bed quickly, not wanting to believe what she was seeing. But when the silver that’d spilled out crawled its way back up and into him without leaving a trail behind itself, she couldn’t deny it anymore. “Oh, fuck, fuck, fuck.” She wiped her hands on her scrubs and reached for her phone and then hesitated. She didn’t want to have to call Damian. But if something like what’d happened to Zach happened here again, she couldn’t let that happen to her workplace—or her coworkers—again.
She hit Damian’s number and dialed, bracing for the moment he’d pick up—only he didn’t. After six rings, she went to voicemail.
Was he truly not around his phone, after an apparent week of stalking her? Or—after having found his coat on Julian—had he finally given up?
The line beeped without an introduction, so she spoke fast. “Damian, I’m at work. Something bad is about to happen here. I…I need your help.” She stared at the phone for a moment more, breathing hard and willing him to answer.
When he didn’t, she hung up.
Damian drove home only slightly slower than he’d driven to the coffee shop earlier, wishing he could fly instead.
So, now you want my wings. His dragon challenged him as they parked.
What I want, he said, as he took the stairs up to his training room, stripping off layers of unnecessary clothing along the way, is not to feel things.
Dragons have feelings, his dragon defended itself. It is only that we don’t care about the feelings of others.
Then that…yes…that, Damian growled and slammed the room’s door closed behind himself. “Grim. Hardest setting. Don’t hold back,” he announced, and lasers descended from the ceiling on turrets.
The beams of light burned him whenever they hit. At the beginning of his session, he was acrobatic enough to avoid them, and Grimalkin gave him enough places to hide, but as the training continued, there were fewer objects to duck behind, and the beams of light grew wider. He moved from spot to spot, taking out the turrets however he was able: with gunshot, thrown knives, hands and feet, until it was just him and lasers now, sweeping from side to side. One caught his shoulder; the other nicked a thigh. Green blood dripped down as he gasped in pain and threw himself down to roll away from the next one’s path just in time.
He fought until he couldn’t think of anything else—tempting fate until he was glazed with sweat. There was nothing else to think about than escape-fight-pain, escape-fight-pain, in an endless cycle, and it was almost meditative seeing how far he could go, feeling like he was on the verge of dying, while knowing that he was never in any real danger, because if he was, his dragon would come barreling out of him.
And save you, his dragon muttered. Again.
How many times have I really needed saving?
More than I can count.
Damian snorted at that, as a laser skimmed his shoulder. It wasn’t like his dragon could do calculus. It was a creature of the now; it knew no future other than what it wanted. Had no concerns other than its own desires. It was a weapon of raw power—his heritage from his Unearthly father—and a quality that his very earthly mother had had to manage in the Realms without.
The first time he learned about it was when he was ten when a tutor tried to poison him. Up until then, he’d only known that he was fast and strong. The man had given him a pastry and then watched him eat it, eagerly anticipating both his death and the bounty it would bring him.
And then his dragon joined Damian.
That was the only word he had for it. One moment he was alone, and then after that, doomed to be dual for eternity. He lost himself and arose as something that he’d never been before—scaled, massive, magnificent—and watched his tutor’s horror and utter fear at his transition.
His tutor lunged for the last of the pastry and ate it before Damian could fully comprehend what had happened, and then he watched the man die through his dragon’s eyes, his tutor frothing at the mouth as his fingertips blackened. Shortly after that, Damian fell apart.
That was what it had felt like at the time. He had held space, and then he’d lost it somehow—gone from being powerful back to being a boy of ten, with a corpse in front of him. He looked down at his tutor, screamed, and didn’t stop screaming all the way until he’d found his father.
It wasn’t the body that’d frightened him—in the Realms, public executions were very popular. It was the change in him. Where had the dragon gone? Why had it come out? Was the dragon his or vice versa? His father was dragon more often than human, so Damian didn’t understand.
He had so many questions, and his father had no answers as he propelled them back to look at his tutor’s body for clues as to who’d bribed him—and when they’d returned, they’d found his mother at his tutor’s side, reaching for a tiny crumb.
“No, no, no,” his father reprimanded her like she was a child, then grabbed her, his ceremonial cape surging behind him like a golden wave as he carried her away. She didn’t kick or scream anymore when he did that, not like she used to—and standing there alone, Damian realized he couldn’t remember the last time she’d said his name. He tried to tell himself he didn’t need to hear it from her, and that was when his dragon first spoke to him.
You don’t need her now.
He’d looked around, stunned, afraid he was hearing his tutor’s ghost, or someone else’s magic was playing a trick on him.
I’m not a trick.
You don’t need anyone else.
You have me.
And his father erected a statue of an attacking dragon on that same parapet within days—mid-lunge, despite the fact that that hadn’t actually happened—to commemorate Damian’s first change.
It was a good thing her other patient was stable, because Andi tightened the parameters on his alarms, hung fresh IV bags so nothing would beep and abandoned him.
It wasn’t that Julian needed her to do anything. His vitals were stable—for all of the shit that’d happened to his body—but she felt like she had to keep an eye on him. There was no way she could’ve stopped the thing she’d seen Damian kill last weekend not three rooms down from here, but maybe she could sound the alarm or something. Save a few lives that way. Stop a few more Jessicas from happening. Andi looked at her phone again, feeling impotent. Come the fuck on already, Damian! Call me!
She paced around Julian’s bed like a caged lion. She’d already told Sheila she was skipping her lunch break, so she was surprised when the curtain suddenly pulled back. She expected to find one of her coworkers waiting there, looking to shoot the shit, or asking for her opinion on an upcoming online purchase, when she found the duo she’d “jogged” past the other night.
“Hello?” she asked in a presumptive tone, putting herself directly in their path. They weren’t in the basement anymore, and this was her territory.
They blinked at finding her there and tried to sidle past her. “We’re here to check your plumbing,” one of them said.
“That’s funny, I didn’t put a work order in.” Andi crossed her arms and moved slightly closer to the call light.
“It’s just a spot check. We’re doing a yearly audit,” the short bald one said with a shrug, holding a strange implement with a gage that looked like a compass on it. She could see the needle flickering as it made a light clicking noise, like a Geiger counter.
Andi had a fearful moment of wondering if Julian was radioactive, but held her ground. “Well, you’ll have to come back. This patient needs to be on isolation for c. diff. It’s not safe for you to be in here without gowns.”
“It’ll just take a moment,” the taller one said, brushing her off.
She’d already known they weren’t hospital employees before that, but that was the final nail in the coffin. No one from engineering was going to tempt uncontrollable diarrhea for any amount of money.
They were at a standoff. They were going to have to go through her, and Andi had a sinking feeling they would try. Her hand reached for the red button on the call light; at least she could attract attention before they released something unholy out of Julian.
“I believe the nurse told you to go,” Damian said as he pushed through the curtain. He was in jeans and a soaking wet T-shirt that showed every curve of his muscles, and he looked entirely capable of violence.
The two men turned in surprise, and whatever was in one of their hands started clicking and wouldn’t stop.
“We…uh,” said the shorter one, trying to back up, only Damian was blocking his exit. Damian stepped aside, closer to Andi, letting him retreat. The taller one practically chased after him, the instrument they held clicking all the while.
Andi relaxed incrementally. They’d been about to do something to Julian. And as far as she was concerned, Julian was like a bomb, about to go off, for as long as he had that silver inside of him. She took Damian in—both her savior and the reason there was fucking weird shit inside of Julian in the first place. “So, did you give me your only coat?” she asked him. He smelled like rain and sweat.
Damian whipped his black hair out of his face with a hand. “No,” he answered, with no sense of humor. “I just came here the second I heard your message.” He stared at her, his expression cold, and his eyes dark. Andi swallowed, steeling herself to weather the brunt of his disappointment from the coffee shop.
“Those were the guys I saw the other night that I called you about.”
“I had a feeling. I’ll have Austin scoop them up. But, you called before that, right?”
She nodded. “I did. Because of this.” She stepped away from the bed, revealing Julian, waiting to read Damian’s expression.
His eyes went incrementally wider. “Who is this jackass to you?” he asked. “And what the fuck happened to him?”
“This jackass is my absentee brother’s best friend. As for what happened to him, I thought you had.”
Damian looked at her sharply. “What?”
“He said, and I quote, that my ‘ex-boyfriend fucking sucks.’ Seeing as my last man was a techbro who couldn’t have slapped a mosquito out of the air successfully, I’m guessing this was you,” she whispered. “What’s wrong with you?”
“We did have an interaction earlier tonight,” Damian admitted, frowning. “But I am in no way responsible for him being in this condition now.” He took a step back. “Is that why you called? Just to yell at me?”
Andi clenched her jaw. She wanted to believe him, but…. “No,” she said, moving to the head of Julian’s bed. She carefully twisted his neck, and…nothing happened. No silver came out. “Goddammit. It was right there. It was why I called.”
“What was?” Damian asked, his frown deepening.
“When he got here, I was watching him, and when he moved, some silver came out.” She traced the path it’d taken on her own face with a finger. “I watched it come out of his nose, Damian, and then I watched it crawl back in. It was fucked up. I can’t have everything here get blown up again. These people are my friends,” she said, gesturing wide to the hospital floor hidden behind his curtain. “That’s why I needed your help. I can solve all the shit wrong with his body, but I cannot fix that silver shit. Not again, and not in a human.”
Damian grunted, considering. “We’ve got to get him out of here.”
“Yes,” she wholeheartedly agreed. “But how? Did you bring the creepy pale guy with the lanterns?”
“No, but I can get him here,” Damian said curtly.
“Good,” Andi said, as her in-hospital phone buzzed again. It was CT; they were ready for Julian. “And even better,” she said, looking at her phone. “They want to scan him now. I can take him down there; it’s in the basement. You can do your mind-wiping thing, and then we can detour and you all can load him up.”
“And take him where?”
“I don’t fucking care, but he cannot release another one of those monster things here.”
“Are you going to come and care for him?” Damian asked, eyes narrowing.
Andi considered things quickly. “I would if I could, but I can’t. I’ve got another patient here, one who isn’t a ticking bomb. You just make everyone up here forget this admission ever happened, and I’ll go back to doing my job.” And then at the end of the rest of her hopefully very boring night, she’d get some answers from her uncle.
Damian took out his phone and texted the lantern-man, presumably, before glancing back at her. “So, why should we care about this one human’s life?”
Andi leaned forward, becoming pissed off. “Are. You. Kidding. Me?”
“Not in the least. He is…” Damian said, and she could watch him choosing his words carefully, “not a good person.”
“Don’t you think I know that?” Andi said, her voice rising. “Julian was the worst thing to ever happen to my brother! He’s a shitbird! But I’m a fucking nurse. You may not be able to keep him alive if something explodes out of him Alien-movie-style, but promise me that you are at least going to fucking try.” It’d never occurred to her that Damian might take one look at Julian and just give up. “What the fuck, Damian? I knew you were cold-blooded, but I didn’t think you were heartless.”
His eyes scanned over her, and she could see memories flickering across his face. “I tried to warn you about that when we were together last weekend.”
“Yes, well, I guess I didn’t want to believe you. But don’t worry, I do now.” She crossed her arms and hugged herself. He was so brooding right now, like some kind of dark god. It was hard to remember the man he’d been when he’d been with her, the man who’d laughed at her jokes—the man she’d felt move inside her.
His jaw clenched, and her phone rang again. She could see the call was coming from CT. “I’ve got to head down, are you ready?”
He glanced at his own phone. “Yes. Everyone’s in place.”
“Okay, then,” she said, then paused. “Wait, how did you even get in here? Did you use those sphere-things again?” She’d seen the way no one noticed the couch-sized wolves leaving, the last time he was here.
Damian snorted. “No. I may not be able to bribe security, but you can definitely bribe other visitors in the parking lot to add you to their visitation list.”
Andi closed her eyes and shook her head. “I’m going to pretend I didn’t hear you say that.” She pulled her badge off of her scrubs and handed it to him. “I’ll say I forgot mine and borrow someone else’s. Use this to get to the basement.” She moved to the back of Julian’s bed and grabbed the IV pole. “See you down there in five.”
Damian watched Andi go and moved slowly after her, giving her a head start. Her work uniform couldn’t hide her body from him, and she still smelled like the apple-caramel-saltwater girl of his dreams, but it was mixed with the spicy vetiver scent of the stranger from earlier in the evening. He stood in the doorway and contemplated chasing her down, either to kiss her or shake answers out of her—he wasn’t sure which.
Damian couldn’t believe he’d come all this way, and he still hadn’t asked Andi about aftershave-man—and here he was, helping her. With that asshole, no less. Damian’s mind flickered back to when he’d seen the man outside of Rax’s, wearing his coat. What the fuck had happened to the man—Julian, she’d called him—after that, and why? At the least, he was a liar. And at the worst…Damian shook his head strongly; he couldn’t let himself think about that.
He wound out of the room and went for the exit to the stairwell, using Andi’s badge to let himself in and took the stairs down to the basement quickly. He hadn’t seen any silver leaking out of the man, but she wouldn’t have called him otherwise. No matter what he’d seen at the coffee shop or in the Tesla or was told secondhand, when he was with her, he wanted to believe the best of her.
And what was more, he wanted her to see the best in him.
It was when he was away from her that all his fears started crawling out. Between his history with the Realms and his temper, it was so easy to assume the worst and hurt her.
But here she was, acknowledging that someone was a total “shitbird” and she still wanted to save them. If she could want to save someone like the man who was on that gurney, how could he not believe in her as well? Because, if she had a choice in things, he knew she’d choose to save him too.
It…wasn’t the same as feelings. And definitely not love.
But she was someone he could be safe with. She’d seen him, truly, and she hadn’t been afraid. And he’d known it from the first moment he’d met her at the bus stop. She hadn’t been wearing a sign saying, “Here, trust me with your heart.” But somehow, his heart had known.
He’d told her he couldn’t afford to have one and tried to make himself sound gruff. Ever since then, he should’ve been trying to figure out a way to walk it back. He reached the last landing and paused in front of the last door.
He did have a heart. And no one else knew it.
And it wanted to be with her.
He swiped Andi’s badge and let himself back inside the building.
Damian met the rest of his crew and Andi in the next hallway, where Andi was explaining the plan to a disbelieving Austin.
“And so, we’re taking this man, why?” he was asking her just outside the corridor for CT. Max walked past him, the way he’d come, lantern swinging.
“Because!” Andi almost shouted, exasperated. “Seriously, are all of you assholes?”
“We’re not. And I get it,” Damian said as he arrived, handing her badge back over. “And,” to Austin, he said, “we’re taking him. We’ve imposed on Andi and this hospital enough.”
“Thank you,” Andi said vehemently. She took her badge back and finally looked relieved. Damian fought the urge to pull her to him and smooth a thumb across her worried brow. “What about those other two?”
“Zach's got them in the van. I'm sure otherwise he’d send his regards.”
“Are you putting them all in the van together?” she asked. “Is that safe? Considering what happened last time?”
“Probably not, but if something bad happens, we’ll make sure it’s away from here,” Damian said, gesturing to the pole beside her. “Does he need any of this?”
“No, it’s just fluids,” she said, disconnecting his IVs. “They said he may have a small bleed, and his lungs suck, but I know you’ve got a crash cart back home. If he dies on the way for some reason….” she said, looking grim again, “I think that’s just a risk we’ll have to take.”
“Fair enough,” Austin said, beginning to push the bed down the hall.
Andi watched him go and looked to Damian. “So, you’re going to tell me how things turn out, right?” Her voice echoed with concern in the small hallway.
“You really do care what happens to him, don’t you?” Damian mused aloud, and then considered the transitive properties of her caring. “You don’t even like him…but you still care.”
Andi looked up at him and crossed her arms again. “Don’t think I don’t see where you’re going with this.”
“I’m just assuming I rank a little higher than a ‘shitbird’ is all.” He narrowed his eyes.
Andi groaned and rubbed her face with both hands. “Damian, I’m the kind of girl who rescues spiders instead of stepping on them, so don’t go feeling too special on me.”
But, in this slightly enclosed space, it was easy for him to breathe her in, and he knew—for all her anger, for all her questions, and underneath the scent of some other man—she still wanted him. Wanted what they’d had together. Her pulse picked up at her throat as he took a step toward her.
She instantly backed up, wheeling the IV pole in between them. “You are still not safe.”
“Is safe really all it’s cracked up to be, princess?” The irony of her not feeling safe around him when she was the only person who made him feel that way was not lost on him. He licked his lips thoughtfully. “I can be safe for you, Andi. Truly.”
She bit her lips and didn’t answer, only her eyes searched his own, and then she shook her head and moved back down the hall. “I’ve got another patient; I need to get back. Just text me or something, will you?”
“Andi,” he called after her, but before he could say anything else, she’d turned the corner and was gone.