She couldn’t blame him for anything after the way she’d tortured him. She did let go of the bars to grab his head and bring his mouth to hers as she spread her legs to take him. He kissed her hot and heavy as she felt the rasp of fine wool rasp against her inner thighs and the hot head of his cock pushing up as she arched her hips to match him.
He was right. He slid into her, and the whole bed shook with it. She grabbed ahold of the bars behind her to withstand the onslaught—his mouth on hers, at her ear, neck, and shoulder—as he thrust relentlessly in, making her gasp with each pumping stroke.
Then he growled at her throat before reaching down to grab and pull her hips to him. He leaned back, kneeling, pulling her ass up over his thighs, and she groaned at this new angle in her, giving herself over to the sensation. He was a sight to see, still in his worsted wool suit—his tie askew, his shirt hanging free, his slacks only down enough to keep his cock in her. The whole scene was so decadently different from her normal life—them together, which she still wasn’t used to and couldn’t quite believe—in this room of all the rooms of his house. It felt like she was watching someone else experience all this, like a very elaborate dream, until he thrust again and took her breath away. He reached down to grab her breast and bent over to kiss her, and she was sliding her hand between them to rub her clit when—
Klaxons rang out. She stiffened, as did he, and then he said, “Fuuuuuuck,” slowly thumping his head against her chest as he stopped thrusting.
“What is it?”
“Rift warning. If this is a drill, though, I will be shooting Jamison later.” He moaned and pulled out of her. “I cannot believe the timing. I’ve got to go…I’m sorry….”
Andi moved to sitting as he made his way to the edge of the bed and dismounted. “If there’s anything a nurse understands, it’s an overly strong sense of duty. And hey, at least you still have most of your clothes on?”
“True.” He set his hard-on into his pants and refastened them, tucking his shirt in and latching his belt back on. As she watched him work, she felt she could see his responsibilities settle onto him like a mantle, in the way he set his shoulders, bracing for whatever would come next. So, she wasn’t surprised when he gave her a cold look shortly thereafter; it was how he had to be for the outside world. Then the corners of his lips ticked up, chipping away at the ice and warming her. “I like the look of you in my bed, Andi.”
She felt herself flush. “Thank you,” she said shyly and hopped off the side of the bed to retrieve her jeans.
Damian had his belt buckled and was pulling on his shoes. “There’s a hidden door on that wall to my bedroom,” he gestured with his chin. “You’ve been there before. Help yourself to the bar or bathroom. Take a bath or shower; I’ve got extra robes there if you’d like. You can even swim in my dragon’s bathing pool if you want. Just don’t touch any of the mirrors.” He fixed her with a stare. “I mean that. They’re magical objects. It’s not safe.”
By then, she had her jeans on. “Wait…can’t I come with you?”
He snapped a hand through his hair, whipping it back into place before straightening his tie. He looked almost pulled together, with the exception of all the new wrinkles on his previously crisp suit. But the ice had returned all the way now. “Absolutely not. I can’t be fighting monsters and be worried about your safety.”
Andi gawked. “So, it’s okay for me to be worried about yours, here? Can your magic cat make me a fainting couch?” The klaxon went off again, and she jumped.
He put his hand on her shoulders. “This is a fight we will have to have later,” he informed her, and she was tempted to say rambunctious just so that he would take her seriously because this was kind of bullshit. Then his expression softened, and he lifted her chin. “I don’t need a safeword with you, Andi. But when I call you princess, know that I mean it.”
She squinted up at him. “We’ll talk when you get back.”
“Among other things, princess,” he promised, then let her go and turned on his heel to walk out the door.
Andi watched him leave with a pout, then wandered the room, collecting the rest of her clothing. She didn’t bother to put it on, just scooped it to her chest as she walked over to the wall he’d pointed at to find the door. She traced her hand along the green velvet wallpaper until her fingertips felt a small gap and then pressed, sending a well-balanced door swinging open. She passed through and watched it twirl shut behind her, finding herself just past the wall of mirrors on the other side, in Damian’s barely familiar bedroom—and everything smelled like smoke.
Not cigarette or cigars, but campfire smoke, and worse—like burning hair. She put a hand to her mouth to cover it before running across the room to the window and found it barred by metal shutters.
“And what was that about serial killers?” she muttered, looking back the way she’d come. All the mirrors on the wall were black, like doorways into deep caves, and that was far creepier than the fog she remembered from last time. She realized belatedly she’d left the photo album and her coat behind in the green room, but she couldn’t see the edge of that particular door anymore against the mirrored wall, and Damian’s warning not to touch any of them was only amplified by the scent of recent fire. Andi chewed on her lip. Without him in the room, all the black frames looked like so many empty eye sockets.
She trailed along the far wall, opening doors until she found the bathroom and let herself inside. She’d had every intention of just cleaning herself up a little until she looked around.
Damian’s bathroom was larger than her and Sammy’s entire apartment. There was a massive claw-foot tub on a dais off to her right, a shower that could’ve fit ten people at once with the kind of sprayer bars that blasted you from all sides on her left, and in front of her, over a wide granite counter with the kind of sink basins that cost more than her annual salary, was a massive mirror that didn’t currently look angry. Everything was in a gorgeous red stone, and she was one hundred percent going to take a bath in that tub.
“You are not going to believe this, Sammy,” she said, wedging herself into a corner so she wouldn’t show in the mirror. She pulled out her phone to take photos to share and saw that she’d already missed a series of frantic texts from her roommate.
Where are you?
That crazy lady is here again!
She’s still outside!
Elsa, her uncle’s secretary. Andi groaned and felt like an asshole, she should’ve warned Sammy. I’m so sorry! she texted back quickly. I went out this morning, and I dodged her. I should’ve told you.
Are you all right? What the hell, Andi!
I’m super, super sorry, S! Did she go away?
No! She’s in the parking lot like a stalker! Sammy sent her a string of frowning emojis after that. Like why can’t she call you? Jesus.
Probably because she knows I wouldn’t pick up.
Where are you? Are you safe?
Andi’s fingers twitched to share everything and send Sammy her recent photos, but she held back. I’m totally safe.
Good, her roommate texted back. I’m still a little pissed, though. I mean, if you were going to get up this early, you could’ve gone out to brunch with me and listened to more about my date.
Andi smiled at her phone, knowing all was forgiven. I’ll be back later, all right? Just don’t tell Evil Elsa that.
Now that I know you’re alive, your secret is safe with me, Sammy sent back, with an emoji sticking its tongue out and then a kiss. Andi smiled at the phone then set it down on the counter, pulling off her jeans to advance on the bath.
Damian’s plumbing was fantastic—in more ways than one—but the bath really didn’t help things. Andi sat up to her armpits in exquisitely scented bubbles that smelled like some combination of lavender and snow. She should be indulgently relaxing, but her brain just wouldn’t stop.
What was he off doing? Was he safe? Would anyone else die? Would he? Hell, for all she knew, could he?
Andi bunned her hair up to keep it dry and save the blue streak in it from fading, then sank in the hot water down to her chin. She didn’t want to be one of those women who just thought about a man, but knowing he was out there putting himself in danger, it was awfully hard not to be thinking about him. How did people with spouses or children in the military survive?
She gave up on the tub and got out to dry herself off—his towels put any towel she’d ever touched before in her life to shame—and found his robes made of the exact same stuff. She cozied into one, folded her clothes up nicely, and tried to decide what to do.
She didn’t want to lounge in here forever…she wasn’t a mermaid. Did Damian know mermaids? Were they really a thing? But she also didn’t want to hang out in his smoke-scented bedroom, which left making her way through the rest of the house.
She had been here before, technically, and while she knew the rooms could move on you without warning, she had a feeling she belonged here now. Maybe. So, she darted through the bedroom, holding her breath against the acrid smell until she reached the door.
The hallway she remembered—no green dragon blood on it this time, though, so that was good—and she went down the front stairs.
“Hello?” she asked aloud as she reached their bottom. Was she truly alone? Maybe she could find the kitchen and make herself another sandwich. “Is anyone home?”
Andi wound her way through the mansion, which was substantially less maze-like than when she’d last been here, and accidentally walked to where she’d had a patient last. She knew that Zach was better now since she’d officially met him as a human last night—which was why she was surprised to see another patient in the hospital bed, Grimalkin curled up at their feet. Austin was sitting, apparently half-awake, in a chair nearby.
He turned to see her, taking her robed state in with a wolfish grin. “Well, hello again.”
“Hi.” She gave him a small wave. “I, uh….”
“I know,” he said, turning back to the bed behind him.
She could’ve minded her own business and walked away, but when had that ever stopped her? Andi snorted at herself and walked up to the bed like she belonged there and gasped.
The woman lying peacefully on the bed appeared to have wings. Actual wings. They’d been splinted and bandaged, but there was no mistaking the struts on the linen or the way their dark green leather splayed out from each shoulder.
“She has—” Andi gasped, and Austin cut in.
“Wings. Yeah.” Andi couldn’t help but stare. Beneath the sheets, Andi could see the outline of generous curves. The woman’s face looked like she’d been beaten up. Her eyes were swollen shut and dark, and her hair was cut raggedly short, and the same worrisome smell she’d scented up in Damian’s room was here. She knew Austin had done the best he could cleaning her, but she also knew from her own time at work that there was no getting rid of certain funks, not without a real bath. “Princess Ryana, meet Nurse Andi,” he said. “Nurse Andi, meet Princess Ryana.”
Andi wavered, once more experiencing the increasingly familiar feeling of being blindsided. She clenched her hands into nervous fists in the robe’s pockets. “She’s a princess? A real one?”
“Well, yeah,” Austin said. “She’s Damian’s sister.”
“Oh.” Andi definitively put two and two together. “Which means…he’s a….”
“Prince. Of the Realms. Although we’re currently uncertain what’s going on back at the ol’ homestead.” Austin scrunched his face thoughtfully and rubbed the golden shadow of a beard on his chin. “Do titles follow you forever? I can’t remember if those British people gave them up or had to turn them in. I mean, would they still be royalty if Britain didn’t exist?”
Andi fought a rising tide of panic, swallowing it down. “So, uh, what does being a prince—or princess—of the Realms typically entail?”
“Fuck if I know. Damian hated it there,” Austin said and shrugged, then looked intently at the woman on the bed. His voice turned low and menacing. “And if they treated someone like her like this, it can fucking stay burned, for all I care.”
Andi stared at the woman and bit her lips. So, the man-dragon who wanted to date her was also a prince. This was all intensely normal!
Not.
She inhaled and exhaled and pulled her nursing persona on. “So…what’s her neuro status?”
“She doesn’t wake up, but she withdraws to pain.”
“Can you even check her pupils like that?” Andi asked, leaning in. A small red bird popped out from in between Grimalkin’s front paws and chittered a warning at her.
“I’d step back if I were you,” Austin advised. “And, no, not really. She could have orbital fractures for all I know. I don’t really want to get in there.”
Andi put her hands on her hips. “What about taking her to a real hospital for a CT scan?”
“Oh, you mean the same hospital where we found Hunters? That one?” he said. “Fuck, no.”
“Austin—”
“She has freaking wings.”
“So? Don’t y’all have freaking magic?”
“Even if we could hide those things with magic, we can’t just wedge her into a CT machine. It would hurt them even worse, and what would we do with the data besides? Who’re we gonna show her scan to who’d believe it? On what planet would it make sense? And then we give her over to someone else to do surgery on? Hell no.”
Andi crossed her arms and frowned, scanning the numbers on the screen over the bed. They were normal, for a human, for now. But that didn’t mean the woman didn’t have fractures or a slow, oozing bleed.
Austin reached out to stroke a charred lock of hair away from the woman’s face, and Andi saw the red bird eyeing him closely. She got the impression that if he moved wrong, it’d attack, and at the thought of a cardinal haranguing a werewolf, she snorted. “I’m not happy about this.”
“Neither am I,” Austin agreed. “But she’s got some dragon in her, just like Damian. They’re tough motherfuckers, if you hadn’t noticed.”
She glanced at the monitor screen again and noticed the time in the corner; it was late afternoon now. How long had Damian been gone? “How tough?” she asked Austin.
He turned toward her, clearly ready to wisecrack, she could see it in his eyes, but he caught himself in time. Instead, he gave her a compassionate nod. “Very. And he’s got Zach and the others with him besides.”
“Aren’t you worried?”
“Always. But my brother can handle himself. So can D.”
Andi sighed and leaned against one of the bookcases on the wall. “How do you deal with the not knowing?”
Austin contemplated this, then shrugged. “Same way you do with patients, I suppose.”
She rolled her eyes. “I’m not attached to them.”
“Like hell. I saw you take on Damian to save my brother, which, thank you, by the way.”
“You’re welcome…but it’s not the same.” The truth was, caring about patients sucked in an entirely different way. Sometimes you worked your shift and went home and came back in a few days, and the person you’d poured hours of your life into saving was gone. Dead, discharged or transported to another floor. Being a nurse was like reading random chapters in a novel or only watching a third of any movie. Sure, you got some in a report, you could read some notes, and listen in to gossip and hearsay, but unless you were with that patient from beginning to end—almost an utter impossibility—it felt like you never knew the whole story.
Whereas with Damian, she might actually get to read the entire book.
Which was also, apparently, a fucking fairy tale. Andi stared at his sleeping princess sister and thought, are you kidding me?
“Help me turn her, will you?” Austin asked. “I’m trying to logroll her in case her spine’s injured, but the wings make it hard.”
Andi moved over to the side of the bed. “You should have your magic cat install a ceiling lift,” she said, and one of the cat’s ears perked up.
Austin snorted. “The magic cat doesn’t like me very much,” he said, reaching over to use the sheets beneath Ryana to pull her gently on her side. Andi took pillows and shoved them carefully, evenly, beneath her, and Austin set her back down. “Thanks.” Then his phone chirped, and he pulled it out quickly, reading a message with a smile, before flashing her his screen. “They’re on their way back already. Told you.”
Andi’s hands went into the robe’s pockets again and found her own phone, which while on, hadn’t beeped or buzzed. “Thanks for telling me.” Unlike some people. “Let me know if there’s anything else I can do to help.”
“Will do,” Austin said, sitting down and kicking his feet up onto the end of the bed to tip his chair back in repose.
Andi wound her way back up to Damian’s bedroom. The metal shutters in the window had come up sometime during her adventure downstairs, so she opened it up and squinted at the road outside. She thought if his car drove up right now, and he saw her staring out the window in a robe forlornly, like some kind of Asian Rapunzel, she might die.
This was not her.
She was not a girl who waited.
She turned and went back into the bathroom to quickly pull her clothes on, rescuing her phone from the robe’s pocket before she put it back on its hook. Definitely no calls. She shoved her feet into her shoes and stomped back into his bedroom. The windy weather outside hadn’t died down, so the smoky scent was quickly dissipating—except for where it wasn’t.
Andi walked as close as she was comfortable to the mirrors, rounding the bed, and saw a leather bag on the floor. That was where part of the smell was coming from, and she realized it wasn’t like a bag you could get at the mall. It was more like if someone did their shopping at the renaissance fair. She walked over to it, nudged it with her toe, then squatted down, grabbing part of the nearby sheets so she wouldn’t be touching it with her own hands when she opened it up.
Inside was an imposing stone box about the size of a hardback Stephen King novel. She shimmied the bag off of it so that it sat flat on the room’s low pile carpet. There were intricate designs carved on the sides, inlaid with opalescent metals. She’d seen enough horror movies to know that you should never, ever, open strange boxes.
And yet.
Andi reached for the edge of the box with a fabric-covered finger, and to her surprise, it opened.
“This had better be a legitimate emergency,” Damian announced as he reached the bottom of the stairs. He felt flustered, flushed, and fucking alive. Andi, his Andi, was here with him, upstairs, like it was meant to be. God, how good was it going to be to go out and wrestle down some Unearthly monster and then come back here to fuck her in triumph?
Careful. You sound like me, his dragon warned him with a sharp laugh.
You were there too, Damian said, walking out of his castle toward the lightly armored SUV, full of weaponry inside, that they jokingly called the tour bus. You know what she’s like.
I do, his dragon said, making a satisfied sound.
For all that his dragon was nearby now, he hadn’t felt the beast riding him earlier. Not like he usually did—especially during sex. Damian wondered if his dragon was still granting him the space he’d claimed to be giving him last night, but not enough to question it. If the dragon wanted to fade away entirely and leave all of Andi to him, that would be fine by him.
But how would you wrestle monsters without me? his dragon told him, slowly uncoiling to take up more space, readying for the fight.
I would find a way, Damian promised the monster inside himself and headed out the door.
Damian hopped into the tour bus and found himself joined by Max and Zach up front and Jamison with his tech gear in the back.
“No Mills?” he asked, taking a spot in the back beside Jamison. Jamison was already running his one metal hand over the equipment, a stark contrast with the dark skin of his other hand, triangulating the latest rift between Realms.
“Turns out faking your sister’s death is a little bit harder than we thought,” Jamison said without looking up. “The coordinates are on your dash, Max.”
“Got it,” the bear-shifter said, putting the tour bus into drive.
“How so?” Damian asked Jamison.
“Magic reasons. We took a sample from her wings, but now, Mills is pretty convinced that it won’t work.”
He bet Lyka loved the sample taking process. Damian had a mental image of Grim holding the red bird back. “Why?”
“For the same reasons you can heal yourself, but we can’t heal you. You can make more of you, but apparently, we can’t. For anything more detailed than that, though, you’d have to ask her,” Jamison said.
“Makes sense,” Zach chimed in from the front seat. “I mean, if you could just culture out magical cells, couldn’t you create magical meats? Like those Impossible Burgers, only from us?” Zach pondered this for a second. “I mean, if you could, you could figure out a way to have ethical magical ingestion.”
Max recoiled. “That’s still disgusting.”
Damian gave Zach a bemused look. “Since when did you become a scientist-slash-philosopher?”
The werewolf laughed. “I do occasionally do things at the board meetings you skip out on. Like researching what to invest your money in.”
“Heh,” Damian said, relaxing back. “Well, back to the here and now…what’s the stat on the rift we’re heading toward?”
Jamison made portions of his screen larger, and Damian watched his expression darken. “Fuck me…. It’s the Clearcreek Mall.” That meant a ton of space to cover—and far too many people to protect. Damian felt the tour bus pick up speed.
“Size?” Max asked.
Jamison pulled his head away from his screens to give a grim look. “At least a meter.”
“Goddammit,” Zach hissed from the front seat, and Damian knew why. A lot of things could wedge themselves through a meter-sized rift. And, conversely, you should shove a lot of things back into a meter-sized rift to save to eat later.
“I’ll know more once we’re closer,” Jamison promised. “Maybe it’s only in a janitorial closet.”
“One can hope,” Damian muttered.
“Spheres,” Jamison said, as Max double-parked the van. He handed out one of the magical objects to each of them. They turned them on, blinking out of sight one by one as the magical barrier the spheres provided showed whoever was watching on the other side just what they wanted to see—which, presumably, wasn’t four muscular, well-armed men running for the entrance of a mall with guns out.
If Damian hadn’t known what they were there for, it would’ve been a nice day. The wind from earlier had died down, the sun was out, there were birds chirping, and a janitor in a navy jacket was sweeping a metal detector across a patch of grass out front.
They entered and jogged down a broad tiled hallway between storefronts, dodging groups of people—mothers pushing strollers, teenagers with swaying bags. Damian did his best to avoid places like this; there was something about the way they were constructed that made him feel trapped, and he didn’t particularly like meeting strangers. For all that he had money, this wasn’t the kind of place he liked to spend it when he bothered to.
“Fuck,” he muttered, dodging a gaggle of preteens sharing a soda. They reached an atrium with wide stairs leading up, and beside them, someone was shilling face creams from a cart. “Jamison?”
“Overlaying blueprints…second floor!” Jamison said and started up the stairs. Damian overtook him, dodging people too busy with their phones to pay attention. The sooner this was over with, the sooner he could get back to Andi.
“And now?” Damian asked from the top, looking around. But he didn’t need Jamison’s tech to see it.
“Shit,” Max said, pulling to heel at his side.
Halfway down the next stretch of tiled hallway, equidistant between a women’s clothing store and a store full of candy and dolls, a rift fluttered.
A flexible triangle hovered like the entrance to a teepee, beginning at knee height and ending at the floor. Its edges flared through colors Damian’s eyes could only barely retain—a bright portal in comparison to the otherworldly darkness it held inside.
And out of it burped a small furry creature. It had white and tan splotches, was about the size of Damian’s fist, and it started zigzagging down the hall toward them on six legs.
“Start shooting; I’ll be right back,” Jamison announced, racing back down the stairs the way they’d come.
Max whipped out his gun and aimed it as Zach stepped up. “Whoa, whoa, whoa!” Zach said. “Why do they look like hamsters?”
“All the better to infiltrate a place like this?” Damian guessed, picking the creature up so that it was hidden inside his sphere with him. With it suspended, he could see a chitinous underbelly and that all six of the legs ended in claws. It was all too easy to imagine a kid taking it home with them to post on the internet, if nothing else. “We’ve got to get everyone out of here.”
Zach looked wildly around, then apparently spotted something familiar on a wall. He ran to it, hit it, and a siren started wailing.
“What on earth did you do?” Max complained.
“Fire drill,” Zach said, grinning. “I have always wanted to do that.”
Everyone else in the mall paused for a moment taking a collective breath, and then they flipped out. People started screaming and running for the exits. Damian moved to the side, watching the tide of humanity rush by, before chucking the hamster-like creature back into the rift like a football. A second one leaped out—or perhaps the same one Damian threw, racing back—this time heading for the stairs like it was following the people.
Max pulled out his pistol and shot it, sending its components splattering against the red tile and the glass wall that held the railing for the balcony.
“Disgusting,” Damian said, shaking a glob of creature off his dress shoe.
“Yo, peeps,” Jamison spoke up in their earpieces. “Good news, bad news time. The good news is that the bottom of this rift is inside a storage closet that I evacuated and locked. The bad news is that there’s like two hundred of those creatures already inside it.”
Zach groaned. “I am not going to feel good about killing hamsters, guys. I don’t care how Unearthly they are.”
And as the werewolf was complaining, the pieces of the hamster Max had shot—including the lump of flesh Damian had kicked away—beaded and rolled back together. All three of the men watched the creature reform. Damian picked it up; it was whole again, impossibly.
“Oh, shit, I take that back,” Zach whispered.
“I’m gonna bomb them so I can seal the rift,” Jamison went on. “One sec—”
Damian grabbed his earpiece. “No!” he shouted, but it was too late. The floor beneath them shook as he ran for the stairs, carrying the reanimated hamster with him.
Damian raced downstairs and found Jamison walking out of a men’s clothing store, smoke billowing out from a closed door behind him.
“What?” Jamison asked.
“They can reform,” Damian said, holding the hamster-looking thing up so that Jamison could see its stomach. Its six legs strained out for him, waving in the air as it chittered.
“Oh, God, it’s like a furry roly-poly,” Jamison said with revulsion. “I hate those things.”
“Not that…this,” Damian said, twisting the creature violently into two halves—with mysteriously little dripping blood. Then he put the two pieces back together, and both the men watched them reseal—like a magic trick.
“Oh, fuck,” Jamison muttered, then winced as ominous rustling and thumping sounds began in the storage room he’d bombed.
“I don’t think you killed any of them,” Damian said, “so much as you made them mad.”
“How do you kill something that can’t die?” Jamison asked as a mad scrabbling started on the wall behind them.
“With dragon fire,” Damian growled. A wall full of drywall fell forward, and a tan and white furry creature the size of a VW Bug scurried out and into the store, on hundreds of tiny legs, each one of their claws scratching gouges into the tile. Both the men dove sideways out of its way and watched in bizarre fascination as it trampled over racks of clothing to go out into the mall. “Seal the rift,” he commanded Jamison, tossing his sphere to the man, racing after the thing to change.
His dragon had been waiting for just this moment.
It was hard to explain the changes that overtook him when his dragon was revealed. There was a moment of intense pain, yes, but he was never fully sure if it was physical or emotional, the sensation of his body changing into something utterly other, gaining in mass and expanding in scale, or the knowledge that each time he did so, it was like he was ripping himself in two and being left with a little less of himself each time. The process was slower now that he was on earth, but the sensation was the same.
Freedom, his dragon growled and reveled in it. Except, it complained, gnashing its teeth as its wings were trapped by walls.
It is what it is…burn that thing, Damian said, and the beast snaked after it. His claws caught on the tile now, his dragon dragging itself down the now-narrow hallway, propelling itself off the ground and walls around them, sending carts and benches scattering to each side, gaining speed. They reached an intersection and wheeled themselves around it, experiencing a moment of freedom in an atrium, before diving back into another hallway, hot on the creature’s tail.
The furry thing appeared to bumble to a stop, reaching the wall at the end of the hallway, bouncing against it like a blind mole.
Damian’s dragon inhaled and then exhaled with intent, catching its breath on fire, releasing a torrent of flame at the furry thing. The scent of burning hair was instantly in the air, just as it’d been this morning. Then the shield of fluff burned through, revealing the insectile creature beneath, and it started to scream and…broke in two.
No…thirds. One third of it was dead, Damian knew, from all his dragon’s senses. The fire had killed it, but the other two had abandoned ship and were now reforming into discreet entities, racing away on different paths. One scurried up into the ceiling; the other raced at him, finding speed, diving between him and the wall.
As his dragon was hardly smaller than the hallway, he roared and then took out the storefronts of the establishments on either side of itself, so that it had more room to turn, chasing after the third of the creature that was still visible to him. He howled fire after it and clipped it, right before it ran down another hall.
Faster! Damian urged.
Yes! his dragon laughed because, Damian realized, it was having fun. For the first time in weeks, his dragon didn’t also want to run to Andi, knowing she was safe back home, and it wasn’t fighting him, as they both wanted the same thing. It was in its element hunting here, even in this strange environment, and for the first time in a long time, Damian almost felt a part of it. The same sensation of ability and glee, the knowledge that there was nothing he couldn’t do as a dragon, the way that they were working as one.
There! he shouted as his dragon spotted it with their eyes, circling behind a bench. In the atrium again, his dragon pounced on the thing. Don’t shred it! he warned.
You’re no fun, his dragon complained, and then let loose a burst of fire at it, close enough to feel the heat himself and bask in it—this revelation of his power.
When it was done, Damian prompted, And the third?
His dragon pulsed out with his senses. There! it crowed, spotting the last piece of the creature frantically climbing the ceiling over the atrium, trying to get to the glass at the top and the presumable freedom of outside.
Damian’s dragon bunched and leaped for the creature, knocking it down, and every instinct flooding through him wanted to play with it, to rip it apart with teeth and claws.
Fire only! he reminded his beast.
Fine, his dragon complained as it dropped to the ground with the creature, holding it clasped between its paws, crashing down the stairs. It rolled as it landed, folding its wings in the small space, holding the creature up and letting out a gout of flame as the creature writhed and clawed, trying to escape. It chittered pathetically as the dragon crisped it, and then they were done—the cause that’d brought them together finished.
Damian waited until his dragon had righted itself before demanding, Change back.
And what would you do if I said no? his dragon asked him.
Then we would fight. Again. Damian braced himself. Before he’d met Andi, it felt like all he ever did was fight. He hadn’t expected the knowledge that there was another way to be to leave him so exhausted with his former reality. Do you really want that?
There was a long internal pause as his dragon contemplated things. No, it said, not right now. Damian felt himself fold back. Changing always cost him his clothing. He jogged back up the stairs to find his men, his bare feet slapping on the cold tile.
He saw Max first, casting the light of the Forgetting Fire he’d brought about to undo magically caused structural problems and erase them from any cameras. Jamison was inside the now reset and restocked clothing store, the wall behind him solid again, as he rewound the end of his rift closing detonation cord, which Damian knew was warded strands of Mills’s long hair. And he heard the static blast of a flamethrower, spotting Zach torching a few remaining hamsters down the hall.
“I’d forgotten we had this in the bus!” Zach announced at seeing him.
“Yes, but it’s not magic…those stains’ll stay,” Damian said, looking at the scorch marks Zach was leaving on the ground.
“Well, we did pull the fire alarm,” Zach said matter-of-factly. “At least something should really be on fire.”
“Pyro,” Damian snorted, as Jamison tossed another sphere at him. He caught it and switched it on.
After a group of firefighters burst in, it was all hands on deck to help Max spot and erase the last of the Unearthly physical damages with the Forgetting Fire before they clocked it. But when they were through, and after Damian had swiped a pair of red gym shorts from an athletic store, making Zach give him a twenty-dollar bill to leave behind, they descended the front stairs triumphantly—at least in their own minds.
Because none of the kids, mothers, or employees who’d stuck around to gawk could see them. Even the same janitor who Damian’d seen earlier had stayed to stare, casually leaning on the metal detector he’d been waving, probably wondering just how much work they were leaving behind for him. Damian would have to give the mall an anonymous donation to make up for the damage Zach’s flamethrower had caused. He brushed by the janitor, bringing up the rear, and heard the metal detector the man had clicking louder.
So did the janitor, who suddenly stood upright.
But instead of looking at the ground, where one would think you would be able to find dropped coins and jewelry with a metal detector, he started looking around him.
Damian paused as the rest of his crew loaded into the tour bus and watched the janitor raise the detector up. The thing clicked more loudly as the man pushed it in his direction, but the janitor couldn’t see him because of the sphere’s magic, although he definitely was looking at something. Damian turned and saw what the man had focused on. A small brunette girl with a pixie cut. Not even in high school, surely, she was riding a girl’s bike with tassels off the handle—she was probably from the elementary school down the street.
And the janitor was absolutely looking at her with intent.
Damian backed up, shielding the girl with his body, assuming the worst and feeling murderous. Did this man even belong here? Was this his gimmick, his way to get close enough to kids?
Damian sidestepped, ready to yank the man into the sphere with him, punch him out, and grab his wallet to figure out who he was and how to prosecute him when the janitor’s attention waved because the metal detector was still going after Damian. The janitor turned, swinging it his direction, and Damian realized it wasn’t a metal detector after all.
The janitor was a Hunter. They’d just affixed a handle to the tool he’d seen the Hunters running around with at Andi’s hospital.
And if Damian hadn’t been there, he’d have been scanning the mall to find people with just a bit of shifter blood in their background, maybe so little that they didn’t even know it was there.
Hunting them.
Kill him! his dragon demanded, rushing forward so hard that Damian swayed.
No! Damian shouted him down inside.
Kill him now, his dragon hissed, seething, clawing, and Damian tensed.
Don’t you think I want to? Damian asked, biting back a groan. The thought of this man preying on kids—at least the Unearthly were carnivores from other Realms, they had an excuse—but this man was human, and he knew what he was doing.
The Hunters they’d encountered recently had been better equipped and better hidden than those in the past. He needed to know more about them, and this was an opportunity to not just torture someone—who might prove strong or a liar—but to spy.
His dragon roiled, and it felt like the beast was biting chunks off his flesh and rending them with its teeth.
Fucking…stop, Damian gritted out, stumbling over to where the tour bus was.
“Damian?” Jamison asked from the safety of the interior.
“Tracking device. Now,” Damian spit out, holding his hand up. Jamison jumped to rummage through a tethered bag and pulled out a chip the size of a dime.
“It’s on,” he said, flicking it with a thumbnail. “But who—”
“Janitor,” Damian said, grabbing hold of the tour bus’s side.
“Are you okay?” Jamison asked.
His dragon was unrelenting. Why are you letting him live? If I were in control—
But you’re not!
Damian pushed the tag back to Jamison. There was no way for him to do it, to get close enough without enveloping the janitor inside his sphere and giving himself away or appearing as a naked man except for gym shorts. That, plus the fact that he would definitely set the detector off. “Tag the janitor. Now.”
“Okay,” Jamison said, snapping to. He set his sphere down and stripped off half his gear in the darkness of the tour bus quickly, thinking along the same lines as Damian.
The dark-skinned man bounced out of the tour bus in black slacks and a black long-sleeved shirt and didn’t look entirely out of place on a chilly day—especially since both of his hands were covered in gloves. He wandered over to the group of people watching the firemen and expressed some interest before walking on, right by the janitor—who was now inspecting his device, probably trying to figure out why it’d registered so strongly just a moment ago—and bumped him, seemingly on accident. Jamison patted the man’s shoulder in apparent apology, and Damian knew he’d slid the tracker into the man’s pocket.
It was done. The tracker would at least lead them to his home, which they could stake out and work back from.
Jamison walked on naturally, and the tour bus circled the block to pick him up. Damian tried to relax, but his dragon wouldn’t let him. It was slamming against his flesh like his body was a cage; he felt bruises blossoming from the inside out.
It’s over…stop! Damian commanded, but the beast wouldn’t. It was as though a switch had been flipped inside. You’ve got to—
I don’t have to do anything! the dragon snarled.
What is wrong with you? he demanded.
The same thing that has always been wrong! I am chained!
I know. Damian breathed deeply, trying to regain control. I’m sorry.
At that, the dragon suddenly stilled, but Damian didn’t know if he could trust it—if he could relax too—or if that only meant that he should brace for what was coming next.
Your regret means nothing to me, his dragon said, but it stopped fighting. Damian had the sense of it receding inside him, to wherever it hid.
“D, are you okay?” Jamison asked quietly, from where he was sitting beside him.
“That’s a matter of opinion,” Damian muttered, then more loudly, said, “I don’t want to talk about it. Let’s just get home.”
The other three men let him off the hook and began talking about other things—how ignoble it was to kill hamsters, even if they were half-zombie, half-insect on the inside, and how no one would believe any of this shit if it were ever in a TV show, a perennial complaint. But at least they weren’t suffering alone and had each other to talk to and laugh with. Damian listened to their jibes and bragging and envied them.
There were days when he wanted to be like them, when he wished his world was simpler. But he couldn’t let go of the fact that he was different, and his differences kept him alone.
Except that now, he had Andi.
He sank back into his seat and closed his eyes and thought of her until Max put the van in park.
“I’ve got that tracker on a trace, okay?” Jamison said as he opened his eyes.
“Good. I’ll check in with you later. I want to know everywhere it goes.”
“Why?” his tech master asked.
“Because that wasn’t a metal detector in his hand. It was a Hunter’s tool,” Damian said with a sigh.
The mood in the van changed instantly.
“Are you fucking kidding me?” Jamison responded, his voice rising in disbelief.
“Why’d we let him live?” Max growled.
“Because,” Damian said, unbuckling his seat belt and getting out of the tour bus, indicating that they should do the same. “We need to know where he lives, where he goes. We need to figure out what the Hunters are up to. Whatever they’re doing now, it’s far more organized than last time. For all we know that man really is a janitor there—under cover—or maybe doesn’t know shit, and he’s just getting paid fifty bucks a week by them to report back. I’m not going to yank someone up to torture them if I’m not sure they don’t have something to tell me when—and if—they flip.”
“Fuck, D,” Zach said, with a head shake.
“I know. It’s awful. And I hate having to think like that. But now we’ll know where he sleeps at night if nothing else. We can stake that out, get a name, have you do your electronic thing,” he said, looking at Jamison, “and track him down. Put traces on his car and credit cards, see who pays him, how and when. If we’re lucky, he leads us someplace good. If we’re not, then we can grab him in a few days and beat what he knows out of him.”
“I don’t like this,” Jamison said, frowning deeply.
“I don’t either. But we need to know more. We’re breaking up a well-funded gang now; they’re not just loose groups of cannibalistic yahoos anymore,” Damian said, and Max grunted. Being from the Realms, he understood the necessity of acceptable casualties more than most.
“I understand, but I’m still pissed,” Zach said, his face curdled by disgust.
“And you have every right to be,” Damian agreed. “Can you contact Stella and find out what information she got the other night?”
“Sure,” Zach said. “I won’t tell her about this, though. She’d hunt that guy down and kill him herself.”
“I’m not asking for long,” Damian said.
“And how long will it take him to murder someone?” Jamison pressed.
“These are the kind of choices you had to make in the Realms,” Max said, coming up behind him. “Which is why Damian’s making it. Not you or me. A situation where both choices are shitty, and neither one lets you sleep well at night.”
“I’m telling Austin,” Zach said.
“I didn’t expect you not to,” Damian granted.
Zach made a small growl and shook his whole body like he was shaking off a fly, a visceral response to Damian’s decision, but he stayed tight-lipped as he turned for the castle.
“Mills is not going to be happy about this either,” Jamison added with a sigh. “But, I’ll restock the bus before I tell her.”
“Thank you,” Damian said, clapping his shoulder, following Zach’s path back in with Max at his side.
“Are you all right?” the bear-shifter asked once they were out of earshot.
Damian shrugged, then realized who he was talking to. “I’m the one who should be checking in with you.” Max was his old weapons master, and he’d come over from the Realms horribly injured a few years after Damian.
“No, I wrote that place off as solidly as you did.” Max snorted ruefully. “What with the whole being blinded and left for dead.”
Damian nodded. If he were a weaker man, he’d still have nightmares about the condition Maximillian was in when he’d come crawling through the mirror. “As long as Ryana’s okay, I don’t really give a flying fuck what happens back there.”
“I just hope the Realms feels the same way about you, brother,” Max said, as they mounted the mansion’s front stairs.
Damian paused once he was indoors, though Max’s words reverberated around him.
His house smelled like Andi. And it felt like if he could just be around her again, everything would be better. He would know he’d made the right decision, and his dragon would behave. He trotted up the stairs quickly, hoping to catch her napping in his bed, because how glorious it would be to crawl under the sheets beside her and pull her close, breathe in her hair, and sleep—or not…depending.
He opened up the door to his bedroom quietly and found her awake and waiting, sitting clothed and cross-legged on his bed, playing with her phone. She seemed startled to see him and emotions he couldn’t quantify played across her face until she took in what he was wearing.
“Were you out jogging?” she asked, arms crossed. There was a strange box sitting on the bed beside her.
“It’s a long story.”
Her eyebrows went high, and then she shook her head helplessly. “I was going to be mad at you, but now I’m just going to laugh.”
He grinned at her. He’d been right; everything was going to be better now that she was here. “Do I normally keep extra clothes in the tour bus? Yes. Do I restock them as often as I ought to? No.”
“So, where did those fetching red gym shorts come from?”
“The mall. I grabbed them on our way out the door. We were in a rush…I didn’t get to try them on.”
“No wonder they’re tight on you then.” The corners of her lips quirked into a knowing smile.
“I don’t know, I thought you might like it,” he said, advancing with a leer.
Andi laughed and pulled back slightly. “No. First off, I’ve seen you fighting monsters before. You’re gonna have to shower before you touch me. Secondly, I’m still mad at you.”
He paused a good three feet away from the bedside and dragged up a chair. “Okay. Why?”
“Because. You raced off again. And I get that’s what you do, and the world needs you, but I don’t like being the girl who waits behind. That’s not me.”
Damian sighed. “I can’t have you out there on the field of battle, Andi. I just can’t. If anything happened to you, I wouldn’t be able to control myself.”
Andi frowned thoughtfully. “And everyone else here has some kind of superpower?”
“Pretty much.”
“Well…how can I get one?”
Damian blinked. “What?”
“My brother got one. Why can’t I?”
Damian stared at her. “Because you’re not a Hunter, Andi.”
Her frown deepened. “So, there’s no possible other way?”
“As far as I know, no. I’ve never smelled magic on you or in you, Andi.” And Rax had confirmed as much last night, aloud. “I can’t claim to fully know what they did to your brother, but whatever is happening to him, I wouldn’t wish that on you.” Damian watched her sigh and sink in on herself. He could almost see the wheels turning in her head as she cycled through other options, and he hoped that one of them wasn’t leaving him. She did have pride, and Damian suspected it was hard going from always feeling capable to helpless. It was part of what he liked about her, the way she was brashly willing to do what needed to be done—regardless of the personal expense.
Maybe he could talk to Mills. See if there wasn’t some object of power she could give her. Or some facet of operations here he could give her control of. Maybe she could help Austin with Ryana. He opened his mouth to say as much, then saw her hand idly play with the lid of the box beside her. It looked familiar.
Like a nightmare he’d tried to banish long ago.
Suddenly, his dragon surged forward, eager to see through his eyes, waiting with bated breath.
Is that what I think it is? it asked him, roiling around in anticipation.
“Where did you get that?” he asked sharply, standing up.
“What?” she asked, looking up at him, then over at the box beside her. “I found it a little bit ago, in a bag. The bag was making everything smell smoky; I put it by the window.”
Damian swallowed slowly. “Andi, please come over here away from that.”
Andi blinked and then did as she was told for once, to her credit, bolting to his side. “Why?” she breathed.
“Stay right here,” he commanded, walking to the bed.
It is, it is, his dragon whispered. It is!
Damian stared at the ornately decorated box, haunted by memories of his childhood. It could be empty.
His dragon laughed cruelly. We both know it’s not.
“And…you opened it?” he asked her, looking back.
She winced. “Just once. I saw what was inside. But then I remembered what you told me about the mirrors, and I knew I shouldn’t mess with it without asking you.”
Damian picked up the box and turned toward her. He didn’t dare open it up, but if Andi had, that explained his dragon’s outburst when he’d been at the mall when it’d tried to tear him up from the inside to be free. “What did you see?” he asked her.
Andi swallowed. “It…it looked like a heart made out of crystal. Like a real heart—not a Valentine’s one—and it was beating.”
Damian inhaled and exhaled deeply. The Heart of the Dragon—the same as his father had shown him once, right after his first change—the object that bound his linage to dragon-kind. The object that granted him obscene amounts of power as a dragon, but stole his soul till he became one.
And the same object he’d come to Earth to get away from, brought here by his incapacitated sister.
Inside him, his dragon’s laughter doubled in triumph.
“Damian?” Andi came up to him. “Are you all right?”
He set the box down behind him on the bed and walked over to her and roughly pulled her against him.