Allied in the Midlife (Fanged After Forty #14)

Chapter 1

HAILEY

The portal had hovered there all day, like a judgmental aunt at a family barbecue, refusing to leave or even acknowledge that its presence wasn't, in fact, welcome.

Staring at it too long made my eyes water and my gums buzz, an effect unique to a really sketchy dentist's office.

Its surface rippled with shifting geometric patterns, and behind that, something impossibly bright pressed outwards.

It wasn't the biggest supernatural mess I'd dealt with, but it was easily the most ostentatious.

The backyard had transformed in record time from a place where we could roast marshmallows and bitch about HOA regulations to a triage center for panic, strategy, and passive-aggressive commentary.

The portal hung about ten feet above the grass, surrounded by nearly my entire extended found-family, all arguing at once about what to do.

"You're standing too close to it," Ransom barked, his shoulders rigid as he paced a rut into the crusted March soil. His fists opened and closed with a relentless rhythm. "Everyone, back away ten feet minimum. We don't know if it's stable."

"It's obviously stable," Luke countered, though he was about two minutes from losing his cool, too.

He'd planted himself between the nearest clumps of human (and not-so-human) bodies and the portal, his arms extended in the universal gesture for please don't approach the screaming eldritch rift, we're all very tense right now.

"If it were going to collapse or explode, it would've by now. "

Kendra was on her knees in the dirt, her fingers moving with feverish speed as she inscribed glowing runes into the ground.

Each sigil sparked for a moment, then faded, leaving behind the faint smell of burned…

was that basil? Her mouth moved in silent calculation, her eyes darting between the patterns and the portal.

Janice had retreated out of the blast radius, phone pressed to her ear as she delivered staccato updates to what I assumed was Hunters HQ.

"No, I told you, it's not an energy weapon, it's a spatial anomaly," she hissed.

"It’s a portal. Well, unless you've got an anti-Euclidean railgun in the armory, I'm open to suggestions, Frank. "

Claudia and Paige had taken up defensive positions around the kids, Emily and Goldie huddled together on the back steps.

Ivy hovered at the periphery, half-lurking behind a hydrangea bush, her eyes so wide I was afraid they'd fall right out and roll under the deck.

Every so often she'd peer up at the portal, then retreat back into the foliage.

Cleo stood at the epicenter of her own personal security detail, Grim and Nash bracketing her with a predatory readiness that said they'd both spent way too much time in sketchy nightclubs.

Cleo kept her expression neutral as Nash scanned the treeline for threats that might be less visible than the thirty-foot-wide glowing hole in the sky.

If anyone had ever wanted to see a dragon have an anxiety attack, they'd have found no better example than Flint.

He'd spent the first hour after the portal's arrival trying to dig a hole in the rose bed, failed, then taken up a post at my heels, his tail lashing in erratic bursts.

I caught his eyes, a frantic flicker, and opened my arms on autopilot.

He launched himself upward, squeaking and wing-flapping in panic, and burrowed under my chin, his claws scoring little slits in my shirt.

I'd add "sew up shirt" to the week's chore list. He vibrated intensely.

On the farthest edge of the patio, well outside the sphere of practical concern, Izora stood with Adalinda, holding court with a tiny quivering dog.

Izora had dressed the animal in a cabled, sky-blue sweater that matched her own tailored pantsuit, and Courage seemed to have accepted its fate with dignified resignation.

Izora smiled thinly, her eyes reflecting the portal's light as she offered her running commentary to the universe. "Well, this is certainly going to complicate everyone's evening plans."

I lost track of how many times the phrase "worst case scenario" got bandied about. Everyone tried to contribute, and everyone talked over everyone else.

Paige's eyes darted, her hands fluttering uncertainly. "Should we call someone? I mean, besides the Hunters? The Council?"

"Yes, let's call the vampire council," Ransom said, biting off each word. "I'm sure they have a well-established protocol for dealing with rifts in the fabric of reality."

"Don't you have a protocol for everything?" Janice chimed in, pen clicking, her tone a perfect blend of admiration and utter exasperation.

"Technically, yes," Ransom admitted and resumed pacing.

I did what any responsible adult would do. I hugged the trembling baby dragon closer and tried not to let my teeth chatter in time with the portal's humming.

The arguments reached critical mass, Janice barking orders, Kendra sketching faster, Emily and Goldie whimpering in their huddle, when, without preamble, the portal burped.

It wasn't a metaphor. It made a strange sound and then Luci dropped through the portal.

He landed in our midst with his hair immaculate and shoes shiny.

He looked at the crowd, his lips curled in a delighted smile.

His eyes, for an instant, held the entire spectrum of visible light and at least three other colors that probably shouldn't have names.

He turned to me. "You guys have to see this," he said. Then he grabbed my free hand, the one not wrapped around a panicking dragon, and yanked.

Everything in my body screamed at the violation of physics. My legs left the ground, the world went sideways, and Jax's face hung below me, all wide eyes and outstretched arms, his mouth forming the word "HAILEY!" But it couldn't anchor me to this reality. I was already falling.

The portal's surface was soft, like pressing my face into cotton candy that had been woven by a madman and seasoned with battery acid.

Flint squealed, his claws digging into my sternum, and the world folded into itself, warped and ugly and brilliant all at once.

Luci's hand was impossibly strong and warm, and then we were through.

We tumbled, our limbs flailing, dragon shrieking, until we landed hard. I rolled, my momentum carrying me, and ended up flat on my back, Flint splayed across my chest, both of us panting.

Luci stood above me, perfectly composed, and held out a hand to help me up. "Welcome to the afterparty," he said, grinning.

If we survived this, I was going to kill him myself.