Chapter 13
Andrew
“…not talking,” David’s voice says through the phone on Sam and Gideon’s coffee table.
We retreated to their place to regroup, leaving CSG security and enforcement to secure the office while we try to work out what the fuck is going on and where Noah could be.
“I think we need to get a warrant and bring a judge in to find the truth.”
I pace restlessly across the carpet. “On what grounds? We’ve got nothing to connect them to Noah’s disappearance or the attack on the office.
And without that, no judge is going to grant a warrant to invade mental privacy.
” As a rule, our judges tend to be vampires, and the truth is gotten directly from the source.
Gideon shakes his head. “We still have to try. Those two hellhounds in custody are the only link we have to finding Noah right now.” We all look at Percy. “Is he still okay?”
Percy shrugs helplessly from his seat on the couch. “No change that I can tell. I’m trying to get the magic to tell me more, but…”
Yeah. If only existential magic was actually able to communicate with us and gave a crap about individuals.
I flex my fingers and make myself take a deep breath when I realize my claws are out.
“Let’s apply for the warrant,” Sam suggests. “The worst they can do is say no. In the meantime, we can go over it all again. Either they found a way around the teleportation wards—”
“Without any demons,” Alistair interjects.
“—without any demons, or—”
Percy’s wordless shout cuts him off and brings the enforcement guards waiting in the entrance hall bursting through the doorway. A second later, a body materializes at my feet.
It’s so emaciated, it takes me a second to realize it’s Noah.
“Medic!” Gideon roars as I drop to my knees and gather Noah carefully in my arms. “Secure the lucifer!”
An enforcement field medic rushes forward as two of her teammates take protective stances around Percy and the others check the rest of the house for surprises. I can hear Noah’s heartbeat, but it’s so weak.
The medic, a sorcerer with a mild healing ability, says, “He needs a hospital. He’s not wounded; he’s dehydrated and malnourished.” She looks me in the eye. “He needs a hospital now .”
Ten days later, I’m still sitting by Noah’s bed in the CSG enforcement clinic, listening to him breathe and waiting for him to wake up.
At least he’s not on the respirator anymore.
During those first few days, while the doctors tried desperately to get enough fluids and nutrients into him to keep him alive, we had to rely on modern science to help.
I haven’t left this room since he was brought here.
Part—most—of it is because I need to know he’s still alive, but officially, it’s because Noah is the only witness to the attempted break-in at CSG, which makes him a target.
I’m not risking him. I don’t even use the bathroom unless one of my teammates is here to sit with him.
We’ve taken to having our status updates here. It’s secure enough, and this way, Noah can be a part of it. Percy says the magic is being even more clingy and protective of Noah than usual, and that it seems very determined. I think that worries him—it definitely worries me.
“How’s he doing?” David walks in and comes to stand beside me, looking Noah over clinically. He has no healing ability, but I know he can see the weaves the doctors are using to maximize Noah’s nutrient intake and help rebuild his muscle mass. “He looks better than yesterday.”
It’s true, he does. And yesterday he looked better than the day before. He’s still painfully thin, and he’s going to have to do a lot of work to rebuild his strength and muscle, but the almost desiccated, skeletal look he had when we brought him in is long gone.
“His fingers were twitching before,” I report. “Without the machines, I mean.” The doctors have been using electrical impulses to stimulate the new muscle, but that was this morning, and I definitely saw his fingers move this afternoon.
“That’s great.” He goes around the bed to sink into the chair on the other side. “Did the latest brain scans show anything new?”
I shake my head, gently stroking Noah’s hand. “No. Everything still looks the same. We just need him to wake up.”
“Whenever you’re ready, Noah,” David teases. “Don’t think I’m not going to yell at you for teleporting just because you’ve been unconscious for over a week.”
That’s our best guess, by the way. We still don’t know how anyone got into CSG or how they got out with Noah, where they went, or what they wanted in the first place, but it seems pretty obvious to us that Noah teleported away to get back to us.
He has the same after-effects as last time, except on a much more massive scale, which makes sense given he moved a bigger object over what we believe must have been a greater distance.
Well, it pretty much had to be, unless his abductors had him stashed in Gideon’s LEGO room.
We don’t know how he knew to come to Sam and Gideon’s house, although David’s theorized it might be a location thing—perhaps his kidnappers hadn’t gotten too far from the office, after all.
Sam and Gideon’s place is the closest to CSG headquarters, and might therefore have been the closest safe place for him to go.
We have no clue, and the only way we’ll find out is when he wakes.
Which he will.
He has to.
“Aidan arrived last night,” David tells me. “He and Percy were still discussing plans when I left the office.”
Our warrant application was declined, which in any other situation I’d say was the right decision.
Deep down, even as angry and unreasonable as I’m feeling right now, I know it was right.
Those hellhounds have the right to be charged and tried according to our law, and we can’t definitively link the attack on David and Elinor—who’s fine but pissed as fuck—to what happened at the office.
Sure, it would be an incredible coincidence if the same person or people—Tish—wasn’t behind them both, but right now, we can’t prove anything.
Unfortunately, that still left us with two hellhounds who might have vital information but weren’t talking.
So Percy called Aidan, who’s the species leader of all shifters.
He flew out to Portland to talk to the hellhounds himself—and if that had no effect, compel them to speak.
Fortunately for them, they gave in and answered his questions.
Unfortunately, they didn’t know much. But it turns out they’re from the same pack as the hellhounds Alistair smelled in the CSG office, so Aidan spent several days visiting that pack to see if he could find out more.
“Still no obvious links to Ti—” I break off when I feel movement against my hand and look sharply down at Noah.
His eyelids flutter.
“Fuck me,” David says, scrambling out of his chair. “I’ll get someone.”
I lean forward, gaze intent on his beautiful face. This is the biggest reaction he’s had. “Noah,” I croon. “Can you hear me? Please wake up.”
Another flutter, another twitch of his hand… and then his eyes slit open and he squints.
I reach over and slap the light switch beside the bed. Half of the lights in the room go out. “Hey,” I manage, trying not to cry. “You’re back with us.”
“An… rew?” he croaks.
“Yes, it’s me. I’m here.”
His mouth stretches in a lopsided, weak attempt at a smile. “I—fucking—win.” He closes his eyes again and his breathing deepens, but it’s different this time. He’s just sleeping.
He wins.
It’s another eighteen hours before Noah is alert and aware enough to hold a proper conversation, although he drifted in and out of sleep quite a bit during that time.
He’s still incredibly weak and has very little muscle strength, but after a battery of tests, the doctors are satisfied that he has full brain function—well, for a human, anyway.
All he needs is high-nutrient food, rest, and extensive physiotherapy, and he’ll be able to resume his life.
“Are you sure you’re up to this?” I ask, not for the first time, but I don’t want him to overdo. He’s already tried several times since he became coherent to tell me what happened, but I insisted he needed medical clearance first.
“Shut up and sit down,” he orders, talking a little slower than usual, his words sounding clumsy, but then reaches out—slowly and shakily—to hold my hand. He takes a deep breath, then looks over at Percy.
“I had to breach the ward because Tish was there with an elf and he was stretching it open.”
I blink.
“What?” Elinor says dumbfoundedly. “I think my concussion might not be healed yet.” She only arrived a few days ago, having had to wait for medical clearance to fly.
The doctors healed her broken bones to a certain point that made them stable, but she still has a cast on her leg and some tenderness in her ribs.
Noah moves his head slightly as if to shake it, then grimaces. Slowly, he walks us through what he saw, and I begin to wonder if maybe the brain scans missed something important. Then he gets to the portal, and I look at Percy. He needs to stop Noah so we can call the doctors in.
To my shock, Percy’s gone pale. Not in a “damn, you have a traumatic brain injury” way, but an “oh no, the elves are coming through the portals” way. And I’m not the only one who’s noticed.
“Percy?” David asks sharply.
Percy shakes his head. “Let him finish.”
Noah’s eyes widen at this tacit acknowledgment that Percy knows more than he expected, but obligingly continues.
“…and then they locked me in the linen closet and I decided to try to teleport home,” he concludes. “I’m sorry I didn’t stick around and try to get more information, but I wasn’t sure when I’d have an opportunity like that again.”
“You did the right thing,” Sam insists, squeezing Noah’s foot through the blanket. “We wouldn’t even know this much if you hadn’t come back.”
There’s a general murmur of agreement, and Noah manages a small, uneven smile.
“So.” He looks at Percy. “Where was I? On a distant planet? Was I so far, light from that sun hasn’t reached our planet yet?” He seems a little too excited by this idea.
Percy clears his throat. “Actually, you weren’t on another planet at all.”
Noah’s face falls. “But… the grass was orange.”
“Sorry, I meant you weren’t on another planet in this universe.” Before I can fully take that in, Percy continues. “You were in another dimension.”
“Say what?” Alistair’s jaw has dropped, but awareness is dawning in David’s eyes.
“I thought those were myths,” he says sharply. “All the archives mark them as folklore.”
Spreading his hands, Percy says, “And they may be. This is something I didn’t know about until Noah was speaking and the magic…
gave me the information. The portal was opened between our dimension and theirs by a member of a species that lives there.
And those portals used to be quite common, but that stopped around the time of the species wars.
That’s it. That’s all I know. We’re going to have to dig through that folklore and see if we can verify any of it as being factual. ”
“The magic won’t tell you anything else?” Gideon asks, sounding more off-balance than I’ve ever heard him before.
Percy shakes his head.
“So what we know,” Sam says slowly, “is that at least one elf or group of elves from another dimension have teamed up with Tish for reasons that aren’t clear and can use portals to move around at will?”
“That sums it up.” David rubs the bridge of his nose, no doubt thinking of all the research ahead while we wait for Tish to make his next move.
“I don’t think they can use the portals just anywhere,” Alistair says. “If they could, why not go right to Percy’s office? Or at least to the inside of the ward. Whatever power these elves have, the wards do have an effect on it.”
“That’s something, at least,” Elinor grumbles.
David stands. “I think we should let Noah rest while we put together a plan to tackle this research and shore up our defenses. Noah, as soon as the doctors say you’re up to it, you’ll be in charge of the folklore challenge.”
Noah manages a small, slow nod. “I’m in.”
The team disperses, saying their goodbyes and heading back to the office. When Noah and I are alone, I smile at him.
“I’m so glad you’re awake. Let me recline the bed for you so you can sleep.”
“Don’t you fucking dare,” he drawls, tripping over the words. “I’m not sleepy yet.”
“You need rest,” I chide, but I leave the bed alone and reach for my water bottle instead. The thought of elves from another dimension popping in and out of portals has made my throat a little dry.
“I love you,” Noah declares, and I spit water across the bed. He laughs, a slow heh heh heh . “If I’d known you’d react like that, I’d have told you while the others were here.”
“Very funny.” I want to hit the call button and get him a dry blanket ASAP, but I also really want to hear him say it again. “Are you… Do you…”
“Are you at a loss for words? This day will go down in history.” The movement of his mouth is not quite a grin, but the sparkle in his eyes says it all.
“I love you, Andrew. I know our relationship is still new, but for a while I didn’t think I’d get the chance to say it, so I’m seizing the opportunity now. ”
All the feelings I have for him rush up in me, wanting to burst out. My fangs descend as though I’m an out-of-control adolescent.
“You’re sure?” I choke out, and then at the look on his face, “I’m not doubting you. I just… I’m so much older than you. You’ve been through a lot, but most of your life is still ahead of you, and I’m coming to the end of mine.”
“You’ll still likely outlive me,” he points out. “Are you really trying to talk me out of loving you?”
“I love you,” I burst out. “I love you. I’ve waited over eight hundred years to feel like this. I’ve loved before, but nobody’s ever been you. I think I started to love you when you broke my nose.”
He laughs again. “I can do it again anytime you want. Now kiss me, damn you, because I can’t move that far yet.”
So I do. And when my fang nicks his lip, he mutters something about sneaky vampires and deepens the kiss.