Chapter 8
Carla
Holy shit!
Holy shit!
Holy shit!
The sirens are screaming.
Magma and Flint exchange a look. I’m panicking. I don’t know what to do. I don’t know where to put my hands, so I clasp them in front of me.
Robyn comes running out of her office. She’s wearing sweats. Her hair is mussed, and her eyes are bloodshot. She blinks at the three of us.
“Is it the patient? Is he coding? What’s happening?” she asks.
“Mistveil is attacking,” Ridge says, sounding calm.
“What?” Robyn looks at him like he’s just told her the moon is made of cheese.
Magma’s phone starts ringing. He pulls it from his pocket and glances at the screen.
“It’s Reed,” he says, then answers the call. “Is this what I think it is?” he asks and then pauses to listen.
The silence is awful. Whatever Reed is saying, it’s making the line of his shoulders tighten.
“How many of these feral males are there?”
Feral males.
Holy shit!
He listens again for what feels like an age. Then his eyes narrow into thin, dangerous slits.
“Fuck!” he snarls. “Okay…copy.”
He listens for a few more seconds.
“Understand this: I’m going to counterattack, and I’m not holding back.” His voice has dropped low and rough. “Noted.” He nods once.
He ends the call and shoves the phone back in his pocket. He turns to Flint and Ridge.
“The excommunicated, feral males who live in the jungle on Mistveil somehow caught wind that the borders are open, and many of them are on their way here right now. The Mistveil guards are doing their best to stop them, but they underestimated how much effort it takes to guard such a long stretch of coastline. They’ve always inadvertently had us helping them, so to speak.
At least fifty feral Reds have broken through, with more expected to follow. ”
Feral Reds. What the hell? I thought all the Mistveil shifters were civilized. I thought the whole feral thing was a rumor.
“Over fifty?” Flint’s eyes go wide. “What happened to sixteen?”
“That was the start of it. More are attempting to cross, and Mistveil guards have their hands full. There are several hundred of them in that jungle. At least fifty have broken through the Mistveil defenses. Call your teams and have them intercept. We need to throw everything at it. They are not to hold back. I told them we weren’t ready for this,” Magma growls the last.
Flint is already on his phone. Ridge does the same.
“What do these males want?” Robyn asks, sounding frantic.
“Females,” Ridge says.
“What for?” I ask.
Magma’s eyes meet mine for a beat too long. “To mate with,” he tells me. “The two of you need to—”
Snare runs into the hangar at the same time as the sound of metal being ripped fills the hangar, and then a whole side section of the roof is gone. It’s like the lid of a giant sardine tin being opened.
Early morning light filters through the gaping hole for a second before shadow takes over.
“They are attacking all the large buildings on Draig Island,” Snare yells.
“Including this hospital,” Magma snarls. “Use deadly force if need be.”
Snare shifts, his clothes ripping off as he does.
Above us, a Mistveil dragon is descending through the opening, scales the color of blood. Snare launches up to meet it.
Robyn screams, and Ridge grabs her hand, and they run.
The two beasts collide in the air with a sound that punches through me.
They tangle, snapping and snarling, and then they’re gone, both of them disappearing through the broken roof, fighting as they go.
The screech and crash of them carries on outside, somewhere over the building.
There are more sounds all around us now.
All drowned out by the sirens, which somehow seem louder.
There are screams and roars.
“I’m not permitted to shift,” Flint shouts at Magma. “I still have the vaccination in my system.” He sounds frustrated.
“Neither can I,” Magma shouts back. “I’m not cleared yet. Go with Ridge and get the females to safety.” His face is pulled tight.
Flint grabs my arm. His fingers close hard. “We need to move. Do you have a basement?” he asks.
I start to answer when the other end of the hangar splits apart.
A second dragon punches its way in, and a chunk of ceiling crashes down where one of the trauma carts had been parked five minutes ago.
A nurse runs past us. Her eyes are huge.
Her mouth is open in a long, soundless scream.
From the other side of the building, more screams answer.
The sirens keep going. The fighting overhead is getting louder.
“We need to stay together!” Flint tells me. “Let’s go. You need to hide.” He’s already moving us toward the wall, pulling me with him. “Try to cover your scent. You—” The floor shakes. I feel it through the soles of my flats.
Another dragon lands through the new opening, moving slow and deliberate this time.
“Shit!” Flint snarls.
The dragon starts to shift but doesn’t do it fully.
Flint pulls me away. My legs feel like lead. I can’t take my eyes off it.
It’s half male and half beast now, taller than any man I have ever seen in my life, easily ten feet of him.
His skin is patched with scales over his shoulders, his thighs, the sides of his torso.
His face is mostly human, except his nose is flatter and his lips are pulled back from too many sharp teeth. It, too, is half covered with scales.
His eyes are bright yellow and slitted down the middle. There are red markings along his arms and chest in twisting lines. His hands end in claws. His feet do too. He starts toward us.
“Run!” Flint screams at me. “I’ll hold him back. Go to Ridge and Robyn. Hide.”
He lets me go and runs back to the thing.
I want to run. I really, really want to, but my feet won’t move. They’ve turned to lead.
Where should I go?
Nowhere is safe.
The thing is walking toward Flint. His grimacing smile shows me a mouthful of pointed teeth.
“Female.” He sniffs the air. Sniffs it in long draws. He makes a sound deep in his chest, low and pleased, the kind of sound you’d hear from a dog that’s just been shown a steak. His slitted eyes are on me. “Mine,” he growls. The word comes out closer to a snarl than speech.
“Fuck off!” Flint shouts. “You can’t have her!” he growls, his shirt ripping across his shoulders. He is bigger than before but holding back from shifting.
He said that he still has the vaccination in his system, so he can’t shift. He will go completely feral if he does.
He’ll kill indiscriminately.
Flint steps in front of me. Unfortunately, the half-shifted thing makes him look small.
“Go back to your island.”
“Not without a female.”
My eyes widen, and horror fills me because between the creature’s legs is a huge, jutting erection.
My stomach turns over. I turn and run, making a sobbing noise. I bolt back the way Robyn went.
I glance over my shoulder. Flint is throwing punches that the creature absorbs like they’re nothing.
He gets in one good hit to the throat and the half-shifter coughs.
Then a clawed hand catches Flint across the side and rakes through his shirt, through skin, through whatever else is under there.
Blood blooms across the white of his shirt in a sudden, awful flower.
Flint goes down on one knee. He’s still trying, even on the ground. He grabs for the creature’s leg.
“Flint!” I scream it without meaning to.
He hits Flint, who goes flying.
The half-shifter’s slitted eyes find me again.
“Mine,” he says. He starts after me. I run like my life depends on it down a corridor that branches into two.
I take the left, shoving through a swing door into the diagnostic bay.
The lights are out in here, and emergency strips run along the floor in red.
On the far side is a row of imaging machines.
They’re big and white and bulky. I dart between them, drop to my hands and knees behind a CT scanner, and crawl into the gap between it and the wall.
I pull my knees up to my chest. I press my hand over my mouth so he can’t hear me breathing.
From the corridor, the swing door bangs open. I hear his claws scraping on the floor. He’s walking slowly. There’s a long, drawn-in breath, and I realize that he’s sniffing like an animal. “Cover your scent” Flint had told me.
Is he sniffing me out?
Another sniff. Closer this time. “Come out, female. I know you’re in here.”
Crap!
I look around, but there is nowhere to go.
He laughs; it’s low and ugly.
“Why are you hiding from me?”
I press myself against the wall. I close my eyes like a child. Maybe if I can’t see him, he can’t see me. Footsteps stop on the other side of the scanner. The biggest machine in the room, but it isn’t enough.
He sniffs once more, right above my head, making a groaning sound. “You smell so good.”
A clawed hand comes around the edge of the machine, pulling it away.
I whimper.
He’s standing over me, grinning.
“Leave me alone.”
“I can’t.” He reaches down and grabs my upper arm, hauling me up.
I scream and twist. Then I kick at his shins and his thighs, and anywhere I can reach, but it’s like kicking a wall.
I beat my fists against his arm. I claw at the hand around my bicep, my nails skidding off his scales.
He just lifts me higher, until my shoes are dangling above the floor, and he tilts his head and smiles at me with all those teeth.
“Pretty,” he says.
“Let go of me!” I hit at his face.
He blinks.
“Stop that.”
Then he flips me, fast, and tucks me under his arm like a rolled-up rug. The breath punches out of me. I’m hanging there with my legs kicking at nothing, my hair in my eyes, his arm locked across my back.
He smells like an animal that’s been out in the rain. He carries me out of the diagnostic bay at a jog. Down through the corridor and past Flint’s body.
“Flint!” I scream. “Please…help me!” I yell.
Flint doesn’t move. I can’t tell if he’s breathing. The sirens are still going. There’s smoke now, drifting down from where the roof is open. Two more dragons are tangling above the hospital, somewhere up there in the gray light.
He walks impossibly fast, headed toward the far end of the hangar. I dangle under his arm, trying to think of a way out of this.
Please let there be a way out of this.
I open my mouth to scream for help, and a clawed hand clamps over my mouth before any sound comes out.
I whimper.
The half-shifted dragon drags me into the wide opening where the roof used to be. He lifts his face to the sky. He drops me just long enough to change, and his body explodes outward into a dragon with red-marked scales.
I scream when a huge claw closes around me.
It snatches me off the floor before I can take two steps.
Then we’re going up. The world drops away in a sickening lurch.
The opening in the roof flashes past. The hospital shrinks, and cold air slams into my face and pulls my hair straight back.
Below me, the loading bay, the parking lot, the lights of the hospital.
Above me, the underside of a Red Dragon, and the curve of his claw caging me in.
“Heeeeelp!” I scream it, but the wind eats the word as soon as it leaves my mouth.
Another dragon comes at us from the side.
I see it for half a second, and then the Red Dragon banks hard.
I am thrown against the inside of his claw.
My head clips something. The other dragon snaps at his wing and misses by a foot.
I see into the thing’s mouth, and it’s all teeth.
The Red Dragon climbs. He flips, then he twists in the air like a fighter jet, and I almost pass out.
My stomach comes up into my throat, or, at least, it feels like it.
For a few seconds, I am sure I’m going to vomit.
I gag, but thank god the feeling soon passes.
He banks again. Another dragon snaps at us from below, his teeth gnashing together.
I’m sure I’m screaming, but I don’t hear a thing. There’s only the rush of the wind and my heart beating in my ears.
My captor swings me out of the way at the last second, and the claw squeezes tight on the upswing. My ribs grind together. I can’t get a full breath. Then he’s away, pumping his great wings fast. Way faster than I knew anything could fly.
The wind almost pulls the breath out of my lungs. The lights of the hospital are already smaller. I can’t quite fill my chest. I can’t get air past the speed of us. I press my face against the inside of his claw, just to have something between me and the sky, and I try to breathe in small breaths.
I have never been this petrified in all my life.
I’m shaking all over. My mouth goes dry.
Below us, the island slides away, until the hospital is a smudge.
The town is a string of yellow beads along the coast. Then there is nothing but deep blue water.
We are over the ocean. I crane my neck and look back.
Draig is behind us. There are dragons in the air above it, dark blots against darker sky, but none of them are coming. None of them are following us.
I am doomed.