Authors: Dean Murray
I felt like I'd
been hit by a baseball bat. I should have seen it before she even
made it inside of the room. The resemblance was incredible. They both
had the same straight blond hair and similar features.
On Ash they
looked good, but his sister was nothing less than gorgeous. She had
the delicate cheeks and chin of an angel, and a body that, even under
stolen hospital scrubs, I could tell was perfect.
Somewhere along
the way she'd acquired the toned, hard build of a dedicated athlete
without losing the femininity I'd always found so attractive in Jess,
but it was her eyes that most captivated me. They were an incredible
shade of gray that had depths to it that I'd never seen anywhere
else. Right now they were filled with heat, not all of which was
directed away from me, but it was still all I could do to pull my
gaze away from hers when she glanced back to confirm that I was still
outside of striking range.
"You
wouldn't dare shoot me, Ashley."
Ash looked like
he wanted to flinch when she used his full name, but his hand stayed
rock-solid.
"I think
that you'd be surprised at what I'd be willing to do, Celeste. I've
studied under some people over the last few years who were every bit
as hard and unforgiving as you or Mom. Isaac and I just finished
killing four of the Coun'hij enforcers Onyx had out looking for us.
One of them got their claws into Kristin, but the rest of us all
walked away under our own power. That should give you an idea of just
how dangerous I've become since we last saw each other."
Celeste looked
back at me appraisingly. "He doesn't look that impressive. This
Kristin chick must be hell on wheels."
"Isaac
would surprise you, but Kristin is a normal human. She's pretty good
with a gun, but she didn't uncork some puissant ability and magically
eliminate two or three of the opposition hybrids if that is what
you're thinking."
For the first
time since she'd entered the room, Ash's sister looked uncertain of
herself. It had been obvious that Ash hadn't been lying when he said
that we'd just finished mopping up a hit squad that would have been
capable of taking down some small packs.
"I'm not
bluffing, Celeste. If you don't put me down in the next ten seconds
I'll shoot you and deal with the consequences of having one more dead
body on my hands."
"You're a
better liar than you used to be. You'd never get a shot off before I
transformed and cut your throat. Even if you did, it would take more
than one shot to stop me."
"Maybe,
but I can guarantee you won't be beating Isaac with a bullet lodged
up against your heart. Two seconds."
It was like
watching two trucks filled with explosives slide towards each other
across a sheet of ice. Everything was happening in slow motion. It
felt like I should have been able to do something to stop the wreck
from happening, but I couldn't.
Celeste thought
she was still dealing with the same scared teenager who had left home
more than a decade before. Even worse, she probably had the same
stubborn streak that caused Ash to consistently throw himself into
fights that he shouldn't have been able to win.
That was the
thing though. He did tend to win them. Ash had learned that the only
way to be respected by a dominant was to be willing to put his life
on the line to back up his position. This was the most important
interaction he was ever going to have with his sister. If he backed
down now then he was always going to be working at a disadvantage. It
was the first step in a dance that would ultimately lead to her
bossing him around for however long they were together.
If there was
one thing that I knew about Ash, it was that he would die before he'd
become a slave to his sister or anyone else. More importantly, he'd
kill in order to avoid having his choices taken away like that.
It was
surprising in someone trained by spies, but he viewed the world
through the same lens as the shape shifters from a thousand years
ago. Once he was your man he'd endure terrible things on your behalf,
but his loyalty wasn't something that could be taken by force.
For Ash it was
all one long, unbreakable chain. If he backed down now then it was
just a matter of time before his sister would push him too far and
he'd be forced to try and kill her. It was now or never. She had to
accept him as an equal, as a possible rival, or all bets were off.
They were
frozen for one impossibly long second with Celeste's hands against
Ash's throat, suspending him in the air and his gun dimpling the
fabric of her scrubs. I was positive that neither of them was going
to blink, and then Celeste's phone buzzed with an incoming text. It
gave her an excuse, a way of backing down that was external to the
two of them and the standoff that they'd locked themselves inside of.
I was watching
closely enough to see Ash's finger start to take up the slack on his
trigger as his deadline wound down, but his sister set him back down
a fraction of a second before her time ran out. As she fished her
phone out of her back pocket I wondered if she knew how close he'd
come to shooting her. I hoped so. It would probably avoid a lot of
issues down the road if she understood that Ash wasn't going to back
down.
"One of my
people back at the house just texted me to let me know that Onyx
received a call a few minutes ago that has him nine different kinds
of excited. He jumped in his car and drove away in a hurry. Any bets
as to why?"
Ash closed his
eyes for a single second. It was his way of preparing himself for
what we all knew was coming.
"He just
found out we're here. How long do we have before his people start
arriving?"
"If I knew
that I'd be prescient and I would have killed him off long ago. It
all depends on who he's got out helping the enforcers the Coun'hij
sent down to look for you and how close they happen to be. My person
back at the house would have spent a couple of minutes getting
somewhere safe before they texted me. People could show up within the
next five minutes. You might have more than that, but he'll be here
himself within the next fifteen minutes. What's your escape plan?"
Ash tossed me
two of the bug-out bags and headed towards the door with the other
one. "I'm not sure; I'll let you know as I figure it out."
Celeste brushed
past me, hot on Ash's heels.
"You came
here without a plan?" Her question came out in a hiss that was
too faint for the humans at the nursing station to hear.
"Of course
not. The plan was to talk to the lamias, find out where Dream Stealer
is and then go and kill him. We've just run up against some problems
that I haven't finished working my way around yet."
"Ashley!
What the hell are you thinking? We don't talk about them outside of
the family."
Ash stepped up
to the nursing station, but he got one last jab in. "It's Ash
now, and these days Isaac is more my family than you are—it's
been at least a day and a half since he threatened to kill me."
The nurse
looked up as Ash put his free hand, the one not buried inside of his
bag to hide the fact that he was carrying a huge semi-automatic with
a silencer on it, on the counter in front of her.
"I'm sorry
to bother you, but where did they take my wife? She's got some
allergies that her brother wasn't aware of and I need to make sure
that they haven't given her anything that will send her into shock."
"You got
married without telling me!"
Celeste's
exclamation was nearly loud enough for the nurse to hear, but Ash's
expression didn't flicker at all.
"I can
pull up her list of medications right here, sir, and make sure that
she hasn't been given anything problematic. Then we can enter a note
on her file and make sure that nobody gives her anything they
shouldn't."
Between the
news that Onyx was on his way, probably with half a dozen or more
hybrids to back him up, and the tension between Ash and his sister I
already had a confused, worried expression on my face. I amped it up
to eleven and made sure that the nurse saw it before I turned and
started down the hall in the direction her doctor had come from.
"There
isn't time; someone could be sticking it in her IV drip right now!
I'll start checking rooms down here."
I could hear
the nurse's gasp from twenty feet away. She was probably worried
about lawsuits and losing her job. Given the ongoing, low-level
concerns with terrorism for the last several years, having someone of
Middle-Eastern descent running around the hospital screaming was the
kind of thing that could start a panic, but Ash didn't give her a
chance to think of calling security.
"Crap.
He's incredibly protective of her. Quick, which room is she in? It's
the only way to stop him from searching the whole hospital."
"Second
floor, room 236."
I spied an
elevator bank off to my left, but I didn't wait for it. I threw open
the heavy gray door to the stairwell and went up the stairs three at
a time. Ash and Celeste were only about a second behind me.
"I didn't
get married, not yet at least—we are waiting for her to turn
eighteen first. It's just a cover story so that they'll keep us in
the loop on her status and not go hunting her parents down."
"Wait,
your girlfriend is seventeen? Please tell me that she's seventeen. If
you're dating a sixteen-year-old I swear I'll kill you myself."
"We don't
have time for this, Celeste. How well do you know this hospital?"
"Better
than you do."
"Then lead
or get out of the way, but either way shut up."
I stopped in
the hallway, looking both directions in an effort to figure out the
hospital's numbering system, and Celeste brushed past me.
"Intensive
care is this way, but this conversation isn't over. Mom and I raised
you better than this—I'm not going to just sit around while you
date someone half your age. That's statutory…it's just wrong."
It took us less
than thirty seconds to get to Kristin's room with Celeste leading the
way. We weren't running, but most people would have had to run to
keep up with us.
"What's
the best way out of here, sis?"
Ash flipped up
the thin blanket covering Kristin and slid his bag underneath her
bare legs as he waited for a response from Celeste.
"There are
only two main entrances with two larger parking lots and half a dozen
smaller ones scattered around the periphery of the building. Do you
guys have a vehicle?"
I shook my head
as I slipped my bags under Kristin and then covered her back up. The
bags were only marginally less conspicuous this way, but it was
better than nothing.
"We were
going to buy or steal one once we knew Kristin was going to be okay.
No time for anything other than stealing one now."
Ash already had
the wheels on the bed down and was moving the IV bag over so it was
suspended from the bed rather than the freestanding rod next to the
bed.
"Whoever
trained you was an idiot. My car is in the west parking lot, we'll
take it."
I grabbed the
wires running between Kristin and the bank of expensive monitors next
to her and disconnected them with a single powerful pull that would
have made Donovan flinch. The computers at the nurse's station
started beeping as soon as the monitors were disconnected, but it
would be a few seconds before anyone made it over to Kristin's room.
Ash patted the
bed as he looked at his sister. "Hop up there and give everyone
a show so they don't stop to think about the fact that we're stealing
one of their patients."
Celeste didn't
look particularly happy to be taking orders from her kid brother, but
it wasn't a bad plan, all things considered. She climbed up on the
bed, straddled Kristin's chest, pointed to the left, and then we were
out in the hall.
I took the
front of the bed, but I didn't really need to pull it along at all,
Ash provided all of the propulsion anyone could have possibly wanted,
all I needed to do was just steer the rocket ship as it went
screaming down the hall.
"Call the
dialysis unit and tell them we'll be there in four minutes and they
need to be ready for us!"
Celeste was a
better actor than I would have given her credit for. She managed to
sound terrified but in control and anyone watching us from the
nursing station wouldn't have been able to tell that she wasn't
actually compressing Kristin's chest.
"That
should buy us some time assuming that we're actually headed in the
direction of the dialysis unit."
Celeste shot
her brother a dirty look as she bent down and pretended to give
Kristin mouth-to-mouth.
"Of course
the dialysis is this direction. Turn left at the next intersection
and then hang a right at the end of the hall. The stairs we want are
sixty yards further along."
Supernatural
strength is nice, but it only lets you do so much without decent
traction. At the speed that Ash was moving it was all I could do to
keep us from crashing into the wall. My feet slid across six feet of
slick linoleum floor before the leading edge of my shoes slammed into
the far wall and gave me something substantial to push against.
Celeste wasn't
ready for the sudden change in direction and started toppling over as
I muscled the bed around and got it headed the right direction again.
When Ash slid into the same wall and the back end of the bed changed
directions it was too much for her and she nearly took a header into
the wall. She saved herself by grabbing a bar on the bed, but it was
a close thing and she bent the slender metal in the process.
The deformed
bar made me revise my estimate of her strength up a couple notches.
You didn't do something like that in human form without having some
weight behind you and on her it was obviously all muscle.