Alaric hit me from behind.
I went down, face planted in the gravel of the parking lot.
I never heard the gunshot.
The bullet struck me on my left side, smashing through my ribs on its way to my heart.
I heard Alaric scream my name, but his voice seemed to come from a long distance away.
He heaved himself off of me. I think he turned me over, but I couldn’t be sure. Even so, I stared up into his face, his eyes, felt his hands press against my wound. Pain lashed me with the force of a cat o’ nine tails. Cold leached into my flesh, sinking into my bones.
I blinked.
Alaric was gone.
Where he had been was a monster from hell.
Great eyes blazed down at me from an incredible distance away. Massive jaws opened and belched red-orange fire into the night. Leathery wings blotted out the stars.
“I’ve got you. Hayley, I’ve got you.”
Alaric’s voice, and yet not his. Talons, similar to an eagle’s but far, far larger, opened up over me.
I know I must have hallucinated everything, for those tremendous talons closed over me. They picked me up carefully –
Chapter Ten
Alaric
Damon and Fiona drove away at high speed and down the road, the car’s tires kicking up a noisome cloud of dust and gravel.
I could have caught them. Chased them down from the air, flamed the vehicle until it was little more than a chunk of molten metal. No bodies would have remained behind. Just a pile of hot ash floating on the sea breeze, no way to identify them.
I didn’t dare chase them.
Hayley took the bullet meant for me. She lay on the ground, bleeding heavily, her breath far too shallow, her skin almost translucent with shock and blood loss. If I didn’t get her to a hospital in the next few minutes, she’d certainly die.
“I’ve got you,” I said to her, my voice hoarse with panic. “Hayley, I’ve got you.”
Enclosing her within my powerful talons, I gently lifted her to my chest. Terrified I’d kill her, I carefully closed my long foreclaw over her ghastly wound in the hope of keeping her from bleeding out. Muttering a prayer to the goddess of my people, Lanokota, I launched myself skyward.Help me. Don’t let her die. I need her to live.
Not caring that I might be seen by humans, I flew over the city. Though I usually flew over the ocean, my wings beating lazily within the strong sea winds, I knew the city well enoughfrom a height. The traffic, the street lights, far below guided me toward one of the major hospitals. I dipped my left wing and banked toward it, diving fast, hoping against hope there were no people in the staff parking lot behind the hospital.
As I dropped lower, I searched the area for humans. At this late hour, no one walked from their cars to the staff entrance or vice versa. All appeared quiet, and darkness illuminated only by fluorescent lights on their tall poles. Back winging, I dropped to the asphalt as close to the building as I could get.
I shifted into my human body, Hayley in my arms.
“Hang in there, Hayley,” I muttered, my shirt soaked in her blood. “Hang in there.”
I know she couldn’t hear me, but I heard her raspy breathing, the faint thudding of her heart. I ran for the emergency entrance, trying to not jostle her. I yelled as I ran, bellowing at the top of my lungs.
“Help! Help me! She’s been shot! Help!”
Two paramedics, lounging near a stopped ambulance, saw and heard me approaching. As though a bloody madman ran toward them with a woman in his arms every day, they instantly unloaded a gurney from the ambulance’s rear doors. By the time I reached them with Hayley, they took her from me and set her on it.
My shouts must have been heard inside the emergency ward as well, for nurses in scrubs rushed from the automatic doors to help the EMTs. Within seconds, they hustled the gurney with Hayley inside. I stumbled after them, gasping for breath though I hadn’t run far. Chasing the gurney and the medical team pushing it, a nurse spun around and halted me before I entered the trauma room they took Hayley to.
“You can’t come in,” the nurse said crisply, pointing past me. “Wait over there.”
