their story, one thing was for sure. That boy loved them like family, and the feeling was mutual. The fiery glint in his eyes promised agony to anyone who tried to come for them on his watch.
The thick snap of bone and vicious yowls of agony made tracking their transformational progress easy.
The earsplitting roar as the big cats emerged clued in the coven that they had waited too long to strike. A ripple went down their line, and they donned skins, each one more hideous than the last. Midas could name only two of them. The rest…he had never seen anything so terrible.
“I’ll do what I can to preserve the hearts,” Bishop told him. “You don’t care now, but you might later.”
Midas shoved the debt out of his mind and focused on the hunt. He let the magic claim him, sweep him away on a tide of primal need and hunger for prey between his jaws. Teeth on display, he set about herding a snack toward Hadley.
Twenty-Seven
I hurt. All over. Every part of me. Nothing felt right. Some things I didn’t feel at all.
“We need to bring her in,” a man said from somewhere to my left.
“Her vitals are good,” a woman agreed. “Let’s get her out of here.”
“What the actual hell,” another man murmured, awe and horror in his voice. “Do you see those?”
“Whatever those are,” the first man said, “I ain’t hanging around to introduce myself.”
“Wait.” I coughed, but my stupid eyes refused to open. “Wait.”
“We’ve got you,” the woman cooed. “You’re all right.”
“Midas…” I couldn’t feel my right arm. No, my whole right side was numb. “Where…?”
Silence filled the area once packed with voices. Whatever they saw, they didn’t want to tell me.
“We need to relocate you to the hospital,” the second man tried. “We can’t stay here.”
A trip to the ER didn’t frighten me. All major hospitals had paranormal wings. Most had entire floors dedicated to emergency care. I just didn’t have the time. Proper medical care was a luxury I couldn’t afford right now.
Try as I might, I couldn’t nudge Ambrose into action. He was weaker than he ever had been, and it left me too drained to do more than mumble and twitch my fingers as they loaded me into what I assumed was an ambulance based on the antiseptic smells.
As much as I hated to do it, I had no choice. I couldn’t leave the others to face what these EMTs were too afraid to articulate.
“Sip,” I thought at Ambrose. “Just a taste.”
They had the doors shut and the engine purring before he worked up the stamina to drink from the nearest person—the woman. She tasted like a witch through our bond, and she gave him enough of a spark to seek out the men, also witches, and drink from them too.
“I don’t feel so hot,” the woman murmured. “I hope I’m not coming down with something.”
The energy animating Ambrose took its sweet time reaching me, but it gave me enough of a boost to open my eyes. I ripped off the oxygen mask, pulled the needle out of my arm, and flung the tubing aside. I felt like death warmed over, but everything appeared to be in working order.
“You shouldn’t do that,” she whispered drowsily. “Let’s both…take a…nap.”
Her lids fluttered closed, and she began to snore where she leaned her head against the wall.
The groans from the front told me the guys were on their way to Dreamland too.
Ambrose had taken more than I would have liked, but he hadn’t hurt them. That was progress. I would have treated him if I had more than a hole in my pocket where his truffles used to be.
After unfastening the straps securing my waist and legs to the gurney, I swung my feet over the edge and braced my palms on the walls to get to the door. It must have weighed a thousand pounds, and it took me at least fifty years to budge it, but I got it open before I required a walker to shuffle to the rescue.
The view out the back stumped me for a beat, and I rubbed my eyes to see if that helped.
Nope.
There still appeared to be six lions and a chonky lizard interspersed among the gwyllgi.
“What drugs did they give me?” I leapt out, which is to say I flopped forward and hit the dirt with my face. “Ouch.” I struggled against gravity to get onto my hands and knees. “Whatever it was, it did jack