Change of Heart (The Potentate of Atlanta Book 3) Page 25

  “She’s alive,” the boy reported. “Her circle is holding.”

  Relief buckled Midas’s knees, and he almost hit the dirt.

  “There are a lot of bodies between her and the point of origin.” He chewed on his lower lip. “They’re insulating her, but they’ve mostly cooked down to their exoskeletons.” He ruffled his hair. “They look like…” He shook his head. “It sounds crazy, but giant roaches.”

  “That’s exactly what they are,” Bishop told him. “Good work.”

  Midas bit down on the question, but it escaped anyway. “How do we get her out?”

  “We need to get the bodies off her,” Aubrey decided. “They’ll crush her if she breaks her circle.”

  “We can’t afford to wait on equipment to arrive,” the captain said. “We’ll have to dig her out ourselves.”

  “I recommend a pair.” Aubrey frowned. “More than that, and there won’t be room to relocate the debris.”

  “I’ll go,” Midas volunteered at the same time as Bishop.

  They looked at each other, and Midas swallowed his anger as best he could until they got through this.

  “Here.” Remy passed Midas the rope she had tied off on a nearby tree. “Don’t get dead.”

  Shocked by the sentiment, Midas quirked an eyebrow at her.

  “I wouldn’t want to miss my chance.” She scuffed her shoe. “I like to keep my options open.”

  “Aubrey,” the captain ordered, “get started on the outer ring. We need to contain this fire.”

  With a snappy salute, he nodded. “Yes, sir.”

  The boy shifted and scurried into the flames…and then he began devouring them. The magical inferno raged around him, but he kept mowing down the blaze with chomps of his wide jaws.

  Tearing his eyes from the spectacle, Midas tossed the rope into the pit and climbed down, choking on the smoke. He called up when he was clear, and Bishop rappelled in to join him.

  “Aubrey said she’s there.” Bishop pointed. “We need to shift as much refuse to the other side as possible.”

  Careful not to put their weight directly on top of her, they began hauling carapaces, dirt, and other debris to the far side of the pit. Their skin burned, and the stench was overwhelming. Their lungs fought to get enough oxygen, and Midas stumbled more than once from dizziness.

  An eternity later, they reached a hard shell that, once they dusted off the muck, revealed Hadley curled in a ball on a patch of dirt unmarked by the explosion. She was unconscious, but she was breathing.

  “Big spoon to little spoon.” Praying for a smile, Midas finished clearing the path. “Can you hear me?”

  The shadow pooled beneath her perked at the sound of his voice and slithered over her in a protective black shroud. Midas noticed Bishop watching and understood that he had known about Hadley. Based on the taste he’d had of Bishop’s blood, Midas wasn’t surprised to learn the fae could see through glamours.

  “Ambrose,” Bishop said, and the shadow inclined its head. “Break the circle. We’ll do the rest.”

  Midas cranked his head toward Bishop. “Ambrose?”

  “That’s his name.”

  Bishop gave him that much but nothing else, and Midas respected that he was protecting Hadley.

  The shadow dove into her, weaving in and out, until she cried out in pain, and her lashes fluttered.

  “Jerk,” she mumbled. “Back off.”

  “Hadley.” Midas pressed his hand to the bubble. “Break the circle.”

  Her lids raised a fraction, and her gaze locked with his, but she didn’t budge otherwise.

  “Break the circle,” Bishop urged. “Come on, kid. You can do it.”

  The shadow kept punching through her until tears streamed down her cheeks, but the pain rallied her. She twitched her fingers, dragging grooves in the dirt, until she reached the edge of the bubble. With a grunt of effort, she raked her nails through the line, and the magic collapsed around her.

  Midas scooped her up in his arms, but she was already unconscious. The shadow coiled around her shoulders, clinging tight, but Midas held them both as Bishop rigged him a harness from the rope so the others could pull him and Hadley out. With so much manpower, it took a minute. Maybe two. Then he was free of the eye-watering smoke and dragging in heaving breaths of fresh air.

  Bouncing on her feet, Remy made grabbing motions. “I’ll take her.”

  She didn’t wait for him to agree, just gathered Hadley with help from another Remy, then ran to a grassy patch where paramedics waited with the ambulance.

  The beast rose in Midas, its possessive instincts roaring, but he let it go. He had done all he could do. He had to turn her over to the experts, even as he wished for Abbott to tend to her.

  The others began hauling Bishop out of the pit, and he flopped onto his back when he reached the top.

  Aubrey, who was coiling the rope like he meant to store it, glanced across the clearing. “Who are they?”

  Three men stood with three women and watched the paramedics rush to save Hadley’s life.

  Midas couldn’t say how long they had been standing there, waiting, but they must have shown up after he and Bishop entered the pit. Otherwise, he had to believe he would have noticed them. Then again, if Aubrey hadn’t mentioned it, he might still have been oblivious.

  His brain was stuck in a rut that made thinking impossible.

  Hadley. Hadley. Hadley.

  “This is exactly what we don’t need,” Bishop panted. “Gods above, this night just won’t quit.”

  “Ares.” Midas located her among the other somber faces. “Send up a call.” He stared down the coven. “See if the wargs are still in the area.”

  Ares filled her lungs and issued an invitation to anyone who heard, who understood, to come and join in.

  “I didn’t realize you spoke the same language.” Bishop scratched his cheek. “Makes sense, given you share common ancestors.”

  “The language we speak in our other form is a mishmash of gwyllgi and warg, but some things are universal.”

  The others joined in, strengthening Ares’s voice, but no cries rang out in answer.

  “They’re gone.” Bishop exhaled. “Guess it was too much to hope they’d stick around to chew the fat.”

  “You should go,” Midas told Aubrey. “We can’t protect you from what’s coming.”

  The youth straightened his shoulders but nodded. “I’ll tell the captain.”

  “They’re just standing there,” Midas said. “Why don’t they act?”

  “They might not have figured out the firemen are paras yet, but they will. Bad guys have a sixth sense for that. Or, you know, they’ll kill all the witnesses and call it a day.”

  Midas grunted agreement then glanced back at Hadley.

  “We need her.” Bishop read his mind. “Her battery is too low, but she can’t fight until she recharges.”

  Alarm swept through Midas as he watched the paramedics struggle to revive her. “What do you mean?”

  After checking their surroundings, Bishop asked softly, “How much do you know about her…condition?”

  “Only what I can see,” Midas admitted, unable to out her birthname to explain he knew more than that. “She has to recharge?”

  “Not her.” Bishop’s gaze bounced from her to Midas. “Ambrose.”

  The alarm clanged in his ears, deafening. “How?”

  “Magic.”

  Midas stared at his burnt hands. “Can I…?”

  “Shifter magic isn’t enough to whet Ambrose’s appetite. We need a battery to hook up to him.”

  The coven in the distance drew his attention. “Will they work?”

  “Yeah.” Bishop hesitated. “One of them would be plenty, but it might juice the heart dry.”

  “I don’t care.”

  “You might later.”

  “No.” He let the beast stare out of his eyes. “I won’t.”

  The deal was his to uphold, and he would. One way or another. Na
tisha might have been willing to bargain with him because of Hadley, but taking one heart had almost broken her. It was cruel to expect her to bear the entire burden alone.

  “All right.” Bishop crackled his knuckles. “Let’s do this.”

  “Hold up,” the captain called. “Aubrey says there’s trouble coming.”

  “Trouble is already here.” Midas indicated them with a jerk of his chin. “You should clear out while you can.”

  “The twins told me it was the potentate down there.” He shifted his weight. “That true?”

  The twin comment threw him for a loop before he noticed two Remys standing together near Hadley.

  “She’s the next best thing.” Bishop failed to conceal his pride. “She’s his apprentice.”

  “I have a proposition for you.” The captain rolled up his sleeves. “Hear me out?”

  “Make it quick,” Midas said, eyes straying to the coven, to the fix Hadley needed to get back on her feet.

  “Folks tend to get jumpy after they hear about Aubrey.” He wet his lips. “We’re getting tired of roaming, and we could use all the help we can get keeping our family together if we decide to make Atlanta our permanent home.”

  Midas cocked his head. “Why Atlanta?”

  “We heard things are better for shifters here, for anyone who’s different.” He shrugged. “Rumor has it the potentate is fair and doesn’t discriminate.”

  There were factions, necromancers among them, that viewed shifters as little more than animals. That Hadley viewed them as equals and protected them with her life had clearly resonated with more shifters than the gwyllgi.

  “I can’t make any promises.” Bishop spread his hands. “I’m not the one in charge.”

  “I can give you the word of the beta and heir of the Atlanta gwyllgi pack that if you help us,” Midas said, “we will ally with you to help defend your claim on this territory against others of your kind.”

  The vow was too big for him to make, and under other circumstances, he wouldn’t have dared without the alpha’s permission. Mom could rescind his vow, and it would damage his reputation. But that would come later. They needed help now. He was willing to risk it all for the chance to bring down the coven and pay his debt to Natisha.

  “I can’t ask for better than that.” The captain stuck out his hand. “Call me Gray. Everyone does.”

  “Welcome to Atlanta,” Midas said with a growl in his voice. “This is what you need to know about the coven.”

  Quickly, Midas filled in Gray so he could warn his pridemates, but the alpha didn’t balk at the task.

  Once he left to fill in the others, Bishop cleared his throat a few times.

  “That wise?” He clarified, “Giving them carte blanche?”

  “We need the help.” Midas would have to survive first to regret it later. “Beggars can’t be choosers.”

  “I’ll get Reece on a background check.” Bishop sighed. “We screen newcomers, so I’m not sure how they slipped through the cracks. That might be on us, or it might be on them.”

  “They’re hiding the boy,” Midas reminded him. “They kept their heads down for him.”

  “They could have presented him as a cub,” Bishop countered. “Secrets make me itchy, is all.”

  Midas cut him a flat look that conveyed the sheer nerve Bishop had in making that claim.

  “Other people’s secrets,” Bishop clarified toothily. “I’m fine with my own.”

  About to check with Gray, he turned to find the alpha loping toward him.

  “We’re set,” he said. “Give us a half hour to shift, and we’ll be ready to go.”

  They might not have a half hour. That’s what Midas was thinking. But he didn’t say it. “Okay.”

  The pride backed off and stripped out of their gear while Aubrey stood watch over them.

  Whatever 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 diddly for the pain.”

  Ambrose coalesced beside me, shades lighter than usual, and he gazed into the distance with anticipation.

  “Oh crap.” I got what the EMTs were raving about and totally empathized with their urge to burn rubber back into the city. “The coven.”

  Six…things…charged down the hill toward the line of gwyllgi, and I almost fainted from the rush of blood to my head as I wedged my legs under me. The limp-noodle state of my arms told me sword fighting was a no-go. I could barely shamble toward them.

  “Don’t make me regret this,” I told Ambrose. “Pick one.” I kept stumbling. “Drain it dry.”

  The shadow bent his head and planted a kiss on my cheek then sped toward the biggest, ugliest, meanest I-don’t-know-what I had never seen. With the bloated head of a tiger, body of an elephant, and tail like a pug, it was pure nightmare fodder. Until it whirled to snap at a lion that got too close, I hadn’t noticed the golden gwyllgi herding it right for us.

  Not one to dawdle when food was on the line, Ambrose honed himself into a black spear and struck the creature in its heart. It roared and thrashed as it fell with a thump that shook the ground beneath my feet.

  The others glanced around, Team Good and Team Bad, shock bright on their faces, and that’s when they spotted me.

  Luckily, Ambrose was too busy gorging to thin my cut of the magic to a trickle. That, or it had overflowed him and had nowhere to go but into me. I didn’t care. I would later. If there was a later, but it felt good to have my aches and pains fall silent and my body once again following my brain’s commands.

  “My swords,” I ordered him. “Ambrose.”

  The shadow ignored me and continued to feast. Unfortunately for him, now that I was flush with power too, I had the reserves to yank his metaphysical leash until he had no choice but to heel. He slunk to me, uncaring as the other creatures descended upon my friends. I jerked on Ambrose until his fury singed the back of my throat in a scream he couldn’t utter, but I got him close enough to reclaim my weapons.