She nodded, tears burning in her eyes. She darted forward enough over her mate’s body to kiss him, hard and quick, then took his keycard before sprinting back for the stairs. No elevator could beat her time just then.
Kissing a woman was beyond weird, but Tori didn’t let it faze him. He used the dragon’s breath she gave him, funneling and refining it as he focused on the paralytic spell wrapped like gold chains around Cassie. “Klak aese!”
The spell splintered and spun away, the shards of it disappearing before it could even hit the carpet. With that gone, he could see the effect it had on her. Cassie’s skin was cold and clammy, sweat dotting her skin. She was panting for breath, and a fine tremor ran through her body, like an aftershock of being electrocuted. Which was no doubt what it felt like to have power ripped out of her body like that.
He put two fingers to the pulse on her throat, monitoring it, and it was far too rapid.
“S-sir?” a woman’s voice tentatively asked behind him.
Tori looked up to see a woman in the hotel’s grey and red uniform peering over a table at him. He mentally winced. He didn’t speak Polish and didn’t have a translation spell on him. There was no way he would be able to understand her. Unless…
He carefully plucked off Cassie’s earring with the translation spell embedded in it.
“Can we help?” the woman asked, possibly for the second time. Too much was happening, and she was the least of his concerns.
“I need a pillow, blankets, and water,” he answered quickly. “She’s going into shock.”
“I—okay.” To her credit, she didn’t ask the obvious questions, just hurried through the lobby and into the back rooms, her heels clacking as she ran.
Someone else brought him a water bottle—the barista from the coffee shop—and he gave her a quick thanks even as he tipped some of the water carefully into Cassie’s mouth.
The barista stayed hunkered nearby, eyeing him warily. “Um. That looked like…magic?”
“It was,” he answered briefly. Right now, there was no way in hell Tori could come up with a plausible story to explain the magic being thrown back and forth in the lobby, and frankly, he wasn’t in the mood to try. This world knew that magic and dragons had existed. They were just under the impression it had all died out. If they learned they were wrong, well, that was no skin off Tori’s nose.
Baldewin and Warin came running back, both of them frustrated and practically steaming with anger. Baldewin dropped down to his knees next to Tori. “How is she?”
“In shock. She was basically magically electrocuted. Sasha’s fetching my bag.”
“You can help her?”
“Yeah. Fortunately, I know how to treat this. The Jaeggi?”
“Had a quick getaway planned. They were in a van and out of the parking garage before we could catch them.” Baldewin cursed lowly in German. “Warin?”
Warin nodded and drew out his phone, no doubt updating someone on the situation. Alric or Cameron, possibly both. He stood so he had his back to them but his eyes on the lobby, acting as a perimeter defense.
Sasha was back, running for him. He took the bag from her, quickly opening it and pulling out four vials. As he did so, he cautioned Sasha, “Don’t kiss her, don’t breathe near her mouth. Her magical core can’t handle something as powerful as dragon’s breath right now. Open her shirt for me. I need access to her chest.”
She was good at following orders, even with the worry pouring off her in visible waves.
Tori undid the lids on the glass bottles, opening nectar of honeysuckle, stillness of moonless night, untouched snowflake, and moonlit water. He needed every soothing, cold element he had on him, and fortunately he had a good mixture of water, wind, and earth elements to work with. He poured a good half of each bottle on her chest, right between her small breasts, mixing them on her skin with his hand. “Fekats resti sana co gev adi.”
Cassie sucked in a deep, shuddering breath, then released it in clear relief.
Tori took the mixture of elements and rubbed them from her sternum to her throat, and she eased even further as the cooling effect spread through her system. He eyed her carefully, monitoring her as best he could, but she seemed to be past the worst of it now. His spellwork was reversing the worst of the damage, although she’d likely sleep for the next few hours recovering from this. God, just the idea of how painful that had been sent a sympathetic shudder through his body.
The hotel employee came back, her hands full of a thick comforter and two pillows. Sasha quickly helped her with both, taking the pillows and sliding them gently under Cassie’s head. Baldewin helped settle the blanket over her, and Tori drew it up to her chin. “Thank you, ma’am. Sasha, I think I have her over the worst of it. Here, take the water bottle, get more down her if you can. She’s severely dehydrated right now.”
Sasha nodded, taking the bottle and tipping it carefully into Cassie’s mouth.
The front lobby doors opened, and four cops spilled inside, their hands already on their weapons. When they didn’t see a firefight in progress, they stopped and milled around in confusion.
“Of course someone called the police,” Baldewin sighed. “Alright. I’ll deal with them.”
Better him than Tori. Tori would tell them to go away.
But then, his nerves were still strung out after diving into a magical fight while being practically unarmed and then dealing with a patient when he only theoretically knew what to do. Yeah. Baldewin was the better choice. “Baldewin? Pretty obvious it was a magical fight going on here. Just FYI.”
Baldewin groaned, shoulders slumping. “Yeah. Thanks for warning me.” He pushed to his feet and caught Warin’s eye, motioning to Tori.
Warin nodded and came to kneel on one knee, offering the phone to Tori. As Baldewin left to go handle the police, Tori accepted the phone a little gingerly. Did he really want to talk to whoever was on the other side?
“Tori.” Cameron’s voice came through clearly, and he sounded more than a little panicked. “How is my sister?”
Shit! Of course it was the consort-brother. “Look, I won’t lie. They drained her pretty bad, and if it wasn’t for her magical connection with Sasha, she’d probably be half-dead right now. But I’ve applied a reviving potion directly to her skin, and I think she’s stabilizing. She’s no longer sweating, her skin is warming up”—he put two fingers to her throat and frowned—“but her pulse is still elevated. We should be able to get her moving soon, but it will take a few days to completely heal from this. But I think she’ll pull through it.”
“You know how to treat this?”
“I mean, I’ve read books on how to do it. We’re all taught it, just in case we accidentally have a spell backlash, as it’s basically the same thing. It hits you right in the magical core and overloads you. It feels much like an electrical burn. First time I’ve had to use the knowledge on someone, though. So, if you want to send someone out here to back me up, I won’t be offended.”
“We might yet. I will be calling on the hour to get updates.”
“Absolutely. We’ll hop on a train, get there as quickly as we can, okay? Right now, though, I need to make sure she’s stabilized enough to travel.”