Andi didn’t think she knew the answer to that right now. “Yes…no…maybe?”
“Come with me,” he said, gesturing her forward with both hands. She took a step and then he picked her up and over the monster’s corpse, setting her down on the far side.
“Damian…you…” she tried again, reaching for his stomach where his beautiful abs had been slashed repeatedly.
“Don’t worry about me.” He caught one of her hands before she could touch him. “This is just my usual Saturday night,” he said, and pulled her down the hall, sweeping his coat up on the way.
They ran into the last ICU room and found Austin there—and Zach—covered in even more blood, but this time it was red.
“What happened?” Damian demanded the second they were inside.
“I’m sorry, I couldn’t stop it, and I couldn’t leave him. There are Hunters here,” Austin was saying, as she ran up to Zach’s bedside. He was torn up again, having given birth to the latest monstrosity. It looked like a war zone.
“How the fuck is he even alive?” she whispered, looking between the men. “Like, is he part zombie?” She dodged around Austin and dialed the blood pressure medications up. Jessica…was dead. She wasn’t her favorite coworker by any stretch, but that didn’t mean she deserved to die.
Maybe Damian could do something to save her? He knew magic or something, right?
“What are you doing?” Austin asked from his position beside Zach, where he was holding pressure on him again.
“Postponing the inevitable, I hope,” she said, folding up her panic and putting it into a mental box. She’d just cranked up all the medication that might help. “The blood bank’s on the third floor, I can go—”
“No, you can’t,” Damian said, grabbing her arm to stop her before looking at Austin. “How much longer?”
Austin glanced at his wrist. “Five minutes. Does he have that, with all those?” he asked, eyeing the pumps.
Andi looked up at the monitor and felt her nursely exterior sliding back into place. Somehow Zach’s numbers weren’t plummeting downward, not like they ought to be—if she’d lost as much blood as was on this floor now, she’d be dead for sure. So there was some other element she didn’t know at play here. “I don’t know, I’m not God, but maybe?”
“All right, good,” Austin said, then he stared at Damian. “She shouldn’t be here.”
“Fuck. You,” Andi told him and reached to take Zach’s pulse. She could see it on the monitor, but she needed to feel it—skin to skin—to actually believe he had one.
Damian grabbed her hand before she touched him. “Don’t. If that’s real silver, you’ll hurt him.” He held her hand up so that she could see her bracelet and rings. “Tell me everything,” he asked Austin, releasing her.
“He was fine until an orderly came in and started poking at him,” Austin said. “Waving something over him? Short guy? Bald? Had full sleeve tattoos.”
Andi cut him off. “But we don’t have orderlies on our floor.” One of the hazards of being an ICU nurse—better patient ratios, but less ancillary staff to help.
Austin’s jaw clenched, and he looked to Damian again. “Then it was Hunters for sure. I knew it. That guy set all this off. Goddammit, D, this is why I told you the hospital was a bad idea—”
“Fine, we’ll install some sort of blood bank at the castle for the next time someone has a portal open in them. Oh, wait, that’s never fucking happened before.” Damian’s voice was low and pissed off as Andi’s mind started to churn.
“I know, I know,” Austin said, his tone an apology. “But how the fuck, D—”
“What do portals look like?” Andi blurted out. Both of the men turned to look at her. “I think I saw it. This morning.” The thing that had glinted in Zach’s belly before being submerged in blood. Maybe she hadn’t imagined it—maybe it was real.
Damian grabbed her shoulders. “What did you see?”
She thought back quickly. “It was shiny like mirror glass—like a little piece of mylar.”
“An implanted portal mirror? Impossible,” Austin said.
“And yet, here we are,” Damian said to himself. Underneath the tatters of his T-shirt, his skin was healing—nearly whole—but she still wanted to touch it to make sure. He frowned in thought, then reached a hand out to her as if he’d read her mind, and she bit her lips. “Give me your bracelet, Andi.”
She inhaled to ask why but didn’t for once, as she took it off and handed it over. Its silver didn’t seem to hurt him as he bent it straight like a blade.
“Austin, get back,” Damian warned.
The other man stood his ground. “No. We’re just two minutes away now—”
“From that thing being stuck inside him again, and who knows when this all repeats itself,” Damian said, advancing on the bed.
“Maybe he’ll heal it out!”
“Who knows how long it’s been there? It’s coming out tonight. This is too much chaos to clean up a third time.” Damian pushed Austin aside, and Zach started freely bleeding again. Andi gasped and ran to the IV pumps to dial all of the medications higher, ignoring all the warning alarms. “If he dies, it’s better his death is on me than you,” Damian said, deciding.
“I can touch it if I put on gloves!” Austin said, running for the boxes on the walls. “I can do it!”
“Do…do what?” Andi twisted back, clearly missing some vital piece. But then, in a moment of horrible clarity, she understood, because Damian was holding her bracelet up like a scalpel and bringing it inexorably down to Zach’s abdomen. “Oh my God, you’re going to hurt him, aren’t you?” Andi whirled back to the remaining IV pumps—one of them was fentanyl—and she cranked it up. “Do you even know what you’re doing?”
“Yes. Do you?” Austin challenged her—no, he was challenging Damian—and his voice was low and full of menace that hadn’t been there just before. Something about the man had changed. He was bigger—how?—and his clothes were tighter, and his wristwatch’s band snapped. It didn’t make sense to her, but then nothing for the last three hours really had, had it? She bit her lips to keep her panic to herself, and focused on Damian instead.
“Let me do it,” she demanded, stopping his hand with her own.
Damian looked at her darkly. “It’s not safe.”
“None of tonight has been safe!” Her hand clenched around his. He would have to pry her off to continue. “And medical procedures aren’t safe. That’s why generally you get people’s permission before doing them!”
“We don’t have time,” Damian growled.
“He was my patient last night, and he’s still my patient now. You will have to hurt me before I let you hurt him,” she hissed.
“You don’t know what you’re getting into,” Damian protested.
She was using all of her strength against him and she hadn’t even made him budge. It wasn’t fair—it would have to be words or nothing. “But I do. This is my job, remember? I’ve had way more experience at this kind of thing than you. So let me help.”