Until I met Kade and learned about the oddities of shifter genetics, I had actually assumed that children were off-limits to me, either because I wouldn’t be able to have babies with humans, or because I would never be able to tell anyone about my shifter abilities.
Now I knew better, but I hadn’t made up my mind about what I wanted to do.
I did know, however, that anytime Kade started putting out that much heat, it worked for me. So if watching me be nice to children was a turn-on for him, I could go with it. As long as he kept nuzzling my neck like that.
He stood up straight. “I’ll be back in a minute. I want to take a look at her chart before we leave.”
I leaned my forehead against the clear glass and spoke to the infant inside. “Okay, sweetheart. I will come up with a name for you soon. I promise.” Her cloudy, gray-blue eyes opened wide again, almost as if she recognized my voice, and I shook my head in disbelief. I was fairly certain I knew this feeling, or something close to it, anyway.
It was an awful like falling in love.
Biting down on my lip, I tried to convince myself that I was not responsible for this tiny person inside the clear box.
But I knew better.
As I prepared to leave, whispering a soft goodbye to the baby and standing to move toward Kade, a shrill alarm blared through the room, causing all three adults inside to jump.
“What is that?” I demanded, pitching my voice loud enough to be heard over the screeching noise.
“Someone has broken into the NICU,” Kade said as he and the nurse both began checking various machines. Kade picked up the receiver of a phone unit connected to the wall and spoke into it, shoving one finger into his other ear to block out the alarm.
When he hung up, he issued a few terse commands to the nurse. I didn’t understand what he was telling her to do, but I knew it couldn’t be good. She hustled across the room to the door and began inputting a series of codes into the keypad by the lock.
Kade’s eyes blazed a violent shade of orange-gold as he turned to speak to me again. “And whoever it is, he’s headed straight this direction.”
Chapter 7
THE NURSE AND I EACH backed up, so we stood directly in front of the new baby’s incubator, one on each side. I didn’t know what kind of shifter the nurse was, but she was growling deep in her throat, and sharp claws had popped out of her fingertips. I was glad to have her on our side.
A hundred different thoughts ran through my mind, but they all came down to the single realization that all of this was directed against the lamia infant.
The attack on Marta hadn’t been coincidental.
Someone—some shifter, I corrected myself silently—wanted the lamia infants destroyed before they were even born, and was willing to kill innocent, traumatized human mothers to do it.
And they thought the lamias were monsters.
A calm voice came over the loudspeaker, calling a “Code Silver” and a “Code Brown,” and directing all patients, staff, and visitors to “shelter in place.” I didn’t know what the color codes meant, but I knew a shifter hospital had to have something in place for shifter emergencies, and I was guessing this counted.
Almost as soon as the announcement ended, someone, or something, began slamming against the locked door into the Contact Isolation NICU room. Kade reached to one side and grabbed what looked like a heavy piece of equipment, and for a moment, it looked as if he planned to use it to block the doorway. Then he frowned, shook his head, and moved it away, instead. “Too expensive,” I heard him mutter.
I was so busy watching him decide what to do, and so distracted by the shuddering of the door, that I was taken utterly by surprise when the ceiling panels above me collapsed and two animals dropped down, almost directly on top of me.
I didn’t even have time to be thankful for Eduardo’s lessons, because I was too busy putting them into action. Before the creatures, both of them large and furry and growling, had time to land, I was already out from under them. The more strategic move would have been to get out into the open center of the room, where I would have space to maneuver. My instinct, though, was to protect the child, so I found myself shoving the incubator up against the back wall and flattening myself against it.
The nurse didn’t fare as well, at least not immediately—one of the creatures had managed to knock her to the ground, and she was alternately lashing out at it with her clawed hands and attempting to protect herself from its teeth and claws. I didn’t have time to help her, though, as the other animal—a wolf, I could see now—had hit the floor on all four feet and gained its balance quickly and was now circling to try to get around me.
From his post in front of the single entrance into the room, Kade had time to spare one look for me before the door splintered around the lock in strips of some man-made material, and the wall around the doorframe broke into chunks. The entire door, frame and all, crashed inward under the weight of what looked like a Kodiak bear.
Wolves and bears.
Holy hell.
Kade had told me that the werewolves were elitist assholes, but he hadn’t mentioned anything about were-bears at all.
But the bear wasn’t my problem at the moment. The wolves were.
I inhaled deeply once and concentrated on the feeling I’d had during practice with Eduardo when I shifted instantly, but focused on controlling the form of my shift, too. In that brief instant, everything I knew about shifting flashed through my mind in something like panic.
Most shifters have some degree of control over their shifts—they can shift completely from human to animal, or partially, as the nurse had by popping her claws. With enough practice, Kade had told me, some shifters could control the size of their animal forms up to roughly their human sizes for the smaller animals (imagine a 180-pound coyote for a moment), and down to their human size for the large ones (that same 180 pounds doesn’t seem quite as intimidating if it’s a Kodiak).
As far as we knew, though, lamias were the only shifters who could gain total control over both form and size. I could turn into any kind of snake I wanted to be, and according to shifter legend, I could turn into something giant.
I had come close, once, when I was fighting against this infant’s grandmother.
Now I was fighting for the baby’s life.
I needed to be as big as the biggest bear on the planet.
Or bigger.
And I needed to get that way fast.
Here in the hospital, I was far away from what Kade called “Earth magic”—the effervescent force I had drawn on out by the river both when I shifted instantly and when I shifted into that larger form.
It didn’t matter. I had to try to make it work, anyway.
On the exhale, I imagined tugging at the air around me to get at that space behind the everyday world where the Earth magic hovered. If the spaces near the Paluxy River were thin spots where the magic seeped into our world from wherever it usually stayed, then there was a way to get to the magic from anywhere.
I simply needed to tear a hole in the fabric of reality.
Everything around me seemed to switch into slow motion.
The wolf in front of me crouched down, preparing to pounce. The giant bear, having moved inside the door and reared up, raised its paw to swipe at Kade. The other werewolf’s jaws stretched wide as it lunged toward the nurse’s throat.