TWENTY-FOUR
Jae heard his name called from the other end of a tunnel. Where was he? There were tunnels in Europe they used to play in, but that was long ago. There was his name again. It was Ker yelling for him. A sting hurt his ear and his eyes popped open.
The last few minutes came rushing back to him. The person on the road who stopped them. The eerie laughter. The avalanche.
The witch. It had to be Sylvana who concocted this.
Surprisingly, the car sat wheels down, though at an angle with the passenger side lower than the driver’s. The outside of the car was pitch black. No doubt they were covered in deep snow. How deep, he’d have to find out momentarily. Inside the car, the dash lights were still lit, allowing him to see Avery slumped in her seat.
“Jae, you okay?” Ker asked. His voice was slightly panicked.
“Yeah. You?” he said, reaching for his love.
“Fine.”
Hannah moaned. Ker had her sitting up, her head back to help stop her bleeding nose.
Jae carefully touched Avery, hoping she’d awaken, too. “Avery, love. Wake up.” She didn’t respond. Terror ripped through him. She could not be dead. He listened. Her heart beat and she breathed. He almost crumbled with relief. Then he saw the cracked passenger side window with a red splotch at ground zero of the spider webbing. Avery’s head had smashed into the glass and now she wasn’t waking.
Jae tried to undo his seatbelt, but it was jammed. His dragon’s claws made quick shreds of it. With shaky hands, he slowly brought Avery up to lean back against the seat.
“Careful, Jae,” Hannah whispered, “her neck could be bad.” Steady hands came over the seat from behind and rested on Avery’s shoulders. “The pain is centered on the side of her head. Oh my god. Her brain is swelling. We have to get her out of here and to a hospital now.”
Jae stared at Avery’s eyes, waiting for her to open them. She had to be fine. He’d been waiting for a millennium to feel this kind of emotion for a woman. She wasn’t going to die in a wreck where he wasn’t even scratched.
Ker bashed his back window, startling Jae from his trance of denial. His little brother partially shifted his upper body and breathed fire into the packed snow, creating a hole. Great idea.
“Hannah, we’ll get the car unburied,” Jae said. “Please, please do what you can to save Avery. I love her with my soul.”
The woman smiled from the backseat. “I know you do. She loves you just as much.”
That surprised him. “Has she said anything to you?” he asked.
“No,” Hannah replied. “You can see it in her eyes every time she looks at you. Mark or not, you two are meant to be together.” After a pause, she added, “Now, go. Help Ker get us out of here.”
Jae slammed his elbow into the glass beside his head and repeated the same actions Ker had done. Ker was already partially out of the car, ready to shift and dig out. He followed, breathing out fire to increase the space outside the window. Just before he shifted, he felt the snow vibrate with Ker’s morphing and pushing up through the snow. Then heard a screech of pain from Ker’s dragon and the ground shook again, but from an impact on the surface. What the hell was going on up there?
Jae transformed and prepared himself to shoot out of the snow into the sky to get an overview of what was happening. He broke through quickly, so they weren’t buried too deeply, and was high above the scene in a heartbeat.
Below, he saw three Noir dragons and a human form hovering over the bank of snow. They were looking up at him. Ker was pulling his dragon self out from bent and broken trees. The Noir must’ve sent a fire ball at him as soon as he surfaced, throwing him into the uncovered woods.
What shitty timing to come across the enemy. Or maybe it wasn’t coincidence. That conclusion felt more accurate.
Ker had yanked a tree out of the ground with his claws and swung it at the three beings still staring up at him in the sky. He ripped the wing and smashed in the head of the closest dragon to him. One down.
The human raised its arms into the air as it did on the road before the avalanche started. Wait, human wasn’t the right word. Sylvana, the witch, was correct. Jae had no way to stop what she was going to do from this distance. He didn’t even know what she was going to do. The car was already buried. Then he realized where Ker had been thrown.
The snow bunching against the trees had stopped them from plunging into the ravine much farther below. Sylvana was going to remove the trees by whatever means she could, sending the car into the depths.
Jae was in a dive straight toward the ground before his human brain recognized his action. His dragon wasn’t about to let anyone hurt the woman he loved. Mate or not, the dragon recognized how important she was to them. While he was in a Kamikaze showdown, Ker sent missile balls of fire at the two Noirs. They dodged the initial attack by flying straight into the mountain wall and pulling up at the last second to make the balls crash into the side, creating huge holes and showers of small boulder crashing onto the highway below.
Jae watched as the witch swept fire across the trees, melting the snow holding up the car. If it could hold on just a second more, he’d have the bitch smashed into the ground with his body slamming down on her. The screech of bending metal rent the air. Ker whipped around and saw what the witch had planned. He abandoned the fight with the two smaller dragons.
Save the car, he sent to Ker telepathically. His brother changed direction, headed toward the teetering vehicle. Zeroing in on Sylvana, Jae let out a shriek that made her cover her ears, stopping the magic flowing from her hands.
Before Jae was able to pounce on her, she disappeared. He let out a frustrated wail and banked to avoid the trees. He looked around for the two Noir, but they had bugged out when the witch left.
Stopping midair to get a grip on the current whereabouts of his brother and the car, he spotted them on the other side of the snow-covered road. The side the ambulance from Hannah’s hospital couldn’t get to. Dammit.
He landed and immediately shifted. Ker had Avery on the asphalt between the car and rock wall. Hannah knelt with her hands on her head.
“Jae, I need help.” He was next to her in a flash.
“What do you need?” he asked.
“Her brain is still swelling too fast for me to heal and the fluid around the tissue needs to be released or she’ll suffer damage from built up pressure. I can’t get rid of the fluid. I can only heal.”
“How do you get rid of the fluid, then?”
“It has to drain out,” Hannah said. “You need to poke a hole in her skull for that to happen.”
He looked at the nurse. Yes, he reminded himself, she was a nurse. She knew what she was talking about.
“That’s it? A hole will do it?” he asked.
“I don’t know for sure outside of the operating room, but I do know if we do nothing, she will likely die here on the road.”
He swallowed hard and nodded. “Okay, we poke a hole,” he said and a claw raised out of his index finger.
“Be careful though,” she warned, “poke too hard or too far and you’ll damage the brain tissue. Just go in far enough to make a hole in the bone. After it drains, I can heal it closed and slow the swelling.”
Despite the below freezing temperature, sweat coated his forehead and naked back. He barely noticed he had no clothing on.
He took his love’s head in his hands and placed his forehead on hers. He prayed to anyone listening for strength and steady hands. He put his clawed finger behind her ear. With a slow, steady push, the tip of his claw slid through the thin layers of skin, down to the bone.
“Rotate your finger like a drill would turn,” Hannah advised. “You’ll have more control that way.”
He followed her directions and twisted his wrist both ways. The bone gave way beneath the talon. As soon as he felt the tip pierce the bone, a colorless, clear liquid seeped out.
“Yes,” Hannah said, “make it a little bigger without going in farther.”
Jae thickened the claw’s tip to take out more material without moving past the bone.
“That’s it,” Hannah breathed out. “I feel the pressure decreasing.” For long moments, Jae waited for the nurse to tell him his love would be okay. If she died, life wouldn’t be worth living. He’d spend eternity alone. There was no question about it.
He listened to her heart beat and the blood flowing through her veins. His dragon synced with her, though that wasn’t supposed to happen until after both mates had received their marks. He guessed the dragon was with him on the idea that the mark didn’t matter. Avery was theirs.
“Okay,” Hannah said. “The hole is closed and the swelling has stopped. She can rest at home in bed.” With that, Hannah flopped to the side, passed out. Ker caught her. The woman had given everything she could to save Avery.
Ker wrapped the blanket draped over Hannah tighter. “You’re not going to believe this, big brother, but the car I said you paid way too much for…”
“Yeah,” Jae said, feeling a bit aggravated, “my Alfa Romeo is the safest car in the world. It’s worth the price. What about it?”
Ker smiled. “The damn thing is still running.”
Jae spun around to see the car a couple yards away, exhaust floating from the back. He stood and realized he had a blanket draped over him. Ker must’ve done that. But the car looked fine except the roof was dented in some places and all the windows were busted out from Ker’s dragon gripping the car through the window to carry it to safety.
“Y’all okay over there?” a man bundled in a coat and boots called out. He stood outside his truck, stopped a short distance from Jae’s car. A couple other vehicles had stopped behind the truck. “Did y’all get caught in the snow rush?”
Jae thought that was a silly question since their car was on the road, but they were at one time in the “rush,” whatever that was. He pulled the blanket completely around his naked as sin body. “We’re good. Caught the end of it. Both of the ladies passed out from fright is all. Getting them fresh air.” If Avery heard him saying that, she’d kick his ass for calling her a weak woman.
“I called the sheriff to let him know about the road so they can close it off.” The man stared at them. Jae could only imagine how they looked. Two naked men with blankets and two unconscious women. “Y’all sure you’re okay?” the man asked again.
“Yes, much better now. Thank you for stopping and calling. We need to get going.”
Jae opened the passenger front door and Ker placed Hannah in the seat, buckling her in. She was coming to. Jae then carefully scooped Avery into his arms and slid with her into the back seat. “Ker, you drive.”
“Yes, sir,” his brother said, exhaustion and irritation sounding in his voice. They followed the group of vehicles that had turned around and headed back the way they came. The drive home was cold, but Jae didn’t mind. They were all alive.