Wu and I huddled in a corner as far from the others as space allowed. I wasn’t convinced rubbing his arms like he was cold and I might warm him was the best idea I had ever had, but touch soothed the coterie, so why not him? Eventually, the fury vibrating through him abated enough he could open his eyes without gilding the room. He captured my hands in his and placed a kiss to the back of each, a formal gesture that nonetheless sent tingles radiating up my arms.
I wondered if it had to do with the fact he had cranked the dial on his power so high a moment ago, but I didn’t ask. Tipping him back toward anger in the presence of so many innocents might spell disaster for us all.
The burning question of what “ah-tru-ha-dal” meant and why it flipped his switch was sidelined too.
I would get my answers, but first I had to get us out of here.
“The windows are all locked this high. We can’t jimmy them without drawing attention, and I doubt we can break them without causing a riot. Odds are high they’re plexiglass. We’d have to hammer on them to make a dent.” I scanned the room, talking to myself as Wu calmed. “Looks like there’s a bathroom.” I tipped my head back. “Breaking those foam board tiles is easy, but the grid is weak. The drop ceiling won’t hold us if we try to climb out that way.”
“There’s a window in the bathroom.” Wu massaged his hands, as if they ached from clenching into fists. “It’s high and narrow, but we could fit.”
“Same problem,” I reminded him. “We have no way to break it. Can we even reach it?”
Gold flecks sparkled in the depths of his brown eyes. “I said I would show you.”
“You did,” I agreed carefully, not at all certain I wanted his revelation. Let alone here and now.
“I’m going in.” He shrugged out of his jacket and tossed it in the corner. “Wait five minutes and follow.”
“People are going to think we’re trying to join whatever the hospital bathroom equivalent is of the Mile-High club.”
The imperious eyebrow he arched informed me I would be so lucky. “And?”
The dare unsettled me after his fit of temper. I wasn’t touching it with a ten-foot pole.
“And nothing.” I shook my head and set a timer on my phone just to be a smartass. “See you in five.”
While he disappeared into the unisex bathroom, I took a moment to check in with Thom via text. I gave him an update on our situation and let him know extraction might be required. Santiago told me once that most of Thom’s bodily fluids were considered medicinal. I had to believe that came with one heck of a top-tier immune system too. But we were dealing with an unknown contagion at this point, and Wu and I were both compromised.
After I unloaded everything we’d learned from canvassing the crowd, I let Thom make the final call. As much as I wanted out, I would rather suffer confinement in a hospital than harm him, or the others.
A bing-bong notification announced my time was up, and I started toward the restroom. I had my hand out, reaching for the doorknob, when a woman slid between me and the handle.
“Get in line,” she snapped, glaring at my clothes. The belt, in particular, appeared to offend her. But maybe she was looking for the badge I didn’t yet have. “That uniform doesn’t mean you get preferential treatment.”
Since my outfit could have passed as business casual, thanks to its quality, I assumed the woman had spoken to enough of her fellow detainees to know Wu and I were posing as FBI. The tone, paired with the sneer, made me wonder if she had to use the bathroom or if she just wanted to make sure I couldn’t without going through her first.
“Sorry, but my partner doesn’t feel well.” That much should have been obvious by our huddle. “He texted me for assistance. I’m going in there.”
“Let him choke on his own tongue.” The woman honed her glare. “You suits are all the same.”
A flare of ice singed my nerve endings, the cold place rising to cool my temper, but I beat it back until my head cleared.
“Yes, we are.” I played up her insecurities. “So you know what will happen if you don’t get out of my way.”
Some of the color left her cheeks, but she kept her glare trained on me as I entered the bathroom and shut it behind me, taking care to lock it. I expelled a slow breath, regaining control of the trembling in my hands, and noticed a few things.
The bathroom was large, one of those all-purpose deals. Handicap accessible and family-sized with a fold-down changing table.
The window was indeed high. Long and narrow, impossible for a human to reach, let alone damage.
And the final thing, perhaps the most important thing, was the winged man who stood below it.
Stripped to his waist to give himself a better range of motion, Wu rustled his feathers. Preening. For me.
I’m not proud of the gasp that escaped me. Or the awe I felt climbing my face and rearranging my features. Or the desperate urge to reach out and caress the downy feathers on his—I counted them—three sets of wings. Six total.
“You look like an angel” was the dumbest thing I could have said about Wu, so of course that fell out of my mouth.
Aunt Nancy and Uncle Harold would have come unglued at the seams thinking of him in their house.
“Don’t let the wings fool you.” He held out his hand for mine, and comforting warmth lapped up my arm. “I’m no more angelic than I was five minutes ago.”
“I get it now.” The joke. The reason he had laughed. “I’m the crazy cat lady with a bird man for a partner.”
Talk about a cosmic joke.
“I’m going to fly up there and shatter the window. We won’t have much time after that. You’ve got to be ready.” He squeezed my fingers so the bones ground together, snapping my attention from his wings to his face. “You’re going to have to trust me.”
I tugged on my arm, but he held firm. “That . . . doesn’t sound good.”
“You’ll have to get yourself onto the ledge and out the window.”
“Out the window.” Visions of splattering on the pavement danced in my head. “Climb out the window?”
“I’ll catch you.” His wings slid forward, gliding down my forearms, almost cocooning us. “Look at me.” His eyes were solid gold, molten. “I won’t let you fall.”
“I will be very pissed if you do.” I shut my eyes, kicking myself for putting us in this situation. “Mark my words—I will live long enough to kick your feathery ass if I die.”
Okay, so that made more sense in my head. Considering I was about to kiss pavement, who cared?
“I believe you.” He tucked his wings tight to his spine and kicked off his shoes. He leapt onto the wall and climbed, his fingers and toes cracking tile as his talons dug into the grout. “Move over there, and make yourself as small as possible.”
Following his orders, I squatted in the far corner and curled into a ball, covering my head with my arms. I didn’t see Wu punch out the window, I kept my eyes shut to protect them, but I heard the dull thuds as his fist hit. Over and over, the force terrible, and then crack.
Fresh air stirred tendrils of hair against my cheek, and I peeked up in time to see him slide through the opening that was maybe two feet tall by six feet wide. I grimaced as a sleek feather caught on a ragged tooth of glass, leaving a crimson smear on the bottommost portion.
I was guessing his stomach had taken the worst of the damage to preserve his wings, but that was worry for later. He was injured, and I didn’t want to waste his time when I had no clue how long he could hover there in wait for me.
Plus, smashing the window had drawn attention to us. Raised voices called out from inside the room, and fists pounded the door while the knob rattled. Too bad Wu hadn’t told me how he expected me to make my escape. The window was a good eight feet off the ground. The only way I could make it work in my head was going to hurt. A lot. Good thing I had charun healing on my side.
Still, I did what I could to mitigate the damage. Scooping Wu’s shirt off the floor, I ripped it in half then wrapped my hands with the fabric. It wasn’t much help, but I would take all I could get. That done, I kicked off my boots but kept my socks on to protect my feet. From there, I had to hope Wu’s handholds and footholds worked for fingers as well as they did for talons.
The tiles bit into my fingertips through the makeshift gloves, but I clenched my teeth and climbed. I didn’t have far to go. The window was placed just high enough you couldn’t see more than a slice of sky when you glanced through it while handling your business. It was worse for my toes. The cracked tiles split beneath my weight, slicing me through my socks when I slipped on them. Once I got three feet off the ground, I was able to reach the window. “This is going to suck.”
There was nothing for it but to grab the windowsill and haul myself onto the lip. Glass sliced open my fingers and ripped into my palms. The cold place hit me with such force, I almost lost my grip before the icy balm numbed the pain and allowed me to situate myself half in, half out of the opening. Hanging over the edge, I got a good look at how far I would have to fall to hit the ground.
Wind snapped loose hairs around my face, and I wished with all my might for the familiar iridescent glint of dragon scales, but Cole was nowhere in sight.
“Adam,” I breathed, thinking it was odd I had never used his first name. “Don’t make me regret this.”
All I had to do was swing my leg over the ledge. That’s all it took to unbalance me and send me tumbling through the air. I sank like a stone, unable to tear my gaze from the grave zooming toward me.
Strong arms hooked beneath mine, wrenching me back, popping my shoulders but not dislocating them. “I’ve got you.”
“Okay,” I squeaked, staring up at him. “I’m a fan of being gotten.”
The panic over him flying away with me, legs dangling over nothing, got no chance to manifest. He didn’t go up, as expected, but down. Backbeating his wings, he lowered us to the cracked asphalt of the parking lot. My feet touched down, and then my knees cracked against the pavement. I was happy to slump forward onto all fours and tempted to keep going until I kissed the ground.
Wings.
Why did everyone and their momma have to have wings?
Terror lent my voice an edge. “Did anyone see that?”
“No.” He had the gall to sound affronted. “Of course not.”
The how would only make my head hurt, so I didn’t even ask. Beholding Wu in this form made my skull ache. Yet another one of those cracks was splintering my façade, the human shell I was having more trouble holding closed with each step I took deeper into the charun world.
“You’re hurt.” Wu crouched next to me, prying open my hands. “We need to get the glass out before your skin heals over it.”
“I don’t have any tweezers, and we need to get out of here more.” I accepted his hand on my elbow as he helped me stand then grimaced at the pain in my feet. “We need to quarantine ourselves until the incubation period has passed.”
“Your coterie is here in Vicksburg.” He tilted his head. “Can we use the bunkhouse in Canton?”
Allowing him into their home—our home—rankled, but it didn’t get more isolated than the swamp.
“I doubt they’ll mind.” I texted Thom to be sure. “Thom gave us the green light. He’ll let the others know.”
Some of the more mountainous members of my coterie might not be thrilled to learn I was holed up with Wu for forty-eight hours, but Cole would have to deal, the same as I had when he vanished on me earlier.
Petty? Who? Me?
“We’ll make better time if we fly.” Wu left the statement dangling the same as I had from his arms.
“Fine.” I patted my queasy stomach. “You’re lucky I’m sitting on empty.”
Wu opened his arms and let me interpret how he meant for us to travel. Miles of bare chest snagged my gaze. Most of it smeared with drying blood and crusting scabs. I would be pressed against him and his ridiculous abs no matter how he held me, and I couldn’t decide which of my options was the least intimate. Giving up, I asked for his preference. “Where do you want me to put what?”
Wicked heat licked the gold in his eyes, and I saw the naughty thought perch on the tip of his tongue before he swallowed it down. Without Cole around to antagonize, it seemed I wasn’t worth the effort.
“The easiest thing—No,” he amended, “the safest thing, would be if you wrapped your arms around my neck and your thighs around my hips.”
Logically, okay, I could see that being easier for him. But I had never let a man other than Cole hold me for any length of time.
This is Wu, I argued with myself as I chewed on my bottom lip. My partner.
He was the one who gave the big speech about how there were no fraternization laws for charun. The spay and neuter program meant females no longer went into heat, and males no longer experienced the urge to procreate.
There was more to it, there had to be, if demi charun existed. But I didn’t have much choice about going with him if I wanted to minimize the risk of infection for the coterie, and any humans we might contaminate if we lingered.
“Okay, we’ll do this the safest way.” I walked into his arms, hopped up when he bent his knees, then wrapped around him like a kudzu vine, careful to keep my hands linked at his nape and my ankles locked at his spine. His hands gripped the backs of my thighs, and his fingers dug into my muscles. His breaths puffed warm in my ear, and his heart raced where our chests touched. “Fair warning, I will go for the feathers if you touch my ass.”
“How about this?” He slid his ironclad grip closer to my knees. “Comfortable?”
“Not the word I would use, no.” I resisted the urge to hop off this ride before it got started. “I can handle it, though.”
“Brace yourself,” he said, breathless with anticipation.
He loved to fly, and why wouldn’t he? He had been born with wings, made to carve his own path through the skies.
His vertical takeoff had me cinching my arms into a choke-hold, and I glanced down to make sure the pressure from my thighs locking hadn’t popped him in half.
Sharp winds hacked at my cheeks, slashed water from my eyes, and I buried my face in his neck to lessen the sting. His scent made my nostrils tingle and my lungs tighten an instant before I softened against him.
Whatever he was, he had gotten one thing right. He was no angel.
Angels, I felt certain, didn’t have this narcotic effect on people. Though, if they did, that might explain the depictions of them wearing halos. The artists might have been hallucinating.
The rhythmic pump of his wings, the sequence as each set gave way to the other with such precision, tempted me to peek up from his neck. Each feathered limb stretched longer than he was tall, reaching out to brush the stars to either side of us. How had he crammed them under his shirt? His jacket? How had they fit in the bathroom?
Dad once accused me of being special, a softer word for having magic, but this—This was true magic.
If I asked, Wu would probably science it away the same as Cole, but I wasn’t one of those people who could only enjoy a magic show if I knew how all the tricks were performed. I was happy to sit and watch, to be amazed without questioning the mechanics.
“You can touch them if you’d like,” he murmured against my cheek. “I won’t drop out of the sky if you do.”
I curled my fingers into my palm to keep from taking him up on his offer. “Isn’t that . . . intimate?”
“Very,” he husked, his voice threaded with midnight. “As long as you avoid the wing joints, you’re not taking liberties.”
Unsure if I believed him, I knew I wouldn’t pass up a second invitation. I brushed a fingertip down the wrist of his topmost wing, admiring the silken texture of his feathers, and chills dappled his skin. “Can you feel each set individually? Each wing? How do you coordinate them?”
“You’re giving me too much credit.” His laugh was lighter than the darkness around us. “I can feel each wing like you feel your arms or legs. I can move them independently, but they move in tandem without coaching from me. I was born for the skies, and my brain came with the manual already downloaded.”
We didn’t talk during the rest of the flight, and I kept my hands to myself as much as possible considering I was clinging to him like a barnacle on the hull of a ship.
“Hold on.” His warm breath cut through the chilly night air. “We’re landing.”
Worried oxygen deprivation might cause him to pass out and us to plummet into the swamp, I loosened my arms, but I kept my ankles hooked and held on for dear life.
Wu’s descent was as elegant as the rest of him now that he wasn’t plucking fallen women from the sky. I slumped with relief and rested my forehead on his shoulder when his knees bent to absorb my weight as he landed, as light as a feather.
The clomping footsteps didn’t register at first. The howling wind had my ears ringing in the silence, and the thump, thump, thump wasn’t all that different from the banging in my chest. No, what clued me in to the fact we had company was the tightening of Wu’s fingers, how they dug into my thighs and kept me flush against him.
“Put her down,” Cole rumbled, his voice barely human. “I don’t want to spatter her with your blood when I rip out your throat.”
“Cole,” I barked. “What the hell are you doing? We came here to get away from you.”
A thunderous rumble vibrated the planks under our feet, and a vicious smile cut Wu’s mouth. He was enjoying this.
The growl I shot back at Cole was pathetically human in comparison. “We might be infected. I wanted you and the coterie to stay in Vicksburg until we knew for certain.”
Given my fit of jealousy over what’s-her-face, I had been looking forward to the break. Okay. Fine. So I remembered her name was Lorelei. Whatever. But this hurt. Cole doubting me hurt. Wu enjoying his pain hurt. And fine, yes. Cole wandering off with her hurt even more.
“Let me go,” I told Wu, kicking him in the tailbone. “You’ve had your fun. Now let me talk him out of eviscerating you.”
As I slid out of Wu’s arms, I got an eyeful of what we were up against. Cole was vibrating. It hadn’t been his growl or approaching footsteps. His whole body hummed, seconds from exploding into his dragon form, and I doubted I could talk that version of Cole down from swallowing Wu in one gulp.
One good thing came from this steaming hot mess. No inflight nausea. Hurray! Who knew staring down dragons with murder in their eyes worked better than sucking peppermints to soothe an upset stomach?
“How are you here?” I straightened my clothes and smoothed my windblown hair. “You must have broken speed records beating us to the bunkhouse.”
“It wasn’t that hard,” he said flatly, and Wu bristled on my periphery.
“You’re supposed to be in Vicksburg—” I tried again, “—where it’s safe.”
“Our culture forbids a female in your position to spend a night, however platonic, with an unmated male who is not a member of her coterie.”
Our culture implied we shared some common ancestry, but what he must mean is it was an Otillian custom enforced by their conquered peoples.
“Under the circumstances, I think an allowance could be made.” I anchored my hands on my hips. “You haven’t touched us, breathed on us, or drank after us. No blood or other bodily fluids have been spilled. You should still hole up somewhere to wait out the incubation period to be safe, but you ought to be fine if you leave now.”
“You’re right,” he allowed, appearing totally reasonable.
It made me immediately suspicious.
Just as I was about to smack him in the face with another warning, he gave the dragon his skin. The beast gazed down at us, crimson eyes hard, and wrapped his tail around his favorite ankle. Great. Now he’d gone and done it. He’d touched me. Holding Wu’s gaze, he ducked his head and rubbed noses with me, breathing me in.
Oh no. No, no, no. I saw where this was heading.
I had no handy drink for him to gulp, and he would never have bled me to prove a point, but he did lick me with his coarse tongue from collarbone to hairline.
Wu shuddered at the display, his hand going for the pocket of a shirt or jacket he no longer wore. I wondered if he would have offered me his handkerchief if he’d still had one. “There are more pleasurable ways to exchange saliva, dragon.”
Scales rippled, a precursor to the change, but I captured the beast’s face between my palms. “Our first kiss will not be the result of a dare.”
The fury propelling the dragon stalled under my touch, and he ceded its form to his human one.
“Our first kiss,” he echoed, clearly liking the way that sounded, “will also not have spectators.”
Wait. Cole was agreeing there would be kissing? Hot diggity dog. “That sounds fair.”
“You can take Thom’s room,” Cole informed Wu. “I’m sure you can find your way.”
Given the years of surveillance, yeah. I’m sure he could too.
“You will remain in our room.” Eyes on mine, he made it an order. “It’s the most central and easily defensible.”
“No arguments here.” Home was where the AC hummed, after all. “What about you?”
“I’ll be staying with you.” He cut his eyes to Wu. “Unless you prefer I stand watch out here.”
I like to think I’m a strong woman, but turning down Cole when he offered to share a bed with me was just plain dumb, and I also liked to think I wasn’t stupid.
“Stay,” I said, and stay he did.