Blood Shift (The Charming Shifter Mysteries Book 3) Page 13

  Sugar gave her a fierce gaze. “Look, soldier, you need to pull from your inner resources. You may be small in stature, but in spirit, you’re an Amazon warrior.”

  Something about her words stirred Chia’s resolve. She nodded, strength pouring through her arms once more. In less than a minute, they made it to the emergency door.

  She lifted her leg and kicked it, hard.

  It flew open, setting off a jarring alarm.

  “Jog. Walk fast. Anything!” Sugar cried.

  “On it.”

  “Go! To the left. Over there.” She inclined her head. “My chariot awaits.”

  They jogged toward the parking lot.

  “See it? Black and silver Dodge Ram.”

  “Got it in my sights,” Chia called.

  When they stood next to the burly-girl truck, she said, “Okay, lower him. Ready?”

  “Go.”

  She and Sugar lowered Hung to the ground.

  He shouted something unintelligible. His eyes squeezed tight, and his limbs twitched like a dreaming dog.

  Sugar unlocked the truck and opened the rear door. She swept paper coffee cups and fast food trash from the seat. “I’m going to maneuver his torso into the truck. You lift his feet.”

  Chia nodded and positioned herself at the end of the sheet.

  Sugar crouched, slid one arm under his neck, and then gently pushed her other arm under his back. She nodded.

  They lifted.

  Once he lay halfway in the truck, Sugar said, “Wait here.” She jogged around to the other side of the Dodge and opened the side door. Then, she tugged on the sheet underneath Hung while Chia kept hold of the cloth supporting his legs.

  “Can’t go any further. His head is at the end,” Sugar said.

  “We bend his legs then,” Chia said. “Gah, he’s like dead weight.” She struggled to lift one of his legs and lean it against the seat. A shiver launched up her spine. “Cancel that. Thank God he’s very much alive.” She bent the other leg and gently leaned it against the other.

  “Hand me your gun.” Sugar reached through the door, across Hung’s body.

  Chia did so, watching as Sugar shoved them into the gun racks affixed to the back window.

  She climbed in the driver’s seat. “Bear Alert. Get in!”

  Chia glanced up to see two Polar bears galloping in their direction. She placed a foot on the running board and hauled ass into the passenger seat.

  Sugar gunned the engine, peeling out of the lot.

  As they sped from the hospital, ambulances and fire trucks screamed past them, their alarms piercing the air.

  Sugar veered around the corner, fast-tracking through side-streets. Finally, they landed on the highway heading for Charming.

  Chia kept glancing back at Hung, checking to make sure his chest rose and fell.

  Suddenly, his body grew agitated.

  “No! Get away!” he mumbled, eyes closed, his arms flailing.

  “What is it, baby?” Chia asked. She reached between the seats, bracing him as best she could with her arm.

  “Shit,” Sugar cried. She slammed on the brakes.

  Chia stiffened, managing to keep Hung from falling off the seat. “What?” she said, her head whipping toward the front.

  A huge familiar eagle stood on the front hood.

  Chia shuddered. “Oh no! Is it…?”

  Sugar leaped from the truck, leaving the door hanging wide. Waving her arms in the air, she spoke in a strange language.

  The bird cocked its head and stared at her.

  Sugar gestured frantically as if pleading with the bird.

  The great bird’s wings fluttered for balance, but it stayed put.

  Sugar scooped up some gravel from the side of the road, shouted another strange phrase and shook her fistful of rocks.

  The eagle studied her for a few seconds. Then, it lifted its wings in sweeping swoops and flew into the sky. Her cheeks red, a scowl on her face, Sugar leaped back in the truck and slammed the door.

  “What was that?” Chia asked.

  Sugar, staying silent, floored the accelerator. The truck fishtailed onto the road.

  “What’s going on? Talk to me. Why did you speak to that eagle shifter in that strange language?”

  Her jaw set, Sugar shook her head.

  “Sugar! Goddamn it! What are you not telling me?”

  Hung let out another groan. His arms flew in front of his face to shield him from God knew what.

  Finally, Sugar blew her breath from between her cheeks. “I’m afraid I haven’t been upfront with you. Or with Hung.”

  Chia’s eyes narrowed. “You’d better start. You know that eagle, don’t you? Who is he? A lover from your confused period, before you figured out, you liked girls?”

  “Even worse. That, my friend, is my wife.”

  Chapter 18

  “Are you telling me the eagle Hung has been hunting is your wife?” Livid, Chia sat next to Sugar, her heart hammering inside her chest. They hightailed it in the direction of Chop Chop Sue’s. Hurt, betrayal and rage warred inside Chia as she stared, slack-jawed at Sugar.

  Sugar kept her lips sealed shut. “There’s the restaurant.” She lifted her hand and pointed up the street.

  A red and white closed sign hung on the door in front of the restaurant. A mongrel sat outside, scratching at the door. As they zipped on by, the door cracked open. An arm appeared, dropping a pile of food scraps on the sidewalk.

  “He does that every day,” Sugar said, avoiding answering the big question of her marital status, a slight smile on her face.

  “Does what?” Chia craned her head.

  The dog licked his lips, looking expectantly at the door for seconds.

  “The cook at Chop Chops. He feeds that damn dog every day. It’s his ritual.”

  “I don’t give a shit about the dog. Stop changing the subject. I want to hear about your wife. You’re kidding me, right?” Chia’s fingers gripped the door handle so hard she thought she’d snap it right off.

  White-knuckling the steering wheel, Sugar shook her head, her expression lined with sorrow. “Afraid not. The eagle shifter’s most definitely my spouse.”

  “Well, yay for gay rights,” Chia spat out. “So you legally married a murderer? She killed all those Fae, right?”

  “No, those were the shadow shifters.” Sugar winced. “She, uh…she showed the shadows where they lived. And she caught the orphaned shifter pups, for, um…to…for Red to experiment on. She’s like a spy…for, um…for Red. That’s what she told me—a few minutes ago.”

  “Which makes you the enemy!”

  Sugar jerked. “No! I want to find her as much as you do!”

  Chia clenched her teeth before speaking. “What the hell were you doing coming to town? You betrayed my lover! You almost got him killed! I still don’t know if he’ll make it!”

  “I know. I’m so sorry.” One lone tear spilled down her cheek, highlighted by the morning sun.

  They whizzed past the city limits, marked by a Thanks for visiting Dirty Creek, Alaska. Come on back, sign.

  Chia felt like her blood might boil out of her nose and eyes. “Sorry doesn’t cut it, sister. I don’t think I’ve ever been angrier. Why didn’t you tell him? Why’d you waltz into town all ‘Hey, buddy, let me cook you some lasagna in exchange for betraying you by letting you hunt my wife and not tell you I know her’?” She let out an exasperated growl, her eyes tracking the barren landscape.

  They zipped through a world of white, punctuated by occasional phone poles, standing like dark exclamation points against the pale backdrop.

  “I know you won’t believe me, but I did it for love.” Sugar took her eyes off the road for a brief second, her expression dark.

  “Eyes on the road, missy, or you’ll get us all killed. Besides, I don’t want to look at you right now.”

  “I get it. I deserve your wrath. But sometimes you do what you do for love. Surely you can understand that.”

  Chia
thought about her love for the shifters, her town…all the things that pushed her to keep using D’Raynged and his blood.

  “Maybe. I don’t know,” she mumbled. Her thoughts drifted to Hung and their ongoing war. “Maybe not,” she added. “Keep talking.”

  She stared straight ahead at the road, surrounded by an icy tundra. In the distance, a herd of migrating caribou dotted the horizon.

  “She—my wife—her name is Santana, by the way—she started to change a few months ago. Everything was great before that. We were really in love, happy…I thought I’d made the right choice in marrying her. We had a sweet little cabin up in Alamouk, just north of Anchorage.” She sighed. “She used to work with me. Hung met her a couple times at a bar but never knew she shifted. They never really liked one another.”

  Chia scoffed. “Yeah. He’s a great judge of character, in case you hadn’t noticed. If you two are so close, why didn’t you think to ask him why he didn’t care for her?”

  She side-eyed the bounty hunter.

  “We’re not that close,” Sugar said, her mouth forming a slit. “I think you’ve projected more onto me than is there. We’re long time work buddies. That’s it. Sometimes we talk about a case. We network. Things like that. We can go months and months without contact. And then, I show up, cook him a good meal and be on my way shortly thereafter. The man can’t cook worth shit.”

  A laugh escaped Chia’s lips before she could catch it. Swallowing her momentary mirth, she pressed her lips together and said, “Keep, going. Tell me the whole story.”

  Sugar glanced at Chia, then turned away and pursed her lips. “Okay. I owe you for not telling you and Hung sooner that I know who the eagle shifter is.”

  “Yeah, you do.”

  “So, she kept disappearing. She’d stay away for the night. When she returned, she’d seem different.”

  “Different how?”

  “I don’t know, different. Her strength grew, like she’d been working out, hard, training for the Olympics or something. I wondered if she’d been doping or something—you know, steroids? Anyway, we started to fight—a lot. And then Santana stopped coming home. I was heartbroken. Surely you can understand that.” More tears slid down her cheeks.

  “Yeah,” Chia sighed. She turned and slipped her hand between the seats, touching Hung’s warm, unconscious body.

  Please don’t die on me, baby.

  Something slammed against her side of the truck as if they’d collided with a freight train.

  She screamed. Sugar yelped and stopped the accelerator.

  Chia looked out the side window. A Grizzly loped toward the Dodge at an unearthly speed.

  “Why the hell would Red be sending bears after us? Do something!” Chia flapped her hands at Sugar. “Speed up!”

  “I’ve got it floored! We’re going one-ten. This isn’t a race car, you know.” Sugar’s eyes stayed pinned to the road.

  The bear crashed into the truck again. The vehicle veered across the road, spinning in a 360 for several terrible seconds.

  Sugar wrestled with the steering wheel, trying to gain control. Finally, the truck slid toward the ditch on the opposite side.

  It came to a screeching, metal grinding halt, colliding with a telephone pole. The side windows shattered, spraying Chia and Hung with shards of glass.

  Without a word, Sugar threw open her door and leaped outside.

  The huge bear cornered her against the truck, snarling and shaking its head, spraying strings of spit.

  Chia peeled her bruised body from the mangled door.

  Hung lay in a crumpled heap in the back seat.

  “Oh, no! Sweetheart!”

  Groaning, Hung’s eyelids fluttered open. “What happened? Where are we?”

  “We’re okay. We’re with Sugar.” She bit back the surge of bile threatening to spill from her mouth at the thought of Sugar. “We got into a little accident, but we’re all fine. Don’t worry. Let’s get you back on the seat.” She climbed over the middle console, exiting at the driver’s door. Barely cognizant of Sugar’s fight with the bear, she hastened to open the back cab. Gently, she lifted one of Hung’s legs from the floor.

  “Shit,” he said. His breath came in short, sharp bursts.

  “Next one. Hold tight. Ready?” She seized his calf and waited for him to indicate his assent.

  “Wait a minute. Jesus Christ. What the hell did that nurse shoot into my system? I’ve been in some other dimension for the last hour, fighting with shadows. It’s kind of hard to fight with something you can’t wrap your hands around.” A cold laugh left his lips. “Fucking nightmares, that’s what they are.” With evident effort, he took a deep breath. “Okay, do it.”

  “I don’t know what he gave you, but it smelled like those damn shadows.” She hefted his other leg onto the seat.

  A shot rang out.

  Chia lifted her head to look out the window.

  Sugar stood like a Marine, gun cocked, shouting at the felled bear. “How do you like that, motherfucker?”

  “What did you…? How did I?” Another pain-wracked moan poured from his lips.

  This one pierced her heart like an arrow. “How did you get out of the hospital? Sugar and I hauled you out of there.”

  Moving like an ancient man, he unfolded his body.

  Chia’s heart began to pound.

  A dark red blossom, like an evolving Rorschach design, colored his hospital gown.

  Spying a wad of paper napkins on the floor, she grabbed them, gently pressing them into his belly.

  Pounding footsteps grew louder, moving toward the truck. Chia didn’t look up, searching for something…anything…to staunch the flow of blood.

  “Chia, love…” Hung trained his blue and gold eyes on her. “I want you to know something.”

  “If this is some ‘I’m dying’ moment, where you confess things to me, I don’t want to hear it.” She shook her head, causing tears to fly free.

  “I don’t think I ever told you how much I…I…” He squeezed his eyes shut, laboring to breathe.

  “How much you love fighting with me. Got it.” Chia seized the bottom of her flimsy garment and tore a strip free. She replaced the sodden wad of paper towels with the fabric.

  Hung’s eyes opened. “Let me say it, woman! Look at me.”

  She paused her frantic search and faced him, biting down hard on her lip. Her body shook. She tried to keep her emotions from springing free like an unwelcome jack in the box.

  “I want to remember your silvery eyes and your rainbow hair and your…”

  “Stop. It’s too much,” Chia said, sobbing.

  “I love you, Chia Petit. I love you with all my heart.” His eyes appeared briefly lucid as his gaze bore into her, reaching in to shake her soul.

  “Oh, God, Hung. I love you, too. I won’t let you die, I won’t.” Her fingers shaking, she ripped another piece of her robe free, replacing the red-soaked scrap.

  “I’m afraid you can’t…it’s not in your…Chia…they’re pulling me…” With one long agonizing, “No,” he fell back into unconsciousness, eyelids closed, eyes moving rapidly like he’d entered the vivid dream state known as REM.

  “Don’t die,” Chia cried.

  The truck door flew open, and Sugar leaped into the driver’s seat. “Stay put. I’ve got to hope the engine still works. We’ve got trouble.”

  Chia pulled the door closed behind her, crammed into the back seat. She looked out the window and gasped. Her heart beat so rapidly she thought she might explode.

  More bears loped in their direction, in a blur of brown alongside antlers and hooves. They’d apparently powered through the caribou. The caribou herd was running in every direction, no doubt thinking the bears were after them.

  “Go, go, go, go, go! Hung’s in trouble. If he doesn’t make it, I’m holding you responsible, you hear me?”

  For a second their eyes locked in the rear-view mirror. Then, Sugar gave one crisp nod and cranked on the engine.

&n
bsp; It roared to life.

  “Oh, thank the stars,” she said, letting her head drop onto the steering wheel. She jerked upright, looked out the windshield, and eased onto the road, jostling Hung, as she maneuvered out of the ditch.

  “Easy!” Chia snapped.

  “I’m trying,” Sugar said. Once she got onto the highway, she accelerated. The engine rattled and hummed like something might fall off at any moment. She had to wrestle with the steering wheel to keep the vehicle on the road. “Something’s wrong with the chassis or the wheel alignment or something. But at least this baby still moves.”

  “Thank heavens for that.” Chia kept a firm grasp on Hung’s leg, not wanting to break contact. A surge of energy passed between them. For a second, she hoped she was somehow helping his return back from whatever rabbit hole drew him.

  “Where are we going? Another hospital? We need to make a decision in the next few minutes. The turn to head back is up ahead.”

  Chia thought for a moment. “Don’t vampires have healing qualities in their blood?” She didn’t mention her connection with the vamp. That topic was none of Sugar’s business.

  Sugar glanced at her in the rearview. “So I hear. Why?”

  “I’ll tell you in a second. Keep driving.” A plan formed in Chia’s brain. It was a long shot, but it just might work.

  Chapter 19

  Smashed against the vehicle door, Chia wriggled her body to retrieve her pink phone, struggling to pull it free from her back pocket. After tapping on the keyboard, she pressed it to her ear.

  “Yes? Are you finally ready to play?” said a smooth Southern voice.

  “Shut up and listen to me, D. Don’t you have some healing powers in your blood? Not the kind we…” Chia glanced up to see Sugar’s eyes in the mirror, watching her intently. She snapped her fingers and pointed at the road ahead. “If you’re with a regular person, or, say, a shifter and you donate some blood…what would be the effect?”

  “It depends,” he drawled. “It’s a ‘give and take’ kind of thing. I’m rarely the one who donates blood. I’m a different kind of giver.” He chuckled. “I give vampire semen and spit. I take their blood. They love it. Some say it gives them better sex. I’ve never queried the ones I merely wanted to kill. And, they died.” He laughed. “So much fun.”