Alex: A Rylee Adamson Short Story (5 page)

T
he light was
fading when Rylee finally stirred. With a groan she rolled, and then was on her feet, hands reaching for a blade. “You motherfucker.” She hissed, then stepped over to inspect the body of the incubus. She booted him once, then seemed satisfied with the result.

“Alex, did you kill him?” She turned to me.

I buried my head against Deidre’s neck. “Nope.” I didn’t want her to think I was bad, she might not want me to stay with her.

Her lips tipped up in a quick smile. “Okay. Let’s get Deidre the fuck out of here.”

I gathered Deidre into my one arm again and she let out a soft moan. “No more, don’t touch me.”

Heart breaking for the girl I held, I clung to the past and the horrors we’d both survived. She could survive this, I had to believe that. She was strong enough.

Rylee dropped out of the trap door ahead of me and then I passed Deidre down to her. The kitchen was still splattered with pale blue blood, but the bodies were all gone. As if they’d never been. And the building was no longer silent as the patter of clawed feet skittered around us, and smoky blue eyes that glittered in the darkness followed our every step.

But nothing jumped out, nothing tried to stop us. Rylee carried Deidre to the Jeep first, and then waved me over when no one was looking. Deidre was laid out in the back seat, her breathing shallow.

“We have to get her to the hospital. Then I’ll call her brother. He’s the one who hired me.”

The drive to the hospital didn’t take long, in some ways not long enough. I kept one paw on Deidre the entire drive, knowing she was my last link to the past that kept slipping further away from me. Already standing upright seemed odd, speaking in full sentences silly, not having fur ridiculous. How quickly this new body had taken over everything I’d ever known. Everything except Deidre.

Rylee parked in the ambulance section of the hospital and people ran out right away. She opened the back door to show them Deidre. I crouched down, but she waved at me. “Come on, Alex. Your collar is still on.”

Oh, so they couldn’t see me. I followed Rylee into the hospital.

“You can’t bring that dog in here, Miss.” A slim, blonde nurse blocked Rylee’s path.

“This is the kid’s service dog.” Rylee’s hand settled in the ruff of my neck and I leaned into her.

“Biggest service dog I’ve ever seen,” the nurse muttered, but let us pass. We ended up waiting in a little room off to one side of the ER. Rylee didn’t sit, but instead stood in the middle of the room, her arms hanging loosely at her side. I flopped on the floor, belly down.

“Deidre,” I whispered, and felt Rylee’s gaze flick over me. She crouched to my side.

“Who is she to you, Alex?”

The words wouldn’t come, so I didn’t try. I just stared at the wall, frustrated, and then the frustration faded as the time passed. And the past faded. And I forgot why we were there.

Heels clicking on the linoleum tile drew close to the door and the same nurse who’d stopped us stuck her head in. “We have her in a room on the third floor, you can come and see her now.”

We followed the nurse out, but when I headed to the elevator Rylee grabbed my collar. “Nope, we do the stairs.”

Curious, I followed her into the stairwell, the smell of a myriad of people, and illnesses filling my nose.

Rylee trotted up the stairs ahead of me, pausing on the first landing so she could look me in the face. “Elevators don’t like people like us, don’t use them if you don’t have to. They’ll shut off.”

They didn’t like us? I tipped my head to one side and lifted my eyebrows in a silent query. She rested her hands on her hips. “Supernaturals and technology don’t get along well. Don’t go into any rooms except Deidre’s, and even then we might have to leave quick if her machines start doing weird shit, okay?”

I bobbed my head. I understood, kind of.

The third floor was the children’s ward, by the multi-hued walls, playroom near the nurses desk, and the nurses brightly colored uniforms. But there was no sound of children, and barely a whiff of them. Antiseptics and fear was all that I could smell. I rubbed at my nose with one paw.

“Yucky,” I grumbled under my breath, and Rylee reached out and grabbed my ruff.

“Quiet.”

Right, no talking. Deidre’s room was at the far end of the hall and we walked in near silence to it. The only thing that broke it up was the occasional beep of a machine, the cough of a small set of lungs, the soothing voice of a mother reading a book. All of it gave me the shivers. Kids shouldn’t be in hospitals, it seemed wrong on so many levels… .

Deidre’s room was done in yellows and oranges, and my first thought was that at least it wasn’t red and pink.

She was hooked up to an IV and a heart monitor that blipped in a slow, but steady pattern, a white sheet tucked up around her, one arm bare, the other under the sheet.

Rylee moved to the side of the bed opposite the machines and sat on the edge. “Hey, kid. You awake?”

Deidre’s eyes flickered open. “You saved me, didn’t you?”

Rylee shook her head, and then pointed at me. “No, my friend here was the one who saved you.”

I crept forward, and the tingle that had stayed with me the entire time the collar had been on me, faded and blipped into nothing.

Deidre sucked in a sharp breath, but her hand stretched out to me. “His name is Alex, isn’t it?”

“Yes, you heard me talk to him?” Rylee seemed to take this new development in stride, her eyes widening as she realized that the collar had finally failed. “You aren’t afraid of him?”

“If he saved me from Stavros, then he’s my guardian angel, like my brother always was.” Tears dripped down her cheeks and sorrow crawled up my throat to see her pain. I pushed my head into her reaching hand and again the past cleared, the fog dissipated for a moment.

“Deidre.” I said her name and she leaned forward with effort to hug me. I wrapped my paws around her frail body, felt every bone in her spine and arms press against her skin.

“Alex.” She sobbed my name.

I did the only thing I could and whispered, “Don’t tell.”

Shaking, she held me tighter and I slid out of her arms, to sit on the floor beside her. There was no going back for me, that had been made clear as crystal. Even if that other voice said that maybe it was possible. There was no point in anyone knowing our connection. I glanced at Rylee who was watching us with eyes that saw more than I wanted her to. Maybe she guessed, but I had the feeling she would never tell.

Heavy footsteps thundered down the hallway toward us, and both Deidre and I tensed with the familiar noise. Hackles raising, I let out a low growl. “Bad man.”

Rylee spun toward the door, sword raised. “What is it?”

“Bad man,” I repeated, planting myself at the foot of the bed. After everything he’d done, surely he didn’t think he should be here now? I hoped I was wrong.

No such luck for us.

Six foot five and well over three hundred pounds of self righteous anger, our father burst into the room, his eyes narrowed before he really saw anything. “Deidre, where the fuck have you been?”

Rylee, even though she was seriously out-sized by the hulk of a man who had terrorized both Deidre and me our entire lives, stepped directly into his path, her sword held along the back of her arm so he couldn’t see it.

“You have the wrong room. Go ask the nurse again.” She stepped sideways as he tried to go around her.

Deidre cried harder, her sheets rustling as she burrowed deeper into them. “Go away, Roland. I don’t want to see you.”

“That’s my daughter and I have every god damn right to see her. So whoever the fuck you think you are, get out of my way.” He shoved Rylee.

Mistake number one. Rylee let the momentum take her, and she used it to run up the wall closest to her, spin in mid-air, and slam a fist into his neck.

With a gurgle, he dropped to his knees, hands grasping at his neck. Fury lit him up and he struggled back to his feet and took a swing at her.

Mistake number two. I lunged forward, snarling and snapping. I wasn’t as big as him, but I knew I looked scary, and I knew how much he hated dogs.

His eyes rolled up into his head and he fell backward in a dead faint, his head smacking the corner of the door as he fell.

“Alex, under the bed.” Rylee pointed and I did as she said as more feet came running.

Rylee helped the nurses get Roland onto a gurney and wheel him away. The head nurse came in and checked on Deidre. In a matter of minutes, Deidre and Rylee got the nurse to start the paperwork to put Deidre into foster care. Safe from our father.

D
eidre was going
to be in the hospital for a few weeks, according to the doctor. Long enough to get her strength back up that the incubus had stolen from her, though the doctor thought she was thin from living on the streets and starving. We didn’t stay with her once Roland was dealt with, much as I wanted to. Even I understood that without the collar hiding me, there was no way I could stay with my sister. We lived in two different worlds now, and though the incubus had drawn her in, she was safer on the human side of things.

And now, she
was
safe, and with that, I could be at peace. No more would she be at Roland’s mercy, or hiding from him on the streets. We slipped down the back stairwell of the hospital and ran for the Jeep under the cover of night. Rylee flung the door open for me. I leapt in and did a spin on the seat, excitement flooding me.

“Deidre safe.”

“Yes, thanks to you. You saved both our asses.” She slid into her seat. “And now we need to find you a place to live.” Her eyes searched mine and I lowered my eyes after a brief moment, tracing the stitching in my seat with one claw.

“Alex stays. Helps.”

She let out a sigh. “This time, you helped, you’re right. But you still can’t stay with me. I can’t keep a werewolf with me.”

I slumped in my seat. “No fairs.”

Rylee buckled in and turned the key in the ignition. “Yeah, life is the shits, buddy. Nothing you can do about that.”

The drive took until the sunrise peeked up on the horizon behind us.

Twenty-four hours since I’d woken up, there was something significant about—

Since I’d become

This

monster

Deidre goodbye

love you sis

safe now

alex likes

rylee

stays with

rylee

hungry… .

Shit, what the hell was I supposed to do with a submissive werewolf? I couldn’t take him home with me. Could I? And was he really as mentally incapacitated as I thought? There were moments with Deidre that I’d seen more than a glimmer of intelligence, but a real light of knowledge in him. He’d understood what he was, or what he was becoming. That alone made me soften toward him. On a whim, I Tracked him, even though he sat beside me.

Sadness was foremost in his heart, but it was followed closely by an intense hunger.

With a sigh, I pulled off the highway and headed for the closest fast food joint.

“What do you want to eat?” I asked as I parked the Jeep. His eyes lit up and he clapped his oversized paws together with obvious glee. “Cheeseburger.” He woofed once and then spit out, “Coffee!”

Laughing, I slid out of the Jeep and went into the restaurant. If nothing else, Alex made me smile, something I hadn’t done a lot of in the last few years.

This time of day, the food joint was quiet and they didn’t want to give me a cheeseburger, so I took some breakfast sandwiches back with me.

Alex snarfed them back in three seconds flat while I managed to get in one bite on mine, but it was the way he drank his coffee that fascinated me. With a dexterity that surprised me, he balanced the cup in one hand, long claws wrapped around the Styrofoam cup, careful not to punch any holes in it. He took a sip and then grinned at me. “Goody good.”

I nodded and finished eating my breakfast before starting the Jeep back up and doing a U-turn, heading back toward home.

“All right, you can stay with me for a little while. But not forever, you got that?” I leaned across and pulled my crappy cell phone out. I would need a more permanent collar for him if he was going to stay awhile.

He started to spin on his seat, while he yipped and barked. “Alex stays, Alex stays!”

I shook my head, but couldn’t stop the smile slipping across my face. “Yeah, Alex stays.”