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Still shaking off the remnants of sleep, he drew in a deep breath and pushed the Sight into his eyes.
The auras of other sleeping patients filled his vision. There was a nurse five rooms down, swapping old bedding for new.
The attack came from behind him—from inside the goddamn room.
Darien shouted in surprise as the Familiar Spirit—a wolf with glowing white marks under its eyes—attacked him with enough force to send him flying into the door. It slammed back against the wall, ripping through plaster, as the wolf’s teeth shredded the sleeve of his hooded sweatshirt.
Bandit, wake up! Darien bellowed. He kneed the wolf in the ribs, but it wouldn’t let go. Sharp teeth latched into his muscle, drawing blood. Darien sensed the other presences in the room now—more Familiars, which explained how they’d got in without him noticing. Bandit, WAKE UP!
The dog jolted into consciousness—right on time to jump out of Darien’s shadow and intercept a different Familiar Spirit, this one a dog bigger than Bandit.
Darien wrenched his arm free of the wolf’s maw and kicked it in the side of the head, sending it smashing into a shelf with a yelp.
An arm wrapped around his throat from behind, while another five men burst through the door, weapons drawn. Six more followed—all of them hellsehers, armed to the teeth, Familiars at the ready.
Fuck.
Darien surrendered himself to his rage, and for several minutes he blacked out—he just fought.
Every move he made was deadly. He never missed—slashing arteries, ripping open throats, and blasting bullets into skulls. But these men had come prepared, and Darien realized, as he fought to keep them from laying a single finger on Loren, that he was—truly, for possibly the first time in his life—outnumbered. There were too many men, even for someone like him, and he was half a-fucking-sleep.
Darien plunged a knife into an ear of one man and slashed another’s throat, blood spilling to the floor like a waterfall.
He ducked under a blade and kicked the guy’s feet out from under him. Shot him in the head. Bang. And then—
One of the men reached for Loren’s IV—
And Darien lost it.
His magic erupted—and it was like a bomb went off.
He threw out a shield of protection, forming a bubble around Loren, as his magic laid waste to almost everything in sight.
Darien got down and covered his head as wood and glass and metal and plastic flew through the room. His magic obliterated his assailants, blood spraying what was left of the walls.
Turned out the hospital staff had made the right decision by keeping the rooms on either side of Loren’s empty; Darien could see through the gaping holes in the walls now—the demolished furniture, the shattered windows and fluttering blinds, the broken televisions.
Slowly, he pushed to his feet, debris slipping off his clothes.
The first thing he did was check on Loren. Glass crunched under his boots as he crossed the room to her bed, Bandit trotting beside him. The dog’s cropped tail twitched with pride.
I was having a very pleasant dream, Bandit said.
Yeah? Darien replied. What about?
Fetch.
Darien checked Loren. Not a mark was on her—not one glass sliver, nor one drop of blood. Even the heart monitor was untouched. He watched as her chest rose with even breaths, her heart beating out a steady rhythm on the monitor.
The sound of wet coughing filled the room.
One of the men was still alive, but barely. He was slumped against the wall by the shattered window, wincing in pain, hands clutching his guts that were spilling out onto the floor.
Hostility simmered in Darien’s blood as he stalked around the bed like a predator, Bandit on his heels, and dropped to a crouch before the man.
“Who sent you?” Darien demanded, eyes like fire. He forced the man to meet his gaze with the muzzle of a gun jammed below the chin. “Gaven?” Bandit growled at the prick’s name, hackles rising.
The man coughed again, blood filling his mouth. “Who the fuck’s Gaven?”
