Page 54 of Fatality on the Field

“I don’t know what y’all are talking about out there, but this damn thing is hampering my ability to do anything!”

We all turn to look at the window, jaws dropping when Dr. Hamilton peels off his suit pieces and flings them at the airlock door. He can’t hear us, obviously, but Morgana rushes forward to bang the glass with a panicked expression. I don’t blame her for losing her cool—we definitely cannot have one of their golden healers/agent/rare species die because of something she’s connected to. It might actually get her terminated this time.

I open my mouth to yell, but the Fae just grins as he walks over to the wall, calmly pushing a button I didn’t know was there. He clears his throat as his mate is finally down to scrubs and says, “Permission to enter now, love? Since you’ve given up the precautions, I assume you’re ready to admit I might be of assistance?”

“Yes, fine, come in, Lucy,” the now bare-skinned doctor says grumpily. “I’m going to do it now, so watch the glare.”

Wolfie grins, and for a moment he looks so pleased with himself it’s like he’s going to eat the door. “I can take it, and you know it.”

That’s when the healer sighs, rolls his eyes, and the containment room fills with a brilliant white light tinged with gold. I watch as he shifts into an enormous, goddamn bird that damn near fills the air over the kids as energy so strong it makes the window glass shiver a bit. His feathers are as snowy as the Alps with golden tips, a gold beak, a shiny crest, and giant talons. That doesn’t stop his mate from barging in through the airlock door without a stitch of protective gear on.

“These guys are a bit insane,” I mutter to the others. “I wonder how bonkers the rest of their crew is.”

“I swear to Freya,” Zuszanna replies in annoyance, “theatrical supes are the worst. Keep that in mind, Ignatius, the next time you consider making a giant scene when it is unnecessary.”

Kaspar snorts, and even Morgana laughs for a moment. I roll my eyes at them, and we turn back to the spectacle going on behind us. Wolfie gives a little bow before he circles the beds, stops by the first kid and crouches to look at her from a new angle. The bird is still hovering, waiting for the Fae to do… something, though I’m uncertain what. That’s when the Fae shifts and I’m left slack-jawed yet again.

This dude is a Dark Fae and I’ve never seen one go all out before—they usually all half-shift here from what all my books say.

“Motherfucker,” the dragon growls as he whips his phone out, dialing quickly and walking away toward his previous spot down the hall.

“What’s wrong with him?” Zuszanna huffs. “The doctors seem to be gearing up for serious magic. That’s our best chance, yes?”

I shrug, shaking my head. “You know dragons, Zu. They’re just temperamental as fuck. Everything sets them off.”

Before she can respond, the sparkling, winged Fae’s voice echoes from the speaker. “We’re going to tap the line. You should all move somewhere far away from the glass. It will not survive, nor will all those things in the hall. Go out to the lobby and let the hospital folks know they’ll have a right mess to clean up soon.”

I press the button as I look at them. “Will that work?”

“Do you have something better in mind that won’t break their minds?”

Morgana blinks, gesturing at me to push the button again. “How did you know⁠—”

Wolfie laughs, but in this form it’s oddly haunting and musical. “You’re a gorgon, darlin’. What else would your endgame be? Hell, even Jackson knew you’d go there if pushed. That’s why we’re here—it's harder to give us shit if we’re unsuccessful. We’ve got a little more pull.”

Our mate grits her jaw and gives them a tight nod. “Then do your worst. We’ll move and you do whatever you have to do to heal them.”

I have no idea what that’s going to be, but I’ve never heard anyone in my family talk about tapping a ley line as if it’s an everyday thing. Whatever the fuck they’re teaching people in Whistler’s Hollow is completely off-book, and I definitely want to take them up on the invite to check the enclave out.

But first, we have to get through this; it will be absolutely fucking nuts and I can’t wait to see what happens.

thirty-three

MORGANA

The second the light bursts free from them, we’re all running like hell toward the lobby. In seconds, I hear the reinforced window to the quarantine ward detonate outward in a sheet of glass. The sound is somewhere between an opera scream and a pressure cooker reaching max level as the three of us dive for the floor. As we land, the part of my brain labeled ‘gargoyle instincts’ simply spikes and my wings snap open so hard the air cracks. I grab Iggy by the shoulder with one hand and throw my other arm up to shield Des, who’s hissing murder and flattening herself to my skull in a panicked outrage.

What I don’t expect is Kaspar having the same instinct on my left with Zuszanna, his wings flicking open with such force it knocks a med cart off its wheels. Our wings overlap in a neat, tactical V, presenting a leathery wall to the onslaught of corridor shrapnel. Every ounce of muscle memory shoves me into a crouch, compressing the more fragile supes in the shelter of our combined spread. In the heartbeat after the explosion, the air is still a storm of glass crystals whistling past, plastic bins thumping off my arms, paperwork sliced into ticker tape, and a full meal tray ricocheting off my hard outer onyx to spin down the hall.

I’m never living this down; I hate shifting to stone in front of random people.

Nurses and orderlies duck behind the reinforced steel of the nurses’ station; two others simply bolt, one of them making for the stairwell exit with her shoes literally coming off as she runs. Someone shouts ‘Code Kronos, code Kronos!’ but nobody’s listening. The entire wing is blaring with a multi-tier klaxon alarm made up of what I assume is the standard get out tone and a secondary, deeper alarm that means ‘magic breach, get your ass to a secured zone or die’. The overhead lights flash in dirty red and cold white, and the hall becomes a horror-show haunted house, everything strobing and shadowed and spattered with glass and metal.

I hold my wing shield for a full three minutes, counting it out internally while the debris storm goes from hurricane to hailstorm to scattered rainfall. My world narrows to the bellowing of alarms, the grit of glass grinding under my boots, and the rapid, almost fevered thump of Iggy’s heart, which I can feel through my palm on his sternum. I risk a look over at Kaspar to see he is doing the same with his head canted, jaw locked, and wings curved tightly enough that the tips nearly graze my own. His face is dead calm, except for the tiniest upturn at one corner of his mouth. If you didn’t know him, you’d miss it; I do, and I can tell he’s pleased that we beat everyone else to the punch.

Dragons are so competitive and jealous that they hoard victory over an explosion like a fucking treasure in a cave.

The last piece of medical hardware—a rolling vitals monitor—clatters off the wall at thigh level, spins once, and flops lifelessly at Kaspar’s feet. I frown when I breathe in air that is thick with dust and the fresh, metallic tang of someone that is bleeding. I’m the first to fold my wings back, the membrane sizzling with leftover energy as I do so. Kaspar does it a half-second later, but he’s fussy about it, folding his wings slow and dignified like a purebred horse settling back into a stable. We both look at the ground between us where Iggy and Zuszanna are crouched, hands over their heads and blinking up at the sudden, deafening silence.