Dungeon Crawl (The Twenty-Sided Sorceress Book 8) Read online

  I didn’t admit to him that there were nights when I awoke from my nightmares and wondered if it would be so awful. If ripping open the seals and letting all the weird shit in the world come to light, letting gods back in to deal with this messy planet wouldn’t be worth getting a little sleep at night knowing that Samir was gone forever. As long as I held him here in limbo, there was always the chance he’d pull a Darth Vader on me.

  Fortunately caffeine and sanity always stopped me from doing something that reckless. For now.

  “Perhaps. I still do not like this.” Alek shook his head and went back to his sandwich.

  There was no good response since we were going anyway. I didn’t favor being on the Archivists shit list. I picked at my chips and looked around the neighborhood. A few fluffy white clouds marred the impossibly blue skies but the sun was out, the air was cooler than the last few days but still pleasant teeshirt weather. The hardware store looked deserted, but someone was parked up at the church.

  I dropped my chip and stood up, raising my arm to block the glare of the sun.

  “That look like a black SUV to you?” I asked Alek. I started to move to the left as I realized I’d blocked his view by standing where I was.

  Hot pain punched into my gut and folded me over even as it shoved me backward and down. Not again, I thought. I knew what this was. Bullet. I fucking hate getting shot.

  I reached for my magic through the white hot agony burning its way into me and started to get a shield up. “Alek,” I yelled in warning. He was quick, he’d get down behind me. I hoped he had his gun on him. I couldn’t remember if he’d left it inside.

  Somewhere in the back of my mind I registered the sound of the second shot but my shield came up and I didn’t feel a second bullet. I turned and started trying to crawl back toward where Alek had flattened himself onto the ground by the table. Blood squelched and spurted between my fingers as I clutched at the wound. The shooter wasn’t fucking around. This was a serious caliber. I’d gotten lucky they’d hit through the very side of my abdomen and missed my spine.

  “Alek,” I said as I crawled toward him. “Alek, they are behind us.” My vision was dimmed by the pain and the strain of keeping the magic going in its bubble around us. He’d dropped down onto his side, facing away from me. Away from the threat. Had he not seen where the bullet had come from? Did he see something else the other direction?

  Blood, dark red and flowing like water toward a storm drain. It was everywhere around him, under him.

  I shoved myself over the patio through the hot, slippery mess and reached Alek’s side. He had his hands over his throat, blood gushing between his clutching fingers. His ice-blue eyes were white and wide with panic and pain.

  Somewhere in my head I knew I was screaming. The sound was far away, like it was coming from another throat. I heard the squeal of tires behind me in the distance and twisted in time to see the SUV drive past. Something hit my shield like a freight train but my magic, running on instinct born of training, held it off. Then the SUV was gone before my brain could turn the magic on the attack, and I was alone with all the blood.

  I knew my wound wasn’t fatal no matter how much pain I was in. My hands found Alek’s and I pressed them around his, trying to staunch the blood flow. His eyes were still wide open, unblinking, but his heart was still beating, pumping all that blood right out onto the cement. His hands moved, falling away as his eyes started to flutter closed. Beneath my fingers I saw gaping flesh, like a horror movie nightmare come to life.

  “Shift,” I told him. “Shift.” It was his only chance. I didn’t know how to heal with my magic. This was way out of my skillset.

  Alek’s eyes closed. The gush of blood beneath my hands started to slow as his heart quit on him.

  Reaching for my magic, I took the only shot I could to try to save him.

  I used Tess’s magic and knowledge to slow time. I couldn’t risk trying to turn it backward again and I didn’t have the power of ley lines to help me do that even if I wanted to, which I admit I desperately did. I’d sworn off time magic completely after that incident, but this was the very definition of extenuating circumstances.

  I felt the air around me still. All noise ceased. Alek’s hideous gurgling breaths had already slowed to nothing. I tried to remember how I’d reached him before, when he was poisoned. I pushed magic at his heart in a desperate bid to make it beat just a little longer.

  “Shift,” I told him. “Shift.”

  His eyes fluttered and his lips folded back from his bloody teeth in a snarl. Then there was tiger beneath my hands, fur instead of flesh. His chest heaved and fell, heaved and fell. His eyes were closed again and though I tried, I could get no response.

  But he breathed. I leaned in against him and listened for his heart. Faint but there, deep within his huge chest. Tiger-Alek had no wound in his neck, but I had no idea how long it would take him to heal. If he healed. I pushed that thought away. At least he wasn’t bleeding out here in the mortal world anymore. I’d take whatever small victories I could.

  Movement beyond the shimmering bubble of slowed time around us caught my eye. Lara’s form hovered there. She was smart enough not to walk into the spell.

  I didn’t want to let go of the magic. If time sped up, would Alek hang on? I couldn’t keep us there forever. Doing this much on top of the shield and being injured myself was already draining the snot out of me. The bile? I felt the blood loss taking its toll on my mental focus.

  With a promise to the Universe that I’d be the best person possible going forward if they’d just save Alek, I dropped the time spell. Wind and noise rushed in on me as the breath I hadn’t realized I’d been holding gasped out. Pain radiated from my side, punching me anew with every beat of my own heart, even though a quick glance showed the bleeding was already slowing.

  “Holy mother of god, Jade. Jade. Do I call Nine-one-one?” Lara’s voice was loud in my ears and I winced.

  “No,” I managed to gasp out. “Vickie. Sheriff Lee, too,” I added, thinking quickly.

  “I’ll close the store. Nobody is inside.” Lara turned and ran back in.

  Brie, her red curls fighting free of her bun, ran out the back of her bakery next door, took one look at me kneeling beside Alek, and made a motion with her hand I couldn’t parse, and ran back inside. I was lucky none of her regulars had come out to see what the screaming was about. If anyone came to investigate the sound of gunshots or a woman yelling bloody murder, we were in trouble.

  I had a hole in my side that wasn’t bleeding anymore but was still an open wound, or so the quick glance that turned my stomach told me. I was kneeling next to a twelve-foot long white tiger, both of us in a giant pool of blood that was already turning black at the edges in the sunshine. The human citizens of Wylde are remarkably good at turning a blind eye to weird shit, but the scene there might have been asking too much. I didn’t want to move, afraid if I took my hands off Alek’s body he would quit breathing while I wasn’t looking.

  Ciaran, my leprechaun neighbor, and Brie, came to my rescue. Brie had gone around the front of our block to Ciaran and they came out the back carrying a huge Shoji screen. It was big enough to mostly block the direct view of Alek from the road.

  “What happened?” Ciaran asked as they got it up.

  “Someone shot us,” I said. Those shifters that Levi had talked to, but I didn’t say that. We’d hash out who and how to hunt them down and make them wish they’d never been born later. “Alek was hit in the throat. Lara’s calling Vickie.” I didn’t know what the town vet could do, but she’d at least come here and maybe say reassuring things. She knew more about what a shifter could heal than any of us.

  “What about you?” Brie said, crouching beside me, not seeming to care that her bright blue tennis shoes were now standing in a pool of blood.

  “Hit me in the side, I’ll live.” I wished they’d shot me in the throat and Alek in the side. We’d stand a better chance that way.

 
; Now that the adrenaline was fading and I could replay the event in my head, things weren’t adding up. They’d shot me low and to the side. I could almost believe they’d aimed center mass and had shitty aim, but their hit on Alek was a smaller target than his chest, and direct.

  Keeping my hands on Alek’s side, I turned and looked toward the church. It was up a hill, giving the shooter a higher vantage, but hundreds of yards away. Not an easy shot, but it gave them a straight line down to where we ate lunch. The awning was high enough that it wouldn’t interfere.

  I’d been in the way, I realized. That was why they’d shot me first. A shot aimed to cripple and drop me. Alek had been moving, reacting more quickly than they expected. That’s why the shot hit his throat and a little to the side, the only thing that saved his life. It should have hit him in the head. Might have, if he’d been just a fraction slower to react to the first and already on alert due to me moving to see the SUV more clearly. But why not shoot us earlier? Maybe the SUV arriving was what had caught my eye. I knew some questions might never have answers.

  Once I got my hands on them, I was going to be asking different questions. If I bothered asking anything at all before turning them into wolf bbq.

  Brie gently pulled away the teeshirt from my wound and I hissed.

  “It’s closing,” she said. “Bullet went through.”

  “Told you, I’ll heal.” I tried to shrug her off but that sent a new spike of pain through me. I hate getting shot. Bullet wounds are literally the worst. The worst.

  Lara saved me from more prodding by coming back outside. She nodded cautiously to Brie and Ciaran. She didn’t know them as anything other than the people who owned shops to either side of mine.

  “They’re cool,” I told her, meaning they weren’t going to freak about supernatural stuff. I made a mental note to have the “Brie is a goddess and Ciaran is a leprechaun” talk with her later.

  “Vickie is on her way. Couldn’t get to the Sheriff, they wouldn’t put me through. I left a message that Alek needs her at the place he has lunch as soon as possible. I hope that was vague enough but still gets her attention?” Her eyes kept darting between me and Alek’s body. She kept back, right at the doorway.

  “He’s breathing,” I told her. I felt him doing it, slow, almost barely there breaths, under my fingers.

  “I can hear it,” she said. “What happened?”

  “Shot in the throat, I’ll explain when Vickie gets here.”

  “Throat?” Lara said. Her brow furrowed. “That’s, uh. I’ll go make sure they come around back. I told them to.”

  “Them?” Brie said as she straightened up.

  “Harper was who I got through to at the vet’s office, so…” Lara trailed off, looking at me again.

  If Harper was coming, she’d be on the phone to Levi and Ezee on the way. If there was trouble, my gang would be in the thick of it before I could say anything. I held back a sigh because doing so would likely hurt too much. There was no keeping them away from this.

  If Alek lived, I didn’t care. I’d let them all take vengeance alongside me. I knew how shifter justice worked and I was ready to throw in.

  “Thanks, Lara,” I said. She seemed very calm. Tense, but not freaking out. I appreciated that. I decided she needed a raise. Of course, that depended on if she even wanted to work here after today. If she didn’t, I wouldn’t blame her.

  I heard a car coming and stood up, peering around the screen. The Sheriff’s brown SUV came down the street behind my shop at a quick but not alarming pace, her lights off. Rachel Lee pulled in and jumped out almost as soon as she cut the engine, her nostrils flaring as she caught the smell of blood. Rachel was a stocky wolf shifter and had been our sheriff for longer than I’d been in Wylde.

  She came around the wooden screen and saw Alek, then looked at me as I crouched back down beside him. Her eyes widened a smidge but that was her only reaction.

  “What happened?” she asked.

  “I think those two wolves that talked to Levi shot us,” I said. The pain my side was fading out to almost manageable levels now and I could breathe without feeling like I was getting stabbed over and over. “Alek took one in the throat.”

  “Let me move my vehicle to block more of this from the road,” Rachel said. She turned and went to do that, coming back quickly after she’d maneuvered her vehicle around to cover the side where the table was and the screen didn’t quite reach.

  I knelt and kept my hands on Alek’s side, wondering what was taking Vickie so damn long.

  “We’ve been getting prank calls about gunfire for two days now, all over the county,” Rachel said as she came back over. “When this one came in, I figured it was near your shop and I was going to come get Alek anyway, so I came.”

  “Lucky,” I muttered. Those calls couldn’t be coincidence and from Rachel’s face, she was thinking what I was thinking. Someone had set it up, probably the people who shot us, so that when gunfire right in the middle of town was reported, nobody would take it that seriously given all the false reports.

  Wolves crying wolf. It would have almost been funny, if I hadn’t been kneeling in a pool of blood wondering if the love of my life was going to stop breathing any second.

  “What happened?” Harper slammed out the back door of my shop and stopped, staring with open mouth. Her lips went back in a snarl as she looked around for a threat after taking in the scene.

  Vickie ducked out around her and walked right through the blood with hesitation.

  “You okay?” she said to me.

  “Shot in my lower side, but it’s healing,” I said. “Alek was hit in the throat. He shifted but he’s barely breathing.”

  “Shot? Who shot you?” Harper said, her voice now almost a growl.

  “Azalea, come stand over here with us,” Ciaran said, using Harper’s proper name to get her attention. “Let the doc do her work.”

  “I’m okay,” I repeated to her as she edged by Alek’s body.

  Vickie pulled out a stethoscope and started listening to Alek’s heart. More tires on roadway noise. I couldn’t see around the screen to know who it was, but Levi’s voice told me a second later. Both him and Junebug, his wife, appeared around the side of the screen and froze, looking at us all.

  This was getting to be too many people. I couldn’t handle it all, them staring and asking questions. I felt like a goldfish or a zoo exhibit.

  “Too many people,” I said aloud. “Please.” I was trying to hold it all together, watching Vickie’s face for any sign of news before she spoke, but she just kept listening, a tight frown on her lips. Beneath my hands, Alek still breathed, the breaths so subtle that without my fingers buried in his fur, I might have missed the rise and fall of his huge chest.

  “Come on,” Brie said. “All of you besides the Sheriff and the doctor. Let’s go into my shop before we drawn a human crowd, eh?”

  Nobody wanted to go, Levi strenuously insisting it was his fault and he should stay in case there was more trouble.

  “Go,” I yelled at them, regretting it as soon as I did because it caused my side and gut to seize with pain as I pushed air out of my diaphragm too quickly.

  They went. Rachel stood guard at the edge of the screen, her hand casually on her gun butt, eyes scanning the street. Vickie sat back on her heels and looked at me across Alek’s body.

  “He’s alive,” she said. “All this blood.” She shook her head. “Shifting probably saved him.”

  “Probably?” I said, not liking the sound of that. Admittedly, I wouldn’t like the sound of anything short of “it’s a miracle he’s fine and should wake up any second to tell you so himself.”

  “He’s not dead yet. That’s a good sign. His heartbeat is very slow and his breathing is not consistent. I can’t promise he’ll live, Jade. But I can guess that he will. Alek is the strongest shifter I’ve ever known. That poison should have killed him last year. If he could pull through that, he can pull through this.” Vickie’s express
ion was hopeful, her gaze steady as she met my eyes.

  “Can we move him?” I asked, looking away from her and around the lot. “They might come back if they think the job isn’t done. Plus it’s Friday and that’s a busy evening. He’s too exposed out here.”

  “Moving him won’t hurt him further. It’s a question now of if he can heal his body in the other world.” She waved her hand in a vague gesture meant to denote the place that shifters stored their animal or human forms, whichever they weren’t using. Some of them called it the “Between” and some called it the “Veil” and some just the “other world” or “other place.”

  “Can we move him?” Sheriff Lee asked. “I don’t think he’ll fit through your back door here and your apartment is two flights up.”

  I had an elevator, well, a lift really, installed inside, but it only went from ground floor to the gaming rooms, not to my apartment. I’d done it so people with mobility issues could still access the gaming rooms. I hadn’t thought through access to the top floor, evidently. Something I’d have to fix.

  “He’ll fit through that door,” I said, pointing upward, though the awning hid where I was pointing. The stairs were to the right of me. Maybe if enough of us lifted at the same time we could do it? Shifters were very strong and I had a small force of them inside Brie’s now.

  The mental image of us trying to push Alek’s giant tiger body up my stairs like people moving an unwieldly piece of furniture nixed that idea quickly. I reluctantly took my hands off his fur and stood up, wincing. A glance downward told me the bullet wound was almost closed. I wished I could impart some of my near-immortality into Alek. If wishes were horses we’d all win the Kentucky Derby.

  The afternoon quiet held. No cars. Nobody at the church or hardware store. I had an idea that was probably crazy, but as long as no normals saw me, we’d be just fine.

  “Get my keys,” I told Rachel. “Inside the shop, next to the register.”