Page 42 of Darkness Echoes (Echoes of Eternity #1)

It’s not one second later that the door to the hallway bursts open, flying off its hinges, and when Finn finally looks over his shoulder, Nix is hauling the unconscious Grayson out of the ruined MRI machine and over his shoulder.

Charred black, the front of the MRI looks like something exploded inside, and the blast had nowhere to go but outwards.

Oh, Goddess, Grayson.

He’s still processing the scene when Gideon is there, pulling him into his arms, checking for injuries, growling and muttering about the plan. The bits of glass in his back stick through his shirt, and it hurts like he imagines being attacked by an entire colony of fire ants.

“Oh, my god!” Dr. Rory shouts, wringing his hands in the open doorway.

“Are you okay?” Finn asks Emmy, helping her to her feet.

“Oh yeah, sure. Yup. Mmmmhmm. Wow.” Her eyes go wide at the feral omega storming out of the room. She meets Finn’s gaze before giving him a small nod. Popping the hard drive out of the control panel, she slips it into Gideon’s sweatshirt pocket.

“Ms. Houser, what in the world happened to my machine?”

“Don’t you think you should ask how she is first, Dr. Hemi-Roid?” Gideon mutters as he grabs Finn’s hand and begins pulling him after their angry- smelling omega.

Emmy coughs to hide her laugh before facing her employer bravely.

“It exploded, Mr. Roid-er-Rory. It’s a danger to everyone.”

She smiles at them and waves them off behind her back. They take that as their cue to duck out of the room.

“Hemi-Roid?” Finn asks once they’re out of earshot.

“Sue me. I mean, Helmsford Rory? More like a hemorrhoid.” Gideon’s face is a picture of disgust.

“We need to get someone to look at your back, puppy. You need to check on Grayson, and then we need to find out what the hell we’re going to explain the exploding MRI machine.”

They find their way to the ER, and it’s unusually quiet. If Finn had the spoons he’d wonder about why that was, but as it is, he can feel blood dripping down his spine and Grayson is still unconscious.

They find a med-bay where Nix lays Grayson down and then drops his lead “skirt” on the floor so that he can climb up on the gurney beside his unconscious soulmate. Not three minutes later, Gideon’s phone rings, and without looking, Finn knows it’s Jay.

“Go,” Gideon says, propping the phone between his shoulder and his ear so he can unbutton Finn’s shirt.

“Gid. What the fuck is going on? Is Nix okay? Are you?”

“Well, yes, to all of that. We’re okay, but Grayson blew the MRI machine up with whatever mojo he’s got cooking now, and he’s out.

Nix isn’t taking to that too well, and Finn was a pincushion for some exploding glass that we really need to get out right now.

Oh, and we might have to replace a three-million-dollar MRI machine. ”

Gideon raises his eyebrow as if to ask Did I forget anything?

Finn can only shake his head and let his bloody shirt fall to the floor. The other end of the phone is silent as their Pack Alpha processes.

“What’s happening to Grayson?” he asks, just as the ER nurse spots them.

“No idea, but we have a civilian incoming. I’ll call later.”

“How did you get in here and past me? Do you need a doctor?”

“I am a doctor, Nurse…uh… Goldberg. Dr. Merritt. I’m visiting from Nash ville. We were in the MRI suite when the machine malfunctioned. I have a few injuries from the glass, and my husband was…uh… nearby.”

“Oh my. I’ll get you some things for your back, straight away. Did your husband faint from the shock?” she whispers.

Gideon laughs out loud, and it’s enough to startle Grayson, who clasps Nix to his chest and sits up, growling. His eyes flash red for a moment, and if it weren’t for Nix hugging him as tightly as possible, Nurse Goldberg might have noticed the alpha’s glowing chest.

Finn grabs a lead apron off the floor and hands it to Nix, who carefully covers Grayson’s chest.

Ouch, fuck.

“Forgive me, Nurse Goldberg, but could I trouble you for that foreign body removal tray?”

“Oh my goodness, yes,” she says for the third time before turning on her heel in search of the medical supplies.

When she’s out of earshot, Finn asks, “What happened down there?”

Grayson shakes his head as if to clear it. He kisses Nix hard on the mouth, shaking his head for the second time.

“Fuck if I know. One minute I was dealing with the wolf, and the next I was…”

He looks at Nix and then at Gideon before continuing.

“I was dreaming…without being asleep? Like standing on a rampart…you know, like on a castle? Then I was…fighting in a battle… it was weird.”

“Like in your dream? A war? With weapons?” Gideon asks, mostly because Weres don’t fight in human wars.

“No…with magic,” he whispers.

Finn’s heart stutters in his chest as a multitude of facts and memories coalesce in his head.

Nurse Goldberg chooses that moment to throw back the curtain all the way.

“Here you are, Dr. Merritt. Would you like me to remove the glass for you? I could also get the intern who covers our on-call?”

“I’ll do it,” Gideon says, unceremoniously taking the tray from her outstretched hand. “Oh, for Goddess’s sake. Thank you. Shoo.” He waves a hand to get her to leave.

This Gideon has exceeded his tolerance for people who can’t shut up and get out of his way.

“Well, I never.”

“Clearly not. Thank you, and goodbye,” Gideon says again, and once she’s backed all the way out of the med-bay, Gideon pulls the curtain closed behind her.

“You were so rude to that nice lady,” Nix chastises and pulls Grayson off the bed so he can sit on Grayson’s lap on the waiting chair.

“She was getting on my last nerve, Kitten.”

“Still, you have to be nice or people will talk. Remember us. That’s not good.”

“I think the exploding MRI is memorable enough. Lie here, Finn. Let Dr. Gideon look at your sexy back.”

The bed is so warm from Grayson’s body heat when Finn lies on his stomach, and that’s the last pleasant thought he has about the entire process.

He stops counting at eighty-eight tiny clinks in the metal basin, but it goes on for much longer. Gideon works in silence until Nix finally has enough.

“Finn, you could have been really hurt. Good thing you saved that nice nurse. What did she put in your pocket?” Nix asks as he fishes out the hard drive with Grayson’s images on it out of Gideon’s sweatshirt pocket.

“Maybe you should finish your part of the story, Grayson, then I’ll get to mine. Distract me.”

“Okay. So I was doing magic. It was…”

“Weird?” Finn asks.

“Constipating?”

“Gideon,” Nix says. “Why are you being a grumpy asshole today?”

“No, it was amazing. Felt amazing…like freedom.”

Gideon pauses in his press, pull, pinch, swab rhythm, and Finn has to look at Grayson, too.

There’s not much that puts that tone of voice in Grayson’s words except Nix, painting, and now his babies. But this is pure awe.

“Anyway, dreams, magic, and then…there was a jolt… like… shit. You know how they talk about pinging towers for signals?”

Finn does.

“Well, it was like that, a strong ping, so the wolf…well, he pinged back. Maybe twice? Then BOOM.” Grayson shrugs.

“The machine was obviously broken.”

No. The machine was not fucking broken before Grayson Pearce got into it.

Gideon wipes the last of the antiseptic across the last cut and runs a hand over the tiny wounds to feel for any more glass. It hurts, but wisely Finn stays silent lest Gideon enjoy it a little too much and get ideas.

“Thank you. They’ll heal up. Now for a shirt.”

“Take mine,” Nix offers, and pulls off one of the ten sweaters they dressed him in before they’d left. He giggles at the silliness of the whole thing. “Good thing I’m a walking closet today.”

“Okay. Let’s get outside, and then I’ll tell you what happened in the booth. Come on, before Hemi-Roid finds us.”

“Who?” Grayson asks, with a pinched face of disgust that Finn thinks looks exactly like Gideon’s.

They thank Nurse Goldberg, who stares after them on the way out, and it’s a short walk across the parking lot to a set of picnic benches on a grassy knoll nearby.

Removing his shoes and socks, Grayson digs his toes into the grass with a sigh.

“Maybe I should add my part before you tell your part, Finn?” Nix asks. “Gideon was being romanti–”

“Ya! Enough of that. Get to the other part, Kitten, or you’ll get that spanking, and this time you won’t like it.”

“Promises, promises. So we were talking and then I felt the bond with Grayson get really bright, and then dim, and then really bright. Sort of like what you were describing before. And then there was a giant crack , and then it blinked out, and then it popped back. It’s so bright right now.”

“Brighter than normal, Nix?” Grayson asks, realizing he’s still wearing the lead apron around his neck like a bib.

“For fuck’s sake.”

He rips it off, throwing it on the ground like it’s personally offended him.

“Yeah. Like, times a hundred. All the bonds are bright, actually, and I feel like we could rule the world.”

Gideon’s eyes go wide at the word choice, but he uses picking up the lead apron as an opportunity to mask his thoughts.

“Okay, now you, Finn.”

“Everything was weird. Right from the start.”

“Weird? What does that mean? That’s my brain you’re talking about so casually,” Grayson grumbles.

“Exactly that. Normal brain patterns have a certain light pattern to them in predictable ways. It allows us to track non-typical brain abnormalities, but your brain was lit up like a fireworks show. There were flashes of activity in every lobe, and some simultaneously. But especially in your temporal and parietal lobes.”

“What does that mean? Is Grayson alright?” Nix asks.

Finn wishes he could say definitively: “Yes.”

“It means he has elevated activity in the areas that govern cognitive function, spatial awareness, and time. Sensory awareness, too. It was stunning and frankly, it looked magical.”

“Why are we using the word magic? Magic users are human. Humans who use their souls. Not born Weres like Grayson,” Gideon scoffs.

Finn can’t ignore the evidence, even if he’ll need more of it to draw any conclusions.

But what if it is ? What if he is?”

And Finn still won’t know how to help him or know if it’s hurting him.

“I need to go to the university library. Maybe I can do a bit of research there.”

“Let’s go, then,” Gideon says, voice tight but steady. His fingers clench at his sides, the only sign of the tension visible besides the muscle ticking in his jaw. “We’re sitting ducks out here. ”

Once they’re all belted in and Gideon has agreed to stop for coffee (because Finn’s brain needs caffeine), he aims the car toward the university.

Grayson and Nix fall asleep like two kids on the way home after a long day playing in the sun, so Finn sets his mind to the events in the MRI suite.

What the fuck is going on?

At any rate, he’ll need a computer to inspect the jump drive Emmy slipped them. Plus a host of other tools to really dig deep into what’s going on with Grayson’s brain.

It’s exciting, and he’ll focus on that rather than the bone-deep terror that something is seriously wrong with his mate.

For now, he can start with the app. It’s always been helpful, and Lauren had assured him the microchip would stand up to the MRI without issue.

Except, when he checks on Grayson’s biometrics in the app, it shows the chip is implanted into someone else.

The physiology no longer matches the DNA structure of the original sample.

Does the user wish to recalibrate for the new subject?

Yes, yes, he most certainly does.