Page 20

Chapter 20

Donovan

C onsciousness returned in slow dribs and drabs, fleeting seconds of awareness between bouts of darkness. I heard raised voices, but couldn’t stay awake long enough to understand what was being said. I felt a hand in mine, but my body wouldn’t respond when I tried to squeeze it. A chill tickled across my bare legs, but I couldn’t ask for a blanket.

The first time I stayed awake for more than a moment and my thoughts cleared, I opened my eyes to darkness. Vague shapes stood out in the shadows, enough for me to realize I was in a kitchen, but not the one at Alex’s house or the one in my rental. Wherever I was, it was quiet. Even in a small town like Lowery’s Crossing, it wasn’t unusual to hear the sound of cars going by at all hours of the night. Here, silence reigned. No glow from a streetlight filtered through the windows, only a faint hint of pale moonlight too weak to penetrate the darkness.

In any other situation, my instinct would have been to fight or flee, to get away from this place that I had no memory of coming to. Now, though, there was a hand in my own that I immediately recognized and when I shifted my head, I found Alex beside me, his cheek resting on the edge of whatever I was lying on. From the height and position, likely a table.

Why was I laying on a stranger’s kitchen table?

When I tried to muddle through my memories, they evaded me, slipping through my grasp. I remembered searching for Landon and finding the ledge. I remembered the argument with Ori’s group, then heading back to the cars with Alex and Raina and Camille. After that, everything went hazy.

I could focus on that later. Right now, I had a more pressing problem. Two of them, actually, but when I tried to move, pain shot up my leg and through my lower back, forcing a sharp gasp.

Alex immediately stirred, sitting up with a groan. He looked at me with bleary eyes, then blinked and nearly fell out of his chair when he realized I was awake.

“Donovan!” His free hand touched my forehead, then my cheek, like he just needed to touch me. “How do you feel?”

“Everything hurts right now,” I admitted. My throat was raw, like I’d swallowed broken glass. “I need a bathroom.”

“I’m not sure if you’re supposed to move yet. Let me get Ori and Lelo. Stay still, okay?” He pressed a kiss to my dry lips, then disappeared before I could gather my wits enough to ask who Lelo was.

I got my answer barely two minutes later when Alex returned with two people behind him. Ori was familiar, of course, so the tall Black woman with them must be Lelo.

“You’re awake. I was starting to worry,” she said, brushing past the other two. The overhead lights came on and I winced against the sudden brightness. “Lie still for a moment. Let me check your wound.”

“My wound?” I repeated. “What happened? Where are we?”

“I’ll explain everything. Let her look you over first, okay?” Alex resumed his place at the head of the table, taking my hand but remaining standing now so he could see what Lelo was doing. Her fingers were gentle as she did something to the back of my leg, but it still hurt like hell, a strange burning and tingling twining with the shooting pain.

“The lines have receded. One more application should do the trick,” she announced, which meant nothing to me but apparently meant everything to Alex.

“Good.” His shoulders slumped with relief. “Is he allowed to move yet?”

“I would prefer you didn’t until we do one more poultice,” she said to me. “I don’t want to risk elevating your heartbeat and moving the poison through your system.”

“Poison?” I’d been poisoned ? Why couldn’t I remember any of this?

“It’s okay. I swear I’ll explain,” Alex said hurriedly, dropping into the chair so he could meet my eyes.

“Okay. I still need the bathroom, though.”

Footsteps walked away, and a cabinet opened, then Lelo appeared by Alex’s head.

“You’re not going to like it, but this is the best I can offer at the moment.”

She handed Alex a plastic container, one of those cheap ones people bought for meal prepping and leftovers. Well, she was right: I certainly didn’t like it. The need was urgent enough that I couldn’t wait, though.

“We’ll step out for a moment. When I come back, I’ll reapply the poultice and we can see about getting you home tonight,” Lelo said, then departed the room with Ori.

“I can handle it.” I tried to reach for the bowl, but even that little bit of effort left me shaking, my heart thudding heavily in my chest and a hint of sweat on my skin.

“Don’t be stubborn. We’re in this together, through thick and thin, right?”

I wanted to argue, but I was weaker than a newborn kitten right now and I couldn’t wait. Flushed with embarrassment, I allowed Alex to help me shift onto my side just enough to use the bowl. That was bad enough, but even worse was listening to him deal with it afterward. He stepped out what must be a back door behind me, but it couldn’t completely disguise the sound.

Once he’d washed his hands and helped me settle, he stuck his head out to let them know we were done, then resumed his seat.

“Sorry,” I whispered, face still burning.

“Don’t be.” He stroked my hair back from my face, as gentle as always. “You’d do the same for me, right?”

I couldn’t help a little smile, and I nodded. “Any day.”

Lelo bustled into the room a moment later and I heard a rustle as she immediately threw the bowl in a trashcan. I didn’t blame her.

“You may feel some tingling when I apply the poultice, but it shouldn’t hurt. Tell me if anything feels odd.”

True to her word, there was no pain this time. Her gentle fingers spread something cool on my upper thigh. The smell hit me a moment later and I shuddered. It reminded me of the Chicago River after a long, hot day, when the smell of pollution and sewage was worst.

“I know. You get used to it,” Alex murmured. He wrinkled his nose at the smell, too, though.

Lelo made quick work of it, and almost immediately, the throbbing pain eased a little.

“I’d like that to remain on for an hour or two, then we can do one last examination and likely get you on your way.”

“Thank you. Both of you,” I added with a nod to Ori, who still stood in the doorway observing us.

“Rest. I’ll be back to check on you,” she said. Something warm draped across my legs from the knees down, then the two of them departed.

“Okay. What happened?” Getting comfortable on the hard table was impossible and I hated laying on my stomach, but I did the best I could. The small pillow helped, allowing me to rest my chin on it so I could look at Alex straight-on.

“The short version is that we found Landon, then we got attacked by a chimera on the way back to the car. It cut your leg and got its venom into you, so Ori brought us here. They gave you some antivenin, and Lelo used that nasty-smelling poultice to draw out the poison.”

A flicker of memory surfaced and I shuddered. The creature that attacked us had been something straight out of a nightmare. I still wasn’t quite alert enough to deal with that yet, so I focused on the more immediate problems. “What about Camille and Raina? Are they okay? How long have I been unconscious?”

“They’re fine,” he assured me. “Ori gave them a ride home a few hours ago. You’ve been out all day. It’s just after midnight now. Will came and went earlier, too. He made sure the search was called off and everyone made it home safely before the storm hit.”

Something in the way he said that last part caught my attention. “But?”

“But what?”

“Did something happen with Will or the search? You sounded odd when you said his name.”

Alex’s fingers found the edge of the pillow, worrying at the seam with his fingernails. “Will might be a little pissed off at us,” he finally admitted quietly.

“What? Why?”

“Well, in all the chaos and everything going on, we all kind of left him out of the loop about… everything.”

“I told him you were working on expanding your abilities, but I didn’t give details because it wasn’t my place to tell. He gets that, right?” I hated that I couldn’t sit up for this, or even really move.

“I told Raina and Camille, so he was the only one who didn’t know. I think he might’ve understood that, but then the four of us went out together and left him to deal with the search. Then he was the last person to find out about the shapeshifting thing. I think all of that combined, plus, you know, finding out about shapeshifters and chimeras, kind of threw him for a loop. He was pretty upset when he left earlier.”

I had a sudden, vivid memory of two coyotes bursting out of the trees and attacking the creature and put the pieces together from there. “I remember that, I think. So the family are all coyotes? That was Landon’s aunt and uncle?”

Alex nodded. “I guess you don’t remember them changing back after the chimera ran away. Raina and Camille saw them and it’s not like they could unsee it, so…” He shrugged, but the edge of the pillow was getting a little ragged. Risking agitating my wound, I shifted just enough to free up my hand and put it over his, stilling his anxious picking.

“Once I get home, I’ll talk to Will. He’ll understand,” I assured him. “I’ll need to talk to him anyway to find out what he told Cornell. At this rate, I’ll be lucky if I have a job by the end of the month.” The lies were piling up, and Bev Cornell wasn’t a stupid woman.

“About that…”

“Don’t tell me I’m already fired?”

“No, not last I heard.” I felt him start to fidget with the pillow again, but this time he stopped himself, wrapping both his hands around mine to keep from destroying it. “I’ve had a lot of time to think while you’ve been sleeping and I think you’re right.”

I waited for him to explain, but he didn’t continue. “Not to sound arrogant or anything, but you’re going to have to expand on that a little.”

Alex rolled his eyes, but it got a tiny smile out of him and some of the strain in his eyes seemed to ease.

“I think you were right about telling her. Chief Cornell. About me.” His grip on my hand tightened and there was a faint tremor to his quiet words. “I can’t stop finding people and she’s already suspicious of me, so telling her before she figures it out on her own would be smart. Not to mention, the chimera got away and it’s obviously dangerous, so she should know about things like this, right?” His voice had fallen to nearly a whisper by the end.

“I agree, but only if it’s something you really want. You don’t sound too sure.”

“I know Ori doesn’t want me to tell anyone, but our friends already know now. And you trust your boss, right? I only know her as a customer, but you seem to like her.”

“Yeah, I trust her,” I assured him, stopping him before he could pick up steam on his anxious rambling. “You don’t have to do this if you don’t want to, though. I’d never force that on you just to protect my job. I know it’s a small town, but there are other jobs.”

“You love what you do, though,” he whispered and I could tell I’d surprised him.

“I love you more.”

He blinked, struggling to process that. “I can’t take that away from you. If you think it’s safe to tell her what I can, then I trust you.”

I gently squeezed his hand. “I think it’s safe, but more importantly, I really think this will be a good thing for you. You don’t have to be scared or stressed about hiding to protect yourself. You won’t have to deal with the worst parts of what you can do.”

He sagged forward, resting his head on the pillow beside mine. “I really freaking love you.”

“I really love you, too.”

Alex was close enough that I could brush a soft kiss across his forehead, the only part of him I could reach in this position.

“I don’t want to work for the police, though. I mean, I’ll help if someone is in danger or something, but I want to try to keep my life as normal as possible.”

“You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to. I’m sorry if I ever I made you think any different.”

“Nope. That fight is done and we forgave each other, remember?”

“I remember.” Just like I remembered spreading him out across the bed and showing him just how much I adored him afterward.

“No thinking dirty thoughts in a stranger’s kitchen, Donovan Parker.”

“It’s that or talk about the chimera.”

“Okay then, sounds like we’re talking about our dirty fantasies in a stranger’s kitchen.”

I couldn’t help but laugh. “Come on, Alex. We have to talk about it eventually. I have questions.”

“So do I. I really don’t know much more than we knew when it attacked us, which was nothing.”

“You at least know what it is, though.”

“Ori made some calls and they thought it might be a manticore, at first, because of the scorpion tail, but I really think it’s a chimera.” He chuckled, low and humorless. “Thankfully, I went through a massive ancient mythology phase as a kid.”

“I didn’t, so I’m going to need you to fill me in,” I said. I had to stay focused on the here and now, otherwise I’d spend hours just laying here wondering how my life had gone from solving petty crimes in a small town to dealing with ghosts and shapeshifters and monsters.

Alex leaned in and brushed his lips across mine, then sat back in the chair, letting go of my hand so he could pull his phone out of his pocket. “I couldn’t remember much, so I did some research while you were asleep. According to Greek myths, the chimera was a creature made up of different animals, like a lion and a goat. In some stories, it had wings like a dragon.”

He swallowed, tripping over that last word. I distinctly remembered the giant wings on the thing’s back, but those had to be bat wings. Dragons didn’t exist. I simply was not equipped to think otherwise at this moment.

“I remember the wings,” I nodded. “The rest didn’t look like any lion or goat I’ve ever seen. It looked more like a giant panther. I definitely remember the scorpion tail.”

“It almost makes me think this thing was created based on the legends of the manticore, but then other things were added to make it more dangerous.”

“Hold on a second,” I interrupted, lifting my head as much as I could. “You think someone created this thing?”

Alex hunched in on himself, ducking his head. “I know it sounds insane, but Ori kept insisting that nothing like it should exist and no one they talked to knew anything about it. If all these people that know about the paranormal keep swearing that it can’t exist naturally, then that means it came about unnaturally, right?”

“You’re not insane, Alex. It does sound strange, but you’re right. Unless it’s managed to stay hidden from everyone and everything it’s entire life, then it must be something new. Considering how aggressively it came after Landon and us, I’d say hiding isn’t a big priority for it.”

“How is this our lives?” he sighed. “I thought I was going crazy when I first started seeing ghosts. For awhile, I thought my mom did the right thing by locking me up. Now we’re sitting here talking about living, breathing chimeras.”

My heart ached for him. The three days he’d spent held in that hospital clung to him even now. He always played it off as a joke or a throwaway comment, like it didn’t bother him anymore, but I knew him better than that. Reassurances didn’t help, so I fell back on distracting him.

“Honestly, I’m trying not to think too hard about it. Once things calm down, then we can have an existential crisis.”

It worked, earning a quiet chuckle from Alex.

“Only you could make me laugh while we’re talking about killer monsters.”

“It’s my specialty,” I teased. “Tell me more about it, though. Did you find anything else?”

“Nothing super useful. ‘Chimera’ is kind of the catch-all for any creature made up of parts of other creatures. In the original myths, it could breathe fire, so I guess it’s a good thing there aren’t any real creatures that can do that, otherwise that fight would have gone a lot different.”

The wings and tail were bad enough, not even taking into account the massive fangs and talons. I didn’t want to imagine what could have happened if it could breathe fire on top of all that.

“I don’t suppose there was a handy guide on how to kill it? We shot it three times and that barely even slowed it down.”

“In the myths, it was killed by Bellerophon. He rode Pegasus up into the sky and shot it from above, which apparently was enough to kill it.”

“I guess we’ll have to figure something else out, then, unless flying horses are real, too?”

Thinking about the flying horse, something suddenly clicked in the back of my mind. The day Landon went missing, something had spooked his sister’s horse and it’d thrown her, hurting her bad enough that she didn’t go with him. Could the chimera have been that close to their house and no one saw it? It made sense, though. Any sane creature would freak out if they encountered that thing.

“Honestly, at this point, I don’t think I’d be surprised if they were,” Alex laughed, shaking his head. “But until someone shows me one, I think we’re out of luck. Besides, it’s not our problem anymore.”

That gave me pause, and I frowned in confusion. “Come again?”

“Right, I forgot to tell you that part,” he said, wincing. “Ori made me promise we wouldn’t go looking for it. They said they’d deal with it and we were to back off unless it was an absolute last resort and they needed help to find it.”

“And you agreed to that?”

“That thing scratched you once and you almost died, Donovan. Like you said, guns aren’t enough to stop it and we’re just regular people. Yes, I agreed. Let the folks who can shapeshift and do magic or whatever else is out there deal with it. We’ll do what we can to protect the people in town, but we don’t need to go chasing after this thing. It absolutely, one hundred percent will kill us.”

As much as it pained me to admit it, he had a good point. It went against my instinctive drive to protect others and get rid of any threats, but in reality… what could I really do against a monster like that?

“I don’t like it,” I grumbled. “But I get it.”

“Ori said they’d keep me up to date on whatever happened with it, and if they can’t find it, they’ll come to me, if that helps?”

“It kind of does, I guess.” It would have to do. “Anything else I need to know about?”

Alex leaned back in his chair, running through a mental tally before finally shaking his head. “I think that’s everything major.”

“Thank God. I honestly wasn’t sure I could handle anything else, but I had to ask.”

“There’s nothing going on right now that we can deal with, so just focus on recovering. We’ll be out of here and back home soon. Everything else can wait.”

A comfortable silence settled over us while we waited for the poultice to do its work. Alex settled back down on the pillow and after a few minutes, the events of the day caught up to him and he settled into an exhausted sleep. Much as I wanted to join him, though, I couldn’t quiet the thoughts racing through my mind. So much had happened in such a short time and it was going to take a while to really process it all, but in the end, it all came down to one solid fact: today, for better or for worse, our entire lives had changed.