Chapter 63 63
Kaelen's POV:
"Talk?" I couldn't believe that word came out of his mouth. There was fire crawling up my arms now and I wasn't trying to stop it. The wallpaper behind me was peeling, blackening, curling away from the heat I was putting out. The carpet under my feet had melted into something sticky and brown. "You drugged her. You put a needle in her neck and you want to talk?"
"She's valuable. To all of us. There's no need for—"
"She's not valuable." My voice cracked on the word. "She's not a thing. She's not your property or your experiment or your fucking investment. She's a person. She's my—"
I couldn't finish that sentence. Didn't have the right anymore, probably. But the fire didn't care about rights. It just cared about her.
The window behind me exploded inward. Marcus came through it, all red fire and controlled violence, and for a second I thought he was going to attack me too because he looked just as furious as I felt. But his eyes went straight to Annabeth on the floor and then to the man from the bench and something in his expression went cold. Not hot like mine. Cold.
"The exits?" I asked.
"Covered. Two more outside, already dealt with." He was breathing hard. Blood on his face, not his. "Where is she?"
"Here. She's here." I was already moving toward her, dropping to my knees on the ruined carpet. My hands were shaking so bad I could barely touch her face. She was breathing, thank God, shallow and slow but steady. Pulse weak. Skin cold. Whatever they'd injected her with was dragging her under hard.
"The device," Marcus said, kicking aside the melted remains of whatever that thing had been. "Sonic suppressor. Designed to disrupt dragon fire at a molecular level. Military grade."
"It didn't work on me."
"It's calibrated for hybrids. Wouldn't be strong enough for a full-blood." He knelt beside Annabeth and checked her pupils, lifting one eyelid with his thumb. "The sedative is the problem. It's not regular tranquilizer, it's something specific. Dragon-specific. Her system won't metabolize it the way a human's would."
Behind us, the man from the bench moved. Tried to move. Marcus didn't even look at him, just sent a wall of red fire that slammed him against the far wall and held him there, pinned, his expensive clothes smoking.
"Don't," Marcus said. Just that one word.
The sprinklers were still going. The smoke alarm had been screaming for, I don't know, minutes? Hours? Time wasn't working right. The whole room was wrecked, scorched walls, shattered furniture, water pooling on the burnt carpet. It looked like a bomb had gone off, which I guess was kind of the point.
"We need to go," Marcus said. "Fire department will be here in minutes. We can't be here when they arrive."
"What about—" I gestured at the unconscious men. At the two who weren't unconscious anymore, who were never going to be anything anymore.
I'd killed them. Three people. Maybe four, I wasn't sure about the one with the burns. I'd killed them with my hands and my fire and I'd done it without hesitating, without thinking, without feeling anything except the absolute certainty that they needed to die because they'd hurt her.
I waited for the guilt to hit. The horror. Something.
Nothing came. Not yet. Probably later. Probably at three AM when the adrenaline wore off and I was lying in the dark reliving every second. But right now? Right now all I felt was her, cold and limp in my arms, and the desperate need to get her somewhere safe.
"I'll handle the scene," Marcus said. "Fire will do the rest. Take her to Mill Road. Now."
I picked her up. She weighed nothing, or maybe I was running on so much adrenaline that a car would've weighed nothing too. Her head fell against my shoulder and her hair brushed my neck and she smelled like smoke and coconut shampoo and whatever chemical they'd put in her veins.
"Kaelen." Marcus stopped me at the door. His face was... I don't know. Complicated. The face of a father looking at the man who was carrying his unconscious daughter. "You did good."
I didn't feel like I'd done good. I felt like I'd done what I had to do, what any person would do when the someone they loved was being dragged away with a needle in their throat.
Actually no. Not what any person would do. What a dragon would do. What a monster would do.
The hallway was empty. The alarm had cleared the floor, guests stumbling down the other stairwell with their luggage and confused faces, probably thinking it was a drill or a kitchen fire or some dumb electrical thing. Nobody looked at me carrying an unconscious girl toward the back exit. Or if they did, I didn't notice.
My car was parked in the side lot. I laid Annabeth across the backseat as carefully as I could, tucking my jacket under her head because the leather was cold. She didn't stir. Didn't make a sound. The needle mark on her neck was turning purple.
I drove to Mill Road with both hands white-knuckled on the steering wheel and my eyes burning gold the entire way. Couldn't make them stop. Couldn't turn it off. Every time I looked in the rearview mirror and saw her lying there, still, not moving, the fire surged again and my vision went gold around the edges.