Floating in the blackness was so much nicer. I just had to thoroughly let go.
“Please. ”
It was the tone that stopped me. The despair. The anguish. The voice expressed the sort of emotional pain that I felt physically through every inch of my body.
I took that breath, fire raging through me. Crap, that hurt like the bejesus. I didn’t want any more of that.
But the voice kept begging. Kept pulling at me.
And energy swirled around me, carrying support and well wishes, offering a hand out of the blackness. That was nice. My connections were also lit up, energy flowing from them, filling me with a rushing sound. If only it didn’t hurt so damn much…
I floated for a while longer, that voice still reaching me, the pleas constant. It made my heart hurt.
I sensed great loss in it. Loss I didn’t want. A connection I didn’t want to leave.
Oh man, this was going to suck.
I took another deep breath, and another, trying to ignore the horrible pain that came with it, growing and growing until it was too much for me. I couldn’t handle it.
After a break, I tried again. How the hell could the pain still be growing? This couldn’t be natural.
I pushed to the surface, hating every minute of it.
The rushing sound increased, so loud now, until it popped. Humming caught my ears then, soft and delicate and all around me, sung by many voices. Then that voice, that plea.
Handling the pain for a moment before I took another break, I forced my eyes open.
Austin.
He held a hand I couldn’t feel, bent over me, his tears dropping onto my chest. Sunlight streamed through the blue above me, behind one fluffy cloud. It almost looked like a dragon, that cloud. That was probably a good omen.
I didn’t dare move my head to look around. Didn’t need to anyway. All I wanted to look at was
that face, so handsome. Mine. My mate, staying beside me.
I struggled to say his name, but my jaw wouldn’t work. So I garbled instead.
His head snapped up, and I saw clean streaks down his cheeks where the tears had washed away dirt and grime. Hope filled his gaze.
“Oh baby, thank God,” he said, his other hand joining his first, though mine was still numb. “Oh thank God. Hold on, Jess. Please hold on. Indigo can help, okay? Just hang on a little longer and Indigo can help you. Keep fighting, baby. Keep fighting for me.”
“Yes! She’s giving me her lifeline,” another voice said, strangely distorted. “She’s giving me enough to work with. Hang on, Jessie, I got this, okay? I showed up for work today. I got it.”
It was all too confusing. Maybe because it hurt so damn much. I needed a break.
As the darkness welcomed me again, I knew it would be temporary this time. Just a break, and I’d try again.
THE NEXT TIME I awoke was so much better. It didn’t hurt nearly as much. The setting was different, though. Now I was inside, surrounded by smells I recognized. Filtered light came through a window to my right and somewhere beyond my feet. A heavy weight lay across my middle and warmth seeped into the skin on my left.
I fluttered my eyes open, taking stock of my surroundings. Austin’s living room.
I lay on a cot with white sheets up to my waist, still in my gargoyle form. The weight was Austin’s arm, across my middle. He sat beside the cot and was bent over, sleeping soundly on a sliver of cot at my side. His hair was wild and dirty, his face tear-streaked and grimy, and wounds and muck crawled out of his T-shirt neck and sleeve lines. He hadn’t cleaned himself up. He probably hadn’t left my side.
“Good afternoon.” Nessa stood from the couch, fatigue heavy in her features. She dropped a book to the side. “How are you feeling?”
I opened my mouth, remembering how much my jaw had hurt. It didn’t feel so bad anymore, not that I could talk with it. I’d need to shift back to human, but given the pain still radiating around my body, that didn’t seem like a great idea.
A tube ran from a needle in my arm to a medical bag on a stand to my right.
“That’s to make sure you get plenty of fluids,” Nessa said, coming closer. “You lost a lot of blood.
Like…a lot of blood. Stupid amounts of it. But Indigo says you’re out of the woods now. You’re going to be okay.”
Memories lay strewn around my head. Images. Pain. All I could really remember right now was pain.
“Sleep,” Ivy House said. “Sleep for a while longer until you have the strength to heal. Your mate will guard you.”
I did as she said, closing my eyes once more.
And then opening them again a moment later. Except the light was different this time, and it was Sebastian on the couch instead of Nessa. Someone else stood at my head, and Austin was sitting up in his chair, just as dirty as before. So exhausted looking, like he’d been awake for days.