Page 10 of Ryld's Shadows
Chapter Three
Flax stood in the elevator lobby after they’d gone. Just stood there. Shivering.Gods, that kid gave him the willies. It wasn’t that he was different. Neurodivergent, the humans said. Okay, maybe that was part of it, since Flax didn’t have any training, any knowledge of how best to approach someone like Ryld. No, it was the rumors. The whispers. Everyone in the building had heard about him by now. The kid—fine, not a kid, but damn it, he was even smaller than Kai—they’d found in the Appalachians, living in a cave. The monsters he could summon. Rumors of giant spiders.
He shivered harder. Nothing freaked him out like giant spiders.Big bad hunter, yeah, that’s me, but the giant spiders back home were nasty, nasty beasties.
He shook himself one last time and called down to dispatch. “Hey, Molly? Has anyone been dispatched to check for monsters in the subways?”
“Negative, Officer Wolfheart. Director Hiltas went himself and gave the all clear.”
“Oh, um, okay, thanks.”
Still, he stood staring at the entrance to Counseling, trying to calm his racing heart, wondering how close he’d been to pushing the little drow into summoning monsters. This was what happened whenkalesiwere separated.Makes an elf all jumpy. Sage needed to get done with his stint at the Academy. Ash needed to come off night shift in medical so they could actually sleep together again.
The elevator doors slid open behind him, and he spun, knives out.
“Whoa, whoa, Flaxy-boy!” Sin stood there with his medical bag and both hands raised. “It’s just me! Not looking for a fight!”
“Gods…” Flax sheathed his knives and ran both hands over his face. “Sorry, sorry. I need to get home.”
“I’ll say. I’d say go get yourself some, but I just passed Ash in the treatment rooms.” Sin edged around him carefully. “You take it easy. Maybe get a beer and put your feet up.”
Flax tried to laugh it off, but he held the elevator door so it wouldn’t close before he could escape the lobby. Escape the building. Behind him, Sin muttered, “Damn freaky elves, the whole bunch of ‘em.”
“Some of us more than others,” Flax muttered. He let the elevator doors close but instead of going down to the lobby he pushed the floor for medical. Ash might be busy, but he might be able to spare a moment.
He didnotrush through the doors to medical like a child running up the steps in the dark. Nope. Not at all. Once there, his heart already started to calm, though. Kellen was on the front desk—friendly, kind-hearted Kellen—and the place had the normal sounds going on of a medical department at the end of the day. People gathering lunch bags, saying goodnight. People typing up chart notes. Nothing bad here. Nope.
“My hunter? Is all well?”
At least he didn’t jump out of his skin when Ash appeared at his elbow. He did turn and fling himself into Ash’s arms, though. “I’m okay. I’m… I needed to see you.”
Ash gave a soft laugh, interrupted by a more concerned sound. “What has distressed you? I would ask what has frightened you, but my Flax knows no fear.”
“It was that strange little drow. Ryld. He was… I took him up to Counseling.”
“That is good to hear.” Ash set him back to search his face. “That he is found.”
“Yeah. I feel ridiculous reacting like this. But I got a little skittish around him. I—” Flax cut off as the doors to medical slammed open, and an elf limped through.
Cress? Isn’t that his name?He leaned against the intake counter, head on his arms. “They were huge. They told me, but I didn’t… They were huge.”
“I should see to this.” Ash patted Flax’s chest and let him go to approach the patient.
Flax wasn’t going anywhere, though. He needed to hear this.
“Let’s get you into bay two,” Kellen said. “How bad is the injury and what happened?”
“It bit me, I think,” Cress said as he started limping toward bay two. Ash followed to help Kellen with the intake, and Flax silently trailed after them both.
“What happened exactly?” Kellen asked again while he pulled supplies from a cabinet.
“You know about the drow fre…uh, the drow? He lost his shit again. That’s what happened. On a packed subway, he freaked out and suddenly people are screaming and bleeding, being slashed to ribbons.” Cress shook his head. “They looked like some kind of demented baboons, or deformed dogs. Three of them. I had to go after them to protect the humans and by the time backup came, the drow was gone.”
While he talked, Kellen silently went about setting out gauze and antiseptic and got him to lower his pants. “Were there a lot of injuries?”
Cress snorted. “Tons. Mostly minor, but you know what happens when people panic. They run everywhere. Trample each other. The human police came, and human emergency services. But what’s a human going to do against that kind of magic? I had all I could do just to keep them relatively contained.” He hissed as Kellen started to clean the slashes on his leg.
“That’s it. I’m done. I can’t take any more of this shit.”
