Page 58 of Jay's Silence
A wall of pure muscle and meat clopped to a stop to the left of the golem. The supernatural’s lumpy face had a mop of greenish-yellow hair which ran down its back. A big silver loop came out of his nose.
“Who do you think you are?” he asked in a booming voice.
I blinked, unsure if the creature was talking to me or the golem. The golem didn’t move, and Jay let out an exasperated breath. Out of the corner of my eye, Ogden got Tyson up while Lux still danced around both, his feet slightly out of time with the thumping bass.
“I’m sorry, dude,” Jay yelled back. “I don’t know what he did, but let me buy you a drink to make up for it?”
The hulking lump of a man narrowed his eyes. His upper lip curled, and he licked his teeth, which were way too sharp to be human.
“Or a blood bag?” Jay bit her lower lip. “Or a dog bone?”
“He looks like a lumpy rock.” Lux stopped dancing and squeezed my arm. His dilated eyes bounced in his skull. “They could be twins!” He jumped up and down, pointing between the golem and the new arrival.
The lump’s chest rose. “A fucking golem!” And he stepped forward with his arm raised.
Jay sighed. “Fuck.”
Between one heartbeat and the next, she kicked out, hitting the beast in the nuts, before stomping on his foot. His eyes bugged, the pupils glowing with a dirty yellow, and he crumpled. On his way down, she kicked out again, and the lump fell backward into the arms of two more lumps who fell backward in a too-familiar chain reaction of bodies, halting the dancing around us.
The golem didn’t move.
I swallowed.
“RUN!” Jay pulled me toward a glowing green exit sign. “There’s never just a few Orcs.”
With Tyson slung over Ogden’s shoulder and Lux, once again pulled to my waist, we booked it.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
JAIYANA
For better or worse, London, like its people, was a stoic city of ancient architecture built on hundreds of years of tradition. Despite my last London visits being years in my past—or at least of my memorable past—within a few blocks of our exit out of Club V, I recognized our location. I didn’t stop until I hit a supernatural-friendly hotel.
The lobby had gotten a facelift in the twenty-first century, but the core design remained the same. We hurried past sleek couches in the open lounge with an unmanned bar on the far side. I took note of a few human-looking patrons still socializing at this late hour, but not with the detail I usually would. My focus was on my drugged mates. We skipped the digital check-in and raced for the front desk.
A short, thin woman bundled up in wool like it was the middle of winter met my gaze. One look at Tyson’s sparkle-covered face, and the woman handed me a room card. “Do you need me to phone a healer? That’s a lot of whatever he took.”
“No. No healer, not yet,” I said, unused to the edge of panic in my voice.
You can’t heal.
You can’t help your mates.
I can’t do anything.
I found a pen and a piece of paper and scribbled a message and my accountant's number onto it. “Call this number. He’ll get us sorted along with a nice kickback for you if you pretend you didn’t see us.”
She nodded as if bribes were commonplace. “We charge extra if he ODs and report it.”
I surveyed my guys. Tyson occasionally twitched in Og’s grip as he mumbled to himself. Not quite as bad, Lux tried to turn a circle in Rehan’s grip, and even my solid water dragon’s eyes were slightly enlarged. We were in deep shit.
Instead of saying anything else, I tapped the key card against my accountant's number and motioned to my dragons. Three flights of stairs later, we found ourselves in a large room with a king-sized bed and a pull-out couch. Lux continued his weird dance, the drugs making his usually fluid motions jerky.
Ogden placed Tyson onto the bottom of the bed, and the fire prince’s hand floated, outlining something which looked like boobs as he mumbled. The only hard bone in his body was his erection straining against his pants. I wanted to laugh and cry at the same time.
“Fix us,” Rehan demanded of Og.
Og put his hands in the air. “I can’t! It’s magical drugs permeating your bodies, nothing like, but with the same properties as, the nasty crap Doctor Raba pumped into Jay. I can only help speed up healing, not remove chemicals.”