He’d been dragging his legs a bit for an hour or so, but that time he fully face-planted onto the hard-packed dirt ground.
“Noah!” Shea shrieked, running to help him. The tunnels were crowded today, everyone who had been sleeping in the night had awoken, and were now making their way out of there.
I ran forward with Luke and helped Shea get Noah to stand. I was tired too, thirsty, and my feet were tingly and swollen, but I’d had at least a bit of sleep, Noah had none.
“I’m exhausted,” he murmured, his eyelids drooping.
We had three to four more hours to go, and the tunnels were too crowded to allow Noah to do a healing on himself. All that golden glowy magic would light up the tunnels like Christmas morning, and get us killed.
Luke looked at the passing people, a slow and steady stream of worn-out-looking humans and demons.
“I’ve got an idea,” he stated, then started to take off his shirt.
I frowned, but when he started to take off his pants, I gasped. “You’re shifting! Down here?” I glanced left and right.
Luke chuckled. “Yeah. I’m demon gifted, so it’s okay. I’m going to carry Noah on my back so he can rest. My bear can easily handle the weight.”
My heart pinched at the kind gesture, but Noah shook his head. “You don’t need to do that, bro.”
Luke waved him off dismissively. “I’m a big emotional softy. I can’t let you keep collapsing. I’ll be fine.”
With that declaration, he dropped his undies and grabbed his junk. A woman passing by stared wide-eyed as his bones started to crack, and huge muscles bulked out on his already huge arms. Fur began to ripple on his skin and he hunched forward, dropping to all fours as his body transformed into the massive bear we were used to seeing.
“I love you, Lukey,” Shea cooed in his ear, stroking the fur on his back.
We helped Noah mount him, leaning him forward to lie on his stomach, so he could wrap his arms around Luke’s big bear neck. Now that he was off his feet, a sigh of contentment escaped Noah ,and his lids started to roll closed.
Shea frowned. “He worked a shift the night before we left. I don’t even know when the last time he slept was. Could be as long as three days ago.”
Chloe was glancing nervously at the tunnel behind us. “We’ve stopped for too long. Let’s keep moving.”
We started forward once more, Shea and I on either side of Luke, each keeping a hand on Noah’s back to make sure he wouldn’t slide off while he got some rest. I’d gathered Luke’s clothes and backpack and was carrying it for now. Walking the tunnels with Luke’s wide form meant that when we passed someone, they had to kiss the walls and stare in shock at the big bear carrying a sleeping man on his back.
The next two hours were grueling. I was so exhausted that I felt sick to my stomach. My legs ached, and I knew I was extremely dehydrated. We’d only brought so much water, and the more you drank the more you had to stop and pee, so we were trying to just push through it.
We were just wondering how much longer it would be, when I saw another scam stop ahead. Our last one by my calculations. He’d just finished with the couple ahead of us, and upon seeing Luke’s big bear, his eyes widened a little and he grabbed his gun.
“Noah.” I shook him awake, wanting him coherent for this in case any shit went down hard.
Noah’s eyes sprang open and he bolted into a sitting position.
“Hello, friends,” the man said cautiously, his eyes never leaving Luke. Beast Shifters were rare, bears even more.
“Yeah yeah.” Chloe waved her hand, dismissing his shitty suitcase of unusable items as she handed him five hundred dollars. When she went to step forward and pass, his associate who’d been blocking the hallway stopped her.
“Hang on, friend. Just a little test to ensure the money is real,” the man, who I now recognized as a Dark Mage with green glowing magic, informed her.
We all looked to Shea, who mouthed one word.
“Run.”
With that single command, Chloe drove her knee into the balls of the man before her, and he collapsed onto the ground with a groan. Shea and I burst forward after her as Luke trampled the man and his suitcase, coming in right behind us. Noah had tucked himself forward and was gripping Luke’s fur with white knuckles. We’d run all of twenty feet, when I heard the loud and terrifying burst of a gunshot.
Luke let out a strangled bear yelp and Noah screamed.
Pivoting in place, I could see Luke had been shot somewhere in his left hind leg, because he was now dragging it with a limp. In one swift move, Noah pulled out his gun and returned fire as he slid off Luke’s side, taking his stance on the ground. Shea positioned herself next to Noah, and a thick black smoke began to pour from her palms, fogging up the tunnel so no one could see.
“We’re going to have to run the rest of the way,” Noah barked to all of us.
“Can you?” I asked Luke, who’d clearly just been freaking shot!
His reply was to start running forward, so I took that as a yes. Noah fired two quick shots into the black smoke, and then we hauled ass.
Running was not my thing, especially after spending the last God knew how long down in Hell, where I was usually drugged up and bedridden. Every muscle in my body rebelled against what I was doing, and my lungs were burning like they were on fire.
“Move!” Chloe shouted to people who were in our way as we sped past them all.
After what seemed like forever, we started going up; the tunnel was slowly arching upward, and the width and height were narrowing. I hadn’t heard any more gunshots, but that didn’t mean they’d stopped coming for us. I couldn’t breathe, so out of shape from not doing cardio in what felt like decades. I was starting to feel dizzy from the short bursts of air.
Mercifully, a staircase rose into view up ahead with a man standing before it.
“Exit fee! Pay your exit fee. One thousand each,” he called.
A few people ahead of us grumbled that they didn’t have the money, when Chloe went into vampire speed mode, and I skidded to a stop behind Luke’s bleeding bear ass. Suddenly Chloe was there and then she wasn’t. The man arguing with the couple trying to leave, as well as his heavily armed friend, were violently thrown backward, and Chloe materialized again standing over him. Then Shea was there, red and purple magic crackling in her hands.
“Night night,” she stated, and threw the magic over them.
The one man was struggling to sit up after Chloe had knocked him over, but when the colorful spell hit him, he slumped over, unconscious.
“Go!” Chloe shouted to the couple who’d been unable to pay.
Needing no other motivation, they burst forward up the stairs, Chloe right behind them. I eyed the skinny hallway and then my large bear friend. It was going to be close.
“He can’t shift. I need to take the bullet out first or it’ll cause more damage,” Noah told me.
I nodded.
Just then, our past came back to haunt us. I was looking at Noah, who’d just been speaking, when half a dozen of the armed con artists we’d been screwing over all day, burst from the end of the hallway and raised their guns.
It was like everything went into slow motion then. Shea was pushing Luke’s big-ass bear through the tiny stairwell, trying to make him fit, and I was standing beside Noah as he raised his gun. I didn’t know much about guns, but I knew a pistol was subservient to a semiautomatic.
Without thinking, I just reacted. Pulling on my powers, regardless of dark or light, I dropped to my knee and shouted, holding my hands out before me. A creamy silver, pearl-like magic poured from my palms, and immediately formed a shield before Noah and me. The magical substance was thin, so we could still see through it, but mercifully strong as bullets started to slam against it.
It held.
“Holy shit, Bri.” Noah’s comment brought me back to reality.
I breathed in and out slowly, holding my concentration on the shield, while more and more bullets rattled the front.
“I got Luke up top. What’s our exit plan?” Shea’s steady voice sounded behind me.
I had an idea, but I had no clue what it would do. “Get ready to run,” I commanded them both.
With one more deep breath, I pushed the shield outward, letting it leave my hands and float toward the group of armed men. It sailed through the air and then slammed into them, knocking them backward before dissipating.
“Now!” I screamed and turned to run, Shea and Noah hot on my heels.
We burst through the door to find we were inside of a crowded subway station. Luke was the center of attention, his bear bleeding everywhere, and half a dozen demons staring at him.
Shit.
Chapter Twenty-Three
San Francisco wasn’t like LA. Back home in Demon City, there would’ve been a hundred questions for the group surrounding the bleeding Beast Shifter, but instead, people got their look in and then left to get on the train.
“Let’s get out of here and find a safe place,” Noah shouted.
The scammers from the tunnels were going to recover quickly, and no doubt they’d be looking for us.
“I’ll meet you up there!” Shea shouted, then dipped her feet in Luke’s blood and walked toward the train, leaving bloody footprints on the white tiled floor.
Genius. They’d think we took the train.
Shea quickly slipped off her bloody shoes and followed behind us, throwing magic at Luke’s backside to keep any more blood from spilling on the floor.
Now that the train had left, the station was emptied out, and we were able to take the stairs up to the ground floor easily.
When we reached the top, I didn’t know what to expect since I’d never been to San Fran, but I didn’t expect this. Every single streetlight had been replaced with red so the entire city had a rosy hue. The one nearest me was decorated with a hanging human body; a sign around his shoulders read ‘Angel Lover.’
I whimpered, lowering my head, and trying to look elsewhere.
Shea’s hand slipped into mine and she squeezed.
“Over here!” Noah called, jogging down the street to a motel whose sign said ‘Rooms by the hour.’
“Uh, Noah?” Chloe called after him. “That’s a brothel.”
He nodded. “I know.”
Shea shared a raised-eyebrow look with me and shrugged. Luke was barely able to walk the final fifty feet, his back leg giving out, but we helped him along. A few people we passed on the street looked at him suspiciously, but minded their own business in the end.
By the time we’d reached the motel, Noah already had a key and was shepherding us inside. The man at the desk looked mildly curious at our bleeding bear, but then he simply went back to his reading material.
After a short walk down a hallway, Noah opened the door to room 106. It took some difficult squeezing of Luke’s massive body, but we eventually got him inside, where he promptly passed out on the ground.
“Shit!” Chloe shrieked, throwing herself around Luke’s furry neck.