Warriors of Poseidon 03 - Atlantis Unleashed

harsh wheezing fired Grace‟s urgency to do just that. She slammed the Jeep back into gear and, tires squealing, pulled out into the street and away from the remains of whatever had attacked them in the alley.
    “Hang on, baby, hang on, please, please, Michelle, hang on,” she pleaded in a constant demand and prayer, as she sped the remaining couple of miles to the hospital. Above the Jeep, matching her pace exactly, a soaring cloud of sparkling darkness watched over them.
    She bumped over the curb at the entrance to the emergency room parking lot and pulled the Jeep right up to the door, ignoring signs and the shouts from the ambulance personnel standing around the large double doors. Grace leapt out, shouting for help, and raced around to open the back passenger door. Michelle slumped out into her arms, eyes wide and staring, and Grace instinctively screamed, so loud and long her throat burned, for the one person she needed more than she‟d ever needed anyone.
    “Alexios!”
    “I am here.” He lifted Michelle out of Grace‟s arms and began running for the ER doors.
    Emergency personnel met him with a gurney. He gently lowered Michelle onto it and backed away as hospital personnel rushed Michelle inside, already snapping out competent-sounding medical speak.
    Head lowered, Alexios returned to Grace and lifted her into his arms, holding her to him so tightly she almost felt— almost , for a fraction of a second— safe .
    She saw one of her team approaching from the outside waiting area, and she put her hands flat on Alexios‟s chest to brace herself and push him away. For an instant, his eyes flared such a hot green that she wondered his gaze didn‟t burn the skin from her face. But then he slowly, inch by inch, lowered her to the ground and released her, almost as if he, too, were reluctant to break the contact.
    “I can move the Jeep, Grace,” Spike said. He‟d been wounded by the first wave of shifters in the door, but the bandages wrapping both of his arms and the side of his face clearly hadn‟t slowed him down. “Everybody is already getting treatment. Most all of us are going to be fine. We‟ll hear about Hawk after surgery.”
    She nodded, glad to hear it but too drained to comment.
    Spike‟s eyes narrowed, and he shot a suspicious look at Alexios. “We thought that dark-haired guy healed Michelle?”
    “So he did,” Alexios replied, his jaw clenching around the words. “We were ambushed.”
    Spike was instantly on the balls of his feet, hands hovering near his jacket, underneath which Grace knew he carried at least three guns and several knives. “How many? Do you want us to go after them?”
    “They‟re taken care of,” Grace said.
    Alexios nodded. “There were only four.” Any other man would have been boasting; Alexios merely stated facts.
    A flash of respect crossed Spike‟s face. Grace wasn‟t the only one who‟d seen Alexios in action. She thought maybe Alexios wouldn‟t want her to mention the mist thing, though. That had been new. Maybe it was meant to be secret.
    “Thanks for moving the car. We‟ll be . . . we‟ll be inside.” She glanced up at Alexios, who started to put an arm around her, then hesitated, as if afraid of being rebuffed. She leaned into him, too tired and afraid for Michelle to force herself to stand alone, yet again.
    Just this once, she would lean on someone else. Just this once.
     
    St. Louis University Hospital,
    emergency room
     
    Alexios looked around the crowded waiting room, remembering the countless times he or another of his fellow warriors had needed to be healed. Unlike the healing chambers in Atlantis, which were an oasis of serenity—all fresh air and sunlight, soft, silken cushions, and masses of flowers from the palace gardens—this room where desperate and injured humans waited smelled of sweat, blood, antiseptic, and despair.
    Grace huddled in an orange plastic chair, strangely diminished without her many weapons strapped to her body. He stood across the room from her, leaning against a battered vending machine, and tried to think of a time he‟d seen her without them but came up empty. The bow, knives, and guns were part of her, oddly dissonant to her beauty and her name.
    Grace. It suited her. She was grace in motion, in and out of battle. Except now, when she hunched in that ugly chair, arms wrapped around her knees, waiting for the bleakest kind of bad news.
    After they‟d removed their visible weapons, he‟d helped