Warriors of Poseidon 04 - Atlantis Unmasked

and his hand came away warm and wet with her blood.
     
    “No. No, I won‟t have it. You cannot be injured,” he commanded, knowing even as he said the words that it was ridiculous—that he was ridiculous—that he couldn‟t command an injury to un-happen. “Where is Alaric? Where is one of your human healers? How bad is it? Why are you standing? Let me take you to the hospital immediately,” he demanded in a confused jumble of words.
     
    “Calm down,” she said, her voice shaky but determined. “It‟s not really that bad. He caught a claw on my side and ripped, but my rib cage blocked him from doing any real damage.”
     
    Sam, who‟d rushed up behind Alexios, quickly assessed the situation and nodded.
    “Right. Glad you‟re okay. I‟m off back downstairs to sort things out there. Michelle, can you help?”
     
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    Michelle nodded and followed after him after she retrieved her shoes. Alexios noticed she held both shoes in her left hand while still clutching the pistol in her right. “You were very brave,” he said to her, acknowledging her courage during the fight.
     
    Michelle shook her head once, her face very grim and pale. “No. I wasn‟t.” Then she headed for the stairs.
     
    “I‟ll be right down,” Grace said. She took a step, but then winced and made a smal helpless sound.
     
    “It does hurt a lot more than you‟d expect,” she said, with an attempt at a smile. “I bet you think I‟m being a big baby about a scratch, though, after all the injuries you‟ve suffered.”
     
    He gently gathered her back into his arms, needing to hold her, careful not to jar her wounded side. “I would suffer a thousand more deadly wounds than ever I have before in order to spare you this single one, mi amara . Where is the hospital? I‟m taking you there now.”
     
    She shook her head, her sweet-smelling hair brushing the skin of his throat and chin and almost masking the coppery-rust smell of blood. “No, you‟re not. You need to tell me what happened downstairs. We‟ve got to take care of the recruits, decide what to do about these bodies, and question this one when he shifts back to his human shape.”
     
    As if on cue, the panther at their feet snarled and tried to pull himself up from its prone position but then fell heavily back onto its side.
     
    “Is this the one that harmed you?” Alexios fired the question at Grace, but never took his eyes off the panther.
     
    “Yes. But don‟t hurt it. We need to question him to find out what he knows.”
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    Grace leaned her head on his shoulder for a few seconds and sighed. “Please put me down, Alexios. Really, I just need a bandage. Maybe some peroxide and Neosporin. But first we need to lock this shifter up in one of the cells downstairs while we deal with the rest of them.”
     
    But it was as if all the gods of war were pounding their drums inside Alexios‟s brain. He could hear nothing over the crashing, hammering pulses of rage that demanded he hurt and tear and rend this monster who‟d dared to touch Grace.
     
    He carefully released her and pressed a brief, gentle kiss on her lips. She said something, but he couldn‟t hear it over the drums.
     
    He couldn‟t hear anything over the drums.
     
    The monster had hurt her. It needed to die.
     
    He whipped around, between her and the panther, just in time to see that it had been deceiving them. Masking the extent of its injury. Because now it had its legs underneath it, as it crouched, ready to spring at him.
     
    “Grace, get down,” he said, shouting so that she would hear him over the escalating pounding in his head. Then he leapt forward, but this time he didn‟t bother to draw his daggers. This time he‟d kill it with his bare hands.
     
    He launched himself toward the snarling beast, matching feral rage with his own primal fury. He smashed into the cat in midair, escaping its opened jaws by inches and catching it around its thickly furred neck. He twisted in flight, using his forward motion to jerk the lower half of his body around until he was almost straddling the panther, and scissored his legs around its middle.
     
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    Together, they slammed down to the concrete, knocking the wind out of both of them, but a split second later the cat was bucking and twisting underneath him. He could