Thornwood Academy: Dance With Death by LJ Swallow

Author:LJ Swallow [Swallow, LJ]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Emu House Publishing
Published: 2024-08-28T00:00:00+00:00

23

GRAYSON

I should’ve restrained the bastard the moment he walked into the room and I smelled a shifter. The guy matched Violet’s description and coincidentally arrived at Holly’s hospital bedside. What if Holly’s abductor sent Dashiell to finish the job? We may’ve just prevented her death.

“Stay with Holly!” I call and blur from the room, barely touching the nurse in the doorway as I sprint after Dashiell. The shifter’s insane if he believes he’ll escape a Petrescu.

Momentarily, I pause, vaguely aware of someone yelling for security. The other way—Dashiell wouldn’t head for the elevators. Pissed that the smell of cleaning fluids and sickness interferes with his trail, I run along the hallway and through double doors at the end. I catch sight of Dashiell’s head as the guy knocks into people, dodging a guy being pushed in a wheelchair, as the shifter barrels along another hallway, not pausing once.

The hallway ends with a large window.

“Stop!” I shout.

Pausing, not looking back, Dashiell yanks open a door to his left and dives through. I catch the door before it closes, entering the concrete stairwell in time to see him leaping through the center of the winding stairs.

I vault over the metal rail after him and land inches away, surer footed than the wolf. He yells out as I grab the back of his jacket and slam him face first into the cinderblock wall.

“Coming to the hospital was a dumb move. Trying to outrun a Petrescu equally stupid,” I hiss in his ear.

“Please. Let me go. I swear you won’t see me again. I’ll never come near Holly or any of you.”

Yanking him backwards, I turn Dashiell to slam his back against the wall instead. “That’s the problem, shifter. If you disappear, so do answers.”

I’ve seen terror in other’s faces before, normally in response to my hemia transformation, but Dashiell’s fear comes from elsewhere. “I need to leave before somebody knows what I’ve done. There’s messed up shit happening, and I’ll die.”

“Then you’re safer with us,” I say.

“Safer with Dorian Blackwood?” he says in a strangled voice. “At least I’ll have a chance if I run.”

“You honestly believe that?” I sneer. “Either he or this mysterious guy will catch you. Dorian might be more lenient.”

Am I seriously saying those words?

But if Dashiell cooperates, and he genuinely did help Holly, he has a greater chance of survival than if Viktor and his associates catch a betrayer with evidence against them.

“Down here!” echoes a voice. A burly man peers down from above the three floors we jumped down. “Security. Stay where you are.”

Shit. I shouldn’t be here either. But if I run from this hospital, Dashiell will escape. It’s one thing for a hemia to chase a shifter through hospital hallways, another to take this pursuit into the streets. Dorian will lose his shit with me and Violet anyway; if I add in some more negative supe behavior in public, I’m done.

Honestly, I’m already done. I aided and abetted Violet in evading Dorian Blackwood.

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