Page 21 of City of the Lost
Azren groaned. “I think I need to vomit.”
Noir opened his mouth with a question in his eyes.
“Don’t ask.” I headed up the stairs, and the poor Shedim did the best he could to help me help him.
“Your ale is toxic.” He groaned.
“Uh-huh.”
“I am never inebriated.”
“Right.”
“The earth spins.”
“That’s right, big guy. Almost there.”
We entered his room, and he pushed away from me and stumbled into the bathroom.
“What’s wrong with him?” Trevor asked from the doorway.
The sounds of Azren retching filtered through the bathroom door.
“Um. Azren isn’t feeling too well.”
“I didn’t realize Shedim could get sick.”
“Yeah, well, it turns out that they can if they drink too much killer honey ale and then dance on the tables.”
Trevor’s eyes grew round. “Please, tell me you got pictures.”
I gave him my best stern look. “What do you take me for?” I pulled my phone from my pocket, face breaking into a grin. “Of course I bloody did.”
“You, Wila Bastion, are a legend. Let me see.”
The retching had stopped. “Shit. Go. I’ll find you in a bit.”
Trevor slipped away as the bathroom door opened with a creak and a pale, shaky Azren emerged. He staggered across the room and fell face first onto the bed.
“Azren? Are you all right?”
A low groan that sounded very much likekill me.
“Sorry, did you say,these hips don’t lie.”
“Fuck you.”
For someone who hated the word fuck, he’d sure been using it a lot lately. I’d totally rubbed off on him. Snort-chuckling to myself, I headed out the door humming the soundtrack he’d been dancing to. Something shifted at the back of my mind, a strange feeling of urgency, the kind you got when you knew there was something important you were about to say or do but it had flown the coop in your head. It was fleeting but disturbing, and then I was bounding down the stairs to the lounge where Tay and Mack had laid the hound.
The hound was still unconscious, but someone had found a blanket and laid it over the beast.
“I’ve never seen anything like it,” Gilbert said softly from beside me.
“Yeah, neither have I. But he saved my life several times now.”
Noir was crouched by the creature, fingers hovering over its fur, eyes closed. He stopped and sat back on his haunches.
“No internal injuries that I can detect, but there’s a puncture wound just here.” He pointed at the back of the hound’s neck. He pulled himself up and smoothed down his slacks. “What happened?”
