Fuck me. I thought they had all been exaggerating about her. I figured I would find a stuck-up bitch female Valkyrie who was so used to the world bending to her every fancy that she was playing with my brothers for the fun of it. I hadn’t expected to find a woman that the world had clearly mistreated but who was brave enough to face each day with fire and grace. I mean shit. I had come in here trying to piss her off so that she would show her true motives or at least try to target me over Connor. He was still sensitive and had a well-hidden hope that the world was a better place than it really was, while I knew the score. But instead of throwing a fit or demanding that our entire Clan be punished for such an insult, she had actually overcome her palpable anger and fucking agreed with me. And Jesus was she attractive when she was pissed off. The allure and power that radiated off that girl were off the charts and she obviously didn’t know it. I watched as she moved from table to table, completely oblivious to the many stares that drank in her every move. She was a mythical creature that I couldn’t tear my eyes away from and it kinda pissed me off. I wasn’t going to start following her around like the rest of my brothers. But God I wished she would look over here with her passion-filled eyes once more.
All thoughts of Ray’s looks went straight out the window at the sound of gunshots. I grabbed my sidearm, took cover, and scanned the room only to see Ray fall violently to the ground as another shot rang out. Oh my God, It couldn’t end like this. Not on my watch.
--Derik
I was just heading over to a new table to get their drink order when the crack of a gunshot ripped through the air and I spun around to see a Hispanic woman pointing a gun at a middle-aged white man sitting out on the patio not ten feet away from me. As I looked on she fired another two shots into the man and all hell broke loose around me. People started screaming and running in all directions. The busboy dropped a tray filled with empty dishes near me and my attention was drawn to my left where there was now a pile of glass and ceramic. Next to the wreckage stood a little girl with curly brown hair staring up at the woman with the gun. To my horror, the woman turned and aimed her gun right at the little girl.
I moved on pure instinct and adrenaline as I jumped between the shooter and the little girl. I wrapped my shield around both of us and pulled her into my chest as I felt the force of a bullet push us forward. I didn’t have a good stance and I was knocked forward. I reached out to break our fall. I felt a sharp pain in the palm of my hand, but I didn’t have time to worry about it. I couldn’t be deflecting bullets in broad daylight. I rolled us under the closest booth and pulled the little girl against the wall and covered her small body with my own.
The sound of two more shots filled the air and I felt the little girl jerk in my arms. “Shhh, it’s okay. You are safe. We are just going to stay under here for a while but I promise you that I will keep you safe,” I murmured to the little girl while trying to hear what was happening behind me. My words seemed to be working because the little girl turned in my grasp and wrapped her arms around my neck and buried her face into my neck. My protective instincts surged and my shield flashed with power. I had just marked this little girl as one of my protected without conscious thought.
“Clear” I heard a voice yell out as sirens wailed in the distance. I turned my head to see Derik kicking the woman’s gun off to the side before he rushed to the side of the table and dropped to all fours so that he could see us. “Are you okay?” He yelled in my face and I was too surprised to do anything other than stare at him like some mentally retarded person.
Derik reached out to me but yanked his hand back when he came in contact with my shield. I felt the zing of power and started chastising him in my head. Didn’t he know how to touch another Valkyrie when their shield was up? And there was no way I was giving my new charge over to that asshole. The little girl started to whimper so I turned so that I could pull her more fully into my lap and Derik let out a gasp. I looked over at him to see that he was staring at my side with shock and worry. I glanced down to see my entire side was drenched in blood. Oh my God, what if I had been too late and my little charge had been hit.
I tried to pull her away from me so that I could see where she was hurt but she hung onto my neck with surprising strength. “Shhhh. It’s okay. I am not going anywhere. I just need you to tell me where it hurts.” She raised her beautiful tear-filled brown eyes to mine and shook her head. I didn’t speak toddler so I gently lifted her blood-soaked t-shirt only to find perfectly unblemished skin underneath.
“It’s not her, Ray,” Derik said with far more care than before. “You are bleeding, not the child. Lower your shield so that I can help you.” I looked down at my hand to find that he was right. A large piece of glass that looked to be from one of our martini glasses was lodged in the palm of my hand and I was bleeding all over my little charge. Oh thank God, it was only me. I let out a sigh of relief and hugged the little girl back to my chest. She obligingly wrapped her arms back around my neck and started to cry again.
“Shhhh. I have you. You are safe. I am going to keep you safe,” I repeated and ran my uninjured hand down her small back.
“Ray!” Derik yelled causing my little girl to jump. I gave him a dirty look and saw half a dozen more cops stream into Polly’s through the front door. “I am sorry, but I need you to concentrate on me right now. You need to lower your shield so that I can see how badly you are hurt.” Now he was just being condescending. I was fine. My hand didn’t even hurt with the amount of adrenaline that was running through my system but I had to be sure it was safe for my little charge before we came out.
More shouts of Clear and a set of EMTs rushing my way convinced me that it would be okay to leave our temporary shelter. I started to scoot awkwardly out from underneath the table and Derik was forced to retreat because I hadn’t lowered my shield. Once I was clear of the table one of the EMTs tried to reach out to take my charge from my arms but I stood and backed away from them. These strangers were not putting their hands on her.
“It’s okay Ray,” Derik said in a voice eerily similar to the one I had used to calm down the little girl. “No one is going to hurt her. But we do need to check to make sure she is okay and treat your wounds.”
When I didn’t move he tried another tack. “I personally promise to protect her and won’t let any harm come to her,” he vowed and I knew that he was telling the truth. I contemplated the rude Valkyrie for a moment and knew that he was my best option. He most likely had a shield of his own that he could use if the situation called for it. Eventually, I dropped my shield and carefully handed my little charge over to Derik who took her with the utmost care. However, when Derik didn’t immediately bring up his own shield I felt something tug within my chest and a new shield of mine popped up around Derik and my little girl. Only then did I walk over to the waiting EMTs.
When they started asking me questions, I realized that I was kinda dizzy and started to sit down but one of the EMTs told me sternly to stay standing. I squinted my eyes at him angrily but did as he asked and looked over to see that my little charge was now clinging to Derik as she had clung to me. Derik was looking at me with disbelief with a touch of fear and I remembered that I wasn’t supposed to be able to make a shield for other people. Well damn.
The pushy EMT was cutting my shirt, bra, and fake weapons harness with scissors and I looked down to see the blood on my left side wasn’t from my hand but that I had several pieces of glass and broken dishes sticking out of me from my hip to my ribcage. That didn’t look good. I was definitely starting to feel dizzy now. The other EMT directed me to gently sit down and then lay on the padded gurney with my injured side facing up. I checked on my charge before complying with their request. One EMT’s started pushing bandages to my side while the other wrapped my hand with gauze. Okay so maybe I was starting to feel a little bit of pain now.
Once I was wrapped enough to stop the bleeding the EMTs started pushing my gurney out the front door and away from my little charge. That wouldn’t do. I couldn’t protect her if I couldn’t see her. I made a fist with my uninjured right hand and my shield started moving with Derik and my little girl inside of it. I quite enjoyed the look of shock on Derik’s face, but if he didn’t like it he could hand her back over. Once when he didn’t move fast enough the shield grazed Derik’s shoulder and he jumped away from it only to turn and stare at the inside of my shield. I made that shield to protect him. It wouldn’t drain his power.
The EMTs loaded me up into the back of the ambulance and Derik followed without me needing to push him with my Shield. He was a fast learner that one. My phone started ringing in my back pocket and it was such a foreign feeling that I jumped a little. I struggled for a moment to free it while laying in this awkward position and saw that Jack was calling. I flipped the phone open and held it up to my ear.
“Ray? Oh my God are you okay? I just heard about the shooting. Where are you?” Jack rambled.
“See I told you the phones were a good idea,” I said into the phone as I tried to hide how much pain I was in.
“Are you okay?” he asked again with more heat behind his voice.
“I am fine. I did fall on some broken glass though so I am headed to the hospital to get the cut stitched up. No need to worry.” Derik gave me a hard look and I rolled my eyes at him. He had no right to judge what I did or didn’t tell my friends.
“Okay good. Keep me updated. And yes, the phones are a good idea. See you later Ray.” I smiled as I hung up the phone and held it in my hand instead of trying to maneuver it back into my pocket. When we reached the hospital we were rushed into the ER with a whole lot of fanfare to be parked in a small curtained-off square where we waited for ages for our turn to see the doctor.
When the nurse came in with paperwork to fill out I knew that I was going to be in trouble. I had to list my real information and technically I was still a minor. They were going to contact Stella. This was just not my day.
Elijah rushed into our cordoned-off space before the doctor did and I was surprised he looked genuinely worried about me. For a moment I let myself dream that I was really part of this family and these guys showed up just because they cared that I was hurting. Elijah looked around the room and asked why Derik was shielded. He told Elijah that it wasn’t his shield and pointedly looked at me. Elijah took a moment to catch on but when he did he rolled with it like a pro.
“Ray, why are you shielding the little girl right now?” he asked like I was made of glass.
“I promised I would keep her safe,” I said and silently dared him to tell me that I was in no shape to keep anyone safe right now. But he didn’t push, he just suggested that he take the girl to get cleaned up and see if they could figure out who she was. It was then that I saw the badge clipped to his belt buckle. Elijah was also some sort of police officer. I thought it over and figured that I was going overboard with the protection thing right now. I didn’t want her to be stuck covered in my blood. I slowly nodded my head and Elijah gave me a small smile before walking toward my charge like he was going to take her.
Nope. That wasn’t going to work for me and my over-active protective instincts right now. Derik was the only one I trusted with her right now. “Derik can do it,” I said in a strangely authoritarian voice and both men looked at me like I was crazy.
“Umm, it’s his job, Ray. He is the detective. Elijah will figure out where her family is and find her somewhere safe to stay. She should go with him,” Derik explained but I didn’t care. Elijah lied when he said that he didn’t want anything from me and I didn’t trust him. Derik had sworn to protect my little girl and he had never lied to me.
“No,” I stated flatly. Both men looked surprised and a little exasperated but they finally agreed to play along with the crazy female Valkyrie for the time being. I dropped the shield with some effort as a nurse came bustling into my makeshift room. Right now my all I wanted to do was curl around my new protected and make everything in her life better. I did not want to have her taken away from my line of sight, but the nurse started taking measurements and told the officers that they needed to leave so that I could change into a gown. I was going to have to trust that Derik would keep his word while the doctors put me back to rights.
I gave Derik a worried look and he quietly reassured me that he would keep my little girl safe before both Valkyries ducked out of the curtained room. With the nurse's help I awkwardly changed into a backless hospital gown and then she started hooking monitors to various body parts of mine and started an IV. Then a tech came and rolled my gurney away to x-ray and they imaged by hand and my side before returning me to the same ER cubicle. Elijah was waiting there when we got back and I didn’t know if it was a good idea for me to be around a Valkyrie I barely knew right now because the pain meds were starting to kick in. I was smart enough to know that I was just clueless enough to give away secrets without knowing their full meaning.
“The boys are very worried about you. They are here in the waiting room,” Elijah told me and I couldn’t help the goofy smile that spread across my face. It felt damn good to have people who cared about me. Elijah handed me my cell phone that I had put down at some point and I opened it to see four text messages from Max and seven from an unprogrammed number that the first text identified as Blake. However, it took a really long time to text them back with only one hand and the numbered keyboard, so I only responded that I was okay and waiting for the doctor. The lack of any message from Connor reminded me that I needed to apologize to him.
“How are you feeling?” Elijah asked and pulled up the chair in the room so that it was next to my bed.
“High as a kite,” I responded honestly and Elijah gave me a soft smile.
“I am glad that you are not feeling any pain. I saw the security camera footage from the shooting. You were very brave to jump in front of that bullet like that.” I studied his handsome face and realized that he looked older than he had last week. At first, I had thought that he was in his early twenties, maybe twenty-three or four, but now he looked all official in black slacks and a navy blue collared shirt under a gray vest. I wasn’t positive but I was pretty sure that it took a while to be promoted to detective.
“It’s what we do. Protect humans,” I murmured and watched his reaction. Elijah just nodded his head and maintained a polite poker face.
“Max told me that a man named Kyle Johnson hurt your face. A Kyle Johnson was booked into the fourth precinct last night along with a Jose Silva on drug possession charges. Because of the state that these men were found, it is suspected that they attempted to rob the wrong person and got the tables turned on them. But without any witnesses to the attempted assault, they were able to make a deal for the minor drug charges and walked free early this morning.”
I had figured as much. I hadn’t called the police because I thought that they were going to get any charges to stick. I just wanted the authorities to deal with the gun and the drugs. Plus I needed those guys to be checked at by a doctor. I had used some pretty hard hits to get them to stay down, but I think they were human. I had wanted to stop them from hurting the homeless man, not kill them.
Elijah didn’t seem bothered by my silence and I turned my thoughts to my little charge. What would happen to her now? The best case scenario would be if she had family out there that was willing and able to take care of her. The worst case was that she was now a ward of the State of California, just like me. The question I kept asking myself was why no one at the restaurant had stepped forward to claim her as their own. A little girl wouldn’t be at Polly’s alone. The only answer I came up with wasn’t comforting. That she belonged to either the white guy that the woman shot or the woman herself. My charge looked more like the woman than the man, but why would a mother try to kill her own child?
Why would a father force his daughter into becoming a killer?
I was jolted out of my thoughts as a doctor finally came into the room and started to talk to me. He told me that no bones were broken in my hand and they believed that the wound was superficial and could be fixed with stitches once the glass was removed. He also thought that the cuts along my side weren’t anything that would cause me to be admitted to the hospital unless I wanted a plastic surgeon to do the stitching. I could care less about a few more scars and denied the option to be admitted.
Several nurses came in to assist the doctor as he pulled out the glass and sewed me back together again. The numbing and pain meds were very good and I didn’t feel anything other than a weird tugging sensation as the suture material was pulled through my skin. The whole thing took way longer than I would have thought and by the time I was all wrapped up in new bandages I was itching to lay my eyes on my little charge again.
Elijah seemed to read my thoughts because he excused himself and returned a moment later with Derik and my little girl. Her hair was damp and she was dressed in simple cotton shorts and a t-shirt that was clearly too large for her. The moment she saw me she started to struggle in Derik’s arms and he walked her over to my bedside. My little charge squirmed out of Derik’s hold and crawled over to me and promptly attached herself to my chest by wrapping her arms around my neck again. It felt good to feel her safe in my arms and I wrapped her up in a tight hug and rested my cheek on her forehead.
“Her name is Maria Desoto and she is three years old,” Derik told me as I inhaled the scent of her hair. “Her mother was the shooter. We are still trying to contact next of kin.” Well fuck. That was just about the worst-case scenario. If they couldn’t find anyone then she would go into the system. I couldn’t protect her if that happened. I lived on a broken-down bus and struggled to provide for myself. There was no way that the state was going to let me take care of my Maria. Even if I took her and disappeared, I wasn’t positive I could provide her a safe place to live or food to eat. I was a sorry excuse for a protector.
The room descended into a tense silence as my mind raced for possible ways that I could protect my little charge. I was still thinking of ways that I could help her get placed into a good home or somehow make her foster parents treat her right when I heard a familiar voice. Stella was asking where she could find me in her sugary-sweet voice. Oh no. What if Stella tried to foster Maria because I was going to age out in a couple of months and she would lose her government check. I gripped Maria tighter in my arms and started to panic. I couldn’t let that happen. I wouldn’t let that happen.
Before Stella had a chance to walk over to my curtained room I scrambled to my feet and pushed Maria into Derik's arms. He was looking at me like I was a crazy person again, but I didn’t really care. Stella wasn’t going to leave until she settled things with me, and I wasn’t going to allow her to get her dirty claws into my little charge. As soon as Maria was transferred from me to Derik I pushed them into the void and sealed them in. “Please keep her calm. Remember you promise,” I said to the empty space where I knew Derik was still standing.
“Wow,” Elijah breathed out and I turned to see a look of awe on his face as Stella barged through the opening in the curtain. She quickly put on a fake smile when she saw that I wasn’t alone.
“Well, hello there,” Stella purred at Elijah, completely ignoring my presence in the room. “I am Delia’s foster mom, Stella. I can’t thank you enough for looking after my dear sweet child for me. I rushed here as soon as I could get away from work but the bus system delayed my arrival. Who would you be?”
“Elijah Nilsen, ma’am. I am a detective working on the shooting that occurred earlier tonight at Polly’s.” Nilsen. That meant that Elijah and Max were brothers. I looked over at him and studied his face again. Yeah, I guess I could see the family resemblance in their narrow chins and dimpled cheeks. But Elijah had longer hair that almost brushed his shoulders while Max kept his in a clean buzz cut.
“Oh bless your heart,” Stella said dramatically. She liked to pretend that she was a bell from the South, but she had grown up in south Chicago. “Well if you don’t mind, I would like a moment alone with my daughter to check up on her.” Elijah was hesitant to leave the room and I knew he wasn’t buying her mother of the year act. But he didn’t have any real reason not to leave us alone and I saw him look pointedly at the area where Derik had been standing earlier. Elijah must think that Derik would be able to intervene if the need arose. Well, that wasn’t going to happen, because I was going to leave Derik and Maria in the void where they were safe until Stella was far away from here.
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