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I inhaled sharply and came to in a hospital room with a bevy of hands holding me down. Everything was bright and blurry, like those hospital shows where the camera looks up from the patient’s perspective. A half-dozen heads formed a circle above me, all buzzing with words I could not make out.
The restraints were bringing on a panic attack, and I needed them to let go. “I’m awake! I’m awake! Goddammit, let me up!”
The hands moved away, and I sat up. “I have to go.” As I swung my legs over the side of the bed, a disapproving grunt issued from a tall man with carefully cropped blond hair, wearing scrubs and a lab coat.
He shook his head about semi-broad shoulders. “Ma’am, we need to run some tests. You can’t leave yet.”
“Like hell I can’t,” I growled. “What’s that thing? ‘Released against doctor’s orders’? Yeah, let’s do that.”
He studied me for a second while the rest of the staff scuttled around us and exited the room. “Go ahead and try.” He had the decency to keep from laughing when I fell into a ridiculous pile of arms and legs on the floor. “Now,” he said, offering a hand. “Are you going to stay and let us make sure that the anti-venom is working? Naga venom is nasty business.”
Suddenly, the ground seemed like the best place to be. “Who are you?”
“Dr. Seth Northman, but I don’t think that’s what you meant.” The doctor looked around and lifted the hem of his scrubs shirt. Damned if he didn’t have golden scales. He raised his hands up in surrender as I tried to scramble backward. “Hey, wait, hold on! I’m one of the good guys. You’re lucky I was here when you came in, because the bite was nasty, and no one else has the antigen—not in this town.”
He held out a hand again. “So let me help you out.”
Yeah, so not ignoring his offer. I held my arm out in front of me and touched white, sterile gauze. “Would I have died?” I asked without looking at him.
“Yes.” His tone was matter-of-fact. “Even being a werewolf wouldn’t have saved you.”
I looked up from my arm and met his dark eyes. “How did you know?”
Dr. Seth smiled. “I smelled it all over you when you came in. Your wolf, she’s rather... pungent. Musky woods and drying blood. Warm death has a peculiar scent to someone cold-blooded like me.”
No one had ever described me—well, my wolf—like that before. Not sure I approved, but since he’d saved my life, I gave him the benefit of the doubt. Not trust, of course. I still had questions. “The Great Naga?”
He frowned. “How do you know about Simon Jones?”
I raised a brow. “That’s not a very scary name.” I waved my hands at him, and he grabbed them and helped me back onto the bed.
He shook his head. “No, it’s not. He prefers to go by ‘Adhiraj’, which is Sanskrit for ‘king’. So I continue to call him by his human name.”
“Just to annoy him.” I smirked. “Dr. Seth, you sound like a man after my own snark.”
He smiled. “Naga cannot kill other naga, so I can afford to be an annoyance. You, on the other hand, have no such luxury.”
I sighed. “Well, I’ve apparently done something to catch his attention.”
The frown returned. “That’s not good, Ms. Delante.”
I shrugged. “I’ve got a knack for it. Big baddies like me.”
He grunted. “Simon is unlike any bad guy you’ve ever met. Any interest doesn’t bode well for you. May I ask what you did?”
“I haven’t a clue, really.”
He crossed his arms. “You must have done something. Simon doesn’t choose humans out of the blue.”
That creepy feeling was back. “Why does he choose humans at all? Aren’t the babies big enough to ferry his damn drugs?”
The good doctor blinked. “What? What babies? What are you talking about?”
“The dead babies being used to carry high end drugs into the country!” It occurred to me that, despite being an ER doctor, this guy had not only lingered for an inordinately long amount of time, but that no one else had come back into the room since they’d all filtered out. “Are you doing this?” I waved one hand around the room. “Are you purposefully keeping us isolated?”
His face was a nonchalant mask, as if I’d asked the stupidest question ever. “Would you rather have this conversation within earshot of my co-workers?”
I opened my mouth and raised one hand, pointer finger up, and then I just stopped, closed my mouth and dropped my hand. “No, I guess not. It answers one of my questions, though.”
“Oh? What’s that?”
I shrugged. “Nagas do magick.”
He smiled as if I’d just done an interesting trick. “Indeed, we do. Don’t werewolves?”
I rolled his question around in my head. Some people might call being a werewolf magick, but the fun stuff—heightened senses, higher metabolism, faster healing—were just perks. We processed energy faster and in slightly different ways. Hell, even my personal ‘magick’ was more inborn abilities than anything else. Could I do what he was doing right now? Sure, but that wasn’t some inherited ability. More like a year’s worth of study plus constant upkeep and practice.
Aside from my wolf scent, he clearly didn’t know me from Eve, so I didn’t see any need to share. “No, I don’t have magick from being a werewolf.” Not a lie.
His smile widened but failed to reach his eyes. He didn’t believe me, but he didn’t push it either. Good on him. “You must’ve done something rather spectacular to get on his radar, but there doesn’t seem to be anything extraordinary about you.”
Mundane? Sure, I was good with that. “But you didn’t know about the babies?”
He shook his head. “I knew Simon was into drugs, that he’d brought more of our brethren in to work the parts that were harder for humans. It’s been pretty lucrative for him and his nest. But, no, I didn’t know he’d gotten into designer drugs, much less using dead children to transport them. Not surprised, but not knowledgeable either.”
“How do I stop him?”
“Is that what you do? Vigilante wolf?”
I grunted. “No, I work with the cops on weird cases. Human stuff.”
He considered me for a moment. “Simon’s on their radar?”
“Yes.”
“You put him there.”
“Yes.”
“Curious.”
So much for letting it go. I chewed my bottom lip. Should I? Shouldn’t I? Ah, nope. “I can’t divulge any details. Police stuff.”
“Uh huh. Well, in an effort to assist the police, I would like to tell you that Simon is no fun to piss off. His interest in you can easily flip to annoyance if he thinks, even for a minute, that you’re trying to gain the upper hand. His ego is overinflated from centuries of working the system and doing what he wants. He doesn’t take kindly to non-nagas who want to stop him.”
He pondered for a minute. “If I’m honest, he doesn’t like it when fellow nagas do it either. Murder may be off the table, but there are many things worse than death, especially when you can regenerate.”
I took that little hint and tucked it away for later over-analysis. “You didn’t answer my question. How do I stop him?”
He crossed his arms. “If I claim Hippocratic oath, will you drop it?”
“The ‘do no harm’ clause? Seriously? Did you hear what I said about the dead babies?”
“If I believed for one minute that you wouldn’t kill him outright, I’d be your best advocate. But I’ve scented your wolf. She is nothing but death. You’ve killed before, and you’ll do it again. No one, not even your cop friends, is going to be able to stop you.”
I shifted uncomfortably on the bed. “That’s a little foreboding, don’t you think?”
He leaned forward until our noses were almost touching. “Can you look me in the eye and tell me that your wolf hasn’t been getting stronger? That you haven’t been on edge, quick to lose your temper, not sleeping? Not quite yourself?”
