I woke hours later, momentarily confused about why the ceiling was so far away, about why every muscle in my body ached, about why a man’s heavy arm was curled across my body, pulling my spine close against his hard, sculpted chest. I could just make out the ink on that arm, the five-pointed star and blue-and-red shield, with numbers swirled beneath, like some sort of date.
I squinted to make out those numbers in the dim grey light.
I shouldn’t be able to see the numbers at all. My room should be pitch dark.
“Nick!” I shoved hard against his arm.
“Mmm.” He rolled over on his back, doing his best to take me with him.
“The sun is almost up!”
His grin was lazier than anything I’d ever seen on Musker’s face. Despite his indolence, his fingers began to explore my legs, starting with the sensitive hollow behind my left knee. “Jesus, woman,” he muttered, eyes still closed. “You’re insatiable.”
I pulled away, scrambling for one of the sheets I’d discarded the night before. At the same time, I planted the soles of my cold feet against Nick’s taut abs. A fat lot of good that did. His skin was cooler than mine.
“Come on, Nick. You can spend the day in your room downstairs.”
He was halfway asleep again. “Not a patient anymore,” he slurred.
“You will be, if you don’t get some place safe before the sun rises. There are a couple of empty rooms on the ward.”
He grumbled, but he lurched to his feet. He could have pulled his clothes on faster. He definitely didn’t need to flex his arms that much as he tugged his T-shirt over his head. And oh, sweet Hecate, he didn’t need to run a hand over his bristled jaw as he gave me that devilish grin.
“Come tuck me in,” he said.
“Go,” I ordered, because I was sorely tempted.
He did, but not before pulling me close for a bruising kiss. I gasped as his fangs expressed, but he merely traced the line of my jugular, not coming close to drawing blood. It took every last shred of my devastated will-power to push him out the door and then I turned the deadbolt behind him—for both our sakes.
I took my time getting dressed, starting with a long, hot shower. I shampooed my hair twice. I applied lotion to my elbows and my feet. I took extra care with my foundation and blush, with eyeliner and mascara, with lipstick on my swollen lips.
I couldn’t stop smiling.
I found a long-forgotten dress at the very back of my armoire, a timeless sheath of blue cotton. I’d worn it once, attending Easter brunch at my mother’s house. She’d disapproved because it showed off my arms. She hadn’t liked my slingback sandals either. Well, Mother wasn’t visiting Empire General today.
Humming a tuneless song, I selected dangling earrings, ones fashioned from sodalite. I might not be able to focus my powers through the stones, but I could remember the confidence they inspired. Besides, I wasn’t about to use my fall-back silver hoops. Not when there was a chance I might accidentally scald a vampire.
I’d just finished brushing my hair when the air shimmered in front of me. I took a step back, nearly falling when my heels sank into the mattress on the floor. Before I could shriek in surprise, Becs materialized in the center of the room.
My warder barely glanced at the chaos of my love nest. She was already grabbing my wrist, steadying my weight and pulling me forward. Her palms cupped my shoulders, and I felt the stomach-lurching pressure of reaching to a new destination, fully under my warder’s power.
She kept me safe upon our arrival, of course. She always did. Even as my ears registered the chaos of hysterical sobbing, even as my eyes took in the arched windows of the elementals ward on the hospital’s second floor, Becs shoved me behind her lithe back. Her curved blade of blue steel sparked dangerously as I tried to decipher exactly what was going on.
“I won’t stay,” a dryad shouted, her voice trembling like leaves in a gale. “I’d rather take my chance with oak wilt.”
“You aren’t being reasonable,” Dr. Blanchard protested. The undine in charge of care for all elementals applied her most soothing voice, as if she could wash away her patient’s terror with simple conviction. “Wilt can have disastrous long-term effects if not properly treated.”
“Death has longer term effects,” the dryad snapped. She tried to tear off her hospital bracelet, but she couldn’t defeat the plasticized loop. “I’ll send someone for my things.” She flounced down the hallway before Dr. Blanchard could summon another argument.
“She’s not the only one,” a sprite spluttered, using the tentacles of his native form to split his own hospital bracelet. A naiad chimed in, along with two ifrit, all of them creating a cacophonous symphony of protest.
“Please,” Dr. Blanchard burbled, her words washed away before they could have any effect. “Please,” she repeated before a sylph rushed down the hallway, knocking over a wheelchair as he chose the straightest line to the stairs.
“Stop!” I shouted, projecting from the bottom of my rib-cage. “What in the name of Hecate is going on here?”
They all started talking at once—every one of the elementals. “No!” I snapped. “Dr. Blanchard! Tell me exactly what happened.”
The undine blinked vaguely, but she raised her voice enough to be heard over the resentful shifting of our patients. “I’d just finished morning rounds when I saw it.”
“It?”
Dr. Blanchard swallowed hard, craning her neck as if she needed to drive a bad taste out of her mouth. It took every fiber of her limited courage, but she managed to say, “A shuck.”
My throat locked. Now that I knew what to look for, the signs of the hellhound were obvious. Claw marks stood out on the linoleum floor, deep scratches where fiery paws had scrabbled for purchase. Scorch marks blackened each doorframe on the hallway, clear evidence that the harbinger of death had peered in at patients. I could picture his fiery eyes, blazing bright even in daylight.
Sweet Hecate, no wonder the ward was freaking out. The shuck had just announced the imminent death of every person on the unit.
“B— Becs?” I finally asked. My warder had finished her own initial surveillance, sword at the ready as she verified that no shoulder-high, flame-eyed, fire-breathing black dogs remained on the premises.
She turned to me like a soldier reporting disastrous defeat on a battlefield. “It’s gone,” she said.
“How the hell did it get in here?” I asked, terror melting to anger in the aftermath of adrenaline. “Where’s hospital security?”
My warder sheathed her sword in the ether, as if her decisive motion could possibly calm me. Her voice was level as she said, “Jerome called me when he realized he needed backup.”
“Backup? Where’s Mikaela?”
Becs looked meaningfully at the claw marks scratched into the floor. “No centaur in history would face down a shuck,” she said.
Of course they wouldn’t. Centaurs, for all their human tempering, were essentially prey animals. It was something of a miracle Mikaela had lasted as a security guard this long.
“Where’s Jerome now?”
Becs gestured toward the window. “He chased the shuck away.”
I tried to picture our geriatric gargoyle trailing after a fire-breathing hell-hound. At least Jerome was relatively inured to flame. And the beast would likely take to ground quickly, unwilling to risk discovery by any human in the vicinity.
“Excuse me.” An ifrit shouldered past me with surprising force. On the surface, her two words were polite, but even a stone-deaf gorgon could have heard the fury beneath them. Her aged face was framed by curling grey hair and wisps of smoke rose from her skull, a clear sign that she was barely containing her rage.
“Ms. Nar,” I said. “If you’ll just step back into your room, we’ll have this taken care of in no time.”
“I’m not stepping back anywhere,” the fire elemental said. “I may have cataracts, but even I can see where a hellhound has walked.”
“Please, Ms. Nar—”
“Don’t please me. I knew this was a bad idea from the moment my son suggested it.”
Cataract surgery was always risky for ifrits. Their fire-based metabolism offered exceptional risk to the eye’s delicate organs. That was why Layla Nar had been scheduled for an in-patient procedure.
Before I could make her change her mind, a sylph hurtled by. “Makani!” I cried out in surprise. I should have been more formal, but the wind spirit was a long-time friend. We’d met at Georgetown, where the Hawaiian elemental had come to study international relations.
Apparently, she wasn’t feeling diplomatic this morning. “Get out of my way,” she said. “Forget that gastric sleeve. I’ll take my chances being fat.”
Within minutes, the ward was empty. We wouldn’t be doing any knee replacements on undines. The discreet tummy tuck we’d planned for a sprite was scuttled. Our first-ever hysterectomy for a nephele was history.
In short, every elective procedure scheduled for Empire General’s elementals was canceled.
I wanted to say they were being absurd. They were taking more risks postponing their surgeries than if they’d had them as planned. But Hippocrates’s old oath reared its annoying head.
First do no harm.
Could I really say no harm would come to my patients when a hellhound had stalked the ward?
I ordered the nurses to help with the mass exodus. Becs, though, defied me directly, refusing to keep watch over the departures. Instead, she stayed by my side in case the shuck returned.
Stalking back toward my office, I found Mikaela crouching behind the security desk. Even across the lobby, I could see the twitch beneath her left eye. Her fingers were so clumsy on the keyboard she was attacking that I was certain she was typing gibberish.
When she saw me, her long face drooped into a frown. “I shouldn’t have left the ward, Dr. McDonnell. I know that.” She shuddered, a rolling tic that cascaded down her entire body.
“At least you called Ms. Sartain before you left.” I nodded toward Becs, hoping my warder’s presence would sooth the spooked centaur. Then I said, “Call Imperial Staffing. See if they can send a couple of giants to cover though the weekend.”
The extra staff would leave a gouge in my budget as deep as the hellhound’s claw marks upstairs. But I didn’t have any alternative. I had to keep my remaining patients and staff safe.
Mikaela nodded and reached for her phone.
Becs followed me into my office, waiting until I’d closed the door before she asked, “You think this will all blow over by Monday?”
I shook my head. “I’m almost certain it won’t. But the temps will give us time to figure out what we really need to do.”
If every one of my patients checked out, my problem would go away. So would my job, of course—and deservedly so. I’d been primping and preening after a night of wild vampire sex, instead of paying attention to a soul-crushing threat on my doorstep.
For the first time since I’d opened the accreditation board’s letter, I wondered if it was worthwhile to fight for Empire General.
Maybe we’d all be better off with the hospital closed.