I pushed aside the thought that this was all my fault. All I should have done was force him to come into the hospital and sleep off whatever effects of the spell had remained. Either that or I could have left him at the condo. What harm would there have been in that?
“Brad?” I said, leaning down. I pulled my stethoscope out, listening to his heart, then his lungs. He was breathing on his own, but it was slow. As I listened, his heart became fainter and fainter.
Of all the people to be injured like this, it was the most experienced trauma provider in the ER. Brad was an expert in traumas, maybe even more skilled than the attendings who had trained him. He needed someone like himself to be caring for him, not me.
One of the residents came into the room, and I glanced over to see Dr. Blake. Kara was nearly to her third year, and she was skilled enough. “Get the ultrasound. Call lab. Activate the trauma team.”
He was still breathing on his own. His heart was still beating. But everything within me suggested that would change. I wasn’t about to lose Brad because of something that had happened to him because of me and my magical connections.
Kara came back with the ultrasound, wheeling it in. I grabbed for the probe, ripping open Brad’s shirt, and looked for signs of bleeding.
My breath caught.
He was hemorrhaging.
We needed surgery, and we needed them here now. This wasn’t something I would be able to stop. I was a skilled emergency medicine physician, and I had been a part of many traumas over the years, but I knew the limits of what I could do. All of this because he had been dosed with some sort of spell. I continued to hold onto his wrist. As I did, a sense of hopelessness washed over me.
I hated that feeling. It reminded me far too much of how I had felt when I was younger. It was the same sense I’d had when I was trying to reach for magic. Now that it came to me, it was a reminder of what had happened, a far too familiar sense. There was nothing I could do for Brad. Nothing even with magic. That wasn’t the way my power worked. If Kate were here, maybe there would be something that could be done. She had already proven she had significant talent with healing, not only with her connection to medicine, but with a type of magic that allowed her to pull people back from the brink of death. Mine had been nothing like that—it was destructive rather than restorative—and without someone who had any ability to heal, Brad would die.
It wasn’t fair. As that helplessness bubbled up within me, it flowed out through me, down through my arm, and into Brad. I had no idea what was happening. There was no control over it, and it simply departed me, washing away and into him.
“What should we do?” Dr. Blake asked.
I took a deep breath, staring at the ultrasound screen. There was nothing we could do until surgery got here, and even then, I doubted anything could be done.
That didn’t mean I wasn’t going to try. “Get four units of O negative.” We could get him blood, and lots of it. If nothing else, maybe it would stabilize his blood pressure, and buy him time.
I looked at Brad, watching him, breathing to myself. “Hang in there,” I whispered.
6
Somehow, Brad survived. The trauma team came faster than usual, including surgery, and they got him to the OR, stabilizing him. He had a ruptured aorta, which should have been fatal. Every other case I had seen of something similar had been fatal. Fate must have been with him.
My shift went slowly. I wanted nothing more than to finish, to get out of the ER, and to go up to the ICU and check in on him. It was likely he still hadn’t come back around after surgery, and surprisingly, I didn’t want Brad to be alone when he did.
“What do you think happened?” I heard one of the nurses say.
I turned to see Riley talking to Josh. They were working at the nurses’ station, entering notes, and Josh looked over to her. “I don’t know. I heard one of the EMTs say the right fender was crunched.
“What does that mean?”
Josh frowned, turning his attention back to the computer screen. “They seem to think it meant that Dr. Roberts was hit, but there weren’t any other vehicles there.”
A hit-and-run? I’d spent most of the day worried that he had crashed into the sign because of the sedation and its lingering effects, but maybe that wasn’t the case at all. Could he have been involved in a hit-and-run that had crashed into him? Either way, the result was the same. He was lying in an ICU bed, tenuously hanging onto his life. I turned away, getting back to work, forcing myself to see more patients. After what had happened, it was difficult to keep my mind on the task at hand, but going through the motions of work made it more tolerable.
By the end of my shift, I was thrilled to be taking off my white coat and stethoscope, stuffing them into my locker, and changing scrubs. When I was done, I headed up the back stairs, making my way toward the surgical ICU. I didn’t visit patients in the hospital often, though I had been known to do so. It had been months since I had come to the surgical ICU. When I reached it, there was a steady beeping of monitors all around me. Ventilators huffed and hummed and nurses hurried from bed to bed. I caught a glimpse of white coats on the far side of the ICU, likely from evening rounds.
I stopped at the nurses’ station. “May I help you?” the nurse asked without looking up. She was a heavyset woman who looked to be in her fifties. Her hair was cut short, and large hoop earrings dangled.
“I’m checking on patient Brad Roberts.”
“Family only. Are you family?”
“Colleague.”
With that, she looked up. “Oh.”
“Yeah. I was the one who worked on him when he first came in.”
She pointed off to her right. “Room two eighty-one.” As I started away, she spoke up. “They say that you’re the reason he lived.”
I turned slowly. “What was that?”
The woman shrugged. “With an injury like he had, he should be gone, and they say you’re the reason he lived.”
I wasn’t sure whether that was true or not. I felt like I didn’t do a lot for Brad, certainly not as much as I thought he would have been able to do, were the situations reversed. Mostly it had been a matter of coordinating care, getting blood into him, and buying time until the surgical specialties were able to arrive. “Thanks,” I said. I didn’t know if there was anything else for me to say.
When I reached the room, I found him on a ventilator, bandages over what I presumed to be a sternotomy incision, and a sheet pulled up to his waist. I looked at the heart monitor, watching his blood pressure and heart rate, along with his oxygen saturations, seeing that they were all stable. He didn’t appear to be on any pressors, which suggested he was stable, if nothing else.
I took a seat. Relief washed over me, seeing him like this. “I’m sorry this happened,” I whispered. I sat with him for a while, knowing that it wasn’t likely to change anything, but it made me feel better. After a while, I got up, heading to the desk, pausing in front of the same nurse who had greeted me. “Has his family been notified?”
“They have. They’ve been here most of the day.”
I didn’t know whether to be relieved or not that I hadn’t been able to see them. What would I even say? That I had been the last one to see him well? Would they even want to know that? The nurse might have credited me with saving Brad, but I wasn’t sure I had. It was the others, all of the specialists, the people we called in for such events. Not me.
As I headed out of the ICU, transitioning from the hard laminate floor to the carpet, I pulled my phone out and punched in a number. By the time I’d made it down to the front desk, a silver Lexus had pulled up and was waiting for me. I climbed inside, looking over at Barden.
“What happened?”
“A friend of mine was in an accident today.” I proceeded to tell him about what had happened, going through the events of what had taken place today, before explaining what had happened with Matt. As I did, the corners of his eyes twitched, and I knew Barden was irritated. “I don�
�t know if it was my fault this happened or not.”
“Not. If this was some sort of sedative spell, the effect can linger. I’ve seen it myself. He should have warned you about that.”
“He said it would last a few hours, and when Brad was awake this morning, I helped him to his car. I could have forced him to stay at the condo, Barden. So it is my fault.”
“Would he have stayed?”
“I don’t know. Brad can be stubborn.”
“Why was he there?”
“At the condo?”
Barden nodded. “Why was he with you?”
“You don’t need to go all protective father on me.”
“I suppose I don’t. I am concerned he was targeted.”
“What do you mean?”
“From what you told me about the hit and run, it sounds to me like he was targeted.”
“I doubt he was targeted by anything. The only thing he was targeted with was the roofie spell Matt used.”
We drove onward, heading past the condo, and I didn’t question where Barden was taking me. I knew he was leading me to his warehouse, a place he considered far safer.
“I don’t care for the fact that the paramilitary is trying to pull you in.”
“It’s not so much that they are trying to pull me as it is them trying to use me.”
“Even worse.”
“I’m not disagreeing with that.”
We drove on in silence for a while, and as we did, I was finally able to work through the events, giving myself a chance to process what happened. “What does a vampire bite look like?”
“Why are you worried about that?”
“Because that’s what Matt was concerned about. He thought the discoloration around the edges of the puncture wounds didn’t appear to be an actual vampire bite.” I could practically close my eyes and visualize the injury—not that I wanted to.
“Let me show you.”
We pulled up to the warehouse, and he pulled the car into a side garage, climbing out. I followed Barden, heading back into his private office. Once there, he reached for a laptop stored in a drawer. He brought it over to where I sat on one of the comfortable leather sofas, leaning back. Barden took a seat next to me, pulling open a window and bringing up an image. On it, there was a pair of puncture wounds, and I could tell they were over the carotid artery. They were similar to what I had seen before, though there was no discoloration around the edges as there had been with Mr. Adams. As I had speculated, there was a little bit more maceration around the center, as if other teeth had gotten involved.
“Is that about what you expected?”
“I guess it’s what I would’ve expected, but it’s not what I saw.”
“And what did you see?”
“It was similar, but this part,” I said, motioning to the middle of the bite, “wasn’t irritated at all. The area around the puncture itself was blackened, almost as if it were charred.”
“That is not a vampire bite.”
“That’s what Matt thought, too.”
“And he wanted to use your connections to find out what we might know?”
“Either what you know or what Jean-Pierre knows.”
“I doubt the elder vampire will get involved.”
“I told him that, too. But really, what I think he wants most of all is to have his name cleared.”
Barden frowned. “He is a suspect in this?”
“Apparently, they can track where he’s been. From what I can tell, he fears they will know he was the first person to find the body, and because of that, they’ll blame him.”
“Even though there was a supposed vampire attack?”
“Which wasn’t too convincing upon further inspection.”
“Interesting.”
I turned to Barden, finding him staring at the screen. He tapped a few keys, pulling up a folder and then opening that up. He nodded to the screen. “This is what we’ve discovered on the paramilitary.”
I skimmed the page. “That’s not much.”
“No. It is not. Your contact is the closest we’ve ever gotten to discovering anything about them. We know they work in the shadows, and we know they serve someone, though not who.”
“You told me they aren’t working on behalf of any government.”
“Not that we know of, though given the nature of their operations, it’s possible they work on behalf of one that we don’t.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means I have long questioned whether they have ties to the other side of the Veil.”
I frowned, looking at the comments on the page before turning my attention to Barden. “How would they work with the other side of the Veil?”
“It’s the only answer that makes any sense to me. As much as I have tried to uncover, I have failed—and I can assure you my contacts throughout the magical world are such that that shouldn’t happen.”
“You’ve told me you don’t have many connections to the vampires.”
Barden smiled, closing his laptop. “Not having many is not the same as having none. When it comes to the paramilitary, unfortunately, I have none.”
I closed my eyes. After a day like today, I was exhausted and wanted nothing more than to sleep, though I already knew that when I was done with Barden, I would be returning to the hospital to check on Brad. I could do it remotely, and log on to the EMR from my phone or from any laptop, but I wanted to check in and see how he was doing. I didn’t have to work for a few days, so I didn’t need to worry about staying awake and getting a good night’s sleep. I’d sit by his bedside and get whatever sleep I could. “Matt is a hedge mage. He’s not from the other side of the Veil.”
“From what he tells you.”
“I don’t believe he’s from the other side of the Veil.”
“No, and neither do I. But I do wonder if the people he serves are from the other side of the Veil. They are well-funded, and wealth like that is not uncommon within the magical world, but usually it is traceable. In this case, I’m not able to.”
Barden was right about that. From what I had seen in my brief time in the building with Matt, there had been a definite sense of wealth, enough that I had even shared Barden’s questions about where it came from.
“How would the people from the other side of the Veil have acquired wealth?”
“They have assets on this side, Dr. Stone. And even if this paramilitary isn’t affiliated with the other side of the Veil, there are others who are.”
I thought about what Matt had told me about the paramilitary. He had been careful about revealing too much, the same way I had been careful about revealing too much with him. In my case, I was more concerned about whether he would come after Kate, but maybe that wasn’t the reason he was interested at all.
“If he is tied into the other side of the Veil, then it’s unlikely we’re going to discover what happened.”
“I agree with that. It’s also unlikely he will be able to survive.”
I frowned, looking over to Barden. “Why would you say that?”
“Because unfortunately, Dr. Stone, it is true. Power from the other side of the Veil is unlike anything you could imagine. While you have begun to access magic, what you can use is only a drop in a bucket of the power that others on the other side of the Veil can easily draw from.”
I sat in silence. I didn’t know Matt well enough to know anything about him, or even whether I should be disappointed he might not survive whatever attack was taking place here. It was because of him—at least, people like him—that I had been targeted before. Were it not for the paramilitary, I wouldn’t have been caught up in this. Then again, were it not for Matt and his kind, it was possible I might never have learned about my ties to the magical world. There was value in that.
“I can tell you are troubled by this.”
“I guess I’m troubled by the idea we would leave him if there is something we could do to help.”
“And what would you do to help
him?”
“I guess I would try to see whether there was anything we could do to get answers for him.”
It seemed as if answers were what Matt needed. If he was going to be accused of killing his supervisor, he needed to find the person responsible. Whoever had killed Mr. Adams had access to his office, which suggested they were powerful. Even if it wasn’t vampires—and judging by the nature of the bite and how it looked different to what Barden had shown me, I didn’t think that to be the case—there was still likely someone of considerable power involved.
“I will look into it from my end, but as I’ve already made you aware, there is little information I’ve been able to acquire when it comes to the paramilitary. Perhaps if Dr. Michaels were to return, we might be able to uncover something more, especially with her newfound connection and ability to cross the Veil, but as it stands, we are limited.”
I sat there, sighing, when my skin began to tingle. Barden sat up, his head jerking around, going toward the door. He lurched to his feet, and went racing toward the doorway, energy crackling from him. “Stay here,” he said.
I got to my feet, standing rooted in place for a long moment, before curiosity pulled me forward. I could feel whatever was taking place here. That was unusual for me, but even more unusual was that Barden had gone running away so quickly.
Were they under attack here? If they were, there was nothing I could do. I didn’t even have his wand, having left it behind in the condo when I headed out with Brad for the morning. All I had was access to my own magic, and that wasn’t going to overwhelm anyone.
When I reached the door, I paused. I didn’t hear anything, and I half-expected to hear the sounds of battle, or something that would alert me to whatever was taking place out in the rest of the warehouse, but there was nothing. Still, my skin tingled, a strange awareness that worked over me. It started at the bracelet, I realized. And it wasn’t the first time I had detected it. Could the charm bracelet Kate had given me provide a way for me to pick up on power?
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