by Larissa Ione
“Take it easy today, Mom,” she said. “You’re still healing. No more harassing the staff.”
“Then you shouldn’t have ruined my plans to trap the False Angel.”
Blas clamped her jaws shut so tight her teeth throbbed. “I have to work with these people, Mother,” she ground out. “So behave. I’ll come get you for lunch.”
Deva muted Al Roker with an impatient click of the remote. “I can’t stay here forever.”
“And you can’t go home,” Blaspheme pointed out.
Her mother rolled her eyes. “I have plenty of friends I can stay with.”
“And you’re really willing to risk your friends’ lives like that?”
Her mother snorted. “Yes. They’d risk my life, too. It’s what evil people do, Blaspheme.” She reached over to the bedside table for a cup of lime Jell-O. “I’m damned impressed that you’re doing the same thing.”
“This is different.”
“Really? How? You’re putting your friends and this hospital at risk, don’t you think?”
“Yes, but…” Blaspheme trailed off. But what? But nothing. Oh, gods, she was as bad as her mother, wasn’t she? Eidolon had assured her that staying here would be fine, and she’d been so eager to save her own skin that she hadn’t even argued beyond a token protest. “You’re right,” she said. “We can’t stay here. But we aren’t putting anyone else at risk, either.”
Deva shook her head. “How did I manage to raise you to be so scrupulous? You’re half fallen angel, love. Act like it.”
“You used to be an angel once,” Blas pointed out. “Don’t you remember that at all?”
“I remember it being very boring. There’s a reason I tried to shake things up amongst the archangel ranks.”
“Tried to shake things up? You got yourself kicked out of Heaven!”
Deva hurled the remote across the room, shattering the thing in a fit of temper. “You don’t know what it’s like there,” she said, lisping a little as her fangs elongated with her growing anger. “The angelic hierarchy is all-important, and heaven forbid someone try to rise above their station. Some of us wanted more power, and Raphael was going to give us that. If not for his buddy, Stamtiel, giving me a suicide mission that got me caught, we’d have brought about a revolution.”
This was the first Blaspheme had heard of an archangel’s involvement in the plot her mother and father had been mixed up in. Leave it to Deva to crash spectacularly.
“Boy, when you do something, you do it big, don’t you?”
Deva shrugged and settled back against the pillows now that her fit was over. “What is it humans say? Go big or go home?” She gestured to the destroyed remote. “Be a good little imp and get me a new one.”
Blaspheme threw her hands up in defeat. “I give up. I have to go to work. Don’t leave the hospital, and please try to stay in the room.” The last thing Blas needed was her mother wandering around the clinic and causing trouble. “I’ll be back later.”
“And then what?”
“I don’t know,” Blas admitted. Gods, she hated the wait-and-see approach, which was funny, since that was what ninety percent of being a doctor was about. Wait and see how a patient would respond to treatment. Wait and see if surgery was a success. Wait and see if your patient died because you couldn’t do enough for them.
“I think I should go crash with friends, and you should stay here. I can’t be here, Blas. This place is too… sterile. And smelly. And it’s full of annoying sick people. How can you stand it?”
Maybe her mother staying with friends wasn’t such a bad idea. “Look, Mom,” she said as she shrugged into her lab coat, “we’ll talk about it later. I have to go.”
She snatched up her stethoscope, cell phone, pager, and purse and darted into the hall, closing the door firmly behind her. She really could take only so much of her mother. A little Deva went a long, long way.
Taking a deep, relaxing breath, she started toward the clinic’s Harrowgate. Since she had almost an hour before her shift started, she wanted to do some research into the information Eidolon had given her yesterday. UG’s library was extensive and eclectic, filled with not only medical texts, but also mystical texts and nonfiction books related to the demon realm. Eidolon especially liked to collect books specific to individual demon breeds and species. The smallest detail could mean the difference between life and death during an emergency.
Her pager beeped again, and she nearly fumbled it as she juggled her stethoscope and the little device. When she saw the screen, she stopped dead in her tracks.
Revenant is here. Again. He wouldn’t wait and we couldn’t stop him. He’s loose in the clinic.
Loose. Like a wild animal. Only far worse.
“Blaspheme!”
Her heart skipped a beat at the too-familiar voice from behind her. Dread and excitement dueled within her as she turned around to see him at the far end of the hall, dressed from head to toe in black leather. Goth boots with thick soles added another couple of inches to his already towering form, and the weapons strapped to his body sent a message that if you weren’t intimidated enough already, it was time to roll over.
His lustrous ebony hair flared out behind him as he walked, and she self-consciously reached back to her own heavy, wet rope hanging down her back.
Her heart thumped harder with every step closer he came. How could she be happy to see him but at the same time be nervous as hell? As for him, she had no idea what he was thinking. His expression could have been carved from stone, and the wraparound sunglasses hid his eyes behind a shield of black.
Clearing her throat, she prepared to say hi, but just as she opened her mouth, a door down the hall opened and her mother stepped out. A thousand scenarios played out in her head in an instant.
Not one of them ended well.
Almost as if in slow motion, Deva looked left at Revenant. Then right at Blaspheme. There was a smile when Deva saw her. And then her brain caught up with her eyes and she whipped her head back around to Revenant.
Suddenly, Deva stumbled over her own feet as she wheeled toward Blaspheme.
“Run,” she mouthed.
Before Blaspheme could stop her, Deva bolted toward the clinic’s tube station exit.
“Wait!” Blas yelled. She started off after her, but as she and Revenant met at the junction in the hallway, her mom disappeared around a corner.
“What was up with that?” Revenant asked.
Blas could only stand there like an idiot. Showing too much interest would arouse suspicion. “I guess she wanted to go home.”
“It was that fallen angel I saw before.” His luscious lips dipped in a deep frown. “She looked familiar. What’s her name?”
Her mother had changed her name every few years, but if she truly looked familiar to Revenant, Blaspheme didn’t want to offer up any of her names.
“I can’t tell you that. Doctor-patient confidentiality,” she said, happy to invoke human standards of care when the situation called for it. “But I don’t know why she’d look familiar to you. Maybe it’s part of your memory thing?”
“Maybe.” He didn’t look convinced. “Maybe I banged her before.”
Oh, Christ. Blaspheme so did not want to go there. The idea that she and her mother had screwed the same guy was too disgusting to entertain.
“Gosh, I can’t wait until you start talking about me like that. Some nameless chick you banged.”
His head whipped around, and although she couldn’t see his eyes, she felt their intensity as he stared at her. “I would never speak of you like that,” he vowed darkly. “And I will never forget your name.”
Okay, then. Talk about knocking someone breathless. Blaspheme struggled to inhale without sounding like she’d run a marathon. No male had ever spoken to her like that before, as if she mattered. False Angels were what most demons considered a “great to date but not to mate” species, so males were rarely in it for the long run. Unless, of course, they’d been seduc
ed and enchanted. When that happened, all their pretty words meant nothing.
She got the feeling that what Revenant had just said meant the world.
“Good to know,” she said with a casualness she didn’t feel. Needing to do something – anything – other than stand awkwardly in the hallway, she started toward her office. Hopefully her mother would call soon to let Blas know she was all right. “Why are you here, anyway?”
“Gethel is bleeding,” he said as he fell into step next to her. “It’s not bad, but you should see her. And don’t tell me to bring her here, because it’s not happening.”
“I’m sorry, but I’m busy. Eidolon volunteered to go in my place. Let me just give him a buzz —”
Revenant grabbed her wrist as she reached into her lab coat for her phone. “No one but you.”
She sighed. “Revenant, we’ve been over this. We’re done.”
“This isn’t about you and me. It’s about the fact that I don’t trust anyone else.”
She gave him a skeptical glance, but his hard, uncompromising expression told her nothing. “But you trust me?”
“I don’t trust anyone. But I trust you more than anyone here.”
“Why?” She lowered her voice so a passing vampire nurse didn’t get a load of gossip fodder. “Because we had sex?”
“No. Because you helped me when you didn’t have to.”
“You were in pain,” she said. “I’m a doctor. I don’t like to see people suffer. Besides, I couldn’t exactly kick you out of my apartment. You’re kind of… big.”
He was big everywhere. The thought made her flush inappropriately hot.
One lip curled in amusement, flashing a bit of fang. “But you didn’t have to be as nice as you were, either.”
Okay, she’d give him that. “Revenant,” she sighed. “I really can’t do what you’re asking. I was just on my way to the library to do some research —”
“What kind of research? I can help.”
She slowed, seriously considering his offer. With his thousands of years of accumulated knowledge, not to mention the fact that he was uber-powerful, maybe he could help. She was at the point of desperation, and while she couldn’t tell him the complete truth, she supposed she could share her problem with a little rearranging of the facts.
“I’m looking for an enchantment that will disguise me from angels. Make me look like another species or something.”
His lip curled again, but this time, there was no hint of amusement. “Does this have something to do with the attack?”
“Yes. Obviously, I’m being hunted for some reason. Could have something to do with a patient I treated or maybe I’m being confused for someone else. Either way, it’s clear I’m not safe, and I can’t stay at UG anymore. I can’t put anyone else at risk.”
He came to an abrupt halt. “Put me at risk.”
She wheeled around to face him. “Excuse me?”
“You can stay with me. Think about it,” he said as he stroked his hand down the hilt of a blade at his hip. “No one in their right minds would come after you with me around.”
True, but how long would it be before he was the one she had to run from? Her pager went off in an urgent tone. “Hold on.” She glanced at the message, and her heart stopped.
Your gallbladder blanchier patient from yesterday is code 12. Hurry.
“I gotta go!” She ran toward the Harrowgate leading to the hospital, and wouldn’t you know it, Rev was right on her heels. She didn’t bother taking the time to tell him to go away. He wouldn’t listen, and her mind was racing anyway.
The blanchier’s operation had been routine and unremarkable, so what the hell? She hit the Harrowgate at a run, with Rev sliding in after her. There was only one flashing light inside, and that was the symbol for Underworld General. She touched it, and instantly the gate opened into the hospital’s bustling ER.
She jogged to the surgical wing and the bank of rooms set aside for post-op patients, and the insane activity outside the second door on the right told her that was the blanchier’s room.
Several staff members were frantically trying to revive the pale, elflike demon. Slash, another of several Seminus brothers Eidolon had hired recently, was gripping the blanchier’s ankle, his dermoire glowing madly as he channeled healing power into him. Unfortunately, the blanchier was a species that didn’t respond well to a Seminus demon’s healing power.
“Fuck,” he barked. “Something is shutting down all his systems.”
Bane, his brother, snatched the IV bag off the pole. “This is saline. It’s fucking saline.”
Oh, shit. Blanchiers were highly allergic to saline. Who would have ordered a saline drip? Or had someone accidentally spiked a bag of saline instead of glucose? Blas grabbed the demon’s chart and scanned it for physician orders.
Eidolon had ordered labs. Bane had given an injection of hydrogen peroxide. Blaspheme had ordered… saline.
All around her, the alarmed beeps from hospital equipment and the raised voices of the people trying to save the demon faded into a distant buzz. Blaspheme’s pulse fluttered in spastic bursts as guilt stabbed her in the chest like a dull blade. She’d marked the wrong damned box.
“No,” she whispered.
Revenant appeared at her side and peered at the chart in her hand. “What is it?”
Nausea racked her, stealing her voice, and when she could finally talk, her voice was barely a whisper. “It’s my fault. I meant to mark D5W. I remember now. I was distracted and… fuck. I didn’t even sign my name on the chart.” Shoving the clipboard onto its hook at the foot of the bed, she leaped into action. “Someone give him a glucose injection. Hurry!”
“We already did that. He’s dying,” Slash said.
“Did you try adrenaline? Cefazolin?” She scrambled for the open drawers and cabinets, knocking stuff out of the way as she desperately sought every drug known to help blanchiers. “Acetazolamide?”
“We’ve tried everything!” Doctor Shakvhan’s shrill voice rang out, but Blaspheme didn’t stop tearing through supplies, knocking wrapped syringes, bandages, and who-knew-what-else to the floor.
Behind her, she heard Revenant’s low curse. She stopped her frantic search to watch him shove his way through the crowd of doctors and nurses.
“Hey!”
“What are you doing, asshole?”
“You can’t be in here —”
Revenant ignored everyone to lay his hand on the demon’s forehead. For a moment, everyone went silent as the room filled with a strange, electric energy. A heartbeat later, the patient inhaled a great, gasping breath, and all the machines that had been beeping in alarm suddenly went back to normal.
Shocked expressions quickly yielded to relief, and then the scramble to stabilize the guy began.
“You saved him,” Blas croaked, her mouth dry from the adrenaline overload. “Oh, damn. You did it.” Her hand shook as she swiped a paper cup from the dispenser, splashed water into it, and downed it to relieve her parched mouth. When she could speak without sounding like a three-pack-a-day smoker, she asked, “How did you do that?”
He shrugged. “I’m powerful as shit.”
“If you ever get tired of your other job, I’m sure Eidolon would hire you,” she said, only half kidding.
Revenant went taut. “I don’t heal, Blaspheme. I kill.”
His words struck her oddly, as if he’d gone dead inside when he spoke them, as if he had no choice but to kill. But he’d saved her life. He’d just saved the blanchier. Yes, she was terrified that he’d turn on her if he learned the truth, but for some reason, she was even starting to question that. He’d been too good to her, his touch gentle, his gratitude genuine.
“If all you do is kill,” she said, “then why did you heal the blanchier?”
Revenant glanced over at the flurry of activity around the demon. “So you’ll owe me.”
That, she didn’t doubt, but she didn’t give a shit what his motivation was. He’d save
d the patient, and he might very well have saved her job.
Leaving the patient in capable hands, she slipped out of the room, followed by Revenant and both Slash and Shakvhan. Shakvhan immediately lit into her.
“You stupid twat,” she snapped. “You could have killed that patient. If not for your friend here, the blanchier would be dead.”
“I know,” Blas said.
“I told Eidolon he was making a mistake when he put you in charge of the clinic with Gem. I’m reporting you.”
Revenant peeled off his sunglasses, and Blas shivered at the ice in his dark eyes. “Do that, and you’ll be dead the moment you step outside this hospital,” Revenant said, the stark emotionlessness of his statement much more frightening than if he’d been angry.
“Easy,” Blas said, laying a restraining hand on his shoulder. “Doctor Shakvhan is doing her job.” She was being an asshole about it, but Blaspheme would be just as pissed if the situation had been reversed. “Go ahead and report me to Eidolon. I’m going to talk to him when he gets here for his shift anyway.”
Shakvhan sniffed. Then she eyed Revenant in a new light now that she’d calmed down a little. As a succubus, the doctor was hypertuned to all males, especially those who were especially… virile.
“Who are you?” she asked.
“He’s Reaver’s brother,” Blaspheme said. “Revenant.”
Shakvhan’s eyes flared. “I thought you looked familiar.” She glanced at her watch. “I have some time before my next surgery… want to see the inside of a supply closet?”
Supply closet was code for sex, and Blaspheme bristled. Didn’t matter that she had no claim to Revenant. Hell, she didn’t even want him. But for some reason, she didn’t want anyone else to have him, either. Especially not the bitchy succubus.
Blas didn’t give him a chance to reply. “Sorry, Shakvhan, but we’re on our way to a house call.”
“I don’t know,” Revenant said as he looked the curvy female up and down. “There’s no hurry.”
You bastard. Then she saw it, the impish glint in his eyes. He was trying to make her jealous. And the bitch of it was that it worked.
