by Larissa Ione
“No idea.” He’d never seen anything like the mess that had scrambled the slayer’s insides. “Check this out.” He pointed to a blackened blob that resembled a blood clot. A pulsing, morphing blood clot that, as they watched, swallowed healthy tissue. “It’s like it’s taking over.”
Eidolon peeled back the gelled mass. His breath caught, and he rocked back on his heels.
“Hell’s rings,” Shade breathed. “She’s a fucking demon.”
“We’re fucking demons. She’s some other species.”
For the first time, Eidolon allowed himself a frank, unhurried look at the nearly naked woman, from her black-painted toes to matted hair the color of red wine. Smooth skin stretched over curves and lean muscle that even in unconsciousness conveyed coiled, deadly strength. Probably in her midtwenties, she was in her prime, and if she weren’t a murderous fiend, she’d be hot. He fingered her ruined clothing. He’d always been a sucker for women in leather. Preferably, short leather skirts, but tight pants would do.
Wraith tipped the woman’s chin back and inspected her face. “I thought Aegi were human. She looks human. Smells human.” His fangs flashed as his tongue swiped at the bloody punctures in her throat. “Tastes human.”
Eidolon probed a peculiar valve bisecting the transverse colon. “What did I say about tasting patients?”
“What?” Wraith asked innocently. “We had to know if she’s human.”
“She is. Aegi are human.” Shade shook his head, making his stud earring glint in the light from the overhead. “Something’s wrong here. It’s like she’s infected with a demon mutation. Maybe a virus.”
“No, she was born this way. She’s got a demon parent. Look.” Eidolon showed his brother the genetic proof, the organs that had formed from a human-demon union, something that occurred more frequently than most knew, but that human doctors diagnosed as certain “syndromes.” “Her physical abnormalities could be a birth defect. Or maybe these two species aren’t compatible genetically. She was probably born with some unusual traits, ones she’s been hiding or that haven’t been blatantly noticeable. Like better-than-average eyesight. Or telepathy. But I’ll bet my stethoscope this is causing problems now.”
“Like what?”
“Could be anything. Maybe she’s losing her hearing or pissing herself in public.” Excited, because this kind of thing made his corner of hell interesting, he glanced up at Shade, who palmed her forehead and closed his eyes.
“I can feel it,” he said, his voice rough with the effort he expended to go deep into her body at the cellular level. “Some of her DNA feels fragmented. We can fuse it. We could —”
Wraith let out a disgusted snort. “Don’t even think about it. If you fix her, you could turn her into some sort of uber assassin. That’s all we need hunting us.”
“He’s right,” Shade agreed, the glossy black of his eyes going flat. “Depending on the species, it’s possible that we could turn her damn near immortal.”
Sedating and medicating could also prove difficult, given the unidentified demon DNA. Something as seemingly innocent as aspirin could kill her.
Eidolon studied her for a moment, thinking. “We’ll take care of her immediate injuries, and deal with the rest later. She should have the choice about whether or not she wants the demon half to be integrated.”
“Choice?” Wraith scoffed. “You think she gives her victims a choice? You think Roag had a choice?”
Though Eidolon often thought about their fallen brother, hearing his name out loud was a punch to the gut. “Do you give your victims a choice?” he asked softly.
“I have to feed.”
“You need to drink blood. You don’t need to kill.”
Wraith pushed away from the wall. “You’re an asshole.” Lashing out with one arm, he sent a tray full of surgical instruments flying and swept out of the room.
Shade crouched to help Paige pick up the mess. “You shouldn’t provoke him.”
“You’re the one who brought up the junkie.”
“He knows I was yanking his chain. He’s been clean for months.”
Eidolon wished he could share Shade’s certainty. Wraith liked to escape his life now and then, but since their species was immune to drug and alcohol highs unless the substances had been processed through human blood, eating a human druggie was Wraith’s only path to blotto.
“I’m tired of coddling him,” Eidolon said, pulling another tray of instruments to him. “Let alone constantly yanking his ass out of trouble.”
“He needs time.”
“Ninety-eight years isn’t enough time? Shade, in two years he’s going to go through his transition. He’s not ready. He’ll get us all killed.”
Shade said nothing, probably because there was nothing to say. Their brother was out of control, and as the only Seminus demon in history to have been conceived by a vampire female, he was alone and had no idea how to handle his urges and instincts. As a male who had been tortured in the most heinous ways imaginable by the vampires who’d raised him, he had no idea how to live life at all.
Not that Eidolon had room to judge. He’d spent the last half-century concentrating on nothing but medicine, but unless he found a mate, in a few months his focus would shift and narrow until he became a mindless beast that functioned on instinct alone.
Maybe he should let the Buffy kill him now and get it over with.
He looked down at her, at the deceptively innocent face, and wondered just how easily and remorselessly she’d take him down.
Before she could do that, though, he’d have to fix her.
“Paige, scalpel.”
Awareness came slowly, in a haze of black blotches punctuated by points of light. Warm, elastic darkness tugged at Tayla, luring her toward slumber, but pain prodded her into consciousness. Every inch of her body ached, and her head felt heavy, too large for her neck to support. Groaning, she opened her eyes.
Fuzzy, shadowy images swirled and pulsed in front of her. Gradually, her vision came into focus, and whoa… she must be in another realm, because the dark-haired man staring down at her was a god. His lips, glistening sensuously as if he’d just licked them, were moving, but the buzz in her ears drowned out his words.
She narrowed her eyes and concentrated on his mouth. Name. He wanted her name. She had to think about it for a second before she remembered. Great. She must have hit her head. Which, duh, explained the headache.
“Tayla,” she croaked, and wondered why her throat hurt so much. “Tayla Mancuso. I think. Does that sound right to you?”
He smiled, and if she weren’t dying on some type of table, she’d have appreciated the sexy curve of his mouth and the flash of very white teeth. The guy must have a fab dentist.
“Tayla? Can you hear me?”
She could, but the buzzing lingered. “Uh-huh.”
“Good.” He put a hand on her forehead, allowing her a glimpse of one muscular arm adorned by intricate, swirling tribal tattoos. “You’re at a hospital. Is there anything I need to know? Allergies? Medical conditions? Parentage?”
She blinked. Had he said “parentage”? And could eyelashes hurt? Because hers did.
“This is a waste of time.” The new speaker, an exotic-looking man, Middle Eastern, maybe, glared down at her.
“Go handle your own patients, Yuri.” The hot doctor with the espresso eyes shoved Yuri aside. “Can you answer my question, Tayla?”
Right. Allergies, parentage, medical conditions. “Um, no. No allergies.” No parents, either. And her medical condition wasn’t something she could share.
“Okay then. I’m going to give you something to help you sleep, and if it doesn’t kill you, when you wake up you’ll feel better.”
Better would be good. Because if she felt a little less like she’d been run over by a truck, she could jump on Dr. Hottie.
The very fact that she wanted to jump Dr. Hottie told her more about the state of her head trauma than anything else, but what the hell. The pr
etty nurse had just injected her with something that totally rocked, and if she wanted to think about boinking a bronzed, tattooed, impossibly handsome doctor who was so far out of her league she needed a telescope to see him, then screw it.
Screw him. Over and over.
“I’ll bet you could make a woman throw out all her toys.” Had she said that out loud? The cocky grin on his face told her that yes, she’d verbalized her runaway thoughts. “Drugs talking. Don’t get excited.”
“Paige, push another milligram,” he said in his rich, smooth doctor voice.
A warm, burning sensation washed through her veins from the IV line in the back of her hand. “Mmm, trying to get rid of me, huh?”
“That’s already been discussed.”
Damn, this guy was saying some weird shit. Not that it mattered. Her eyes wouldn’t open anymore, and her body wouldn’t work. Only her ears still seemed to function, and as she drifted off, she heard one last thing.
“Wraith, I already told you. You can’t kill her.”
Aww. Her hot doctor was protecting her. She’d have smiled if her face hadn’t frozen. And clearly, her hearing had gone, too, because he couldn’t have tacked on what she thought he tacked on.
“Yet.”
Two
Someone was having sex nearby. Eidolon could feel it. Smell it. The ability was part of his breed’s gift; any Seminus demon within thirty yards would sense the same thing. As he walked, the scent of arousal grew stronger, making his body tighten and his balls throb. At any given time someone was screwing in the hospital – usually Wraith – but this time he scented only a female.
Normally, such arousal was a beacon for any incubus, but Eidolon had always fought the urge to seek out the horny female and take advantage of her lust. At least he had resisted the urge until a few months ago, when he’d entered his hundredth year and had begun The Change. Resistance had grown increasingly hard and painful. As his dick was at this moment.
Dammit, Wraith or Shade had better find the female and satisfy her cravings before they became too much of a distraction – or temptation – for him.
He moved swiftly through the dim corridors, nodding greetings to passing staff members, and as he approached the slayer’s room, the scent of arousal became almost overwhelming. A low, drawn-out moan forced him to bite back his own sound of need.
Muttering obscenities, he brushed past the two imps stationed outside her chamber and armed with enough sedatives to bring down a Gargantua demon and entered.
Tayla lay on the hospital bed, fists clenched, her chest heaving with her panting breaths. His own breath froze as she cried out and tilted her hips as though taking some imaginary lover inside her.
Standing at the foot of the bed, his brother smirked. Eidolon should have known.
“Get out of her head, Wraith.”
“You’re just jealous because you don’t have this power.”
Eidolon inhaled deeply and prayed to the Two Gods for patience. Wraith’s mercurial moods made it difficult to deal with him in any circumstance, but throw any of his primal instincts – sex, violence, blood-hunger – into the mix, and Wraith went from difficult to impossible.
“Wraith…”
“Chill, eldest male sibling. She kills our kind. I’m seeing how she feels about screwing us.” He shot Eidolon a sideways glance. “Screwing you, anyway. I’m a little more selective about my partners than you are, so I’m feeding her your images.”
Eidolon almost laughed. The words “Wraith” and “selective” canceled each other out. Both Shade and Eidolon preferred humanoid sex partners, though his preferences would soon change. But with the exception of humans and vampires, Wraith would nail anything that breathed. Though even that seemed to be optional.
Tayla’s head thrashed back and forth, and suddenly he pictured her under him, doing the same as he pounded into her. He’d tangle his hands in fistfuls of her fiery hair and fuck her until she climaxed so hard she’d beg him to stop, and then he’d make her come again just to show her he could. His cock twitched, and he ground his teeth because this line of thinking was one that could only lead to No Way in Hell.
“Knock it off,” he growled, knowing his brother would catch the scent of his own arousal if this didn’t stop. “She’ll tear her stitches.”
The reasoning was weak; it had been twenty-four hours since Eidolon had patched her up, and in addition to his healing touch, she’d been bathed in regenerative waters and had received recuperative potions and spells from other, specialized staff members. She’d be up and running and killing demons as soon as the sedatives wore off. Which reminded him that they needed to fit her with restraints immediately. The Haven spell would prevent her from hurting anyone, but she could still tear the hospital apart.
“You know, I thought the s’genesis would loosen you up. It’s only wedged that stick farther up your ass.” Wraith elbowed Eidolon on the way to the door, and then halted with a knowing grin. “Or maybe not. E, man, you smell like a virgin male in a brothel who can’t decide which whore to hump.” He grimaced. “And eew. Dude, she’s a Buffy. I’d sooner shove my dick into a month-dead corpse.”
“You probably have.”
Wraith snorted. “Eliminates the obligatory cuddling afterward.” He reached for the door handle, but drew up short. “Oh, Gemella called. Wants you to get in touch. Lucky bastard.”
“It’s not like that.”
Gem, a demon masquerading as a human intern in a human hospital, regularly checked in with Eidolon, mainly to share intel on the types of demon activity that came through her hospital. He’d tried to talk her into working for him, but she felt her duty was to follow in her parents’ footsteps, using her skills to intercept human-demon issues that would create questions if discovered by human physicians.
“Whatever. You ought to make it like that. She’s hot.”
Wraith sauntered out of the room, and Eidolon turned back to the slayer. Wraith had gone, but Tayla still squirmed. Her sheet had fallen to the floor, and the hospital gown had ridden up to her waist, revealing her silky black panties. He didn’t need to touch to know they were soaked. Her scent, her sexual perfume, hung so thick and heavy in the air that it was only a matter of time before he became drunk with it.
“Damn you, Wraith,” he muttered, and moved to Tayla’s side.
Stay detached. Professional.
Yeah, because the erection popping a tent in the front of his scrubs was real fucking professional.
Willing his pulse to idle out, he lifted her gown and methodically checked her most serious injuries, which looked good, nearly healed. Only one of the wounds had required sutures, and her writhing hadn’t disturbed the stitches.
“Yes,” she whispered, and grasped his hand where it rested on her rib cage. Her needs came to him in a rush of visions, a riot of tangled limbs and sweaty skin, and gods help him, a surge of excitement rocked his entire reproductive system.
Tamp it down, E.
He tried to pry her fingers loose with his other hand, but her iron grip tugged him upward to her breast. Beneath his palm, her flesh felt tight, hot, fevered in a way no thermometer would register. Her areola puckered at his touch, and his own body hardened in response. If he were made of stone he couldn’t be any harder.
Eidolon exhaled slowly, reaching deep for control. He’d been born to the Judicia, demons known for cool, calm logic, something that didn’t come naturally to him, but that he’d honed to perfection over the years both while growing up and later, when he’d served as all Judicium did, as a Justice Dealer.
But all those years fell away as he looked at Tayla. Even half-asleep, seductive, deadly power bled from her pores. She could crush him between her thighs and he’d beg her to make it hurt. Idiot. His brothers might like to mix it up with females like her, but Eidolon’s tastes in bedmates ran more on the civilized side.
“Tayla.” He struggled with her strength and his own desire as he drew his hand back. She was a killer of his peop
le. A butcher. “Slayer. Wake up.”
She shook her head and reached out blindly. He grasped her face between his palms and held her still. Using his thumbs, he lifted her eyelids. Pupils were equal and responsive when he turned her face toward the overhead light, though she didn’t seem to see him.
Damn, she had beautiful eyes. Green rimmed with gold, and so expressive that he doubted she could shield her thoughts from anyone. Pale freckles shimmered just beneath the surface of her creamy skin. High cheekbones added definition to her slightly rounded face, marred by the faintest tinge of a healing bruise. He let his gaze travel to her mouth, her pouty lips that parted slightly to let out the sounds of wanton desperation.
He wanted to take that mouth. Wanted to feel it take him.
Human medicine demanded ethics. Here, at Underworld General, if he, or any doctor, screwed every patient who came through the doors, few would care.
Eidolon happened to be one of the few.
Moral codes were not his concern; doctors didn’t screw patients in his hospital not because it was “wrong,” but because the hospital teetered in a precarious position. Demons weren’t a trusting sort. Most held a distrust, even contempt, for those with power. Doctors with scalpels could kill. If word got out that the doctors were raping their patients, even fewer demons would trust the hospital’s services.
As a result, most of the staff had agreed to keep their paws, claws, and teeth off the patients. Naturally, there had been exceptions and indiscretions.
Hell, he’d be willing to make an exception with the right woman, but an Aegi killer wasn’t the right woman, no matter how much his throbbing cock argued that she was.
“Doc.”
Tayla was looking at him, her eyes glittering with a combination of determination and lust so potent that he drew a startled breath. Her hand came up, grasped a handful of his hair near the nape, and pulled his head down with such force that he barely had time to brace his hands on either side of her head before his mouth came down hard on hers.
