Dark Wine at Midnight (A Hill Vampire Novel Book 1)

by Jenna Barwin

  “Who are you working for?” she yelled. She pried his eyelids open. His pupils were fixed, staring off into space. She bit her wrist and forced his mouth open. “Drink.”

  “Your blood won’t be enough to fix that head wound,” Karen said, “not without turning him first.”

  She didn’t need Karen to tell her that. “I want to bring him back, just enough so he’ll talk.”

  The sound of the shooter’s breath rattled in his throat. Tig squeezed her wrist to force more blood into his mouth, but with a final whoosh, his breathing stopped completely.

  “Damn,” she said, standing up. “What the fuck is going on here!” She threw the night-vision googles on the ground. “Go help with Cerissa,” she told Karen.

  “Cerissa? Something happened to Cerissa?”

  Tig looked at her like she was crazy, and pointed in Cerissa’s direction. “She was shot.”

  Swinging up onto her horse, Tig clicked her tongue, and reined her horse around to follow Rolf and Jayden. Behind her, she heard Karen’s startled cry: “Oh my God!”

  * * *

  Henry glanced up when Karen rode over and dismounted. “What can I do?” she asked.

  He ignored her. “Zeke, ride to Dr. Clarke’s and bring him to my house. I’ll take Cerissa there.”

  Zeke hesitated, and then grabbed his phone from his belt. “I’m calling the doc,” he said.

  The phone emitted a beep, telling Henry the call didn’t go through. They were in a dead zone—he and Rolf could never use their phones from here.

  “You’re the fastest rider, Zeke.” He leaned over Cerissa, keeping pressure on her arm. “The dirt road is a shortcut. You’ll be at Dr. Clarke’s in less than ten minutes if you ride quickly.”

  Zeke swung up onto Candy. His horse had taken off. “Don’t worry, Cerissa. I’ll have the doctor to you in no time.”

  He left at a gallop, a trail of dust following him.

  Henry started to pick up Cerissa. “Don’t do that,” Karen said. “You shouldn’t move her after a fall.”

  “She might bleed out if we stay here.” He unwrapped his shirt from her arm to see how it was doing. “An arterial bleed—see how it still pumps rhythmically.” His belt was too wide, her arm too small, for it to act as an effective tourniquet. “I have medicines at my house that should stop the bleeding. If Zeke can’t find the doctor, I can call an ambulance from there.”

  Besides, there was always the healing power of his blood, even though he didn’t want a blood connection to her.

  He tied the shirt around her arm again, tighter this time, and gently lifted her. She cringed with the movement. Karen picked up Cerissa’s braid and wrapped it over his arm. He took off, running down the dirt road, moving as smoothly as he could, leaving Karen behind.

  His Viper was parked by the corral. A fleeting thought—should he carry her the rest of the way? If he drove Cerissa to his house, the leather seat might be damaged by bloodstains. He dismissed it—Cerissa’s wellbeing was more important than his car.

  He worked the door handle without putting her down and gently slid her onto the passenger seat. She stopped him from closing the door, motioning for him to come closer.

  She’s asking for my blood. He started to bite his own wrist. She reached across and grabbed his arm, stopping him.

  “I can’t,” she said between gritted teeth. “Allergic.”

  He had never heard of an allergy to vampire blood, but this wasn’t the time to argue it.

  “In my front pants pocket,” she said, “an injection kit. Get it out.”

  He reached in and pulled out a short, cylindrical object. Near the tapered ends were the manufacturer’s letters, AB.

  “It’s cutting edge,” she said, panting. “A hypodermic loaded with different medicines. You dial in the one you want.” She gasped and held her breath, her back arching. When she finally let out her breath, she added, “I can’t use my right arm. I need you to dial it for me—1-2-3-4. Simple.”

  He tried to do what she said—he saw the numbers 0-0-0-0—but it wasn’t working.

  “Imagine there’s a wheel encircling each number,” she said, growing paler. “Feel for where the ring should be and turn it. Picture it there in your mind and it will be.”

  With those instructions, he dialed in the first number and soon had the hang of it. When he finished, she grabbed it with her left hand and jabbed it into the bare skin of her neck. Moments later, she sighed with relief and stuffed the device back into her pocket.

  He watched her wounded arm—nothing happened; blood continued to seep through the fabric tied around it. “Keep pressure on it,” he commanded, taking her free hand and pressing it against her arm.

  “Drive,” she mouthed, no sound coming from her throat. He closed the door gently and got in on the driver’s side. Soon they were on the main road, where he gunned the engine.

  “What was the medicine you took?” he asked, shifting into second.

  “Can’t talk right now.” She leaned back into the seat, her eyes closed. Her head lolled to the side.

  At his house, he parked in the circular driveway and jumped out, moving quickly to the passenger side. Dr. Clarke drove up behind him, and Zeke bounded out of the car before it stopped.

  “How is she?” Zeke demanded.

  Henry tossed his house key to Zeke. “Open the front door. I think she passed out.”

  He scooped up Cerissa and carried her inside his house. Not sure where to take her, he stopped in the tiled entryway. Dr. Clarke spared him further quandary. “I need her on a firm surface so I can examine and treat the wound.”

  Chapter 17

  Cerissa heard every word. She hadn’t spoken because she needed all her focus to maintain control. The stabilization fluid did its job, freezing her current form and keeping her from taking the easy way out to escape the pain. But it wasn’t enough—she had to use all her energy to stop the transformation.

  She cracked her eyes slightly to see where Henry carried her—a dining room. He held her while the doctor whisked away a large floral centerpiece, and then he laid her on the table. She bent her knees, the hard surface of the table digging into her back, her braid trapped under her shoulder pulling her head at an odd angle. Henry lifted her and freed her hair, draping it to the side.

  “Cerissa, can you open your eyes?” the doctor asked, disturbing her focus.

  I can, but I don’t want to. The stabilization fluid and blood loss were making it harder for her to weave the micro-changes needed to stop the bleeding. The doctor’s knuckles dug into her good shoulder. How am I going to repair the artery if he keeps bothering me?

  “Cerissa, look at me,” the doctor insisted. “Cerissa!”

  Damn it, he isn’t giving up. She opened her eyes and saw a vampire peering into her face. Dr. Clarke is a vampire? He shined a light into her eyes, and then flicked it away. No, I don’t have a concussion. I’ve been shot, you stupid ass.

  “Has she had any medication?” he asked.

  “No,” she replied in a parched whisper and slipped her fingers over Henry’s wrist, squeezing it. Henry looked back at her, puzzled.

  “Did you give her your blood?” Dr. Clarke asked.

  “She refused.”

  “Stupid mortal.” The doctor lifted Henry’s shirt from around her arm. The material tugged at her wound, igniting more pain. The sound of scissors cutting fabric followed, the cold air hitting her bare arm and shoulder when he peeled back the fabric of her blouse. “She’s lost a lot of blood.”

  It doesn’t take a doctor to know that.

  He removed Henry’s belt from around her arm and replaced it with a rubber-tube tourniquet tied loosely above the wound. He reached across her and, with Henry’s help, fitted an automatic blood-pressure cuff on her other arm.

  The machine dinged. “Eighty over fifty-five,” Henry said.

  “Not good. What’s your blood type?”

  “O negative,” she replied weakly.

  Dr. C
larke looked up at Henry. “Do you have any in your refrigerator?”

  “I doubt it.”

  “Not surprised. It’s a rare enough blood type. Hey, chief,” the doctor called out.

  Tig poked her head through the doorway. “Yes?”

  “Check Henry’s refrigerator for O negative. If he doesn’t have any, can you call around and see if anyone has some? She may need a transfusion.”

  “Will do,” Tig said, and left.

  The doctor continued to inspect the damage to Cerissa’s arm. “Did the bullet go all the way through?” he asked.

  “I don’t know,” Henry replied.

  “Help me roll her on her side.”

  The movement caused agony to shoot through her. Henry held her braced against his bare chest. His thick chest hair was already matted with her blood; a little more wouldn’t matter.

  The doctor peeled away her sleeve. She groaned when he traced his fingers over the back of her arm.

  “What are you doing?” Henry asked.

  “The bullet’s still in there.” The doctor ran his fingers over her arm again. “Close to the surface. Silver. I can feel a burning sensation as I pass by it, like someone dragged a lit match across my fingers.”

  She groaned again. If that idiot doesn’t stop touching me…

  “Probably a small-caliber, low-velocity bullet,” the doctor continued. “Designed to penetrate tissue and stop. Lucky for her they didn’t use a hollow point.” He laid out blue sterile sheeting over her arm and tucked it between her and Henry.

  “How can you tell the bullet type?” Henry asked.

  The doctor’s featherlight touch traced across her skin again and sent another wave of pain through her. “It traveled a short, clean path. Straight. A hollow point would have caused more damage, and a high-velocity bullet would have gone all the way through her soft muscle tissue. Lucky for you it hit her. Silver bullet hits vampire flesh, it instantly kills what it touches.”

  “Isn’t it expelled?” Henry asked.

  “I can see you haven’t had much experience with silver bullets. Wish I could say the same, but trust me, your body wouldn’t be able to push it out.” She heard the doctor reach into his medical kit for something, relieved he was no longer touching her. “Do you have any allergies?” he asked her.

  “No,” she replied, pushing out the word between clenched teeth. He didn’t need to know about her allergy to vampire blood—the fewer people who knew about it, the better.

  The doctor pinned her arm tightly to her side and pushed her against Henry’s chest. As Henry held her close, the doctor spread a cold solution over her arm, and the antiseptic smell of Betadine invaded her nose. The sound of tearing paper followed.

  “What are you doing?” she asked.

  “I have to stop the bleeding.”

  “Yes, but how—”

  The bite of a sharp scalpel sliced into her arm.

  “You fucking asshole!” She jerked from the pain, her control slipping away in spite of the stabilization fluid. She struggled to break Henry’s grasp. “Haven’t you heard of painkillers?”

  The doctor swabbed her arm with gauze. “We don’t have time for a painkiller to work. I have to find the bleeding artery and stop it. You’re losing too much blood too quickly.”

  “We have time, damn it,” she yelled at him. She was fighting the pain and something bad would happen if they didn’t quit screwing with her. Twisting in Henry’s arms, she finally broke free and found herself looking at the scalpel the doctor held. She freed her left hand and grabbed his wrist.

  “Now!” she demanded.

  The doctor looked at Henry. What, does Dr. Asshole think I’m Henry’s property? If he waits one second longer, I’m going to take the scalpel and use it on him.

  “Do what she asks,” Henry said.

  “It’s her arm,” the doctor said snidely, retying the rubber-tube tourniquet more tightly. “I’ll need the portable ultrasound. It’s in the bag over there.”

  Henry released her, and she rolled onto her back and closed her eyes, trying to block the burning, stinging pain radiating down her arm and the nausea welling in her stomach. Then she shivered. Uh-oh. She touched her face with her left hand, her fingers detecting a layer of cold moisture. She was going into shock. Dr. Asshole should have given her a painkiller and started an intravenous infusion of saline solution to compensate for the blood loss.

  Idiot! When did he last see the inside of a medical school? Before Oliver Wendell Holmes coined the term anesthesia?

  She opened her eyes again and saw Henry rummaging through one of the bags. He pulled out a couple of pouches before he held up one. “This is labeled ‘US Scan.’”

  “That’s the one.” The doctor looked into another bag and pulled out a hypodermic syringe and a bottle of a local anesthetic. “I only have lidocaine; it will work for about two hours.”

  He loaded the syringe and injected the nerves around the wound. Using the portable ultrasound, he located the peripheral nerve in her shoulder and injected the anesthetic directly into it.

  It made no sense to her. If he knew how to perform a nerve block—an advanced technique—why did he slice into her without a painkiller? What was he, some kind of sadist or something?

  Five minutes later, her whole arm went numb. The doctor kept pressure on the wound, frowning at her the entire time, clearly not happy taking orders from a patient. When the throbbing pain stopped, she signaled with a nod for him to begin.

  Henry rolled her onto her side. She couldn’t see what the doctor was doing—but, thank God, she couldn’t feel it anymore, either.

  “Got it.” Dr. Asshole held the bullet with surgical tweezers, waving it in front of Henry, who pulled back quickly, almost rolling her onto her stomach. The doctor dropped the silver bullet into a dish or bowl or something—the clink of metal on china. He grumbled as he continued to explore the back of her arm for a few moments then gave up. “The bleeder’s not on this side. I’ll close the incision once we find it. There—I’ve got it packed—help me turn her onto her back.”

  She could watch now as he worked. What good it would do, she didn’t know—maybe she could stop him from making any big mistakes. There was no reason for him to do this kind of surgery in Henry’s dining room. They should have taken her to a hospital.

  The doctor started exploring the entry wound. “The source of the arterial bleed has to be the front of the arm,” he said. “The tourniquet is holding it back for the moment, but we can’t keep the blood supply blocked much longer.”

  “You’re sure you can repair it?” Henry asked.

  “Of course I can. The bullet missed the bone completely and didn’t fragment. Straight, clean path. Ah, here’s the bleeder. Let’s see.” She felt pressure but no pain. “Good news: it’s only slightly nicked.”

  Using a cauterizing tool, he sealed it off. The acrid smell of burning flesh—her own—accosted her nose, and she sneezed in the direction of Henry’s blood-smeared chest. “Excuse me,” she mumbled.

  “Bless you,” he replied, grabbing gauze squares from the pile by the doctor and wiping her nose for her.

  The wound oozed a bit, but the rhythmic gushing stopped. The doctor released the tourniquet, and it held. He cleaned the wound and applied a chemical hemostat. The wound clotted and stopped bleeding. Finally, he did something right.

  But it still didn’t make sense. If he wasn’t completely incompetent, why did he perform field surgery? There was time to take her to a hospital. Or did someone order him to cover up the shooting?

  Dr. Asshole added a topical antibiotic and stitched up the torn muscle, then closed the entry site and the incision in the back of her arm with a series of short stitches. Finished, he wrapped the wound in gauze and pulled a vial from his bag. He loaded another syringe. After asking whether she was allergic to any antibiotics, to which she curtly replied, “No,” he unbuttoned her jeans, pulled back the waistband of her underwear, and gave her a shot in the meaty part of
her hip.

  She still gripped Henry’s wrist tightly. Realizing it, she let go and, seeing the mark on his arm, mumbled, “Sorry.”

  “It is nothing,” Henry replied.

  Dr. Asshole rechecked her bandages. “She’s in no condition to be driven back to Gaea’s. Can she stay here with you?”

  Henry hesitated. “Shouldn’t we take her to a hospital?”

  Tig answered from the doorway before the doctor could. “The hospital will report it to Mordida PD. I don’t want them interfering.”

  She tried to sit up to see Tig better. So the doctor was under orders to fix her here. She didn’t care why—she was in strong agreement with Tig.

  “Don’t move.” Dr. Asshole grabbed her shoulder above the wound, holding her down. “You’ll tear the stitches.”

  Henry furrowed his brow. “Are you sure, Tig? The hospital staff will be better equipped to care for her.”

  Tig shook her head. “No hospital.”

  Cerissa crooked her neck to meet Tig’s eyes and nodded back at her in agreement.

  “Any luck finding O negative?” the doctor asked Tig.

  “No, but we have a couple of mortals on the Hill who are O negative.”

  Dr. Asshole rechecked Cerissa’s blood pressure. “Ninety over sixty. Let’s hold off for now on the transfusion. She may not need it.”

  “They would have O negative at the hospital,” Henry suggested.

  “No hospital!” Tig and Cerissa said in unison, Cerissa’s voice a dry croak. They all gave her a surprised look.

  Dr. Asshole reached into his bag to pull out another vial of injectable medication. He loaded the syringe. “In that case, she should stay here.”

  “Here?” Henry repeated. “We should move her to Gaea’s house at least—Dylan can care for her during the day.”

  I take a bullet for him and he doesn’t want me in his house?

  “Her body is in shock,” Dr. Asshole replied, giving her a second shot. “The less movement, the better. Just find a mortal to stay with her during the day.”

  She grasped Henry’s wrist again, letting her eyes do the begging. He had to say yes. He’d seen the injector. She needed time to convince him to keep his mouth shut.