Page 44
Author: Kalayna Price
Bobby didn't like being left out, that much was obvious, but he would resign himself to being a decoy if he thought it was truly important. “What do I have to do?"
Nathanial explained his plan. He and I would disappear, Bobby would lead us into the waiting room then create the distraction and open the ICU door. We'd come back to get him after we'd talked to the victim. Easy. With my luck, too easy to actually work. I sighed.
Nathanial motioned me closer. When I wrapped my arms around his neck, my shoulder cried out and I fought not to wince again. Nathanial scooped me up so one arm was under my knees and the other around my back. The movement caused my shoulder to shift again, and I sucked in a pained breath.
Bobby scowled, then suddenly he blinked, squinted, and scanned the hall. “Amazing. I guess you weren't lying. I'm going to open the door now, so if you are in the way. . . ” He carefully opened the door as if he were afraid he would hit us with it.
I cringed. If he didn't act more natural than this, we weren't going to make it into the ICU—he was going to get himself locked up in the loony bin before he made it across the waiting room.
Nathanial carried me out of the hall quickly, but Bobby kept standing there, holding the door. Finally he stepped through the threshold. At least he didn't announce he was going to shut the door. Maybe we would make it.
The same red head sat behind the counter as the last time we were here. She looked up at Bobby, her gaze passing through Nathanial and me, then her attention slid back to her computer. If she recognized Bobby, her dismissal gave no indication of it.
Bobby made a beeline for the ICU door. He ignored the receptionist as he rushed around her desk, and then he gave the door a good push. It creaked, but didn't budge. The receptionist looked away from the data on her screen and scowled at him.
"The next visiting hour isn't until nine a. m. I'm sorry, you'll have to wait. "
Bobby frowned at the air about three feet to my right and gave it a questioning look. I glanced at Nathanial. He shrugged. Nothing we could do but wait it out. Bobby finally stopped trying to communicate with the empty space to our right and gave the receptionist a sly smile.
I'd never seen Bobby flirt before, but he laid it on thick. Within a couple of minutes he had her blushing and giggling. He leaned onto her desk, and ‘accidentally’ hit the button that caused the doors to slide open. Of course he made no move to walk through them, so she had no problem with this.
Nathanial and I slipped through the gaping doors completely undetected.
* * * *
We hadn't considered that we'd have to find the right room, or at least, I hadn't. Theoretically this shouldn't have been a problem, I mean, how many mauling victims could the city have? But most of the doors were shut, and opening them would have made us visible. Luckily the charts were on the outsides of the rooms.
I ignored the rooms with thick charts; the patient we were looking for hadn't been here long, hopefully her chart would be relatively thin. Of course, depending on how much surgery she'd needed, I could have been way off base. I saw Lorna's name on one of the charts. Good to know she was still alive, even if alive in critical condition.
Nathanial went rigid a few doors from Lorna's room. I had to crane my head around to read the chart he was staring at. Candice Mathews was printed in small letters across the top. There could have been hundreds of Candices in Haven, and this particular one could be an old lady with heart failure, but a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach told me that wasn't the case. Nathanial glanced up and down the hall, readjusted his hold on me, then pushed through the door.
He lowered me to the floor as soon as the door shut behind us. The patient was hidden behind a privacy curtain, but the beeping of monitors and the whooshing of a breathing machine permeated the room. Nathanial stepped around the curtain instead of pulling it back, and I followed him. On the other side, a round, bruised face with a little, turned-up nose and blond curls slept fitfully on an uncomfortable-looking pillow.
Candice had been kind to me, had tried to befriend me, even if she had been after Nathanial. I stared in sick shock at all the little tubes leading into her. She looked so small and helpless, not at all like the exuberant girl we'd left at the bar last night. That thought brought me up short. We had left her in the bar last night, all alone and working on drunk, but at a bar and not a rave. The rogue had been picking up women at raves. Why had his pattern changed?
Because he knew what we'd learned only last night, from Candice's DJ. That there were no raves right now, or in the near future.
A bar or club was a good alternate spot to find people of impaired judgment. He must have picked up Candice after we left. Guilt settled in my gut. If we hadn't asked to meet her friend, she wouldn't have been in the bar in the first place.
I approached the side of the bed. The red streaks she'd swiped into her bangs hung over her swollen eyes, a strange contrast to her bruised face. Why that bar? Why had the rogue picked her? I reached out to wipe the bangs aside so they wouldn't cover her eyes when she opened them, but Nathanial's arms wrapped around my waist, drawing me back.
"Wha—"
He pressed two fingers over my mouth as the door to the room opened. I went so still I stopped breathing. Crap. We were stuck between the bed and the curtain. Nathanial dragged me closer to the wall as a young nurse in salmon-colored scrubs rounded the curtain. She didn't scream, so apparently we were invisible again. She hummed as she checked Candice's vitals and wrote the results in her chart.
"Keep fighting,” she whispered to Candice's prone figure.
How bad was she? How close to not making it? The need to ask burned my throat, and I bit my lips.
I looked up at Nathanial. He wasn't watching the nurse, but staring at Candice, his face lacking even a speck of legible emotion. I'd expected sorrow or anger, but he stared at Candice and there was nothing. His face was blank, his eyes cold, empty. He noticed me watching him, and turning, studied my face like I would quiz him on it later. Tension crept over his features. The rawness I'd seen when we left the council claimed his face again as the emptiness slipped away. It hurt to look at, but the only other thing to focus on was Candice's broken body.
The nurse wouldn't leave. She kept humming. Seconds dragged by. Nathanial's fingers dug into my waist. I closed my eyes to escape what I saw in his eyes. The nurse reached for one of the machines near the head of the bed, her heat filling the space between her arm and my face. I leaned against Nathanial's chest, creating an extra inch of space between the nurse and me.
As I settled against him, Nathanial's near painful grip on my waist slackened, some of the rigidity flowing out of him. Curious. I slid my hands under his coat, wrapping my arms around his waist. A breath slipped from his lips, dancing through my hair and tickling my ear. He relaxed against me.
I was torn between the desire to push away and the need to say something, though I wasn't sure what. The nurse's presence prevented either action.
Through slitted eyes I saw her disappear around the curtain, then the door opened and shut with a quiet swish. I dropped my arms, but Nathanial didn't move. I pushed back, pressing myself against the wall so I could look at him. There was nothing cold about his grey eyes now. One of his hands left my waist. It hung an inch from my face, then, feather-light, his fingers trailed along my jaw. My heart slammed against my chest. His lips parted, but he said nothing as he leaned closer. I didn't dare breath. I wasn't sure what I wanted or why.
Then his body wasn't there anymore.
I blinked at the empty space in front of me. Nathanial was on the other side of the bed, his back toward me as he peered out the window. Too many of my racing heartbeats flew by as I stood there, my legs unsteady beneath me. Heat rushed to my cheeks.
When Nathanial turned back around, he didn't look at me, but studied Candice's broken form again. His face was calm now, completely
in control, with none of the heat it held a moment before or the empty blankness from earlier.
I took a couple of deep breaths and tried to feel half as calm as he looked, but I'd never been good at being calm. I wrapped my arms across my chest and paced at the edge of the curtain. “She's drugged. Heavily. Now what?"
"We fish for information. ” He sat down on the edge of Candice's bed and lifted the hand not sealed in a cast. “See how her eyes are rolling under their lids, and how she keeps twitching. She must be dreaming. "
I watched for a moment, confused, until I realized his intent. “You can't be serious. She's three inches from death. You'll kill her. "
"She will survive this, hopefully it will not take much, but if we do not find some clue about the rogue, the rest of us will not survive the night. ” He turned her hand over so her palm was facing up, then he sank his fangs into her wrist.
I watched in disgusted fascination, my own fangs extending. The moment Nathanial's fangs pierced her flesh, she stilled, her nightmares ceasing. I waited. I tried not to count the heartbeats that passed. Seconds dragged on. The machine beside Candice's head lost its steady beep.
Crap . . . I shook Nathanial's shoulder. He didn't respond. Aside from his throat convulsing as he swallowed, and the rigidity of his posture, he could have been asleep. “Nathanial?"
Not even a twitch.
He'd stop, wouldn't he? That first night, he'd said the drugs in my system had confused him—Candice had way more drugs in her body than I'd had.
The mechanical beeping became more erratic. What had he done to make me stop? Pressed on my eyes. Closed off my throat. I ran behind him, but as I grabbed for his face, his hands locked around my arms.
I froze.
Candice's hand fell to the bed, but Nathanial didn't release me. I couldn't see his face, and his vice like grip on my arms kept me locked behind him. His lips slid over my right palm and up to my wrist. His fangs pressed against my flesh, and I winced, waiting to feel the sting as they pieced my skin.
They didn't. Nathanial's breath beat against my wrist, quick, short gasps. Strange for someone who didn't need to breathe. His grip pinched, but wasn't truly painful.
Once Bitten Page 44
