by Cheree Alsop
Aleric stared at the vampire. “That’d be a death sentence.”
Dartan gave a self-deprecating smile. “I’m already dead, remember?”
Aleric held his gaze. “You know what I mean. The Drakathan will kill you or turn you into one of their slaves.”
“At least I’ll be in good company,” the vampire replied.
Aleric watched his friend for a moment. When it was clear Dartan wasn’t going to budge, he gave in. “Fine. I’ll avoid the Drakathan for as long as I can, but I need to get to the bottom of the killings. The Fervor leader is called the Chosen. I met him today.”
“Pleasant fellow?” Dartan asked.
“He told his followers to kill me, hence the mass arrest,” Aleric replied. “Also, he has a werewolf who seems to follow him around like some glorified pet.”
“Hence the killings,” Dartan said with a nod. “So they really were werewolf. But why? Are they trying to frame you?”
“Looks like it,” Aleric agreed. “But why? I don’t do anything here that would impact the Drakathans.”
“You mean besides patching up injured fae, tracking down evil-doers, and generally acting like the protector of Edge City?” Dartan said in a wry tone.
Aleric rolled his eyes. “Now you’re being dramatic.” The pain from his hands made Aleric’s breath catch. He tried to hide a wince, but Dartan saw it.
“Suffering from the consequences your actions?” the vampire asked lightly to hide the concern in his eyes. “Now who’s being dramatic?”
Aleric grinned. “You’re right. This is nothing.” He studied his hands, wishing he could feel as light-hearted about them as he pretended. “Nearly burned them clean through. No big deal.”
“That’s the spirit,” Dartan replied.
The door pushed open and Dr. Worthen stepped into the room with his gloves raised to keep from touching anything.
“Sorry it took so long,” the head physician apologized. “We’ve had some complications with the ifrit male.”
“What’s going on?” Aleric asked.
The doctor’s gaze lowered. “We’re struggling to keep him here. His head wounds are beyond the repair of a blow torch. Nurse Talia’s watching over him. She’ll come get me if his condition changes.”
Aleric attempted to sit up, which turned out to be much harder without using his hands. When Dartan saw what he was doing, the vampire lifted him up to a sitting position far easier than Aleric was thrilled about. “Maybe you should stay with him,” the werewolf suggested in concern.
“If I thought standing there watching him would heal him, I wouldn’t leave his side,” the head physician replied. “As it is, I have a doctor to take care of. Let me see those hands.”
Hearing Dr. Worthen call him a doctor made Aleric’s heart tighten painfully.
“I’ll catch you later,” Dartan told the werewolf. “I shouldn’t be in an operating room anyway. You know, they smell like blood even after they’ve been cleaned.” He pushed through the door and left.
“We should consider making him the janitor,” Aleric suggested.
Dr. Worthen gave a small chuckle. “Not a bad idea. If we didn’t need him to keep an eye on the D Wing, I’d consider it.”
He moved a rolling chair over to the table and studied Aleric’s hands where they rested palms-up on his knees. By the doctor’s expression, Aleric could tell he wasn’t happy with what he saw.
“Do they hurt?” Dr. Worthen’s tone was quiet.
“A bit,” Aleric said to belie the sharp throbs that were branching from his palms up his arms.
Dr. Worthen picked up Aleric’s right hand carefully and gave it a critical look. “I don’t know whether to wrap these or treat them the way I would a regular patient.”
“They’ll heal,” Aleric replied. “I just need to wait for nightfall without using them much.”
“Not using them isn’t going to be a problem by the looks of things,” Dr. Worthen noted. “I have a feeling if you touch anything, the pain will drop you to your knees. Maybe it’ll slow you down.”
“I doubt it,” Aleric said wryly.
“I do, too,” Dr. Worthen echoed. He grabbed a roll of gauze from a tray. “I’m going to clean them and wrap them to keep them sanitary until nightfall. If they don’t heal by sunrise, come see me again.”
“I won’t be here.”
The doctor gave him a surprised look. “Why not?”
“I’m not a doctor, remember?” Aleric replied. He kept his voice level to hide the emotions that came with the words. “You told me to leave. I endangered Lilian. I’m the reason she was kidnapped, remember?”
Dr. Worthen didn’t speak as he sanitized both hands, then proceeded to wrap the left one. The doctor’s movements were sure and precise, though gentle as he tended to the werewolf’s burns. He used tape to secure the end of the gauze and turned to Aleric’s other hand. He was nearly through with that one as well before he broke the silence.
“I was wrong to say that. I need you here.” He looked up at Aleric. “The presence of the ifrit family reminds me that I don’t have all the answers, and your sacrifice in there tells me you wouldn’t endanger a member of this hospital willingly. I know you better than that and I shouldn’t have said what I did. I’m sorry.”
He set Aleric’s hand back on the werewolf’s knee. The movement pulled at Aleric’s sore arm and he winced.
“What was that?” the doctor asked.
“It’s nothing.”
Dr. Worthen pushed Aleric’s scrub sleeve up. He gave the burlap sack strips around Aleric’s forearm an apprehensive look. “Mind telling me what this is?”
Aleric wanted to pull his sleeve back down, but the gauze around his hands made them clumsy. Dr. Worthen refused to back away. Aleric turned his gaze to the wall near the door.
“I got shot.”
The doctor paused for a moment. Out of the corner of his eye, Aleric saw Dr. Worthen’s eyebrows pull together, trepidation on his face as though he didn’t want to know the answer to the question he had to ask.
“What were you doing when you got shot?”
Aleric kept his gaze from the doctor’s. “Looking for Lilian.”
There was hope in Dr. Worthen’s voice when he asked, “Did you find her?”
“I did,” Aleric replied. “But the man who has her got away and I lost them both in the fight that followed.”
“Did you see her?” the doctor’s question was tinged with despair.
Aleric shook his head. He felt as much as saw the doctor’s dejection. “But I know she was there. I could smell her.” He met the doctor’s gaze. “She’s alive. I know she is. And I won’t stop until I bring her back to you in safety.”
Dr. Worthen didn’t answer. He picked up a pair of scissors from the tray and began cutting the burlap strips.
“The others healed,” Aleric said. “This one apparently needed some more time.”
The doctor’s actions slowed. “There are more?”
“Knife wounds; stabs, mostly,” Aleric replied. “Not more bullets, thank goodness. One was enough.”
Dr. Worthen took a step back. “Remove your shirt.”
Aleric lifted his eyebrows in mocking shock. “Dr. Worthen, I’m not that kind of werewolf.” At the doctor’s stern expression, Aleric sighed. “Fine. But only because it’s hot in here and I could use a bit of air. I’m sure all the girls say that to you.”
Aleric drew his shirt over his head. The sleeve got caught on his arm. Dr. Worthen helped him pull it the rest of the way free. The doctor walked around the table, viewing the werewolf’s bruised torso.
Dr. Worthen gave a disapproving cluck of his tongue. “When are you going to start taking care of yourself?”
Aleric turned to follow the doctor as he walked around the table a second time. “I did take care of myself. If I had just stood there, you’d be sewing me back together like a quilt or a doll, or, well, other things that get sewn together.”
The h
ead physician checked the stab wounds, his expression becoming more set with each mark. Aleric decided not to mention the scissors that had been jabbed into his thigh.
Dr. Worthen stopped near his arm again and finished cutting through the bandages. “I suppose I should be grateful you’re still standing of your own accor— is that wire?”
Aleric glanced at his arm. “Oh. Yeah. That’s all I could find. After I got the bullet out, I was going to stitch it together with some twine, but my stomach wasn’t having it and I was worried I’d pass out and bleed to death. I figured this would at least keep it together until it healed.”
“Lay down.”
Aleric knew better than to argue when the doctor used that tone. He settled back on the operating table. “You don’t approve?”
“Did you do anything I’ve taught you since you’ve been here?” Dr. Worthen asked. He picked up a pair of tongs from the tray. “Did you clean it, sterilize the wire, get the bullet out?”
“All of it,” Aleric replied. At the doctor’s doubtful expression, he explained, “Pine sap is antiseptic and antibacterial, one of the few things of actual use I leaned with the Drakathans.”
“The who?”
Aleric shook his head. “Never mind. Long story. Anyway, I used it to clean the knife wounds and the one from the scissors—”
The doctor’s gaze sharpened. “Which one from the scissors?”
“Forget I said that,” Aleric said. “As you can see, everything is healing just fine. I dipped the wire in the salve and let it soak before washing everything clean. It shouldn’t have gotten infected.”
“I have a suspicion that you might not have gotten all of the pieces of the bullet out. I need to open this back up. Hold still.”
Dr. Worthen gave no further indication what he thought about the werewolf’s unorthodox methods. He crossed to the door and pushed a button on the wall with his elbow.
“Nurse’s station,” Therese said.
“Tell Nurse Eastwick I need her assistance in O.R. Seven,” Dr. Worthen instructed.
“Right away, Doctor,” the orderly replied.
“Do you really think that’s necessary?” Aleric asked.
Dr. Worthen shot him a smile. “What? Just because you know you’re going to get a well-deserved talking-to doesn’t mean I should operate without a nurse.”
“You could get Gregory,” Aleric muttered.
Dr. Worthen chuckled. “That orderly’s been floating around here in another world since he got engaged. I wouldn’t trust him to tell the difference between a scalpel and a butter knife until they finally get married. He’s a bit frazzled about the picketers, anyway.”
“Sorry about that,” Aleric replied.
“It’s not the first time we’ve had picketers here,” Dr. Worthen said as though their presence didn’t bother him at all. At Aleric’s look, he smiled. “Let’s just say this city has activists ready to picket anything, including a doctor who may have been taken to jail for drunk driving.”
“You were drunk?” Aleric said in surprise.
Dr. Worthen shook his head. “It wasn’t me, it was Dr. Kreen. He’s a cardiothoracic surgeon. There was a bus accident downtown and lots of patients were brought in. He worked over twenty-four hours to help me cover because we were short-staffed at the time. On his way home, after he had saved at least half a dozen lives, he was pulled over because he couldn’t drive straight. The officer thought he was drunk and took him in. The media had a field day saying that we had drunkards on our staff.”
“What did you do about it?” Aleric asked.
Dr. Worthen shrugged. “I made a statement to Channel Two News about how heroic Dr. Kreen had been and the lives he had saved. One of the mothers of a child who needed emergency surgery attested to his competence and her gratitude that he had saved her child’s leg even though it was outside of his specialty. I left it at that. Eventually the picketers stopped showing up and harassing Dr. Kreen. Ignore them and they’ll go away.” He gave Aleric a closer look. “Unless their rumors are true.”
Aleric studied the ceiling above him. “They’re true. The body was definitely mutilated by a werewolf. I’m the one who found it, but the Commissioner thought it would be best to keep the werewolf talk hushed.”
“Someone else didn’t feel that way,” Dr. Worthen pointed out. “People always want to doubt what they don’t understand. Give a little hint of suspicion and they’re all over it like wildfire. Don’t let it bother you.”
Aleric nodded.
The door opened. When Nurse Eastwick saw who was on the table, she clucked her tongue like Dr. Worthen had done. “I heard what you did for the ifrit woman. You’re lucky you have hands left.”
“How’s she doing?” Aleric asked.
“She’s resting in the D Wing near the window. Dartan’s watching over her with orders to get me if she awakens. Your little winged kitten is curled up at the end of her bed. Dartan says she likes the heat.”
The thought of the minky filled Aleric with guilt. He had been so busy he had nearly forgotten about the little creature. He made a mental note to pick her up some tuna fish from the convenience store near the hospital. The kitten seemed to prefer it over the cat food Lilian had brought.
“What’s that?” Nurse Eastwick asked.
“A bullet wound,” Dr. Worthen replied as he injected a local anesthetic into the wound. The doctor then straightened out the wire so he could remove it. Aleric winced at the pain to his raw flesh. “Serves you right,” the head physician said, giving him a scolding look. “You should have come here when you got hurt.”
“I thought Nurse Eastwick was going to give me the lecture,” Aleric replied.
The nurse was busy shaking her head over the other marks across Aleric’s torso. “I guess you got these fighting that Fervor gang. We watched the news in the breakroom.” She held his gaze. “Did you have anything to do with the mutilated bodies they keep finding?”
Aleric’s heart gave a painful thump. “I thought you knew me better than that.”
The nurse nodded, her attention on Dr. Worthen as he eased the wire from the bullet wound. “Yes, but they’re saying werewolf. Given what you’ve told us about your race, I’d prefer not to think of another werewolf roaming the city slaughtering people.”
“Better the devil you know than the devil you don’t,” Aleric suggested tightly.
“Forceps,” Dr. Worthen said to Nurse Eastwick.
She handed them over and held gauze beneath the wound.
“I wouldn’t call you the devil,” the head physician said. Aleric saw a smile tug at Dr. Worthen’s surgical mask. “Maybe one of his minions.”
Aleric smiled. The pain in his arm swept the expression away. He felt the blood run down when Dr. Worthen opened the wound.
“Flush it,” the doctor said.
More fluid followed. Aleric kept his gaze on the ceiling. It was white and boring.
“You should put posters up there,” he suggested. “It would give patients something to look at.”
“Usually they’re either unconscious or a bit preoccupied with the surgery to care,” Dr. Worthen replied. He used a scalpel to open the flesh further.
Aleric sucked a breath in through his teeth. It was becoming his experience that werewolves didn’t respond to anesthetic the way humans did. It numbed things a bit, but knifes and forceps seemed to overwhelm any painkilling properties.
“Right there,” Dr. Worthen said. He peered at the wound through his surgical glasses. “That’s what I thought. Tweezers.”
After a few more very drawn-out seconds of prodding, the doctor pulled a piece of metal free. He held it up so Aleric could see it. “Bullet fragment.” He dropped it in the bowl Nurse Eastwick held out. “Let’s flush it to ensure that’s the only piece.”
Aleric realized he had been breathing so shallowly he felt lightheaded. He took a relaxing breath and closed his eyes. He let the breath out through his nose.
The image of an i
frit girl with thick handcuffs around her wrists surfaced in his mind. There was dirt on her face and arms. It dulled the color of her golden hair and marked her red skin. Her wings drooped behind her as she was dragged across the floor.
Every fiber of Aleric’s being screamed for him to help her. Her head turned and her gaze locked on his. He saw it in her face, the fear, the dread of what she knew was coming, but also the defeat. She knew he was powerless to break her free.
He could barely do more than lift his head as she was pulled past like a sack of wheat. They had tortured him beyond his ability to do anything other than breathe. He was barely alive, and she wasn’t long for that world. He accepted it because he had no other choice, and he hated himself for it.
Chapter Six
“Dr. Wolf.”
His eyes flew open and his heart thundered. It took every ounce of self-control not to fight before he saw who was around him. He blinked and his gaze focused. At the sight of Nurse Eastwick and Dr. Worthen watching him, he shoved down the strange feeling that urged him to attack any threat. He told himself he wasn’t a fighter, but the fight in the warehouse whispered otherwise.
Dr. Worthen helped him sit up. “Take it easy. Don’t use your hands. Don’t use your shoulders. Try to remember that you had surgery a few days ago and another one today. You really should start spacing them out further.”
“I’ll remember that,” Aleric said. He rose to his feet. Lightheadedness swept through him, but he pretended not to feel it.
“I’m going to check on the ifrit.” Dr. Worthen said. He gave Aleric a stern look. “Take it easy, Dr. Wolf. You need to stop pushing yourself so hard.”
“I’ll keep that in mind,” Aleric replied.
Dr. Worthen shook his head and left the room.
Nurse Eastwick held out his scrubs shirt. “A hospital gown would be easier to get on.”
The brought a grin to Aleric’s face. “Now you’re just being cruel.”
She laughed. “I remember how much you enjoyed the first one you were in. Drafty was the word you used, wasn’t it?”
Aleric rolled his eyes. He struggled to lift his arms over his head to put them in the armholes of his scrubs. His right arm wasn’t happy about it and his left shoulder decided to join the protest.
