by RJ Blain
“That’s within your power to learn, don’t fear. It’ll be a satisfying hunt for you, cupcake. Give it a few minutes. The bloodlust will fade—as long as no one else decides to act like prey. Also, you might want to get that looked at.” The devil took his turn pointing, and I frowned, following his finger to my chest—no, shoulder, which had a rather bloody hole through it.
“That’s going to hurt later,” I predicted.
“Indeed.” The devil sighed. “How troublesome. I suppose I better stick around, just in case someone else gets a stupid idea. Right, Caitlin Murray?”
Malcolm’s former lover froze, her eyes widening. “R-right.”
“Good girl. Run along. And Caitlin? However tempting, I wouldn’t touch that gun if I were you. I’d really hate to wreck that pretty face. My claws are sharper than my heir’s, and they’re much longer, too.”
The woman fled, and the devil cackled, a bloodcurdling laugh. “Well, I guess that’s a wrap.”
I scowled. "I'll say."
"You really should put a bandage on that wound, dear. Bind it nice and tight before you bleed out. I'd hate to tell your mummy you died."
My cheek twitched. Maybe if I kept quiet, he'd stop.
"It's my dry sense of humor, isn't it?"
King Tutankhamun groaned and shambled in the direction of his exhibit, and I swore I heard the mummy cursing in ancient Egyptian.
"Someone must have slipped him decoffinated coffee when he got up today. So grumpy. Relax, Tutankhamun. No need to be so wound up."
No one would blame me if I tried to kill the devil, would they? King Tutankhamun wisely kept walking away.
"He has a rather stiff sense of humor, doesn't he? I bet he just doesn't have the guts to face me."
Death would be a far better fate than enduring another one of the devil's puns. "What did I do to deserve this punishment?"
Damn it, he had me doing it, too. I bowed my head, sighed, and regretted everything.
"Don't feel bad, cupcake. They're groaners."
I went from fine to whimpering in the blink of an eye as I made friends with the floor. One uncontrolled shift later, I bled as a human rather than a bipedal feline with a mummy problem.
Well, I still had the mummy problem. Ginger crouched beside me, staring at me with his hollow sockets. The golden light had dimmed, leaving two faint, shimmering orbs in place of his eyes.
“You’ve made a friend.” Satin knelt beside me and placed his clawed hand on my shoulder, applying pressure to my gunshot wound. “Since you dodged death by fire, you had to test your luck against metal?”
“Sure. How’s Malcolm?”
“Better off than you are, cupcake. Turns out that armor he’s wearing packs a layer of kevlar beneath the metal plating. He cracked his nose on his cousin when he got the breath knocked out of him. The fall stunned him, then he stayed down with a little help from his clan—safer for him that way. I don’t think anyone expected Asfour would try to kill you, too. That’s what makes mortals so much fun. They’re unpredictable. I expected chaos and destruction, not a bloodbath.”
Talking helped distract me from the intensifying throb in my shoulder. “How much did you know?”
“Know? Nothing. It’s against the rules to peek into matters like this—it’s also not worth the headache. I guessed, I lurked, and I listened. I’m naughty like that, listening in on private conversations. You let him off lightly. I’m so curious to learn how potent your curses will become. Now, that leads me to my one problem with this situation. You called an ambulance for him when you’re the one who needs it. I suppose I’ll have to interfere.”
“Interfere?”
“Like this.” The Lord of Lies lifted his hand and stabbed his finger into my shoulder. Blue flames shrouded his arm and pierced my skin. I yelped at the shock of heat, which cooled to numbing ice. “A fringe benefit of my origin. I’m sure you won’t mind most of the consequences. You won’t bleed to death, which is important. Don’t worry. You’ll stop glowing in a few hours.”
I turned my head to get a better look. My blood burned, and blue flames danced over my skin. “The last time this happened, I lost all my hair. I don’t want to lose my hair again, it just grew back,” I wailed.
“Hellfire blended with a bit of heavenly light. Those pesky angels upstairs hate when I do this. It reminds them I have the same tricks they do without nearly as many of their rules and scruples. Of course, I never work for free, but this time, you were working in my name. Consider it compensation for your efforts. I do tend to do things that benefit me in some fashion or another, and it’d be annoying if I lost my heir on her first public appearance, especially after such a lovely display. To wake King Tutankhamun in his full glory surpassed most of my expectations. I look forward to watching you grow—and seeing what you’re capable of when your anger doesn’t consume you.”
Ginger hissed at the devil, and golden dust spilled from the gaps in his wrappings, swirling around him without touching the floor. The mummy opened his mouth, and emerald scarabs skittered out. They congregated around Ginger’s throat and clustered over his heart. “Ginger stay. Zezemonekh stay.”
The devil snickered. “King Tutankhamun likely finds it offensive a mummy of non-royal heritage dares to be his equal.”
Ginger lifted his hands, and dust and sand coiled around his throat. The orbs in the mummy’s empty sockets flashed, blinding in its intensity. When I could see again, a gold and emerald usekh covered his shoulders and hugged his neck, and a triad of scarabs rested over his heart. Ancient linens brightened to pristine white, reformed as though new, and golden hair braided into tiny strands fell to his jaw, each tipped with a silver bead and a teardrop emerald.
“Then again, he probably didn’t want to end up your servant.”
I must have fallen unconscious and dreamed; that seemed more likely than the Lord of Hell sticking his finger through my shoulder and igniting my blood so it burned blue. Ginger spitting scarabs and rejuvenating to a mummy in full glory had to be a figment of my imagination right along with King Tutankhamun’s appearance.
Maybe I had lost my mind earlier than I thought. I couldn’t be the devil’s heir. I must have made the whole thing up. Oh! Maybe I had fainted in the airport, overwhelmed by the wretched stench of the recently dead.
“If that makes you feel better.” Satin patted my shoulder, which hurt like hell.
“I’d feel better if you stopped doing that.”
A siren wailed in the distance, and the devil rose to his hooves. “You. Bring the paramedics here. You, deal with the police. Tell them the name of that miserable human who caused this trouble.”
“Isaac Asfour,” I provided.
“Isaac Asfour. Do make sure the clansman goes to the hospital. Try not to ruin that armor getting him out of it. Its owner tends to carve out pounds of flesh in payment for damage to his property. Oh, cupcake? I’ll hold onto your male’s sword. It wouldn’t do if that fell into the wrong hands. Try not to wreck the hospital. It’ll be annoying enough making a suitable contribution to the museum to convince them to look the other way.”
“Sure.” I could humor my twisted psyche. How hard could it be to avoid wrecking a hospital? I’d probably wake up in the airport terminal gagging over the reek of week-old corpses.
“Good girl. I’ll check in with you later.”
“Please don’t,” I begged.
The devil laughed and disappeared.
Chapter Nineteen
It was difficult to deny reality when it hurt so much. Add in the trip to the hospital, the brace and cast to immobilize my shoulder, and the staggering stack of paperwork, and I couldn’t pass off my situation as a really bad dream. To make matters even more complicated, Ginger refused to leave my side. The mummy shed piles of golden sand wherever he went, much to the nurses’ dismay.
“Miss, could you please ask your friend to wait outside? Please?” Nurse Abigail sighed, looking up from my medical chart. “We’ll be at this all n
ight otherwise.”
While I thought Ginger wasn’t bothering anyone and behaving himself despite his tendency to shed sand, I regarded the mummy with a weary sigh. What was she expecting me to do? ‘Stay’ had gotten him to lurk in a corner, and he’d chased the ambulance, running on all fours like a demented, linen-wrapped dog.
Maybe I could relocate my mummy problem for a while. If Nurse Abigail wanted anything else from me, she’d be disappointed. “Ginger, could you find Malcolm and guard him, please?”
The mummy hissed. “Future King?”
Oh dear. If Malcolm found out, he’d probably get upset with me. It wasn’t really lying, was it? Given half a chance and the removal of my self-imposed rule about sleeping with or dating clients, I’d pounce. I could express my desire to get the unobtainable to an old dead guy wrapped in rags and get away with it. Maybe. “That’s the idea.”
Ginger rose to his full height and strode across the room, moving with the same grace and dignity as King Tutankhamun. The sand slithered after him, leaving no evidence of the mummy’s presence in the room. Startled cries in the hallway amused me enough I grinned.
“What was that?” the nurse grumbled.
“His name is Ginger. He’s the first Egyptian mummy; he used to be on display at a museum until he woke up.” Nurse Abigail didn’t need to know I’d been the one to wake Ginger, although the specifics of how I’d done it remained a mystery. “He’s harmless.”
I was such a liar.
“He’s an actual mummy? Now I’ve seen everything. Anyway, back to you. You got lucky; the bullet clipped the bone and cracked it, but otherwise, it punched through fairly clean. As long as you take your medication as prescribed and do physical therapy as ordered, you won’t experience much if any impairment.”
“Huh. I thought the doctors gave the verdicts. Cool. I got the super nurse.” I wrinkled my nose and glared at the bulky cast and rod assembly keeping my shoulder immobile. “How long do I have to wear this thing for?”
“That depends on your health insurance; if you qualify, a bone-trauma specialist can mend the bone. The treatment takes several hours and is very expensive. There are few mages in the medical field who can do that level of work. If you don’t qualify, expect at least four weeks. That’s considered a normal recovery time for an injury of this nature.”
The thought of four weeks in a cast made me shiver. To make things worse, I wouldn’t be able to shift until the cast was gone. For whatever reason, my magic could handle clothing and basic restraints, including handcuffs, but casts and broken bones caused problems. Broken bones I could shift through, but I didn’t heal faster. It actually slowed my recovery; the last time I’d broken something and shifted, it had cost me at least a week.
It also hurt so much I could barely do it. If I wore a cast, the pain became so intense I couldn’t shift at all.
I loathed the idea of spending four weeks stuck in my human form. Sighing, I poked the unwieldy monstrosity. “That’s going to be so gross when it comes off.”
“It won’t be too bad. A shower will fix you up good as new. The itching’ll be what gets to you. Normally, we would have handled your insurance first, but we try to address gunshot wounds immediately. Let’s begin. Give me your full name, please.”
Why couldn’t my entire day just have been a bad nightmare? When I told the nurse my new last name, she’d have me committed—or accuse me of lying. “Kanika Mephistopheles.”
Nurse Abigail’s eyes widened, and she gaped at me. “Pardon?”
I spelled it for her, and since I was doomed to answer a lot of questions anyway, I gave her the devil’s phone number and policy number. “Please don’t misspell it on any of the forms; he hates that. You’ll also have to call him, I’m sorry. It’s part of the policy agreement. And yes, the number on file works, and yes, that is actually the policy number.”
The woman took it better than I thought; she wrote down my answers, stuck to asking for information, and while she seemed curious, she didn’t pry into my private affairs. It took an hour to sort through the paperwork, and by the time we finished, I stifled yawn after yawn. Nurse Abigail spoke to the devil on the room’s sole phone, and he manifested in the room in a cloud of steam and brimstone, disguised as an incubus in a suit.
I hated the smell of brimstone. It burned my nose and made my eyes water.
“This is easier than dealing with the phone,” the devil announced, sticking his cell in his pocket. “You look tired, Kanika. Maybe that cast will keep you out of trouble for a few days. Where’s that man of yours?”
Poor Malcolm. “He’s not my property.”
“Sure he is. He was yours the instant you bent over the engine of an SUV, slapped a mystical ball and chain around his wrist, and took him to your lair.”
My lair? Since when did I have a lair? When I wasn’t quite so tired, I’d have to teach the devil about the concept of professionalism, morals, and an appropriate sense of humor. I couldn’t really argue about the bent over the engine part of his speech, as I’d done just that to get Malcolm to pull over. Oh well. “Good question. I asked Ginger to keep an eye on him.”
“Perhaps you should inform Ginger he can return to his slumber.”
“Couldn’t he if he wanted, like King Tutankhamun?”
“Well, yes. He could.”
“Ginger has free will?”
“Yes.”
I dismissed his complaint with a wave of my hand. “If Ginger wants to go back to sleep, he can. Ask him what he wants to do. I’m not his master.” Turning my attention to the nurse, I plastered my best smile on my face. “Can I leave now?”
“In the morning,” she replied, checking the display of her phone. “It’s too late to discharge you unless you have an official nocturnal rating, which you don’t. We start processing discharges at eight for diurnals.”
The devil checked his watch. “Two hours, cupcake. You’ll survive for that long. While we’re waiting, I’d like to speak to her surgeon, please. I’d also like a copy of her medical records; you’ll find the authorization forms within the insurance policy. Kanika, I’ll be back in time for your discharge, so don’t think you can run off without me. Try not to wreck the hospital.”
“Why do you think I’m going to wreck the hospital?”
“Where to begin? I’ll start with the rental car and the museum. What can go wrong does go wrong with you, and when they go wrong, they go really wrong. No trouble. Wait here quietly.”
How rude. I huffed, turned my head so I wouldn’t have to look at the damned devil, and gave him my best dose of the silent treatment. Neither the rental nor the museum were my fault. How could he hold those incidents against me?
“Please come with me, Mr. Mephistopheles.”
“No trouble,” Satin ordered before following the nurse out of the room.
What sort of trouble did he expect me to get up to in a hospital? Then again, boredom tended to make me do things I regretted later. Within ten minutes, left alone with nothing to do, my appetite and curiosity got the better of me. Exploring the hospital in search of something to eat was not causing trouble. That I needed to find Malcolm first to reclaim my wallet meant nothing.
I was in a hospital. Hospitals were safe, quiet places of healing. How much trouble could I get into?
Stupid Satin, toying with me because he could.
Roaming around wearing a hospital gown drew a lot of attention. The nurses I met scowled at my cast, smoothed their expressions, and questioned me. When I told them I was going to be discharged at eight, they smiled and returned to their work.
I explored the entire floor without finding Malcolm or Ginger, much to my disappointment. Instead, I found Isaac Asfour, and his smile chilled and annoyed me.
“Well, well, well,” he murmured, looking me over. Unlike me, he wore a suit—a different suit from the one he’d been wearing at the museum. “It seems the tables have turned in my favor.”
Wow. Had Asfour always been so stupid? I s
uspected so, since a much younger version of me had run away to escape him. “You just can’t take no for an answer, can you?”
“Why should I? You’re even more valuable than I had ever hoped. You know what they say. Great risk brings great reward, and I’ve already killed the man who thought he could interfere. You look half dead. Don’t worry about a thing. I’ll take you home and care for you. You’re worth everything to me alive, but if you fight me, healthy is optional.”
I considered the ramifications of murder. Could I pull it off in a hospital, or would the staff stop me before I managed to strangle the life out of him? The cast would make killing him a challenge, although I enjoyed the idea of taking my time with his demise. “You have got to be the dumbest man I’ve met in my entire life. Go away, please. Your stupidity might be contagious. Also, if you even think about touching me, I’ll scream. If I scream, it’ll catch everyone’s attention. After I’m done screaming, I’ll take you to court, request an angel, and make it my life’s mission to ruin you beyond redemption. I won’t stop there, either. I think I’ll like making your life as miserable as I can possibly make it. Let me use small words so you can understand. No. I won’t cooperate with you. Leave, Asfour.”
“I can’t do that.”
“There are millions of single women. Find one who won’t mind your idiocy.”
He barked a laugh. “I already paid for you. Why should I waste my investment?”
Between Asfour and the devil, I had a stinker of a headache. I was willing to bet Satin knew Asfour was around, which explained why he thought I might wreck the building and otherwise cause trouble. With that in mind, his insistence I sit tight and wait made a great deal of sense.
Go figure. The devil was capable of giving sound advice. I sighed and shook my head.
Why did so many men—of most species—have to be entitled morons?
“Cooperate, Kanika. It’s for your own good.”
“No. Leave me alone.” I did the only thing I could without lowering myself to public displays of violence. I spun on my heel, staggered from the cast unbalancing me, and walked away.