by Cassie Black
"OK, OK, I'm coming." I started dressing while she paced the room impatiently. She appeared to be wearing a fresh pair of jeans and another t-shirt, both of which looked new.
"Where did you get the clothes?"
"These guys have everything. They have a room in this house with only clothes in, all new, and all sizes. Even undies."
"Brilliant," I said. "I didn't think to pack anything before I came to find you."
"I know. I brought some stuff up for you in your size and packed it in there." She indicated the dresser that stood between the two simple pine beds we had slept on last night. "There's a bathroom just outside this room with a massive shower. Bliss."
"Give me five minutes," I said as I grabbed a set of clothing from one of the drawers of the dresser and ducked out of the room. Millie and I had always been more or less the same size. That plus the way we looked and the fact that our names started with 'm' resulted in us being called M&M at school. Not overly original, I know, but it stuck.
Ten minutes later we found ourselves walking barefoot down a carpeted passage behind a young woman called Jess, who had apparently been sent to find us. She led us to a large room with a big rectangular oak table in the centre, and several chairs around it, all of which were currently occupied, apart from two nearest us. Lucy stood as we entered the room, and indicated for us to sit. We sat, just as we had done all those years ago in a small dark tent at a country fair.
"Witches," she spoke to the women gathered at the table. "This is Madeleine Grantham and the Lady Milla Blake."
"Wait a second," I said uncertainly. There were so many eyes in this room, and they were making me nervous. "Those aren't our surnames. And Millie isn't a Lady anything. What's going on here?"
Lucy smiled benevolently at us.
"We are all three governed by the same Law, Madeleine; the witches, the wolves and the bloodfeeders, or vampires as they are more commonly known. Witches are here to balance the activities of those other two groups - we are the Keepers of the Law. If a vampire or a wolf breaks the Law, we encourage the group to step in and deal out the appropriate punishment. For example, we know that Marcus Arnold has laid a hand on the Lady Blake, and by law this is punishable by death. Titus Blake is a just ruler, and he will see that the Law is obeyed, but others before him were not so righteous, and we have had to intervene in the past to ensure that justice was meted out. That is who we are, and it is what we do."
"However," Lucy paused briefly before continuing, "over the years our function has by necessity evolved. We now offer sanctuary to those women who seek to flee the wolves and the vampires, and we do this for two reasons. The first is the unassailable fact that we too are women, and the wolves and vampires have not been good to women in the past, and we have sympathised with their plight. We have felt their pain."
"The second reason we offer sanctuary is to allow the wolves and vampires to speak with their women on neutral ground, and to facilitate a reconciliation between the two. Paranormals are possessive, often violently so, and many people who have attempted to protect these women from them have died in the past. The simple fact is that once you have been claimed by a paranormal, and impregnated, you belong to them under our Law, and even more importantly, in their eyes. You can flee, but you will never escape them. They will hunt you relentlessly, and kill anyone and anything that stands in their way. We seek to avoid that."
I thought my jaw was going to dislocate the way my mouth had fallen open. I glanced across at Millie who looked equally shocked, and horrified too. This was definitely not turning out the way I had hoped. It was starting to feel a lot more like a trap than a sanctuary, and it sounded suspiciously like we would be forced to go back to those bastards. Reconcile with Cade Grantham? I would rather open a fucking vein.
"I know this will come as a shock to you both, and I must apologise for misleading you, although that was not my intention. We as witches and Keepers of the Law recognise your marriage to Cade Grantham, and Lady Milla's marriage to Atticus, son of Titus and heir to the vampire regime."
"You are fucking kidding me," said Millie. Lucy just shook her head.
"You are welcome to remain here as long as you want, but when you leave, it will be with the the paranormal who claims you. The risk to innocent life is too great otherwise, and we cannot allow that."
"Your Law needs changing," muttered Millie angrily. "Do you have any idea how many women Atticus and Julius have raped? And that disgusting Marcus and his gang were going to rape another innocent woman, and me too if they got half the chance. They knew it would kill me, but they didn't care. What does your precious Law have to say about that?"
"Our Law does not recognise the concept of rape," said Lucy quietly. "But the intentional killing of a woman is forbidden. I am glad you alerted me to Marcus' intentions. I will have to discuss the issue with Titus. The Arnolds have always been difficult, and it is probably time we did something about them. I will attend to that immediately. In the meantime you are welcome to explore the house and grounds, but I cannot allow you to leave yet. Your breakfast will be served shortly."
And with that she stood and left, shortly followed by everyone else in the room apart from us, of course. I looked across at Millie.
"I'm sorry, Mills," I said regretfully. "I didn't mean for this to happen."
"That's OK, Maddie. I guess it was too good to be true. At least we're safe here, and Lucy did say we could stay as long as we liked. Let's eat. We can worry about this on a full stomach."
"You're obsessed with food," I told her jokingly, feeling guilty for bringing her here.
"Absolutely," she grinned at me. Jess reappeared and indicated for us to follow her, which we did. She took us to a large kitchen where we were given eggs on toast and thick chunks of bacon for breakfast. Millie choked down some foul-smelling tea, and I drank milk, which I'd been craving for a couple of weeks now. We thanked Jess and the cook, and left the kitchen to explore the grounds outside. The house felt too much like a prison just then.
We ended up sitting on the grass under a big old beech tree on the edge of the lawn that circled the house. It was a beautiful day, warm and bright, and we sat leaning our backs against the trunk of the tree, and our legs straight out in front of us.
"You know, Maddie, it's almost as if everyone is conspiring against us. What are we going to do?"
"I wonder what would happen if we terminated these goddamn pregnancies? We should ask Lucy."
"I don't think it would make much of a difference. They could always force you to have more."
"That sucks. What about if I couldn't have more? I would seriously consider having a hysterectomy to avoid this life they expect me to live."
Millie considered the implications of this. "You're right," she said. "That might work. But getting a doctor to perform one for you when you're young and healthy is going to be really tricky."
"I hadn't thought of that. Damn." We sat in silence for a while.
"We could negotiate with them. Offer to let them have the baby in exchange for your freedom."
"D'you know, that is actually a very good idea." I was impressed.
"I know," she smirked at me.
"And you, Mills? Don't think I haven't noticed the way you keep saying 'you' instead of 'we'. What do you want to do?"
"I'm not sure." She paused. I waited in silence for her to continue.
"On the one hand, Atticus hurt me. He and Julius basically held me down and raped me. And it hurt. You have no idea how big they are, Madz. But the problem is that I sort of understand why they did it."
"What?" I was horrified to hear her say that, and didn't bother to hide it.
"I know. It sounds crazy. But I met Marcus, that vampire I was telling Lucy about. He and another vampire accosted me in that shopping centre. They were going to do much worse things to me, and Marcus knew it would kill me, and I could see that he liked that. But as soon as I showed him the tattoo on my wrist, they both backed off. I guess what
I'm trying to say is that if having the wild gene attracts evil like that, then I'm glad Atticus did what he did, because being pregnant keeps me safe. Even though he did it for his own reasons, and against my will, the outcome is better for me than if he hadn't done it."
I sat watching her face as she spoke, seeing the truth in her eyes, and how much it cost her to say those words to me, knowing how I'd react. What she said made a strange kind of sense, and I wondered if the fact that I'd been pretty much undisturbed by male attention in the past few months could be due to a similar protection. I remembered how much I'd been pestered by men in the months before I'd run into the wolves. There had been a few times that I'd been really worried. At one stage there were four different guys following me at random times of the day. I hadn't thought about it much since they'd disappeared from my life, but I wondered now. They'd been there one day, and the next they were gone. And I hadn't experienced anything similar since. For a shit magnet like me that was something of a miracle.
"Two things, Millie," I said. She looked at me with apprehensive curiosity.
"How big exactly? Their dicks, I mean. I'm assuming that's what you mean when you say they're big." She blushed furiously, just as I had known she would. I grinned in satisfaction.
"Short answer?" I nodded.
"Almost as thick as a Coke can and twice as long."
"Jesus!"
"Tell me about it. And they have spikes too."
"What?" I crossed my legs involuntarily. It was her turn to grin at my reaction. "I know, right. But the spikes only appear after they come, and if they keep still, the spikes go down after about half an hour. Apparently."
"I'm surprised you survived that."
"Me too. But they did all they could to minimise the physical damage for me, and that makes me hate him less than I should."
"I get that," I said gently when I saw her anguished expression. I knew that she was conflicted by what she felt she ought to feel, and what she did feel, and I understood that.
We spent most of the day under that tree, talking about possibilities, weighing up options and exploring emotions. Eventually we decided not to decide just then. We sat there as the afternoon drew to a close, quiet and content for the moment just to have everything suspended in a kind of hiatus, until we saw Jess running across the grass towards us.
"What now," I said sourly, and Millie giggled.
"Madeleine," Jess began when she finally reached us, panting slightly. "There's a couple of wolves and another woman up at the house. They've just arrived. Lucy said to let you know that Cade would like to speak to you."
"Really? Gosh. Do me a favour. Tell him to fuck off."
Part 4
Olivia
I
My heart sank when I heard the trauma call go out. Well, to be perfectly honest it sank some more. I was in one of the cubicles on the other side of the ED, and I had just explained to a sweet old guy with a younger and adoring wife that he had a couple of tumours on his liver, and they had probably come from somewhere else, and were probably going to kill him. Not in those words, obviously but I could tell by the way she started sobbing that they had picked up the gist of what I was saying. Even so, they had both thanked me, and I walked out of that cubicle hating the CT scanner, my job and that damn tumour for making me deliver the shittest news anyone could never hope to hear.
I hadn't thought this day could get much worse, but apparently it could.
Twenty minutes later I was standing over the head of the only survivor of a three car pileup, manipulating a laryngoscope while I tried to make out the elusive vocal chords through a mist of blood splattering the plastic visor I wore. I sighed with relief as they came into view, and I slid the plastic tube between them.
"Airway secured," I announced to the room in general, and a nurse made a note on the large whiteboard in the corner of the huge resuscitation bay. I inflated the balloon around the tube and taped it in place while one of the junior docs listened for the air that the ventilator was forcing into the patients battered lungs.
"Decreased air entry right," he told me in a breathless voice, as if he was the one with the life threatening injuries.
"Chest tube tray," I spoke to the room in general again, as one of the nurses dragged it out from the counter that ran the perimeter of the room. I glanced at the propofol infusion and the unconscious patient with the multiple rib fractures and bulging abdomen, and I swore.
"Where the fuck is the surgeon?" I demanded of nobody in particular. "Has the O neg arrived yet?" I didn't wait for an answer, but instead jammed the earpieces of my stethoscope in my ears, and placed the other end on the patient's chest, confirming a decreased air entry on the right. Bugger. It had been there before, and I was pretty bloody sure my tube hadn't gone in too far, but this did complicate things.
"I need to check tube placement," I sighed, as I undid my strapping and flicked open the laryngoscope again.
"Good idea," a new voice spoke from the other end of the patient. I looked up briefly and saw blue eyes, dark hair, and a suit, for God's sake. I ignored him, and went looking for the vocal chords again. There they were, with the balloon of the tube just beyond them. I gave it a small tug to confirm what I saw, and lifted my head again.
"Tube's fine," I said. Mr Suit had removed his jacket and rolled up the sleeves of his shirt, and was having a plastic apron tied around his waist by a tittering student nurse while he washed his hands. He must be the surgeon, I thought sourly as I took in the scene. About bloody time. I noted with satisfaction that he worked quickly, placing the tube between the patients ribs with deft fingers. I noted with even more satisfaction the blood splatters that covered his shirt sleeves when he was done. I can be a bitch like that sometimes, and this guy was getting up my nose with more than the usual speed that surgeons the world over seemed capable of. It probably had a lot to do with how he looked and how he carried himself. Gorgeous and arrogant. An infuriating combination, and made so much worse because he was a goddamn surgeon. I was not a fan of surgeons - they were a bunch of educated psychopaths in my opinion. Seriously, who else cuts people open day in and day out and gets such a kick out of it?
Having said all of that, I was really pleased to have one of them here now. I was an ED doc, jack of all trades, master of none. I could deal with almost anything that came through those doors and I could stabilise patients like this one, but with any trauma patient it was essential to go to the source of the problem and fix it. There was no point pouring blood into someone if it was just hosing out the other end. He needed the bright lights and cold steel of an operating theatre. The ruptured spleen needed removing, the transected vessels needed repairing, the blood around the heart needed draining. The massive haemothorax needed a thoracotomy, I thought glumly as I watched the blood pouring from the tube between the man's ribs and into the drain. Too fast.
I looked at the blood pressure on the monitor, at the heart rate. My eyes took in the distended abdomen and the blood in the chest drain and the bloody scalp swelling that had crunched slightly when I touched it, and I knew he was going to die. No surgeon alive could fix this guy. His chest and belly maybe, but he was going to have a massive brain injury, and who knew how much of him would wake up if he came through this.
It was as if the patient sensed my thoughts then, because the blood pressure suddenly became unrecordable. I felt his neck. Nothing.
"No pulse," I said. "Start chest compressions." The junior doc had been standing at the surgeon's shoulder, watching the blood pour into the drain, but he leapt forward at this, and started vigorous chest compressions. I shut my eyes briefly, feeling sick, as the crunching sound of his broken ribs filled the room. Even though I knew that CPR in a trauma patient with cardiac arrest almost never worked, I knew we had to try, if only for the family of the man lying dying here, so they could know we had done everything we could. But it was excruciating to have to hear that sound, and know that it came from the broken body of a human being.
/> We did a few cycles of CPR, but nothing worked, so we declared him deceased, noted the time, and I went to find his family and tell them that their son wasn't coming back. I was stripping off the blood smeared protective gear and wondering how to deliver news like this, when I sensed someone standing behind me. I turned around to see Mr Suit reaching past me to discard his gloves in the same waste bin I was using. He leaned in close and our bodies almost touched. I was about to suggest to him that he step back when his eyes suddenly darkened and his nostrils flared. I tried to step back, alarmed by the intensity of his expression and the hunger in his eyes, but my butt was jammed up against a washbasin, and all I could do was stand there and stare at him, biting my lip nervously. His eyes followed the movement, darting downwards like the eyes of a predator tracking its prey. He inhaled deeply through his nose.
"A wild one," he grinned delightedly as he reached out and tugged a strand of my hair that had escaped the untidy bun I'd pulled it into when the trauma call had come in. "I'll be back for you, sweetheart." It sounded like a promise and a threat all rolled into one. I glared at him, more angry than afraid.
"Back off," I told him firmly. "You're in my space."
"You have no idea, do you?" he chuckled and leaned closer, inhaling deeply.
"Back off!" I hissed, noting a couple of curious glances from the nurses. "You are being unprofessional, dammit."
"Oh no," he laughed softly. "Unprofessional would be me bending you over the counter right here and fucking you. We are merely having a conversation." His eyes moved to my mouth again, which had fallen open in horrified amazement. He groaned softly. I shut it again, fast.
"Jesus, even for a surgeon you are unbelievably arrogant," I told him crossly. "Now back the hell off before I scream."
"Later, then," he said slowly with a wicked grin, and then he suddenly moved away as if we had just had a normal conversation and it was now over. I watched him go, shaking my head in disgust. Like I say, psychopaths, the lot of them. I wondered if I should be worried about this one, then dismissed the thought. I had had to deal with more than my fair share of creeps in this job. Some guys loved the idea of a doctor in scrubs looking after their own particular needs, don't ask me why. But they had invariably backed down when they realised how unwelcome their attentions were. This one was sure to do the same.