Fang Hospital (Dr. Gabriella Van Court, Book 1)

by Tanya Goodwin

  “Follow me.”

  “Where are we going?” K.L. asked.

  “The storeroom.”

  Gabriella twisted the doorknob, but it didn’t budge. The door was locked. She clutched the knob, closed her eyes, and calculated the combination. K.L. and she had already damaged one door tonight. The tumblers clicked into action. She opened the door. “We’re in.”

  She perused the bottles neatly aligned on a shelf. Where would they keep it? She searched out loud, “Sudan Black B, Congo red, Prussian blue, H&E. These are all tissue stains.” Please be here. Gabriella eased a bottle of Giemsa stain over. There it was, the answer that could free all of them from Volk, Hydrochloric Acid. She raised the glass-sealed clear solution and peered through it at K.L.

  K.L. shot his hands up. “Careful with that! That is some wicked stuff.” He arched his eyebrows. “Wicked stuff that may actually work.”

  Gabriella grinned at the skull and crossbones on the label. The corrosive acid could easily dissolve tissue in humans. She’d see what it could do to vampires. She pointed to the storeroom door.

  “Let’s go.”

  K.L embraced Gabriella. He startled away from her and gasped. His eyes grew wide.

  Her heart raced clear to her carotids. He’d never acted this way. Gabriella flipped out her palms with complete confusion. “What?”

  “Give me your hand.”

  She held it out to K.L. He poked her finger with his nail.

  “Hey!”

  K.L. sipped her blood and swished it around in his mouth. “Shit!” He shot his eyes to her belly. “You’re pregnant.”

  “What?” The words clanged in her head. Impossible! She blinked, hoping she hadn’t heard him correctly.” Her head fuzzy, Gabriella leaned against a wall. “Pregnant?”

  “Yep. P-R-E-G-N-A-N-T.”

  She pushed herself off the wall and nudged K.L. “I know how to spell it.” She massaged her temples. “How?”

  “The usual way, dear.”

  “But it’s only been a few hours.”

  “The course of your vampire – uh hybrid-pregnancy won’t follow a human gestational time table.”

  “Great! What do I tell Max?”

  “The truth.”

  Gabriella clutched her bloated belly. How many more surprises awaited her on this Halloween? She swayed.

  K.L. steadied her. “What’s done is done. If we don’t get out of here and prepare for Volk, you won’t get the chance to tell Max.”

  “You’re right.” She took a deep breath and released her fangs. She was fighting for two now. With the silver dagger in one hand and the acid in the other, Gabriella was more than ready for battle.

  Chapter Twelve

  Max sank into a chair at the nurse’s station and raked his fingers through his hair. The ER was weirdly empty again. He’d taken care of the patient with the sprained ankle and had sent her home. He fully anticipated, with great pleasure, being with Gabriella all night. Where was she? He didn’t want to leave things the way they were between them when he had left her in the cafeteria. While she was worrying about her uncle, he accused her, with coolness, of not being the center of her world. Max tapped a pen on the counter, striking it harder and harder. By the time he was done castigating himself, the pen had snapped in half.

  “Here, have one of mine,” she said, her voice forgiving.

  Max spun around in his chair. “Gabriella!”

  Where did she come from? Who cared? She was back.

  She handed him the pen. He set it down and rocked out of the chair. Max wrapped his arms around her and buried his nose in her hair. It smelled of the ocean on a breezy day. He let her waves crash over him.

  “I’m so sorry,” he whispered in her ear. He eased away from her and stroked her silken hair behind her slender shoulders, shoulders he desperately wanted to kiss, trailing his lips across one, then sliding up her neck, down the other side, and ending his caress on the opposite side. “I should have gone with you to see your uncle.”

  “No, you had a patient. That was your priority.”

  “Inside The Fang, patients do come first. But on the outside, I want to make you my priority.” He bowed his head. “That is, if you’ll have me.”

  ****

  Have him? She was about to take him from his world and plunge him into her realm—a mortal on the precipice of the kingdom of the undead. She had to tell him. If Volk wins, she might not see Max again. He had to know about the hybrid child that was growing inside of her, exponentially. He had the right to know. If Volk captured her, she’d see to the child’s safety with Max. A half-breed, it would be ostracized by Volk and his followers, if not killed. She cradled her belly. Max may reject her once he heard the truth, but he wasn’t the kind of man who’d turn his back on his child.

  Gabriella took his hand. “Come with me to the call room while it’s still quiet.” Soon he’d discover the double meaning.

  Max trotted behind her and playfully patted her rear. They halted in front of the call room door. They were about to enter the same room that had changed his life and her undead one, hours before; he just didn’t know the magnitude of it, yet.

  Max slid her hair away from her neck and rested his lips behind her ear. He kissed her there. His tongue teased the crevice beyond it. Her pelvis pulsed. She reached behind her and stroked his hair. Damn Volk! She’d have Max, one last time. Then she’d tell him.

  Gabriella opened the door. They stumbled inside. Max kicked the door closed. He lifted his scrub top over his head, and tossed it onto the foot of the bed. His solid muscles marched down his torso. She leaned over him and kissed every one of them, stopping beneath his navel. Gabriella yanked the tie of his scrub pants loose. He dropped them for her, displaying the bulge ready to pleasure her. She took him in, hugging him with her mouth, her fangs tucked safely away. Max moaned. His sighs chimed in her ears. He filtered his fingers through her hair and grasped the ends, then inched her away.

  “Not yet,” he whispered.

  Max edged up her scrub top. She writhed out of it. His eyes danced at her litheness. She shimmied out of her pants, mortal woman style. His pupils rounded, rewarding her performance. He eased her onto the bed. His lips, mortally hot against the coolness of her vampire skin, he dallied at her breasts, alternately and attentively lapping each nipple made even harder with his every suck. He trailed his kisses past her cleavage and down to her lower belly. She instinctively clutched her slightly rounded fullness.

  “No.”

  Max looked up at her, his eyes soft. “What?” he asked softly.

  He slowly peeled her hands away.

  “Gabriella, you grow more beautiful by the minute.”

  “Oh, Max.”

  He suckled her gently. It was she who was under his trance, now. Wave after glorious wave took her away. She was on the shore, and Max was there. Beautiful, wonderful Max. Gabriella grasped his shoulders and pulled him up to her, more than ready to ride every crest with him. He mounted her slowly, and buried himself in her, taking a long pause. The wicked man! He was taunting her! She wrapped her legs around him and squeezed him to her belly. Max grunted. In her ecstasy, was she crushing him? Gabriella eased her grip. But he pressed his hand against her thigh in protest. She enveloped him, tighter this time. He returned the favor, filling her faster and deeper. She raised her hips, begging for more. And when she couldn’t stand it anymore, she sank her fangs into his neck. They exploded together, in their rocking embrace.

  Max collapsed onto her. He braced himself on his elbows so he wouldn’t crush her. She stroked his hair, admiring his chivalry. He couldn’t possibly have hurt her, but she may hurt him with what she was about to say.

  Gabriella touched his shoulder. “Max?”

  “Hmm?” he hummed, still dazed with apparent satiety.

  “I need to tell you something.”

  Max kissed her on the forehead. “What is it?”

  “I can’t say it like this.”

  She could bare
ly say it at all. How would she explain who she was, and what was happening to her on the inside? And then there was Volk, and his attempt to assassinate her uncle, who, like she, was 850 years old. That was a lot for him to digest, if not believe.

  Gabriella gently pushed Max off of her. He rolled to his side and propped his chin in his palm.

  He gazed into her eyes. “What is it, babe?”

  How ironic that he spoke that word at this moment.

  “Max, I’m pregnant.”

  ****

  The words collided in his head. He searched her eyes for an explanation, but only saw his shocked reflection in them. Max flung out of the bed and sat on the edge of the mattress, his back to her. He leaned over and lowered his head into his palms.

  “Pregnant?” he muttered. “You couldn’t have told me this earlier, like before we got involved?”

  She stroked his back. He jerked away from her. Moments ago, he craved her touch. Now, it only stung.

  “Don’t!” He whipped around to face her. “You told me there was no one else.” He shook his head. “Why weren’t you honest with me? I would rather have taken the pain then. This is a thousand times worse.”

  Gabriella sat up beside him. “There is no one else.”

  Max grabbed his scrubs. He pulled on his pants and cinched the ribbon at the waistband, missing the looped tie once before simply knotting the strands. He dodged his head through the scrub top and poked his arms through the sleeves. He needed to get out of that call room, fast, and to untangle the caboodle Gabriella’s bombshell admission had left behind. He paused at the doorway, his back to her.

  “Go to your uncle...and take the night off. I’ll handle any patients that come in.” He reached for the doorknob. They’d entered the room with the promise of a future between them. Now, they’d leave with a past.

  “Goodnight, Gabriella.”

  “Max, please.”

  The words were like daggers in his heart. He walked through the door and clicked it closed.

  ****

  Gabriella flopped back into the bed and draped her arm over her forehead. She failed to tell him the complete truth. Her chest throbbed. How did she expect this to go down, anyway? She’d grown weak in his arms. Vampires had no soul, but she swore, from memory, this was how a tortured one felt. Gabriella hugged her belly. She’d survive tonight. She had to! Then she’d leave The Fang, give birth to their child in obscurity, and begin again at another hospital. Healing was her gift. She had not turned her back on that. K.L. was right about her and Max. Their passion was doomed from the start.

  Gabriella donned her scrubs and walked out of the call room. Max’s scent lingered in the corridor. She inhaled and savored the sweet, musky smell of him on her skin. Gabriella paused and memorized the perfect concoction. She had one more stop to make before returning to the lab. She fled with vampire speed, leaving Max behind.

  ****

  Max trudged to the ER. Why did she do that, suck him in like that? She knew all along, yet she did nothing to thwart his advances. He massaged his temples. His head throbbed. He was no closer to understanding what had just happened between them. The woman he’d been crazy about, the woman he’d felt an unparallel intimacy with, not to mention the mind-blowing sex, was still the woman who he apparently knew nothing about.

  Max collapsed into his favorite chair. It was the chair he was sitting in when she’d snuck up on him. She did that a lot, mysteriously surprising him. Even when he followed her around, she’d disappear. And she’d leave after their shifts, lightening fast. When he finally cornered her for the date he’d long fantasized about, it ended as abruptly. His hunch was right, despite her denial. The father of her child was there that night! Max picked up the pen Gabriella had offered him and tossed it into the waste can.

  He gritted his teeth and stared at the computer screen. Signing off his electronic medical records might keep his mind off Gabriella. He pressed the key to waken the sleepy screen. Instead of pushing thoughts of her from his brain, “Van Court, G.” lit up in bold letters. He whispered her name, repetitively. She’d used this computer last. Max wiggled his fingers and summoned his hacker skills. Less than 60 seconds later, he’d brought up her password. VampireDoc! Hmm. How fitting. She’d certainly sucked the life out of him. He poked into her digital trail. Her records were impeccably all signed off. He squinted, reading her most recent doctor’s order – a chest x-ray for Claude Van Court. Max shook his head. He couldn’t believe Gabriella got away with the order, since she wasn’t her uncle’s attending physician. His cardiologist would be pissed that she’d stepped on his “turf” toes. Max grinned. He didn’t like the arrogant guy, anyway. But he understood her concern. He would have run the same interference had that been his uncle. His stubbornness softened. His ego had cut her off. He hadn’t heard her out. Perhaps the guy who had impregnated her had walked, leaving her alone in a crisis. She was being honest. She was reaching out to him. He was such a jerk, no better than the other guy. Perhaps he couldn’t salvage what he’d callously thrown away, but he had to try.

  Max logged Gabriella’s name off the computer. He reached into the waste can and fished out the pen she’d offered him. He tucked her pen into the pocket of his scrub top and leaned back into the chair with his arms folded across his chest, contemplating his childish behavior.

  “Oh, my gosh, Dr. Cade! That insect bite is much worse now,” a nurse blurted out.

  Max grabbed his neck. He swore it had disappeared after Gabriella tended to it.

  Another nurse shoved the “V” of his scrubs aside. “We better call Dr. Van Court.”

  “No!” Max called out. He lowered his voice. “I mean I’ll go find her.”

  He hurried to the call room. Gabriella had given him love bites, but the nurses would have teased him mercilessly if these were only hickeys. What the hell was on his neck? Gabriella had made the insect bite he had on his neck earlier disappear. Had the wound come back with a vengeance? He doubted Gabriella would be in the call room, especially since he’d rejected her. But he hoped she’d still be there to give him her healing touch, perhaps strictly out of sympathy. He’d be grateful for that much.

  Max burst through the call room door. “Gabriella?”

  He darted his eyes about the room. The bed was neatly made with perfect hospital corners, as if they hadn’t tangled in it an hour ago. His heart sank. She was gone. It served him right! Max headed into the bathroom to examine his neck. He’d give anything for Gabriella to do it. Max tilted his head sideways and checked out what the nurses were freaking out over.

  “Shit!”

  He shot his fingers to the two puncture wounds screaming from his neck. No insect on the planet could do that. What did she do? He had succumbed to her bite at the height of their passion, not protesting in the least bit. It was the most intense pleasure he’d ever felt, but Holy Mother of...she’d left a demon of a mark. He caught his gasp in his reflection in the mirror. What the hell was going on? The nightmare! Could it have been real?

  “Absolutely.”

  He hadn’t said that aloud! “What? Who said....”

  Before he could finish his shocked inquiry, someone smashed his face into the mirror. Then everything went black.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Max opened his eyes. The ceiling above him was not that of the ER or the call room, and the walls were tiled a pale green. Where the hell was he? He crunched his abs to get up, but the pain in his face halted him. He reached for his face. His arm jerked back. Someone had chained him. He shifted his eyes sideways to find a row of empty stainless steel slabs. His heart hammered, sending shockwaves of pain to his face. He was chained to an autopsy table in the hospital morgue.

  He swallowed, wincing at the tinny taste settling on his tongue. It was blood! A warm dribble trailed down his neck and coursed across his shoulder, ending as droplets that hit the tiled floor with successive echoes. It was his blood! Max pushed his mouth to one side, and then to the other. His jaw wasn’t
fractured, but the simple test caused a distinct crackling. Then it hit him. Someone had shoved his face into the mirror in the call room. What he heard were glass shards embedding further into his face. What sick son of a bitch did this?

  “Good evening, Dr. Cade.”

  His attacker pulled up a steel stool and sat next to Max. His jet -black hair was slicked back in a neat ponytail, and he was wearing a black turtleneck sweater and black pants. The man opened his arms, goading Max to view all that he was. Max narrowed his eyes and began to memorize everything about his attacker. If he lived through this, he’d relay every detail of his demented abductor to the police. His skin was bleach, and oddly, he was barefoot. He was a Halloween freak.

  “Who are you, and what do you want?” Max asked, his words pointed, authoritative. Although captive, he would not cower to this madman.

  The man grinned and bared his fangs. “I an Volk, progenitor and King of the Union of European Vampires.”

  This guy was totally high. He’d have to talk him down. Someone from the psych unit was probably already searching for him. Surely the security cameras had caught him dragging him to the morgue.

  That sounded plausible until Volk finished the second part of Max’s inquiry. “I seek Gabriella Van Court.”

  “What do you want with Dr. Van Court?” Max asked calmly. “Perhaps I can help you.”

  Volk threw his head back and laughed. The stale breath from his hardy guffaws blew into Max’s face. “Gabriella, a doctor? You, help me?” He licked his fangs. “How amusing on both points. And by the way, I am not an escapee from the psychiatric unit.”

  He’d read his thoughts. He truly wasn’t human.

  Volk pointed his finger at Max. His black fingernail was switchblade long and looked as sharp. “I’ve been relatively patient up until now.” Volk’s obsidian eyes seared like daggers into Max’s eyes. He inched up the sleeves of his sweater and leaned towards Max. “So, I repeat myself. Where is Gabriella?”