by Paula Black
‘I was talking to myself.’ Not the best first impression, but she seemed to be stuck in a rut of terribly bad first meets. ‘But not in a lunatic way.’
‘That’s good to know.’ He laughed and she relaxed a little. Normal. He was perfectly normal. A refreshing balm after the crazy in the waiting room. ‘I’m Dr. Madden and my nurse tells me you got into a bit of a scrape.’
His eyes were too gentle. ‘I walked into a dog fight, they were scrapping and I got caught up in it ...’ Ash was sticking to that story if it killed her. She would not be sleeping in a padded cell talking about her nightmares come to life. He hummed and ahhh’d, his fingers gently probing the swelling around the lacerations, nodding as he peered in close.
‘You should be careful. I’ve heard it takes practice to safely walk these streets. These are pretty deep, you’ll be needing stitches, but they’re clean and there doesn’t seem to be any infection so we’ll dose you up with some antibiotics, give you a rabies shot and bandage the injured area to give it time to heal.’ He spoke calmly, simply, no over-technical doctor’s terms that would rocket her wariness up into the heavens to sit in the clouds with her crazy. That was good.
‘Will do, Doc. Load me up.’ He nodded, bid her an ‘I’ll be back once you’ve been stitched up’ and exited her cubicle with a near silent gait.
She let out a hard exhale that throbbed the ache in her shoulder through her entire body, and she wished they’d given her a little more painkiller to numb her while she waited. Her head flopped back on the not so soft pillows and she idly braided her hair, watching the clock hand tick around the face, counting the seconds to too early in the morning. When a skinny guy in scrubs passed through the curtains with a trayful of implements, curved needles threaded through with what she hoped was surgical thread, Ash set her sights on the clock and tried to hypnotise herself into not thinking. About the pain. About her near misses. About fangs and fur and hands all over her. About Connal. Her stitches had barely begun weaving through her flesh when she realised she was trying to do the impossible.
The longer the guy worked, the more he filled her head. Arrogant and stalkery and too sexy for his own good, out there somewhere. Hopefully he thought she was dead. Was he worried? Her brows pulled down and she ground her teeth, stifling an exasperated huff. Mr. Scrubs glanced askance at her, tugging the wire through her skin a little more gently. As though he was the cause of her suffering. After everything, he was ice cream and rainbows on her level of distress.
Connal. She spat the name in her head, breath hissing between her teeth as Mr. Scrubs pulled too hard and tied off the end of the thread. Connal was the king of her confusion, the reigning leader of her irritation and sole holder of her anger. She blamed him for her being here, for pissing her off and getting her lost. Her room was empty once more, a quiet swoosh of raspy fabric falling back into place and the squeaky wheels of a clattery metal tray leaving her alone with her internal grumblings. Fingers absently stroked at the ridges of sewn flesh striping the line of her arm as she quieted the thoughts in her head and listened through the sterile walls around her.
When the Doctor returned, she couldn’t even muster up a smile, her brow furrowed with thoughts, teeth worrying her lower lip, watching him curiously.
He was still firmly in the ‘normal’ zone, despite looking over the details she’d filled out with a knitted crease in his forehead and the arch of an eyebrow. ‘You’re not from around here, are you?’
She shook her head, drawing the length of her hair over one shoulder, self-conscious under the new scrutiny of his gaze. He smiled, brightly and she blinked.
‘We won’t keep you too long, Miss.’ He was so professional, but there was something in his eyes that unsettled her a little. Call it a long night, call her paranoid and scared and wound up and in pain, but he wasn’t looking at her with a doctor’s eye anymore. Ash scowled and he stepped back in confusion. She’d been making guys do that a bit today. ‘I’d just like to run through some simple neurological tests, Miss DeMorgan. Routine checks after any trauma. Could you hold out your hands please, palms down?’
Ash’s fingers shook with a fine tremor as the doctor examined her nail beds, before lifting his head to look her in the eye.
‘That’s quite a shake you’ve got. Do you drink a lot of coffee, Miss DeMorgan? Or are you simply terrified of me? I won’t bite, I assure you.’ His smile was meant to be reassuring, but his eyes were heating with something unnerving, and she forced her lips to return the motion as the doctor’s hand clasped her right wrist gently, the pads of his fingers seeking her pulse, which kicked to a gallop at his touch.
‘I drink a lot of energy drinks, guzzle them like a monster truck does fuel, otherwise I’m barely functional in the day.’ She listened to the voice that told her not to divulge that the vivid dreams keeping her awake at night were the reason she was dead on her feet without hourly jolts of caffeine.
Yeah. He’d definitely been looking at her strangely, because now, he was back to cold, clinical professionalism and whatever she’d seen in his eyes was gone. He scrubbed a hand over his clean, too chiselled to be natural jaw.
‘Interesting.’ He released her hand and turned his back to her. ‘I’m going to dim the lights so that I can examine your eyes.’
The cubicle fell into darkness, save for the intense beam of light from the opthalmoscope the doctor grasped in his palm. Placing his hand gently on the top of her head, he swept the light back and forth across each of her eyes in turn, before leaning in close. It burned her retinas and she felt the prick of tears as she fought the urge to blink while he examined the back of her eye. His mouth was so close to her ear that she heard his sharp intake of breath.
‘Fascinating.’ He murmured. She frowned. ‘Do you see well in the dark, Miss DeMorgan?’
‘I ...’ No ... well ... she figured maybe she’d taken it for granted, that it had been there all along and it had been so normal for her she hadn’t given it a second thought. But now that he mentioned it, she recalled a soft memory of her foster parents finding her reading her book of fairytales in the dark after a nightmare, flicking on lights she hadn’t been aware were off. ‘I never gave it much thought ...’
‘Were you aware of the retinal anomaly affecting your eyes?’
‘Excuse me?’
‘Tapetum lucidum, sometimes referred to as eyeshine. Your eyes glow in the dark when a light is shone on them, Miss DeMorgan. Rather like a cat’s eye.’ He moved back to her, peering once more into her line of vision and getting close. She suppressed the uncomfortable, childish impulse to yell ‘BOO’ in his face. ‘It is a trait possessed by many nocturnal hunting animals that affords them exceptional night vision. Amongst humans, however, such a finding is vanishingly rare. There have only ever been a handful of unsubstantiated cases in the medical literature.’
‘What causes it? Why do I have this?’
‘It is most likely a throwback to our evolutionary past, Miss DeMorgan. A primitive, vestigial gene resurfacing. Totally harmless, but fascinating nonetheless.’
Her eyes went wide. ‘You’re saying I’m related to a cat? I don’t recall an Uncle Garfield.’
‘Of course not.’ His eyes crinkled in amusement, but his words were deadly serious. ‘Cats in general have blue or green eyeshine. Yours is red, in common with a number of ancient species, suggesting a more primordial genetic lineage. The scientific research potential is intriguing ...’
She recoiled a little, fisting the material of her johnny as his eyes shone with a near maniacal zeal. He was getting carried away and he scared her. He wanted her in a lab, a guinea pig to shine lights at and stick with more needles.
‘Would you be prepared to let me take some blood samples for further genetic analysis?’
Ash just wanted this done with. ‘Take whatever you have to so I can leave.’ The words came from her lips a little more strained than she’d hoped for, rushed with a feigned lightness as she watched him wheel a little car
t of sharp and pointies up to her side. Her face felt hot and cold at the same time, flushed and chilled, her head a little woozy and floating as her vision blinked.
‘Are you ok?’ His hand was warm lifting her chin and Ash nearly swam back away from him through the heavy fear swamping her senses.
‘Not so good with needles, Doc.’
‘I’ll be gentle.’ And for the most part he was, though Ash was pretty sure she dropped out of consciousness a few times. She was exhausted. The night had gone from fun and playful, letting off steam, to dark and dangerous and scary beyond belief. Now she had an injury she couldn’t really explain to anyone and was one step from passing out and praying she didn’t wake up. ‘Miss DeMorgan? Ashling?’ She fluttered her lashes open and focused on the caramel brown of his eyes. ‘We’re done.’ He shook the little vials of her blood, the liquid sloshing a deep red.
‘You have everything?’
He nodded and ran through the list of what he still had to pump her with, what he’d taken from her and why. ‘I’d really like a specialist to come and look at you.’
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
To a casual observer, the guy on the bench in the open necked shirt was just any other city worker, on a break and tossing the crusts of his lunch to the birds who scavenged the park, picking over the human leftovers. Except for a few incongruities, like the fact it was after midnight, and instead of the sun’s rays on his back it was the cold light of the moon illuminating this patch of urban greenery in the heart of the city. Then there was the small detail that ravens were not supposed to be nocturnal creatures, and yet the birds flocked to the grass, inching ever closer, drawn by the murmured incantations that fell from his lips with barely perceptible movements, lured by the temptation of the crumbled cookie trail, made brave by a dangerous alliance of hunger and keen competition.
There were no casual observers. He made sure of it as he waited, an eternity, for the perfect opportunity, that outward air of infinite calm belying the furious knocking of his heart against the cage of his ribs. It was the same urgency that had seen him abandon the bustling emer-gency department at a flat out run, stuffing the vials of her blood into his pockets as he broke out into the cool night air. Dr. Robert Madden was not a patient man. He’d floored the accelerator of his beamer and hared it out of the staff car park like the Grim Reaper was breathing down his shirt collar. And the man with the scythe was MacTire. He was going to kill him for letting her slip out of his hands.
She had seemed so damn compliant, and he’d left her barely five minutes while he locked himself into the cramped clinic room, away from prying nurses’ eyes. As he’d jabbed the hypodermic needle into the vial, he’d let that smugness wash through him, imagining it like a drug high. Even as the sedative sucked up into the syringe on its liquid rush, he’d been thinking he might not need the drugs to subdue her. He had won her trust. This one would come willingly. All these years and finally he’d hit pay dirt, right there in his ER. He’d conjured up MacTire’s face and how it would look when Madden held him to his end of their deal, had to tame the smirk curling his lips as he drew back the curtain, the syringe slipped discreetly into the pocket of his white coat, no need to alarm the girl, after all. But then his gaze had fallen to the rumpled sheets of her abandoned bed, the IV bleeding a crimson stain to the white sheet where she’d ripped it from her vein, the bedside locker gaping open, the plastic bag containing her possessions noticeable by its absence.
The flimsy curtain rail came down in his blanched fist. He wheeled on the young Filipino nurse in the corridor, veins standing out on his forehead, glaring daggers, demanding to know where his patient had gone, reducing her to a lip-quivering, teary mess with his rage. Shoving her aside, he stormed through the ER, sequentially jerking back curtains and flinging open doors on bewildered staff and patients, coat-tails flapping a black-eyed whirlwind of fury as he barged through the chaotic waiting room, gaze darting to every face, but she was gone. Fucking gone ... Punching through the security doors, he sucked in the night air, fuelling the frustrated roar that greeted the breeze-blown, deserted ambulance bays. Gone. He was a dead man walking. Gross basic error, allowing his brain to cross the victory line before his feet had carried him over. MacTire was ruthless. Panic flooded in over the crest of his anger, neurons firing frantically, scrambling for an out like a maze rat. Nobody else had seen her or knew what she was. He could destroy the vials of blood, cover up the records. MacTire need never know. But her genes could be his golden ticket, and he was damned if he was going to drop her and let some other son of a bitch pick her up off the streets. This was his chance to escape the cesspit of a life his own screwed up chromosomes had landed him in. He had her blood, he knew where she lived and her innocence would work to his advantage. It was gambling with his skin, but he was going to come clean to MacTire. A bird in the hand and all that.
So, yeah, despite the enforced outer calm, internally, Dr. Robert Madden was positively vibrating, juiced up on a potent cocktail of adrenaline and sympathetic nervous system overdrive. But catching a bird demanded stillness. A successful hunt was as much about patience as a strong arm. It was a principle that could be employed to ensnare an unsuspecting girl as easily as a wary bird. Damn, he couldn’t believe this one just walked off the streets of Dublin and into his emergency room. Fate was indeed one warped bitch.
As he’d stepped casually through the privacy curtain of the exam cubicle, he’d flipped open the chart and the name all but leapt off the page. He felt the sweat break across his brow, throat suddenly constricted by the ferocity of his own heartbeat. Lifting dark eyes from the chart, he’d half expected to see Anann DeMorgan herself, but was greeted instead by a pretty face of wide-eyed, youthful innocence in a scarlet coat. Did she notice the momentary lapse in composure before he’d had time to rearrange himself into a mask of cool professionalism and blind her with his well-versed medical charm offensive? Probably not. She had been open with him, mostly, when he steered the conversation towards the circumstances of her grandmother’s stroke. Granted, she’d lied about her injuries, but probably only because she imagined any legit doctor would have her signed off to a padded cell if she spilled the truth behind what had scored those lacerations down her arm. And he had been open with her, to a degree. She made no effort to avoid his examination, offered her blood willingly. The girl genuinely had no clue what she was. All the better to catch her. Something had spooked her, but with luck, she would put it down to needle phobia. This one had instincts hard-wired in her brain that even she herself knew nothing about. He would not underestimate her again, and he was not going for her without reinforcements.
A swift lunge and a flutter of black feathers and the bird was trapped in the folds of the green scrub top he’d appropriated from the hospital for just this purpose. He felt the flap of its wings against his palms and tightened his grip, tucking the struggling quarry under one arm while he popped the trunk of his car and fished out a tire iron. The manhole cover grated over the cobbles as he hefted it aside to peer down into a vast well of black, oily nothingness. The switchblade drawn from his pocket flicked open on a snap, moonlight glinting off steel. Casting a glance over his shoulder, he sliced down into his own palm, hissing into the night air and curling his hand into a bloodied fist. Next, he dragged the struggling bundle from under his arm, opening up the fabric just enough to expose the raven’s breast. He felt the flutter of the bird’s panicked heart, the desperate battle for freedom, even as he plunged the blade deep into the creature’s chest, and crimson welled up through blue-black plumage. Without hesitation, he fell to his knees at the lip of the manhole and began chanting the words his Thegn Master had taught him, words in that ancient, forgotten tongue. As he voiced the rights of passage and entreated the great ancestor Elatha, one hand fisted the dying bird’s body, guiding the droplets of blood to fall into the murky waters, the other squeezed tight, wringing out the wound in his palm, offering up his own lifeblood to the underground lake. The waters an
swered him as it had every time before, with a sinister plume of red mist that curled up through the opening in the ground, carrying with it the vague scent of sulphur. The window of opportunity was narrow, and ignoring the flaring instincts that bade him run from this evil gateway, Madden dropped down into the waters.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Connal unclipped the jump leads from the battery and dropped the bonnet on the ancient Cadillac, wiping the sweat from his brow on a bicep. It was one of those muggy, overcast days when the air clung to your body like a second skin. Didn’t help that he’d been cooped up in Nan DeMorgan’s dusty garage for the whole day attempting to resurrect her old jalopy. The sun was beaming through the cracks in the mud-frosted windows, effectively turning the cramped basement room into a hothouse. He tossed the oily rag from his hand and stared through the light shafts with their spinning dust motes, eyes settling on the tarpaulin-covered mound in the corner. Already, the body under the plastic sheeting was starting to stink. He needed to get it dealt with. No way he could transport that thing on the back of the bike, just getting it here to the house had been a full-scale cloak and dagger, under cover of darkness routine.
The car was the perfect mode of transportation, custom made for the job, you might say, but she’d been out of service for decades. Anann had always taken care of the clean-up and Connal had taken it for granted. But now she was out of the equation, and much as he hated to admit it, his routine, all the shit he took as a given, was uprooted right along with her. Pissed off and resentful didn’t exactly cover it. In her place? This impossible granddaughter, who was hotter than the hinges of Hades and wound tighter than a clockwork monkey. She was crashing around the streets like Godzilla on crack, clueless to the ticking time bomb she was or the potential havoc she could wreak. It was unsustainable. He wasn’t sure she could survive another night of moon fever. Sooner or later she had to come down from this high she was riding, and he expected it would be an ugly crash. Eventually, he’d tracked her down to the hospital, reassured himself she would live, followed her home and stuck tight to the shadows until she was deadlock bolted-shut indoors. She would be safe there at least. The mutt would have her back while she slept it off and Connal got down to the messy business of cleaning up.