Max inspected his hand. The red splotches from the spilt coffee had disappeared. “How did you do that?”
She cocked her head. “Do what?”
“Heal me.”
Gabriella shook her head. “Honestly, Max. All I did was massage it. Knowing the coffee here, it’s not that hot.”
“It felt pretty damn hot to me. They must have recently brewed it.”
She picked up the coffee and took a sip. “It’s not hot.”
He eyed the cup. Curls of steam wafted from it a minute ago. Gabriella offered the cup to him. Max eased the rim to his lips and carefully swallowed the coffee. It was tepid at best. “Hmm.”
“Hmm what?”
“Never mind.” He grabbed another cup and poured a second one, paying attention this time. Max filled it three quarters full, leaving a margin for overflow error. He snapped a plastic top onto it. “Let’s go sit down before I end up in the burn unit.” Max followed Gabriella back to their solitary table.
She turned and planted a kiss on his lips. “You’re a good man, and I know you care for me. Thank you.”
Thank you? Care for you? Hell, he’d long fallen for her. He loved her. She had said as much during their lovemaking.
“Gabriella, I...”
She interrupted him. “Max, about tonight.”
He raised his hand, barricading his heart. She didn’t love him. She had declared it in a moment of ecstasy. How many times had he slipped out those disingenuous words with women before? Tit for tat. He was due for payback.
They drank their coffee in silence.
Their beepers chirped. Max pulled back his chair. “I’ll get it. You sit and enjoy your coffee.”
He walked over to the phone mounted on the cafeteria wall. Confusion banged around in his head. Had he misinterpreted her intentions? Max pressed his lips tight. There is someone else, or some unfinished business with someone else. His heart pinged hard in his chest. Once everything was settled and Claude was on the mend, she’d have to choose. He picked up the phone with purpose, gearing to fight for her.
“I’ll be there right away,” he said.
He hung up the cafeteria phone and strode toward Gabriella.
“Incoming?”
Max picked up his cup of coffee. “Yeah. Sounds like a simple sprain.” He held out his hand to her. “I’ll walk with you to the ICU, and then I’ll take care of the patient in the ER.”
“Max, I’ll be fine. Go to the ER. I’ll visit my uncle. I’ll join you afterwards. We’ll talk.”
We’ll talk never ended well. “Okay. Go to him. Take your time.”
It pained him to kiss her on the cheek instead of the lips, but it would lessen the brunt of the fall once she divulged that there was indeed someone else in her life.
Max walked to the cafeteria doorway and turned to see her again. He waved. She waved back. Their night of passion had fizzled to a conciliatory departing gesture.
****
She might as well have stabbed him in the heart with a dagger. Gabriella gazed into her coffee. She’d injured him. K.L.’s words echoed in her head. It won’t work. It won’t work. Gabriella clutched her ears. But it was her heart that was splitting. She stood and readied herself to chase after Max, but she halted at the cafeteria door. She let him go, for now. She couldn’t tell him the truth, that she was perpetually young, and that he would grow old and die. Unless.... No, she couldn’t do it. Roaming the world endlessly was a penance she would not inflict upon him. Their relationship was sadly ironic; he couldn’t come into her world, but she could stay in his forever, or until Volk changed that.
She sighed and set her cup next to a saltshaker.
“That’s it! Salt!”
Gabriella dug her hand into her scrub pants pocket. Ah, what every ER doc carried—a roll of surgical tape! She ran table to table, taping the holes of the shakers shut before stashing them into every available pocket. Her scrubs and cardigan bulged at weird angles. There was no way she’d walk a mortal pace without catching strange glimpses. She’d have to travel vampire speed to the lab. Time was running out. She needed K.L.’s help.
****
K.L. hugged her the second Gabriella morphed beside him.
“My dearest, how are you? With the hospital full up during flu season, I haven’t been able to get away. Some holiday this has turned out to be.” He let her loose and squeezed her hands. His eyes narrowed to angry slits. “Volk did this heinous act, didn’t he?”
She nodded. She would not stoop to utter his name out loud! “He’s come for me, and, I’m sure, to finish off my Uncle Claude. Failure is not in his vocabulary. He has grown stronger over the centuries, but I will battle him, first with my brain, then with my fangs, if it comes to that.” Gabriella plucked a saltshaker from her scrub pocket and smacked it onto the lab counter. “I have a plan.”
K.L. jumped back. “Hey, hey. Watch it! If you drop any of those, we’ll be compelled to count every grain. That can set us back for hour, hours we may not have.”
The compulsion to count was a vampire quirk.
Gabriella raised her palm. “It’s safe. I’ve sealed the holes with surgical tape.”
K.L. gingerly picked up the plastic shaker as if it was made of fragile crystal. He nodded. “Smart.”
She unloaded the remaining saltshakers. Her eyes darted to K.L. “I need a bag.”
“I know where you’re going with this.” He shot his finger at her. “Lab plastic bags would work. I have plenty for our purposes.”
“I’ve had the misfortune of meeting this despot. The salt will slow him, but it won’t stop him,” someone said behind them.
Gabriella and K.L. spun around to confront their uninvited guest.
“Marcus!” K.L. yelled.
“The same,” Marcus said coolly. “Why are we at odds, K.L.?”
“One, you’re a thief. Two, you’re a menace.”
“Yes, I did partake of the blood supply.” Marcus shrugged. “A vamp has to eat.” He folded his hands across his chest. “I would think twice about summoning your vampire squad to vanquish me. You need me.”
K.L. walked up to him and poked him in the chest. “How so?”
Marcus peeled K.L.’s finger from his chest. “I have unfinished business with Volk.” He undid his white cravat and tilted his head sideways, exposing the healed gash across his neck. “It happened in Sicily. Volk’s mark. After he drank my blood, I refused to follow him. A slice to my carotid was his response. The cut was not deep enough for him, but shallow enough for me. A nurse who was of his clan came to my aid.” Marcus bowed his head. “He beheaded her for her efforts.” He shot ramrod straight. “I am prepared to avenge her death with mine.”
Gabriella’s stomach clenched. She grabbed at her neck. What did Volk have in store for her? Perhaps marriage was off the table. She’d trade it for death anyway. There was no going back. Volk had fulfilled his promise to find her. But she had her own alliance now.
“We will battle together!” Gabriella proclaimed. She’d add the curly-haired Italian vamp to her army.
K.L. bowed respectively to him. “I will call off my vampire S.W.A.T. team.”
Marcus waved his hands. “No, don’t. We will need them; not for me, but for Volk.”
“Done.” K.L. stroked Gabriella’s cheek. “Go to your uncle. We will prepare here.”
Her heart softened. The men in her ‘undead life’ had sworn allegiance to her: Marcus, her new soldier, Uncle Claude who had now twice risked his life, and K.L. who’d do anything for her, including lassoing and nurturing her vampire progeny. Her heart stopped.
“Where’s Barbara?”
K.L. shook his fist. “Not again!”
Chapter Eleven
Gabriella sent her thoughts to K.L. “I found her!”
“Where?”
She pressed her lips together. “Sitting on the side of my uncle’s bed and feeding him!”
“Ooh. Eee!”
“My sentiments, exactly.”
/>
Her green eyes glowed red. Honestly, he’s 850 vamp years older than she!
“Barbara! Uncle Claude!”
Claude gazed up at Gabriella, a smile on his face, and his fangs in Barbara’s wrist.
“Stop it, you two! What if someone had walked in on this?” She glared at Barbara and waggled her finger at her. “What are you doing here? You promised me and K.L. you’d not wander away again!”
Barbara lowered her eyes. “I didn’t, my mistress. Your uncle’s blood requisition popped up on the computer. I came to draw his blood, and to check on him. I saw what that monster did to him!”
Claude brought Barbara’s hand to his lips and kissed it. With a sheepish grin on his lips, he cocked an eyebrow. “She came to draw my blood, but I drew hers instead.”
“Oh, Claude,” she cooed.
“Don’t be angry, my dear Gabriella. The minute she walked into the room, I knew she was the one. I know she belongs to you, but I couldn’t help myself.”
Oh, how Gabriella understood that.
“I’m completely healed, but these mortals have me trapped here.” He ripped off his ECG leads and yanked out his IV’s. “So let them come. They’ll see I’m perfectly fine.”
Gabriella scrambled to reattach the cardiac monitor electrodes. Claude dodged her efforts with catlike finesse. She rattled the wires in her fist. “Put these on right now! You’re off the central monitoring system. The nurses will come rushing in. How are we going to explain your fangs and her punctured wrist?”
Claude gave a “So what?” shrug.
Gabriella shoved him into the bed and slapped the ECG electrodes back onto his chest. “Stay. I have a plan to get you out of here, peacefully.” She shot her finger at Barbara. “You draw his blood into that lab tube.” Gabriella gritted her teeth and narrowed her eyes. “Like you were supposed to do in the first place. I’ll be right back.” She poked her finger at her uncle and at Barbara. “And no messing around while I’m gone.”
Claude and Barbara nodded, feigning obedience. “Yes, we understand.” But their eyes said, “Take your time.”
Gabriella walked casually out of his room and proceeded to the hallway outside the ICU. She sent a message to K.L. “K.L., I need you to put an order in the computer for a chest X-ray for my uncle. Order it under my name. My computer code is VAMPDOC.”
“Done.”
“Barbara, my uncle, and I will meet you in the lab.”
She searched one hallway. Damn! There’s always at least one wheelchair here. Her fangs sprouted in frustration. She turned the corner and sighed with relief. Gabriella grabbed the lone wheelchair and raced back to the ICU. She halted in front of the double doors to the unit and took a calming breath. Bringing her hand to her lips, she patted her mouth, making sure her fangs weren’t showing. Good to go! She punched the automatic door opener mounted on the wall and proceeded into the ICU. She stopped at the nurse’s station.
“I’m going to take my uncle to radiology for his chest x-ray.”
A nurse wrinkled her forehead. “Chest x-ray? I don’t believe he has one ordered.” The nurse tapped the computer keys and stared at the screen. “Oh, I guess he does.”
So far, so good, she thought. If this ruse didn’t work, she’d have to hypnotize the whole staff. Then she’d have to return to break the trance. It would take precious time she may not have. Volk may already be on his way for Uncle Claude. He’d think nothing of draining the nurses as an appetizer. She had to get her uncle out of the unit, fast!
She rolled the wheelchair into his room. “Quick. Get in.”
Claude popped off the electrodes. “Free at last.” He sank into the chair. “As the mortals say, ‘Let’s roll!’”
“Barbara, you go first. Smile, and walk nonchalantly out of the unit. Go directly to the lab. We’ll be behind you. No detours!”
Barbara strode out of Claude’s room, holding the blood filled-tube up like the Statue of Liberty. She smiled at the nurses.
So much for nonchalant. Good, now leave.
She stopped at the nurse’s counter.
No!
Barbara reached into a plastic pumpkin bucket and plucked out a handful of candy bars.
Gabriella smacked her palm to her head. Double no! Oh, please don’t eat that!
A nurse grinned. “Take some more, honey. You could definitely use it. You’re deathly thin!”
Barbara smiled. Her fangs sparkled.
Oh, man. Damn it! Now I have to hypnotize them all.
“Hey, those are great. Especially for a lab tech. Happy Halloween!”
She grabbed an extra candy bar and dropped it into her pocket with the rest of her chocolate stash. “You, too.”
Phew! They thought they were fake.
Gabriella rolled Claude out of the ICU, prodding Barbara along. Part one of her plan-accomplished.
She pushed Claude into the elevator and waved Barbara inside. “Hurry!”
The air had thickened with cold and her powers were weakening. Volk was near.
Barbara stood next to Claude. They held hands during the elevator ride down two floors. Twangs of envy poked at her. Uncle Claude and Barbara had eternity. Max and she did not. She had to tell him the truth tonight, before Volk snatched her away.
The elevator doors parted at the laboratory level.
The lab had become their military headquarters. K.L’s vampire S.W.A.T. team had arrived. Some were aligning fire extinguishes in neat rows along the floor like rockets ready for lift off, while others packaged salt into plastic bags. K.L. and Marcus leaned over a paper spread across the countertop, their heads nearly touching as they analyzed what was on it.
K.L. lifted his head. “Ah, you’re here.” He rushed to meet them. K.L. extended his hand to Claude, respectful of the vampire’s elder rank. “Sir, I’m overjoyed at Volk’s failure.” He guided Claude upright from the wheelchair.
“As am I. But we must prepare for his return.”
While Barbara and Claude strode with their fingers interlinked toward the S.W.A.T. team’s regimented bustling, Gabriella glanced at her square-tipped fingernails. They’d barely grown a quarter of an inch. What was happening to her? She couldn’t fight Volk this way! Fear crawled up her spine and met bewilderment running amok in her brain. The gravity of what was to come hit her like an anvil.
K.L. crooked his finger at Gabriella. “Come with me.”
He led her past Marcus, and now Claude, who stood discussing the map.
“What’s on that map?” she asked.
“The Fang Hospital duct system, water main valves, and all available exits. Marcus’s meandering about has paid off. He drew the map. He knows every nook of this hospital. It’s kismet that we didn’t get rid of him.
Marcus was the pearl in a clam, completely unexpected.
They stopped in the pathology department, devoid of humans at night.
“It’s here, on this shelf, waiting for you.”
K.L. snatched a bagged specimen tagged: Van Court, Claude, MR0077269, FB-OR 6,10/31/13.
The silver dagger, the ‘foreign body’ that had been extracted from her uncle’s chest, rested inside the specimen bag. It was foreign all right! It had come all the way from Europe.
He pulled the bag open and handed the dagger to Gabriella. “Use it. Let it make its way back to its owner.” K.L. thumped his chest. “Straight into his heart!”
Gabriella bumped fists with K.L. “Let’s do it!”
They raced to the pathology exit. Renewed vigor pulsed in her every blood vessel. Volk would pay for his centuries of abuse. Suddenly it dawned on her. She’d never killed a vampire. Volk was strong, and her strength was weakening. What if she missed? Or couldn’t impale him deep enough? Thus far, their armaments would slow him, but like Marcus had warned, they wouldn’t stop him. Gabriella skidded to a halt. Then she thought of what would.
“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.”