Stay the Night

Alex drew back the edge of the bed drape. "Hello," she said to the man inside. "I'm Dr. Alex Keller."

"Cyprien's lady," he said, his voice rasping. "I have heard tales of you."

"Don't believe the ones that say I have horns and a pointy tale," Alex said. "I only grow those during a full moon." There didn't seem to be anything wrong with the man, other than that he'd been buried under a huge pile of bedclothes, but the stench of decomposing flesh radiating from him almost gagged her. "I'm going to take a look at you, okay?"

He nodded and closed his eyes.

She drew back the top coverlet and exposed a blood-soaked mound of linen someone had layered over his abdomen. She lifted one side of it, looked at the gaping horror that had once been his torso, and gently put it back in place.

She turned to Braxtyn. "How long has he been like this?"

"Three weeks," the man answered her. "It will not close, my lady, no matter how much I feed."

"What he says is true." Braxtyn sighed. "The wound remains as it was when he first came to us."

Alex could smell something else, something that tainted the ghastly smell of the wound. "How much blood does he take every night?"

"He is too weak to feed from a human, so we give him bagged blood." Braxtyn thought for a moment. "He uses three, sometimes four bags."

"He's bleeding out about that much, too, isn't he?" Alex put her hand on the patient's forehead, which burned against her skin. To the warrior, she said, "I'll be back to see you later."

"It is good of you to look after us, my lady," he murmured, drifting off.

Alex went to the next bed, which was occupied by a woman with second- and third-degree burns covering her legs, hips, and hands. She remained unconscious, even when Alex carefully rolled her onto her side. The gunshot wound to her back was large and still open and bleeding.

"Is it the same thing with this one?"

"She takes less blood, but we must change her mattress several times a week," Braxtyn said.

Alex made rounds of the entire ward, and found nearly all of the patients with open wounds and terrible burns. She couldn't rouse a third of them, and the rest responded to her with varying degrees of weakness and apathy.

She asked Braxtyn only the most necessary questions, and after seeing the last patient she walked out of the ward and into an adjoining room. She looked around at the stacks of linens, pillows, and towels being stored there and tried to get a grip on her temper.

"My lady?" Braxtyn hovered in the open doorway. "Do you think you can help them?"

"Come in here and shut that, please." Alex waited until she did. "I need a room set up as a surgical suite. This one will work. I'll write a list of the medical equipment, supplies, nurses, and chemicals—"

Her eyes widened. "Chemicals?"

"—to make Darkyn anesthetic," Alex continued. "I don't operate on patients when they're awake, and some of them are too far gone to do the autohypnosis thing. You have to get all of this here as quickly as possible. Can you do that, or do I need to talk to someone else?"

"I can, but… I do not understand," Braxtyn said, glancing back over her shoulder and then back at Alex. "Are you quite certain that you must operate on them? Surely with time and care they will eventually heal."

"Care? What care?" Alex shouted. "You've been wrapping them in bedsheets and letting them bleed out and rot away."

Geoffrey's wife stared at her slippers. "This is all that we could do for them."

"Jesus." Alex pressed the heels of her hands against her eyes before she let them drop. "I don't know how things work in England, but in my country we don't care for people like this. We call what you're doing depraved indifference. Right before we throw your ass in prison."

Braxtyn's eyes flared. "For your information, my lady, I have cut open my own arms and poured my blood onto their wounds countless times, trying to heal them. It has always worked on other wounded Kyn in the past, but for them it does nothing."

"Can't you smell it?" she demanded. "Don't you know why they're not healing?"

"No, I do not." Braxtyn made an angry gesture toward the ward. "Why do you think I asked you to come down here and attend them? We Kyn have no doctors. We always heal."

Alex felt like slapping her. "Not from wounds still contaminated with copper, you don't."

Braxtyn looked stricken. "But I checked their wounds when they were brought in. I found no bullets in them."

"It's not copper from bullets. I can't even see where it's coming from, but I'd know that smell anywhere." Realizing that she'd been unfair to the other woman, Alex took a deep breath. "I'm sorry. You're right; you couldn't have known. I shouldn't have yelled at you. This isn't your fault."

"Lady Alex, you may shout at me all night long, as often as you wish," Braxtyn assured her. "Only please, help them. I will obtain whatever you need. You have but to say it and it will be yours."

Alex checked her watch. "If you can get what I need delivered in the next three hours, I'll start operating tonight."

Chapter Seven

"I'd be more interested in making an offer if I could see the actual contents of the manuscript," Mortimer Cuzman said, fogging the glass top of the display case with his choppy breath as he peered at the gem-encrusted cover. "'Brother de Crewes's work is described in all the appraisal books. I could tell right away if it is a forgery."

"As I said, the book is too fragile to be handled, but we've had it authenticated by six different experts on illuminated artworks." Chris's cheeks felt numb from the effort it took to maintain an interested smile. "I could arrange a private showing for you tomorrow, perhaps. Do you live in Atlanta, Mr. Cuzman?"

"New Jersey. I flew in from Newark this afternoon for the Renaissance exhibit at the arts center downtown." The old man licked his dry lips while he plunged one liver-spotted hand into his trouser pocket.

Chris stepped back and reached inside her jacket.

The elderly collector produced a somewhat creased business card, which he dropped on top of the display case. "You can reach me at the number on the back. I won't pay a penny over one hundred thousand, and I have to see the entire book and have my own experts authenticate it."

Chris slipped her hand out of her jacket. "Thank you, Mr. Cuzman. I'll pass your offer along to the owner. May I show you anything else?"

"However clever they are, forgeries don't appeal to me, young woman. Good evening." With a jab of his cane into the carpet, Cuzman pivoted and hobbled off to the entrance.

"He knew the paintings were fake, and he's certainly old enough," Dennis said over her earpiece. "Should I have one of the mobile units tail him?"

Chris nodded to a pair of women who went around the manuscript case to admire a triptych mounted on the wall behind it. "The Magician would never consult an appraisal book, or offer a hundred grand for a manuscript conservatively worth five million."

"So that's a no-go on the tail?"

"Yes, Dennis. That's a negative." When no one else approached the case, Chris decided to stop hovering and work her way around the gallery one more time.

Circulating allowed her to size up the guests, but she had already made the rounds four times, and no one but Cuzman had seemed promising. Now she was beginning to wonder if the Magician was deliberately waiting until after they closed the show to make his move.

"Ms. Renshaw." One of the local journalists, a reedy young woman with hot-pink spiked hair and a cool blue minidress, tapped her green fingernails against Chris's arm to get her attention. "Great show. I've never seen so much old church stuff in one place."

"I'm glad you're enjoying yourself." Chris couldn't remember the name the reporter had mumbled the first time they had spoken. "I apologize again for not allowing your photographer to take pictures of the displays."

"No problem. Most galleries don't unless they're hurting for patrons. I was more interested in who came tonight: my editor likes me to drop a lot of names in my column. Speaking of which…" She made a discreet gesture toward the front of the gallery. "Can you please tell me who that gorgeous couple is?"

Chris stepped to one side to get a better look, and stopped breathing when she saw whom the reporter meant.

"I don't know the woman," she heard herself say, "but I believe the man's first name is Rob."

"Rob. Thanks." Pink spikes bobbed as the young woman hurried off toward the couple.

"Who's Rob?" Dennis asked over her earpiece. "One of ours?"

"Not now, Dennis." Chris stayed where she was and watched the couple's progress as they walked around the exhibits.

Rob wasn't wearing a jacket or tie, and he'd unbuttoned the collar and rolled up the sleeves of his khaki-colored shirt. His trousers, in a darker shade of coffee, appeared to be made of leather rather than cloth. The thin, uneven green line of his neck tattoo looked from a distance as if he'd wrapped a piece of barbed wire around his throat.

Chris's gaze shifted back to Rob's companion, who hung on his arm as if she were glued there.

Raven-haired and sloe-eyed, Rob's dark goddess had the sort of body that men wanted to see in a magazine foldout. She filled out every dart of her scarlet and silver lamé dress, which fit her so well it couldn't be anything but a tailored original. It was semitransparent, too; Chris saw the shadow of black lace move under the thin material as the woman turned to say something to Rob.

Whoever she was, she had money. Emeralds and topazes, some the size of quarters, hung from her ears and wrists and studded a complicated-looking belt made of gold around her narrow waist. ns class="adsbygoogle" style="display:block" data-ad-client="ca-pub-7451196230453695" data-ad-slot="9930101810" data-ad-format="auto" data-full-width-responsive="true">