CHAPTER ONE
“I’ve got your medicine.” Denver’s voice chimed as she entered John Doe’s room. She always talked to her patients even if they didn’t or couldn’t respond.
She’d been a registered nurse for as long as she could remember. The amount of years, decades paled. Not exactly what she thought she’d be doing for almost 100 years of her life but as jobs went… it worked. She should have flicked on a light, but her night vision was better than most people’s day vision, and her patient hadn’t come out of his coma since they’d brought him in.
If she’d been paying closer attention, she would have seen it… felt it coming. But tonight, her mind was elsewhere. The air started crackling two weeks ago. The coldness of it tingled across her arms and raised the hairs at the nape of her neck. It tugged low in her gut so strong sometimes she thought she might throw up. The only thing she didn’t know was what it was. Where it came from or where it was going.
In an attempt to stave the eerie electrical impulses slamming her body, she shivered, shook her head and stepped up to her patient’s bed. Mr. John Doe had been brought in nearly two weeks ago and hadn’t awakened since the doctors had surgically repaired the torn ligaments, set the broken arm, bandaged up the busted knee and stitched up the multiple knife wounds darting across his body in a, ‘connect the dot,’ pattern which she knew spelled out ‘Filth’. No one else saw it. Someone or many some ones had beaten the crap out of him and left him for dead. If a driver hadn’t seen the chaos taking place in the dark alley he would be dead. However, given his injuries and the rate the stab wounds and incisions knitted back together, she knew what healed at lightning speed. However, that shouldn’t be in existence. She was rare and knew there was only a handful left. What she thought he was, was impossibility. She hadn’t seen this debauchery in years, three decades to be exact and had hoped it would never surface again. The past does have a funny way of catching up with you.
But why him? A mere man. Who’d he pissed off? She smiled down at his still form, eyed his marred face, full lips and closed eyes. She’d looked in them every four hours for the past two days as he slept. She’d been transfixed by the darkness of them. Her gaze trailed down the length of his body and across the muscled legs and thick thighs. She drew her hand up, lifted the blanket and peered at his manhood. Even in a coma it was impressive.
“Hum, maybe in another time, another day.” She mumbled to herself and allowed the soft smile to curve.
Running her hand across the expanse of his muscled chest, her mind slid to a forbidden place, her body snuggled in his strong arms all hot and tight and…
“What the hell!” Denver blinked back to reality but not fast enough before Mr. John Doe’s hand shot up and clamped around her throat.
So much for the coma. Instinctively her fingers curled around his wrist, tightened, but she didn’t exert any pressure. Confusion and fear lit his eyes, shining like the full moon, or was it anger. It shimmered across her skin like a blast of cold windy air when someone opens a door in the dead of winter. She stared back as she patted the back of his hand. Energy sizzled through her fingers and up her arm. She forced herself to not snatch her hand back, but continued to caress his skin.
“Where?” His voice sounded dry and strained. He tightened his grip as he sucked in a breath of air. “Are they?” Throwing his legs over the side of the bed, he stood and back walked her to the wall.
“Not here.” Denver tried to soothe but it didn’t work. His hand squeezed tighter, cutting off what little air she reserved in her lungs. Okay, now would be a good time to get this man off me. “Listen buddy,” Denver coughed, “It’s all right. Nobody here’s going to hurt you. Let me go.”
“Why?” His voice sounded stronger than it did a second ago.
She could make him, would make him in another second if he didn’t release her. Denver curled her lips up into an ominous snarl and grunted a laugh. Being mindful of his injuries, yet ignoring his grunt of pain, she pivoted. Her body changed positions so fast in the blink of an eye she had released his hand from her neck, pinned him against the wall and had her face an inch from his.
“Because--” she knew her eyes flared red, then instantly went back to brown just as she curled back her lips to show the points of her fangs descending from her gums. “--I said so.”
“Aw hell.” His voice slurred. “You’re one of--” The muffled grunt escaping his throat hurt as much as the pain riddling through every bone and muscle.
Not being able to hold his weight any longer, he went down on one knee, almost dragging the woman to the floor with him.
“Hang on.” She grasped his arm and slung it across her shoulder, hefted him up and walked him back to the bed. Propping him against the side, she cursed just as lights exploded inside his head. He felt his eyes roll to the back of his head and once again had no control over the darkness as it overtook him.
Reed let the thunderous clouds close in on him. He was too tired, in too much pain and too sick to care. Not sure where he was, what was going on or who the woman was standing guard over him, he drifted on a wave of nothingness. Her voice floated above him like a summer’s breeze. Although he couldn’t grab it he knew it was there. In more ways than one, he considered her voice an anchor. It kept him from plummeting too far into the darkness. It was what he heard before he grabbed on to it and allowed it to pull him out of the void he’d been trapped in for too long.
Every day his body waited for her to enter his room. He didn’t care what time. Hell, time meant nothing to him. All he knew was it was the sweetest thing he’d ever heard. Warm. Soothing. Arousing. She’d talked to his body as if he knew her, but he didn’t. He didn’t know anyone. Not in this town wherever it-- he was.
The trail of the serial killer he’d been following was almost cold until an anonymous tip brought him to the town. . He thought it was one person until he’d stumbled on their hideout. Four men of various sizes and age sat around a beat up television, plotting out their next kill. They had already killed his brother, claiming they were cleansing the earth of vermin. He was next on the list. They knew who he was and probably where he was. His only hope of survival was to kill them before they killed him or anyone else like him.
Thoughts of bringing them in for justice were long dead. That was one road he’d never travel on again. Justice and fairness meant nothing to these people. They wanted to cleanse the earth. He was going to help them.
Denver. Yes, she’d introduced herself to his unconscious self on the first day and he’d not forgotten her name. Denver, like the town in Colorado, she’d said with a chuckle. She wiped a blessedly cool cloth across his forehead. She always knew what to do. The warm caress of her fingers across his skin, on more than one occasion, made his mind sizzle. The pain riddling his body was from more than his injuries.
From the first time she’d touched him, he’s wanted to make her his own, brand his being into her soul but he could never reach out. And now, now he’d done nothing more than try to break her neck. Thankfully he was unsuccessful.
“Open your eyes, John.” Her voice slid through his mind, making his heartbeat slow in response.
“Reed.” He didn’t move. Couldn’t if he wanted to because of the pain it was best to lay still. “My name’s Reed.”
“You got a last name… Reed?”
He didn’t answer. Denver didn’t press the subject.
“How are you feeling, Reed?” She asked without missing a beat.
“Like I’ve been hit by a Mack truck.”
“You probably have.” Her hand continued to caress the side of his face. Slowly he opened one eye then the other and stared up into her face.
Damn, she was beautiful. Like an angel descended from the heavens to pull him back. Sucking in a ragged breath of air that hurt more than he thought it would, he pushed up.
“Whoa! Where the hell do you think you’re going?” Her hand cupped his shoulders and with a gentle tug pushed him back to the bed.
“Shit.”
On a better day, she wouldn’t have been able to do that, he told himself as his body descended back to the mattress.
“I’ve got to get out of here. They’ll be here soon.”
“Who are they, Joh—Reed?”
“Them. The ones…” His voice slurred off when he moaned. “The ones who tried to kill me.”
“Nobody’s going to try to kill you.” Denver turned away from the bed and lifted a syringe from the table. “You need to get some rest.”
“No.”
Before he could breathe another protest, she swiped the portal to the IV sticking out of his arm and injected the medicine.
“Go to sleep, Reed. Its oh-two-hundred dark. You’ll feel better in the morning.”
“Doubt that. He didn’t finish the sentence. The gray pressing into his mind gave way to the darkness. “I’ve got to get out of…”
****
Denver hung up the phone. She hated having to call the attending physician but rules were rules. When a patient awakens from a coma you’ve got to tell someone, can’t keep quiet till morning.
Reed’s day would now be filled with tests and scans to check for permanent damage. Her mind wondered back to the conversation with the doctor. Nervous energy prickled her neck after she hung up the phone. She didn’t know why, but guessed it was because of the doctor’s verbal nervousness that permeated her ears. Why was he nervous about Reed? Guessing she was imagining it, she pulled out his chart to document the latest events. Whatever was bothering the doc was not her concern.
Denver sat at the nursing station staring at the clock on the wall, watching the second hand tick slowly by. She hated quiet nights. They took too long. Three o’clock. Three more hours and she’d be off duty. Because of her affliction she worked ten p.m. until six a.m. Sure she went out in the sun. She didn’t burst into flames like some of her ancestors. The rays itched and the longer she stayed out the more they itched. If she wasn’t careful she burned something awful. Ugly blisters coated her skin, but never scarred as long as she fed. She cringed at the image of the ancient vamp’s wasted dust remains floating away with the gentlest breeze.
Thank the heavens for sun block seventy. Thinking back, she remembered once she wanted to see just how long she could do it. She itched so badly her arms and legs bled from the scratching. Long streaks marred her body and looked as if she’d been in a fight with a very large and deadly cat.
Glancing back at the clock and shaking her head at the same time, she let her mind wonder back to John Doe-- Reed. It had been a long time since someone brought forth her venom, a very long time. Over decades she’d perfected what she called her poker face. Things that previously boiled her blood, raised the need to hunt had grown dormant until a few seconds ago. And now, now, she wondered why this man was able to do it. He’d seen her but not at her worst. Maybe he won’t remember. Drugs were a wonderful thing. Smiling, she caught a yawn in her fist, started to push up and came face to face with a man.
“May I help you?”
It was way too late for people to be visiting the hospital and he didn’t look or smell like the average Joe. Anger poured off of him like a raging river. The man standing three feet behind him was no better. Evil thoughts permeated off of him in dark thunderous waves. Denver gasped. He stared at her with eyes so pale they looked dead. The bulge supposedly hidden under the leather jacket was definitely a gun. Not good.
Swallowing, “What did you need, gentlemen?” And that was an understatement. They may have been men, but gentle they were not.
The one in the front slapped an eight by ten photo on the counter. “Have you seen this man?”
Denver dragged her gaze from his face down to the photo, picked it up and held it in front of her face. Shaking her head in a slow deliberate movement, she pulled her lips into a tight frown and pretended to be thinking.
“Yeah.” She nodded. “He was here yesterday. He was transferred upstairs to the sixth floor this morning, unit six north. Not sure of the room number.”
Before she could continue he snatched the photo, motioned to the other with a jerk of his chin and stormed toward the elevator. She stood at the nursing station, listening to her heart pound in her chest. As soon as the elevator door slid close she raced down the hall in the opposite direction.
Damn-it.
Oh yeah, she recognized the man. It was her John Doe--Reed, her newly awakened sweetie. Her skin crawled with an uneasiness she’d never felt before. Now she knew why everything felt so out of sorts. These men were bad news, and if she didn’t get Reed out, they would finish the job they’d started. What the hell was going on? Just how badly did you want someone that you’d risk a scene at a hospital? Would they have killed him there? How many others would they kill to get their goal? The thought of it disgusted her.
Scanning the area and priming her ears to hear every little noise, she sprinted to his room, chastising herself for sedating him. This is not going to be easy. The only thing she hoped was that Doug, the night orderly stayed on his break for another thirty minutes. Any other night he bled the time clock. She hoped he stayed true to form, not wanting him to come back and meet up with her visitors, and by God, don’t let someone stop their trek and tell those men she lied. If they followed her instructions, it would take them a good twenty minutes to figure it out. The unit she sent them to was on the other side of the hospital and it was closed due to maintenance repairs and painting.
“Okay, Reed.” Denver stepped into the room with caution, her gaze raking across the bed. He wasn’t there. Her heart pounded in her chest, thinking the men snuck back, seized him, and killed him. No, she would have known, would have heard. A breath of relief slid from of her lungs when his grunt directed her attention toward him sitting on the floor near the bathroom.
She moved over to him and stroked a hand across his forehead. He was hot. Hot as a branding iron right before it struck the side of a cow to brand. Sweat dripped from his forehead in waves.
“Damn,” she mumbled between gritted teeth. Moving him might kill him, but which would be worst, her or those men?
She cupped his shoulder and shook him. “Time to wake up, Reed.” He didn’t move. His breathing was barely noticeable. Okay, maybe the drugs weren’t a good thing. Her body tensed when she heard a muffled sound resembling a scream, or was it the squeal of a cart being over turned. Her hand connected with the side of Reed’s face, sending a stinging sensation across her fingers. “I said wake the hell up!”
His eyes fluttered open, pain filled, and groggy from the meds.
“We’ve got to go.”
His eyes widened. “What’s going on?” He grunted with the motion. “They’re here, aren’t they?”
“How’d you know?”
“I smelled them.”
Wrapping her arm around his waist, she tugged him up to stand and moved out of the room and toward the door as she counted the minutes in her head before the men would return. She didn’t want to be there when they did and her heart wouldn’t let her leave without Reed, even if she didn’t know him or what the hell he was getting her into. Her gut told her she couldn’t turn him over to those men. She now knew the moment he opened his eyes her peaceful existence of a life dissipated into nothing.
Dragging him from the room, she scanned the hall and listened. If she’d thought about it, she would have cut the lights off. That would have given her the advantage.
Half dragging, half carrying, she pulled Reed toward another bank of elevators. It was further, but knowing they’d use the same one to come back, she didn’t want to step right into their path. She propped Reed up against the wall and jammed her finger into the button to summon the car. Her movements were too fast too hard. She felt it vibrate in her hand and tingle the muscles in her palm.
“Come on.” Denver cursed the slowness. Tilting her head, she could hear the elevator moving at a snail’s pace toward them. A subtle ding of the arrival alarm and she let out a breath of air she didn’t know she was holding.
Almost as if in slow motion, the elevator door opened just as the shuffling of feet penetrated the silence cloaking them. Their time had run out. She swore a barrage of eloquent words as she grabbed Reed around the collar of the hospital gown and literally tossed him into the elevator. The yells grew louder as she pounded her finger into the close door button. Objects being thrown aside fractured the fear and sliced through her gut. They’d be there in another minute. They’d be on them and that would be it. The end.
She dared to look out the elevator. They might already be there and could grab her out and do whatever. The door closed at its own pace. A hand shot through the opening just as it was about to reach the end. It started to reopen and a face breeched. Denver gasped at the evilness shining in the man’s eyes. He reached out, grabbed her arm and began pulling her out of the elevator.
Reed grunted, pushed away from the wall, and bringing his cast covered arm up, he crashed it into the man’s face, causing him to stumble back, loosen his grip. The door slid shut. Reed slithered his body to the floor and sat there motionless. He grimaced and she knew it must hurt too badly to move, to breathe, to do anything, but he did it anyway. He drew in a breath, blew it out, repeated it, then opened his eyes and stared up into Denver’s face.
“Why’d you do this?” His voice was strained.
She shrugged a shoulder as she kneeled down and ran a hand across his face, across his chest. Certainly she couldn’t have left him there for those men. Bastards. She didn’t know or understand what Reed had done, but her gut told her it wasn’t warranted. They would kill him if they got their hands on him. No, she couldn’t let that happen.
“Can you stand?”
“No. I don’t think so.” He slowly shook his head.
“Then walking is out of the question. We’ll do it together.” Denver stood. She wrapped her hand around his and placed it on her shoulder. She pulled him up and pressed his body against the wall.
His eyes rolled to the back of his head and he slid back to the floor. “Go without me. Get as far away as you can.”
“Nope, can’t do that.”
“You shouldn’t have interfered. They’ll not stop now until they hunt you down. Go.” He tried to swat her hand away, but between the drugs and the pain, his hand missed and fell back to his side. “Please-- leave me. It’s okay. I’ve been expecting them. They’ll do me fast this time.”
“Too late.” Denver gritted her teeth, grabbed him around the arms and pulled him up to stand. She blew out several breaths, sucked one in and chastised herself for not keeping in shape.
She did the only thing she knew. She carried him.