Rapture's Edge

52

“You!” she growled, freezing him in place with those ferocious inkwell eyes. “Help me!”

Her French was nearly perfect, but not completely so; obviously, she wasn’t a native speaker. Perhaps she hailed from Mars.

“Now!” she said as he remained rooted to the linoleum. The word was hard as two fingers snapping, and it jolted Laurent into action.

“In there.” He pointed to an exam room just behind her, watching as she shouldered through the door and gently deposited the man she carried on the white-sheeted hospital bed. A quick glance over his shoulder and a mouthed instruction to Michelle, the night nurse—Call the police—and he followed her in.

“He’s been shot.” The alien beauty stepped back to allow Laurent to move closer.

He took his glasses from the pocket of his white lab coat and donned them, snapped on a pair of thin nitrile gloves, and did a quick, cursory examination of the victim. Blood had spread in an erratic circle over the front of his button-down dress shirt, and Laurent ripped it open with a yank that sent buttons flying. There it was—a perfect, round hole four inches below the burly man’s collarbone. Just above—or in—his heart.“Will he be all right?” The woman stood almost too close, watching intently as he examined the wound.

“He’s lost a lot of blood. There’s no exit wound, which means the bullet is embedded. We need to prep him for surgery.”

He straightened, faced her, and made a swift, visual assessment of her condition. No pupil dilation. No nervous twitching or shaking. No obvious signs of drug intoxication. She was, oddly, barefoot, even more oddly wearing men’s boxer briefs and an undershirt gone slightly translucent with perspiration that made it cling to her beautiful breasts in a most distracting, enticing way—

She stepped closer, took his elbow in an iron grip, and said, very quietly, “He lives, or you die. Understood?”

Laurent had heard this on more than one occasion from distraught family members. Threats to his life or safety were not so uncommon, but something about the way this woman shaped the words, the cold, cold intent in her dark eyes, truly frightened him. He chose not to antagonize her and instead simply said, “You’re family? We’ll need to get some information for treatment. And for the police.”

At the word police, she released his arm as if she’d been burned and stepped back with a low, spine-tingling growl that reverberated through the room, animal, chilling. It was like nothing he’d ever heard before. Slowly, she backed away to the door.

She was going to run. He’d seen this before, too.

“Madam,” he said, holding out a hand, but she cut him off with a savage snarl that froze him in place and had his bowels threatening to spill themselves.

“He lives or you die,” she reiterated, deadly soft, vibrating menace. She glanced at the cursive stitching on the front pocket of his lab coat. “Laurent.”

The high, wailing scream of sirens underscored his hissed name. Wild, she glanced over her shoulder at the ER doors and then back at him. For a moment he imagined her eyes changed, something about the pupils…Had they elongated? To slits?

But then she was gone. Like a gazelle she bounded away and disappeared through the glass doors into the night, just as three blue-and-white police cars with sirens wailing and lights flashing blazed into the parking lot.

Eliana limped into the catacombs just before dawn, exhausted as she’d never been, every muscle aching, every step burning sharp with pain.

The pain of heartache. The pain of confusion. The intense, stabbing pain of guilt.

If Gregor died, she’d never, ever forgive herself.

It took nearly an hour of navigating the silent, twisting passageways before she came upon the rusted metal stepladder hidden around a black corner deep in the belly of the catacombs. The ladder, drilled right into the rock, led up three stories through a ragged fissure in the limestone to the basement of the abbey. She climbed slowly, dazed, the chilled air doing little to soothe her abraded skin.

She needed a bath, and sleep, and to talk to Mel about everything that had happened. Not necessarily in that order.

The old wooden trapdoor was much heavier than usual to push open, but she did it, emerging into the frigid darkness of the basement—

When suddenly, a strong hand reached out, lightning-fast, and painfully fisted itself in her hair.

“You stupid f*****g b***h!” Caesar hissed in her ear. Viciously, he yanked her head back and she lost her footing on the stepladder, twisting away from him. Pulling her by the hair, he dragged her clear of the tunnel and slammed her down to the dusty stone floor.

Before she could rise, he kicked her hard in the ribs. Twice.