Property Of A Monster

Chapter 1 Rain hammered the cracked pavement, turning the alley behind St. Augustine's into a river of grime. Mary pulled her jacket tighter and quickened her pace. Twelve hours on her feet. Her legs ached, her eyes burned, and all she wanted was her bed. Then she heard it. A groan, low and broken, coming from behind the dumpster. She froze. Every instinct told her to keep walking. Nurses got robbed too. But another sound followed, ragged breathing, wet and shallow, and her feet were already moving before her brain caught up. "Hello? Is someone there?" Nothing but the rain answering her. She rounded the dumpster and her stomach dropped. A man lay slumped against the brick wall, one hand pressed to his side, blood seeping black between his fingers in the dim light. His jaw was clenched so hard a vein stood out at his temple. Even folded over in pain, something about him radiated danger, the sharp cut of his jacket, the way his eyes tracked her like a predator assessing a threat. "Oh my God." She dropped to her knees beside him, adrenaline burning through her exhaustion. "You're losing a lot of blood. Let me see." "Get away from me." His voice came out a rasp, but the command in it was unmistakable. "I'm a nurse. I can help you." She was already peeling off her scarf, pressing it hard against the wound. He hissed through his teeth, his whole body going rigid. "You don't understand what you're doing." "I understand you'll bleed out in ten minutes if I don't." Her hands worked fast, sure, years of muscle memory taking over even as her heart hammered against her ribs. "Hold this. Press down. Hard." He obeyed, and that surprised her more than anything else that had happened so far. Up close, she could see the wound wasn't from a knife. A bullet. Clean entry, no exit that she could find. Her fingers went cold despite the sweat gathering at her hairline. "Who did this to you?" "Doesn't matter." He grimaced as she pressed a fresh wad of gauze from her bag against his side, his fingers digging into the wet pavement. "You should walk away. Now. Before you learn things you can't unlearn." "You're bleeding out behind a hospital and threatening the person trying to save your life. Interesting strategy." She kept her voice steady, clinical, even as her pulse roared in her ears. She'd learned long ago that panic helped no one, least of all the patient. A short, disbelieving laugh escaped him, cut off by a wince. "If you knew who I was, you wouldn't be laughing right now. You'd be running." "I don't care who you are. I care that this wound needs pressure and you need a hospital." She glanced up and caught his eyes for the first time, dark, assessing, glittering with something that wasn't quite gratitude and wasn't quite warning either. Rain dripped from his hairline down the hard line of his jaw. "Why aren't you at one already?" "Hospitals ask questions." "So do I, apparently, and you're not answering." He didn't smile, but something in his face shifted, a flicker of surprise that she'd pushed back instead of flinching. "You should be more afraid of me." "I'll add it to my list of things to worry about after you stop bleeding on my scarf." For a moment there was only the rain, and the ragged rhythm of his breathing evening out under her hands. She worked in silence, cleaning what she could, applying pressure, monitoring the way his pulse fluttered too fast beneath her fingers. Whoever he was, his body was lean muscle under the soaked shirt, and old scars ridged pale over his ribs where her hands brushed. This wasn't his first bullet. The gauze had barely stopped soaking through when footsteps splashed through the alley entrance behind her. "Boss!" Mary's head snapped up. Three men in dark coats moved toward them, and the one in front raised something that caught the streetlight, metal, cold, unmistakable. A gun swung level with her forehead before she could even process what was happening. "Don't move," the man barked. She froze, hands still pressed to the wound, blood warm and sticky between her fingers, her heart slamming so hard she thought it might c***k a rib. "Lower it." The wounded man's voice cracked through the alley like a whip, all the exhaustion gone from it now, replaced by something colder and infinitely more dangerous. "She's the one keeping me alive right now." The gunman hesitated, then lowered his weapon a fraction, though his eyes stayed locked on Mary like she might still be a threat. She looked down at the man she'd been trying to save, the man whose men had just aimed a gun at her, and felt the pieces slide into place with sickening clarity. "You're not just some guy who got jumped." Her voice came out steadier than she felt. He held her gaze, unflinching despite the blood loss, despite the pain that must have been tearing through him. "No. I'm not." "Then who are you?" The corner of his mouth twitched, not quite a smile. "I don't need to introduce myself. Not after tonight. You already know the kind of life that leads a man like me. Question is what you're going to do with that." Mary's hands were still slick with his blood, her scarf ruined, her whole body trembling with cold and adrenaline in equal measure. She had walked into that alley to save a stranger's life. She had no idea yet what it was going to cost her.