A Curse Unbroken (20 page)

Aric sighed. “I don’t want to fight with you, or force you into a corner. But if you feel compelled to help those who need you, I want you to go back to nursing.”

“I don’t think that’s where I’m meant to be.”

“Will you try?” He lifted my chin, his eyes pleading. “Please, Celia. I just want you to try. If it doesn’t work out, we’ll regroup and work something else out, okay?”

I didn’t say anything for a few beats. But when I spoke, I hated what I had to ask. “If I do, will you consider stepping down from your position as Leader?” The bomb I dropped loosened Aric’s hold. “You don’t want to lose me, but you have to understand that I don’t want to lose you, either.”

It took him a while to respond, and in the minutes that passed I regretted my request. Whether he’d meant to or not, Aric had forced me into a corner. But then I’d gone and done the same thing to him. “Okay,” he finally said. “If that’s what it will take to keep you safe, I’ll step down at the end of the year.”

For something that would help ensure our safety and well-being, both of us looked miserable. Aric bent and kissed my lips, then turned from me to pull some clothes out of his dresser. He’d been so willing to make love mere moments ago, before my ultimatum; now he simply seemed distant and I only had myself to blame. Guilt twisted my belly. In a thousand years I would have never expected to make such a demand. Sometimes I still surprised myself, and it wasn’t for the better.

“I’d better get Shah to the Den,” he said quietly. “I’ll be back later; stay here and rest.”

I nodded and pulled on a T-shirt and shorts.

Aric disappeared into the bathroom. When he stepped out, he was dressed in jeans and a long-sleeved T-shirt and grasped a hand towel. He stared at Shah. “Will you start applying for nursing jobs sometime this week?”

I nodded, knowing I owed him as much for what I’d just asked of him. “I’ll start later today. I promise.”

“Thank you,” he whispered.

He reached for Shah, waiting a breath before he gathered him in the towel. “You’re not going to touch him?” I asked. He didn’t answer me, and wrapped Shah tighter. “Aric?”

“I don’t think I should touch him.”

Aric’s voice sounded strangely distant. Instead of saying more he left our room with the fate of the world, literally, in his hands.

—

Just like I promised Aric, I started applying for nursing jobs. Based on my experience, and a glowing recommendation from my former manager, I had a job in the Emergency Department of my old hospital within days.

I called Misha and told him I wouldn’t be working for him anymore. He simply chuckled and said, “We’ll see.”

My brief time away from the hospital didn’t require a formal reorientation, but the only shifts available were nights. I didn’t like being away from Aric. But he probably disliked stepping down from his Leader role even more. So I sucked it up, and started my first shift the following week.

My preceptor from the garden of evil, Helen, handed me a tube of lubrication jelly and a pair of gloves. “What’s this?” I asked.

Helen smiled and reached for her extra-large coffee. “Mr. Kelly was just brought in from the local nursing home with a heavily impacted colon. He needs you to relieve his discomfort. Get to work. He’s in room seven.”

Without another word, she strolled down the hall of clear glass partitions. She didn’t glance back, but I had no doubt her smile remained. I clenched my jaw and tried hard to keep my fangs from protruding. With a heavy heart, and a big tube of lube, I headed in the direction of room seven.

The speaker system crackled above me. I waited to hear a code announced along with the affected department only to hear the chorus of “You Are Not Alone” begin to play. I thought someone was messing with the system and continued on, expecting the music to suddenly cut off. Instead several voices trailed in.
You’re not alone,
they whispered at once, their echo seeming to come from every direction.

My steps slowed.

You’re not alone,
they said again, repeating the lyrics that continued to pour from the speaker system.

I pushed forward, trying to dismiss the voices as stress from starting a new job, the music playing over the intercom, and the remaining tension between me and Aric. While I really didn’t believe my absurd logic, it was better than the alternatives—I was crazy or the ED was haunted. Neither appealed to me so I pushed aside the curtain to room seven and stepped in.

Mr. Kelly lay unmoving.

Very unlike the three vampires spread around his body, draining him of his blood.

Here’s the thing. Too many rotten experiences throughout my life had left me edgy and defensive. I was always on guard—
always
. But hearing voices in your head
and
being told you’re about to manually remove a few pounds of literal crap from some old man’s rectum would have distracted even the most vigilant warrior.

The vamps whipped around, baring their blood-smeared fangs. I dropped my gloves and lube and backed away.

“Shah,”
they hissed.

“I don’t have him,” I growled back.

As if on cue Shah appeared in my hands, practically calling me a liar. My eyes widened before I was deafened by the sound of shattering glass and bending metal when the first vampire tackled me through the doorway.

The vampire was huge, well over six feet tall and probably close to three hundred pounds. In supernatural terms, it was the equivalent of being charged by a rhino. The force alone would have killed a human. But I wasn’t human.

Still, the tile floor cracked beneath me along with every bone in my back.

The impact robbed my lungs of air. I couldn’t breathe, and struggled to shove him off me. He rammed a gun into my temple. With the first breath I managed, the smell of cursed gold bullets overwhelmed my sensitive nose. If I’d known he was going to kill me, I could have saved him a few bucks by telling him normal bullets worked just fine on me. “Aw, hell,” he said. “This bitch ain’t so—”

I
changed
and bit through his wrist.

All bad guys liked to talk. It wasn’t something they did in movies or in the superhero comics. It was a God-given fact. He was probably going to say “tough” or “bad” or something just as wrong. I didn’t let him. Experience taught me it’s always best to kill the bad guys before they’re done talking.

I wasn’t sure how impacted Mr. Kelly was, or if I was just grossed out by the flavor of blood, but the vampire tasted like shit. I spat out his gun-wielding hand and swatted Shah away with my paws while the other two vamps rushed me.

I roared. People screamed. A lot. A “Code Silver” was announced over the speaker system, alerting security that an out-of-control person with a weapon was in the ED. I guessed it was someone’s way of trying to help. To me it just meant more people I had to keep from being eaten. The other two vamps cocked their weapons. I
changed
back to human and swept up Shah, using the one-handed vamp as a shield.

It seemed none of the vamps were the best of friends. They took aim and fired at their buddy in their attempt to kill me. I was grateful for the gold bullets just then. They worked really well on vampires. His body ricocheted against me before he exploded into ash. The large cloud gave me cover so I could scramble behind the nurses’ station. I tucked Shah in a drawer and kept going, emerging on the opposite side as a tigress just as security arrived.

Apparently, our hospital used off-duty cops to patrol the halls during the night shift. I was certain that’s what they were, especially when they reached for their guns and pointed them at me. My claws scratched against the tile in my haste to haul ass away from them. Although I called them about half a dozen names in my mind, part of me couldn’t blame them for shooting. If I were them, I definitely would have shot the tiger first before dealing with the two guys holding guns.

I sped ahead and had just rounded the corner when a bullet took off the tip of my tail. A horrible burning pain ran the length of my body, to the tip of my cold wet nose. Security beat feet behind me, continuing to fire. I wasn’t going to make it if I didn’t act, so I dove and
shifted
through the cinder block wall directly in front of me.

It was something I’d never done. And with good reason. Normally,
shifting
through solid surfaces underground refreshed my body upon surfacing. Through walls…not so much. Perhaps it was because the wall wasn’t solid. Regardless, when I emerged on the other side my insides felt scrambled and grossly misplaced.

My human shape crashed against the cold linoleum floor, and I was temporarily blinded by the fluorescent lights. I pushed onto my side only to vomit uncontrollably.

Aric,
I called to him.
Aric, I need you
.

It was hard to see. My head spun revoltingly fast and I felt like the inside of Mr. Kelly’s colon. When my eyes were finally able to focus, they fell upon a pair of feet directly in front of me.

A janitor holding a mop loomed over me. “Hi,” I mumbled.

He made a few sweeps at the mess next to me, but otherwise did his best to pretend there wasn’t a naked woman with a bleeding ass cheek lying in front of him. I forced myself to my feet, using the wall I had just
shifted
through for support. All I wanted to do was take a second to breathe and maybe vomit some more, but the screams and the gunfire from behind the wall forced me back into action. I sprinted to the ED. I wanted to
change
as soon as I stumbled through the main doors, but my body insisted I eff off.

Security came in handy after all. They distracted the vampires by unintentionally offering themselves up as snacks. I decapitated a vampire with a jumping, spinning kick when his head jerked up in my direction. It landed somewhere near the heap of wheelchairs shoved against the wall.

My only problem was that I was still dizzy from
shifting
through the stupid cinder block, and I fell onto my already sore ass, giving the other vampire ample time to pick me up by the throat.

His hands squeezed tight. “Kill her, Edison!” the decapitated head screamed from the seat of a wheelchair.

Edison never had the chance. My body couldn’t
change
yet, but I could extend the claws in my feet. They slashed him across his thighs while my fists broke through his chest and collapsed his lungs. He twisted at the last minute and I missed his heart, but I injured him enough that he released my throat.

I immediately rolled to my feet when I fell to the floor and leapt onto Edison’s back when he tried to flee. I yanked his head back, exposing his throat so I could sever his neck with my claws.

And damnit all, he still wouldn’t die!

Edison and his pal must have been old,
real
old. I’d rather have fought a new vampire any day of the week than take on a master or a vamp older than three hundred years. It wasn’t enough to rip out their hearts or tear off their heads to kill them. Oh no. It had to be both. So there I was, on the floor, being bitch-slapped by Edison’s wildly flailing arms while the fangs from his decapitated head sunk into my forearm.

His incisors dug deep. They scraped against bone while the blood he took from me seeped onto the floor through his severed throat. No. That wasn’t nasty or anything.

I banged Edison’s head over and over against the tile floor, trying to crack it like a nut. It didn’t work; I was either too weak from blood loss or he had an exceptionally hard head. My luck generally sucked so of course things had to get worse. The first vamp I’d decapitated had gotten to his headless feet. He charged at me with the wheelchair that held his head.

“I’ll kill you!” his head hollered at me. “I’ll kill you, bitch!”

If the people in the ED weren’t screaming before, they certainly were then.

Chang, the martial arts master whom Misha hired to train me, had taught me a valuable lesson not learned in most strip mall martial arts studios. “If you can’t rip an evil creature off of you, figure out a way to use him as your weapon.” Honest to God, that was one of the first things I understood him say in his broken English. I kicked Edison’s body away from me and slammed his head against the oncoming wheels of the chair.

The body pushing the wheelchair had nowhere to go because his head went bouncing across the floor. He just stood there, making it easy for me to bash through his chest with Edison’s head and tear out his heart.

“You whooore. You bitp,” Edison muttered through a mouthful of me. I was hurting, bleeding, and horrendously nauseated, but the name-calling really pushed me over the edge.

I protruded two claws from my fingers and poked the bastard in the eyes. He screamed, finally letting go. His head hit the floor with a sickening splat. Like an idiot he tried to use his body against me, despite having been blinded. He lifted his legs and tried a jumping kick. Not only did he completely miss me, he made it easy for me to catch his foot. My fangs snapped it off so he wouldn’t bother me when I tore out his heart. Unfortunately, I hadn’t noticed the poor housekeeping person hiding behind the linen cart. She peered around the cart and got smacked in the face when I carelessly tossed Edison’s foot aside. Blood from his ankle trickled down her face.

“I’m so s-sorry,” I stammered. She stared at me with horrified eyes, tripping over the unconscious security guards in her haste to join the terrified group huddled in the corner.

Edison continued to scream obscenities at me until I abruptly hushed him by ramming his heart with an IV pole. Silence had never been so golden. Before his fangs could completely retract, he was nothing more than a mound of ash.

My hands gripped the IV pole to help keep me on my feet. Spots flickered in my field of vision. I tried to blink them away, but it didn’t work and in a way made things worse. For a moment, my body refused to move, readying itself to vomit. When I didn’t, I risked taking a step.

I limped to the linen cart the poor housekeeping person was pushing before the start of the chaos. My right butt cheek seeped blood with each step. I guessed that was the body part that made up my tail in beast form. I pulled a clean sheet from the cart and wrapped it around me. In the corner, a few feet to my right, stood a doctor, about four nurses, and twelve patients ranging in ages from a toddler with a bandaged arm to another nursing home drop-off. Everyone stared with wild, terrified eyes at my half-naked, ashy, and bloody body. And while they had stopped screaming, they were barely breathing by that point.