Revenant (18 page)

Blaspheme had just spent the most miserable night in a cot next to her mother in the on-call room. Then the shower water had been only lukewarm. Now the blow-dryer didn’t work. She was going to scream.

The one positive was that her mother was getting stronger. Eidolon had personally given her a checkup last night, and while he was concerned that the internal damage caused by the grimlight weapon could still cause problems, he figured that if she continued to improve, she’d be ready for discharge in a week or so.

“Blaspheme,” her mother called through the bathroom door. “Your pager thingie is beeping.”

“Thanks, Mom,” she muttered.

“What did you say?”

Blas raised her voice. “I said, thanks, Mom!”

“You don’t have to yell.”

Blaspheme conked her head on the mirror. How were they going to occupy not only the same space, but the same
tiny
space for who-knew-how-long?

Screw the hair; she had to get to work. So what if she was an hour early? She should see if she could work an extra shift tonight, too.

She grabbed a green scrunchie that matched her scrubs and tied her wet hair up in a high ponytail. After brushing her teeth, she scooted out into the bread-box-sized on-call residence room, where her mother was kicking back on the bed and watching
The Today Show
.

“Take it easy today, Mom,” she said. “You’re still healing. No more harassing the staff.”

“Then you shouldn’t have ruined my plans to trap the False Angel.”

Blas clamped her jaws shut so tight her teeth throbbed. “I have to work with these people, Mother,” she ground out. “So behave. I’ll come get you for lunch.”

Deva muted Al Roker with an impatient click of the remote. “I can’t stay here forever.”

“And you can’t go home,” Blaspheme pointed out.

Her mother rolled her eyes. “I have plenty of friends I can stay with.”

“And you’re really willing to risk your friends’ lives like that?”

Her mother snorted. “Yes. They’d risk my life, too. It’s what evil people do, Blaspheme.” She reached over to the bedside table for a cup of lime Jell-O. “I’m damned impressed that you’re doing the same thing.”

“This is different.”

“Really? How? You’re putting your friends and this hospital at risk, don’t you think?”

“Yes, but…” Blaspheme trailed off. But what? But nothing. Oh, gods, she was as bad as her mother, wasn’t she? Eidolon had assured her that staying here would be fine, and she’d been so eager to save her own skin that she hadn’t even argued beyond a token protest. “You’re right,” she said. “We can’t stay here. But we aren’t putting anyone else at risk, either.”

Deva shook her head. “How did I manage to raise you to be so scrupulous? You’re half fallen angel, love. Act like it.”

“You used to be an angel once,” Blas pointed out. “Don’t you remember that at all?”

“I remember it being very boring. There’s a reason I tried to shake things up amongst the archangel ranks.”

“Tried to shake things up? You got yourself kicked out of Heaven!”

Deva hurled the remote across the room, shattering the thing in a fit of temper. “You don’t know what it’s like there,” she said, lisping a little as her fangs elongated with her growing anger. “The angelic hierarchy is all-important, and heaven forbid someone try to rise above their station. Some of us wanted more power, and Raphael was going to give us that. If not for his buddy, Stamtiel, giving me a suicide mission that got me caught, we’d have brought about a revolution.”

This was the first Blaspheme had heard of an archangel’s involvement in the plot her mother and father had been mixed up in. Leave it to Deva to crash spectacularly.

“Boy, when you do something, you do it big, don’t you?”

Deva shrugged and settled back against the pillows now that her fit was over. “What is it humans say? Go big or go home?” She gestured to the destroyed remote. “Be a good little imp and get me a new one.”

Blaspheme threw her hands up in defeat. “I give up. I have to go to work. Don’t leave the hospital, and please try to stay in the room.” The last thing Blas needed was her mother wandering around the clinic and causing trouble. “I’ll be back later.”

“And then what?”

“I don’t know,” Blas admitted. Gods, she hated the wait-and-see approach, which was funny, since that was what ninety percent of being a doctor was about. Wait and see how a patient would respond to treatment. Wait and see if surgery was a success. Wait and see if your patient died because you couldn’t do enough for them.

“I think I should go crash with friends, and you should stay here. I can’t be here, Blas. This place is too… sterile. And smelly. And it’s full of annoying sick people. How can you stand it?”

Maybe her mother staying with friends wasn’t such a bad idea. “Look, Mom,” she said as she shrugged into her lab coat, “we’ll talk about it later. I have to go.”

She snatched up her stethoscope, cell phone, pager, and purse and darted into the hall, closing the door firmly behind her. She really could take only so much of her mother. A little Deva went a long,
long
way.

Taking a deep, relaxing breath, she started toward the clinic’s Harrowgate. Since she had almost an hour before her shift started, she wanted to do some research into the information Eidolon had given her yesterday. UG’s library was extensive and eclectic, filled with not only medical texts, but also mystical texts and nonfiction books related to the demon realm. Eidolon especially liked to collect books specific to individual demon breeds and species. The smallest detail could mean the difference between life and death during an emergency.

Her pager beeped again, and she nearly fumbled it as she juggled her stethoscope and the little device. When she saw the screen, she stopped dead in her tracks.

Revenant is here. Again. He wouldn’t wait and we couldn’t stop him. He’s loose in the clinic
.

Loose. Like a wild animal. Only far worse.

“Blaspheme!”

Her heart skipped a beat at the too-familiar voice from behind her. Dread and excitement dueled within her as she turned around to see him at the far end of the hall, dressed from head to toe in black leather. Goth boots with thick soles added another couple of inches to his already towering form, and the weapons strapped to his body sent a message that if you weren’t intimidated enough already, it was time to roll over.

His lustrous ebony hair flared out behind him as he walked, and she self-consciously reached back to her own heavy, wet rope hanging down her back.

Her heart thumped harder with every step closer he came. How could she be happy to see him but at the same time be nervous as hell? As for him, she had no idea what he was thinking. His expression could have been carved from stone, and the wraparound sunglasses hid his eyes behind a shield of black.

Clearing her throat, she prepared to say hi, but just as she opened her mouth, a door down the hall opened and her mother stepped out. A thousand scenarios played out in her head in an instant.

Not one of them ended well.

Almost as if in slow motion, Deva looked left at Revenant. Then right at Blaspheme. There was a smile when Deva saw her. And then her brain caught up with her eyes and she whipped her head back around to Revenant.

Suddenly, Deva stumbled over her own feet as she wheeled toward Blaspheme.

“Run,” she mouthed.

Before Blaspheme could stop her, Deva bolted toward the clinic’s tube station exit.

“Wait!” Blas yelled. She started off after her, but as she and Revenant met at the junction in the hallway, her mom disappeared around a corner.

“What was up with that?” Revenant asked.

Blas could only stand there like an idiot. Showing too much interest would arouse suspicion. “I guess she wanted to go home.”

“It was that fallen angel I saw before.” His luscious lips dipped in a deep frown. “She looked familiar. What’s her name?”

Her mother had changed her name every few years, but if she truly looked familiar to Revenant, Blaspheme didn’t want to offer up any of her names.

“I can’t tell you that. Doctor-patient confidentiality,” she said, happy to invoke human standards of care when the situation called for it. “But I don’t know why she’d look familiar to you. Maybe it’s part of your memory thing?”

“Maybe.” He didn’t look convinced. “Maybe I banged her before.”

Oh, Christ. Blaspheme so did not want to go there. The idea that she and her mother had screwed the same guy was too disgusting to entertain.

“Gosh, I can’t wait until you start talking about me like that. Some nameless chick you banged.”

His head whipped around, and although she couldn’t see his eyes, she felt their intensity as he stared at her. “I would never speak of you like that,” he vowed darkly. “And I will never forget your name.”

Okay, then
. Talk about knocking someone breathless. Blaspheme struggled to inhale without sounding like she’d run a marathon. No male had ever spoken to her like that before, as if she mattered. False Angels were what most demons considered a “great to date but not to mate” species, so males were rarely in it for the long run. Unless, of course, they’d been seduced and enchanted. When that happened, all their pretty words meant nothing.

She got the feeling that what Revenant had just said meant the world.

“Good to know,” she said with a casualness she didn’t feel. Needing to do something – anything – other than stand awkwardly in the hallway, she started toward her office. Hopefully her mother would call soon to let Blas know she was all right. “Why are you here, anyway?”

“Gethel is bleeding,” he said as he fell into step next to her. “It’s not bad, but you should see her. And don’t tell me to bring her here, because it’s not happening.”

“I’m sorry, but I’m busy. Eidolon volunteered to go in my place. Let me just give him a buzz —”

Revenant grabbed her wrist as she reached into her lab coat for her phone. “No one but you.”

She sighed. “Revenant, we’ve been over this. We’re done.”

“This isn’t about you and me. It’s about the fact that I don’t trust anyone else.”

She gave him a skeptical glance, but his hard, uncompromising expression told her nothing. “But you trust me?”

“I don’t trust anyone. But I trust you more than anyone here.”

“Why?” She lowered her voice so a passing vampire nurse didn’t get a load of gossip fodder. “Because we had sex?”

“No. Because you helped me when you didn’t have to.”

“You were in pain,” she said. “I’m a doctor. I don’t like to see people suffer. Besides, I couldn’t exactly kick you out of my apartment. You’re kind of… big.”

He was big
everywhere
. The thought made her flush inappropriately hot.

One lip curled in amusement, flashing a bit of fang. “But you didn’t have to be as nice as you were, either.”

Okay, she’d give him that. “Revenant,” she sighed. “I really can’t do what you’re asking. I was just on my way to the library to do some research —”

“What kind of research? I can help.”

She slowed, seriously considering his offer. With his thousands of years of accumulated knowledge, not to mention the fact that he was uber-powerful, maybe he could help. She was at the point of desperation, and while she couldn’t tell him the complete truth, she supposed she could share her problem with a little rearranging of the facts.

“I’m looking for an enchantment that will disguise me from angels. Make me look like another species or something.”

His lip curled again, but this time, there was no hint of amusement. “Does this have something to do with the attack?”

“Yes. Obviously, I’m being hunted for some reason. Could have something to do with a patient I treated or maybe I’m being confused for someone else. Either way, it’s clear I’m not safe, and I can’t stay at UG anymore. I can’t put anyone else at risk.”

He came to an abrupt halt. “Put me at risk.”

She wheeled around to face him. “Excuse me?”

“You can stay with me. Think about it,” he said as he stroked his hand down the hilt of a blade at his hip. “No one in their right minds would come after you with me around.”

True, but how long would it be before
he
was the one she had to run from? Her pager went off in an urgent tone. “Hold on.” She glanced at the message, and her heart stopped.

Your gallbladder
blanchier
patient from yesterday is code 12. Hurry
.

“I gotta go!” She ran toward the Harrowgate leading to the hospital, and wouldn’t you know it, Rev was right on her heels. She didn’t bother taking the time to tell him to go away. He wouldn’t listen, and her mind was racing anyway.

The
blanchier
’s operation had been routine and unremarkable, so what the hell? She hit the Harrowgate at a run, with Rev sliding in after her. There was only one flashing light inside, and that was the symbol for Underworld General. She touched it, and instantly the gate opened into the hospital’s bustling ER.

She jogged to the surgical wing and the bank of rooms set aside for post-op patients, and the insane activity outside the second door on the right told her that was the
blanchier
’s room.