Two Knights of Indulgence (5 page)

“I’m taking the three.
 
The last triple team you took on nearly took you down.”

“Hey, that almost sounded like a joke.”

“I have my moments.
 
Every five hundred years or so.”
 
Matthias began to move away, pointing at his
watch and then holding up ten fingers before he disappeared into the trees.

Nicolas gazed at his watch before returning his stare
to the five dead men walking.
 
Adrenaline
pumped through his body as he counted off the seconds, his gaze traveling to
his watch every few moments.
 
He slid his
sword from its sheath quietly so as to not draw attention.
 
He clasped the thick leather grip and
squeezed it in both hands, loving the feel of the weapon’s weight.
 
The Illuminati had been stepping up their
actions over the last months, attacks were on the rise, and bedlam was becoming
a daily event.
 
Where chaos reigned, the
Illuminati were never far away.

The weapons were probably going to the
Middle East
.
 
Over
seven hundred years later and the area
was
still rife
with disorder.
 
Nicolas had learned a
hard lesson over the years, realizing Matthias had been right all along.
 
Death was an inevitable part of the world.
 
Just not for them.
 
They were the immortal guardians, standing up
to the chaos the Illuminati brought forth.

A glint of steel caught Nicolas’ eye, and he glanced
at his watch.
 
Seven minutes had passed,
but when he heard the scream of death coming from the other side of the clearing,
he knew Matthias hadn’t waited to begin.
 
By the time Nicolas arrived, two men were already on the ground, their
heads severed at the neck, blood pumping from their lifeless bodies as their
life flooded Matthias with lightning.
 
It
didn’t even make the behemoth pause. He continued to fight as the arcs of
electricity passed into him, making him even stronger.

Nicolas caught one still standing off guard, plunging
his sword through the man’s back as another rounded on him.
 
He started to shut down and fight just as
Matthias had trained him to so many years before.
 
His blade swung, striking his opponent’s
weapon. The dance began, the thrust and parry of a violent pairing, the two
dueling to the death.
 
Nicolas felt the
cold sweat of battle sprinkling along his brow and sliding down his back, even
in the coolness of the night.

The Illuminati foe was spirited, fighting with much
skill, but finally, Nicolas speared the man in the chest, slicing through his
sternum and ripping down through ribs to get to his heart.
 
Pushing the man off his sword, Nicolas
watched as he fell limply to the ground.
 
A blow to the heart wasn’t enough to ensure the man … or thing, as it
was not truly a man any longer … would not come back to life. The only way was
to take his head off his shoulders.
 
Nicolas rounded to the side and chopped the head off, a clean
break.
 
Lightning flooded his body,
making him freeze as the strength roiled through him.

Sirens began to howl in the near distance, the
civilian police.
 
Nicolas turned to
Matthias, concern filling him.
 
They were
far enough outside civilization for a police presence to not interfere with
their work.
 
Perhaps they were going to
another scene, an accident or some other incident.
 
But their close presence could make it more
difficult to flee the location, especially if they were taking the weapons away
to be destroyed.

“Should we leave and hope the police will confiscate
the weapons?” Nicolas considered out loud, sharing his idea with Matthias.

“Even if the police took them, the Illuminati would
have no problem taking them back and potentially killing the men protecting
them.
 
We have no choice but to load them
up and take them with us, or they will arrive to their intended recipient
eventually.”

A shuffle caught Nicolas’ gaze.
 
“Too late, boys.”

The first man.
 
Nicolas hadn’t taken his
neck yet.
 
The gun blast struck him in
the chest, and he reeled back.
 
Another
shot took him to the ground.
 
This was
the end.
 
Once he was on the ground, the
Illuminati henchman could take his neck, and he would find oblivion.
 
For some reason, the thought wasn’t as scary
as he’d imagined.
 
He would finally know
peace.
 
Blackness stole over him as the
sounds of sirens grew louder.
 

****

As sirens began to sound in the distance, Britt
readied the room for the patient before going in to check vitals on her other
patients.
 
They’d already received the
call for a gunshot victim on the way, ETA ten minutes.
 
The patients were all growing weary, waiting
to see a doctor as well, but the worst of the accident victims would come
first.
 
Now a GSV would bump ahead of
them, too.
 
She allayed as many of their
fears as she could, made them as comfortable as possible, and held on that the
night eventually had to come to an end.

After the week Britt had had, she was bone weary.
 
Working in an understaffed ER had led to her
tenth day straight, but the adrenaline was quickly kicking in within the midst
of the chaos.
 
Her heart was a steady
thud in her chest, her ears ringing slightly.
 
It was no different than any other emergency situation, just on a
grander scale.

So why did she have goose bumps, and why did her chest
clench in panic?

Something was coming, barreling down on her, and she
wasn’t sure what it was.
 
Perhaps it was
all the long days in a row pushing her over the edge into utter
exhaustion.
 
She just hoped they could
free a doctor from the bus accident to help the man coming in, but she doubted
that was possible since Joanne had already been pulled to help finish up the wounded
accident victims.
 
The
EMTs
would be the only help Britt would have until a doctor
could be freed up.
 
The hospital was a
small rural one.
 
They couldn’t handle
multiple emergencies on this scale.
 
It
was already all hands on deck as it was.
 

The sirens grew louder but stopped as the ambulance
began to back up to the double doors around the corner.
 
Reflections from the red lights danced along
the walls, flooding the hallway with the fiery glow.
 
Britt moved from the readied rooms to the
entrance and helped bring the first man in.
 
He was huge, his impressive feet dangling off the end of the
gurney.
 
A splash of bright red covered
the center of his wide chest, his shirt cut away and baring an expanse of
muscled flesh.
 
Those muscles would
benefit the patient as muscles were denser and would have made it harder for
the bullet to penetrate.
 
The EMT held
cotton gauze to the wound as Britt helped guide the stretcher into the
room.
 
Another of the
EMTs
entered the small cell and helped them lift the man off the trolley and onto
the waiting bed.

“His BP is over 75 and rising.
 
Sats
are 98
unassisted and pulse is 65.
 
He seems to
be getting stronger.
 
The wound isn’t as
bad as I originally thought once I cleaned him up.
 
It doesn’t appear deep, either.
 
Not sure why, but it seems the bullet stopped
just before it got to his heart.
 
Weirdest thing I’ve ever seen.”

Britt looked up at the woman as the male EMT left
them.
 
Bullets didn’t just
stop
.
 
The EMT must be new.

“I’ll help move the other guy in while you triage this
one if you point the way.”

Britt stood taller.
 
“The other guy?”

“Ambulance two has the other guy.
 
They should be backing up now.”

“I got a call for one GSV, not two.”

“There are two of them.
 
Not sure how
that
ball got dropped.”

“You guys are staying with me until we can free up a doc?”

“There’s a backlog of calls.
 
Something’s in the air tonight.
 
Must be the full moon.”

“You can’t go out on another call until you release
your patient, and I refuse to accept.
 
We
don’t have the manpower right now. They’re all in the OR already.
 
With the bus accident, we’re deep in the
weeds.”
 
How was Britt supposed to handle
two gunshot victims on her own?
 
“You’ll
have to take one of them to Carson General.
 
If you can’t stay, I can’t commit to their care.”

“
Carson
is two hours away.”
 
The woman thrust the
files over for the man on the gurney, and Britt signed off before hovering back
over the man.

“You can’t come in and dump two on me.
 
Take the other one to
Carson
.”

The woman growled and ran from the room.
 
Britt didn’t have time to worry about what
they chose to do.
 
She had a gunshot
victim that required her attention in her bed.
 
She lifted the gauze to take a look at what she had.
 
As soon as her fingers touched the man’s
skin, she felt a ripple of energy flow through her.
 
Waves of power, waves of strength rushed from
her hand into his body, and they flooded back into her as well.
 
Connected in the most ethereal way, she saw
inside his soul and was flayed open to him as well.
 
Lust swamped her, making her body cry out
with desire.
 
Her pussy ached to be
filled, the need to be connected in the most basic way overriding her logical
mind.

She fought the sensation, her body quivering at the
power she reined in.
 
His eyes popped
open, and he stared at her.
 
It wasn’t
just a stare.
 
He was looking through her
and into her soul.
 
She froze, rooted to
the floor.
 
She felt his large hand grasp
her wrist, unable to break away from his gaze.
 
Light flooded her, the room growing brilliant around her, the
illumination steadily growing brighter and brighter.
 
Britt pulled her eyes from his and looked at
his body.
 
It glowed just as brightly as
hers did.
 

He drew her hand to his wound, and it began to heal as
she watched.
 
Skin joined itself back
together, and the blood absorbed back within, as if the injury had never been
there.
 
A blackened bullet slowly pushed
to the surface as the last of the wound was healed.
 
As quickly as it had begun, it was over.
 
The glow darkened, and the usually bright
hospital lighting looked pale in comparison.

She breathed shallowly, her breath coming in gulps as
she tried to right herself.
 
Smoke lifted
from the odd looking bullet, and it scorched her skin when she reached for
it.
 
She dropped it to the floor, where
it promptly melted.
 
Melted?
 
What kind of bullets are
these?

“What was that?” the man growled out, his wild-eyed
stare pushing her further off balance and making her forget the bullets.

“I … I don’t know.”
 
She did, to a point, but nothing like that had ever happened.
 
A simple touch had never caused her gift to
short circuit and go haywire.
 
And the
need she’d felt, it hadn’t gone away completely.
 
She met his gaze once more, embarrassment
filling her.
 
Besides the elderly woman
earlier that morning, no one had ever seen her powers at work.
 
She’d only allowed
Beverly
to see because the woman was so close
to death and if she had told, Britt was sure they’d believe her tales to be the
hallucinations of a woman on the edge.

Having been witnessed, she was fearful.
 
She’d worked hard to hide whatever it was she
had within her.
 
It could be the
beginning of the end.

“Where is Nicolas?”

“Who?
 
Was he the other victim brought in with
you?
 
They’re about to transport him to
Carson General.
 
I couldn’t take both of
you.”
 
She supposed she could now, as it
appeared he was perfectly fine.