Two Knights of Indulgence (6 page)

The man jumped from the bed, his tattered shirt
falling off his body as he moved.
 
She
tried to block his escape but was thrust against the wall as he barreled out of
the room.
 
Britt pulled herself off the
floor where she’d slid and ran after him.
 
“Wait!
 
You need to be
checked!”
 
What if he was the
shooter?
 
She had to stop him before he
hurt the man in the ambulance.

He busted out the doors toward the vehicle as it was
pulling away, and she ran as fast as she could to catch up.
 
He ripped open the back doors, and Britt
could see the look of surprise on the female
EMT’s
face as she hovered over the other patient.
 
Brakes squealed on the vehicle as the man began pulling the gurney out
of the ambulance, the
EMTs
working hard to keep it
in.

The man was a brute, pure muscle rippling as he
reached in, grasped the male EMT, and threw him to the ground.
 
Fear seized Britt as she neared, knowing she
couldn’t handle the strength he had, but she had to try.
 
She jumped on his back, wrapping her arms
around his neck and pulling as hard as she could.
 
“Security!
 
Security!”

He twisted and turned below her, trying to throw her
off, but she held on like glue.
 
“Security!”

A few of the more mobile patients or family members
had drifted to the doorway, watching as she tried to wrestle the man.
 
No one else ran to assist her.
 
Britt was utterly alone with a monster of a
man hell-bent on getting to the second victim.
 
She might as well have been a fly buzzing around his head, annoying but
altogether ineffective.

“That the best you got, healer?”

The man grasped the gurney and yanked it out of the
ambulance, ripping apart the locks that held it to the ambulance floor.
 
The driver jumped out of his seat and hedged
close.
 
“We all need to calm down, man.”

“I am calm,” he spat.

Britt knew the man was actually speaking the truth,
which rattled her.
 
From her spot around
his neck, she could feel his pulse pumping against her arm.
 
His heartbeat was steady and unchanging.
 
He didn’t breathe heavily.
 
He hadn’t even broken a sweat.

“Leave my brother
be
.
 
He’ll recover.”

The
EMTs
from the second
ambulance rounded behind him, circling in close.
 
She knew it was a mistake to circle the
man.
 
If he felt too enclosed, he could
lash out and truly hurt someone.
 
The
driver rounded the beast of a man.
 
“He’s
been seriously wounded and needs medical attention.
 
We’re not trying to hurt him.
 
I swear.”

“He needs our help,” Britt whispered from his
back.
 
She suddenly felt the humor of her
position, wrapped around his neck.
 
Knowing she must have looked stupid, she slowly slipped down him and
dropped to the ground.

“He doesn’t need your help,” he said to the driver
before turning to Britt.
 
“But perhaps he
could use
yours
.”

“We can take him inside.
 
I can see what I can do.”

“They leave.”
 
The man pointed at the ambulance and the
EMTs
before rounding back to her.
 
“And we will go inside.”

The
EMTs
gazed at Britt, all
shaking their heads no.
 
The driver
stepped closer. “We should go in with her.
 
To help.”

“She doesn’t need your help.
 
Leave.
 
Or I’ll become
un—
calm.”

“It’ll be alright, guys.
 
Just go.
 
I’ll help his brother, and we’ll be just fine.”

The
EMTs
watched her,
concern etched over their faces.
 
The
driver shook his head before moving to his co-worker on the ground.
 
They lifted the fallen man into the ambulance
as the brute dragged the wheeled gurney closer to the ER doors, her arm in a
stranglehold.
 
She still felt a rush of
power at his touch, and it made her feel lightheaded.
 
He pushed the patient into the room they had
just exited and then eyed her, releasing his grip on her arm.
 
“Go ahead.
 
Do what you do.”

Britt halted.
 
She momentarily forgot all of her training and knowledge for a split
second as the situation hit her.
 
She was
afraid, yet knew the man wouldn’t hurt her.
 
“Help me move him to the bed and roll the gurney out.”

The man picked up his brother without help and laid
him on the surface as if the man weighed nothing and rolled out the stretcher
as instructed.
 
She moved close and noted
three gunshot wounds slowly trickling blood behind red-stained gauze.
 
As she peeled away the first, she was
surprised to see a healing wound.
 
It
wasn’t fresh but looked days old.

“How long ago was he hurt?”

The blond behemoth checked his watch. “Thirty minutes,
give or take.”

“That’s impossible.”

“Can you help him or not?
 
Touch him.
 
Do your light
brite
thing and let us be on our
way.”

“Light
brite
?
 
I don’t know what
that
was.”
 

“Liar.
 
I can see that on your
face.
 
You know what it was.
 
Just do it.”

It
wasn’t
a
complete lie, but she didn’t have time to argue with him.
 
She looked back to her patient, uncertainty
filling her.
 
If she touched him, would
her gift go bonkers again?
 
It would be
easy enough to find out.
 
She slowly
peeled the gauze off the second and third entry wounds and saw the same thing,
a healing injury.

Britt lowered her palm between the gashes and took a
deep breath.
 
Light filled the room once
more, and she felt the energy pumping around her as the wounds began to knit
together.
 
Need swamped her, the same
intense sexual desire making her body quiver as the lights swirled around
her.
 
Sweat beaded her brow as she fought
the reaction once more.

Two bullets lifted to the surface of the man’s chest
once the holes sealed themselves, but there was nothing of the third.
 
She moved them and found them as hot as the
one she’d removed from the brute.
 
As
they hit the floor, they melted as well.
 
Britt lifted her hand away, startled at not only the bullets but also
her odd reaction to these two patients.

She’d never healed gunshot wounds.
 
Most of her talents had been to determine the
root cause of an injury or illness and improve it.
 
She could heal smaller abrasions, but nothing
of this magnitude.
 
What was it about
these men that amplified her talent?

The darker man, Nicolas the brute had called him,
opened his brilliant blue eyes with a rush, sucking in a deep breath.
 
He looked at Britt before turning to the
other man.
 
“What was that, Matthias?”

“Your guess is as good as mine, brother.”

Both men stared at Britt as she began stepping closer
to the opening to the room.
 
“You both
need to leave, now, before everyone returns.
 
And never speak of this again.”

“She may be right.”
 
The brute caught her gaze before turning to his brother, a grimace
twisting his handsome features.
 
Britt
caught herself for a moment, shocked she’d found the beast of a man attractive,
but the closer she looked, the more she realized how drawn she was to him, to
them both.
 
One was light and intense,
the other dark and innocent looking.
 
They couldn’t be more different in appearance if they tried.

The attraction she felt rocked her to her core.
 
A voice within told her not to let them
leave.
 
She shook her head and tried to
ignore the call.

Nicolas rose to his full height, and she saw he was
almost as big as the brute.
 
In the small
space, she felt crowded.
 
She stepped
back to catch her breath and hoped to make her heart stop beating so loudly.
 
As she moved back, motion to her left caught
her gaze.
 
A man in black steadily walked
toward her with a menacing look.

Her breath caught in her lungs, and the world spun
around her before a bright light blinded her completely.

Chapter Three

Matthias saw the woman light up like a light bulb
again as she moved into the hallway, her intake of breath making goose bumps
skitter down his neck.
 
Something wasn’t
right. He knew it the moment her feet lifted off the floor.
 
He pushed closer to see what she faced and
froze at the sight of the man who’d gunned them down in the woods.
 
The same gun was raised and pointed at the
woman.

Matthias shoved her out of the way, but she wouldn’t
budge.
 
He heaved with all his might once
again, but she was immovable.
 
Suddenly,
he realized no gunshot had sounded.
 
The
Illuminati henchman was frozen.
 
Nicolas
moved to the other side of the woman and looked at the two, his face showing
the same astonishment he felt himself.

“What’s going on here, Matthias?”

“I have no clue.
 
She healed me, and I made her heal you.”

“We regenerate, so why bother?”

“A gunshot seems to take longer to recover from than a
sword wound.
 
I knew we needed to get out
of here as soon as
poss
—” Matthias paused as the
female began floating across the floor toward their Illuminati foe.
 
The man at the other end didn’t move at all,
but his expression began to twist into a mask of terror.

Matthias took a few steps to close in.
 
He wasn’t sure what to do, but he was sure
going to see what was occurring.
 
The
closer the woman became, the brighter she got, the walls of the hallways nearly
white with her illumination.
 
One of her
hands rose before her, and she placed it in the middle of the man’s forehead.

The light grew brighter.
 
Her head fell back as the man began to
soundlessly scream, his face contorting into an expression of pain before he
began to age ever so slowly.
 
Deep
wrinkles formed over his face, deep jowls forming along his cheeks before his
skin began to look leathery and darken.
 

The light died, and she backed away, slowly dropping
until her feet hit the floor.
 
The man’s
body dropped before her, a husk of his former self.
 
He appeared mummified, bones and dried skin
all that seemed to remain.

Matthias stared at Nicolas before turning back to the
woman.
 
She spun on her heel and faced
them, a smile twisting her lips.
 
Her
eyes still
glowed
the soft blue that had filled the
space when she’d both healed and killed.

“He’s healed now.”
 
With that, she dropped to the floor beside the corpse she’d left behind.

Matthias felt shock for the second time that day.
 
It wasn’t easy to surprise a man who had
lived as long as he had.
 
Every day wore
on, an endless tedium that had made him grow numb to everything around
him.
 
He’d traveled the world several
times over, experiencing everything there was to see, to taste, and to
know.
 
She was different, and different
made him stand up and take notice.
 
It
wasn’t just her healing ability that made him pay attention, either.

His instincts screamed at him to pick her up, care for
her, and make her his own, but that wasn’t the man he was.
 
A woman was a liability and would only slow
them down.
 
He ran a shaking hand through
his too-short hair and shuddered as a sigh rose from his chest.
 
How long had it been since he’d had a
woman?
 
He wasn’t like Nicolas, who
seemed incapable of going more than a few months without charming the pants off
some poor unsuspecting woman.
 
It had
been at least two decades since Matthias had slaked the lusts that he kept a
tight control over.