Dawn of a Dark Knight (7 page)

In the background, Markus yelled, “Got her out, didn’t I?”

Into the phone, Kane asked, “You get hurt?”

“A little.”

Off the phone, she heard muffled cursing.

Kira said, “Kane? Kane!”

“Yeah, I’m here.”

“Get the details later. We lived, no thanks to Mr. Unprepared. Listen, this new deal tomorrow worries me. I’d like you to come along.”

“Wish I could, but it’s out of my hands. The company is sending me on a job that’s been arranged for months. But I can be about twenty-four hours behind you.”

“I’d ask what you’re really up to, but you won’t tell me, will you? Security agency, my ass. If this goes smoothly, then we’ll be out of there by then.”

Kane laughed. “Right.
Smooth
isn’t in Markus’s vocabulary.”

****

With a left-click, she hit the
Book It
button on the travel website. Pain squeezed Kira’s chest. She wheezed, barely able to move air.

She pushed at her chest in a useless attempt to remove the invisible pressure on her ribcage. Her analytical mind diagnosed it to be a heart attack. A clumsy grab for the cordless on her desk sent it skidding into a slip-n-slide for the edge, ending in a plastic-cracking clatter against linoleum. No doubt the phone’s battery was yards from the unit.

The pain disappeared. A few test breaths…no crushing ache, easy draws.

Not typical of a heart attack.

A male voice boomed, “I need your help.”

“Who’s there?” Glancing around, she found herself still solo in the office. Recognition dawned. Her stomach did a small crazy flip. Goosebumps prickled her arms. No mistaking that lightly accented, deep, masculine baritone. It was him.

Violent stinging pain ripped through her chest and abdomen. From one breath to the next, it vanished. She darted into the bathroom across the hall, barely pushing through the door of a stall before her stomach emptied. Afterwards, she rinsed and spit tap water. In the mirror, she examined herself for evidence of illness. Nothing looked off other than the fact her face was the same lime green hue as the wall, and her hair was a disaster, refusing the confinement of its braid.

Acute pain cramped again. She held onto the counter as her legs folded.

Kira, I need your help
, Ashor’s voice thundered inside her skull. She grabbed her head and sat hard on the cold floor.

Her mind needed logic to explain this. She didn’t feel like she was losing it, but then again, if she was going crazy would she know it? She had already hallucinated him once in the past twenty-four hours. Or maybe not? Her heart thudded as her brain began to accept that perhaps their encounter in Florida had been real.

This must be his pain. Why did she get a complimentary reality ride during the worst moments in this guy’s life? Feeling his agony led her to help him escape the Hashishins’ compound when she’d been a high school senior. The torture inflicted on Ashor back then had been no picnic to live through even secondhand. Yet she hadn’t felt anything from him in over a decade.

Now he was speaking to her. In her mind!

Through halting breaths, she spoke aloud, “Ashor? How are you doing this?”

She shuffled close to the toilet when another round of threatening nausea hit. One look at the grimy floor discouraged her impulse to set up camp next to the porcelain throne.

After a few minutes without any new mental chit-chat, she concluded she was delusional. And the nausea was gone.

Just as she found the strength to push off the wall and go for the exit his voice exploded in her mind.
Come to me.

Her butt hit the floor. She waited, expecting more pain. None came.

Excitement and fear coalesced. She called to him, but this time not out loud. Instead she thought,
What’s going on? Where are you?

No reply.

This was ridiculous. Had to be her imagination.

An impression of urgency hit her. Someone nearby struggled to stay alive. Her healing power always homed in on trauma patients about to get a Grim Reaper visit. This victim was in the emergency area of the hospital. The aura was male. Yet it was unlike that of a typical injured or sick patient. It projected a dangerous, yet mystical, vitality and stubborn rejection of aid, but there was deep pain. The emotion the aura projected dimmed, usually an indication that the person was losing consciousness.

Kira smoothed her black pencil skirt and adjusted the plum wrap sweater into place beneath her lab coat. She swiped her stethoscope off the floor near the toilet and draped it around her neck. Her watch indicated she had exactly eight minutes to make it to bedside rounds.

If she skipped, her patients would get stuck with an intern for the second day in a row. Guilt tugged at her to resume the daily grind.

Curiosity won. She moved toward the anomalous aura in the ER, knowing full well she was going to get her ass reamed for skipping rounds. Intuition suggested this was a very bad, possibly life-altering decision.

The emergency floor of the hospital bustled with the aftermath of a mass casualty incident. Waiting patients lounged everywhere. Some were walking wounded.

Kira stayed on the periphery and avoided eye contact with medical personnel to evade an involuntary draft into the chaos. The aberrant aura radiated from a treatment room off the main emergency floor. At the doorway of the room, she scanned the four male bedridden patients. A solo nurse attended a gigantic, unconscious man in the far corner—the owner of the unusual aura.

He had the physique of a pro wrestler. Short, blond spikes barely camouflaged an intricate blue scalp tattoo on the left side of his head. More of the stylized tribal tats etched his left cheek and neck. The monitor next to his bed read stable stats and chirped a slow mechanical ring with each heartbeat.

Kira nodded in greeting to the unfamiliar, middle-aged brunette nurse and scanned her name badge.

“What happened, Susan?”

“Not sure of the details, Doctor. These two men were brought in right before the bus accident. They were found half dead on Greenmount Avenue. Such a bad part of town. It’s probably gang related. The other guy is over there.” The nurse pointed to a bed across the room. “The attending checked them out and said they could wait, if I bandaged them. I don’t know. That other guy’s stats aren’t good, but I haven’t had a chance to hook him up to the monitor yet. It’s just me on this room right now with the bus trauma and all. I’m glad you’re here.”

Kira nodded with mute authority.

“I’ll take a look at them. Thanks for all the work you’ve done so far.”

Gently, she peeled away the top of the bloody bandage encircling the blond man’s chest and gasped.

“Yeah, it’s some tattoo, isn’t it?” Susan said as she finished her bandage on his arm.

“Sure is.”

That distinctive blue triangle symbol in the dead center of his chest was a Scimitar magus designation. Three scimitar blades crossed to form the edges of a triangle.

“Need any more help from me?” asked Susan.

“I can take it from here, if you need to move on.” Kira rested her fingers on the magus’s arm. Instantly she knew he was in shock—too much blood loss from the lacerations across his torso and blood slowly filling his chest. The stats monitor may look good, but this guy was on the road to death.

Quickly, she moved to examine the other guy. He wasn’t Ashor. Disappointment prompted her to aura scan for any more magi in the vicinity.

None.

She hadn’t realized how much she wanted this to be him.

The sleeping, dark-skinned, Asian giant radiated a potent, yet nonthreatening energy.

As she leaned close, his eyes flew open and trapped her in a piercing black evaluation.

His hand clamped down on her arm. “Get him out of here. Now. He has to return to his
senariai
…I mean, wife.”

At his touch, info on his condition piled into her mind. He was within minutes of knocking on death’s door. The fractured ribs and pulverized left kidney were on the not-so-bad side of his injury tally. In addition to multiple fractures in both legs, he was paralyzed from two luxated vertebrae. How could he be so calm? So accepting?

Her eyes glassed up, knowing he was a goner. “We need to get you to surgery.”

“Too late for me…They’re coming, and I know you can sense they’re close.”

She shot upright and scrutinized the room’s entry. A doctor she recognized as a surgery resident strode past. No one else appeared in the doorway. Yet, she did detect the icy darkness of evil closing in.

The magus pulled her toward him and whispered, “I know what you are. I foresaw your coming.”

He knew what?
She tugged against his hold, but he didn’t release.

“Take my totem. Keep it safe. Whatever goes down, don’t let them get it.” He pushed a hefty gold wristband into her hands.

Potent white energy heated her palms. “I can’t take this.” She rolled the piece, marveling at the intricacy of its patterns, which looked like mini-hieroglyphics.

No reply came back. She glanced up sharply. The void of death greeted her in his dilated eyes. Sorrow settled in her gut.

Now was not the time for regrets about another Grim Reaper win. The
they
he indicated had to be a Hashishin or somebody else of the same ilk. Someone she had no desire to meet.

The nurse had moved on to a patient a few beds down.

Back to the blond…and decision time. Traditional medicine wasn’t going to cut it. He’d die long before they got him booked into an OR. Magically healing him would risk exposure. She had no desire to be swept into his world, fearing not necessarily him or the other magi, but their enemies. Ashor’s untimely plea for help slid into her mind. Coincidence? Probably not. She didn’t believe in fate, but the odds of these guys ending up in her hospital when Ashor needed her were pretty slim.

To better evaluate the blond guy, she peeled the upper few inches of bandaging away from his chest. Deep slashes ran diagonally in furrows that wept blood. Massive tissue bruising from blunt trauma covered most of his substantial torso. She could imagine only one creature capable of this level of force and viciousness. A daemon. She’d seen one. Once.

She should walk away. Right now. This wasn’t her fight.

Her long-dead father’s French-accented voice echoed in the recesses of her mind.
Magi are all that stand between us and daemons,
ma petite
. They are the guardians of our realm. Our protectors. We must do everything we can when one is in need.

And didn’t that just make her feel like a shit for even considering walking out.
Thanks, Dad.

But could she help this guy? The extent of her healing ability was an unknown. Truthfully, she’d barely taken the power for a test drive. The last time…the only time she intentionally used it was ten years ago. With Ashor. And the results had been a bit disappointing.

She pulled a chair beside the magus’s bed and swallowed her apprehension. With a light touch on his arm, the healing energy within revved up. Effortlessly it flowed into his body. She visualized clearing the blood around his lungs and closing his external wounds. A dizzying weakness indicated she’d expended enough energy. Any more and she’d pass out. A peek beneath the bandage showed only puckered pink scarring. No more cavernous lacerations.

It worked. Wow.

He needed a transfusion to replace the blood he’d lost, but there wasn’t time. She was pretty sure she could not give back what wasn’t there.

The bedside monitor beeped faster as his heart rate picked up. He shifted restlessly for a few seconds and then stilled.

Laser blue eyes popped open and zeroed in on her. They filled with distrust. Feral, smoldering power surged from his body. He grabbed Kira’s wrist roughly, yet demonstrated great control. A bit harder and bones would snap.

Kira detected his power swelling to an explosion. Adrenaline fear surged. Her heart beat so loudly, she was sure he could hear it.

Although he looked human, he most certainly was not. Not all magi might deserve the honor she credited them with. Awaking this unfamiliar warrior may have been a colossal mistake.

Swallowing her fear, she said as calmly as she could manage, “I’m Dr. Hardy. I mean you no harm. Your friend said you must get out of here as fast as possible.”

He scanned the area, his gaze landing on his deceased comrade.

“He’s dead. I’m sorry,” she whispered. “There’s something or someone evil approaching, which I assume are the people your friend wanted you to avoid.”

The magus relaxed his grip on her arm, but didn’t relinquish his hold. Instead, he turned her wrist to examine the underside. His eyes flared.

His voice rumbled deeply, “It is an honor to meet you, Dr. Hardy. We have been waiting a long time for you.”

His words puzzled her. Did his dead friend tell him of her impending arrival?

“How do we get out of here?” He yanked out the oxygen canula as he swung his legs over the edge of the bed. The sheet drifted down, revealing he was butt-naked except for the flimsy bandages around his upper body and arms. Stylized tattoos and scars coursed over every inch of skin on that sculpted body.

Kira cleared her throat as her cheeks heated. She hit the power-off button on the monitor before alarms blared. “You really don’t want to draw that much attention. Pull that sheet around your waist or something.”

With a smug smile, he wrapped the sheet low-rise style. He tugged at the line anchoring his hand to a fluid line.

She grabbed his hand. “Stop. Don’t rip out the IV. I’ll get it.” With a quick pluck, she removed the catheter, and did a magical stop-bleed on the exit site. She clamped off the line so it wouldn’t make a pool on the floor.

Everything in him quieted as if he detected the little cheat she just pulled.

His mouth opened as if to comment, but she rushed to say, “I don’t see your clothes. You get to go in your birthday suit, but with the sheet, please. Lean on me and pretend you’re weak. We’re going to that bathroom across the hall.” They had to get out of this room, naked or not.