Renegade (29 page)

Too much time.

“Radio ahead,” Stefan said. “Order a surgical team to assist me and have a suite prepped. I want the elevator on the ground floor, doors open, and a crash cart by the landing pad. When we land, this stretcher goes on a gurney,
stat
.”

Too bad they couldn’t translocate to the infirmary. Every building on the property was warded against such incursions. Or excursions, for that matter. Even if that weren’t so, the systemic shock of the maneuver would likely kill someone in Javier’s condition.

“ETA, three minutes.”

“Forty over—no reading.”

“Come on, Javy,” Stefan ground out. Steeling himself for the worst, preparing to fight it, he heard the landing gear come down. Felt the chopper descend.

Javier’s heart faltered, then stopped.

Stefan managed not to flinch at the final gurgling wheeze, the trickle of blood on his friend’s lips. The still silence of his chest.

The chopper touched down. Staffers in scrubs scrambled through the open doors, grabbing for the stretcher, pulling it onto a waiting gurney.

“Crash cart,” Stefan shouted, leaping out. Electricity plus shrapnel would cause burns, but those were easy to heal. He grabbed the paddles from a tall orderly, checked the charge, and snapped, “Clear.”

The jolt of electricity succeeded. Javier’s heart restarted.

“Bag him,” Stefan ordered as the heartbeat faltered again. He vaulted onto the gurney to straddle his patient.

Orderlies flanked them, ready to roll as soon as the respiratory bag mask was in place. Stefan started chest compressions while Susan Miller, one of his staff doctors, applied the mask.

“Go,” she said. She ran beside the gurney, pumping air into Javier’s lungs to Stefan’s count as the orderlies rushed them into the building, down the corridor to the elevator. They dropped one level for the OR and shot down the hall to it.

Dr. John Parkhurst waited there, his dark face grim in the fluorescent lights. “Callie has a team waiting in the OR. How bad?”

Stefan gave him a quick summary, too aware this all might be in vain. “Take over while I scrub.” He hopped off the gurney as John picked up the CPR.

The organic damage it caused could be corrected easily now that they were home. If only Javier’s system hadn’t endured more than it could withstand.

Stefan ran into the locker room. Yanking off his bloody fatigues, grabbing clean scrubs, he couldn’t help remembering more was at stake than one mage’s life.

The Void demons didn’t have a portal to this world. So how were they communicating with the ghouls? There had to be some method.

Maybe the demons have evolved, said the unpleasant voice of logic in his brain. We have. Why shouldn’t they?

Because stopping them was hard enough without their gaining new powers. They’d never given up easily. Odds were, they’d try to open a portal again in order to bring Void demons to Earth, bringing plague, terror and death.

If that happened, the world was seriously and totally fucked.

Three hours after landing, Stefan stuffed his bloody surgical gown and gloves into the disposal bin. Javier had survived the surgery. Now all they could do was wait. At least magic could speed healing, and Stefan’s very competent staff would take over that part.

Stefan had called Javier’s wife, Karen, and caught her en route from Athens. When she arrived, she would want an update, so no use trying to rest. He couldn’t anyway, not after surgery.

Instead, he wandered down to his office and through the door marked
DR. STEFAN HARPER, CHIEF PHYSICIAN
. The anteroom was empty. His assistant was out, probably at lunch.

Stefan glanced at the wall clock. Was it really just one thirty? His mind might still be keyed up, but his body felt as though he’d put in a full day’s work.

Visitors didn’t see this part of the building. They were only allowed in an area rigged to look like a paranormal research lab. The Georgia Institute for Paranormal Research was the cover identity for the mages’ Collegium, the headquarters for the Southeastern U.S. Shire. And wouldn’t there be hell to pay if Mundanes ever learned about that?

The Burning Times, the witch hunts of the seventeenth century, had provided a salutary lesson. Some humans could be trusted with the truth but only a small, almost minuscule, few. Open practice of magic was dangerous, and not only to magekind.

As Stefan had more reason than most to know.

He shoved the memory aside and sat at his desk, punching the button for voicemail. Nothing much interesting there, a couple of speaking invitations, an offer to cowrite a paper.

“Stefan,” the fourth message began in the Wayfarer sheriff’s familiar, gravelly tone, “it’s Dan Burton. We got an odd murder case here, could use some help. Deceased is missing a lot of blood and has an unknown toxin in what’s left of it.”

Now, that was intriguing. Stefan focused as the sheriff continued, “I know you’ve done some consulting. Cathy Lamb at GBI recommended you for this. If you’re interested, give me a call. Word’s out about the wounds somehow, so I’ve set up a press conference for late this afternoon. You can get an idea what they’re talking about in the
Oracle
.”

Weird wounds and strange toxins sounded ghoul-related. Stefan turned to the computer and pulled up the Wayfarer weekly
Oracle
newspaper’s site. The murder was splashed across the homepage. The victim was an elderly woman, a retired music teacher.

The sheriff’s department was withholding details. Of course they were, or at least they were trying to, but there was a reference to a purple-eyed suspect and a description of deep, curving wounds, as though made from talons.

Cold prickles rose on Stefan’s neck. Purple eyes as in Void demon host? Talons as in ghouls?

The article said the woman had moved to Wayfarer from Essex, North Carolina. That was Camellia Wray’s hometown.

He could still see Cami’s face, pale, gray eyes wide with hurt and fear as she accused him of cheating on her.

“
Marry me
,” he’d said in desperation, “
and I’ll tell you where I go on those missing weekends.
” If she would commit to him, he’d thought, maybe he could trust her with the truth. Maybe she loved him enough not to freak out if he told her he was a mage, that he went away to study magical healing techniques with a mage physician.

“
Tell me
,” she’d flung back at him, “
and maybe I’ll marry you.
”

Maybe
hadn’t been enough for him to take the risk. Instead he’d kept his silence and lost her.

Stefan frowned at the screen. He’d been over her for years, of course, but he still remembered that kick in the gut she’d delivered, first by doubting him and then by leaving him.

He’d bet there weren’t many music teachers in a town the size of Essex.

So what if this woman had taught Cami Wray? Cami had nothing to do with this case. Even if she came to the funeral—likely with a husband and kids in tow—he wouldn’t see her because he wouldn’t attend. Thinking of her shouldn’t make his gut clench. That had to be tension from the hard day he’d had, one that was far from over.

The picture accompanying the article showed the victim’s bright eyes and kind smile. She’d lived a quiet, ordinary life but died with a weird toxin in her blood, a toxin whose nature Stefan could probably guess without seeing the labs. A toxin he needed to sample, one no Mundane doctor could properly identify.

If Stefan was right, Dan Burton and his crew would be up against a foe they couldn’t hope to beat. Stefan picked up the phone.

“Thanks for clearing me so quickly, Sheriff Burton.” Considering the suspicion many local cops nursed toward any and all Feds, Mel wouldn’t have been surprised if he’d sat on her request. Instead, here she was, midafternoon, the very next day. “I appreciate your bringing me in on this.”

They stood beside the corner desk he’d assigned to her, the only uncluttered one of eight in the room. With deputies serving as courtroom bailiffs, patrolling the county, and managing the press out front, she and the sheriff had only the dispatcher and clerk at the front counter for company.

“I’m glad to have the help,” Burton said. “I ran that wound pattern through the National Crime Information Center and got a match with a case up near the Great Dismal Swamp in North Carolina. Another one down in the Everglades, although not identical to ours, has similarities.”

So they couldn’t know yet whether they were hunting a serial killer. Mel nodded. “I knew the wound pattern seemed familiar. I can’t access NCIC from my laptop, so I left a message asking a colleague to do it, but he hasn’t gotten back to me yet.”

Frowning, the burly man shook his head. “Damnedest thing. Anyway, I asked the Atlanta office to bring you in on this. Brunswick office is our usual contact, but you’re already here.”

“I appreciate that, Sheriff.”

He laid a manila folder on the desk. “Copies of the reports are in here. Bottom line, we found nothin’ new.”

“I’m sorry to hear that. What can I do?”

“For starters, you can back me up at the press conference. I guess you noticed the mob out front. Dr. Milledge did the autopsy first thing this morning. I’m thinking somebody at the hospital just couldn’t help flapping their lips.”

Mel and the sheriff exchanged a glance of mutual frustration. She said, “Judging by the chatter at lunch, I’d say you’re right.”

Some people in the café—the Goddess’s Hearth, across the street from the Wayfarer
Oracle
newspaper, names doubtless adding to the town’s New Age-y reputation—had speculated the murder was some kind of Satanic ritual. They might be on track. Those blaming otherworldly creatures absolutely were not. What was it with this town and woo-woo?

“There’s other strange factors we’ve managed to keep a lid on,” Burton said. “Report’s in your file, but I’ll go ahead and tell you, most of Miss Baldwin’s blood was gone, and what was left had a strange substance in it Milledge couldn’t identify. Like the Great Dismal case.”

Mel shook her head. “‘Curiouser and curiouser,’ as the saying goes. But you think the yard is the murder scene, even with no blood?”

“We do.” Rubbing his chin, he added, “There’s signs of a struggle in the grass. Anyway, Milledge recommended a toxicology consult, so I phoned the Georgia Bureau of Investigation. Their top choice is a fellow who’s just an hour or so away. And here he is.”

Before Mel could turn, a man spoke in a rich, clear baritone behind her. “Good morning, Angela, Corey,” he said to the clerk and dispatcher.

A shiver of recognition rocked through Mel. But surely this couldn’t be Stefan Harper. She risked a quick glance over her shoulder at the man strolling around the end of the counter and into the territory reserved for those with badges and weapons. Oh, God, it was him.

Her heart skipped a beat. A buzz filled her ears, and she lost the thread of the sheriff’s comments. Stefan Harper. Voice of an archangel, hands of a sex god. Or so she’d once described him.

“Hey, Stefan.” Sheriff Burton walked forward to meet him.

Mel turned hastily back to the desk, toying with the paper in the file. She was so over him, had been for years. So why wouldn’t her breathing settle? It must be the shock of seeing him. It could only be that.

Instead of the jeans and T-shirt combo he’d favored in med school, when she’d known him, he wore a charcoal suit that fit as though it’d been tailored for him. Otherwise, he looked the same. Same thick, dark hair neatly combed but in need of a trim. Same strong chin and straight, aristocratic nose. Same serious brown eyes with gold glints that never showed in photos.

Same generous mouth so adept at arousing her body.

Once so adept. That was totally over.

Breathe, damn it.

“Thanks for coming,” Sheriff Burton said, his gravelly voice a sharp contrast to Stefan’s almost liquid one.

“I don’t guess you’ve had a chance to go to the hospital yet.”

“No, sorry. I’ll listen in on the press conference from the back, then talk to the crime scene unit before I go to the morgue. Milledge agreed to meet me there.”

“That works. Come on, I’ll introduce you to the FBI agent working with us on this.”

Footsteps came closer. Mel steeled herself.
Deep breath. In. Out. In.

“Stefan, this is Special Agent Wray. Mel, meet Dr. Stefan Harper, our medical consultant.”

Mel squared her shoulders and turned to greet the man who had broken her heart.