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  “Sebastian!” I hissed in frustration. I had been going to give the patient a little disclaimer about how all transfusion blood is carefully checked and completely anonymous but my big-mouthed friend had ruined that.

  “Goddess…my Lady, you cannot!”

  My patient reached for the line in his arm, about to yank it out. I dropped my curving suture needle and grabbed for his big hand instead.

  “Stop!” I put as much command as I could into my voice and stared him right in his rainbow-shifting eyes. “You stop that right now Mr.…” I had to trail off there, because I didn’t know his name.

  “Verrai. Captain Kristoff Verrai of her majesty’s Imperial Guard of Femme One.”

  “Okay, Kristoff,” I said. “That’s quite a title and I bet there’s a long story behind it. But I’ve got a short story for you right now—you try to rip that line out of your arm and I’ll have you in restraints so fast your head will spin.”

  “But…” He shook his head helplessly. “You have the rainbow aura. I am not worthy to receive the sacred blood. My mother was only a lesser noble—I have no royal lineage.”

  “Uh, well that’s okay,” I said, patting his arm. Now he was just spouting nonsense but at least he didn’t seem inclined to pull the line out anymore. “I don’t care about your, uh, lineage,” I told him. “It’s my blood and I say you can have it. All right?”

  He looked deeply troubled but I held his eyes with my own until, at last, he nodded and sank back on the gurney.

  “Very well. But I fear there will be grave repercussions when we get to Court. Or perhaps even before.”

  “Well, we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it, all right?” I said, using one of my dad’s favorite expressions. “For right now, just leave the line alone and let me finish stitching you up.”

  He nodded, his eyes still fixed on my face.

  “I knew you were a La-ti-zal but I never thought you’d be a Healer. The old Goddess-Empress—she whom I still mourn—was a Seer. And so was the Incarnation before her and the Incarnation before her. I thought all of them had the gift of Sight or Knowing in some way.”

  “Uh…sure,” I said, nodding again. Behind me I heard Sebastian whisper to Gloria,

  “Are you hearing this stuff? Better check his blood alcohol level.”

  “On it,” she whispered back.

  I had thought that my patient was settling down again, but then he started shifting on the bed, his hips moving from side to side uncomfortably.

  “What’s wrong, Kristoff?” I asked, frowning at him. “Are you experiencing discomfort? Do you have another wound we should know about?”

  “A wound? No. But discomfort…” He shifted again, one big hand coming to cover his groin. My eyes were drawn to his pelvis and behind me I heard Sebastian give a long, low whistle.

  “Oh my Gawd,” he muttered. “It’s fucking huge.”

  That was when I saw what the patient was trying to hide—a perfectly enormous erection. Seriously, it looked like something out of a porno. The leather kilt was flipped up from Sebastian’s earlier search for another wound and the white under-kilt didn’t hide much. The thin fabric was stretched tight over the patient’s burgeoning member, which he tried vainly to hide with one big hand.

  “Forgive me,” he muttered, his face turning crimson. “It is the effect of your blood, Goddess. I cannot help it.”

  “You can stop calling me that. Dr. Walker will do just fine,” I said, trying to ignore his obvious “problem.”

  “But you are a Goddess—or most believe that you are,” he said, looking at me earnestly. “It is a title of respect.”

  Behind us, Sebastian snorted.

  “Right. The Goddess of Trauma, maybe. You better stop or Miss Goddess’s head will swell too big to fit in the door of the hospital.”

  The patient glared at him.

  “Be still, commoner. I know you cannot see it, but this female has the rainbow aura—she is in fact the true Incarnation of the Goddess-Empress. You are not fit to stand upright in her presence. Better you should grovel on your knees before her and beg her forgiveness for daring to speak so disrespectfully in her presence.”

  “Hey!” Sebastian put a hand on his hip and frowned. “Look, we’re going to just pass that kind of talk off as blood loss. But for your information, Dr. Walker here is just an intern. A very good intern and apparently one with an incredibly rare blood type…” He gave me a speculative look. “But just an intern all the same.”

  “Sebastian…” I glared at him in exasperation. Never knowing when to shut up was my friend’s defining personality trait. Discussing me with a patient was extremely unprofessional and probably broke all kinds of Hippa laws. Not to mention that it was also kind of insulting.

  “Well, it’s true,” he said airily. “Sorry to burst your royal bubble, Goddess, but—”

  The last word ended in a choked gurgle. My patient had sat straight up on the gurney and reached one long arm out to grab Sebastian by the throat. Without any apparent effort, he raised the intern with one hand and glared at him.

  “You do not speak so to the Goddess-Empress,” he said, his deep voice a menacing growl. “It is disrespectful and rude. Were you on Femme One it would be grounds for immediate execution and I would gladly swing the axe myself.”

  “Shit!” I shot to my feet as Sebastian’s sneakered feet kicked a good twelve inches off the floor. “Gloria—give me ten of Haldol now.”

  “Yes, doctor!” Gloria could move fast and she was back with a syringe almost before I could blink. I darted around the side of the bed and injected directly into the patient’s left deltoid. It was twice the dose I would have given anyone else but Kristoff was so big and from the way Sebastian’s face was turning the color of a ripe eggplant, he was strong too.

  The meds kicked in quickly. Kristoff’s muscular arm sagged and Gloria and I were able to get Sebastian away from him.

  My friend coughed and choked, his hand going to his throat to explore for injuries. I thought he might have some bruising but I doubted there was any permanent damage—I hoped not, anyway. Sebastian could be an annoying, arrogant prick at times but he was still the closest thing I had to a friend now that Zoe had disappeared and Leah had moved to Virginia with her jerk of a fiancé who was now her husband.

  Kristoff’s eyelids fluttered over those amazing, rainbow eyes and he seemed to realize what had happened.

  “What is this…this feeling? This lethargy?” he demanded, his deep voice starting to slur. “Wha…what have you done?”

  “I’ve given you something to help you calm down,” I said firmly. “It’s for your own good.” I tried to help guide him back down to the gurney but he resisted.

  “But…how…how can I protect you if I’m…if I can’t…” His eyelids were drooping and his broad shoulders started to sag.

  “Look,” I said, “I don’t know how you know my name but you have a wrong idea. I’m not any kind of Goddess or Empress or anything like that. I’m just a medical intern and you don’t have to protect me.”

  “Yes, I…I do,” he protested. “I…” Suddenly his eyes snapped open and he lifted a wavering arm, pointing to something beyond the pale blue curtain which was still hanging open. His lips moved but for a moment it seemed like he couldn’t speak.

  “What? What is it?” I asked, frowning. Outside the curtain it was just business as usual in the ER. I could see that we were starting to get busier. Interns and attending moved around the beds as well as nurses, techs, and other support staff.

  But one person in particular seemed to bother my patient.

  “D-danger,” he stuttered hoarsely, his wavering arm still outstretched.

  I frowned at what he was pointing at. It was just Carlos, our elderly janitor, emptying the trash. He was a nice old guy with gray hair—probably in his late sixties with a slightly hunched back. He never complained about cleaning up when a patient was sick or incontinent and he was always there to lend a hand when
we needed lifting help.

  “Who, Carlos?” I asked, frowning at Kristoff. “Don’t worry about him—he’s one of the sweetest guys you’ll ever meet.”

  “No…danger!” he insisted. Clearly he was fighting to stay awake. I couldn’t believe it—I had never seen anyone fight off that amount of medication. “Please…” He grabbed my arm, his eyes swirling so many colors now I couldn’t count them. “Give me…help me…wake up. Have to…have to…protect…”

  If he hadn’t looked so serious and desperate I would have laughed at the idea that I needed protection from Carlos. He was such a sweetheart—I would have sworn on a stack of Bibles he wouldn’t hurt a fly.

  Still, I couldn’t help feeling touched at the fiercely protective look in Kristoff’s strangely gorgeous eyes. After he woke up I would have to have someone who specialized in ophthalmologic disorders come take a look at him. But in the meantime, I wanted to reassure him.

  “It’s all right,” I told him gently. “Carlos is a good guy. He would never hurt me.”

  “Not…who you think,” he insisted. He was still fighting the meds but it was a losing battle. His eyelids were fluttering closed and I saw that he had incredibly long lashes for a man. “Assassin…droid…”

  “Annnd we’re back to the delusional fantasies,” Sebastian’s voice was hoarse but still snarky.

  “I’m glad you’re recovered enough to be sarcastic,” I said as Kristoff finally sank back down on the gurney. “I was worried there for a moment.”

  “Oh, I’m fine. Just peachy.” He massaged his red throat gingerly. “You think that’s the first time I’ve been choked by a hot guy?”

  “Can we please not get into your sex life right now?” I asked in an undertone as Kristoff’s big body finally slumped into drugged unconsciousness.

  “Just because you don’t have a sex life to discuss—” he began but I waved him off and went to check on Kristoff now that he was out.

  Where had this strange man come from? And what was the deal with his weird skin and eye coloration? How did he know my name? And how did he have my blood type—or at least a type so rare that it was only compatible with mine?

  There were so many unanswerable questions it made my head spin. But there was no way of getting answers now. I had gotten everything I could from him with my touch-sense earlier, and I had given him enough Haldol to put him out for hours—probably until sometime tomorrow afternoon at least.

  “Come on.” Sebastian tugged at my arm. “They’re bringing in a multi-trauma MVA. Some idiots who were texting and driving plowed into each other—we’ve got more triage to do.”

  “Okay, you’re right. Go ahead and I’ll be there in a minute.” I nodded at him to go on and turned back to Gloria. “I want this guy put in a room on the psych floor and be sure he’s restrained,” I told her. “I don’t want him hurting anyone when he wakes up.”

  “Well, with ten of Haldol on board, that’s going to be a while,” she said. “But sure, I’ll get the ball rolling, Dr. Walker.”

  “Thanks.” I gave her a grateful smile and took one last look at Kristoff Verrai. There was something special about him—my touch-sense told me so. I wanted to get to the bottom of it, but for now, I had business to attend to.

  I turned to go and from the corner of my eye, saw that Carlos the janitor was watching me. He turned away as soon as he saw me looking, but there was something in his expression—a coldness—that sent a shiver down my spine. Suddenly I wondered what I would know if I walked up to him and grabbed his arm.

  “Assassin-droid,” murmured Kristoff’s deep voice in my head. “Danger!”

  It was crazy, right? But was it any crazier than what I had been experiencing lately?

  Suddenly it occurred to me that I was putting him on the psych floor in restraints when I myself had been seeing visions of a blue space worm trying to contact me through shiny surfaces for weeks now. Talk about hypocritical!

  But that’s different, I argued to myself. I’m probably just having those visions because I’m tired. Plus, I don’t go around dressed in a Roman gladiator’s outfit, grabbing people by the throat.

  Of course Kristoff had only done that because he felt that Sebastian was disrespecting me but still…

  “Goddess…” he had called me. And he had seemed to think I was in danger.

  Don’t be stupid, Charlotte!

  With an effort, I shrugged off the sense of dread that had somehow settled over me like a cold, clammy coat. I had patients to treat, a night in the Pit to get through, and morning rounds to do before I could even think about getting some rest.

  It was time to get back to business as usual—I could worry about my strange new patient later.

  Chapter Three

  Kristoff

  I swam through drugged nightmares, fighting my way to the surface, only to be dragged down again and again. Over and over I saw my Empress in danger…over and over I saw her slain, the assassin-droid killing her in a hundred, a thousand different, awful ways.

  Her face…the young one of the new Incarnation and the old one of the female I had served all of my adult life mixed and melded, melting and flowing into one another until I couldn’t tell which was which.

  “Save me!” the old Goddess-Empress cried but when I turned to shield her, it was the new one I saw—her lovely face and sharp green eyes so like the ones of my former mistress.

  “I’m coming, my Lady!” I cried but I could never quite reach her. Always the Assassin-droid got there before me. Always I was left holding her broken, bleeding body in my arms, her lovely blonde hair matted with crimson.

  The dream reset itself over and over, I know not how many times. And all the time I prayed—not to the Goddess-Empress but to the Goddess of Mercy, she who made us all through the Ancient Ones.

  “Goddess, please—let me reach her in time! Let me serve my Lady and keep her safe. Protect her while I am not able. Please, Goddess—help me to save her!”

  I do not know if she who made us all heard me or not. I only know I struggled in the nightmare, longing to wake and shield my new mistress. But I was unable because of the drug flowing through my veins.

  And yet—that was not the only thing in my veins. The Empress’s own blood was in me. Though the Council of Wisdom would call it blasphemy, it gave me strength. Somehow, I knew I would reach her.

  I just hoped it wouldn’t be too late.

  Charlotte

  “Come on, Charlotte, this is a good thing. We actually get to go home to sleep.” Sebastian prodded me with one sharp finger. “Come on. Don’t tell me you don’t like that.”

  I didn’t like it, though I couldn’t say why. I ought to be beyond grateful, after the night I had had.

  Not long after my mysterious patient, the ER had been slammed with a ten car pileup and then several gunshot wounds and a heart attack that turned out to be an aortic dissection.

  By morning rounds Sebastian and I had been dragging. Even before the craziness in the Pit, we had been up for eighteen hours straight. So by the time morning rounds rolled around, we had both gone well over twenty-four hours without sleep. Even black coffee has its limits and the two of us were yawning so much so that our attending, Dr. Calgary, had ordered us home for at least eight hours of uninterrupted sleep. I had tried to protest but he wasn’t having it.

  “I appreciate that you interns think you have something to prove and normally I’d let you prove it,” he said sharply when I protested that I still had patients to see. “But you two are so tired you’re falling asleep on your feet—that’s no good for anyone. Especially not your patients. Go home, turn off your phones, and get some sleep. That’s an order.”

  “Yes, Sir,” I had muttered. But I couldn’t help the sense of foreboding that filled me, even as Sebastian and I trudged out to the employee parking lot.

  “You’re not still thinking about him are you?” Sebastian asked me. “You know—tall, gold, and grabby?”

  I shrugged irritably.
>
  “He only grabbed you because you were being a dick. And no—I wasn’t thinking of him.”

  Which was a lie, of course.

  It had been a crazy night—so crazy I could almost forget about Kristoff. But somehow, even after such an exhausting shift, I found he was still at the back of my mind like a piece of music I couldn’t forget.

  “He’ll probably wake up and wonder where the hell he is,” Sebastian said, grinning tiredly. “Picture this— he’s actually a high-stakes attorney and he was at a fancy dress party last night. Some girl who wanted to hump him and dump him slipped something psychotic into his appletini, had her way with him, and then dumped him outside the ER when he started getting too wild to handle. Now, this morning, he opens his eyes and he’s strapped to a hospital bed and he has no idea how he got there.”

  “You should have been a romance writer,” I said, shaking my head. “That’s a hell of a story.”

  “Thank you.” Sebastian made an elaborate bow which almost ended with him face planting onto the concrete because he was so tired.

  I laughed at him. “You need to stop before you fall over and need stitches. I’m in no shape to sew up your pretty face right now.”

  “I’m fine,” he declared, opening his eyes wide to show how awake he was. “Although I do appreciate you acknowledging my beauty.”

  I barely held back a snort of laughter.

  “Seriously Sebastian, do not make me laugh right now—I don’t know if I could stop. Okay, this is me.” We had stopped in front of my little blue Spark.

  “I don’t know why you even bother to drive to work,” Sebastian grumbled. “You only live a few blocks away.”

  “I drive to work because on the off-chance that I get to go home and sleep, I don’t want to spend half my time walking there,” I said. “You’ve got a lot further to drive than I do, though. You want to crash at my place? You can have the couch.”

  Sebastian considered it for a minute, then shook his head.