Fang Hospital (Dr. Gabriella Van Court, Book 1) (11 page)

One by one, Volk dragged K.L., Claude, and Marcus to the autopsy suite, and bound them each to their own stainless steel table. He stepped back and reveled in his accomplishment. This was her chance. Gabriella sprang from her stool and grabbed the bags of salt. She reached into the back pocket of her scrub pants and whipped out her trauma scissors. Gabriella ran and positioned herself between Volk and her imprisoned men. Snipping the ends of the bags, she held them at arm’s length and raced around Volk spraying the salt, encasing him in a circle of tiny grains, a gazillion tiny grains that he’d be obligated to count, crystal by crystal.

Volk growled. “Damn you!”

The plan hadn’t gone as planned exactly, but the effect was the same. It bought her time before the next step. She grabbed the dagger and freed K.L., her uncle, and Marcus’s bonds.

Gabriella looked at Max, crestfallen. The dagger wouldn’t work to liberate him from his iron shackles.

K.L. jumped off the autopsy table. “I have an idea.” He looked at Max. “You’ll be free in a minute, Dr. Cade.”

“Hurry, K.L. He’s counting fast.”

K.L. ran over to a fire glass case. He cut a hole in the glass with his fingernail, so as not to set off an alarm that it had been smashed, and threw the fire hose aside. He grabbed a hatchet and rushed back to Max. With four precise whacks he broke Max’s wrist and ankle cuffs.

“This doctor needs medical attention,” Marcus said. “I’ll get him safely to the ER. I know every back exit, and I can detour if I have to.”

Max stumbled to his feet and embraced Gabriella. “I’m not leaving you with this monster. I’m staying here.”

She kissed his head. His hair was matted with blood. “No, go with Marcus. You are a strong man, but you can’t win with him. This is my battle.”

“No, I won’t go. I won’t lose you. I’ll fight by your side.”

She had to reason with him, for his protection. Gabriella placed his hand on her lower belly. “Max, this is your baby. The pregnancy does not follow human growth. Our child will be a hybrid, part mortal and part immortal. You have to fight hard to survive. If I live, and am led away, know that your child exists.”

Blood tinged tears rained down his cheeks. “Our child?”

Gabriella swiped the tears from his face with the back of her hand, careful not to cut him further with her razor sharp nails. “Yes, but go with Marcus. I will come as soon as I can.”

Marcus tugged Max’s hand. “Come on, Doc. Let’s go. Gabriella is strong-willed, and the cavalry is yet to arrive.”

“Cavalry?” Max asked in a fatigued tone.

“I’ll explain on the way out of here.”

Max slowly lifted his hand to Gabriella.

“Go,” she said wistfully, knowing she might not see him again.

Chapter Fourteen

Marcus grabbed the doorknob on the lab door and twisted it. The door didn’t budge.

“As I expected, Volk has sealed this exit with his powers. He had no intention of any of us leaving here alive.”

Feeling as if he was about to pitch over, Max leaned against the wall. His heart hammered in his ears, pumping overtime to compensate for his blood loss. “What do you mean by ‘alive’? I thought vampires were immortal.”

Marcus kicked the door. “We can be killed.” He looked at Max. “It’s complicated. I don’t have time to explain.”

Max swallowed past the lump rising in the back of his throat. “Gabriella? She could die?”

Marcus nodded.

Max pushed off the wall and stumbled forward. “I won’t let her. I won’t let him kill her. I’m going back.”

The lab spun before his eyes through a brown haze. His legs turned rubber. Max crumbled in nightmare slow motion. But before he collapsed to the floor, Marcus grabbed the back of his scrubs, clothes-lining him. Max rebounded upward. The top of his head grazed the ceiling. He wind - milled his arms, grasping at the air, trying to save himself. Wind rushed past his ears as he plunged downward. He landed in Marcus’s arms.

“I got you, Doc,” he said. “Sorry about the inadvertent toss, But I couldn’t let you hit the ground. You’re weak from blood loss. You can barely stand much less get in the ring with Volk.”

Marcus was right. Worse yet, so was Gabriella. But the male instinct jabbing at him to protect her lingered stronger than his rapidly dwindling physical strength. Cradled in Marcus’s arms, Max glanced up at him. His face appeared blurry now, and a yellow light surrounded it
. So weird
, he thought.
A vampire with a halo
. Max stumbled for the words, but what came out was, “Can’t her I leave.” He even realized he was spouting word soup. The perfusion of blood to his brain was dangerously slowing.

“Gabriella isn’t alone. Although she can be killed, I’m confident Volk won’t do it. He attacked her to teach her a lesson. His obsession with her is ironically in her favor. Your role is to heal. You’ll need the strength should you need to search for your child.”

Max’s eyes flickered and his head flopped back. “Father I be,” he mumbled.

Marcus laid him down. Max closed his eyes. He was cold, but he couldn’t shiver. He just wanted to go to sleep.

Marcus shook him. “Stay awake!”

Max prodded his eyes open. His surroundings appeared as if he was viewing them through jelly jar glasses.

“You’re losing too much blood. I have to slow the bleeding.”

Marcus’s words echoed distantly in Max’s head.

He propped Max up against the wall and took off his cravat. He wrapped it around Max’s neck.

“I have to get you to the ER. We’ll have to travel through the duct system. There’s an opening to the far left of the lab.” He hoisted Max onto his back. “Hold onto my neck.”

Riding on Marcus’s back was like riding on a rocket.

Marcus jumped up and flung back a ceiling panel. “Head’s up, Doc. We’re on our way. We’ll land in the call room corridor in a few seconds. Then on to the ER.”

Marcus deftly maneuvered through the system of tubes. Max took a deep breath. He felt weightless, as if he were flying.
Vampires go so fast!
He thought of how Gabriella vanished even when he was not far behind her, and how she disappeared after her shift. She healed people by touching them, and there was no way that that dagger in her uncle’s chest hadn’t penetrated his heart. She healed him, too. And she was always cold. He was so silly that he thought she needed a thyroid test, when all along, she was just a vampire. Max laughed at his musings.

“Sounds like you’re a bit loopy, but at least you’re conscious,” Marcus said. He tapped the ceiling tile. “We’re here.” He jumped down into the corridor with Max still flopped onto his back. “Good that no one has seen us. We’re going into the ER now. It is imperative that I do all the talking.”

“Problem no,” Max gurgled. He furrowed his forehead. His spoken words were tangled, yet his thoughts made sense.

“Yes, I see that’s not going to be a problem,” Marcus said. “Ready?”

Max wearily nodded.

Marcus ran into the ER with Max in tow. “I need help! Dr. Cade has been attacked!”

“Oh my God!” a trauma nurse yelled. “Hurry, bring him into trauma room one.”

Marcus rushed to the room as directed.

A hoard of nurses descended upon them.

“Lean toward the table, sir.”

“One, two, three,” one of the nurses called.

On the count of three, they rolled Max from Marcus’s back onto the trauma bed. His arms flopped to his sides like wet spaghetti. A high-pitched zip roused him. He’d heard that sound of trauma scissors hundreds of times before. His scrubs were being sheared off. He felt no pain as he watched the nurses poke him in his veins trying to get that “pot of gold” IV line inserted in his collapsed vessels, and the slaps of cardiac electrode pads to his chest felt like mere taps.

“Page Dr. Van Court, stat.”

Max shook his head and mumbled, “Kidnapped.”

A trauma nurse yelled to the unit clerk, “Call the police. Overhead page any available doctor in the house. Get the nursing supervisor and security. Have them lock down the hospital.” The nurse leaned over him. Her face looked distorted, like a “Picasso” in scrubs. “Can you tell me what happened?”

Max rolled his head toward Marcus.

“Sir, what is your name?” the nurse asked.

“Marcus Pemberly. I’m Dr. Cade’s friend.”

Two trauma surgeons, George Toth, his OB/GYN friend, and the cardiologist who he didn’t care for, descended upon him.

“Max!” George called.

“Shit!” the cardiologist yelled.

One trauma surgeon gently unwrapped Marcus’s blood-soaked cravat from Max’s neck. “Who did this to you?”

He opened his mouth, but no words came.

The other trauma surgeon assessed the rest of his body. The cardiologist’s eyes shot straight to the cardiac monitor. He frowned. “Sinus brady, and he’s starting to throw PVC’s.”

Max processed the information. His heart was slowing and it was having dangerous irregular beats. It was the beginning of the end, as he recognized it.

“Something went down in the call room where Max was staying,” George offered. “When I passed by it, there was broken glass and blood everywhere. I was calling security when I heard the stat overhead page.”

The nurse pointed at Marcus. “That man brought Max to the ER, slumped onto his back. Marcus Pemberly, right?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“What do you know about this?” the trauma surgeon asked while glancing up from Max’s wound.

“I was at a Halloween party that turned out not to be what I expected. So I called Max to ask if I could come over for a bit. While we were talking on the telephone, I heard a loud crash, like glass breaking. Then the telephone went dead. I rushed over straight away. I found Max on the floor, his face bloody and his neck cut. I took off my cravat and applied pressure to his neck wound. I scooped him up and ran to the emergency room.”

“You did well,” the second trauma said. “You’ve helped keep him alive.”

Max lifted his thumb.
That was a great lie!

“He needs surgery, right away. And he’ll need several units of blood.” The surgeon turned to the nurse. “Call the lab right away.”

Another trauma nurse looked up. “Hey, where did Mr. Pemberly go?”

The bed brakes unlocked beneath him with a squeak. He was being wheeled to the OR. Having run alongside dozens of patient beds, Max knew the corridors leading to the surgical suites by heart. Except now he had the perspective of a ceiling view. As the trauma team swerved the bed into the operating room, Max struggled to open his eyes. Gabriella floated above him, wearing the same diaphanous gown she had worn in his dream. She reached out to him with one hand, while the other one rested on her belly.

“I’ll be with you soon,” she whispered.

“I love you,” Max mumbled.

“I love you, too,” the anesthesiologist joked.

As always, Gabriella had vanished.

Was it another dream, or perhaps a hallucination? Whether it was or was not, he could finally close his eyes.

****

Volk cackled. An evil grin marched across his mouth, showcasing his fangs. The circle of salt caging him was now in a neat pile.

“Your grains of salt are accounted for. I was in a benevolent mood, but unfortunately you’ve changed that.”

He glared at Gabriella. The power of his stare made her feel as if her eyes were about to be ripped from their sockets. She clapped her hands over them and mustered all her energies to counter his vicious play. This was only the start of his games, she thought. The agony in her face faded. She spied the dagger he had dropped at his feet while counting the grains. She’d take the chance. She had to. The pounding of her heart in her ears drowned out all sound. Gabriella drew a quick breath and lunged for the dagger. Her fingers wrapped around the handle, her fist flush to its hilt. Gabriella was primed for his retribution, but he didn’t respond. She inched her eyes upward. Volk had spun around. Something had distracted him. Something strong. Clenching the dagger with two fists, she rolled to her back and sped to a corner. With her feet wide, Gabriella assumed her warrior stance. But Volk’s attention was elsewhere. Gabriella tracked his stare.

Marcus! He’s back. He must have delivered Max safely to the ER. Thank you, Marcus.

He stood in the doorway to the lab, his spine erect, his hands on his hips.
You’re welcome.
He had shot his thoughts back to her. The pathways to their telepathic communication were reopening. Caught by surprise, Volk’s power must have flickered.

“Leave us be, Volk. Return to Europe, or else...”

Volk roared with laughter. “Or else what, my dear Marcus?”

Marcus shrugged. “Or else, you die.”

Marcus stepped aside, releasing a flood of vampires. K.L’s S.W.A.T. team, plus more recruits, including Anabella and Michael, descended upon Volk. Her army had arrived! But as quickly as her hopes had soared, so had they fallen. Volk tossed her army aside, throwing them against the walls like ragdolls. Her vampire battalion lay moaning and crumpled on the floor.

Marcus rushed at Volk, Kamakazi style.

Volk raised Marcus into the air by his neck. Marcus’s feet dangled. “You wretched bastard!” Marcus rasped. Volk snapped Marcus’s neck and dropped him.

“No!” Gabriella shouted.

She cocked the dagger at her shoulder. But before she could make a run at him, K.L. and Uncle Claude rushed in front of her, barricading her from Volk.

“Take us,” Claude said. “Two for the price of one.”

“Honestly, this has turned out more complicated than it should be. Gabriella belongs to me. What would I do with a fruit and an old, traitorous man! I say no to your offer.”

Volk picked up K.L. and tossed him. K.L. somersaulted in the air before landing stunned onto his back. He grabbed Claude by his shirt and walked with him to a wall. He pinned him there.

“I will go slower with you than I did with Marcus. I want to hear every one of your bones crush before I rip off your head.”

Gabriella lunged at him with her dagger. “You’ll never have me.”

While holding her uncle captive with one hand, he slapped her away. She flew across the room from the force of his single-handed assault. The dagger fell from her grasp. She skidded on her belly until her head smashed against a lab cabinet, jarring it open. “My child,” Gabriella mumbled. She fluttered her eyes open to find Michael curled up inside the cabinet.

With chocolate smeared across his mouth, he brought his finger to his closed lips. “Shh.”

Michael sprang from his hiding place and leaped into the air. He landed on Volk’s back and wrapped his arms around Volk’s neck.

“What the hell?” Volk yelled. He released Claude, who fell to the floor. Claude lay curled up on his side, coughing. He spun Michael around to face him. “You little rat!”

Michael clung to Volk’s neck. Volk squeezed the boy’s stomach. Undigested candy bars in a sea of gastric acid spewed from Michael’s mouth and sprayed into Volk’s eyes. He dropped Michael. Volk grabbed his face and spun around in circles.

“Argh!”

“Bravo, Michael,” Gabriella called. She motioned for him to return to his hiding spot. Michael scampered into the cabinet. Gabriella closed the cabinet, securing him safely inside.

K.L. stumbled to his feet. While Volk scrubbed his eyes with the backs of his hands, he tottered to the fire extinguishers Volk had confiscated. He picked one up and aimed the nozzle at Volk.

“Eat this!”

He covered Volk from his head to his bare feet in a blanket of white foam.

Volk slapped blindly at the frosty froth.

“Allow ‘a fruit’ to help you out.”

K.L. unrolled the hose from the firebox and cranked on the water.