Fang Hospital (Dr. Gabriella Van Court, Book 1) (7 page)

The heart monitor above his head began to beep faster. The man clutched his chest. “I’m not feeling so well.”

Gabriella darted her eyes to the monitor.
Shit! He’s in V-tach
. She shot her hand over his heart. Blue sparks flew from her fingertips. The man jerked in the bed. His heartbeat slowed immediately. The nurses bolted into the room.

“He’s back in normal sinus rhythm,” Gabriella said calmly.

The man stared at her. “What happened?”

“Your heartbeat sped up, but it’s back to normal.”

“Thank God you were here, doctor,” one of the nurses said.

The cardiologist on call rushed breathless into the room. He scanned the monitor that now displayed a normal beat. “Sir, you certainly are keeping us on our toes.”

The man pointed to Gabriella. “It was she. She’s a healer,” he said, his gaze fixed onto hers.”

“You’ll be fine now. Listen to the doctors and nurses and you’ll be out of here in no time. Take care. I have to go.” She gently squeezed his hand. “Your heart will mend.”

Everyone’s jaw dropped as she left the patient’s room.

“He converted spontaneously to a normal rhythm. I’ve seen it happen before. He’s lucky, I guess,” Gabriella offered. She had no time to be cornered to discuss freakish arrhythmias. She had to corral Barbara and make amends to Max for being so tardy.

“Shoot!” the unit secretary called out. She smacked the counter. “I had those tubes of blood right here.” She leaned back into her chair. “With all the commotion going, the lab must have already picked them up. I’ll call them to confirm they’ve received the specimens.” The secretary picked up the phone and dialed. She waited with the receiver fixed to her ear. “That’s strange. It’s ringing but there’s no answer. They’re probably slammed. Halloween is always crazy.”

“Indeed,” Gabriella said, quickly ending the conversation.
Hmm? Missing blood. Barbara must be near.

High-pitched scraping followed by a clicking scurry came from beyond the ceiling.

“Drat! Must be those raccoons in the ducts again. I better call maintenance,” the secretary said.

Barbara!
She was in the ventilator system
. “I better go.”

“Watch out for those raccoons.” The secretary held up her hands claw-like. “They’ve got these huge talons.”

“I certainly will.”

But those were not raccoon talons. They were Barbara’s nails.

Gabriella sent a message to K.L. “Found her. She’s in the vents.”

He replied telepathically. “Shit!”

“Go up through the lab. I’ll climb in from the E.R. We’ll flank her.”

“I’m on my way.”

Gabriella hurried to the E.R. Crap!
The E.R. vent entrance is past the call rooms. I can’t let Max see me.

She winced as she whooshed past the call room where Max was waiting patiently for her, undetected to his eyes. At least he was still there. Once she grabbed Barbara by her scruff and deposited her in the morgue, as she should have done, then she’d jump in that bed with Max. Gabriella skidded to a halt beneath an entrance to the ducts. She sprang up past the ceiling cover and carefully replaced it.

Where is she?

Gabriella crawled through the maze of the hospital ductwork. She banged her head.

“Ouch!”

“Ouch. Ouch. Ouch,” her voice echoed back in the cramped canal.

“Gabriella?” Barbara called.

Pay dirt!
“Stay right there. I’m coming.”

“Women!” She heard K.L.’s curse echo in the distance.

As she crawled towards Barbara, her knee crunched over glass.
How many test tubes did she steal?
Gabriella sighed.
Better test tubes than bodies.

She found Barbara lying in a fetal position and clutching her stomach.

Barbara belched. “I don’t feel so good.”

Her eyes no longer glowed red, and she was not only docile, but she also made perfect sense. Thankfully her feral state had finally faded.

Gabriella scooted to her. “Honey, didn’t K.L. feed you enough?”

Barbara nodded. “But I was still hungry.” She pouted. “I’m stuffed.”

Gabriella rubbed Barbara’s back. “Come with me. I have an elixir that will help you.”

Barbara gazed up at her with pleading eyes. “I’ll definitely need that.”

Gabriella took her hand. “Let’s go back to the lab.”

“K.L. is going to be really pissed off at me.”

“Maybe. But he’ll get over it. Then we’ll all celebrate Halloween.” Once she got Barbara tucked away with a “forgiving” K.L., she’d dash back to the call room for her own celebration with Max.

They crawled toward the lab. Gabriella picked up one empty blood vial after another that Barbara had sucked down like a pack of Pixy Stix.

K.L. lay prone with his chin resting in his palm. “Well, well. Look who’s here.”

“It’s okay, K.L. Her feralness has expired. She’s tame now.”

“Oh, goody,” he said sarcastically.

“I’m sorry I caused so much trouble,” Barbara said. “I couldn’t control myself.”

He paused, in one last bit of silent admonishment. “Understandable.” He rose to his hands and knees, and waggled his finger at her. “No more escaping.”

She shook her head. “I won’t. I promise.”

K.L. backed up and disappeared through the vent exit in the lab. Barbara and Gabriella followed. They closed off the duct as if nothing had happened.

Gabriella handed him the empty tubes. “I don’t think these are re-useable.”

“Not for the hospital.” He grinned. The tips of his fangs poked out. “But they’ll make cute cocktail glasses for our party tonight. I’ll have my minions redraw the labs in ICU.” He glared at Barbara. “I’ll just say the other specimens had
clotted
.”

Barbara hunched her shoulders in supplication.

Gabriella pulled the flask filled with her potion from her cardigan pocket. “This has come in handy tonight. You’re the second vamp needing a dose.”

She poured the bellyache medicine into a cup.

“Salut, Barbara. This is amazing stuff.”

Barbara brought the plastic shot glass to her lips and tilted her head back. She tossed the elixir down her throat and slammed the empty cup onto the lab counter. “That was awesome. The bloat is gone.”

Gabriella cocked her eyebrows at K.L. “Maybe we should open a vamp pharmacy.”

He puckered his lips and squinted. “It’s a thought.” He grabbed Barbara’s hand. “You, my little apprentice, will help me set up for our soirée this evening.” K.L. winked at Gabriella. “You, my sweet Gabriella, have an appointment to keep with your ‘doctor’.”

She nodded with a grin. “And I’m very late. I hope he’ll still see me!”

Chapter Eight

Max stared at his watch. One hour, 21 minutes, and 33, 34, 35, 36 seconds had past. But who was counting? He quit tormenting himself by watching every tick of the second hand.
Gabriella was a no show. He massaged his head. He didn’t get it. Why did she stand him up? There were no patients in the E.R. The nurses would have paged him or rang the call room phone. And there was no way she’d take that long in the lab. He’d worked hard fixing up the call room. Twice! He even cut his face while shaving. He was alone, confused, and now softened.

The night had started with a promise, their bodies twisted together, hot yet cold at the same time, on that hard picnic bench. The call room was a step up.

Max grabbed the T.V. remote and clicked the power button. He surfed through the channels.

“Halloween special, Halloween special, Halloween special, CNN.”

He watched the news for a while, but it was too depressing. He settled on a Dracula movie.

“Yeah, why not? My night’s going to suck anyway,” he muttered.

He couldn’t get into the flick. Gabriella poked through his every thought.

He had fallen for her the first time she walked through the double doors of The Fang E.R. The way her ebony hair bobbed on her shoulders. Her porcelain skin. Those ruby lips. The perfect swell of her breasts. He’d ogled her derriere at every covert opportunity. And he caught her assessing his package on several occasions.

She was an enigma tonight just as she had been the other evening. Max stroked his chin. Was there someone else besides him? Gabriella oozed sex, and he thought it was directed at him. But his thoughts started to spin wildly in his head. He recalled how nervous she seemed at the restaurant before she fled to the restroom.
Was her cell on vibrate? Did she leave to answer his call? And what happened at her house? What single woman, a beautiful single woman, lives alone in a way too spacious secluded house?
Max’s pulse escalated with imagined scenarios.
Did she spy him in the parking lot? He must have beaten us to her house. He was there when she kicked me to the curb. God, what did she do? Give him her house key? We had plans. The good kind of all night plans. It was the night that never happened. And tonight is a repeat!

He tossed the remote onto the nightstand and yanked the blanket to his chest. He shivered. He’d complain to maintenance, but it never made a difference. The hospital call rooms were frosty in the fall and winter, and sweltering in the summer. The thermostats served merely as decoration. Tonight was weirdly extra frigid. Max huddled between the sheets with no Gabriella to wrap his arms around. His mind wanted sleep, but his body desired more. His tired brain won. Max closed his eyes, letting the Dracula movie play in the background.

His slumber led him straight to Gabriella. She was floating above him. A diaphanous white gown replaced her scrubs. Her silky hair brushed across his chest. Then her eyes flashed green and fangs sprung past those ruby lips. She sank her points into his neck. He tried to yank her off of him, but he lay paralyzed, his muscles not heeding his commands. He grew sleepier.

“Gabriella,” he whispered.

The cackle woke him. Max bolted upright in the bed. She wasn’t there. No one was there. Max glanced at the T.V. where Dracula had his victim by the neck. It was an old black and white movie, but he gasped at the bright red blood seeping from Dracula’s prey. He blinked. The weird colorized blood was now gray. Max clutched his temples. It was all a nightmare.

****

Gabriella scurried down the corridor of call rooms. A maintenance man stood steadying a ladder leading to the ventilator entrance she had pushed through minutes ago. She stopped and asked, “What’s going on?”

The man pointed upward. “We had to call Animal Control. The ICU nurses reported sounds like talons scraping against metal coming from the duct system. My bet is there’s a raccoon on the loose. But we’ll get him. These guys got their dart guns ready.”

She fought the grin bubbling to escape onto her lips. “Good luck.”

“Don’t you worry, Dr. Van Court. We’ve got this varmint cornered.”

“Carry on.”

She shook her head all the way to the call room where she hoped Max was still there waiting for her. “Silly mortals!”

But there was one mortal she planned to corner.

Gabriella dashed into the call room. Max sat in the bed clutching the sheets. Even in the dim room, his pallor rivaled hers. Someone had spooked him.
That damn Marcus! K.L.’s clean-up clan better hurry.
She scooted into the bed next to him and touched his cheek. His jaw was tight.

“Max, what happened?”

“Bad dream,” he answered. “Where have you been?”

“I went to the lab, and then I spent some time visiting that man with the MI who got transferred to the ICU. While I was there, he went into an arrhythmia. They were about to call a code, but he spontaneously converted to sinus rhythm.”

It was the diluted version of what really happened: scouring the hospital for Barbara, electro-converting the man with her touch, and chasing Barbara through the hospital ducts. But she couldn’t tell him that’s why she was late. Gabriella pressed Max to her chest and kissed the top of his head. “I’m so sorry I’ve kept you waiting.”

His heart beat in tandem with hers. She raked her nails through his damp strands. The tight muscles in his neck and shoulders gave way in her embrace.

“I’m sorry, too,” he said. “I was thinking the worst when you hadn’t showed up.” He looked up at her. “Between last night and tonight, I thought you might be involved with someone else. Frankly, I don’t want to know. You’re here right now. Let’s take advantage of the quiet, and have our own moment. I won’t hold you to anything else.”

Her eyes tingled. But as a vampire, she couldn’t cry. She squeezed him tighter, heedful to not crush his bones.

“Oh, Max. There is no one...but you.”

Explaining her past men would not be possible without revealing herself.

She kissed him long and deep, controlling her fangs in their retracted state. Her tongue lay warmed and leisurely upon his. The breath from his nose caressed her cheeks. No vampire nor mortal in 850 years had stirred her like Max. Her pelvis ached and wetness that had become a faint memory resurged in full bloom. It took her centuries to find this man. She would not let him go. Gabriella grabbed his arm and flipped him to his back. She pulled his gaze to hers, and locked it there. In her aroused state, she tore his scrubs off like tissue paper, and then ripped hers free. He lay naked, hard, and vulnerable beneath her, hers for the taking. She straddled him, enveloping him deep inside her. They moaned in synchrony.

****

His heart did not expect what came next. It rocked in his chest with her every grind, harder and faster until it hammered so hard in his ears he heard no other sound in the room. The heat of his hardness collided with her coolness, the invigoration sending every nerve beneath his skin to attention. She arched her spine and flung her head back. It was balletic. His chest swelled in contentment at pleasuring her. She rose higher in response. Max’s mouth watered as the blush of her nipples, centered perfectly and pouty on her alabaster breasts, waved closer and closer to his lips. He parted his lips, ready to take her in. But before he could invite her erect pink buds into his mouth, Gabriella lunged at his neck. He exploded inside her at her bite. Her tongue circled his neck. As she lapped at him, he filled her until he had no more. She collapsed onto him. He stroked her silken hair and kissed the top of her head. Hands down, this was the best sex he had ever had!

“I love you, Gabriella,” he whispered.

“I love you, too,” she murmured.

****

Gabriella draped her arm over her forehead. She winced. She couldn’t believe she had actually said those three words. Yes, she did love him. But this complicated everything. K.L. was right. Mortals and vampires shouldn’t intermix. Satisfying vampire libido was one thing; falling in love with your host was completely different.
He did say he loved me. Men always say that in the throes of orgasm, mortal and vamp alike. It just slipped out!

Max rolled to his side and propped his head in his hand. He tapped her on the nose. “Happy?”

She restrained the urge to wrap her arms around him and yell, “Yes! Yes! Yes!” But she smiled and simply said, “Yes.”

Gabriella stared into his eyes. But she no longer could transfix him. Could having sex with a mortal drain her of her magnetic powers? “Oh no!”

Max knitted his brows. “Oh, no, what?”

“Um...uh.” Gabriella pointed to the torn scrubs scattered across the floor. “I can’t believe we shredded hospital property.”

“Whoa! So worth it, though.”

He scooped her up in his arms and kissed her long and sweetly. This wasn’t the kiss of a one -night stand. She wanted to stay there, undisturbed, the whole night.

“Stay here,” he said. Max wound a sheet around his waist. “I’ll make a run for it and get us clean scrubs.”

She giggled as he comically waddled out the door. With Max gone, Gabriella glanced at her nails. She sighed with relief. They’d sprouted. At least something was working. She slid out of bed, grabbed her cardigan from the floor, and rummaged through the pockets. The flask containing her elixir survived the throws of passion. In her other pocket was what she needed before Max returned. She dumped the clippers into her palm and pattered into the bathroom. Fingernail after fingernail, she lopped off those pesky telltale talons. Hearing his breath in the hallway, she jumped back into bed, appearing nonchalant for his entry.

Max skidded into the room, the wraparound sheet now skirting his hips. It begged to be ripped away. He tossed the maroon scrubs onto the bed.

“Small for ma petite cherie.”

Her mouth dropped.
Ah! He spoke French!

“And large for me.”

Gabriella smiled widely and pulled off his sheet, marveling at his erection. “Maybe you need extra-large!”

Max cocked his head and gaped at Gabriella’s parted lips. He clapped his hand to his mouth.

He must have seen my fangs!
Gabriella sucked back her incisors. The sight of his arousal had distracted her.

He shook his head. “Boy, I’ve been watching too much T.V.”

Max catapulted on top of her. He kissed her neck and gave it a nip.

She laughed softly beneath him.
Nice try!

He pinned her arms over her head. “Laughing at a stiff man has its consequences.”

“I’m willing to take the risk.”

He was just
ready to dive into her, when their beepers blared. The call room phone rang before either of them could check the message on their pagers. “Someone besides ourselves wants us badly.” He rolled away from Gabriella and answered the phone.

“We’ll be there right away!” he said. He slammed the receiver down. “Shit. We got a trauma coming in. Some guy with a penetrating object in his chest. So much for a quiet Halloween.”

Gabriella’s neck veins pulsed. Her powers had returned tenfold. She sniffed. A wounded vampire was on the way to The Fang E.R., and it was serious.