Crimson Christmas Read Free

trusted his apartment manager to
watch over his car more than the airport. He was packing a bag when Ghost,
Vincent’s familiar, appeared on his bed.
    The cat was extremely ugly in a ragged, mangy,
lopsided-face way, complete with a disfiguring facial scar, but he did save the
day on occasion. After learning what Ghost had been through, the cat’s peculiar
aspects seemed more like battle scars to Devon.
    He ignored Ghost and the cat glared at him
disapprovingly. Ghost was only there to spy on Devon for Vincent, since the
older wizard was worried Devon was going to work his curse-damaged heart too
hard. He closed his bag and set it by the door. When he turned back to his bed,
the cat was gone.
    Of course, Devon had no desire to die of a heart
attack at thirty-one, but he wasn’t going to sit in bed drinking tea and
worrying about his blood pressure, either. He had a job to do. In his mind, the
more people he helped and malevolent foes he outwitted, the closer he got to
both healing his heart and saving Astrid.
    Even if that meant making a deal with a demon.
     
    *          *          *
     
    At the end of a long day, Dylan was just about to
change out of his scrubs when he was paged. Alyssa Cofer, a young girl he had
helped before, was injured. It was difficult for her to get injured since she
was from Skrev; a world of powerfully built shifters that were all huge
compared to Earth’s creatures. Her parents, Hon and Malla, were waiting
impatiently for Dylan’s arrival.
    Alyssa first came to Dylan after being pronounced
dead in a traffic accident. When she healed on her own, Dylan discovered she
wasn’t human in the least.
    He closed the door behind him and checked the chart.
“Scratches?” He studied the girl on the bed, noting the blood on her torn
shirt, the bloody towel on the floor beside her, and the lack of any pain on
her face. “Let’s see the damage.” He lifted up the shredded shirt and saw three
long scratches that were mostly healed. “What did this?” he asked. The
direction of the marks indicated that something with three claws attacked her,
but the hand must have been huge.
    “I don’t know. It attacked me from the fireplace.”
    “Was there a fire going?” he asked. The alternative
was to take the obvious holiday-related explanation and he wasn’t ready to go
there.
    “No. I was hanging the stockings.”
    “I’ve already called someone in to investigate,” Hon
said.
    Dylan clipped the file to the end of Alyssa’s bed.
“Someone who knows about the supernatural?”
    “Yes.”
    “In that case, I don’t see why you brought Alyssa in.
She’s perfectly fine. There’s no infection, her vitals are fine, and there’s no
sign that she lost too much blood.” Shifters of Skrev healed much faster than
humans.
    “We want you to do that thing where you check her
skeletons. We just want to make sure she wasn’t harmed in her other forms.”
    Dylan had learned it was best not to argue with
worried parents when reassuring them took something as simple as a touch. He
gently touched Alyssa’s arm and let his energy flood her system. Like
echolocation, his energy returned with the image of the three skeletons of her
shifted forms. Her own magic didn’t even hint at putting up a fight.
    “She’s in perfect health.”
    “Are you sure?” Alyssa asked worriedly. Dylan
honestly wouldn’t recognize her voice if he heard it on the street because the
adolescent very rarely spoke. “Maybe I should stay the night in the hospital.”
    “Sorry, kiddo. We only take sick patients here.
Besides, you don’t want to be here for the holiday, do you?” She shook her
head. “Then have a good holiday, stay away from the chimney monster, and don’t
scratch,” he said, pulling her arm away when she tried to scrub at her wound.
“Maybe I should take a peak in your chimney, though. If it was bats or something,
she might need a rabies shot.” Assuming the shifters of Skrev could get
rabies