Immortally Yours, An Urban Fantasy Romance (Monster MASH, Book 1) Read Free

 
    He needed me because I was there. Everyone else was busy with the greased lighting victims. I was the only one who could handle this.  
    "What have you got?" I glanced at a sandy-haired EMT.  
    "Stab wound to the upper chest. Possible punctured lung."  
    Finally, a real case: a soldier who needed my skills, my expertise—me.  
    No wonder it felt good.  
    I ran through my mental checklist as I inspected the bronze knife lodged in his upper torso and took stock of his vitals.  
    He must have gone down during the storm. His clipped brown hair still held water droplets.  
    "What's his pressure?" I could feel my fingers shaking.  
    "Ninety-seven over fifty-six."  
    My patient fought for every breath, his impossibly blue eyes locked onto me.  
    "I'm going to save you," I told him.  
    The soldier closed his fingers over mine and squeezed, leaving a smear of blood across my hand.  
    "Get him over to my table."  
    I grabbed his file. His heart rate was dropping. Blood pressure down. He was hemorrhaging. I was glad to see Nurse Hume already at the table, prepping my instruments. "Patient is a male, mid-five-hundreds. Blood pressure's down to eighty over forty. Pulse is up to one twenty-six. Hook him up to both blood and saline." I took a final glance at his chart.  
    Galen of Delphi. Rank: Lokhagos. Decorated unit commander and head of the Green Hawk Special Forces team.  
    "You're in good hands, Galen of Delphi."  
    He nodded, wincing against the pain.  
    "Don't worry," I said for his benefit, and mine.  
    I could feel my blood pumping as I handed off his file.  
    Metal weapons wounds could be dicey. The commander's head slammed against the table as he began to convulse.  
    My gut clenched. "Let's get a move on, people."  
    Horace posted the X-rays. The knife was dangerously close to his heart. And convulsions meant poison.  
    "Get me one hundred twenty cc's of toxopren."  
    The drug was highly toxic, and flammable.  
    Nurse Hume offered me a prepared injection the size of a horse tranquilizer.  
    Both armies liked to poison their weapons. They usually used the blood of Medusa, or spittle from Cerberus, the three-headed dog of the underworld. I'd even seen them use Britney Spears perfume. We actually preferred that last one. It smelled nice and it wouldn't kill any mortals on staff.  
    The commander thrashed harder as I injected him with toxopren. Soon his entire face went red.  
    Toxopren burned as it neutralized the poison. The commander was lucky he was delirious. It was the kind of pain that made even the gods scream.  
    But that was the least of my worries. The poisoned blade was designed to split as it came out—over and over again. The shards would slice him apart, from the inside out, until he was well and truly dead.  
    "I hope you know what you're doing," Horace said.  
    "Don't you have some chariots to bless?"  
    I rubbed at the trickle of sweat working its way under my surgical cap. Focus . Of course I knew what I was doing. I'd looked this man in the eye and told him I'd pull him through. I just needed to concentrate.  
    The commander thrashed on the table.  
    "Hold him steady," I said. "I need him motionless."  
    It took both ambulance drivers to pin his arms and legs down.  
    I double-checked my grip on the leather handle of the knife and used the nervous tension to help me focus. The blade was millimeters from his heart. One wrong twitch and he'd be dead. One really bad move, the knife would shatter and we'd both be dead.  
    "Okay." I cleared my mind and tugged at the blade.  
    My stomach churned as I felt a droplet of sweat snake down the side of my face. I held steady, my fingers working the poisoned knife.  
    "Halfway there. We're doing good." Bracing my left hand against the closing wound, I extracted the knife with my right. I kept my grip steady, and followed the entry trajectory, until a piece broke. I watched it snap and disappear.  
    "Shit!"  
    His vitals