Immortally Ever After (7 page)

Valerie was saying something, but I couldn’t hear because the crowd noise had started up again—on-call people trying to get the hell out versus backup medical like me who had to see exactly what was going on. The crowd jostled against my legs.

PNN cut to a shot of people camping out up on a mountain. There were hookah vendors, dancing girls, and tents full of tailgaters.

“Disgusting.” Thaïs grunted next to me. “Ever since Hermes tweeted the location of the hidden continent, it’s been a goddamned hippie party.”

We watched a pink-suited PNN reporter struggle against a conga line as she tried to get in her live shot.

Thaïs made a lewd gesture at the screen. “There are condos going up on the far side of the mountain, for gods’ sake!”

“Pipe down.” He was not my new TV-watching buddy. Besides, I wanted to hear.

PNN cut to a shot of the three oracles emerging from their cave and onto a platform overlooking the sea.

There was Radhiki, in a bloodstained sack, wearing huge round sunglasses that covered half of her face. She looked more like a Real Housewife than a feared oracle as she stared out into the ocean.

There was Lu-Hua, her stick-straight black hair arranged in layers and streaked with blond highlights as she held up a large femur bone.

There was Ama, with bloodred paint smeared over her ebony cheeks, wearing a glittery gold tank top and a censor’s rectangle covering her girly parts.

Lovely. Even the oracles had gone Hollywood.

Ama hissed as the camera panned in on her face. Her eyes rolled up in her head as she began to hum.

A hush fell over the crowd, and our mess tent, as we waited for her to speak. To tell us what came next.

Hell, I’d be willing to do just about anything to prevent a tragedy like the one we’d seen today.

Her lips quaked as she groaned.
“The healer who can see the dead…”

Her eyes flew open and I nearly sidestepped off my chair. She began panting, gaze unfocused.
“The healer will uncover the bronze weapon,”
she snarled.

Hell. Not that thing again. I didn’t know whether to slink to the floor or scream bloody murder. I’d had enough of the bronze dagger to last me a lifetime—quite possibly three or four.

Ama snarled.
“With it, the healer shall arrest the gods.”

Oh, sure. Why not go up against the gods?

Ever since I’d been forced to yank it out of Galen’s dying body, the bronze dagger had brought nothing but fear and damnation. I’d had to deal with it while it followed me around. I’d had to use it to fend off soul-sucking Shrouds. The thing had practically stalked me outside of a hell vent.

I was so glad when the goddess Eris swiped it. I thought I’d finally gotten rid of it. But no. I was never done with the bronze dagger. At that point, I was convinced the bloody weapon would follow me to my grave—or worse—put me in it.

But I’d do it. I’d take up the dagger again. I’d do it for every kid out there on the battlefield right now. Every soldier injured and fighting for life. As well as the ones who hadn’t made it.

Ama collapsed onto the ground, spent.

Oh, well, wasn’t that nice? At least somebody could relax around here.

A healer who can see the dead will uncover the bronze weapon.

When? Why?

The least she could do was give me some fucking detail.

Grim, I eased down from the cafeteria chair and made my way out of the tent. No doubt I’d find out soon enough.

chapter six

The yard was clogged with casualties, and I could hear more choppers on the way. I stopped to triage a burn patient. They’d packed dressings on his chest, neck, and on the right side of his face. His left was criss-crossed with so many scars, I could barely tell what he was supposed to look like.

“Hang in there, soldier. I’ve got you.” I eased back the gauze in a few spots to see what we had. Second- and third-degree burns, a mix of mottled black and red oozing wounds.

An out-of-breath EMT drew up next to me. “We’ve given him glucose and saline.”

“Good.” He was losing a lot of fluids. The gauze was soaked. I took a closer look. He was swelling fast. I kept my face carefully neutral as my heart sped up. “He’s going to lose that airway.”

The soldier watched me, his eyes hard with pain and fear.

We didn’t have much time. I stared daggers at the EMT. “Give me a trach tube. Now.” Before he dilated to the point where we couldn’t get it in.

“We’re going to get you through this,” I said, focusing on the soldier. He was a corporal. Infantry. I glanced down at his neck. His dog tags were gone. Damn it. Was it too much to ask that I actually know about my patients?

A cool shiver ran through me as the ghost of my former nurse shimmered into focus next to me. Charlie looked like a teenager, too skinny for his rusty red army scrubs. “They’re in his left pants pocket.”

I really hated when Charlie showed up. But in this case, I hoped he was right.

One way to find out. I winced. “I’m sorry to do this.” The soldier’s combat fatigues were bloody and torn. Trying not to grimace at the pain I knew I was causing, I slid a hand into my patient’s pocket.

“You got it,” Charlie said, reaching down to help, his hands passing right through our patient. My fingers came in contact with metal. “Jimmy Zern,” he said. “He’s a shifter. Twenty-two years old. Blood type A positive.”

I slid the dog tags out and flipped them over in my hand. Damned if he wasn’t right. I clutched the tags and pointed to the nearest nurse. “Get me three hundred cc’s of morphine.”

The soldier was in obvious distress.

The EMT returned with my trach tube. My patient was starting to gasp.

I glanced at the hard face of the EMT. “You didn’t give this patient a painkiller.”

His eyes flicked up to me as he positioned the soldier’s head. “I’m not allowed to anesthetize immortals in the field.”

“He’s a shifter,” I snapped. Gods be damned. We couldn’t wait.

My patient gasped and gurgled as I inched the tube down his throat, without the benefit of morphine. I felt his pain. It was suffocating both of us.

But we got the tube down. He could breathe.

“Ready?” I asked the EMT as I handled the legs and he took the shoulders. We hoisted the corporal onto a stretcher and rushed him inside.

A half-dozen nurses had turned the walk-in clinic into a makeshift burn unit. They’d cut off his clothing and bandage the burns. We hooked the corporal up to a ventilator and assigned him to a twenty-four-hour watch. He should make it. At least he was in good hands.

Our base commander, Colonel Kosta, barreled past me, sterile hands up. “If you’re done with him, we’ve got about five dozen of his friends out front.”

“Tell me something I don’t know.” I scrubbed up for surgery and made it out onto the floor in time to help with a mass influx of close-combat injuries—artillery shot, metal-weapons wounds.

From what I could see, it had been a massacre.

The operating tent was packed. I had a table by the front, near one of the big fans. You’d think that would be good, but all it seemed to do was blow hot air around.

By my third patient, I was getting a massive headache and an intense urge to run away and jump in the nearest tar pit.

Marc had the table in front of me. He stepped away as an orderly took his patient to recovery. “How are you doing?”

“Good.” Which was a ridiculous thing to say in the middle of the latest bloodbath.

Still, I didn’t need to worry about Marc understanding, at least when it came to this.

My goggles fogged at the edges as I worked on a particularly dicey shard of glass that had severed a lung in three places. At least that was how many I’d found so far.

Nurse Hume stood to my right, assisting.

Marc made his way to my free side. “Hey,” he said, under the clattering chaos. “You need a break?”

“I’m okay.”

He didn’t budge. “I’m not giving up on you.”

I glanced up, locked eyes with him. “Don’t do this. Not now.” I wasn’t about to give him false hope.

Hume suctioned. “There.”

I looked to where he was pointing and saw another shard of glass. I extracted it, holding it up for Hume and Marc to see. “Do you realize how close to the abyss he had to be to get this kind of a wound?”

Marc shook his head. “What are you talking about?”

That’s right. He hadn’t seen PNN. “Let’s just say the old army has invented a whole new brand of horror.”

Complete with dragon suicide bombers.

“Christ,” he said, keeping an eye on his table. It wouldn’t stay empty for long.

“Over here,” Hume murmured, suctioning near another shard.

Damn.

It was like they were multiplying. I was thankful again for the anesthetic we’d developed for immortals. It was impossible to imagine doing this surgery while the poor kid on my table was conscious.

Nurse Hume handed me a retractor.

I tried it, realized I needed something smaller. “Get me a McAndrews clamp,” I said to Hume.

While he went off to look, I took over siphoning the wound. “We have a new prophecy,” I said, voice low, eyes on my patient. “The surgeon who sees the dead gets her fricking bronze dagger back. Again.”

I glanced up at Marc, expecting shock, coming up way short. Hell, maybe he was surprised. It was hard to tell with the surgical mask covering his face. Still, he looked way too calm. “Did you hear me?” He especially should recognize my own particular brand of hell.

No one knew about me and my ability except for Marc, and Galen. And now Leta. Shit. This was getting better and better.

He exhaled hard, the breath tenting his surgical mask. “Don’t borrow trouble.”

Oh, that was rich. “Because the oracles have been wrong before.” I located another sliver of glass and tossed it onto the tray.

“You’re looking for problems,” he ground out.

I didn’t have to. They found me all on their own.

Marc leaned close. “If you want to stew about something, start thinking about how we’re going to keep our special guests a secret now that recovery is flooded.”

“Thanks for that.” I couldn’t wait to get them out of here. “Why the hell did he ever come back here with her?”

Marc’s eyes were guarded. “She’s a fugitive,” he said, heading back to his table. At my surprised look, he added, “Leta explained everything.”

“Nice,” I muttered as he went to inspect the X-rays they were posting for him.

Galen wouldn’t tell me squat. Meanwhile Marc got explanations from the dragon who’d died on my table.

I focused on stitching together torn muscle. Classified, my ass. At least one of them had had the decency to fill us in after we’d risked our necks.

We finished surgery in just under eighteen hours, which in truth was quicker than I’d expected. Dawn was beginning to edge through the high windows of the surgeons’ locker room as I peeled off my cap and tossed it into the bio waste bin.

My ponytail was half falling out and my eyes felt like sandpaper. I didn’t care.

I plunked down on the bench between the rows of lockers and just sat.

There was a time I thought I could beat this war—that the things I did to make the prophecies come true would make a difference. Now, I didn’t know.

I’d worked so hard, bled soul-deep to help bring about that cease-fire. And for what? It was hard to see if it had been a true time of peace or simply a delay of the inevitable. War, suffering, death. I didn’t know how to escape it. Or if we even could.

I shoved to my feet.

Marc hadn’t even wanted to hear about the bronze dagger, as if that would make it go away.

It galled me, the way he refused to acknowledge what we were dealing with.

He was too cynical. This war had hardened him as well.

I shucked off my surgical gown. Oh, who was I kidding? There was a time when I’d felt the same way. Like I could be logical, practical, and all of this would go away.

Ha. I wadded the gown and tossed it into the biohazard bin.

Now I felt too deeply, for people and things I shouldn’t feel for at all. I didn’t want to dive back into that mess, but trying to handle everything on my own sucked.

No matter how hard I tried not to admit it to myself, I knew Galen would understand about the dagger.

I yanked open my locker and pulled out a PowerBar and a half-full bottle of water.

He’d wanted to protect me when the knife had first started showing up in places it shouldn’t. Galen had insight, answers—even if they were based on an insane faith in me and my abilities.

Maybe I didn’t miss him so much after all.

I tore through my PowerBar without tasting it. It was fuel, nothing more. And if I slowed down, I might fall over. That was the problem with marathon surgery—my body wanted to crash, but my brain was still going a hundred and eighty miles an hour.

There was no way I was going to sleep. And anyway, I needed to check on Galen. No telling who had walked in on him during the chaos of the last eighteen hours.

Grabbing a clean mask, I took the shortcut through surgery, half expecting to be called over to assist. But there were no more patients waiting and the only surgeons left out on the floor—Kosta and Rodger—had eyes only for their patients.

When I pushed through the double doors to the ICU, a new nurse sat at the desk.

“I’m here to see Jane and John Doe.”

She finished making a notation in a chart and slid her pen behind her ear. “They’re in quarantine.”

Nice touch.

She checked her list. “Beds 2Q and 3Q.”

Quarantine. So they’d been separated then. “Thanks.” My heart pounded and my palms began to sweat.

Don’t think of the dream.

Or sex.

Or the way our bodies slid together so perfectly.

It hadn’t been so long ago that I’d lived that dream. I’d had Galen in my bed every night. I remembered every kiss, every touch. Vividly.

Lord have mercy.

I took the back exit out of recovery, to the flat strip of land before the rise of the hill where we landed our evac helicopters. Six small red tents stretched out in a row, with the requisite ten feet between them.