Immortally Yours, An Urban Fantasy Romance (Monster MASH, Book 1) (26 page)

"Also about Galen. He's laid out on your floor."
 

She took one last drag. "Never mind. We're even."
 

Chapter Seventeen

True to his word, Kosta had an ambulance parked outside. It was rusty red, same as the limbo landscape, with the Ankh—an ancient symbol for life—blazoned on the sides. The Ankh was painted in gold, and resembled a cross with a loop at the top.
 

I wore the same symbol on the sleeve of my field jacket. It was painted on the roofs of our medical tents. It was our version of the Red Cross, really.
 

Thaïs walked ahead of me, with his trademark limp.
 

Not even bothering to look back, he swung open the heavy metal door and climbed into the driver's seat. What a male move.
 

I trudged around the front, toward the passenger side. It was just as well. I hadn't driven a car since I parked my bright blue Mustang at my dad's house before leaving.
 

My heart squeezed a fraction.
 

It didn't do any good to think about it.
 

"You're out of uniform," Thaïs barked as I stepped up into the modified truck.

I slid onto the vinyl seat and stashed my white coat and the charts on the dash. "I'm a doctor, not a soldier."
 

"Obviously," he grumbled.
 

Thaïs fired up the engine as I slammed the door. The sound of it vibrated through the metal interior like a tuning fork.
 

The driver's cab smelled like the dust and heat of the limbo desert. Out of habit, I reached for a seat belt. There weren't any.
Merde.
Not everyone was immortal.
 

The entire ambulance rattled as Thaïs hit the accelerator with enough gusto to launch the charts into my lap. Jeffe sat outside, waving as we pulled out in a cloud of dust.
 

Teeth rattling, we whipped past the hospital and a puzzled Rodger, who was just about to go inside.
 

Not many people left camp. I fought the butterflies in my stomach as I dragged off my field jacket and laid it next to me. The sun felt good on my bare arms. The ambulance bumped over the uneven road between the recovery tent and the supply depot, toward a side road that led due south.
 

A hand-painted sign informed us that we were indeed on the highway to hell.
 

Too bad it couldn't be Galen sitting next to me. He'd probably been down this road before.
 

I dragged my hands through my hair. I couldn't believe I'd actually knocked him out. That would put a crimp in our relationship.
 

Before this afternoon, I hadn't exactly known how sphinxes took down their prey. I'd figured it wasn't pleasant. But really, I didn't have a choice. I had to complete this assignment without Galen following me.
 

And without killing Thaïs.
 

"Where's the map?" I asked, locating it on the scratched up floor between us.
 

"Don't bother," Thaïs hollered over the droning engine. He pointed to his head. "I have it right here," he said, tapping.
 

"Oh please," I ground out. "And here I thought your head was full of hot air." With a few cobwebs in the corners.
 

I unfolded the map, fighting it as the edge flapped in the breeze.
 

When Kosta said we had to head south, I figured we'd be heading toward Hades, but I wanted to know just how far he expected us to go. I certainly wasn't going to depend on Thaïs's ego to tell us when to stop.
 

I rolled my window up and braced a knee against the two-way radio receiver on the dash in front of me. Better than the siren button.
 

Okay. I ran my finger down the colorful map that detailed hell vents, raised terrain, and very few roads. The Highway to Hell speared down from our camp.
 

It looked like we needed to head thirty-two miles due south until we hit a bottomless canyon. Well, that should be easy to spot. At the canyon, we'd turn left onto a dirt road for another mile.
 

"Told you we were going the right way," Thaïs said as I refolded the map and stashed it under my charts. "I don't need you telling me where to go," he said to himself, gripping the wheel with both hands, "or slowing me down."
 

"Oh, well," I said, "forgive me for tagging along."
 

Wouldn't Thaïs be even happier to know we could have some assassins on our tail?
 

At least we'd be able to see them coming. The rusty red desert stretched for miles. Here and there, I'd spot an outcropping of rocks in the distance.
 

Hopefully I'd be back in time to be with Galen when he woke. I could tell him how I'd done this on my own—how we'd fulfilled the second prophecy. Lord help us.
 

Wind thundered through Thaïs's window and echoed throughout the cab. As we rode farther and farther south, the whole thing started to smell like someone was cleaning an oven.
 

"I could do this myself," Thaïs harrumphed.
 

I knew the silence was too good to last. "You can treat four casualties at once?" Impressive.
 

To think, I could be back in camp hanging out with my bronze knife, or hearing more about the prophecy.
 

Thaïs tightened his grip on the wheel. "You don't have any respect for this war."
 

"No," I said, gazing out onto the unending desert, "I'm partial to the kids I treat."
 

"They're not kids," he balked. "They're trained killers."
 

Not the one laid out on my table last night. He couldn't have been more than eighteen years old. He was lucky I didn't have to do anything but sew his shoulder shut. Next time, it might be worse. And there would be a next time.
 

There always was.
 

I glanced at Thaïs in all his determined glory. "It's a dumb war." For every battle-crazy soldier like Thaïs, there were half a dozen others who just wanted to go home.
 

He glowered at me. "That's treason!" I could tell I'd shocked him, which meant he really didn't get out enough.
 

I rested my head on the back of the seat. "Let the gods fight it out themselves."
 

He acted like I'd suggested they take up belly dancing. "Hand-to-hand combat is beneath them."
 

I lolled my head toward him. "I was thinking more like Parcheesi. Jeffe can moderate. As long as he promises not to eat anyone."
 

"This is not a joke," Thaïs cursed under his breath.
 

"I know." People were dying. If we weren't careful, there'd be four more dead today.
 

I just had to trust myself that this would work out. I'd do what I had to do in order to bring those soldiers back. Anything else was out of my control.
 

I glanced out the window to my right and nearly fell out of my seat. "What the hell is that?" A leathery black creature dashed across the desert, straight for our ambulance. It had the lolling gait of a chimpanzee, only it was about twice as big and ten times faster. I spotted two more in the distance.
 

Holy shit. Assassins. And I'd chucked my knife and knocked out Galen.
 

"Ha!" Thaïs barked. "They're just imps."
 

Spoken like a man with a death wish. Imps were minions of the devil. They could tear your heart out in one swipe. They had razor-sharp teeth, crushing jaws, hell, even their spit was lethal.
 

Heart racing, I braced my hands on either side of me and searched for something I could use to clock them. This weapons ban was going to kill me. "You don't get it. Those monsters are after me." The cab was bare. "Why don't we have any weapons?" This was the fucking army!
 

Thaïs—the jerk—seemed to be enjoying himself. "You haven't been out of camp much."
 

"No," I snapped, wide-eyed, "I haven't." And now I knew why.
 

The imps had drawn into attack position. All three of them ran beside the ambulance on my side, their mouths set into snarls. I could see their glowing yellow eyes and the ridges of bone on their foreheads.
 

"For god's sake, close your window," I yelled. Or maybe not. Let them eat him first.
 

"Watch," Thaïs said, two seconds before he hit the brakes.
 

"Shit!" I grabbed hold of the dash as the impact shoved me forward.
 

"See?" Thaïs hollered. He still had the damn window open.
 

"What?" I pleaded.
 

He pointed out the window. The imps had slowed to match our pace.
 

"What are they doing?" I demanded. Stalking us?
 

"They like to run alongside cars."
 

"Huh?" I stared at my annoyingly smug colleague, then back at the creatures. They loped next to us, tongues out. I stayed there for a minute, catching my breath, not quite believing any of it. "They're not going to attack?"
 

"Oh, they probably would if we stopped and had a picnic," Thaïs said, "but right now they're just having fun."
 

"They're minions of the underworld," I protested, watching the jostle for position alongside my window.
 

"Exactly." Thaïs shrugged. "They deserve a break."
 

I sat back in my seat, arms shaking. "I am never doing this again."
 

The corners of his mouth tugged up, but Thaïs didn't comment. We drove in silence, the limbo suns bearing down hard on the metal shell of the ambulance. Still, I didn't open my window for anything.
 

The imps stayed with us for at least ten miles. Then they dropped off and dashed toward a leafy green hell vent on the horizon. I shivered despite the heat, watching them go.
 

I'd seen a lot of screwy stuff in my life, but this was right up there.
 

"My sister used to have a flesu," Thaïs commented, out of the blue.
 

"A flesu?" It took me a second to register what he'd said. It sounded more like a sneeze than a name. "I don't even know what that is." I hadn't given much thought to Thaïs or his family, either.
 

"Half imp, half gargoyle," he said, pleased. "They're very rare."
 

"I'd say." I wouldn't want to be in charge of that breeding program. Gargoyles hunted imps.
 

"She called him Romeo," he said, as the ambulance bounced over a rough patch. "Rode him in countless battles."
 

I couldn't help but notice the past tense. "What happened to him?"
 

"I don't know," he said, voice tight. "She was killed in the Battle of the Three Points."
 

Five years ago. "I'm sorry."
 

"I'm not." He drew his shoulders back. "It was an honorable way to die." His mouth twisted. "Instead of spending eternity on the sidelines."
 

I shook my head, willing to bet there'd be a line of demi-gods willing to trade Thaïs a bum leg for a ticket out of the combat corps.
 

"Look," I pointed. "Up ahead." The desert surface dropped off into a canyon.
 

"That's us." Thaïs barreled up to the edge before making a hard left onto a dirt road. We hugged the rim of the bottomless pit, like we were on some twisted carnival ride.
 

What the fuck were these people thinking? I mean, who built a road on the side of a cliff when it could have been ten feet back?
 

Make that twenty.
 

"You mind driving us over there?" I snapped, pointing to the endless desert.
 

"And break an axle?" Thaïs balked. "No way."
 

"You want to plunge down a cliff?" I barked.
 

"I'd be more worried about that hell vent." He pointed dead ahead to a leafy expanse of jungle. Colorful birds swooped over a cluster of trees. It looked like a page out of a resort brochure. "I'll bet the enemy camp is on the other side," he said, as if we were driving through a friend's neighborhood, looking at house numbers.
 

Thaïs skirted way too close to the hell vent, but I refused to give him the satisfaction of another reaction on my part.
 

The air was sweeter here, lush and vibrant. I could hear the chatter of exotic birds, the screeching of monkeys. Illusions, no doubt. I wasn't going to get close enough to find out.
 

I held my breath. It was cooler now, as we caught the breezes off the trees.
 

Shadows moved among the trunks. I'd read reports that people had seen children in the forest, or at least heard the sound of young laughter. I didn't trust anything except the rattling of the ambulance.
 

Thaïs began humming the theme song to
Rocky,
whatever that meant. He was half crazy on a good day.
 

I breathed a sigh of relief once we made it around the vent and picked up the trail again.
 

We hadn't gone more than a mile before we spotted two troop trucks parked on either side of the road ahead. Two jeeps with stretchers attached sat behind them. Thaïs slowed the ambulance.
 

"Checkpoint," I said under my breath as I grabbed for my white jacket. This had to be it.
 

The soldiers climbed out, carrying broadswords. There were at least a dozen of them. Huge demi-gods wearing the muted tan of the old army. Etched in green on their sleeves was the double-headed eagle of the infantry corps.
 

They were followed by at least as many archers. Their arrow tips glistened with the blood of Medusa. It glowed with an unearthly fire. One touch would rot a mortal from the inside out. Several of them knelt in firing position while others stood.