No Escape From Destiny

NO ESCAPE FROM DESTINY

Destinies

KASEY DEAN

Copyright © 2012

Chapter One

It was dark, too dark. There was supposed to be a full moon that night, but there were so many clouds that one couldn’t even see the moon, which may have been a good thing. Rumor had it there was a gang of kids pretending to be vampires whenever the moon was full. Hopefully, if the moon stayed hidden in its blanket of clouds, the pretend vampires would stay at home and off the streets.

Anstice hated working the night shift during the full moon, as did every other paramedic in the department, which is why she was there. She had no life, so when the regular crew member called in sick, she was the supervisor’s first call, and of course she had no excuse for not coming in. So there she was, sitting in the back of the rig waiting for the first crazy call of the night to come across the radio. While waiting, she was stretched out on the patient cot reading her favorite paranormal romance book, just waiting for her vampire in shining armor to come to life off the pages and rescue her from her boring life.

At least she was the paramedic on duty tonight and got the comfy position. The poor driver, Paul, was trying to relax in the front seat. Every once in a while the whole rig would shake when he was trying to find a comfortable position. That was the problem with covering such a big district. Some of the crews had to stage near their coverage area instead of being at the station in a nice comfortable bed.

She only got to page five before the dispatcher’s voice came across the radio. “Assault in progress,
5001 Highmore Ave
, stage two blocks away until law enforcement secures scene!”
Stage two blocks from scene, yeah right, we’re only four blocks away as it is
. The dispatcher sounded excited. Anstice thought, great, this should be a whole lot of fun.
Assault in progress, hopefully law enforcement would be quicker, which was highly unlikely as close as they were. Last time the perpetrator found the ambulance crew before the cops found the perpetrator. Thank god for locks and Anstice’s training in karate. After she was done with him, they’d had two patients instead of just the victim.

Anstice took her time putting her book away and climbing into the front of the rig. No need to hurry, she didn’t want to be the first on the scene again. Paul, who had probably just gotten comfortable and fallen asleep, had the red lights and siren on and the ambulance in drive by the time she got her seatbelt on. “Okay, let’s go, and turn the lights off, we don’t want the bad guys to know we’re coming,” she said with enough enthusiasm
she wouldn’t have been surprised if
Paul thought she was still asleep. Paul rolled his eyes at her. She knew he lived on a constant adrenaline rush and loved speeding to the scene, but he reluctantly listened and turned the lights and siren off.

Two blocks down the street they came to a stop to await the cops.
They aren’t here yet, surprise, surprise
. Well, they weren’t going to get any closer until they got there. They could hear what sounded like several people fighting not too far away.

Anstice looked around to see if she could locate the source of the sounds. A few blocks away she found what she was looking for. By the looks of it, there wouldn’t be much for her to do if the police didn’t get there soon. There were five men standing around one on the ground, beating him with what looked like iron bars and kicking him. If they kept this up, the only thing she would have to do was wait for the coroner to come.

Just then the dispatcher’s voice came across the radio. “Law enforcement has been delayed, officer down at another location, expect extended ETA.” Great, this guy would die for sure now, unless Anstice and Paul did something about it. They had to make a decision and do something against protocol that could put them both at risk, or let the poor guy die. Anstice looked over at Paul, whose knuckles were white from how tight he was gripping the steering wheel. She knew he was thinking that they should be doing something but didn’t want to say anything to her, as she was in charge of making the decisions.

They couldn’t wait much longer. She reached over and flipped on the red lights and siren and hoped that that would be enough to get them to clear out. By god, at least it got their attention. All of the bad guys looked up at the same time. The sight they made had Anstice’s blood draining from her face. All of them were white as ice with hair as black as a raven, all their clothes were just as black, and even from two blocks away, their eyes looked like they were glowing red, which must have been a reflection from the ambulance lights. At least that’s what she hoped.

Anstice held her breath while the men stared her way, clearly trying to decide whether to run or take on the ambulance crew. They apparently decided that the man had had enough and the ambulance crew wasn’t a threat to them. They walked away like they were taking a nightly stroll down the street, not like they had just been caught beating a man probably to death.

Anstice looked at Paul, who had been holding his breath, too. “Let’s get him in the rig and get out of here before they decide to come back,” she said.

Paul replied, “You think he’s alive?”

She shrugged her shoulders and told him to drive up to the scene. When they got to the man lying lifeless on the ground, it didn’t look good for him. She jumped out of the ambulance, looking around, and tried to avoid stepping in all the blood that was on the ground around him. While Paul got the stretcher out, she checked the guy’s vitals.
What do you know
? He was still alive, barely. His pulse was very slow and weak, and if they didn’t get him to the hospital ASAP, there wasn’t much even the best doctors were going to do for him.

They had just loaded him into the back of the ambulance, and Paul was climbing in behind the wheel. Once she had the man settled, she turned to lock the doors of the ambulance. Just as she was reaching for the lock, one of the men in black opened the back doors, demanding Anstice turn the beaten man over to him. “Give him to us, and we will let you live. Try to get away with him, and we won’t just kill you, we will torture you first. We thought he would die before you could get him to the hospital, but we just can’t risk him living.”

Anstice had always had a smart mouth with no filter between it and her brain. She always said the first thing that came to her mind, even if it wasn’t the appropriate time. “Yeah, buddy, like making me look at that ugly mug of yours for hours on end?”

Who could blame her? The guy was so ugly he could scare the dark out of a closet. She didn’t think he had ever been outside in the sun. His hair looked greasy, like it hadn’t been washed in months. And to top it off he had a horrible scar from the corner of one eye down to his chin. The scar drew his mouth down into a sneer that would have made him look evil even if he hadn’t had a gun pointed at her. He was holding a scary-looking gun that Anstice had never seen before.

The pasty guy looked at her in shock for a minute. It was as if no one had ever spoken back to him. When he was able to regain his composure, he said, “Have it your way, bitch.” With that, he pointed the gun at her head.

The man on the stretcher opened his eyes and grabbed her hand. “Just let them have me, and they won’t hurt you,” he said, so weak she could barely make out the words.

“We will all be fine,” she assured him, although she really didn’t believe herself at this moment. They would be lucky if any of them lived through this night. She weighed her options. Turn the poor guy over to the “pasties,” as she had decided to name them, and maybe they wouldn’t kill her, too, but he would definitely die. Or she could try to make a run for it and maybe at least Paul, being in the front seat, would live to see morning.

She looked through the window to the front seat. Paul knew what was she was thinking and nodded. Anstice grabbed the handle on the stretcher as tight as she could just in time. Paul had the ambulance in drive and was taking off as fast as the rig could go.

Her hand that was coated in the patient’s blood slipped off the handle, and she found herself falling toward the open door. She closed her eyes and prepared to meet pavement, hard. Next thing she knew, the guy on the stretcher had her arm wrapped in his hand, tugging her back onto the stretcher with him. How he had enough energy left in him to pull her back and hold on to her she couldn’t figure out. She found herself lying flat against his huge rock of a chest while his arms wound around her and held her tight as steel bands.

She couldn’t help but notice that he smelled of dark spice and musk. Even in this situation she found herself aroused as his scent filled her nose. She couldn’t explain the feeling. The scent was pulling her in, and reality was lost. She’d sworn off men three years ago, but man oh man was she willing to put an end to her self-induced celibacy for the hot man lying under her. Even with all her training she couldn’t find a reason to care that he was hurt. As hot and strong and delicious-smelling as he was, she couldn’t wait until he was healed for some wild times.

He looked like the kind of man that would be into some hot, rough, kinky sex. It was obvious she needed to get laid if she was thinking all this in the few seconds she lay across his chest inhaling his intoxicating scent. But, God, did he smell good. She wasn’t sure if she wanted to rub herself all over him to be covered in his scent or lick him from head to toe.

He was definitely someone one could describe as edible. Just lying partially on top of him she could feel all the hard lines of his body, and if she wasn’t mistaken, he was hard and quite well-endowed. How could he possibly be aroused as injured as he was? She didn’t care. She rubbed her pussy against his length, pushing at the fly of his leather pants. He let out a low moan. “You’re playing with fire, little one.”

That was enough to rip her from her daydream and back into real life. Anstice shook her head to clear the image of lying over him like this for a whole different reason. She tried to push herself up and away from him so she could get rid of the desire to rip his clothes off for reasons other than treating his injuries.

Just then she felt something hit her hard in the back. The force of it knocked her back down to the man’s chest, where she saw shock in his deep-brown eyes so dark they might even have been black. She tried to push up again but couldn’t seem to move very well. He wrapped one arm around her back and pushed her hair that had fallen out of her ponytail back off her forehead. “Just hold still, little one. I’ll get us help. Please just hold on. You’ll be okay.”

She looked at him, confused for a split second before the burning in her back and lungs started. It felt like someone had stabbed a hot poker into her back and left it there. It wasn’t in just one place, though. Her whole back felt as if it were on fire. She tried to take a breath to say something to him but was having a hard time inhaling. When she opened her mouth, no sounds came out, only blood.

She knew then what had happened. She had been shot in the back and had some sort of internal injuries. She was going to die tonight. As if he could hear her thoughts, he pressed a small kiss to her forehead, looked her in the eyes, and said, “I will save you. One way or another, I promise. You will not give your life to save mine this night.”

Then, as if she was falling into the dark pools of his eyes, the world went black.