Immortal Flame Read online

  She eased his eyes open and flashed her penlight. Normal pupillary responses. The deep brown, almost black color of his eyes surprised her with their darkness. His open eye locked onto hers and focused, at the same time a blast of vibration drilled from his face through her hand.

  The depth of that gaze pulled her like a particle into a black hole. Her heart expanded then contracted, and her breath caught. Vertigo washed over her. She grabbed the IV pole for balance. The rush of vision took hold, blocking out all sound, like voices obscured by a stiff wind. Faces swam too quickly to make out details. Far in the distance of her mind’s eye, the focus sharpened onto a man. She could see—

  A radiology tech tapped her on the arm. “Doc? Doc?”

  Allison moved her hand away. The patient’s eye fell closed, and the vortex sensation ebbed.

  For the space of two breaths, she felt like a woman surfacing from under water. “Yes?”

  “C-spine x-ray is here for your review, and CT is warmed up and ready if this guy’s okay to go.” The tech passed her a plastic film.

  The nurses turned on the water-cooling blanket now draped over the man. Allison could run him through the scanner with the blanket on top of him. But damn it, why was his temperature so high? Broken neck? Head injury?

  She lifted the film to the light. No obvious vertebral fracture, so it was safe to move the patient. “Sure thing. I’ll go with you.”

  Once they arrived in the CT room, the staff transferred the man’s backboard into the scanner, handling the man with ease, though to look at him, he must have been 200 pounds of solid muscle. This guy gave Captain America a run for his money.

  The machine whirred and hummed. Images of his head, thorax, and abdomen slowly downloaded onto the computer screen. Allison leaned forward. No obvious internal bleeding or spinal injuries. No chest or abdomen damage. The overview scan revealed callus formation on his skull, forearm, and ribs, no doubt from old, healed fractures. A few minutes later, the standard scan images appeared. Where she’d noted callus formations before, now there were none. These new scans belonged to a man with no previous fractures. But how?

  She glanced between the crash victim and his inconsistent scans. How did a man crash at fifty-five miles per hour and destroy his vehicle without so much as a hairline fracture? And what would explain the hyperthermia?

  Allison rubbed her tight neck muscles. “What do you think? I’m not a radiologist, but it looks good to me.”

  The tech gave the okay sign and put a finger to his lips. “I’ll have the radiologist call in a few minutes with the official word. This guy was lucky.”

  “Yeah, lucky.” She stared at the screen and then back to the enigma on the other side of the lead glass window.

  When the staff moved him back to the trauma room, his feet hung over the end of the gurney. He had to be well over six feet tall, maybe mid-thirties, probably a healthy guy. So why the temperature? Why the ghosts on the CT scan?

  She reviewed the labs. White cell count was normal. Okay, so no infection. Drug screen negative. And the CT was negative, so the hyperthermia wasn’t due to brain damage. Her pulse sped up as she called for the nurse to start cooled IV fluids. She had to try something to help this man, but damned if she knew what the hell she was treating. Shivers skittered up and down her neck, part frustration and part fear for this man’s life.

  When things don’t add up in the ER, people end up dead.

  Marcie poked her head into the doctor’s work area. “Teleradiology’s on the phone.” Allison picked up the line, ready for her colleague to shed light on the mystery of this patient.

  “Hi, Al, it’s Becca Lawson in Baker City.”

  “What do you see?”

  “Nothing much. What was the mechanism of injury?”

  “Car went down the bank off the interstate, rolled a couple times. Restrained passenger, stable in the ER, with a head lac that I’ll sew up in a few.” She paused. “Oh, and a temperature reading of 107. I can’t find any reason for that. He should at least be sweating and seizing by now, with markers of muscle breakdown. Yet there’s nothing on lab. You see anything to explain it on your side?”

  “No, his head is fine. There’s some swelling near the head wound and some facial bruises. I presume he’s black and blue?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “His neck and spine are clear, no swelling, no fracture. Abdomen and chest are clear.” She whistled low. “Are you sure you’ve got the right patient? I’d say this guy cheated death.”

  “It’s the right guy. Anything to explain the hyperthermia? Maybe something in the midbrain?”

  “Hmm.” Taps and mouse clicks transmitted through the phone. “Nothing. No blood, no swelling. Did you check your thermometer?”

  Allison blew an exasperated breath. “Yes, it’s reading correctly.”

  “Don’t know.” Dr. Lawson chuckled. “This is why I have the computer screen and not a stethoscope.”

  “Ugh. Thanks, Becca.” She set down the phone and pressed her fingers to the bridge of her nose.

  A nurse’s scream shattered the silence.

  Chapter 2

  “Stop it!” Allison stepped into the fray. “Stop it!” she shouted at the man.

  He froze.

  Her patient, fully awake now, had sat up while still attached to the backboard—now in two pieces. She’d never seen anyone break a board before. She hadn’t even thought such an act was humanly possible. The Velcro straps should have torn first.

  Nurses hung on as the man struggled to free his arms, his muscles bulging. One IV line had ripped out. Dark blood dripped from his arm to the floor until a nurse pressed four-by-four gauze pads onto the IV site.

  “Get. Me. Out. Of. Here,” he ground out, his strong jaw immobilized by the cervical collar.

  “Okay, cool it.”

  He followed her every move with a dark brown gaze fixed on her.

  She gulped. “First of all, your CT scan is clear. So if you calm down for a second, we can get you out of the collar and off of what’s left of our backboard.”

  He tensed briefly and then relaxed as the nurses took the collar and backboard on their way out the door. When he swung both legs around to the side of the bed, his feet touched the floor. He stared at Allison to the point where heat crawled up her neck onto her face. Even covered in blood, bandaged up, and bruised, this handsome man oozed intensity. A flutter in her belly reminded her to stay professional.

  “Okay, Mister … ?”

  He paused, brows furrowed for a long moment, then met her gaze with an astonished expression. His handsome face lit up as if he remembered something important.

  Her mouth went dry.

  “Blackstone. Peter Blackstone.” His rumbling, low voice ran right though her, and Allison suppressed the urge to shiver.

  “All right, Mr. Blackstone, since you’re awake, let me ask you a few questions—”

  With a slash of his hand, he cut her off. “I need you to answer some questions. Where am I? What happened? Who are you? What did I say to you people earlier?” He rubbed his hand over the knot on his forehead.

  She took a deep breath. “Okay, then. You’re in La Grande, Oregon. The EMTs extracted you from your SUV, which rolled down an embankment. You and your demolished vehicle almost ended up in the river. You haven’t said a word since you got here, on account of being unconscious. And I’d say you’re pretty lucky you can move and talk after that bad of an accident. As for who I am? I’m Dr. La Croix, the doctor who is trying to help you.” Some thanks.

  She turned toward the counter and snapped on a pair of gloves. When she glanced over her shoulder, the stark, lost expression on his hard features made her pause. Her tone softened. “Now, I’d like to keep patching you back together. So if you don’t mind, I need to take care of that cut on your head. Would you please lie back?”

  He stared at her.

  Her pulse pounded in her ears.

  Finally, he complied, scowling at her until the hairs
rose on her arms. His eyebrows quirked as if he wanted to ask a question. Tension radiated from bunched muscles as he lay stiffly, his substantial frame nearly covering the entire bed. While she unwrapped the bandages and examined his scalp, he stared at the ceiling. A nurse returned and held up the Xylocaine so Allison could draw it up into a syringe.

  After she irrigated the wound, the flap wasn’t bleeding as much as when he’d first entered the ER. Actually, most of the area that had been pouring out blood earlier had healed, leaving a simple laceration to repair. Bizarre. Scalp wounds often appeared worse than they actually were. Maybe that was the case here.

  When she injected the Xylocaine, she had to double check that Peter was conscious, because he didn’t flinch when she inserted the needle. She brought the skin edges together, the squeak and click of the skin stapler uncomfortably loud in the trauma bay. Heat poured off his skin, and that strange vibration traveled through her gloves. Although she surreptitiously shook her hand out and used instruments to manipulate his wound edges, the vibration continued, like her hand hovered a millimeter above a high-voltage power line.

  Damn it. Not again.

  She threw the gloves into the trash and rubbed her hands on her scrub pants, praying her fingertips would stop buzzing. She scooted the stool around to the side of the bed while a nurse removed the laceration repair tray.

  “All done,” Allison said.

  Peter sat on the side of the bed, the hospital gown covering most of his thighs. His large hands rested on his knees above long, muscular lower legs dusted with dark hair. His corded forearms flexed as he leaned forward.

  Her heart skipped a beat when he locked those dark eyes onto her.

  With the room now empty of staff, the silence crackled like someone had flipped a switch to that same high-voltage power line. She cleared her throat to talk, but he interrupted her.

  “Can I leave now?”

  She sputtered. “Excuse me? No, you have a head injury.”

  He snorted.

  “You need to stay overnight for observation.”

  “Not going to happen.” He stood, towering over her.

  She instinctively reached out to steady her patient.

  Electric fire coursed through her hand where she touched Peter’s naked forearm. Her hand ached, burned, and froze all at the same time. Terrible pain smothered her in an unending, red-hot haze.

  Her gift—randomly seeing the death of the person she touched—went haywire. She’d never seen annihilation of human beings like this before. Too much, too quickly. She couldn’t filter the images, couldn’t control the rate of input into her mind.

  Images jammed into her head. Blazing agony was the frame upon which this vision took shape. Blurs of activity and roars of sound coalesced into specific people and objects. Fields were littered with bodies … soldiers? But the uniforms weren’t right. It looked like an army hospital, but the equipment seemed older, much older. In a blink, there was a flash of light and a scalding ache in her arm.

  Then the image shifted to a woman’s face … her sweet smile … then she shriveled into herself and became a living skeleton with eyes sunken deep into her face. The woman’s pitiful sobs hit Allison like a punch to the abdomen. Then a man appeared, his features obscured in dark smoke except for a malicious smirk. Instinctively, Allison recoiled from the waves of evil emanating from the man. How did she know that he was evil? She mentally shrugged. In whatever manner she experienced this vision, she simply knew for a fact—could feel—that this man promised nothing but horror to anyone around him.

  A familiar large, tanned hand reached out as if it came from within her body and shook the evil man’s smoking hand. Relief washed over Allison, along with hope ...

  Then a terrible realization.

  Horror iced her veins and settled like a frozen fist clenched inside her chest. By some twist of her already warped powers, she had moved inside Peter’s mind. The only question: did these visions represent his imagination or real experiences?

  Unable to control the visions, her mind’s eye was forced in a different direction. She saw the skeletal woman again, this time her round face full of life, with a doting young man by her side and a baby on her hip. Bittersweet happiness turned to pain as it lanced through Allison’s chest and then the image disappeared, only to be replaced by more visions.

  Piercing screams, hands reaching for her but only grasping air, bulging eyes staring at the end of their lives, painful gasps—her vision presented a parade of horror that had no end.

  For what felt like an eternity, she simply watched people die. Asian men in green uniforms, then dark-haired, olive-skinned men. People died from the hands that seemed to be a part of her. Blood spurted from knife wounds coming from one specific weapon, a blade about a foot long and glowing green. People collapsed as the tanned hands released from around reddened necks. In her vision, she heard reports of gunfire, but always the vision returned to the eerie knife.

  Another jolt of power and hope washed over her, followed by crushing, deep despair. After the hands let go of a neck, the knife plunged into a body. Again, she felt a burst of hope and then despair.

  This connection with the visions had never happened before. She had no idea why, but the texture of her usual visions had changed in such a way that she was actually experiencing killing people. Never before had she been the cause of the pain. Never had she felt her own hand push a weapon and rend bone and flesh.

  So much death, so much suffering—like a superheated vase in a kiln, Allison’s soul began to crack. Trapped in the vision, she couldn’t breathe, couldn’t call for help. The pressure in her mind threatened to tear her apart. She’d seen death before, but never in this vicious way. Never this real, this immediate. Never was she the killer.

  Suddenly, she was lying on the hospital bed. Peter’s black stare filled her sight.

  • • •

  Peter’s life seemed to stop and start the instant the gentle doctor touched his arm. The emotions reflected in her lovely emerald eyes shifted from concern to unrelenting agony as her pale lips pressed together and blood drained from her face. Physically connected as they were, he caused her suffering, and he hated himself for it. But, oh, he did love that rush of raw power that flowed from her hand into his body. He’d never felt anything like that electric power before. Did the voltage surge have to do with this woman, or had his inhuman state suddenly changed? The flow of power had to be from the woman now curled on the floor.

  According to his blasted, ever ticking watch, the experience had lasted mere seconds in real time, but to him it was an eternity of blissful freedom.

  Somehow, her contact had lifted the weight from his long-suffering soul. Everything was gone: the guilt after each kill, the disappointment that he would have to continue killing, the pain from his ultimate sacrifice too many years ago. The succor was like sunlight and fresh air in his stale lungs. Standing this close, she even smelled of a bright, sunny day or a clear mountain stream. And he craved more. He craved her.

  They’d connected in a way he’d never known with another person, human or otherwise. He thought he’d left the balm of human touch behind many decades ago.

  He had been wrong.

  Maybe there was some humanity left. Then again, maybe not, since he also wanted to feel this way forever, despite what it would do to this woman. A shocking, delectable mixture of raw power and protectiveness washed over him.

  He no longer wanted to leave the hospital.

  Peter wanted more.

  More of this energy, this control.

  More of her.

  But now, with their connection broken, his soul grew dark and empty, as though his loss from years ago had happened once again.

  Careful not to touch her skin, he slid his hands below her shoulders and knees. When he brushed his lips over the strands of silky hair that had come loose from the clip, he inhaled her scent of fresh air and flowers. Her delicate frame fit next to him like a puzzle piece.

>   A puzzle piece he didn’t want to let go.

  When she moaned, he willed himself to relax his tight grip.

  He could kill any human with his bare hands, and on one level, that ability had served him well. On the other hand, that power reminded him of the creature he had become and the terror he’d been forced to deliver. His unnatural strength was a side effect of the price he had paid to save someone he loved.

  He gently laid her on the hospital bed.

  When her eyes fluttered open, her brows furrowed until she focused on him. The intensity of her green gaze hit him like a sucker punch to the jaw. Unable to look away, he was entranced by flecks of gold, like bits of glitter, swirling in her irises.

  She gasped, trying to sit up. “Oh my God, what did I just see?”

  When he pressed her back onto the bed, another protective urge swamped him. Unfortunately, a competing desire to touch her skin again so she’d lift away his darkness nearly won out. He crouched over her, muscles clenching as he fought to keep his hands off of her. He’d never been so close to losing control.

  Peter wanted to smooth the worry lines from her forehead. The thought rattled him.

  Terror etched upon her fine features as she pressed her soft lips together. “What are you?”

  He rubbed his jaw, focusing on her. “What are you?”

  “I’m an ER doctor.”

  She eased into a sitting position and brushed away tears. When he stepped away from her, she swayed on the bed, and he caught himself reaching for her again. He dropped his useless, cursed hand.

  She pinned him with a heart-stopping stare. “I saw horrible things. What are you?”

  Blind to everything around him except the woman sitting on the bed, his desperate anger radiated outward in waves.

  He gripped her upper arms covered by her lab coat. “Tell me what you saw. Please.”

  She winced when he didn’t let go.

  “What. Did. You. See?” He shook her slightly. “What?”

  Her lip trembled as tears pooled in her green and gold eyes. Peter froze. Frustration threatened to overpower him as he stood a hair’s breadth away from her. He was close enough that a delicate floral scent filled his nostrils, almost enough to distract him.