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I try not to think about the last words Dr. Slater said to her as I hasten after the stretcher. If what he said is true, then we deliberately left that other man to die. To bleed out alone.
I don’t have time to think about it because as soon as we crash through the OR doors, the scarred man’s heart rate flattens again.
CHAPTER TWO
KAIN
“Time of death…01:38.”
Thank fuck, at least it’s over. Thirty four years was too many.
As the thought forms, a splitting pain emanates from my temple, and I nearly laugh. Even hell won’t take me. Why would they? There’s nothing left for the devil to want.
It’s an effort to force my eyes open, each slight movement more painful than the last. Once I do, I take my time scanning the surroundings.
Definitely not hell. A bed with gentle white linens. The rhythmic beep-beep-beep of a monitor just out of my vision. The rush of fluids into my veins from an IV in my hand.
Hospital. Hurt. Not dead.
With one question solved, I search my memory to see if my killing shot rang true. If I was finally able to kill the bastard. My foggy mind races through the shrouded memories of the past few hours, searching for an answer. Any sign that I finally did it. Time seems to slip away, my memory as distorted as my vision, until a single peering light breaks through the veil.
Only, it’s not the light I’m looking for.
Adrenaline floods my system, and a door cracks in the attic of my mind, letting a voice—that voice—slip through.
The blood. The blood filling your ears, filling your lungs. Slowly, slowly, slowly drowning you from the inside. The life from your veins, so slippery on the pavement, on your hands. Sticky, icky, slippery life, clinging to whatever it can. Clinging to sanity, clinging to hope where there is none. None. None, none, none, none, none—
I slam my mental weight against that wretched door and clench my fists tight, locking those unbalanced thoughts back where they belong. When there’s no threat of them escaping, I try to take a deep breath past the dense knot in my throat and finally notice the thick plastic tube lodged in my windpipe.
I manage to gasp through the searing pain and crushing weight in my throat and chest. That voice rattles against its confines, but I steel my mind, focusing on taking small breaths through the tube.
In. Out. In. Out.
My muscles unwind as the powerful sedative from the IV courses through my veins, stopping the nerve receptors and muddling my senses. I’m sure whatever they’re pumping into me is making it harder to block out that inner voice, but I can’t do anything about it now. No escape from the lashings.
Death is a warm blanket. Soothing nothingness. To fall. To slip. Down, down, down the rabbit hole.
I rail against the door until the soft sounds of crying call my attention, offering a blissful distraction. A young woman in blue scrubs sits on the floor in the corner of the room with her head in her hands, her whole body wracking with the effort to hold in her sobs. She’s pretty, and even though I’m halfway dead, my cock twitches below the thin hospital gown.
I didn’t think there was enough blood left in me to do that.
It’s because you’re sick. Sick, sick, sick.
My mind refocuses, slamming the barricade on that door as I notice the team of hospital staff across the room. They quickly scurry from one place to the next, one pleading wreck to another. A team of nurses rip the cords from a man lying motionless in bed as a white-gowned man—doctor—checks his watch. The monitor beside the bed showcases a flat red line where a heartbeat should be, and a spark of hope lights my veins.
Maybe it’s Myers. Maybe—maybe I really did kill him.
In a flash, the team transfers the body to a stretcher, taking care to cover the gaunt, pallid face with a sheet before wheeling it from the room. I try to make out the face to see if I recognize my father’s mouth before the sheet covers him, but I have no luck.
Suddenly, a gust of cool air smacks my right cheek, and my line of thought flips.
The mask. Where is it? Where, where, where? They’ll see you, and they’ll vomit. They’ll run, they’ll scream, scream, scream. Kill. Kill them all before they see.
The heart monitor beside me picks up pace, and the girl’s head whips to me.
“You’re awake.”
A blanket of quiet falls over my mind at her tinkling voice. I watch her rub an arm across her face—forcefully, as if she’s angry at the tears for being there. Then she stands from the bed and strides over to me, those blue scrubs swishing around her ankles. They’re horribly faded and baggy, with soft tears at some of the seams and worn down so thin over time and reuse that the outline of her breasts and her hips is clearly visible.
