For Love and Blood and Fury (Lilith’s Legacy #1)

Chapter 12

Chapter Twelve

“Well, Jane Doe can’t stay in the ER forever.” The voice was male and unfamiliar, filtering into Elena’s ears through closed curtains and the discordant beeps and groans of her hellish prison.

Closing her eyes, she strained to hear Marisol’s reply. The act of listening shouldn’t be so depleting. “We should run more diagnostic?—”

“She's already been here for over twenty-four hours. And just like I told you at the end of your shift yesterday, she should be in a skilled nursing facility. There is nothing we can do from a medical standpoint without a diagnosis. There is nothing to treat, Lopez.”

“So then admit her,” Marisol shot back.

Even from the other side of the ER, Elena felt Marisol’s ire like an earthquake. Marisol didn’t want to let her go. She was even jeopardizing that reputation she cared so much about. Amused, Elena kept an ear trained on Marisol’s argument. She wasn’t backing down. A surprising deviation from the sweet persona she projected.

With the disposable lighter she’d pilfered from the daytime nurse, Elena went back to melting the end of a plastic toothbrush into a fine point. Old memories had returned to her. Not in clear pictures, but vague senses that she couldn’t look at too closely or they’d disappear. The more she recalled, the more acutely she felt the wrongness of being on her own. She was injured and cornered and alone.

There was a violence in being severed from her kind. She felt it in the deepest recesses of her soul. Knew it to be true even if she couldn’t remember her clan. There was more missing than her memory and strength, and she had an overwhelming need to be complete.

Unsure that she could fight with nothing but her fangs and upper body, she’d busied her mind and hands with creating sharp weapons out of the hygiene kit that had been dropped next to her untouched plate of revolting human food.

It had been a long time since she’d eaten food, but she didn’t remember it being so… gelatinous. And why was it all so beige?

After adding the toothbrush to the comb and plastic knife already secreted in her hideous and insulting no-slip socks, Elena tried to listen for Marisol again. She couldn’t hear her. Had she won her battle? Elena didn’t have time to wait and find out, but she imagined Marisol’s freckled cheeks flushed with indignation while she addressed some superior.

How far would she push to keep Elena? The thought filled her with an unfamiliar tenderness she shoved aside.

The tray of food next to her bed made it impossible to stop thinking about feeding. She wasn’t hungry, but blood might help her body fight whatever was slowing her healing. Leeches had also crossed her mind, but they’d fallen out of favor so long ago. She didn’t expect to find them in a human hospital. A shame. She’d always loved what they did for her skin.

With as much effort as it had taken the first time, Elena endured the agony sparking up the left side of her body and got to the wheelchair. This time, she’d been able to bear the slightest amount of weight on her right leg. Enough that she landed in the chair when she tumbled out of the bed rather than the floor.

Outside of her enclosure, no one spared a glance her way. There was no sign of Marisol either. She set out on her mission.

The stink of death was heavy behind one of the closed curtains in the emergency room. She hated the smell. Hated how easy it was to choke on. Using the senses that still responded to her, she wheeled carefully around the circular maze of identical looking stalls. Little prisons just like hers.

Rolling past anyone who smelled sick, Elena hunted for a healthy person who’d suffered an unfortunate accident. While she did, she kept one eye trained on the doors leading out of the ER. If she got the chance to bolt, she’d take it.

Heart attack, stroke, sepsis, aneurysm.

Elena kept herself calm, even as a swell of anxiety crested in her chest. What if she couldn’t get herself out? What if she was sitting like a lame duck when her attacker found her? Or worse, what if she could never fully regain her memories? If she couldn’t regain her strength? She couldn’t think of a worse fate than being trapped with humans for the rest of her endless life.

Focusing on something more useful than panic, Elena stopped in front of a closed curtain. She didn’t smell illness, and there was little movement. It was easy to extend her influence, to soothe the sleeping male and ensure he didn’t rouse at her presence.

Ready to feign confusion if a human discovered her incursion, Elena slipped inside the man’s stall. He was heavily sedated, although Elena couldn’t tell why. He did not appear to have any injuries. She rolled to the side of his bed and detected the scent of intoxicants. Many intoxicants.

A polluted blood supply wasn’t optimal. At her full strength, she could easily filter out the mind-altering substances, but like this… She couldn’t be sure. Would she be making herself more vulnerable?

She eyed her supply options. His neck and arms would be too visible to the hospital staff. The brachial artery—a source deep in the upper arm that would quickly deliver a lot of blood—could suit her purposes.

Extending her fangs, she couldn’t bring herself to lift the sleeve of his T-shirt. He was dead asleep; there was no risk he’d wake and let out a blood-curdling scream. Even without her influence, the drugs in his system were a strong anesthetic.

But still, Elena couldn’t bring herself to take from him. She remembered enough to be sure that she shouldn’t take without consent. That she wouldn’t.

Disgusted with herself, Elena turned away. She wanted more than anything to fucking remember. Pressing her fingers to the source of the pain in her hip, she imagined shrapnel and glass. What had she been impaled with? What had it done to her brain?

She forced herself back to her task. There was really only one option. Before anyone transferred her to some new hell and away from Marisol, she would need to drink from her. If she couldn’t heal her with her undisciplined magic, she might restore her strength with blood.

Wheeling herself back to the corridor, she scanned the massive circular desk at the center of the room. No sign of Marisol. Anxiety flared anew.

Had she gotten fired for fighting to keep Elena under her care? Something like nausea returned to her gut. If she left, Elena would have no one. No way out.

“I’m looking for my nurse,” Elena said to a man behind a computer monitor. Her influence followed her words like burgeoning tendrils on a vine.

Instead of ignoring her, which Elena was sure had been his desire, he barked, “What do you need?”

Elena resisted the urge to shift into compulsion. She didn’t have time to deal with the aftermath. She upped the influence instead, infusing into the nurse a critical sense of urgency. “I need Marisol Lopez,” she said, voice soft and velvety and loaded with the unspoken now .

He resisted. But only for a moment. When he picked up a telephone, she relaxed into her chair, tired from an exertion that should be as effortless as breathing.

A second later, his voice crackled over the PA system. “Lopez, your patient in two needs a bedpan. STAT.”

Elena closed her eyes against the indignation. Well, I should have been more specific with my intentions.