Lover Unbound (Black Dagger Brotherhood 5)

Jane's mouth about fell open. "Don't read my mind."

"Sorry. I didn't mean to, it just happened."

She cleared her throat, trying not to measure how great he looked standing up. Dressed in Black Watch plaid pajama bottoms and a black muscle shirt, he was moving slowly, but with a lethal confidence that was a knockout.

What had they been talking about? "How do you know I won't run for it?"

"You won't bail on someone who requires medical attention. It's not in your nature, true?"

Well... shit. He knew her pretty well.

"Yeah, I do," he said.

"Cut that out."

Red Sox looked around Jane at the patient. "Your mind reading coming back?"

"With her? Sometimes."

"Huh. You getting anything from anyone else?"

"Nope."

Red Sox repositioned his hat. "Well, ah... let me know if you pick up shit from me, k? There are some things that I'd prefer to keep private, feel me?"

"Roger that. Although I can't help it sometimes."

"Which is why I'm going to take up thinking about baseball when you're around."

"Thank f**k you're not a Yankees fan."

"Don't use the Y-word. We're in mixed company."

Nothing else was said as they continued through the tunnel, and Jane had to wonder whether she was losing her mind. She should have been terrified in this dark, subterranean place with two huge escorts of a vampire nature. But she wasn't. Oddly, she felt safe... as if the patient would protect her because of the vow he'd given her, and Red Sox would do the same because of his bond with the patient.

Where the hell was the logic in that, she wondered.

Gimme an S! A T! An O! A C! Followed by a K-H-O-L-M! What's it spell? HEAD FUCK.

The patient leaned down to her ear. "I can't see you as the cheerleader type. But you're right, we both would slaughter anything that so much as startled you." The patient straightened again, one giant testosterone surge plugged into shitkickers.

Jane tapped him on the forearm and crocked her forefinger so he'd lean back down. When he did, she whispered, "I'm scared of mice and spiders. But you don't need to use that gun on your hip to blow a hole in a wall if I ran into one, okay? Havaheart traps and rolled newspapers work just as well. Plus, you don't need a Sheetrock patch and plaster job afterward. I'm just saying."

She patted his arm, dismissing him, and refocused on the tunnel ahead.

V started to laugh, awkwardly at first, then more deeply, and she felt Red Sox staring at her. She met his eyes with hesitation, expecting to find some kind of disapproval thing going on. Instead, there was only relief. Relief and approval as the man... male... Christ, whatever... looked at her and then his friend.

Jane flushed and glanced away. The fact that they guy was obviously not pulling a best-friend pissing contest with her over V should not have been a bonus. Not at all.

A hundred yards later they came up to a set of shallow stairs that led to a door with a bolt-based locking mechanism the size of her head on it. As the patient stepped up and put in a code, she imagined they were going to walk into a 007 kind of deal -

Well, not hardly. It was a closet with shelves of yellow-lined legal pads and printer cartridges and boxes of document clips. Maybe on the other side...

Nope. It was just an office. A regular middle-management kind of office with a desk and a swivel chair and file cabinets and a computer.

Okay, no Jerry Bruckheimer/Die Hard here. Try a commercial for Allstate insurance. Or a mortgage company.

"This way," V said.

They went out through a glass door and down an unmarked white corridor to some stainless-steel double doors. Beyond them was a professional-quality gym, one big enough to host a pro basketball game, a wrestling match, and a volleyball exhibition at the same time. Blue mats were laid out across the glossy honey-colored floor, and there were punching bags hanging from under a stacked row of elevated bleachers.

Big money. Huge. And how had they constructed all this without someone on the human side of things catching on? There must be a lot of vampires. Had to be.

Workmen and architects and craftsmen... all able to pass among humans if they wanted to.

The geneticist in her got a serious case of brain strain. If chimpanzees shared ninety-eight percent of the DNA of humans, how close were vampires? And evolutionarily speaking, when did this other species branch off from apes and Homo sapiens? Yeah... wow... she'd give anything to get a crack at their double helix. If they were indeed going to clean her mind before they let her go, medical science was missing out on so much. Especially as they didn't get cancer and healed so fast.

What an opportunity.

At the far side of the gym they stopped in front of a steel door marked EQUIPMENT/PT ROOM. Inside there were racks and stacks of weapons: An arsenal of marital arts swords and nunchakus. Daggers that were locked in closets. Guns. Throwing stars.

"Dear... God."

"This is just for training purposes," said with a whole lot of meh.

"Then what the hell do you use to fight with?" As all kinds of War of the Worlds scenarios marched through her head, she caught the familiar scent of blood. Well, semi-familiar. There was a different tint to the smell, something spicy, and she remembered the same winelike fragrance when she'd been in the OR with her patient.

Across the way a door marked physical therapy, swung open. The beautiful blond vampire who'd trucked her out of the hospital put his head around the jamb. "Thank God you're here."

All Jane's physician instincts came online as she walked into a tiled room and saw the soles of a pair of shitkickers hanging off a gurney. She pushed ahead of the men, shoving them out of her way so she could get to the guy lying on the table.

It was the one who'd hypnotized her, the one with the yellow eyes and the spectacular hair. And he really needed attention. His left orbital region was crushed inward, the lid so swollen he couldn't open the thing, that half of his face twice the size it should be. She had a feeling the bone above his eye was collapsed, and so was the one on his cheek.

She put her hand on his shoulder and met him in the eye that was open. "You're a mess."

He cracked a weak smile. "You don't say."

"But I'm going to fix you."

"You think you can?"

"No." She shook her head back and forth. "I know I can."

She wasn't a plastic surgeon, but given his healing capabilities, she was confident she could address the issues he had without marring his looks. Assuming she had the right supplies.

The door swung wide again, and Jane froze. Oh, God, it was the giant with the jet-black hair and the black wraparound sunglasses. She'd wondered if she hadn't dreamed him, but evidently he was real. Totally real. And in charge. He carried himself like he owned everything and everybody in the room and could do away with it all in a swipe of his hand.

He took one look at her next to the guy on the gurney and said, "Tell me this is not what's happening."

Instinctively Jane stepped back in the direction of V, and just as she did, she felt him come up behind her. Although he didn't touch her, she knew he was close. And prepared to defend her.

The black-haired one shook his head at the wounded guy. "Phury... for f**k's sake, we need to get you to Havers's."

Phury? What the hell kind of name was that?

"No," was the weak response.

"Why the hell not?"

"Bella's there. She sees me like this... going to freak... She's already bleeding."

"Ah... shit."

"And we have someone here," the guy said wheezed. His one eye moved over to Jane. "Right?"

As they all looked in her direction, the black-haired one was clearly cranked out. So it was a surprise when he said, "Will you treat our brother?"

The request was nonthreatening and respectful. Evidently he'd been upset primarily that his buddy was down for the count and not getting treated.

She cleared her throat. "Yeah, I will. But what do I have to work with? I'm going to want to knock him out - "

"Don't worry about that," Phury said.

She shot him a level stare. "You want me to put your face back together without general anesthesia?"

"Yes."

Maybe they had a different pain tolerance -

"Are you insane?" Red Sox muttered.

Okay, maybe not.

But enough with the talk. Assuming this boy with the Rocky Balboa puss healed as fast as her patient did, she had to get operating now, before the bones knit together wrong and she had to rebreak them.