Total pages in book: 118
Estimated words: 112001 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 560(@200wpm)___ 448(@250wpm)___ 373(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 112001 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 560(@200wpm)___ 448(@250wpm)___ 373(@300wpm)
Gus spoke up, loud and clear. “This is insane, get the fucking guards and—”
“Give it to him,” Lydia snapped. “Right now.”
THIRTY-SEVEN
ABSOLUTELY FUCKING NOT.”
As Gus laid down the law—because someone clearly had to be reasonable in the middle of this shit show—the man in red turned to him.
Before the guy could start blabbing, Gus put his palm up. “This is bullshit. There are so many reasons I’m not going to allow you to have my patient stung by—”
The smile that came back at him was cold. “You are not involved in this business.”
“The hell I’m not. I’m his fucking doctor.”
“Then why are you getting in the way?”
“You come in here, with a goddamn arachnid in a bug box, making like you’ve got a Nobel Prize in your palm, and you’re accusing me of getting in the way? And spare me any hocus-pocus, Google doctor talk. When it comes to cancer treatment, that kind of venom is only a facilitator. Chlorotoxin is not a compound that actually kills the tumor cells. It just helps our modalities get to where they need to be—when appropriate.”
“Ah, but I told you,” the man intoned. Like he was the voice of God or some shit. “She is a very special member of her species, cultivated over generations for—”
“Just give it to Daniel,” Lydia said sharply. “Now.”
Gus pivoted around. The poor woman was leaning over the bed, her hand gripping Daniel’s, her eyes rapt as a convert’s—and he told himself not to lose his temper completely while Daniel was lying there two inches from a coma, and C.P. Phalen was doing absolutely nothing to stop this, and Lydia, as a grieving partner, was getting seduced by a snake oil salesman.
Scorpion venom. Administered by a sting. Was this where they were all ending up?
“Okay, everybody has to leave now,” he announced. “Lydia, you don’t need this distraction—”
“It’s not a distraction!” She turned to the man. “Blade, I believe you! This explains everything. I saw the light at dawn that means you are my future, but it wasn’t in the way I thought it was! You save Daniel and you give me my future—”
Stepping between them, Gus went on man-to-man defense, putting his hands out in front, prepared to shove the red-robed SOB from the room. “I’m going to ask you one more time to leave. And then I’m going to take you out by your asshole because nobody else seems to—”
Before he could get any further, he was forcibly picked up and displaced out of the way. For a split second, he thought it was Daniel, somehow back on his feet. Nope. It was Lydia, and she was stronger than he was—and not just because he was still healing.
Pinning him against the wall, her eyes glowed with a yellow light so bright, he felt the burn in his face—
The wolf. From the forest.
The conclusion came to him with a certainty that made no sense. Yet for some reason, it was clear to him that she was… somehow… what had come out to find him and Daniel. Who had taken them to the footprints. Who had protected them through acreage.
And she was prepared to kill him if he didn’t get the fuck out of the way.
That was also clear.
Her voice, low and threatening, threaded into his ears with the growl of an animal: “This doesn’t involve you.”
Gus shook his head. “He doesn’t want Vita. What the fuck are you doing putting poison into his—”
The explosion registered from someplace off in the distance, the loud boom! muffled, but the detonation close enough so that a quaking hit the patient room like a ton of bricks. As a crack spidered across the ceiling and then ran down the wall, the hospital bed rolled around, and a table rocked on its legs. All at once, he and Lydia and C.P. threw their hands out for balance, while the man in red sank down into his thighs and held that little glass box to his chest.
In the aftermath, as dust filtered down from overhead and alarms started to blare everywhere, “Blade” looked over at Gus, then indicated Daniel with a nod of his head. Calmly. As if he’d expected the bomb.
“It will work. My scorpion will save him—”
Popping sounds now. Out in the corridor. A scream.
The door to the patient room opened, and a guard leaped inside, clearly to give them an update. Except… no. There was something wrong with him—in the center of his forehead, a small, sooty black mark was precisely triangulated between his eyebrows. And before Gus could look too much at the smudge, the man collapsed to his knees and fell face-first into the tiled floor.
The back of his head had been blown off.
“You have to do it now,” Blade announced. As if some guy hadn’t just dropped dead of a gunshot wound right in front of the group. “He’s come for me.”