Page 24 of Hospital for Immortal Creatures

Run!

But what if he returns?

Run!

Amelia forced her muscles to cooperate. A sigh of relief left her lips as her shaky fingers grabbed the keys. On trembling legs, she rushed to the door. She stepped into a lengthy hallway covered in red carpet, not knowing what awaited her.

Her heart jumped to her throat as she almost bumped into a wolf. A marble wolf.

God… it wasn’t the only one present. Marble statues of people and animals lined the walls on either side like guards. Determined not to acknowledge their vacant stares, she surveyed both sides of the corridor, which culminated in archways and closed doors.

Left or right?

She had to pick in three, two, one…

Right! Running past numerous lifeless creatures along the hallway, her eyes set on the door at the archway. Relieved that it was unlocked, she flung it open and nearly crashed into the lift waiting on the other side.

She pushed the button and waited for its entrance to open. Her body trembled, forcing her to lean against the side wall for support. What was less than a minute seemed like torturous hours to her, but at last, the lift opened, and she peeked in. Empty, thank God! She pressed the button for the ground floor and turned to face the closing doors, cursing them for their snail’s pace.

Right before they closed completely, Amelia glanced at the empty hallway with its red carpet and desolate marble statues. In that same instant, the door at the opposite end of the walkway opened, revealing none other than Mikhail Korovin. He looked straight at her, their gazes meeting for less than a second…then the lift was sealed shut.

Fuck! Amelia held her breath. He’d seen her. She hit a random button in the middle of the panel. There was no way she was going down to the ground floor now. That man would be waiting for her there.

And he did appear human again, clad in a brand-new set of clothes.

Don’t think about him. He does not exist. It’s just a trick of the light, of my imagination.

If she persisted in recalling the image of the monster, her confidence would dissipate, and she would never escape.

The doors opened on the tenth level, revealing another empty hallway. As she hurried down a green floor, past entrances in the same colour and walls as white as canvas, she couldn’t help but compare her surroundings to a hospital. She wrinkled her nose. It reminded her of a hospital ward because it smelled like one.

Her eyes landed on a tiny stainless-steel table on wheels pushed up against the wall. Scattered on the green cloth were a few surgical instruments and different lengths of gauze.

This was a hospital ward.

Further down the corridor, one of the doors opened with a bang, forcing Amelia to cower behind the small table. She peeked from between its legs, and a quiet gasp died down her throat. An enormous grey wolf staggered into the hallway.

She blinked a few times. There were wolves at the zoos she had visited, but none of them had been this size. The animal’s eyes were black and empty, and his fur was matted along the spine and the hips. It headed towards the lift she’d just stepped out of, its wobbly gait leaving a bloody trail.

A tall man in green scrubs emerged from the same door. Holding her breath, Amelia ducked lower behind the table, terrified and transfixed by the smoothness of his stride. He caught up with the wolf and drove a giant needle into its back.

The wolf tumbled to the floor, powerless. Its silhouette slowly shrunk down, the fur melted away and the snout disappeared. The wolf was gone and, in its place, lay an unconscious, naked man covered in blood.

The guy in the scrubs turned him over, exposing the bleeding wound across the wolf-man’s chest. “Damn it, Keith! Where’s the fucking gurney?” He ran his fingers through his dark hair. A distinctive silver streak framed his temples, accentuating the sharp lines of his profile.

Another man in green scrubs rushed out of the room and pushed a stretcher down the hallway. They lifted the injured man onto it.

“He tore his stitches. I don’t even wanna think about what’s going on inside of him. How many times do I need to teach you how to sedate them?” The first man said. Amelia gaped at the two pronounced canines glittering between his angry lips.

A blonde woman in a white lab coat appeared. “He was sedated.”

“Then why did he turn?”

“How the hell should I know?”

The man huffed in disgust. “Let’s take him to the OR.” He must have been someone important, as his behaviour reminded Amelia of the top surgeons at her own hospital. The three of them pushed the gurney forward, marched into the lift, and disappeared.

Amelia didn’t dare to move. This place was crawling with monsters.

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