Page 116 of Sinner's Sacrifice

Chapter Seventeen

Sam woke to something jiggling her. What the...? Where was she?

Another jiggle. It felt like...airplane turbulence?

She’d only been on a couple of flights before. When she and a bunch of female friends went on a girls’ weekend to Vegas a few years back. Back when life was mostly normal. The vibration, the sense of sliding, felt like an airplane.

She opened her eyes and looked around. She was laying in a narrow bed in a small room that reminded her of a bedroom inside an RV or motorhome. There was a closed slim accordion door opposite her, blocking her view of whatever was outside the room.

An IV bag with a unit of blood, mostly empty, was hanging from a hook above her head, its tubing leading down to her arm.

Why on earth did she need a blood transfusion?

Raised voices on the other side of the door woke her up further.

“No, you’re not going to bother her until she wakes up on her own.” A man’s voice, and he sounded angry and frustrated, and so much like Yvgeny, it stabbed her in the heart.

Yvgeny. He’d looked so peaceful in death. She’d wanted to be with him, and these stupid people had taken that away from her.

Okay, so if Yvgeny was dead, who was outside this room?

“Hello?” she called out.

The yelling continued, so maybe no one could hear her over the noise.

She pounded on the wall next to her and tried again. “Hello, can someone please tell me what’s going on and where I am?”

Silence was her answer for about two seconds, then the door was shoved aside and a dead man walked in.

Her stomach did a double back flip while her heart took off on a sprint.

“Yvgeny?” she asked, her voice sounded weak and shaky, but... “You were dead.”

He stumbled forward, as if shoved from behind.

She jerked back, flattening herself against the wall behind her.

He froze for a moment, watching her, then slowly straightened. “I got better,” he said as if he were telling her about his day.

“I...I saw you recover before, but I didn’t realize you could survive almost any wound.”

He lifted one shoulder in a shrug. “It still hurts.”

Someone cleared their throat behind him.

Yvgeny angled his body slightly in response. “Go away.” It was an order.

“We’re supposed to check her vital signs,” someone said.

“No,” Sam said, raising her voice a little. “Thanks. Maybe later.”

There was a pause, then some furious sounding whispers before the sound of people walking away.

Yvgeny took another half-step inside, then closed the accordion door behind him.

“How do you feel?” he asked, again in that casual tone, like the last day hadn’t happened.

Really?

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