Page 18 of Queen Takes Sunfires 2
“She couldn’t remember anything but her name. Karmen. She couldn’t tell me where she’d come from or what had happened to her. She’d definitely been traumatized. She was scared. Nothing seemed to make sense to her. She could understand my words, but it was like she didn’t recognize some of them. Hospital. Chicago. She didn’t know what they meant.”
“Shock? Normal trauma response?” Harris asked.
“Not really. When she first came in, we treated her like a shock patient, but she didn’t exhibit normal physical symptoms. Her skin wasn’t clammy, her pulse was almost nonexistent, certainly not rapid. She responded quickly to fluids, making me think she was suffering more from exposure and dehydration than anything else.”
“Exposure?” Harris mused. “In the middle of the city? I suppose someone could have been holding her captive and she escaped? Or more likely, dumped her. I can’t see a naked woman traipsing through the streets without drawing quick attention. What else?”
Dr. Mason studied his hands, as if trying to decide how much to admit.
“Look, doc. This can go one of two ways. I can be nice, and you can tell me what I need to know. Or I’ll be camped in this hospital digging into every dark corner of your life and the rest of the staff until I get what I need.”
Dr. Mason sighed heavily. “We did blood work.”
“And?”
“It was abnormal.”
Harris waited a few seconds, but when the doctor didn’t elaborate, he grabbed the chart and scanned over it himself. “I don’t know what any of this means.”
Dr. Mason raised his gaze, focusing on me, not the cop. “Are you like her?”
I held myself still a moment, trying to decide how much to admit. I needed his trust, but I’d avoided people for so long, I wasn’t sure what would happen if humans started to suspect we existed. I didn’t want to ignite mass hysteria and draw even more unwanted attention to any of our queens, but especially Helayna and Karmen.
But I needed insight into Karmen’s situation if I was going to help her at all. I couldn’t be at her side, but I could see how much these humans knew. See if I could pin down what was after her. So I gave him a slight nod.
His breath sighed out and his shoulders relaxed as he laughed weakly. “I was afraid I was crazy. Her blood work was so strange that I had the lab redo it. I was sure they’d made a mistake.”
Harris looked from the doctor to me, back and forth slowly. “Like what kind of mistake?”
“The sample came back inhuman,” Dr. Mason said hoarsely.
“Inhuman,” Harris repeated, incredulity making his voice ring in the quiet room. “You’ve got to be shitting me.”
“Similar, yes, but some of the proteins in her blood were off the charts, and there were other elements the lab couldn’t even begin to identify.” Dr. Mason laughed, shaking his head. “I even asked her if she was an alien. It was clear to me that she wasn’t from this world. Or if she had been at one time, she’d been gone for so long that she had no idea what our lives were like any longer. She looked at everything as if she’d never seen it before, though she knew our language and recognized small things.”
Harris stepped closer to me and stabbed me in the chest with his finger. “And you’re like her, huh? So you’re an alien, Wild Man? Is that what you want me to believe? Come on, then. Show me your true image.”
I let the wolf shine in my eyes, but I kept my voice even, my words light. “You already suspected there was something off about me, Detective. You’ve wondered how I could find people you couldn’t. Or why I was always in the right place, at the right time. How I knew things about people that I shouldn’t be able to figure out just through normal means. Human means.”
He was six inches shorter than me. Strong for a human, but weak compared to an Aima king. He gave me a shove, trying to rattle my control, or maybe just see if he could provoke me. I didn’t even rock back on my heels.
“I could arrest you right now, throw your crazy ass in a cell. Let’s see if the alien can get out of that.”
“I didn’t say we were aliens.” I shrugged. “I could get out of anything if I wanted. However, you wouldn’t like my methods. I’ve done my best never to hurt innocents, Harris. You know that.”
“But people do tend to end up dead in your wake.”
I gave him a wolfish grin. “Only the really bad guys that you’d love to see thrown behind bars, right? Or better yet, shuddering as the chemical cocktail seals their death sentence. I’m quicker and more merciful than your human methods would ever be.”
Harris took up a familiar cop stance, right hand ever so casually at his hip over his gun. Not that a gun would help him in the slightest. “If you’re not some kind of motherfucking alien, then what the fuck are you?”
“I don’t have time to give you a history lesson. All I care about is Karmen and whatever is after her.”
“Do you know where she went?” Dr. Mason asked. “Is she alright?”
“I can’t say where she is, but she is alright to my knowledge. There is something otherworldly after her, and I intend to find out what it is. Even I haven’t seen anything like it before.”
“The paw prints on the ceiling.” The doctor shuddered. “I’d ask one of the nurses to put me in a padded cell if you two hadn’t seen it too. What could possibly do that?”
