"King." Gabe kept a wary eye on the couch where they'd placed the werewolf, one hand resting on the table near his gun.
"Go fish." Max's fingers tapped a staccato beat on the wooden surface, his gaze obstinately on his cards, but Gabe knew the other man was watching the werewolf out of the corner of his eye.
Gabe pulled a card from the pile, and sighed. His luck was not good this game. My attention is also on the blasted werewolf Elisa brought home. This isn't what I think of when I think of her bringing her work home with her.
"Did Elisa give you a reason she brought a werewolf home, Alex?" Max still had yet to look up. "Other than the ones she put forward when we arrived?"
Alex shook his head. "No. Gabe, you have a three?"
Gabe tossed the card to Alex. "You have all the luck tonight, Alex." His eyes drifted back to the werewolf. "There has to be a reason she decided to help him. She knows lycans are perfectly capable of protecting themselves."
"That doesn't always mean she'll leave them be, Gabe." Max held up two fingers, raising an eyebrow at Alex.
"Go fish." Alex shrugged. "You know she'd pick up every stray cat or dog she finds, if we had the room to take them in."
"Heh. And that lycan is the epitome of stray dog, unconscious." Max looked over at the werewolf. "Perhaps that would be why she decided to bring him here."
Gabe watched the lycan for a long moment. "Maybe." Privately, he doubted Elisa had simply seen it as picking up a stray. But she's not going to tell anyone but her journal.
"Queen, Alex?" Gabe tapped a card against the table.
"No, and go fish." Alex's lips twitched. "He doesn't actually strike me as the type to dress in drag."
Gabe rolled his eyes. "Really, Alex, not everyone shares your fascination with women's clothing."
Alex shrugged, smiling slightly. "What can I say, Gabe? I can't help being the fashion consultant for four younger sisters."
"At the tender age of eight?" Max chuckled. "No doubt your fashion sense is atrocious."
"Bah." Alex looked over at the lycan. "Now that, that is atrocious fashion sense. Silver just doesn't go with his coloring. Oh, Max, have an ace?"
"Go fishing, fashion queen." Max placed his cards face down on the table. "I ought to check on my erstwhile patient, and make sure the coagulants are working. We don't need him hemorrhaging all over the couch."
"Or worse, waking up. You sure about the dosage of that sedative, right, Max?" Alex asked, all traces of his earlier amusement gone."
Max snorted as he crouched near the sofa, knowing Gabe and Alex would watch his back. "I gave him enough to keep an elephant down for several hours. He could wake up any minute, in the morning, or not at all. I don't know."
Gabe grimaced. "Let's hope he doesn't wake up tonight, Max. I don't relish the idea of disposing of a dead body, or explaining it to the police."
"Neither do I, Gabe." Max checked the bandages over the lycan's wounds. "But I can't calculate the dosage for him. Not without a clue to his physiology. Hell, Gabe, he should be dead, according to all I know about lycans." Max scowled. "There were fragments of four separate bullets in his wounds. Enough silver nitrate to kill him twice over, at least." Satisfied that none of the wounds had started bleeding again, Max came back to the table, a troubled expression on his face. "He should be dead. That he's not is worrying."
"Lis would have to bring home the werewolf we don't even know if we can kill." Alex gave the lycan a dark look. "I have a very bad feeling about this. Like we're in for more trouble that usual."
Lucian woke slowly, his mind fogged by something other than pain. He pried his eyes open, blinking to adjust them to the sunlight pouring through a window. It was just rising, and he squinted, trying to see where he was.
"He's awake." A bass rumble came from somewhere near Lucian's head.
Sitting up carefully, Lucian turned his head to look at the source of the voice. A blond-haired man with a shuttered expression was sitting at a small table, a gun in his hand, aimed steadily at Lucian.
"Miscalculated the dose, than." A man with a baritone voice blocked the sun as he moved towards the table, staying out of Lucian's reach. "Not by much though."
"Who are you, and where am I?" Lucian was searching for a door as he spoke, hoping to make a rapid exit.
"Cool your jets, lycan." The blond spoke again, his voice holding a warning note. "You don't get to leave yet."
Observant, Lucian noted. Potentially dangerous. The gun hadn't worried him, but the attentiveness to detail was a trait that few had. "Who are you?" he asked again, keeping his temper tightly leashed. And why are you keeping me here?
"You can call me Montrose." He didn't offer anything more, and Lucian looked to the man setting a case on the table.
"St. Claire." His reply was even shorter than the first. "Who are you?"
"Lucian." He paused. "What are you? Her brothers?"
Montrose raised an eyebrow, and Lucian caught a whiff of amusement. "No. Doctor Maloryn's bodyguards."
"Coffee, anyone?" A third voice joined the conversation, a tenor that came from behind Lucian. "Brew's up."
"Black as hell and sweeter than sin, Mister Brown." St. Claire opened the case he'd set down, revealing a doctor's kit. "I'll need to check the bandages, Lucian, since it appeared the silver nitrate in your system was interfering in your healing."
Lucian regarded Max warily, not certain of his intentions, especially since he'd woken up from a drug-induced sleep in the first place. "Why was I brought here? And where am I?"
"I can't say why you're here. I wasn't party to the decision." St. Claire looked over at Lucian, his expression closed. "You'd have to ask Doctor Maloryn."
A door opened somewhere behind Lucian, and he heard someone padding out into the room, their footsteps light. The absent Doctor Maloryn?
"Ooo! Blond and sweet for me, Alex?" Lucian recognized the voice, identifying the person as Doctor Maloryn. Her footsteps came around the couch, and she smiled slightly when she saw Lucian was awake. "Good morning, Lucian. I trust my bodyguards are not mistreating you?"
Lucian noted how she remained behind Montrose as she spoke, allowing the blond man to block Lucian's path with his body as well as the threat of the gun.
"Why did you bring me here?"
Maloryn chewed on her lower lip, looking down at the table next to her. "You passed out next to my car, and I wasn't comfortable with the idea of leaving you alone in the street. It wasn't safe last night."
Lucian raised an eyebrow. You had more reason than that, Doctor Maloryn. What aren't you telling me? He marked the frowns on the faces of Montrose and St. Claire. Or your bodyguards? What do you want to hide?
A tall man came into Lucian's line of sight bearing a pair of mugs. The tenor, Alex Brown.
"Black and sweet for Doctor St. Claire, blond and sweet for Doctor Maloryn." He handed each of them their coffee, giving Doctor Maloryn a warning look.
To prevent her from giving away any more of their first names?
"Thank you, Mr. Brown." Maloryn took a sip, her eyes closing in pleasure.
Doctor Maloryn. Doctor of what?
"You said when we met you were a doctor, Miss Maloryn." Lucian saw her twitch when he spoke. "Doctor of what?"
Elisa closed her eyes as she sipped at her coffee, determinedly ignoring the silence from Max and Gabe. I am not telling you why I thought it might be good to bring Lucian home. Other than the first instinct to protect him. Which I still have yet to understand, in the first place.
"You said you were a doctor, Maloryn." Lucian's tenor voice broke into Elisa's thoughts, and she jumped. "Doctor of what?"
Se opened her eyes to meet his gaze, licking her lips .Elisa still had the distinct impression that she knew him, but once more, the details of how eluded her, and frustration made a knot in her stomach. "Forensic anthropology and biology."
"Doctor Maloryn, what do you want for breakfast?" Alex drew her attention to the kitchen, and gave her a warning look.
Sighing, Elisa padded across the room to lean against the counter that separated it from the kitchen. "You know what I want for breakfast, Alex," she hissed, keeping her voice low. "You just would rather I were over here, away from the lycan."
Alex raised an eyebrow. "And this is a bad thing?"
Elisa looked over her shoulder at Lucian, chewing on her lower lip again. "No. But I am rather interested in what I might learn from him, and distracting me from asking him questions will not help me. So much I could find out. About lycan culture. Perhaps about why the lycans and vampire fight so much. Why all the bodies."
Alex looked over her shoulder, his eyes hooded. "You could, but what would the cost be?"
Lucian turned on the couch, his blue eyes catching Elisa's gaze. She shifted uncomfortably as she felt a frission of warmth go through her, trying to banish the sensation.
I do not know what the price would be, Alex. And I am almost afraid to find out.
"Since you have me here, on your ground, Doctor Maloryn, what do you intend to do with me?" Lucian's expression was unreadable, but Elisa had the distinct impression he'd heard every word passed between her and Alex.
"I had not yet thought what I might do." Elisa paused, marshalling her thoughts. "However, there are some things which I am curious to learn."
"Such as topics you have no business knowing?" Lucian's voice held a dangerous note, one that promised danger if she pursued the knowledge she sought.
Elisa's eyes narrowed, and anger burned away any uncertainty or fear. "Perhaps, Lucian, if your activities did not impact human lives, and involve them. Then it might be no business of mine."
As it is, my patron and employer wants this information as much as I. For all that you make me uneasy, Lucian, you are not going to make me give up my desire to know all I can about you and your species, and the vampires. Why you are so familiar, and unfamiliar at the same time.
Lucian remained silent after Maloryn spoke, turning her words over in his mind. She can't be related to Corvinus. We traced all the blood lines, and Maloryn appears in none of them. So who are you protecting, Doctor Maloryn? And why?
Maloryn shuffled her feet, her scent and expression giving away her discomfort in the unfriendly silence. He observed her, purposely stretching out the silence, curious if she might have him leave if he made her uncomfortable enough.
Before she tries to question me more closely. But still, the question begs… What is she doing interested in my species? Or the vampires?
"Anyone other than Doctor Maloryn want an omelet?" Brown's glance at Lucian was hard; he had a suspicion what Lucian was doing in stretching out the silence.
"No, thank you, Mr. Brown." St. Claire drew Lucian's attention away from Maloryn, peeling away the bandages from the still raw wounds. He frowned slightly, probing them with one gloved finger. "From what I know of Doctor Maloryn's research, this is amazing recovery for tissues effected by silver nitrate."
"Perhaps an accelerated metabolism, Doctor St. Claire?" Maloryn came back over, a sardonic glitter in her eyes. She peered over Montrose's shoulder, her earlier discomfort apparently buried under her curiosity about him.
Lucian snarled silently at her, and Maloryn's hand dropped to her thigh, trying to grasp a gun she wasn't wearing. "It is not your concern."
Fast to heal? How can they know it is fast to heal? Or even that it will heal at all?
"The hell you say." St. Claire looked up, his eyes narrowed. "I don't care that you are a lycan, sir, or that you are evidently some threat to Doctor Maloryn, you are still my patient. Anything that can effect your health status is my concern."
"Leave him be, Doctor St. Claire." Maloryn held Lucian's gaze, a cold glitter of anger in her eyes. "If he wishes to remain helpless because his body can't metabolize the silver still lurking in his blood, let him."
St. Claire shot her an annoyed look as he moved back towards his medical kit. "Hippocratic Oath, Doctor Maloryn. I know you never had to swear it, but it is something I live by." He paused. "Besides, who was the first one to insist on helping him?"
Author's Note: For those still watching for my updates, I apologize for the length of time it takes. I am hoping to have a website done in time for the new year... (and yes, I know, I've said that before. Maybe this time I'll succeed?)... and on that website will be all my stories, and there I will most likely update first. Once I get the thing done.
Thank you all for sticking with this, though, and I will do my best to have an update - or the website - done before January, as my muses for this are back, for now.