immortally yours
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chapter one
kill him, but I didn’t want it healing wrong. I tested the edge,
careful not to cut myself.
Yeti infection was bad for immortals. It could be deadly
for me.
“You know I got into medicine to make a difference,” I
caught myself mumbling.
I wanted to help people who didn’t voluntarily mix up
their vital parts. Creatures with real problems who couldn’t
go to human hospitals. I’d been one of the last paranormal
surgeons in Orleans Parish. And the only one who special-
ized in thoracic medicine.
I glanced at Nurse Hume, who was swathed in scrubs and
a surgical mask. He looked like a child next to these immor-
tals. We all did.
“Brace yourself,” I told my patient.
I clamped the skin back. Blood smeared my surgical
gloves as I manually retracted the spikes from the surround-
ing muscle tissue. “I’m going to remove it on the count of
three.” I flicked my eyes up and found him watching me.
“One.” My fingers tightened. “Two . . .”
In one quick motion I made the extraction.
“Alala!” My patient bellowed the Athenian war cry.
And why not? We fought the war in the operating room
as sure as they fought it on the battlefield.
I tossed the claw into the metal pan. “It’s easier on you if
you don’t stiffen up.”
He flopped his head back on the table. “You MASH docs
always go on two.”
I shook my head as I inspected the wound for splinters.
“Merde. I hate being predictable.”
The wound was clean, and healing, even as I stitched it
up.
I tugged off my gloves and tossed them into the bio waste
can.
My dad had worked a factory job all his life. He spent
forty-three years shaving the sharp edges off Folgers coffee
cans. He called it good, steady work. And he kept on doing
it until plastic containers came along and they forced him to
Immortally Yours 7
five minutes. His cult had died out around the time of Cae-
sar. He’d been trying to get something going ever since.
But I knew I’d get better results with honey. “See what
you can do,” I told him. “In the meantime I’ll leave an offer-
ing at your altar.”
The orderly huffed, but I saw him perk up a bit.
“You do still have an altar,” I said.
“Yes.” He flew a few inches higher. “What will you leave
me?”
“Er . . .” I had to think. “Flowers?”
He looked rather put out at that. “I am the god of three-
wheeled chariot racing.”
“I don’t have any chariots.”
“You’re as funny as a bad rash. Enough of the games. I
like copper.” He squared his shoulders. “You have three
pennies in the bottom of your footlocker.”
“Fine.” And interesting to know. Perhaps the little god
had some power in him after all.
He sniffed, as if he knew what I was thinking. “Make sure
they’re neatly stacked.”
“Done,” I said.
“All right. Perhaps I will help you,” he said, wheeling away
my patient. “Although I must say your entire style of wor-
ship leaves something to be desired.”
I didn’t doubt that. This place was killing me.
“So what’s next, Nurse Hume?”
Nurse Hume simply stood there and waited, all the fire
gone from his pale blond hair, pasty skin, vacant eyes. He’d
had been here for decades. This place had turned the man into
a total drone. Some days I wondered if Charlie were more
alive.
Well I wasn’t going to let it happen to me. I wasn’t just
going to stand here and yank out claws. I wasn’t going to
spend my life tracking down lost horns and eyeballs.
Or was I?
Nurse Hume took the next set of charts and shuffled his
way around the table. “X-rays indicate our next patient has
ingested a horse.”
Immortally Yours 9
“Excuse me?”
He posted the images to the light board next to my table.
“His colleagues bet him that he was not, indeed, hungry
enough to eat the unfortunate animal. And so he did.”
I stared at Nurse Hume. Then at the X-rays.
“Son of a bitch.”
He cleared his throat. “As you can imagine, hooves and
harnesses are not digestible.”
“So this is my life,” I said to no one in par ticular.
“I can’t imagine . . . ,” Nurse Hume began before his
voice trailed away.
“What? Do you want to say something to me?” Frankly, I
wished he would. If Hume started getting opinions, there
might be hope for the rest of us.
“No,” he murmured. “Never mind.”
Just when I was about to bang my head against my steel
operating table, I heard a commotion on the far side of the
tent.
“We need a doctor, stat!”
Ambulance workers loaded an immense New Order Army
soldier from a stretcher onto a table. He must have just come
in. They were still cutting his uniform from his body.
His face was hard. His jaw could have been cut from mar-
ble. He was well over six feet, with scars slicing across one
impossibly wide shoulder.
He had powerful arms, cut abs. He was like a Greek statue
come to life. Only he was more. Much more. Even prone, he
was intensely powerful—striking in a way that went beyond
mere physical strength.
He was commanding.
I stared at him, raw excitement thudding through me. I’d
seen a lot of demi-gods, but none of them as astonishingly
regal as this one.
He was rough, dangerous.
He was a work of art.
My breath caught. He was watching me.
I crossed the crowded ER, intimately aware that he never
took his attention off me. It was as if he’d come to find me.
10 Angie Fox
Ridiculous.
He needed me because I was there. Everyone else was
busy with the greased lighting victims. I was the only one
who could handle this.
“What have you got?” I glanced at a sandy-haired EMT.
“Stab wound to the upper chest. Possible punctured lung.”
Finally, a real case: a soldier who needed my skills, my
expertise—me.
No wonder it felt good.
I ran through my mental checklist as I inspected the
bronze knife lodged in his upper torso and took stock of his
vitals.
He must have gone down during the storm. His clipped
brown hair still held water droplets.
“What’s his pressure?” I could feel my fingers shaking.
“Ninety-seven over fifty-six.”
My patient fought for every breath, his impossibly blue
eyes locked onto me.
“I’m going to save you,” I told him.
The soldier closed his fingers over mine and squeezed,
leaving a smear of blood across my hand.
“Get him over to my table.”
I grabbed his file. His heart rate was dropping. Blood pres-
sure down. He was hemorrhaging. I was glad to see Nurse
Hume already at the table, prepping my instruments. “Pa-
tient is a male, mid-five-hundreds. Blood pressure’s down to
eighty over forty. Pulse is up to one twenty-six. Hook him
up to both blood and saline.” I took a final glance at his
chart.
Galen of Delphi. Rank: Lokhagos. Decorated unit com-
mander and head of the Green Hawk Special Forces team.
“You’re in good hands, Galen of Delphi.”
He nodded, wincing against the pain.
“Don’t worry,” I said for his benefit, and mine.
I could feel my blood pumping as I handed off his file.
Metal weapons wounds could be dicey. The command-
er’s head slammed against the table as he began to con-
vulse.
IMMORTALLY
YOURS
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