“I see you,” he sang.
I headed toward the dark windows and looked out. “Are you in the other building?”
When I walked around the corner to my left, automatic doors opened. I crossed over a skywalk that connected to an adjacent building. “This isn’t the time for games. I think Crush is supposed to see the doctor this morning for an assessment, but he seems all right. No serious brain damage.”
“I beg to differ.”
When I reached the other side, I veered down a hallway to the right. Someone paged a doctor over the intercom. I spied the nurse’s station ahead and dove into the first room on the right where the windows would be. “Christian?” I whispered into the darkness.
“I’m here,” he whispered back.
On the phone.
I stepped into the hall and tried the next room. Hopefully I didn’t walk in on a total stranger. A dim light on the wall revealed a neatly made bed. Before I turned away, something moved in the reflection on the window. When I walked around the bed, I lowered the phone away from my ear.
Disastrous.
Sitting against the wall was Christian, the love of my life, wearing blue scrubs covered in blood. He clutched a plastic bag, gnawing into it with his fangs while a tube bounced around, splattering more blood onto his pants and the floor. It covered his beard, his neck, and the whole top of his shirt. Beneath the bed were four empty bags.
I picked up his phone from the floor and took it off speaker. “Have you lost your fucking mind?”
There was a slurping sound like when a straw sucks up the last drops from the bottom of the cup. Christian turned the bag upside down, shaking it into his mouth.
I snatched it away and tossed it with the other bags. I squatted in front of him and turned them all over. The labels had AB withRhNegativeprinted below it. It was the rarest blood with the most delectable flavor. “Are you drunk?”
He held his thumb and index finger in front of his eye and then shrank the gap.
Christian started licking his bloody fingers as if they were covered in sauce.
“This situation is fucked. You realize that. Where’s your coat? Why are you wearing scrubs?”
“Too many watchers. You can’t just waltz into the lab and grab a few bags of the good stuff. I can only charm so many people at once, and they have all those fecking little cameras,” he said, pointing to nonexistent cameras in the room.
I stood up and yanked the drapes shut. “This is karma biting me in the ass for every time I got drunk and you had to clean up my mess.”
After quietly closing the door, I went into the bathroom and soaked a white towel. This was a conundrum. If someone called the cops on us, I wasn’t sure what Christian might do in his current state. When I returned, he had opened another bag with his fangs. I ripped it away, gathered them up, and put them into a trash bag. Then I tossed the wet towel at Christian’s head. “Wipe your face and hands.”
The bathroom had a small trash can for biohazards, so I brought it out and dropped the trash bag inside. Screw mopping the floor. I needed to get him cleaned up and out of here as fast as possible.
“Stand up,” I ordered him. “If we get arrested, Viktor’s not gonna like it. Especially if it interferes with the job.”
“Jaysus, Mary, and Joseph,” he whined, climbing to his feet. “Can’t a man just enjoy a drink without everyone getting their knickers in a twist?”
“Raise your arms.” I stripped off his bloody shirt and tossed it into the trash. At least he was still wearing his own clothes.
When I returned to the bed, horror rinsed over me. Christian was stripping off his bottom scrubs, and he had nothing on underneath except his boxer briefs.
“Where are your pants?”
“I couldn’t get these trousers on over my own. Something had to go.” He licked the blood from his wrist.
I searched the room in vain for hospital gowns. When I noticed a wheelchair, I rolled it to the foot of the bed. “Sit down.”
Christian frowned, so I guided him to the chair and shoved him into the seat. After putting his feet in the footrests, I tossed a blanket over his lap.
He cupped his hand around my thigh. “Flatten me, Dr. Black. I’ve never done it in a wheelchair.”
“We’re not playing sex doctor. Can you help me a little bit?”
