His voice was rough and scratchy, but Dr. Baines heard him, darting forward to check Monica’s vitals, the machines’ beeping falling back into steadier rhythms, evening out. She pulled a pen light from her jacket pocket and checked Monica’s eyes, and when she pulled back an eyelid, Monica moaned and tried to pull away from the light.
“Monica, can you hear me?” Dr. Baines asked intently. “You’re safe now; you’re in the hospital.”
Monica gasped, back arching her off the bed a few inches, before collapsing again. She tried looking around, but she was clearly weak and exhausted. She rolled her head to the side, her dull eyes staring at Ezra like she could see through him. He leaned forward, catching her gaze.
“Monica, what was in the chest?” he asked softly. She blinked, and he could almost feel her confusion.
“She’s only just woken up after nearly dying!” Dr. Simmons burst out, and Major Grendel grabbed him by the arm and yanked him away.
“Get answers, Redmayne,” the major ordered before towing Dr. Simmons from the hospital tent.
“Monica…” Ezra tried again.
“The chest…” she gasped out, interrupting him. Her eyes went wide with fear. “A skull.”
“A skull?” He let Lilith down on the floor and reached out, taking a chance and grabbing the closest hand to him and squeezing. “What did it look like?”
Skulls as cursed objects were common. Right up there with heirloom jewelry and blood-mine diamonds.
Monica groaned, pale and limp, and one of the machines began screaming. Her dull brown eyes locked with his. “Not human, etched in blue fire. Cleaved at the crown by a deep blow. Eyes that glowed. So cold. Very cold.”
“That’s enough,” Dr. Baines ordered, coming around the bed and pushing Ezra back. “You’ll have exhausted yourself for nothing if she starts to decline again.”
Monica went limp, and the machines calmed down. She was asleep, and thankfully not dying this time.
Ezra clapped for Lilith, and she leapt into his arms. He turned away from the bed, leaving Monica to the tender merciesof the medical wizard. He found an audience behind him, Dr. Myers and Major Grendel having returned from removing Simmons. Both watched him, along with various members of MERS, all of them eyeing him with varying degrees of disbelief and caution.
“You heard?” he asked Grendel as he worked his way down the aisle between the beds.
“I did,” she bit out. “Good work, Redmayne.”
“Another day’s work,” Ezra sighed out. “I got a bunk in this complex?”
“Sergeant, show Sorcerer Redmayne to his tent.” A young woman in a MERS uniform jumped to and gestured at him, and he followed her out into the darkness.
Past the tent flap, Ezra looked up at the sky, the clouds overhead pierced by lightning with thunder rumbling in the distance.
Blue lightning.
“A skull etched in blue flame,” he said softly to himself, pondering. “Interesting.”
Sleep first, then he’d worry about saving the world.
CHAPTER THREE
EZRA
Lilith was purring loudly enough to wake the dead, the vibrations rumbling down through his chest. Ezra cracked open an eye and saw his darling familiar nose to nose with him, her golden eyes unblinking.
“Breakfast, huh?” He turned his head just enough to see the flap that served as a doorway, and sure enough, there was a hint of light that appeared to be natural and not from the huge lightbulb banks looming over the camp. Lilith kneaded her claws into his chest, and he winced, though he heeded her unsubtle demands and got up. Or tried to.
“Good morning, baby,” Ezra hugged her to his chest and planted the required kisses to her forehead, her purrs increasing in volume as she accepted her due. After five kisses he opened his arms and she leapt daintily to the floor of the tent, meowing insistently for her breakfast.
Her Royal Highness required feeding before anything else could be done, and so he rolled off the dismally too-short cot assigned to him and stretched, trying to work out the kinks from sleeping on a thin mattress pad. He was used to horrible sleeping conditions on missions, but he always woke up sore. Toomuch comfort between contracts to truly become acclimated to roughing it.
His bags were deposited in the tent sometime the evening before while he was busy with Monica, and he double-checked that everything was there before cracking open the travel case holding Lilith’s food. Temperature controlled, the case was sealed by spells and helped maintain the freshness of anything stored within. He sourced her food from a specialty shop in San Francisco, and it was worth the expense. The case held her food and a small jug of filtered water.
He read the label of the first container he grabbed. “Fresh quail and hare. Yum.” She meowed, louder, impatient as only a cat could be. He dug out her food bowl, refreshed her water from the water jug, and hurried to feed her before she tripped him in her haste to eat. She happily dug in, growling a bit as she tore through the fresh ground meats and supplemented kibbles. “Enjoy your breakfast. I’ll be back. Don’t stray too far from the tent.”
