“I do really need to be going,” the nurse said with a forced politeness as she tugged her arm easily from Tressa’s grip.
What the…?
Tressa’s jaw all but hit the sterile hospital floor. How was that possible? The only person a vampire couldn’t compel should be theirmate. And hers was lying in a bed six doors down.
“Sorry,” Tressa mumbled.
The nurse gave her a small smile, then rushed off.
Tressa watched her scurry down the hall and was about to head toward the waiting room to call Baylin about the bizarre encounter when she noticed the nurse enter Ethan’s room.
Wasn’t she literally just in there five minutes ago taking his blood?
There were probably a hundred reasons the nurse would need to return to Ethan, but Tressa couldn’t shake the weirdness of not being able to compel the woman.
Trusting her instincts, she walked back toward Ethan’s room to take a look. Once she saw he was fine, she would get Baylin on the phone to figure out why there might be a human other than her mate who couldn’t be compelled.
When she peeked through the window into Ethan’s room, though, all thoughts of her cousin vanished, and pure, undiluted terror raced down Tressa’s spine. For a single second, every muscle in her vampiric body went into full on lockdown as she processed what she was seeing.
Then she was bursting through the door with enough force that the door partially ripped off its hinges.
“Stop!” she screamed, rushing toward Ethan’s bed and the nurse who had a pillow pressed onto her mate’s face.
The nurse popped her head up, but only mild annoyance rippled over her slightly wrinkled features as Tressa flung her away from the bed, sending her into the wall with a crunch of broken plaster.
Tressa took a second to evaluate Ethan, her pulse pounding wildly at how close she came to losing him. His eyes were closed, and his face was slack, but his heart still beat, though not as strong as she would like.
“You really couldn’t leave well enough alone, could you?” the nursesaid, sounding strangely unconcerned about being caught trying to smother a patient. “Do us both a favor and walk away before you get hurt. I have no grievance with you, but I’m not going to allow you to disrupt my plans either.”
Tressa whipped around. “Walk away?” she growled. “You tried to murder him!”
Despite the pure rage building inside, she kept her voice low enough that she wouldn’t alert any hospital staff. Whoever this nurse was or wasn’t, Tressa wanted to deal with it herself. She hadn’t killed a person in nearly three hundred years, but all that went out the window the moment she saw her mate in danger. Saiden hadn’t been kidding when he said the protection instincts were no joke.
The “nurse” pulled herself from the divot in the wall and rose to her feet, brushing gypsum dust from her scrubs. “Yes, and once I’ve dealt with you, I’ll finish the job. His death is inevitable, but yours needn’t be.”
“Like hell you’re going to touch him again,” Tressa snarled.
She blurred around the bed to snatch the woman’s neck but stumbled into the broken wall when her fingers grasped only empty air.
“What the fuck?” She whirled around to see her target leaning against the door frame without a care in the world. “How did…”
The woman sighed as if the whole situation was little more than a minor inconvenience. “I would think you of all people would know the answer to that.” She cocked her head, then added, “Although, I suppose ‘people’ isn’t the right word, is it?”
Vampire.
Tressa analyzed the woman, scanning her face for any of the tells that were so common to her kind—preternaturally flawless skin, lush and healthy hair, eyes that almost glowed. “But you look human,” she said when she found nothing but paper-thin skin with numerouswrinkles, frizzy gray hair, and dark circles under the eyes.
The woman laughed. “Not quite.”
She waved a hand in front of her, and Tressa gasped when the woman’s appearance rippled like the surface of a placid pond disturbed by a dropped stone. The ripples grew and twisted until a stocky middle-aged nurse no longer stood before her, replaced by a statuesque beauty with wavy dark hair and tan skin—a woman whose appearance matched that smooth voice tinged with a Mediterranean accent. She’d look like a goddess if it wasn’t for her ominous eyes, the irises so dark they were nearly indistinguishable from her pupils.
“You’re a shape shifter?” Tressa whispered, confusion and fear warring for dominance in her brain.
“Nothing so exotic,” the woman replied. “Just a little perception filter. My Gift from Lilith. I can appear however I choose.”
With the confirmation that she wasn’t facing an unknown entity—just another vampire gone off the deep end—Tressa’s unease dissipated under a wave of anger. “What did you do to the real nurse?” she demanded.
“Her blood is in my veins, and I’m sure her body will turn up sooner or later,” the rogue replied, her tone void of any emotion. “I don’t actually enjoy killing, but I had to keep her hidden, and…” She shrugged. “Waste not, want not.”
