Highlander's Need: Winter Solestice (Against All Odds Series 4) Read online

  She was almost balling as she kissed Lisa and Paul, so before she lost control she turned and strode off with her bags as they called after her about keeping in touch.

  Page sought refuge about as far north as the little island of Aruba would let her. She took a job in a bar in Malmok Beach that offered a shared room to stay in while she worked there. She needed to be nowhere near Oranjestad when the Persephone finished her charter. She did not want to bump into Anna, or worse, Anna and Brett as they left the boat. On her fourth day there, the day after Brett’s charter had ended, she stared at a gin and tonic at the bar before her afternoon shift started and congratulated herself on being right. Well done, you knew he wouldn’t come. Gold star for Page, she said to herself, but at that moment a familiar voice sounded behind her:

  “You know you’ve already cost me another twenty-five grand?”

  She smiled and sipped her drink, but did not turn around. “Really? How so? I was here the whole time.” She sounded cool and confident, but her heart was pounding like it never had before.

  “The rest of the trip was so terrible, with Anna being especially mean to the crew, that I had to tip an extra ten thousand to say sorry.” His fingers gently traced along the backs of her arms until his hands rested on hers.

  “Well, it’s your own fault. You knew I was off limits and, come to think of it, so were you.”

  “You’re right about that,” he said, spinning her to face him, “and when you said you were too hard to handle. Neither of us is off limits now.” Their eyes locked and, when they stared deep into each other’s hearts and souls, they knew they were meant to be together. “But are you still too hard for me to handle?” Brett kissed her long and hard, and Page moaned with the pleasure of it. She leaped up and wrapped her legs around his waist.

  “You bet I am!” she laughed.

  THE END

  Wanted By The Alpha Lion

  A bad night

  “For crying out loud, move it!”

  Claudia couldn’t remember the last time she had to yell in order to get anywhere. Her round, angelic face, combined with her wavy black hair and (perhaps excessively) voluptuous figure had usually sufficed up until now. Tonight, however, that was not the case.

  The way through the hospital to the operating halls was packed with the usual guests: hypochondriacs, pimps and prostitutes, and even some wounded kids from the city’s poorer parts. That was not unusual. What was unusual was the sheer number of the people that clogged the walkway before her, the crowd in the emergency room having spilled out of the waiting area.

  It’s as if they keep multiplying every month, she said to herself while keeping an eye out for any one of them to budge from their position and let her through. None did.

  “I got capped and it needs to go out!” an unseen youth exclaimed from somewhere within the unruly crowd.

  “I’m sore down there!” A woman screamed from right in front of Claudia, her shameless appearance a clear indication of her indecent profession.

  “Hey, yo! You ain’t passin’ ‘ere ‘till you give me what I need, yo!” Someone else yelled out from the crowd.

  The sooner you move and let us through, Claudia raged silently, the sooner you will get your turn. But you’re all just too self-absorbed to realize that, aren’t you?

  She squinted, the flickering lights from above making it even more difficult for her to find an opening. Then, the doctor’s voice snapped her out of it, the hurry evident in his tone.

  “Nurse! We don’t have time to negotiate with those people! There are men back here with serious injuries! Make way!” He was maybe twenty feet behind her, surrounded by the other nurses, but his voice had cut through the racket with zero trouble.

  Sir, yes, sir! Claudia took a deep breath. It was time to get rough.

  Slowly, she took a single step back, causing the woman in front of her to stare in dull surprise. Then, Claudia rushed forward, turning the hooker’s expression into one of shock and disbelief.

  “Move or be moved!” she bellowed out, the usually soft tone of her voice now much rougher. Having been in these kinds of situations many times before, she was well prepared for the impact that would follow a collision, but this time she didn’t hit anybody. Men, women, and juvenile delinquents all vacated to the sides of the hallway, forming a tight but functional little path for the doctor and his entourage.

  “Thank you,” Claudia spoke to the crowd, her voice soft and breathy again. They are angry. She made note of the twitching fingers and blood-shot eyes of the crowd. These are not nice people, or else they wouldn’t have refused to move like this.

  The doctor’s entourage moved immediately, pushing the gurneys bearing critical patients (all of whom were horizontal and almost completely covered up) down the corridor.

  Good response, thought Claudia. Better not hang around and test our luck any more than we have to.

  The operating rooms were not far away; merely a couple of doors behind the end of the passage. But the speed at which she had to traverse that distance was nothing to joke about. Combine that with all the negative energy that kept radiating from behind her, by the time they reached their destination the resulting fatigue on Claudia was very apparent.

  “Good job, Nurse Chance.” Doc Addams put his right arm on Claudia’s shoulder. “A little longer, and we might as well have left them back there.” Full of vigor, the older physician turned toward the other nurses and said, “Check the vitals for the lot of them! Stat!”

  Ready to do her part, Claudia was just about to step toward the closest patient when the Doc tightened his grip.

  “Uh, do you mind, sir?” she protested, knowing that people’s lives were at stake.

  “Yes, nurse. Actually, I do. We have more than enough nurses to cover this part of the procedure. If and when I need your help, I will need you functional, not gasping for breath. Understand?”

  I hate it when they get smart. She nodded, knowing full well what the Doc meant. “Yes, sir.”

  The doctor was just about to say something else when one of the male nurses spoke out. “This one is long gone,” he noted in a grim tone. “I need you to come and call it, Doc.”

  Doc Addams finished his sentence as he walked away from her. “As I was saying, take a breather and be ready. Keep watch at the door, I’ll call for you.”

  Another male nurse interceded, his gloved hands red with blood. “Doc, this guy needs your attention now, or you’ll have to proclaim him deceased as well!”

  “Goddamn it!” he exclaimed, changing directions again. “Carlos, note the time for me and offer your help to whoever might need it!” He kept yelling command after command, the room under his absolute control. Claudia had always admired the way Doc Addams took charge. If he were not a married man, she might have even made a move on him by now.

  It is still tempting from time to time. Perhaps I could… Claudia considered the possibilities as she neared the barricaded doors. They were extremely strong doors, the only relatively fragile part of them being a pair of small windows. She could not help but focus on her reflection once she was close enough, her doll-like face staring back into her emerald-colored eyes and shocking her back to her senses. No! What am I thinking? She shook her head slightly, causing one of her coal-colored locks to sway enticingly. Yes, it does get lonely, but that comes with the job! Deal with it! Still, the obligations of her position had taken their toll. Despite being in her thirties, Claudia Chance was still single, and that fact didn’t seem likely to change soon.

  “Are ya done yet?” A face appeared on the other side of the window, far clearer than her own transparent reflection. It belonged to an older African-American man. He appeared visibly distressed. “I think I’ve got me a broken arm here,” he mumbled out in a gravelly tone, his eyes bloodshot. “If I wait any more I think you’ll have to break it again to set it properly!”

  Everyone’s a medical expert these days.

  “Please, sir, calm down,” Claudia replied
in the most courteous manner she was capable of, while making sure that the older man could hear her clearly. “We’re fighting for people’s lives in here. You’ll get your turn.”

  “It seems like a guy needs to die to get any attention out here!” He was insistent. “Think of devoting some time to us still-living people from time to time, huh?”

  Why, the nerve of this old fart…

  Claudia took a deep breath, preparing herself to give the aging man a piece of her mind. Suddenly, just before she could say it out loud, someone had moved him to the side. Another face now stared at her from the hallway: that of an attractive, blond male.

  Well, hello there, handsome. What might your emergency be?

  “Hello there, pretty lady,” he said in a voice that possessed a depth that the glass could not dull.

  “Sir… please wait your turn, we have some injured people here,” Claudia answered, reluctant to say no to such a stud.

  “I am aware of that, doll. They didn’t look too good on those gurneys. I guess it must be a real horror to look at, right?”

  “I wouldn’t know, the Doc had me moved to this door before I could get a real look. Things aren’t looking too good from around here, though.”

  “Compared to you, sweet-cheeks, nothing doesn’t look too good,” he replied as he moved backwards, allowing the crowd to engulf him.

  Well, that was strange. Nevertheless, she couldn’t help but be intrigued by the man.

  “Claudia! I need you here now! Stat!” The doctor interrupted her musings.

  Without a word, she turned around, eager to help. However, what she saw when she reached the Doc made her miss the door duty.

  My God. The only patient that was still alive was bleeding profusely, his body covered with countless lacerations. Everything was red, and it was difficult to differentiate between flesh and surgical gauze. Above him stood the doctor, caught up in the act of saving the man’s life.

  “Claudia, I’ll need you to hold this bandage over the wound in his abdomen and press hard. He has been critically injured in two places, and you need to stop him from bleeding out from one while I fix the other.”

  He won’t survive, this one. Not in the shape he’s in. She knew that from the moment she laid eyes on the patient. The Doc knew it too, that much was certain. But regardless, he didn’t stop trying. They had to do their duty. From time to time, even the most hopeless cases have been known to survive.

  She took the gauze, stretching it over the man’s gaping stomach and pressed as firmly as she could at the sides. What the hell, let’s give it a shot. The muscles around the shredded abdomen contracted slowly, despite the anesthesia. Reflexes. Whatever it was that happened to him was horrible, alright.

  With the precision and infallibility of a well-oiled machine, the Doc proceeded to work his way on his end. Despite her not being weak of stomach, she averted her eyes. Some blood and gore is bearable. However, witnessing the rending of flesh and bone while surrounded by similarly mutilated bodies was another thing altogether. Best not look at it until I must. The man’s muscles kept slowly contorting while he was being cut, moving under her fingers ever so slightly. It appears that he is not completely oblivious to the agony we are putting him through. Then, out of the blue, she noticed something. The man was fit. Not just fit, it was apparent that his body was comparable to that of a triathlete, at the very least; the kind of body that only the most capable and devoted sportsmen and special forces members walked around in. Was this some sort of military op gone wrong? I’ll have to remember to ask the Doc where these guys were even found.

  “Goddamn it!” Doc Addams suddenly exclaimed, some of the patient’s blood having splashed in his face, right over the glasses. The wound he had been working on started gushing crimson. “He had a couple of torn arteries pressed inside! Someone, anyone! Come here and wipe my glasses!”

  Within less than a second he could see again, but by that time the man’s slight contractions had stopped entirely. The Doc didn’t need to be told. He could tell just from looking that this was now a fresh corpse.

  “The internal injuries were too severe,” he said after a couple of contemplative seconds. “The rest of them, they’ve been so badly mangled you could see it right away. We couldn’t tell the damage this one here had suffered without opening him up.” He removed his gloves slowly, as if he aimed to purposely give his words some additional weight. “Which was simply not an option, given how much blood he’d lost on the way here.” He put his gloves next to the deceased as he made his conclusion. “This man was as dead as the rest of them, we just didn’t know it.”

  He always takes it personally when a critical intervention fails, even after all this time. Claudia didn’t blame him. She was the same, although she never did any actual surgery herself, being a nurse. Still, assisting in an exhausting procedure that doesn’t result in a life being saved was just about the worst feeling in the world.

  “Doctor Addams, sir,” she broke the silence after giving him some five seconds to gather his thoughts. “Who were those men? Where were they found? Were these animal attacks, all of them?”

  What the hell is going on? she wanted to ask, but opted not to. It’s not like he would know. He just fixes people.

  “I am not all that certain, Nurse Chance.” He removed his glassed, this time wiping them personally. “And I’m not sure that I want to know. In fact, I’ll be glad if I never have to see something like this again.” Lost in thought, he turned his stare toward the large pair of doors, the only barrier between them and the angry mob of sick (and not so sick) people outside. “But enough about that. All of you, take these to the morgue and notify the relevant authorities.” But just as they were about to start moving the bodies, he interrupted them with, “I’ll need two volunteers. You will remain here to work the door and assist me with these, shall we say, less critical cases.”

  Claudia didn’t hesitate once before she raised her hand. Helping people was why she was there, after all.

  A week later

  Exhausted, though the night was just beginning, Claudia Chance relished the opportunity to rest in the staff room. Granted, she had to join two chairs together so as to place her ample buttocks comfortably, but no one was around to complain.

  There’s so much work to be done…

  Times had never been harder. Something was going on in the city, and it kept getting worse. Even if everyone ignored the rapidly rising frequency of assaults and more violent crimes, it was more than evident that something new was going down.

  Like that new wave of animal attacks…

  The mere thought of what had happened last week was enough to cause an unpleasant sensation on the back of her neck. Those men and the way they were just butchered like that; just thinking about it sent shivers down her spine.

  No one deserves to die like that.

  In the meantime, she had made some inquiries about the whole thing. The results were strange, to say the least. While some of the deceased men did have military backgrounds, most of them did not. Furthermore, none of them had been employed in any combat agency at the time of their deaths.

  At least not officially, that is.

  The possibility of the entire thing being some sort of failed secret operation was indeed there, but what could it have possibly been? An escaped animal would demand the attention of animal control, not a military organization or whatever it was that those men were.

  Alternatives do come to mind, but they’re all drawn straight out of bad movies, of course. She smiled for a little bit, amused by the absurdity of what she had actually allowed herself to consider. An escaped experiment. A maniac with claw-like weapons. A werewolf. The thoughts kept piling up, each more ridiculous than the last. For a while she amused herself like that, almost completely losing track of the time. By the time she snapped out of it, another ambulance was arriving at the hospital.

  “Nurses Anders, Chance and Harrison, report to the emergency room for intake!” The op
erator’s voice echoed from the speaker in the room’s upper corner.

  Time to make a difference. For the millionth time.

  Now in a somewhat better mood, Claudia rose from her table, placing the other chair back in its place before she exited the room. As always, the hallway was packed. Luckily, most of the people there knew exactly who she was. It took less than a second for them to move to the sides, forming a passage that was wide enough to let even her sizeable frame through.

  Who knows, this might go easier than expected. Claudia traversed the neon-lit hallway with heavy yet quick steps. But her positive disposition quickly got shot to smithereens by the sight in front of her. Coming up the hallway, members of the ambulance staff raced toward her at top speed, their hands firmly planted on the bloody gurneys that rolled in front of them. Oh, God, not this again…

  The commanding voice of Doc Addams cut through the air the way it always did. “We’ve got a total of six victims, all bleeding profusely! Clear the path! These men are beyond critical!”

  Let’s try and use the opening I’ve made getting here, then. Without a word, Claudia turned around, sighing in relief when she saw that she still had a clear field of vision to the end of the corridor.

  “Alright, you’ve heard the doctor! Make way for your fellow patients!” Then, having noticed just how unpleasant she sounded, Claudia added a finishing touch to her act: “Please.”

  With all the speed of a crawling baby, the patients in triage cleared as wide a path as was possible. No one made a major fuss this time, and those who had anything to say now mercifully kept their mouths shut.

  Ah, the perks of having trusting and regular customers. Claudia felt proud as she made her way toward the area that led to the operating rooms. Behind her, the others followed suit. The Doc was on the phone, busy requesting the aid of all available surgeons as soon as possible.

  “This is neither a joke nor a drill!” he bellowed into the phone’s mic. “The animal attack from last time; it’s happened again! If you want us to learn anything about that you better get here yesterday!”