'Til Death (Conversion Trilogy # 3)

Chapter 21: A Heart

Chapter 21: A Heart

An hour later, Teren, Gabriel and I, were at the hospital where my sister worked. We’d called the ranch moments after getting off the phone with Malcolm and explained Gabriel’s idea to her. Ashley had insisted that if we were going through with this crazy plan, then she was coming with. I’d wanted to object, but Hot Ben had been out at the ranch and had offered to bring her out to us.

With my sister having an escort, I’d felt better about her leaving Alanna and Imogen’s supervision. Once Julian had been taken, she’d stopped going to work, stopped going to see Christian. Pretty much stopped having a life. I hated that mine was so affecting hers, but I wanted her to be safe. I didn’t really know if Malcolm would snatch another family member or not, but it wasn’t a risk I was willing to take. Ash either. She knew the stakes, knew what could happen to her if she crossed paths with a vampire with an attitude. My sister was brave, but she wasn’t an idiot.

As she led our band through the halls of where she worked, she waved and acknowledged several of the people we passed by. None of the people working here gave her looks a moment’s pause. They were too interested to hear how the family tragedy that had kept her away was going. Ash had told the hospital the same sob story that I’d told Tracey: that we’d gone out of town for a funeral. The nurses and doctors that we met along the way all wanted to know if Ashley was okay. It warmed me that she was so completely accepted here. She really did have a second family to fall back on. Well, maybe a third, since the Adams had all pretty much adopted her.

Stopping at the doors where the recently deceased bodies were stored, Ashley glanced around the empty halls. “They don’t like people being down here that aren’t supposed to be, but Christian has me come down sometimes to collect donor tissue, so no one should find it too odd for me to be here.” She looked around at the group assembled before her. “Now the rest of you…well, I’m just glad it’s getting late. This is just a waiting area, so it should be empty until morning.”

Teren sighed. “Yeah, it’s getting late. We’re running out of time, we need to hurry.”

Ashley nodded and opened the doors. Teren paused before going through, placing his hand on her arm. “I’m very sorry you got dragged into this, Ashley.”

Looking up at him, she shook her head. “He’s my nephew, Teren. There’s nothing I wouldn’t do for him.”

Smiling warmly at her, Teren leaned down and kissed her bare scalp. My sister squeezed his arm, patting him through the door. I came through last, slinging my arm around Ashley as the doors swung closed behind us.

The smell of disinfectant hit me first, then…the smell of blood. Teren had walked over to the cold storage drawers and had found what we’d come here to find. Two freshly killed bodies. From what Gabriel had told us when laying out his idea, they’d shot each other in some petty, territorial, gang fight. The hospital had tried to save them, but the damage had been too great and they’d each died on the table.

I inhaled deeply, the scent in the air heavenly and a bit disgusting, since I knew where I was and what I was doing. The human side of me cringed away from being in a cold, sterile room with fresh corpses. The vampiric side of me growled in pleasure.

Hot Ben looked back at me, his eyes wide, and I realized that the vampiric side of me had actually growled in pleasure. I shrugged at him as I looked around at all of the people staring at me. “Sorry…it smells good in here.” I looked down at the floor. “I’m sort of hungry,” I mumbled.

Ben made some sort of disgusted noise as he started digging into his backpack. Gabriel smiled crookedly and nodded, not a big deal, and Teren ignored me completely, his eyes focused on the two dead bodies lying under sheets on metal slabs in the otherwise empty room. My sister held my waist tighter and whispered, “I could get a blood bag for you, if you need something?”