Moving beside him near the bed, the male nurse rearranged some of the tubes and tethers attached to Chase's free arm. "You hear about the other guy they brought back here from the situation in lockup tonight - the one this fella tried to use as a wrecking ball? He's busted up real bad."
The female exhaled a sharp grunt. "Oh, I heard about him all right. Severed spinal column, total paralysis from the neck down. Poetic justice, if you ask me."
"What do you mean?"
More gum-snapping and a whiff of peppermint as she leaned in to inspect one of Chase's chest wounds. "Before I came here, I used to work midnights over at Mass General. Admitted his wife to the ER more than once after he worked her over, then had an apparent attack of conscience and brought her in to be patched up. He always had some kind of excuse, like she ran into a wall or split her head open while she was cleaning. You won't see me crying that a guy like him is gonna spend the rest of his life flat on his ass, eating baby food and pissing in a bag." "No shit." The male nurse blew out a low chuckle. "They don't say karma's a bitch for nothing."
"And so am I when I haven't had a cigarette in more than two hours," she said, chomping even harder on her gum. "Can you finish up here while I run down and have a quick smoke?"
"Yeah, sure. I'm almost done. Just need to prep a little nightcap for Mr., ah ..." A pause as he looked up the name. "For Mr. Chase here. Something to take the edge off, after that suicide-by- lead-poisoning attempt he made tonight in the lineup room."
Nurse Doublemint stripped off her latex gloves with a violent snap that felt like a thunderclap in Chase's head. "You're a doll, Mike. Be sure to turn the lights off when you're done in here, okay?"
"Yeah, yeah. Get outta here already. I got you covered."
Chase listened to the padding of the nurse's crepe-soled shoes as she left the room. The door settled closed with a whispered snick. Chase's senses began to bang with the impulse to act, to seize this chance and feed.
He peered through the slit of his parted eyelids. The male nurse was turned away, unwrapping a thin clear tube from a small plastic IV bag. He was a sizable man, as his voice had indicated - tall and strong, with thick shoulders bulking underneath his sky blue scrubs.
"All right, Mr. Chase. Got a bag of nighty-night for you here." He hung the bag on one of the hooked IV poles next to the bed, then leaned over Chase to pick up his left arm and attach the end of the tube to a readied line. "I promise you, this is some real good shit ..." Chase's eyes were fully open now.
"Jesus Christ!" The man's body jerked in alarm as he tried to leap back from the bed. He didn't get far. Chase clamped his hand around the back of the human's neck and brought him down in a sudden burst of coiled power. It was all he had in him, but it was enough. With the man's hoarse shouts muffled against the blanket at his chest, Chase sank his fangs into the human's neck.
He drank quickly, deeply, gulp after gulp. The coppery blood hit his parched tongue like fire, igniting his body's depleted cells and fueling his senses. It was an instantaneous flood of strength and power - the very thing that made it so addictive. He couldn't think about that now. Only one thing mattered, and that was getting out of this place.
The temptation to gorge himself was as powerful as it would be to any junkie, but as soon as Chase felt his power peak, he swept his tongue over the punctures and sealed the wound closed. The man was limp now, dazed from the feeding. To be safe, Chase placed the flat of his palm against the human's forehead, trancing him into a swift, heavy drowse. Chase pushed his heavy bulk off him with his free arm. The cuff on his other broke loose under a combination of mental command and sheer Breed strength.
Naked but for his many bandages, Chase sat up and began pulling the tubes and lines out of his arms. He freed himself of the tangle of medical apparatus, then hurried to strip the male nurse of his blue scrubs. He put them on, scowling when he got to the white Crocs that were easily two sizes too small for him.
Barefoot, Chase hefted the big human onto the bed in his place, clamping the heart rate monitor onto the nurse's finger before the machine had a chance to bleat in alarm. To be sure the human didn't wake up screaming the word "vampire," Chase made quick work of his memory, scrubbing the attack clean from his sleeping mind. After pulling the sheet and blanket up around the man's chin, Chase pivoted to head for the door.
Just as Nurse Doublemint was pushing it open ahead of her.
"I'm not sure, Darcy. I just got back from break," she called over her shoulder, her head turned back toward the nurses' station as she started to enter the room.
Chase drew back against the wall behind the door. His body was still riding the powerful high of its feeding, every muscle coiled and waiting for his command. He didn't want to harm the woman, but if she saw him ...
She lingered in the doorway and stared toward the bed where the big male nurse lay unmoving, still in a deep drowse. "Mike? You still in here?" she asked, speaking in a hushed tone so as not to wake the patient.
As she took a quiet step into the room, Chase pushed deeper into the shadows behind the open door. He gathered those shadows around him, calling on one of his personal abilities that was sometimes even more effective than the strength and brute power of his kind. He held the shadows close, bending them to his will as the woman peered around the room looking for her colleague.
"Michael?" She frowned, shivering a little in the cold of Chase's illusion. She pulled the fabric of her white cardigan tighter around her. "So much for remembering to turn off the lights when you were done."
With that, she pivoted on her heel and left, hitting the light switch on her way out. The room went dark, and Chase released the curtain of gloom that had shielded him from her notice.
He glanced out the window of the door as she returned to the station up the hall and fell into a chatty conversation with the pair of young nurses manning it. Chase slipped out of the room in his stolen scrubs, his bare feet silent as he took the first step into the corridor toward escape. They didn't see him.
Nor could any human eyes follow as he flashed with preternatural speed down the opposite length of the long hallway, as silent and stealthy as a ghost.
Once outside, Chase hit the street on foot. To the few humans he passed, he was nothing but a cold gust amid the midnight flurries that fell from the dark sky. He knew exactly where he would go now. With predatory senses guiding him, he headed for a specific residence on the North Shore, as swift and certain as death itself.
CHAPTER SIX
FIVE HUNDRED AND THIRTY-TWO emails in his in-box since the afternoon - including the one Tavia Fairchild told him she'd sent containing his speech file for the morning fund-raiser. Ever the efficient assistant, she'd gone to the trouble of including a separate file that provided anecdotal remarks about some of the people who'd be attending the charity breakfast. A social cheat sheet to assist him in maintaining his reputation for personability and effortless charm. He barely glanced at the document, finding it hard to care about the pet philanthropic ventures and causes du jour of a bunch of Back Bay socialites or the alma mater team standings of every deep-pocketed corporate executive on the guest list.
Under the low light of the desk lamp in his study, he flipped open his calendar and cast a disinterested eye over the sea of meetings and committees, public appearances and social engagements that filled the pages.
None of it mattered to him, not anymore.