Tainted Blood . Amy Blankenship

to get concerned. He’d been searching the graveyard for Devon’s scent for the last hour. When he wandered away from his brother earlier, he figured Devon would be right behind him and ready to fight. Warren had killed three more Skitters before he fully realized that Devon was still nowhere in sight.

      He’d even sent out a piercing feline cry, basically the jaguar’s version of checking in with each other. There was no responding cry. Going over the last place he’d seen Devon, Warren found the signs of the fight but no Skitter and no trace of Devon. It took him a few more minutes but when he finally found Devon’s scent. It led him toward an old crypt.

      Approaching the building carefully, he sniffed around the perimeter before pawing at the locked door. He growled at the lock and two solutions popped into his mind. Devon had either been put in there or the door had slammed shut and somehow locked during a fight.

      Shifting back to his human form, Warren wrenched the door open, breaking it away from its hinges with the scream of old metal against heavy wood. His eyes widened when he saw Devon lying in the middle of the floor with two Skitters heaped on top of one another next to him.

      Devon’s eyes opened slightly when the door banged open but he immediately shut them when the morning light invaded, burning his retinas. He felt like he’d just drank Kat’s entire stock of Heat and got into a losing fight on top of it.

      “What the hell happened in here?” Warren demanded softly.

      Devon growled low in his chest and shifted back to his human form. Bringing a hand to his head, he slowly sat up with Warren’s help and took a good look around.

      “The last thing I remember was getting into a fight with another Skitter after you left,” Devon answered. “I must have trapped it in here and killed it…” he looked over at the heaped Skitters and frowned, “…killed them. One must have knocked me good in the head before it went down.”

      “I think that’s enough fighting for now.” Warren said at length. “We both need some sleep.”

      Devon nodded and let Warren pull him to his feet. “Great, we’re naked,” he muttered.

      ”Just call us the streak,” Warren smirked. “Wanna slowly stroll out of here and see how many cat calls we get, or do you wanna race?”

      “The count of three,” Devon responded with a raised eyebrow.

      When they got back to the vehicle, they put on the change of clothing they kept stashed there just in case.

      “Drop me off at Chad’s place. Envy’s there, so I’ll just crawl into bed with her,” Devon said as he leaned back in the seat. “Also, do me a favor.”

      Warren looked over at him as he drove. “I won’t tell anyone so it doesn’t get back to Envy.”

      Devon smiled at his elder brother’s uncanny ability to always know what someone was thinking. Sometimes it made things not so awkward.

      “Thanks,” Devon said. “I hate it when she worries.”

      A few minutes later, Warren pulled to a stop in front of Chad’s apartment and looked over at Devon. “Get some sleep and just call me when you’re ready to come back.”

      Devon shook his head, “Don’t worry about it, either Chad will drive us or I’ll call a cab.”

      Warren waited until Devon opened the front door and was inside the house before he drove off. He didn’t want to say anything to Devon, but finding his brother like that had sent up red flags. The way the door had been locked from the outside was a bit too planned out making him wonder if someone or something else didn’t lock him in there on purpose.

      Shaking his head, Warren decided not to think about it anymore today… he was exhausted.

      Devon moved silently through the apartment toward Envy’s room. Opening the door, he smiled at the vision of her angelic face relaxed with sleep. Removing his clothes, he slipped into bed behind her and curled up against her back, wrapping an arm around her waist.

      She snuggled closer before relaxing against his chest and tilted her head back. Her breathing returned to the long breaths associated with a deep sleep and Devon relaxed. He decided to let her sleep this time instead of waking her up to let her know he was there… he would have to remember to take better care of her sleep habits from now on.

      *****

      The seventh floor of the hospital was peacefully quiet. It had been a long and boring shift as the nurses did their rounds to the various patients. The soft rhythms of the life support machines beeped steadily, creating enough background noise to keep the darkened floor from feeling eerie.

      “Long ten hours huh?” the security guard asked one of the nurses at the station.

      “And then some,” the nurse said with a smile, “You going to the corner deli for lunch?”

      “Yeah,” the guard answered. “You want anything?”

      The nurse nodded, “We were talking about it earlier. I’ll get an answer from everyone and let you know before you go.”

      The system monitoring the patients suddenly started lighting up and the nurse jumped to her feet. Blue led lights flashed sporadically making the nurse grab the phone sitting next to her.

      “Doctor Gordon and Doctor Harris to the seventh floor stat,” she announced before hanging up the phone and rushing out from behind the desk.

      More nurses came from the smaller stations at each end of the sprawling floor, each one trying to cover a set of rooms in order to see more patients in a shorter time. The security guard brought out his radio and called main floor security. It wasn’t long before the two doctors on duty along with a small army of ten more nurses rushed the floor to help.

      Panic and mayhem started to bloom among the staff as the patients began dropping like flies. They stayed with the people as long as possible before moving on to the next one, barely taking a moment to note the time of death for each one.

      As the staff moved down the hall, they realized that whatever was causing the patients to die seemed to be moving closer to the ICU also located on this floor. Though they were all thinking the exact same thing, none of them voiced that fear… it was only a coincidence after all.

      The security guard was waiting at the elevator when the police arrived. He was disappointed that only two officers had answered the call but it was better than nothing. With the earthquake about a week before, added to all the people showing up dead and dismembered, he could understand the lack of available cops.

      Screaming erupted down the hall and the officers pulled their guns as they ran forward. Two nurses went sailing across the hall, hitting the wall hard enough to crunch bones. They fell to the floor leaving long smears of blood behind on the pristine white paint.

      “What the hell?” the security guard whispered.

      The officers tightened their grips on their side arms and slowly moved down the hall toward the bodies. More staff members began flying from the doors while others attempted to run for it.

      The security guard stared wide-eyed as a dark figure emerged from the last room next to the entrance of the ICU. It was fading in and out of their vision as it moved. Its face couldn’t be seen beneath the ragged black cloak, but a long bladed scythe could be seen clearly in one of its ridiculously long-fingered hands.

      It moved down the hall toward them, grabbing up nurses and flinging them aside like rag-dolls. The officers opened fire while backing away from the specter. The scythe came down in a long arc slicing one of the officers in two. Blood sprayed across the floors as the officer fell but the creature kept advancing on the officer still firing his gun.

      Blood sprayed again, this time across the security guard’s face as the second officer was cut down. He vaguely registered the elevator ding, signaling that someone was coming up but he was frozen in fear and couldn’t move.

      A man appeared in the corner