Home > Bad to the Bone (Blackthorn Wolves #1)

Bad to the Bone (Blackthorn Wolves #1)
Author: Vivi Anna

Chapter One

Olivia Jordan looked into the McDonald’s bag again Oand swore under her breath. She was hoping if she looked twice, the large fry she ordered would magically appear. Damn it! Why did this always happen to her?

“Rog, they forgot my fries again.”

Roger turned in his seat and grinned. “I’ll go get them, Liv.”

“McDonald’s hates me.”

“Oh, yeah, it’s a conspiracy against you,” he chuckled as he pulled out of the drive-through and parked the ambulance in the empty parking lot. It was past midnight and the restaurant was closing.

“I shouldn’t be eating this crap anyway. I’ll just have to run longer tomorrow.” Olivia unwrapped her hamburger and took a healthy bite.

Roger chuckled again and opened his door. “Liv, I see you eat it, but I have no idea where you put it.”

The radio on the dashboard crackled, pausing his movement.

Possible gunshot at 1st and 12th Avenue SE. PD on scene.

He shut his door and started the ambulance. “You didn’t need them anyway. I can almost see your butt in those pants.”

Olivia punched him hard in the arm. “Har har.”

“Ow, you have bony knuckles.” He rubbed his arm.

She wolfed down the rest of her burger and crumbled up the garbage. She rolled down the window as they exited the lot and tossed it into the provided trash bin. “Two points.”

There were three cruisers on scene when they arrived. Two officers were trying to keep back the small group of onlookers, that consisted of three hookers and some drunk bar patrons. Olivia got their gear ready as Roger parked the ambulance in the middle of the street. She jumped out of the back on the run.

This was not their first visit down to this area of town. Olivia figured she’d been down here at least five times in the past two years as an EMT. Stabbings and beatings mostly. This was her first gunshot wound. She wasn’t looking forward to it.

Two officers were bent down over the victim who was lying on the sidewalk in front of a scuzzy blues club. They were pressing down on her wounds, but were also holding her down.

“What are you doing?”

One officer looked up. She knew him. Had dated him briefly.

“She’s trying to get up.”

Olivia pushed the other officer out of the way and bent down next to the victim. She was young and pretty, and had three bullet holes in her chest. The woman turned her head and stared up at Olivia, blood congealed on her lips.

“I want to go home,” she croaked.

“Ma’am, you’ve been shot three times. We need to take you to the hospital.” Olivia took out the small oxygen mask and put it over the woman’s mouth. She struggled against it, trying to swipe it off.

“Grab her hands, Tom.” The officer gently stilled the woman’s arms. “You need to take some deep breaths, ma’am.”

While the woman struggled still, Olivia applied fresh trauma dressings to the wounds. Three shots to the chest. It was unbelievable that the woman was still alive and talking.

Roger hunkered down on the other side, nudging Tom out of the way. He grabbed the woman’s arm and tried to get an IV line in.

“How is this woman conscious?”

“I don’t know.” Olivia took out the trauma collar and put it around the woman’s neck. “Let’s get her on a board and get her out of here.”

Roger set the injury board next the woman’s’ form.

They gently lifted her and set her on the board. Then they lifted the board onto the stretcher. Roger raised the stretcher and they wheeled her to the back of the ambulance.

“Hey, Liv?” Tom stepped around the ambulance.

“Nice to see you, too.”

Olivia turned around and flipped him the bird.

“What an a**hole,” Roger said as he jumped into the back of the ambulance and helped slide the victim in.

Olivia jumped in after and shut the back doors. She settled next to the patient while Roger went to the driver’s seat.

“The man has no couth. Now you know why I dumped him.”

Olivia settled in beside the victim, and hooked her up to the EKG. Amazingly, the woman’s vitals were still strong. She glanced down again at the woman and saw that she watched Olivia with intensity, her eyes wide and very aware. She wanted desperately to look away from her intense stare.

“You’re going to be okay. We’re almost at the hospital.” Olivia looked up at Roger. “Punch it.”

“I am.” He picked up the radio and called into the emergency.

The woman raised her hand and placed it on Olivia’s arm. She jumped and looked down at it. The woman squeezed her hard. Olivia winced in pain and dug at her hand trying to remove it before her arm snapped in two.

“No one can help me.”

The woman suddenly released her hold on Olivia and bowed her back. The EKG went crazy. Olivia pushed the woman back onto the board to start CPR.

As she touched the woman’s abdomen, Olivia felt something warm and liquid through the rubber on her hand. She glanced down at the woman’s dressings. They were soaked through, but not with blood.

Olivia lifted up the gauze pressed just underneath the woman’s right breast. A gray fluid oozed out. She touched it with her gloved hand and brought it up to her face to identify. It glistened in the light, like liquefied silver.

She looked down at the moaning woman and saw that all three wounds leaked the same strange substance.

“Rog, we have a major problem here.”

“What?” Rog quickly glanced over his shoulder.

“There’s a possible contaminant here. Radio in to emerge. Have them ready for a possible quarantine.”

“Fuck! Are you sure?”

“No, I’m not sure of anything right now.”

“Arghhh! ” The woman screamed.

Olivia jumped back as the woman bowed again, her muscles in her arms and neck straining to capacity, as she pulled against the restraint over her stomach. She watched the woman’s face as it contorted in intense pain. The woman opened her mouth and growled like an animal.

Bang! The ambulance hit something solid. Olivia was tossed across the back of the vehicle and hit the side where the equipment was welded to the metal.

She cracked her head on the EKG.

“Hang on!” Roger yelled as he struggled to control the ambulance. “We’re gonna hit!”

Olivia had time to grab onto something solid before the vehicle smashed into the guardrail. She bolted forward then could feel the vehicle begin to tip. She cursed herself for not sitting in the side seat and putting on her seat belt. She quickly glanced around the back searching for anything that she could nestle herself into. She let go of the machine and jumped across to the side seat, fumbling with the seat belt. It was too late. The ambulance tipped over.

It seemed like slow motion to her, just like in a John Woo action thriller, as the vehicle flipped over and over down the embankment. She smashed her head on the roof then back on the floor as they rolled like a huge square Lego block down the hill. It was so surreal, Olivia was hardly aware of the groaning woman still straining against her restraints.

Finally, the vehicle came to a rest on its wheels at the bottom of the ravine. Olivia lay in a crumbled heap beside the monitors. She opened her eyes slowly. The world spun around in vicious circles, and she brought a hand up to her head. She touched the crown and winced. Her fingers came away wet and sticky with blood. She definitely had an open gash on her head. She tried to move her limbs. Pain radiated from everywhere and she was unsure if anything was severely broken. She grunted and finally moved her legs. Not broken. She turned her head. Not broken either, thank God.

“Roger?”

No answer.

She pushed herself up into a sitting position. Her back and stomach ached but she didn’t think she suffered any broken ribs. She peered into the dark of the ambulance toward the cab. She saw a form slumped forward over the steering wheel.

“Roger?”

She heard a low growl coming from in front of her.

The woman was still strapped to the stretcher. Olivia gasped as her shadowed form sat up, snapping the leather restraint in two. She growled again.

Olivia jumped, as the back doors were ripped open. She shut her eyes as a wave of nausea rolled over her. She took in some deep breaths and opened her eyes again, staring at the open back doors into the surrounding night. She could barely see trees outlined in shadow.

“He comes.” The woman wailed low and was barely audible even in the nightly still. Olivia thought her voice sounded muffled, like someone talking with his or her mouth full.

“He who?”

“The Keeper. He comes!” she howled.

Olivia covered her ears as the ear-piercing wail resonated around her and vibrated off her skin, and turned back toward the open doors.

A dark shape loomed in the door frame, its head touching the top. Olivia screamed as a hand, long-nailed and not quite human, reached for her. It touched her, gripping her tightly around the neck.

Her screams stuck in her burning throat as she tumbled into the darkness, but not before she saw a flash…a flash of two glowing eyes.

Chapter Two

Cool breeze rustled the hair at the nape of her neck.

A Olivia raised a hand and pushed the tendrils of hair away. She rolled onto her back and opened her eyes, staring at the gray cement ceiling as she blinked rapidly.

She was alive.

Olivia glanced around the pitiful room. If one could call it that. She thought it looked more like a cell. It was bare except for a worn wooden chair and the mattress that she lay on. The walls were drab gray cement and were unadorned. A thin, tiny window was above her and provided the gentle breeze that swept over her. She tried to sit up.

It was then, that she noticed with absolute horror, that her left arm and leg were chained to the walls. A thick metal cuff encompassed her wrist and her ankle.

She pulled at them, but knew it was no use. Even if she’d been a man, ten times the size and strength; she would not be able to break free of the chains.

She lay still her breath coming in panicked waves.

   
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