Sally’s cheerful, “No problem,” was followed by a promise to make sure the movers would take wonderful care of Blaspheme’s things and not to worry, and a moment later, Blaspheme’s mother was on the other line.
“Hi, Mom.” Blaspheme slammed on her brakes to avoid rear-ending a piece-of-shit truck that apparently hadn’t come equipped with a turn signal or brake lights. She shot the driver the finger through her front windshield.
“Blas.” Her mother’s raspy voice came from right next to Blaspheme.
Screaming, Blas dropped the phone. “Holy shit!”
She opened her mouth again to yell at her mother for popping into the car from out of nowhere, but when she saw the blood, her voice cut out. Deva, short for Devastation, sat in the passenger seat, every inch of her body covered in blood. The broken end of a bone punched through her left biceps, and a deep, to-the-femur burn had wrecked her right leg.
“Oh, gods,” Blaspheme gasped. “What happened?”
Her mother lifted her trembling hand from her abdomen, and Blas got an eyeful of bowels poking through the laceration that stretched from just above her navel to her hip bone.
The injury itself was grave enough, but emanating from it was a vibe Blaspheme couldn’t place. Whatever it was, it felt… wrong. And very, very fatal.
“I —” Deva sucked in a rattling breath… and slumped, unconscious, against the window.
“Mom!” The POS truck moved, allowing Blaspheme to whip the Mustang around a corner to head back to Underworld General. She automatically reached out with her mind to find a Harrowgate, and although she located one a block away, there was nowhere to park, and no way she could abandon the vehicle in the middle of the street.
Damn, it would be nice to be able to flash like the normal offspring of a fallen angel, but that wasn’t an option for Blaspheme. It would never be an option.
On instinct, she gripped her mother’s wrist and tried to channel healing energy into her, but that talent had been rendered useless a long time ago.
Dammit!
“Just hold on,” she told her mom as she wove her car through the streets, narrowly avoiding sideswiping a cab and a messenger on a bike.
She whipped into the underground parking lot owned by the hospital but off-limits to the human public, drove through a false wall, and practically skidded to a halt in a stall in the hospital’s hidden parking lot. Then, for a split second, an eternity, really, she hesitated.
Everyone at the hospital believed Blas was a False Angel. She could come up with an explanation as to why her mother wasn’t the same species, but doing so could raise questions. Questions from the one person she was pretty sure was already suspicious.
A mere two weeks ago, Eidolon, Underworld General’s founder and chief of staff, had been just cryptic enough in his warning to stay away from Revenant that she’d been paranoid ever since.
Her mother groaned, and suddenly, it didn’t matter what Eidolon suspected. Her job… hell, her life… was at risk, but so was Deva’s, and she couldn’t let her mother die.
Quickly, she leaped out of the vehicle and ran through the sliding doors to the emergency department.
“I need help!” she barked, and in an instant, Luc, a werewolf paramedic, and Raze, a Seminus demon physician, rushed outside with a stretcher.
Moments later, Blaspheme was in an exam room, gloved up, while Luc checked vitals and Raze channeled his healing power into Deva. His scowl indicated that he was having trouble.
“Her stomach ruptured,” he said. “Dammit, there’s a tear in her transverse colon. I can heal the tears right now, but she needs surgery to clean out the contaminants.” He looked over at Blas. “It’s a huge risk, though. I know you’re aware that False Angels don’t respond well to anesthesia.”
Shit. Blaspheme did not want to reveal the truth about her mother – and potentially, herself – but she couldn’t compromise Deva’s health by sending her into surgery with doctors who thought she was something other than what she was. Maybe she could play fast and loose with the facts and hope no one dug too deep.
Blas glanced up as she prepared an IV site in the back of her mother’s hand. “She’s not a False Angel.”
Raze cocked an eyebrow. “But you said she’s your mother.”
“She’s my adoptive mother,” she lied. “She’s a fallen angel.” At least the second part was the truth.
Raze’s hand jerked, and he cursed under his breath. She understood his shock; fallen angels were rare, they were mostly evil assholes, and as far as Sheoulic denizens went, they were at the top of the food chain.