Page 45 of Immortal Unveiled

“Shut up!” Manus cut him off, his voice sounding hoarse now.

Too late. She’d already heard enough. She stopped walking and glared at Manus, who looked rather pale now. “So, it was all a lie! You killed her, and you tried to make me believe that crap about the air conditioning system.”

Manus opened his mouth. “I didn’t k… The demons…” His voice died. Suddenly, his knees buckled, and he collapsed.

If not for the super-fast reaction of the hybrid vampire, Manus would have crashed to the floor. But Ryder caught him, then stared at her, stunned. “What’s wrong with him? This shouldn’t happen.”

“He must have lost more blood than we thought,” Kim said, feeling a little guilty for what she’d done.

Ryder looked at the back of Manus’s arm. “No exit wound. The bullet is still inside.”

With Manus in his arms, Ryder started running down the corridor. “Follow me!” he ordered without looking over his shoulder.

She could try to escape now, but something held her back. Instead, she looked at Ryder’s disappearing form. “Ah, fuck it! In for a penny, in for a pound.”

Kim charged after Ryder, worried she might lose him in the maze of corridors he was navigating, carrying Manus’s two hundred pounds of muscle like he was a feather. Maybe he was really a vampire like they’d all claimed, like she’d seen evidence of, because no human had that kind of strength.

Finally, Ryder stopped and kicked a set of double doors open. Kim followed him into the large room. What she saw wasn’t what she’d expected. The room was a mini state-of-the-art operating theatre any hospital worth its salt would have licked its chops for.

A woman in her late thirties, wearing a white doctor’s coat, was waiting for them. Had somebody already notified her that they were coming? “He’s out? What the hell?”

Ryder was already placing the unconscious Manus onto the steel table, the overhead lights glaring down at him, emphasizing the paleness of his skin.

“Something’s wrong. Bullet’s still in his arm. But he shouldn’t have collapsed. It’s just a flesh wound,” Ryder claimed.

“I agree,” the woman said, then briefly looked at Kim. “I’m Leila. I’m his doctor. Don’t worry, I’ll take care of him.”

Kim nodded, her heart tying itself into a knot. Damn it, what had she done? Suddenly, her suspicions about Manus, about him being the one who’d broken into the storage facility, and about him being behind her mother’s murder, weren’t quite as strong anymore. What if he wasn’t the bad guy here? What if he’d just been trying to help her like he’d promised?

A tear suddenly stole itself down her cheek. She wiped it away quickly but caught Ryder’s look on her. He didn’t make a comment, and she appreciated it. Suddenly, he didn’t look that menacing anymore. He looked kind and full of concern for his friend.

Kim stepped closer and watched Leila work quickly and efficiently on Manus’s bicep. “So much damage. Must have been a large caliber,” Leila murmured.

“Just a nine-millimeter,” Kim said.

“How would you know?”

“Because I shot him.”

Leila lifted her head for a moment, meeting Kim’s gaze. Then she shrugged. “Well, Manus can be a bit of a jerk sometimes.” She took a pair of metal pliers from the tray next to her and dug into the wound. “Got it.”

The sound of the bullet dropping into a metal bowl felt like a ton of weight dropping off Kim’s shoulders. But her relief didn’t last long.

“Oh shit, do you see this?” Leila asked, turning her face toward Ryder while pointing at the bullet.

Ryder perused the bloody bullet. “That can’t be. That’s impossible. We’ve gotta get one of the guys in here to confirm.”

Leila shook her head. “There’s no time. This isn’t a commercial bullet. It’s been hand-cast. If that bullet was made from metal from a weapon from the Dark Days, he’s gonna die.”

Die? Kim felt her throat constrict, her heart pounding as if it was trying to escape the confines of her ribcage.

“Ryder, you’ve gotta save him. There’s no time to lose.” She pointed to Manus’s wound. “If we let this fester, it will infect his blood and spread through his body. It will poison him from within just like silver would poison you.”

“Fuck!” Ryder hissed and extended his fangs.

Shocked and frightened, Kim shrank back when she saw the transformation from human-looking to vampire. “Oh God!”

Ryder didn’t even look at her, too intent on his task. With his fangs, he pierced his wrist, then held the bleeding wound over Manus’s wound.