Pleasure Unbound by Larissa Ione, now you can read online.
One
The demon is a prince of the air and can transform himself into several shapes, delude our senses for a time; but his power is determined, he may terrify us but not hurt.
—Robert Burton, Anatomy of Melancholy
Had Eidolon been anywhere but the hospital, he would have killed the guy pleading for his life before him.
As it was, he’d have to save the bastard.
“Sometimes, being a doctor blows,” he muttered, and jabbed the demon in a human suit with a syringe full of hemoxacin.
The patient screamed as the needle passed through mangled thigh tissue, releasing blood sterilization medication into the wound.
“You didn’t numb him first?”
Eidolon snorted at his younger brother’s words. “The Haven spell keeps me from killing him. It doesn’t prevent me from dispensing a little justice during treatment.”
“Can’t escape your old job, huh?” Shade pushed aside the curtain separating two of the three ER
cubicles and stepped fully inside. “The son of a bitch eats babies. Let me wheel him outside and waste his sorry ass.”
“Wraith already offered.”
“Wraith offers to waste all the patients.”
Eidolon grunted. “Probably a good thing our little brother didn’t go the doctor route.”
“Neither did I.”
“You had different reasons.”
Shade hadn’t wanted to spend that much time in school, especially since his healing gift was better suited to his chosen field, paramedicine. He was all about scraping patients off the street and keeping them alive long enough for the Underworld General staff to fix them.
Blood dripped to the obsidian floor as Eidolon probed the patient’s most serious wound. A female Umber demon, the same species as Shade’s mother, had caught the patient sneaking into her nursery, and had somehow impaled him—several times—with a toilet brush.
Then again, Umber demons were remarkably strong for their petite size. The females were especially so. Eidolon had, on several occasions, enjoyed the application of that strength in bed. In fact, when he could no longer resist the final maturation cycle his body had entered, he planned to make an Umber female his first infadre. Umbers made good mothers, and only rarely did they kill the unwanted offspring of a Seminus demon.
Putting aside the thoughts that plagued him more frequently as The Change progressed, Eidolon glanced at the patient’s face. The skin that should have been a deep reddish-brown was now pale with pain and blood loss. “What’s your name?”
The patient groaned. “Derc.”
“Listen, Derc. I’m going to repair this unsightly hole, but it’s going to hurt. A lot. Try not to move. Or scream like a cowering little imp.”
“Give me something for the pain, you f**king parasite,” he snarled.
“Doctor parasite.” Eidolon nodded at the equipment tray, and Paige, one of their few human nurses, handed him clamps.
“Derc, buddy, did you eat any of the Umber’s young before she caught you?”
Hatred rolled off Shade’s body as Derc shook his head, sharp teeth bared, eyes glowing orange.
“Today isn’t your lucky day then. Didn’t get a meal, and you aren’t getting anything for the pain, either.”
Allowing himself a grim smile, Eidolon clamped the damaged artery in two places as Derc screamed vile curses and struggled against the restraints that held him on the metal table.
“Scalpel.”
Paige handed him the instrument, and he expertly sliced between the clamps. Shade crowded close, watching as he shaved away the shredded artery tissue and then held the newly clean ends together. A warm tingle wound its way down his right arm along his dermal markings to the tips of his gloved fingers, and the artery fused. The baby-eater would no longer have to worry about bleeding out. From the expression on Shade’s face, however, he would have to worry about surviving more than two steps outside the hospital.