Bound (The Grandor Descendant Series Book 3) Read online

  The woman placed the unconscious fox onto the stainless steel examination table. There were large gashes across its legs, while its paws were badly grazed. A small trickle of blood was coming from one of its nostrils, and the fox took tiny shallow breaths, as if the effort of breathing was costing it greatly.

  “Ok, well thank you for bringing it in to us,” said Chris, now holding the consult door open for the woman to leave.

  “That’s it? You don’t need anything else from me?” said the woman, now following Chris into the front reception area, leaving Ari alone with the fox.

  “Right, good point,” said Chris, “let me just find something for you to fill in so that you can surrender him over to us.”

  Back in the consult room, Ari looked sadly at the fox. Though she was not a vet yet, she knew that the fox’s injuries were bad. She was almost certain it would need to be euthanized.

  “Ariana Sol,” a stern voice said from behind her, and Ari turned around to see Dr Fellow walking into the consult room, a surprised look on his face.

  Her guilty eyes traced Dr Fellow’s glance and they both looked down at the fox on the examination table.

  “We were just leaving and someone brought this fox in… and, and she hit it with her car. We, we, didn’t know what else to,” Ari stammered.

  “It’s alright. Calm down. Let’s have a look at the poor beast,” Dr Fellow said quickly, cutting off Ari’s ramblings and removing the stethoscope from around his neck. “Hmm,” he said, placing the stethoscope against the fox’s chest. “Ariana, come and listen to this. What do you think is going on?”

  Ari moved over to the fox, who was staring back blankly at her, it’s large round eyes fixed desperately on her. As she placed her stethoscope to its chest, the animal let out a small whimper.

  “Haemothorax?” whispered Ari. “Or, maybe pneumothorax?”

  “What’s that? Oh yes, pneumothorax, exactly, probably happened when it was hit by the car,” said Dr Fellow. “This means that air is separating the pleural surface of the lung lobes from the thoracic cavity.”

  “So what do we do?”

  “Nothing we can do,” he said. “The air in its lungs is preventing it from ventilating properly. It would need x-rays, a chest drain placed and intense hospitalisation to try and save it, and because it is wildlife and considered a pest in this area, our hands are tied.”

  She watched with horror as Dr Fellow began searching the cupboards, finally retrieving a large bottle of thick green liquid, lethobarb, the barbiturate that would give the animal an overdose of anaesthetic and put it to sleep. Ari was just about to ask if there was some way that might be able to justify treating it, when the fox began to growl and convulse.

  “Why is it doing that?” she asked, looking down at the writhing animal.

  “It may be rabid, or having a seizure from increased intracranial pressure. Have you had your rabies vaccinations?”

  Immediately Ari nodded, though this wasn’t true. Australia didn’t have rabies, it had Lyssa virus, and it was not a requirement of the course back home to get vaccinated for it, as it was such a rare disease. She did not however want Dr Fellow to know this.

  “Hold the vein up for me Ariana. I don’t think we should make it suffer any longer. Make sure it doesn’t bite you,” he said. “I’m just going to get some gauze.”

  Ari moved cautiously back towards the small animal, feeling a great sense of grief. She knew that death was a part of this job but there was something cruel about euthanizing this animal; it just didn’t feel right.

  “But couldn’t we just…” Ari began to say, until she noticed something strange around the fox’s neck. Looking down more carefully, Ari realised that there was a small silver chain around its neck. “What the?” she said, staring at the jewellery in absolute confusion.

  “Have you got it?” asked Dr Fellow, still with his back to her as he reached for a pair of clippers. “Just give me a moment.”

  “Yes, but…” said Ari, about to make mention of the silver chain, until something very strange happened.

  The small fury arm that she was restraining was becoming larger. Within her grasp she could feel it expanding, pushing her fingertips further and further apart, until she could no longer wrap her hand around the animal at all. At exactly the same time, she felt the animal go limp in her arms. Then the sound of a thousand tiny snaps and an odd tearing noise filled the small consult room. Looking down, Ari gasped, threw her hands into the air and stopped time, just before Dr Fellow turned around to administer the lethobarb.

  “Jesus Christ! Chris, get in here!” Ari screamed, now looking down at a naked girl lying on the table, whose brown eyes exactly mirrored the same shape and colour of what the fox’s had been.

  Ari moved to the girl quickly, sweeping her long hair out of the way so as to place her stethoscope against her chest, listening carefully for a heartbeat and making sure her stethoscope was turned on. The heart beat was there but it was faint, and Ari knew that they had to get this girl to the hospital, quickly. As she placed her fingers near the girl’s neck to feel for a pulse, she saw again the small chain and realised that it was in fact a silver necklace.

  “Coming, coming,” Chris said back in a bored voice. “Why is everyone calling me God today? I know I am good but it’s not like-”

  The moment he walked inside, Chris stopped speaking. His eyes darted over to Dr Fellow, who was still frozen next to Ari, holding a syringe filled with bright green liquid, then down to the naked, unconscious girl who was propped on the table, where many gashes were oozing thick red blood.

  “What the hell?” he said, quickly racing to Ari as he removed his shirt so as to cover the girl on the table.

  “She’s a waere,” Ari said exasperated, “the fox was a waere! Dr Fellow burst in, and, he was about to euthanize her, then, then she started having a seizure and changed. Or maybe she’s a wraith... I don’t know.”

  “But, what are we going to do?”

  Both Ari and Chris stared down at the unconscious girl.

  “She has a pneumothorax! We have to get her to the hospital,” explained Ari.

  “But,” Chris began, turning to face Dr Fellow and waving a hand in front of him. The vet did not move and Chris turned to look at Ari, exasperated, as he said, “You froze the person who is going to be grading us? Ari, are you insane?”

  “Don’t worry about him right now. If you take the fox, I mean girl… waere… wraith... argh, you know what I mean. Take her to your car; I will come up with something to tell Dr Fellow,” Ari said, helping Chris so that he was cradling the girl in his hands. “I’ll meet you out the back in a minute. Then we can take her to the hospital.”

  Ari raced to the door and opened it, thrusting her head out and checking to make sure that there was no one in the waiting area, before waving for Chris to follow.

  After watching Chris run to his car, she bolted back inside the consult room and thought hard. She had just about come up with an idea, when she felt her powers wane. Without hesitating she jumped across the room and threw the door that would lead back to the hospital open.

  “Where is it?” asked Dr Fellow, suddenly unfreezing and looking around the consult room for the missing fox.

  His eyes scanned the consult room, finally coming to rest on the door which Ari had thrown open.

  “It jumped out of my hands,” Ari lied. “The door was open; I think it went somewhere out the back, into the hospital.”

  She didn’t wait for Dr Fellow to respond but raced into the hospital and pretended to search under the cages in the treatment room. Instantly Dr Fellow followed behind her, shouting out frantically to all the staff.

  “There is an escaped fox here!” he said, “It can’t have gotten far, it was hit by a car, but it might be rabid. I want everyone to stop what they are doing and search for it.”

  There was an immediate scramble as everyone started looking for the injured animal.

  “I’m going to go have
a look in the exercise yard,” Ari yelled out to no one in particular. “Here foxy, foxy, foxy,” she cooed, just loud enough to make sure that the others inside could hear her.

  Pretending to have started searching around the outside of the clinic, Ari jumped over the fence and moved quickly to the road that serviced the rear entrance. She squinted into the distance, searching for any sign of Chris’s car, until she saw the flash of headlights and raced towards it.

  “Drive,” she said, jumping into the front seat before glancing behind her shoulder to look at the unconscious girl in the back of the car.

  When they finally arrived at the Pasteur Hospital, Chris swerved into the emergency car park, fumbled for his seat belt and raced to open the passenger door. In an instant he had lifted the girl into his hands, cradling her as he sprinted towards the entrance. The nurse at the triage counter glanced up at them, her eyes dull and indifferent, until she realised that Chris was carrying someone. After that her eyes widened and she sprung from her seat, quickly directing them to an emergency room off to the side.

  “I will get a doctor,” she said, placing a small probe onto the girl’s finger, before sweeping from the room.

  “What do we do now?” asked Ari, turning to face Chris, where dried blood was smeared across his chest.

  “I think we need to get out of here.”

  “But we can’t just leave her,” said Ari, looking down at the girl, whose deep red hair matched the scrub top that Chris had placed over her.

  “We can’t stay. The docs gonna wanna know what the hell happened to her. What are we supposed to say? She was hit by a car but seeing as she was a fox at the time, the person who hit her bought her to a vet clinic instead of a hospital? They will probably think that we hit her.”

  “Good point,” said Ari, now pacing around the room nervously. “And I froze the room when she was transforming. I have no idea how much she saw. She might have seen me use my powers. I doubt it; I mean she was unconscious, but still…”

  “I say we make a run for it.”

  Ari glanced back at the still unconscious girl, the small silver necklace now splayed on the outside of Chris’s scrub top. She wanted to wait until the doctors retuned but she knew they had no choice. They had to get out of here.

  Chapter 3- Four legs and Fur

  One week later and despite Ari and Chris being reprimanded by Dr Fellow for admitting and then losing a fox, the pair had managed to pass their first clinical rotation, without any lulling from Ragon. Neither had heard anything at all about the waere-girl they had rescued. In the days that followed, Ari had come to the conclusion that the girl must have been a waere, not a wraith. Ari’s ability to stop time did not work on waeres when they were in their animal form, and she was sure that when she had frozen the room, the fox had continued to move.

  Ari had thought Riley might have known who she was, and had described the girl with the silver necklace and red hair in detail, but Riley had said she had never seen her before.

  “Maybe it’s time you went to see a doctor yourself,” Ari suggested, after the pair had discussed the possibility of the waere-girl’s identity.

  Two weeks on from initially catching the bug that had swept through the Pasteur Institute and Riley was still looking dreadful. She was thinner and listless, and Clyde had become increasingly overprotective of her, if that was possible, putting Riley on strict bed rest following their night out at the campus club. The moment Ari suggested seeing a doctor, Clyde nodded enthusiastically, while Riley groaned her disapproval. For the entire day she had been curled up in Ari’s bed, turning the heater on and off and only leaving the room to go to the bathroom, which she did surprisingly often.

  “I think Ari’s right,” said Ragon. “You’ve been sick for ages. You might need antibiotics or something?”

  “Yea and I am sick of hanging around you, just waiting for you to sneeze on me,” Ari added, hoping to make light of the situation. “And, I would like to get my bed back at some point.”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” said Ragon, grinning mischievously, “I don’t mind you sleeping at mine. It certainly keeps Mistress Bridget at bay.”

  “But,” Riley argued, sitting up in Ari’s bed and quickly reaching for the head rest for support, “I can’t go to the Pasteur Hospital and that’s the only medical centre on the Isle. It’s full of vampires! You said it yourself, that’s where the vamps take their victims, and we know that there are vampires there working as doctors. What if one of them works out that I’m a waere?”

  “Riley,” said Clyde, his voice stern, “not all the doctors there are vampires. Besides, vampires only consult on cases that involve trauma… like bites. They are hardly going to feel suspicious if a girl walks in there complaining of a cold. It’s not likely that a vampire will be blamed for that. Anyway, how could they possibly realise that you are a waere. I assume you aren’t planning on shifting in front of them.”

  “Geez, that’s what I normally do when I get checked out by the doctors, you know, just to make sure everything is in working order,” Riley snapped back.

  “That’s not funny,” said Clyde, his hands on his hips.

  “I’m not going,” Riley insisted. “It’s just a stupid flu. I just need some peace and quiet.”

  “What about Lea?” Ari suggested, her head shotting up with this thought.

  “What about her?” Clyde asked.

  “Well, she’s a witch,” explained Ari.

  “Yes, well spotted,” Clyde replied.

  “And she’s healed Riley before. What’s the harm in getting her to have a look at you again?” Ari explained, looking hopefully at Riley.

  “I don’t know if Lea will agree to it,” said Ragon, looking doubtful. “I’m fairly certain her powers are supposed to be used in extreme cases, not head colds or the flu. Besides, she wasn’t particularly thrilled about saving Riley the last time, and that was after she had been attacked by Bridget.”

  “Yea, but she knows Riley now,” said Ari, reaching for her phone and dialling Lea’s number before the others could argue. “Trust me, she will want to help.”

  Fifteen minutes later, Lea arrived at Ari’s room.

  “What’s the big emergency?” asked Lea, looking across at all the worried faces until her eyes fell on Riley. “Jesus Riley, you look awful.”

  “Thanks,” Riley muttered. “I think I have the flu… still.”

  “Yea, it’s going around. A friend of mine told me that the hospital has even started giving out free vaccines. So what’s up? Ari, you sounded tense on the phone.”

  Ari shot Lea a guilty smile which she did not return.

  “Well,” said Ari, speaking slowly so as to choose her words carefully, “we were kind of hoping that you might be able to help Riley. You see, she doesn’t want to go to the Pasteur Hospital, because, you know, it’s crawling with vampires and she’s a waere. But she has been sick for ages and she isn’t getting any-”

  “-what do you want me to do?” Lea said quickly, looking at Ari sceptically.

  “Well, I was hoping that you might be able to use your,” Ari paused, flinging her hands mysteriously into the air and adding in a whisper, “special talents to-”

  “-you want me to use magic to heal her?” asked Lea, her voice stiff and oddly formal. “Are you insane?”

  “You’ve done it before for me,” Riley whispered.

  “Yea, because you almost died, not because you had a runny nose,” Lea retorted.

  “Can’t you at least take a look at her? I mean, you said it yourself; she looks awful and she won’t go to a doctor,” Clyde said.

  “I can hear you, you know,” said Riley. “You don’t need to remind how bad I look.”

  “Riley,” Clyde said, sweeping to her side and grabbing her hand, “to me you look beautiful... perfect. But I can hardly ignore the fact that you are vomiting almost every morning. What do you want me to do? Tell you that nothing’s wrong? As much as it pains you to hear it, I love you and I
can’t stand you being sick. You know very well that I am a vampire, that I have been a vampire for many centuries. I don’t remember what it’s like to be sick; I don’t know when I’m overreacting. All I see is you suffering, and all I want is for you to be fixed. You may not care about your own wellbeing but I do.”

  When Clyde’s speech had finished, Ari gaped at him. It was the first time she had ever heard him tell someone that he loved them. She compared the hard, callous and sarcastic vampire she had first met, to the kind and sensitive one who stood in front of her. Loving Riley, a human, well, a waere, had given him a second chance at humanity.

  “But I’m not a doctor,” said Lea.

  “You won’t at least try?” asked Ari, “Isn’t there some sort of herbal remedy you could use, or-”