Reluctantly, he joined Shade. “What’s going on?” Tavin asked, a split second before he noticed the giant HAPPY BIRTHDAY banner strung from one side of the room to the other. “Ah. Whose birthday?”
“Underworld General’s.” The voice next to Tavin’s ear startled him, and he pivoted around to see that Shade’s brother Wraith, his blond hair tied back with a leather thong that matched his duster, had sidled up next to him. He shoved a plastic cup full of sloshing red liquid and fruit into Tavin’s hand. “Screw the punch. The sangria is infused with ashleech so we can get buzzed.”
Seminus demons generally didn’t feel the intoxicating effects of alcohol. But a while back, Wraith, working with Lore, had discovered that a blend of probiotics and ashleech, a demon fruit fungus, altered alcohol so Sems and several other species could partake. Now, it was totally a thing, and infused alcohol was available in most underworld markets and every store in Australia.
The Sem brothers were making a fucking fortune off their proprietary formula. And, like the good guys they were, they put it right back into the hospital.
He took a swig of the drink and set it aside. He still had three hours left in his shift, and Eidolon probably wouldn’t appreciate it if he spent it drunk.
“I’ve worked every day this week,” Tavin said, catching a glimpse of Deja laughing with another nurse near the disinfection station. She had an amazing ass. Deja, not the other nurse. That one had a spiky tail, and he was not into those things. “So how come I didn’t know about this shindig?”
Wraith grinned, flashing his vampire fangs. His mother had become a vampire while pregnant with him, and like all Seminus demons, he was pure incubus except for a few unique inherited traits from his dam. She’d apparently been a shitty mother, which made Tavin appreciate his Fury mothers even more. Plus, from his birth mom, he’d inherited eyes that changed from green to blue for no apparent reason, and a few magical abilities, which were way better than fangs or a thirst for blood.
“It’s a surprise party,” Wraith explained. “Even Eidolon didn’t know about it.”
Tav glanced around the crowd for the third Seminus brother and found the black-haired doctor looking more annoyed than surprised, although he did smile when his mate, Tayla, stepped out of the Harrowgate. She was dressed to party in black skinny jeans, jeweled black flats, and a belted thigh-length green blouse that complimented her burgundy hair. Tavin liked the ex-demon slayer, felt a kinship of sorts when they spoke of their former employment. They’d both been killers, even if their reasons had been different, and now they were trying to turn the past into something positive.
She gave her mate a smoky look and headed in his direction. Eidolon was another Sem who had escaped the fate of s’genesis by taking a mate, and now he had a stable life and a family. Lucky bastard.
Eidolon’s normally dark eyes began to shimmer with the telltale Seminus gold glitter of arousal as he watched his wife walk toward him. Feeling like a voyeur, Tavin turned back to Wraith.
“So, you put together this shindig, I take it?”
Behind Wraith the Harrowgate snapped shut, becoming a glittering curtain to Tavin’s eyes, but completely invisible to non-underworlders. Human employees saw only two posts in a cordoned-off area near the triage station.
“It was Sin’s idea,” Wraith said. “She asked me, Lore, and Tayla to help. And a few staff members we knew could keep their mouths shut.”
Sin and Lore were the three Seminus brothers’ half-siblings, and from what Tavin could gather, the initial family meeting had not gone well. They’d had a rough road getting here, but now Lore was the hospital’s medical examiner, and Sin…Tavin wasn’t sure what she did exactly. She had the ability to spawn disease with a touch, so Eidolon always had her busy creating cures and identifying new diseases.
A round of applause went through the department as Tayla led Eidolon to a makeshift stage they’d constructed opposite the nurses’ station. He took the stage with only the slightest grimace of reluctance, and once he was in front of the microphone Shade handed him, he sighed in resignation.
“Well, fuck,” he muttered, and everyone laughed. He jabbed a playful finger at Tayla. “You’re lucky it’s a slow day.”
She tapped her watch. “It’s not the day, it’s the time.”
Tavin glanced at his watch. Yup, it was Hallohain, the ten minutes or so in Sheoul when time became fluid in random regions. Anyone entering into or leaving from those regions risked losing hours—or even days—of time. Since it was impossible to know which regions would be affected, few opted to travel outside of their region during Hallohain. Incoming patient numbers generally slowed to a crawl.
“I thought we were just going to make an official announcement in a newsletter, but apparently I was wrong,” Eidolon said to the crowd. “So, here’s the news. As you may or may not know, Shade, Wraith, and I founded this hospital–some of us more reluctantly than others.” He gave Wraith a pointed look, and the guy just grinned and held up his beverage in salute.
Eidolon gave his brother a hopeless but fond shake of the head and continued. “Anyway, decades later, our family grew when we found Lore and Sin and brought them on as Underworld General employees. Now, after trials, tribulations, and a near-apocalypse or two, they will be co-owners with seats on the hospital Board of Directors. Their contributions to medicine and to this hospital are immeasurable, and we’re happy to welcome them aboard in an expanded capacity.”
There was much clapping and cheering, and then the Harrowgate flashed open. A couple of senior paramedics, a werewolf named Luc and Sin’s mate, Con, emerged, carrying a bloodied humanoid demon on a stretcher. Eidolon immediately started off the stage, but Con waved him back.
“Stay there,” Con shouted. “We got this. Gem is waiting for us in Trauma Two.” He gave Tavin a follow-me gesture. “You said you’d been wanting to work on a sucking chest wound.”
Awesome. Tavin rarely got to see the good stuff. Lately, it had been all cavities and constipation.
He jogged over and joined the two medics as they pushed through the swinging doors to the trauma bay. The hot new nurse, Deja, came in on their heels.
Once they’d arrived in Trauma Two, where Tayla’s sister, Gem, and Tavin’s physician assistant brother, Grim, were prepping, they wasted no time in getting the humanoid male off the gurney and onto the exam table.
Gem’s nose wrinkled as she tugged the privacy curtain closed. “What’s that odor?”
“This is a hospital.” Grim scratched at the collar of his scrub top, where his dermoire disappeared beneath the black fabric. “Could be blood, bowels, disinfectant—”
“It’s not hospital funk.” Gem drifted toward the new patient, her nose working like a hellhound’s.
Grim shrugged. “I don’t smell anything.”
“I smell it too.” Deja turned away from the blood pressure monitor. “It’s kind of bitter.”
Tavin didn’t smell anything but the patient’s blood. “I’m with my brother on this. I don’t smell—” He broke off at the sudden sting in his nostrils, followed by the bitter scent that Deja had mentioned. Something about it was familiar.