Forged: The World of Nightwalkers by Jacquelyn Frank Read Free Book Online Page A

if she’d seen crazier shit in an ER than a man who could turn to stone? After all, it was rather a benign thing overall …
    Katrina shivered her way into her car and, throwing the truck into four-wheel drive, began the treacherous trip back up the mountain. She was inching along, grateful that the snow had shifted from driving pellets of snow and ice to a thick blanketing fall of soft, fat, white flakes. It made it easier for her to see, although she couldn’t see more than a few feet in front of her because it was, after all, still a heavy snowfall.
    The thickened snow also provided a little more traction,which she desperately needed. At the midpoint to her house she was so tight with tension from creeping up the deadly mountain road that her neck, her arms, and her entire back were hurting. She shrugged her shoulders, trying to work it out, trying to alleviate the pain of it, even though she barely noticed it on a conscious level because all her attention was focused forward.
    And at some point she stopped worrying about getting home and started worrying that a man’s life might hang in the balance and she was the only means of swaying the odds in his favor. It was a weighty responsibility, one she realized she was glad to take on. If not, why would she ever have taken part in this madness? She could only suppose that instinctively she knew there was something good about him, something worth saving, worth risking her own life for. Then again, she probably would have done the same for even the lowest of men … only she would have made sure to call in the cavalry.
    Kat didn’t even release a sigh of relief when she turned into her drive. The drive to her house was long and even more treacherous than the roads. The drive was dirt and gravel, which could make for good traction … unless it was drenched wet and then frozen. Then it was nothing but ice at an incline. Right then it was a mixture of both. The tires slipped and spun in places, the drive dropping off into a gully on the right side and threatening to skid her right off into it. But eventually she reached the final curve to the house, pulled right into the garage, and then came the well-earned sigh of relief. She didn’t spend more than a moment at it before she was out of the car and bursting into the house.
    Karma was on her like white on rice the next instant. The dog whined and threw her big body into Katrina as if she’d been gone a year. She’d been trained not to jumpup only because that kind of love from that big of a dog would most likely kill Katrina. But that didn’t keep Karma from body bumping her like a maniacal kid in the bumper cars.
    “Yes, yes. Hello, hello,” she said, giving the dog a hasty pet or two before plowing past her and heading for her bedroom. She didn’t even bother taking off her coat. She fished the Cipro out of her pocket and headed for the master bath to fetch a glass of water.
    When she entered the bedroom she once again found the bed emptied of her patient and he was nowhere in sight.
    “Damn it to hell and back!” she growled. God only knew what shape he was in and where he was in her house. And so help her, if he went about bleeding on something else she’d kill him herself!
    Thumping the antibiotics onto the bedside she then shimmied out of her coat as she marched through the house in search of him.
    “He can’t have gone far,” she said aloud as she stalked through the rooms of the ground floor.
    And sure enough, she found him out cold on the kitchen floor, right in front of her refrigerator. Apparently fever had not ruined his appetite and he had come in search of something to eat. There were jars of things like pickles and olives on the floor near him, all of which seemed to be empty. She found herself praying he didn’t throw up later. That wasn’t going to be a pretty experience for either of them.
    Anyway, in the here and now she had an unconscious behemoth lying on the floor and she had the