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I don’t mean that he was grossly over-muscled in a roided-out body-builder kind of way—it was just that his entire frame was pumped in all the right places. He had kind of a swimmer’s build—long and lean and muscular with broad shoulders and narrow hips.

  I bet myself that he had less than two percent body fat. Must be nice—as a plus sized girl, I have considerably more than two percent myself.

  But back to my patient.

  He also had curly black hair and eyes like nothing I had ever seen before. As I watched, they seemed to change color from sky blue to pale, leaf green, to iridescent silver. Wait—silver? Nobody had silver eyes. And how were they changing like that?

  “Get away from me!” the huge patient was storming at the nurse—a girl named Gloria—who was trying to take his vitals. “I told you, I will have none other than Charlotte Walker as my healer!”

  “Honey, I’m just trying to take your blood pressure.” Gloria held up the extra-large cuff. “Come on now, why don’t you be a sweetheart and settle down?”

  “It’s okay, Gloria," I said, coming into the curtained triage area. “I’ll take it from here.”

  “Fine.” She threw up her hands and let the BP cuff drop. “You handle him, Dr. Walker. You’re the only one he seems to want, anyway. Just be careful, I don’t know what he’s on but it must be some wild stuff. You see those eyes?”

  As a matter of fact, I did. At the sound of my voice, the patient’s incredible eyes had fixed on me and he was practically staring laser beams right through me.

  “Charlotte Walker,” he breathed, reaching for me with one catcher’s mitt-sized hand. “I have come for you. I must warn you—you are in danger!”

  And then his eyes rolled back in his head, his head thumped back on the pillow, and he was out like a light.

  Chapter Two

  Charlotte

  “Okay, let’s see—what have we got?” I bustled forward, pulling on a pair of gloves to examine the patient. Sebastian came with me, obviously eager to get a closer look at the big guy.

  “What is this he’s wearing?” he asked under his breath. “Looks like some kind of weird costume from a Roman soldier movie or something!”

  I had to admit he was right. My new patient had on a molded golden breastplate which buckled at the sides and a short kilt made of many leather straps that ended above his knees. There was an undergarment—an under-kilt I supposed—beneath it that had been pure white, which was now bloodstained and ragged. High black boots with golden metal greaves over the shins encased his feet—which had to be a size sixteen at least—and matching golden vambraces covered his forearms.

  In case you’re wondering how I knew all the names of this stuff, it was from playing waaay too much Diablo III with my friend Zoe, back in college. I’m not exactly a gaming geek—I don’t have time to be—but I know my way around an RPG. Still, I had never expected a guy who looked like a fortieth level Paladin to land in my ER.

  “That is one fancy gladiator outfit,” Gloria remarked. She had come back to do the blood pressure now that the patient was out for the count. “You know he has a sword too?”

  “You’re kidding!” Sebastian exclaimed.

  “Uh-uh. Look under the gurney.”

  Sebastian flipped up the trailing sheet and gave a long, low whistle.

  “Oh my Gawd. It’s as long as he is! I wonder what his other sword looks like—huh?”

  He grinned at me but I was barely paying attention. I had finally managed to unbuckle the golden breastplate on both sides but it was really heavy—somewhere in the neighborhood of forty or fifty pounds. This was no cheap Halloween gladiator outfit—it was the real deal. Why was he wearing it and how did he walk around with this stuff on? Added all together the breastplate, vambraces, greaves, and sword, must weigh a ton!

  Also, how had he known my name? But that question would have to wait until I figured out what was wrong with him.

  “Help me lift this over his head,” I told Sebastian, who was happy to oblige. We lifted the breastplate carefully, sliding it over the patient’s head, and leaving the heavy front plate dangling down over the top of the gurney.

  The white wife-beater type undershirt was also bloodstained. But I couldn’t see a wound—only evidence of one by the way the white shirt was rapidly turning crimson.

  “Scissors,” I said and Sebastian handed them over. Starting at the bottom of the shirt, I slid the sharp blades up, careful not to touch his skin, which seemed to have a slightly jaundiced hue. Only it wasn’t yellow so much as a shimmering of gold—very strange. I wondered if he had something wrong with his liver. But what liver disease turned your skin gold?

  When I peeled back the sodden undershirt, Sebastian gave a long, low whistle.

  “Oh my God—would you look at that!” he exclaimed.

  I frowned. “It’s a nasty slice, all right. Give me some gauze—let’s try and stop that bleeding.”

  “No—I wasn’t talking about the knife wound!” Sebastian threw me an incredulous look as he passed the supplies I was asking for. “I’m talking about the way his chest and abs are even more muscular than that molded breastplate he was wearing! Forget a six pack, he’s got like…an eight pack.”

  “I’m only interested in knowing if any of his fabulous abs got cut up in this fight,” I snapped. “Not how hot they look. Speaking of which, look under his kilt and see if there are any wounds there.”

  Sebastian’s eyes lit up like a kid at Christmas.

  “Yes, Ma’am!”

  I sighed and shook my head, going back to the matter at hand. My new patient had a long slice that started at the top of his right pectoral region, just under the clavicle, and ran all the way down to the top of his groin. It was shallow but nasty and it looked like he had already lost a lot of blood. He might not need surgery but he sure as hell was going to need a whole crap-load of stitches.

  “He’s hypotensive,” Gloria announced, pulling off the blood pressure cuff.

  Damn—I had been right about the blood loss.

  “Does he have any ID?” I asked the nurse. “Is he in the system? Do we know his blood type?”

  “No to all three.” She shrugged. “He just stumbled in the ER door asking for you and collapsed.”

  “Great,” I muttered. "Just great.”

  “No lacerations around the groin but he clearly needs a transfusion,” Sebastian said. “Let’s hang some O neg.”

  Of course, this would normally be the right course of treatment. We didn’t know the patient’s blood type but O negative is the universal donor. Still, something made me hesitate.

  “I said we need O neg up here. And a suture kit.” Sebastian can be really bossy sometimes.

  “Wait.” I held up a hand to stop him.

  “Charlotte—”

  “Just wait, I said!” I snapped at him. “This is my triage, Sebastian—he asked for me personally. So I’m going to determine the course of treatment.”

  “But—” He began, but I ignored him. Instead I took off my glove.

  Now this is something a medical professional should never do—especially around an open wound in a patient with an unknown medical history. There are so many blood-borne pathogens on the loose out there it’s not even funny. But I had a feeling about this strange patient with his bizarre outfit and his golden-sheened skin—and I always listen to my feelings.

  Taking a deep breath, I placed my ungloved hand on his face, cupping his cheek carefully.

  I felt a strange tingle run between us that almost made me pull my hand away. It was like a low-level electrical shock. What in the world could it mean?

  And then my sixth sense kicked in and I knew.

  What did I know from a simple touch? Well, all kinds of things. I knew that O negative blood would sicken or perhaps even kill this man. I knew he had been recently fighting for his life. And I knew something else—but it was something so strange and disturbing that I immediately pushed it to the back of my mind and concentrated on the importa