Wrong Side Of Dead Read Online Free PDF Page A

leather away from sweaty, red-marked skin. My ankle protested being bent back to its normal angle, and again when I put my weight on it. Blissful pain. I moaned.
    Phin made a sound somewhere between a snort and a laugh. “Better?”
    “Almost.” My left leg soon joined my right in boot freedom. I let go of Phin, then threw the offending objects against the nearest wall. They hit the floor with a clattering thud. I bounced on the balls of my feet, stretching my calf muscles, smoothing out the aches. “Yeah, much better.”
    “You’re going to leave them there?”
    I eyed the boots. “I borrowed the damned things for this rave. If someone wants them, they’re welcome to them. Knee-high leather boots with three-inch heels are torture devices.”
    He chuckled and continued walking. I padded behind, the ceramic tile floor cool on my bare feet. A familiar buzz of power tickled over my skin as we passed the Sanctuary. A vampire was always standing guard at the hall entrance leading down to what had once been a set of the mall’s public bathrooms. The women’s restroom was the last place anyone would think to find a Sanctuary. Its location had certainly surprised the hell out of me.
    The infirmary was a few stores down, in what I’m told was once an electronics outlet. Not that it mattered much, since the entire thing was gutted, outfitted with an emergency surgical suite (not that we had a surgeonyet, but it was on the To Do list), a fully stocked closet of supplies, an exam room, and four private patient rooms. The adjacent store was under construction as an expansion. We were in a pretty dangerous and injury-prone line of work, after all.
    The infirmary wasn’t a doctor’s office, so there was no waiting room. Just a desk, some filing cabinets, and the curtained exam room. All of our Boot Camp medical staff had been slaughtered last month. The Assembly brought in an Ursia (were-grizzly bear) physician they trusted, and who was familiar with human, Therian, and vampire anatomy. Dr. Reid Vansis was good, and he knew it. He also had the grumpy personality of most Ursia I’d met, which made him someone I preferred to avoid. But he’d saved Milo’s life when he was shot, and I respected him for it.
    But Vansis also wasn’t in. As the only doctor in residence, he had a large whiteboard on the wall behind his desk where he wrote his location when he wasn’t in the office. In large black letters he’d scrawled “SLEEPING.” Which meant we were not to disturb him except for emergencies. Which this clearly wasn’t.
    Terrific.
    “Take off your shirt,” I said.
    Phin yanked the hem of his shirt out of his jeans and up over his shoulders, and whipped it off in one smooth motion. He wasn’t fast enough to hide his wince, though. A long, pale line divided his chest from sternum to belly button—a terrible reminder of the hell he’d been through because of me.
    “Turn around,” I said.
    He did, presenting a lean, perfectly muscled back. Hiding just above the waist of his jeans was a four-inch gash, still oozing blood. This close, I could see the dark, damp patch where the blood had soaked into his pants. I could also see more meat than I was comfortable with.
    “Damn, Phin, that might need stitches.”
    “It does?” He twisted his torso in a vain attempt to see his own lower back, and only managed to make the wound gape wider. He hissed, then quit trying to see it and felt around with his fingers. “It’ll heal, Evy. Use those butterfly bandages to keep it together until it can mend.”
    I eyeballed the gash. “Are you sure?”
    “Yes.”
    “Okay.”
    Therians healed faster than the average human, but it would still be several days before that wound was completely gone. And it would likely scar. Small lines and imperfections dotted his back and shoulders—scars I never had the guts to ask about. I still didn’t.
    We moved our little production into the curtained exam area and assembled a tray of useful