But now, two hundred years later, the aura was wearing off, and when the scar was gone, so would be Blaspheme’s cover. Oh, as a vyrm she’d be far more powerful than a False Angel, with the ability to flash wherever she wanted, summon fiery weapons, heal almost anyone of thousands of afflictions… but she’d also be hunted into the ground.

“Daughter,” Deva rasped. “You need to perform the ritual. Before I die, I need to know you’re safe.” She sighed. “And I was so looking forward to Sanguinalia.”

Blas patted her mom’s hand and stood. “Stop being dramatic,” she said with a lightness she didn’t feel. “You aren’t going to die. And we already discussed this. I’m not going to sacrifice a False Angel so I can maintain my disguise. I’ll find another way. Another way to save both of us.”

Before her mother could argue, Blas kissed her on the forehead and got the hell out of there. She had work to do and frankly, she didn’t want to dwell on the fact that between Deva’s injuries and Blas’s rapidly fading disguise, they could both be dead by the end of the week.

Blaspheme got a fitful night’s sleep in an on-call suite close to her mother’s room. After a groggy breakfast, a pot of coffee, and a quick check to verify that her sleeping mother was doing fine, she got to work.

Now she was just trying not to dwell on things out of her control as she put a series of stitches in a Huldrefox’s lacerated scalp. The furry female had gotten into it with a werewolf, and from the number and severity of her wounds, it looked like the Huldrefox had been less of a worthy opponent and more of a chew toy.

“Doctor?”

Blaspheme yelped, startled by a dark-skinned lion-shifter nurse named Mbali as she pulled back the cubicle’s fabric curtain just enough to poke her head inside. “My, you’re jumpy today,” Mbali said. “You okay, imayama?”

Blas had no idea what language imayama represented, but she knew it meant healer in Mbali’s native tongue. She wondered how Mbali’s native tongue would translate No, I’m not okay. I think there’s an Eradicator around every corner.

“I’m fine, Mbali,” Blas said, concentrating on leveling out her breathing and heart rate, something she’d had to learn to control during emergencies and surgery. “What do you need?”

“Dr. Morgan sent me to tell you that the staff meeting is being postponed until tomorrow. She didn’t say why.”

Blaspheme had a feeling she knew why. As the busy co-director of Underworld General Clinic with Blas, Gemella Morgan valued her time with her husband, Kynan, and daughter, Dawn. Her dedication to her family and to the hospital and clinic made her a hell of a doctor as well as a devoted wife and mother.

It wasn’t often that Blaspheme experienced jealousy; she was thrilled to dedicate her life to medicine. But every once in a while she couldn’t help but envy Gem’s family life… something Blas couldn’t have as long as she was forced to pretend she was something she wasn’t.

“Thank you, Mbali.” She snipped the suture thread and swabbed the surgical area behind the Huldrefox’s ear. “Can you finish this up for me? I need to check on our fallen angel patient.”

With the exception of Eidolon, Luc, and Raze, no one knew that Deva was Blaspheme’s mother, or even her adoptive mother, and she planned to keep it that way. There was no sense in giving anyone the tools to put two and two together to equal vyrm.

Mbali happily took over while Blaspheme headed down the hall to one of Underworld General Clinic’s recovery rooms, where her mother had been brought to keep her close to Blaspheme. Deva was still asleep, her short blond hair a messy mop sticking out from covers she’d pulled up to her eyeballs. Blas checked her vitals, adjusted her saline drip, and finished with a light kiss on her mom’s cheek. Her mother was evil in ways Blaspheme couldn’t understand, but she didn’t doubt how much her mother loved her.

A three-toned beep indicated that someone had arrived through one of the two entrances to UGC, but unless her pager went off, she didn’t have to —

Her pager went crazy in her pocket, bouncing around in the fabric of her lab coat. Wondering what was up, she stepped into the hall… and ran right into Revenant’s rock-hard chest.

She leaped back with humiliating squeak number two for the day. Damn him! Did he enjoy scaring the crap out of her? She supposed she’d rather run into him than an Eradicator, but geez, he’d just taken a hundred years off her life. And was it necessary to wear all that leather and metal like some sort of armor? Inappropriately sexy armor?

“Are you a professional lurker, or what?” She casually but quickly closed the door behind her.

Revenant ignored her, craning his head to get a peek as the door shut. “You’re treating a fallen angel?” he asked. “Must have been one hell of an injury to require medical attention.”

“I can’t discuss patients with you,” she said, summoning her don’t-screw-with-me doctor voice. “And how do you know she’s a fallen angel?”

He cocked an ebony eyebrow. “I can smell fallen angel blood.”

Oh, crap. She broke out in a cold sweat. Hopefully he couldn’t smell that. Time to get rid of this too-handsome bloodhound before he caught a whiff of her fallen angel – or angel – blood through her fading disguise.

Clearing her throat, she queued up her doctor voice again. “What do you want?”

She scrounged her pager out of her pocket, and, somehow, the words that flashed on the screen didn’t surprise her.