Bound: Chinatown Demons, Book One by Rhys Ford

Author:Rhys Ford [Ford, Rhys]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Rogue Firebird Press
Published: 2020-11-29T18:30:00+00:00

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Breathing was painful, but Spencer forced himself to inhale slowly, keeping each hissing pull as shallow as possible. His skin crackled with every minute motion he made. Even trying to draw moisture from his parched throat and tongue set off a new wave of ache. Rivulets of dull, throbbing red pain coursed over his body in a rolling tsunami, seeking out every fissure and channel of his crackled, dry flesh. Blinking was out of the question, and he sure as hell had no plans to ever stand upright.

Not for as long as he lived.

For however long that was, because if the pain wasn’t confusing enough, he sure as hell couldn’t make any sense out of the fragments of memory bombarding his mind, a blitzkrieg of explosive revelations carved out of a block of sheer horror and force-fed into Spencer’s thoughts.

Slowly, he became aware of certain things. One side of his body hurt a hell of a lot more than the other, and something hard held his right arm immobile, a hot prick digging into the inside of his elbow, the persistent ache overcoming the dulled lows of pain in between his breaths. His heartbeat pounded in his ears, a thrush-thrush-thrush more along the lines of a dripping water torture than the reassuring rhythm of his continuing life.

“Gah.” Probably not the best first word to scrape off his tongue, but it was the best Spencer could do. Another breath in, and the exhale was much better. “Fuuuuck.”

“Brutish, yet effective,” a man said, his voice softly accented with an odd cadence and a hint of the British Isles. “And I imagine you are tender at the moment, but the best thing right now is for us to get you sitting up at least. It’s not good for the… blood circulating through you to stagnate in one spot. Odd things could happen.”

Spencer placed the voice, recognized the brandy snap of Dr. Xian Carter’s sardonic, liquid tones, but for the life of him, he couldn’t think of any reason he would be in the man’s presence. Unless…

“Am… dead?” He finally choked out, trying to get his tongue working again. Since his eyelids seemed glued down despite his feeble efforts to lift them, Spencer was content to simply lie still, letting the twisting ache in his bones seep away. “Morgue?”

“You’re not dead. Nor have you come back to life while I was performing an autopsy,” Carter finally murmured. There were sounds of him moving around; then the sharp prick in Spencer’s arm dug down again. “Hold still. I’m going to take out this IV. You needed fluids. You were… dehydrated.”

His eyes finally responded to his commands, and from the stabbing shards of glass pouring out of an overhead light, Spencer instantly regretted opening them. Hot tears gathered along his lashes, streaming down the sides of his face until they felt crusty and sore.

“Come on, let’s get you up.” Carter was closer now, close enough for Spencer to smell the faint burnt rice scent of popcorn green tea on the man’s breath as he worked an arm under Spencer’s shoulders.

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