Marcus POV
I woke up in a hospital bed with bandages covering my left shoulder and a man I'd never seen before sitting in the visitor's chair.
He was tall, lean, with platinum blond hair that looked almost silver under the lights. He had the most perfect pair of pale blue eyes that I had ever seen. He had sharp cheekbones, and wore expensive clothes that surely didn't belong in a public hospital. He looked so young that it was almost impossible to know whether he was thirty or fifty.
"Good. You're awake." He said, his voice carried an accent I couldn't quite place, he sounded more european, but old in a way that suggested he was from three centuries ago. "How do you feel, Detective Reed?"he asked placing his hand on my thigh.
"Like I just got hit by a truck." I tried to sit up and immediately regretted it. The pain in my shoulder was manageable, but every other part of me was hurting. "Who are you?"I managed to ask after leaning against the pillow that was placed to protect my head from the hospitals bed frame.
"Adrian Kane is the name. I am a forensic consultant." He said leaning forward, and I caught his scent that triggered something in me. His scent was purely masculine and it seemed to have affected me in way it shouldn't. "I specialize in unusual crime scenes."he said bringing my wandering mind back.
"What happened to Ray?"I asked as soon as his words registered in my head.
"He was gone by the time we arrived." Adrian's pale eyes never left my face, he was reading my reactions with unsettling intensity. "The security guard gave us a description before he..." Adrian paused. "Before he died from his injuries."
The words hit me like physical blows. "He was alive when I lost consciousness." I gasped.
"It's not your fault,he lost a lot of blood, coupled with internal trauma." Adrian's voice held gentle regret that somehow made me feel worse. "I'm sorry. There was nothing anyone could do."
A wave guilt crashed over me. Another person was dead because I'd failed to save them. I had failed to stop Ray. I had failed to understand what was happening until it was too late. My intrusive thoughts nagged at my soul.
"The wounds on your shoulder are unusual," Adrian continued, bringing me back to reality yet again, his fingers tracing the air above my bandages without quite touching it. "It looked deep, but not exactly clean. It looked as though someone with surgical experience did this."he added.
"Ray had some kind of knife."I blurted out before I realized what I had said. I never saw Ray with any knife,so why did I saw that?
"Oh did he?" He said raising a brow,it was clear that even he doubted what I had just said "And how would you describe his... physical condition when you saw him?"
The question brought back memories I wanted to forget. Ray's impossible height, the way his clothes hung in shreds, his teeth that caught the flashlight beam.
"He looked sick, malnourished and mentally unstable."
"What do you mean by unstable detective?"
"He was blabbing about becoming what he was meant to be. About helping me understand." I said as I looked up to study Adrian's face, looking for some sign of recognition or surprise. Instead, I found only professional interest. "Have you seen injuries like this before?"I said when he became too quiet.
"More often than I'd like." Adrian sighed. "Detective Reed, I'd like to ask you some questions about the investigation and about your partner's disappearance if you don't mind."he said standing up.
"Well,I've already given my statement to Internal Affairs what more do you want from me?."I asked looking at my feet because somehow looking at him fueled my burning desires for him.
"This isn't for IA." Adrian said as he pulled out a badge I didn't recognize,I struggled to recall what organization had such, maybe federal, but not FBI or DEA or any agency I'd seen before. "There are jurisdictions you haven't heard of, Detective. Laws that surpass your constitution."he said once he noticed that I was looking at the badge intensely.
Before I could ask what that meant, Dr. Martinez entered with my discharge papers and a lecture about taking it easy for the next few days. She said my wounds were healing faster than expected, remarkably fast, actually. "Had u been taking any supplements lately? Any unusual diet changes detective?" She asked before writing down my response in a notepad.
I answered her questions while watching Adrian from the corner of my eye. He stood by the window, perfectly still and I could picture myself in between his arms.
"Detective Reed." Adrian approached as Dr. Martinez left. "I'd like to continue our conversation somewhere more private."he said looking around. "There are things about your partner's case that you need to know."
"What kind of things?"I asked with a raised brow.
"The kind that could save your life." Adrian said as his pale eyes met mine, and something electric passed between us. "Or get you killed if you're not prepared."
Almost immediately, my phone buzzed with a text from Lisa:
Reed, thank God you're okay. Captain wants to see you ASAP. New development in the Chen case.
"I have to get back to work."I said pocketing my phone
"Work can wait." Adrian's replied as his hand found my uninjured shoulder, and I felt a wave of heat racing through my body despite the medication in my system. "This can't."he added.
"I don't even know you."I protested
"You will eventually." Adrian's voice held quiet the certainty that made my pulse quicken. "Whether you want to or not."
He handed me a business card with only a phone number printed in elegant font.
"Call me when you're ready to learn the truth about what happened to Ray Sullivan. About what's happening to you."he said
"What do you mean by what's happening to me?"I asked my eyes still glued to the card.
But Adrian was already walking away when I looked up, he moved quite briskly that made nurses and patients step aside without seeming to realize they were doing it.
I looked down at the business card again. The paper felt expensive between my fingers, and when I turned it over, there was a single word written in the same elegant font: Soon.
My shoulder throbbed under the bandages, but it wasn't the pain that was keeping me awake as I got dressed. It was the memory of Adrian's pale blue eyes, and the way they'd seem to look straight through me and see something I didn't understand.
My mind went back to the growing certainty that whatever Ray had done to me in that shipping container, this was only the beginning.
Lisa picked me up from the hospital, her relief obvious as she helped me into the passenger seat of her Honda.
"Jesus, don't you ever scare me like that Marcus",she said pointing her index finger to my chest. "When we couldn't reach you on the radio..." She shook her head. "Torres said he'd never seen a crime scene like that. There was blood everywhere, but we didn't find a body. Just you unconscious in the corner with those weird claw marks."
"Claw marks?"I asked my mind completely blank.
"That's what the ME called them. The marks were too precise for it to be an animal, too wide for any knife she's seen." Lisa said before glanced at me while navigating downtown traffic. "Reed, what really happened in there buddy?"she asked, this time her voice was laced in concern.
My mind went back to Ray's transformed appearance, his impossible strength, the way he'd shrugged off three bullets to his center mass as if there were nothing. Also about Adrian's cryptic warnings.
"I don't know."I managed to reply when the silence was lingering too long.
But even as I said it, I knew it was a lie. I knew something had happened to me in that shipping container. There was something that was making my senses sharper, my reflexes faster, and my body hungry for things a sane me would never have craved for before.
Even as we passed a butcher shop,I could perceive the smell of raw meat through the closed car windows and it made my mouth water so bad with an intensity that should have disgusted me.
Instead, in that moment, it felt like the perfect place for it to be was inside my mouth.