Dark Princess: Shadows (The Children Of The Gods Paranormal Romance #89)

7. Aru

7

ARU

" C an you wait a moment?" Aru asked Merlin when Dagor went to change into a hospital gown. "I want to run up to the penthouse and bring a few bottles of whiskey in case your anesthetic doesn't work on him."

Merlin gave him an incredulous look. "I will test it before I begin. I won't operate on Dagor before I'm sure the area is numb."

"Test it on me," Negal offered. "Inject it into my finger or something, and let's see how long it stays numb."

"Good idea." Merlin motioned for Negal to sit down. "I have a hunch that whatever works on immortals will work on you just as well, but testing is always preferable to assuming, right?"

Negal nodded.

Merlin gathered his tools, including a small syringe that was filled with liquid. "The lidocaine will block the nerve signals in the area."

He cleaned Negal's hand with antiseptic and then pinched his finger. "The base where the nerves are located is the best location." He took the syringe and inserted the needle. "I'm injecting the anesthetic just beneath the skin."

Negal didn't even wince, and he didn't react when Merlin repeated the procedure on the other side of the same finger.

"How bad was it?" Aru asked.

"It was just a small pinch, and now it stings." The trooper chuckled. "Stop hovering over me like a mother hen. We are soldiers."

"Right." Aru crossed his arms over his chest.

For some reason, little hurts suffered in civilian circumstances seemed larger than major injuries suffered by a soldier in battle. That reminded him of what his commanding officer at the time had told his unit during training—it was all a mind game.

"Okay." Merlin brandished a wicked-looking tool. "Let's see if that worked." He prodded Negal's finger. "Did you feel it?"

"I felt no pain."

"Close your eyes." Merlin waited for Negal to comply before doing it again.

"Well?" Negal asked. "What are you waiting for?"

The doctor chuckled. "It works. The question is, for how long? I need two minutes to take the tracker out, and it will take a few minutes longer for Gertrude to staple the wound."

The door to the dressing room opened, and Dagor walked in wearing blue hospital booties and a hospital gown that he was clutching in the back. "This thing is so drafty." Noticing Negal sitting in a chair and holding his finger up, he frowned. "What are you doing?"

"Testing the anesthetic for you."

Dagor shifted his gaze to Aru. "What, no whiskey?"

"It seems that the anesthetic is working," Merlin answered for him. "No booze needed."

"Oh well." Dagor climbed onto the hospital bed, flashing everyone as his gown parted in the back. "I'm ready to be liberated from the tracker, Doc."

"One more moment." Merlin used his tool to prod Negal's finger again. "Still numb?"

Negal nodded.

"Excellent." Merlin put the tool aside. "Now, I want everyone except for Gertrude to get out." He shooed them away by waving both hands.

Reluctantly, Aru left together with Negal, who was still holding his finger up. "You can put it down, you know," he told his friend.

Negal shook his head. "I will when the feeling returns." He opened his mouth, exposing his elongated fangs. "Who needs surgical tools when I have these, right?"

He nicked the finger on one of his fangs. "Damn, it is still numb. Why isn't my body rejecting whatever Merlin injected me with?"

It was indeed odd and a little ridiculous. Perhaps Negal was just clowning around to reduce the tension.

The procedure itself was nothing, but what followed would significantly impact their lives, and Aru had been a ball of stress lately.

"I don't know." He opened the door to the waiting room. "Maybe it doesn't recognize it as something that needs to be repelled."

Kian greeted them with a raised brow. "Why are you bleeding?"

Negal looked at his finger, licked the drop of blood that had welled over the wound he'd made, and then showed it to Kian. "It's not bleeding anymore. I just wanted to check if the numbing was still working. Surprisingly, it still is."

"Interesting," Kian murmured. "Evidently, your healing speed is not much faster than ours."

Aru knew that it was, but he was tired of discussing the subject. "Is the trafficker ready to receive the tracker?"

Kian nodded. "He's heavily sedated. We don't want him panicking, although given what he did, we should let him suffer both the fear and the pain. He doesn't deserve our mercy."

As the minutes crawled by, Aru started pacing the small waiting room while Negal and Kian passed the time scrolling on their phones.

When the door finally opened and Merlin emerged with a tray and a tiny object on top of it, Kian rose to his feet.

"How did it go?"

"It took some digging, but the anesthetic held on for most of it, and Dagor only had to suffer through the suturing. He's resting now." He headed toward the room where the trafficker was waiting. "Extraction was successful. Now, on to the implanting. Cross your fingers, gentlemen."

"That's odd," Negal said when Merlin closed the door behind him. "How come my finger is still numb?"

Kian shrugged. "Maybe he gave you a very strong dose. Bite it again."

"Nah." Negal finally put his hand down. "I'm glad that I'm so susceptible to the anesthetic. When Merlin removes my tracker, I won't feel a thing."

"I just hope this works," Aru said. "If not, our trackers are staying in our bodies, and we will be packing and getting ready to go."

"It will work." Negal leaned back in his chair. "We need to start looking for humans to carry our trackers and figure out how to compensate them for their efforts."

"That's the easy part," Kian said. "We will also need to implant them with an additional tracker that we can monitor so we can make sure they are doing what they are supposed to."

"Good thinking." Aru cast him an appreciative look. "Also, compulsion will have to be used to ensure that they don't try to remove the trackers and disappear."

Kian nodded. "Talk about a morally gray area. I would have suggested using captured traffickers for that, but I don't want to let those monsters loose."

When the door opened again, Julian emerged, pushing the gurney and motioning for the Guardian to take over. "You can put him back in his cell. When he wakes up, he won't know that anything was done to him."

The Guardian nodded and took over, pushing the gurney out of the clinic.

"Shouldn't Dagor be out of there by now?" Aru asked.

"He's probably waiting for one of us to tell him that he can go." Merlin opened the door to the back of the clinic.

Negal lifted his hand. "Why is my finger still numb?"

Merlin frowned. "It shouldn't be. Let me take a look at it."

Aru left them in the waiting room and headed over to the surgery room to check on his friend.