I slipped a short-sleeved shirt over my head, and the offending gun. "New Mexico law says I can carry as long as it's not concealed."

"If you're not a policeman, then why do you need the gun?"

"I'm a vampire executioner."

He held a long-sleeved gown out towards me. I slipped my arms through the sleeves. It tied in the back like most hospital gowns. Ben tied it for me. "I thought you couldn't kill a vampire with bullets."

"Silver bullets can slow them down, and if they're not too old or too powerful, blowing a hole in their brain or heart works. Sometimes," I added. Wouldn't want Ben to get the wrong idea and try to take out an intruding vamp with silver ammo and get munched because he trusted my opinion.

We had some trouble getting my hair up under the little plastic hair thing but finally managed it, though the thin ridge of elastic that held it in place scraped the back of my neck every time I moved my head. Ben tried to help mo with the surgical gloves, but I put them on myself, no problem.

He raised eyebrows at me. "You've put on gloves before." It wasn't a question.

"I wear them at crime scenes and when I don't want blood under my fingernails."

He helped me tie the mask around my neck. "You must see a lot of blood in your line of work."

"Not as much blood as you see, I bet." I turned with the mask over my mouth and nose. Only my eyes were left uncovered and real.

Ben looked down at me, and his face looked thoughtful. "I'm not a surgical nurse."

"What is your specialty?" I asked.

"Burn unit."

My eyes widened. "Are the survivors burned?"

He shook his head. "No, but their bodies are still like open wounds, just like a burn. The protocol is similar."

"What do you mean their bodies are an open wound?"

Someone tapped on the glass behind me, and I jumped, turning to see another man in an outfit just like mine glaring at me with pale eyes. He hit an intercom button, and his voice came clear enough to hear the irritation in it. "If you're coming inside, then do it. I want to sedate them again, and I can't do that until you've had a chance to question them, or so I'm told." He let go of the button and walked further away behind a white curtain that hid the rest of the room from view.

"Gee, I'm just on everybody's happy list today."

Ben put on his mask and said, "Don't take it personally. Doctor Evans is good at what he does, one of the best."

If you want to find a good doctor in a hospital, don't ask other doctors or referral services. Ask a nurse. Nurses always know who's good and who's not. They may not say the bad stuff aloud, but if they say something good about a doctor, you can take it to the bank.

Ben touched something on the wall that was a little too big to be called a button, and the doors whooshed open with a sound like an air lock opening. I stepped inside, and the doors hushed closed behind me. Nothing but the white curtain now.

I didn't want to pull that curtain aside. Everyone was too damned upset. It was going to be bad. Their bodies were like open wounds, Ben had said, but not a burn. What had happened to them? As the old saying goes, only one way to find out. I took a deep breath and pushed the curtain aside.

The room beyond was white and antiseptic looking, a very hospital of a hospital room. Outside this room there had been some attempt at pastels and a pretense that it was just a building, just hallways, just ordinary rooms. All pretense ended at the curtain, and reality was harsh.

There were six beds, each with a whitish plastic hood/tent over the head of the beds and the upper bodies of the patients. Doctor Evans was standing beside the nearest bed. A woman in matching scrubs was further into the room, checking one of the many blinking, beeping pieces of equipment that huddled around each bed. She glanced up, and the small area of her face that showed was a startling darkness. African American, female, and not fat, but beyond that and height I couldn't tell anything underneath the protective clothing. I wouldn't recognize her again without the scrubs. It was strangely anonymous and disturbing. Or maybe that was just me. She dropped her gaze and moved to another bed, doing the same checks, writing something down on a clipboard.

I walked towards the closest bed. Doctor Evans never turned around or acknowledged me in any way. White sheets formed tents over each patient, held up by some sort of frame work to keep the sheet from touching them.

Doctor Evans finally turned to one side so I could see the face of the patient. I blinked and my eyes refused to see it, or maybe my brain just rejected what I was seeing. The face was red and raw as if it should be bleeding, but it didn't bleed. It was like looking at raw meat in the shape of a human face, no meaty skull. The nose had been cut off, leaving bloody holes for the plastic tubes to be shoved inside. The man rolled brown eyes in his sockets, staring up at me. There was something wrong with his eyes beyond the lack of skin around them. It took me a few seconds to realize his eyelids had been cut off.

The room was suddenly warm, so warm, and the mask was suffocating me. I wanted to pull it off so I could breathe. I must have made some movement because the doctor grabbed my wrist.

"Don't take anything off. I'm risking their lives with every new person that comes in here." He let go of my wrist. "Make the risk worth it. Tell me what did this."

I shook my head, concentrating on breathing slowly in and out. When I could talk, I asked, "What's the rest of the body look like?"

He stared at me, his eyes demanding. I met his gaze. Anything was better than looking at what lay in the bed. "You're pale already. Are you sure you want to see the rest?"

"No," I said, truthfully.

Even with just his eyes visible I could see the surprise on his face.

"I would like nothing better than to turn and walk out of this room and keep walking," I said. "I don't need any new nightmares, Doctor Evans, but I was called in here to give my expert opinion. I can't form an opinion without seeing the whole show. If I thought I didn't need to see it all, trust me, I wouldn't ask."

"What do you hope to gain by it?" he asked.

"I'm not here to gape at them, Doctor. But I'm looking for clues to what did this. Most of the time the clues are on the bodies of the victims."

The man in the bed made small jerks, head tossing from side to side as if he were in a great deal of pain. Small helpless noises came from his lipless mouth. I closed my eyes and tried to breathe normally. "Please, Doctor, I need to see." I opened my eyes in time to see him rolling back the sheet. I watched him roll it back, folding it carefully, revealing the man's body an inch at a time. By the time I saw him to the waist, I knew that he'd been skinned alive. I'd hoped it was just the face. That was awful enough on its own, but it takes a hell of a long time to skin a grown man's entire body, a long screaming eternity to do it this well and this thoroughly.

When the sheet rolled back over the groin, I swayed, just a little. It wasn't a man. The groin area was smooth and raw. I glanced back up at the chest. The bone structure looked male. I shook my head. "Is this a man or a woman?"

"Man," he said.

I stared down and couldn't keep from staring at the groin and what was missing. "Shit," I said softly. I closed my eyes again. It was so hot, so very hot. With my eyes closed, I could hear the hiss of the oxygen, the whisper of the nurse's booties as she came towards us, and small sounds from the bed as he twitched and strained against padded restraints at his wrist and ankles.

Restraints? I'd seen them but hadn't really registered them. All I could see was the body. Yes, body. I couldn't keep thinking of the man as a "he." I had to distance myself or I was going to lose it.