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Chapter 4 moves Book 7’s central mystery forward while quietly setting up its most personal subplot. With his apartment move-in favor to Jaz finished, Dean gets word from Tammy about two more calls that fit the same pattern as Stacey’s: a young woman carving unidentifiable runes into her own arm, and an elderly man who overdoses after confessing he needs to “pay” for years of cheating people as a banker. Both patients spoke of guilt and atonement in language that no longer sounds like coincidence.

What makes this chapter satisfying for readers who like their urban fantasy grounded in procedure is Dean’s approach to the problem. He doesn’t just accept Gibbie’s sin eater theory — he pulls up a map, cross-references patient addresses and workplaces, and starts building a real picture of where the sin eater might be operating in Elk City’s downtown business district. It’s classic Station U problem-solving: medical instinct paired with supernatural research, using the tools of the job to track something no ordinary first responder would even believe existed.

Threaded through the investigation is the chapter’s other big reveal: Dean is planning to propose to Jaz, and he’s arranged to meet Gibbie’s diamond merchant contact in the Unusual community to shop for a ring. It’s a small, human counterweight to the mounting sense of dread building around the sin eater plot — a reminder that even as Elk City’s newest threat gathers strength, Dean is still trying to build an ordinary life in the middle of an extraordinary one.

📖 Read more of Dean Flynn’s story — get The Paramedic’s Doom on Jamie Davis’s site:

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The next two days flew by for Dean. It surprised him when it took him most of both days to get everything put away and the boxes carted down to the recycling bin in the parking lot. He was proud of how much he’d accomplished, though. The apartment was much more homey now that everything was put away in its proper place. Jaz was happy with the results, too. Dean knew she hated everything to do with getting her apartment set up. She wasn’t terribly domestic.

Dean stopped by Jaz’s office on his last trip up from the recycling dumpster. She hunched over her desk, buried in paperwork with her reading glasses on. He knew she was self-conscious when wearing her glasses. Dean didn’t understand what the big deal was. He kind of liked the bookish look on her.

“Hey, I just wanted to let you know I’m all finished upstairs. Maybe we can plan to go out tonight and celebrate?”

Jaz looked up from her work. She shook her head.

“I’m not sure I’m going to be able to get away early enough for dinner. Maybe we can schedule it for another time?”

Dean was a little disappointed, but he tried not to show it. He knew how busy she was with getting security operations ramped back up to the level they were at before her family died.

“We can do that. I do go back to work starting tomorrow night. But maybe after the next round of shifts we can plan to celebrate getting the move completed. Does that work for you?”

“Honestly, Dean, that would be perfect. I should have everything for this new project completed by then. Thank you for understanding.”

“Hey, what kind of boyfriend would I be if I didn’t cut you some slack for being the upwardly mobile career woman? Since you’re working late though, I think I’ll head back to my apartment for the night. I haven’t been there for a few days. I need to check the mail and look in on the Baxters.”

“That works. I’ll call you tomorrow before you go to work.”

Dean smiled and leaned over her desk, sharing a brief kiss before he turned and left.

He didn’t like how the work stressed her out. She’d never planned to be the executive in charge of her family’s security business. That had always been her brother. She was digging in with gusto, though, which he appreciated. Hard work had rewards of its own and he knew it would pay off for her in the end.

Dean headed out, driving across town to go back to his place. He wasn’t sure his plan would work and he was glad he’d been able to keep the secret of why he really wanted to stay at home tomorrow.

He planned to meet with Gibbie to get together with a diamond merchant the vampire knew in the Unusual community. He knew almost nothing about jewelry but Gibbie’s long experience with all of his girlfriends over the years had made many connections with various jewelers in the area. He’d offered to introduce Dean to one of them and promised to get him a nice discount, too.

The first thing he did when he got home was throw a load of his uniform shirts and pants into the laundry. His landlords, the Baxters, had recently put in a second clothes washer and dryer in the back of their garage right below his apartment. They told him it didn’t make any sense for him to go and spend all his time off at the laundromat when he could do laundry at home.

The Baxters were a sweet old couple who rented him the apartment over their detached garage. They both treated Dean like he was the son they never had. At first, it made him uncomfortable, but over time, he grew to appreciate the way they looked in on him and took the time to get to know the young man who lived over their garage. He’d resolved to pay them back for their kindness with extra chores around their property and home just like he thought a dutiful son would do.

Dean was going to miss living here after he and Jaz got married. He thought they’d miss him, too, though Mrs. Baxter had told him on numerous occasions how much she liked that nice girl he was seeing.

While he was waiting for the laundry to get finished, Dean went ahead and logged in to his work email account from home. On the screen, there were the usual announcements and calendar item emails notifying him of updated training and protocol options for him to get his continuing education credits. He flagged them to look at later while he checked the other two emails that caught his attention. They were both from Tammy and the subject line read “Sin Eater.”

Both emails contained links to patient care reports on calls she and Brooke had been on while he was off. He was logged in to the secure portal system allowing him full access so he clicked on the links and brought up the confidential medical reports on the two patients.

The first was a twenty-two-year-old woman who suddenly displayed cutting behaviors that alarmed her parents. When the paramedics arrived, the woman was carving designs that looked like runes of some kind in her forearm with a box cutter. Tammy had made a note in the report that she could not find any reference to the specific runes during her brief search. The woman had spoken about the need to atone for her past transgressions.

The second report linked dealt with an elderly man who had taken an overdose of pain medication in an attempt to kill himself. When Tammy and Brooke revived him, he told them he had to die to pay for all the people he’d cheated as a banker in the community over the years. There was a note in that report that local police had been informed and we’re looking into the possibility of criminal activity in the man’s past.

After looking through the reports, Dean agreed with Tammy’s assessment that these both sounded like people who had run-ins with the sin eater loose in the community.

On a hunch, Dean pulled up a map of Elk City on the screen and looked up the locations of the two ambulance calls. He also cross-referenced the workplaces listed for each person in an effort to see if their paths might have crossed during the course of the day. While their homes were nowhere near each other, they both worked within a couple of blocks of each other which might indicate the sin eater was somewhere in and around the downtown business district.

It wasn’t much to go on, but Dean figured he and Barry could head out on their shift and pick up a meal in that area while he scouted around to see if he could spot anyone matching the vague description they had for the sin eater.

Dean tapped a reply to one of the emails thanking Tammy for sending him the information. Anything they could do to cut down on the call volume they’d seen over the last several weeks would help. Even a couple of fewer ambulance calls translated to a break in their already busy days.

Dean spent the rest of the evening searching for information among the many myth and legend databases he’d discovered since he started working at Station U. While he waited for his laundry to be done, he typed in every version of sin eater he could think of using different keywords and phrases to learn everything he could about these particular rare creatures. He had to figure out a way to find this Reggie and figure out what dire situation or impending doom was about to occur in Elk City and its surrounding community.

By the time he was finished searching, it was late in the evening, well after midnight. Checking the last load of laundry and bringing the clean clothes upstairs, Dean turned in for the night. He had a busy day tomorrow. He was meeting Gibbie at noon to talk with the diamond merchant. When that was finished, he had to head back home and get ready for work at six o’clock. His first day of night shifts hit on the weekend which always led to a series of exciting 911 calls.

📖 Loved Chapter 4? Get the full story — get The Paramedic’s Doom on Jamie Davis’s site:

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After two chapters of supernatural mystery, Chapter 3 pulls back to let readers breathe alongside Dean — and to deepen the relationship that anchors the whole series. He heads to Errington Security, the headquarters and apartment building Jaz rebuilt after the explosion that killed her family, and the chapter spends its time on the small, human details: Jaz sweaty from a workout instead of buzzing him in from upstairs, a still half-unpacked apartment, dinner reheated from Freddy’s leftovers.

It’s also a chapter that keeps the series’ broader world active in the background. Jaz, running her family’s international security firm, is short-staffed for an overseas executive protection job and short on people she trusts. Dean’s suggestion — that she talk to Rudy about hiring Lycans for a contract with heavy Unusual mob presence — is a small moment that does a lot of work, reminding readers that Elk City’s supernatural community isn’t confined to Station U’s patient roster. It has its own economy, its own politics, and its own uneasy alliances.

Underneath the practical talk is the emotional throughline of the chapter: Dean offering to spend his days off finishing Jaz’s unpacking so her new apartment finally feels like home, and Jaz admitting she wants it to feel like home for both of them. It’s a quiet, grounded scene, and for a series built on supernatural emergency calls, that grounding matters — readers get to see exactly what Dean is fighting to protect and build every time he answers a Delta Response.

📖 Read more of Dean Flynn’s story — get The Paramedic’s Doom on Jamie Davis’s site:

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Dean pulled up to the gate outside of the Errington Security building. He punched in a code on the keypad and waited as the gate rolled back allowing him entry into the parking lot.

The Errington Security building was brand-new, built on the lot where the former building stood before an explosion destroyed it along with Jaz’s entire family. Not only did it hold Jaz’s offices for herself and her security teams, it also had a full set of apartments including one large apartment on the upper floor reserved for her. Dean parked his pickup truck next to a line of black SUVs and got out, walking over to the double entrance doors on the side of the building.

Jaz was supposed to give him a personal code to get into the building, but her IT guy hadn’t gotten around to creating a unique code just for Dean. Without the code, he stood and waited by the entrance knowing she should be able to see him on the security monitors mounted on the wall of her apartment’s foyer.

He expected her just to buzz him up, opening the doors remotely from upstairs. He was surprised when the doors opened and Jaz stood there smiling back at him.

She had her blonde hair pulled back in its usual ponytail tucked through the back of the baseball cap she wore. She had a towel over one shoulder and wore a gray tank top and black leggings.

“I thought you were going to buzz me in from upstairs.”

“I thought so too, but I’ve been spending too much time behind a desk lately. I decided to get a few more reps in on the weight bench and wait for you down here.”

Jaz leaned in for a kiss which Dean returned, grateful as always for any contact with her.

“You don’t mind that I’m all sweaty, do you?”

“Not at all. I kind of like my women sweaty.”

“Eww, don’t get gross,” Jaz said, laughing. She gave him a playful punch on the shoulder.

“Hey, you started it,” Dean complained, rubbing his arm as if in pain.

“Careful, or I’ll show you what I can really do if I wanted to. Come on upstairs. You did remember the leftovers, right?”

“I did,” Dean said, holding up the bag with the plastic container Freddy put together for him.

“Awesome, I am famished.”

“You said you were working on something and forgot to get dinner. What’s got you so tied up?”

“It’s another project to provide corporate security for an executive traveling overseas. It’s pretty standard bodyguard work but they want assurances that we’re providing them the very best we have. Honestly, we are spread pretty thin right now and I’m having trouble recruiting the type of people I need.”

“I wish there was something I could do to help,” Dean said. “If you needed to hire a few tactical medics, I could put you in touch with some people, but for the kind of thing you’re talking about you need a particular set of skills.”

A thought occurred to him.

“Have you thought of talking to Rudy? He probably has some contacts among the Lycans, if you don’t mind hiring people like that.”

“If you’re trolling to see if I’ve overcome some of my family’s older prejudices against creatures of the night, I think you’ll be disappointed. I actually already thought of that. A few of his people would be perfect for this job especially since the places this executive is traveling for his meetings has a large Unusual creature mob presence. It might be good to have a few werewolves around on the security team to discourage them from making a move on our client.”

“Sounds like you’ve got it all figured out then.”

Jaz laughed. It was a happy chuckle that warmed Dean’s heart. He liked to hear her laugh like that again. She’d been through so much over the last year and it seemed like she was finally recovering. He was glad he’d been there to see her through it.

They rode up in the elevator to the top floor. The doors opened right into the apartment. She’d only been staying there for a few weeks and there were still unopened boxes left to unpack from her temporary apartment in the building across the street.

“It doesn’t look like you’ve got much unpacking done,” Dean observed. “I told you I would come by and help. You don’t have to do all of this alone. That’s one of the perks of having a boyfriend.”

“I know. But you’ve been busy getting back into the swing of things at work since your injury and I didn’t want to put anything else on your plate.”

“Well, that’s just stupid. If we’re going to spend all our time tiptoeing around trying not to bother the other one, nothing is ever going to get done. Look, I’m off for the next couple of days. I was planning on staying here anyway so why don’t I start unpacking all this stuff while you get your work done? I bet I can get most of it done in a day or so. With that done, this place will feel much more like home to you.

“I’m hoping it will feel much more like home for both of us,” Jaz said. She looked at him waiting for an answer. She didn’t have to wait long.

“I would like that a lot.”

His confident statement, spoken without hesitation brought a beaming smile to her face. It lit up her whole expression and made him smile, too.

“Did you at least get the kitchen stuff unpacked? The last time I was here, all of your plates and utensils were still in boxes.”

Jaz shrugged. “I did manage to unpack a few things but not much.”

“I’ll make do. You go shower and get changed while I heat up dinner. By the time I’m finished you should be out and feeling fresher.”

“Sounds like a plan. Be back in five.”

Jaz headed down the hallway towards the bedroom and master bath while Dean turned to go to the kitchen. She was right. She had barely unpacked anything in here.

He dug around until he found a couple of plates as well as the box with the eating utensils.

Freddy had arranged the food so that all he had to do was heat up the food from the container in the microwave. One side had the pork chops and the other had the green beans almondine.

While the food was heating up, Dean went ahead and set the small, round kitchenette table in the corner. He had to take a few boxes off the top and set them down in the dining room next door, but that only took a few minutes. By the time the food was done, he’d laid out the plates, napkins, and silverware for their meal.

He pulled open the fridge and grabbed a beer for each of them, setting a bottle down next to each plate. Jaz came in just as he was dishing up the food. She wore a T-shirt and shorts; her head tilted to one side as she dried her hair with a towel.

“Wow, that smells delicious. I am so hungry.”

“Well, that’s what it’s here for. Dig in.”

Dean sat down across from Jaz. His stomach growled loud enough that even she heard it. They both stared at each other for a second and then started laughing.

“Sounds like I’m not the only one who’s starving.”

“Not at all,” Dean said. “We ran all day without a break. Things have been very busy lately.”

“Anything strange I should be aware of?” Jaz always tried to keep abreast of anything going on within the Unusual community. She was the head of a Hunter clan, after all.

“There was one thing. Have you ever heard of a sin eater?”

Jaz shot him an alarmed glance. “Why, is there one in town?”

“Maybe,” Dean said. “At least that’s what Gibbie thinks.”

Dean recounted the events surrounding Stacey and the missing angel she had stashed in her apartment.

“So this Reggie person, if he exists, is the sin eater?”

“That’s the theory so far. I’m not sure there’s much to it though. We only have a little bit of evidence he even exists.”

“Maybe not on your end, but on my end, there are a few things that showed up on my radar recently that might point to a sin eater being in the area.”

“Like what?” Dean asked. He hadn’t expected to find corroboration from Jaz’s side of things.

“Just rumblings from some of our contacts. I didn’t think much of it until you said something about a sin eater being in town. Now that you say it, some of these other things are starting to make sense. You know how some Unusuals are more sensitive than others to supernatural phenomena, right?”

Dean nodded.

“I got word that one of our secretaries, a member of a banshee family, turned in her notice yesterday. When she was asked why she quit, she said she had the sudden urge to move far away from here. She told her supervisor to pack up his family and move away, too, if he knew what was good for him.”

“That sounds ominous,” Dean replied, concern in his voice.

“It does, especially in light of what you just told me.”

“Gibbie said the sin eaters show up right before something bad happens.”

“That’s an understatement,” Jaz said. “You’ve heard of the Black Plague? Well, there was a rash of sin eaters all over Europe right before the plague spread throughout the area. It was so bad; people started associating the plague with the sin-eaters. I know because the Hunter clans were tasked with tracking them down and dealing with them.”

“But the plague is spread by fleas on rats, not people, and certainly not angels.”

“We know that now but it was a different time and people didn’t understand disease and germs the way we do now. They saw correlation as cause and effect.” Jaz shook her head. “I agree. It wasn’t our finest hour.”

“It’s stuff like that which causes all the bad blood between you and your Hunters and the rest of the Unusual community.”

“I know it and I’m trying to be better, really I am.”

Dean reached out and took her hand in his.

“I know you are. You’ve come a long way since we first met a year ago.”

Jaz squeezed his fingers in hers.

“Who knew when we met back then we’d end up here? We didn’t really hit it off all that well.”

“That’s an understatement. So much has happened over the last year between us, good and bad. No matter what has happened, I wouldn’t want to change where we are now, not for anything.”

“I’d like to have my family back.”

Dean’s heart sank. He was being selfish again. He saw Jaz as the best thing that ever happened to him, despite their rocky beginning. When she thought back to the first few times she met him, it only reminded her of the bomb that killed her parents and older siblings.

“I’m sorry, I just meant…”

“I know what you meant, Dean. It’s alright. I’m grateful to have you in my life now, too.”

She gave his fingers another squeeze then let go of his hand so she could go back to eating. She tried to change the subject.

“Freddy has done it again. I don’t usually like pork chops but these are amazing, juicy, and tender. I’m used to pork that is dry and chews like shoe leather.”

“Having a zombie chef who used to have two Michelin stars does have its perks.” Freddy had taken to staying at the station after terrorist vandals burned down his house trailer. He paid for his room with his prodigious cooking skills, making meals for the paramedics on shift during the day.

“Make sure you tell him how much I appreciate him making enough for you to bring home to me. I can’t help but think I’d be wasting away to nothing if it weren’t for his leftovers.”

“Don’t worry. I will.”

They finished dinner and Dean helped Jaz clean up. Afterward, the two of them spent an hour unpacking the remaining kitchen boxes until that room’s stuff was put away in the custom cabinets lining the walls.

“See, I told you it wouldn’t take too long. Imagine how much I’ll get done tomorrow while you’re downstairs in your office.”

“I feel bad putting you to work like that,” Jaz said. She threw her arms over his shoulders and pulled him close. He was always surprised by how strong she was.

“I suppose you could find a way to make it up to me.”

She leaned forward and whispered in his ear.

“I’m sure I can think of something.”

She tugged him by the hand back to the hallway and the bedroom beyond with a mischievous grin on her face.

Dean smiled and went along willingly.

📖 Loved Chapter 3? Keep going — get The Paramedic’s Doom on Jamie Davis’s site:

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Chapter 2 splits neatly into two halves, and both matter to where Book 7 is headed. The first is a genuine mystery beat: Dean talks Stacey into taking him and Officer Jimmy Shorter back to her apartment to check on “Reggie,” only to find an empty bedroom with rope still tied to the headboard and a balcony door standing open. Whoever — or whatever — Stacey was holding is already gone, and the trashed apartment makes clear it didn’t leave willingly at first.

That single scene reframes everything readers thought they understood from Chapter 1. Stacey isn’t just a victim of something supernatural; she may have been the one doing the harm, however unknowingly. It’s the kind of moral gray area the Extreme Medical Services series does well, and it sets Jimmy off to work the scene as a possible crime while Dean gets Stacey to the hospital.

The second half of the chapter is pure Station U found-family texture, and it’s where series fans get some of their favorite recurring cast: Tammy, Brooke, the ever-hungry vampire Gibbie, and Freddy the station’s zombie chef, fresh off cooking a dinner made from fairy-donated pork. It’s here that Gibbie supplies the chapter’s biggest lore drop, identifying Reggie by type — a sin eater, a rare and lesser member of the angelic Eldara who feeds on guilt and only appears when something dark is approaching a community.

Woven through the banter is a quieter thread: Dean’s relationship with Jaz, the security-firm CEO and last survivor of a Hunter clan, and gentle teasing from his coworkers about when he’s finally going to propose. It’s a chapter that balances an unsettling new mythology with the warmth that keeps readers coming back to Elk City book after book.

📖 Read more of Dean Flynn’s story — get The Paramedic’s Doom on Jamie Davis’s site:

jamiedavisbooks.com/books/the-paramedics-doom/

Stacey’s apartment was across town and before they left the scene, it took Dean several minutes on a conference call over his phone with headquarters and the ER doc on duty to explain the need to divert to a patient’s apartment before transporting to the hospital. Dean stuck to his guns though and convinced the shift supervisor of the need to visit the woman’s home first. The supervisor, a paramedic captain who understood the unique nature of the Station U calls, agreed with the assessment of his team on the street after listening to Dean. He approved the diversion once he had more information on the situation.

Barry climbed into the driver’s seat while Dean, finished his call to the powers that be, and hopped in the back with Stacey. Officer Shorter got up from where he sat next to the distraught woman. He nodded at Dean and swapped places with him, stepping out to the street behind the ambulance.

“I’ll follow behind in my police cruiser. Have Barry stop if you need me to help you back here.”

“Got it. Thanks, Jimmy. I don’t think there’ll be any issues. Stacey is going to be just fine, isn’t that right Stacey?”

The woman smiled and nodded. “You’ll see. Reggie is at my place. You’ll understand once you meet him.”

“I can’t wait to meet him,” Dean replied.

Jimmy rolled his eyes and shut the back doors to the ambulance.

There was no need to run with the lights and sirens on the way to Stacey’s apartment complex. Without the emergency lights engaged, it took them almost twenty minutes to drive across town. They pulled into the residential neighborhood where their patient lived.

Dean was playing this by ear at this point. He’d stepped outside any ordinary medical protocol he had, but that was not that strange for the paramedics of his unit. You had to be flexible when dealing with supernatural and mythical beings. He had confidence in his decision.

Their medical director, Doc Spirelli, had always told them to trust their instincts as paramedics in general and he doubled down on that statement when talking to the Station U medics. The doc knew the kinds of things they faced every day.

“Stacey, we’re here. I’m going to walk up to your apartment with you. Then you can show me where you’re keeping Reggie.”

“You’re not going to take him away from me, are you? I found him. He’s my angel.”

“Let me take a look at him first. He might need more medical treatment. You wouldn’t want him to get sicker when I could help him out, would you?”

“No, I don’t want that.”

“Alright, then, let’s go check on him.”

Jimmy’s police cruiser pulled in behind them as Barry slid the ambulance up to the curb and parked. Dean waited until both Jimmy and Barry stood behind the ambulance before he unbuckled Stacey from the cot and helped her get up.

Barry opened the back doors and helped her down. He looked up at Dean and quirked an eyebrow as if asking, “What now?”

“I’m playing this by ear, partner,” Dean replied to the unspoken question.

“I’ll follow your lead then.”

Dean hopped down and closed the double doors at the rear of the ambulance. He turned to his patient.

“Stacey, do you want to take us to your apartment? Which one is it?”

“I’m in twenty-four J, over there on the third floor.”

Dean followed her pointing finger and spotted building twenty-four in the complex of squat garden apartment style buildings. A central, open stairwell in each building led up to the second and third floors.

They crossed the courtyard and went up to the third-floor landing in Stacey’s building. Four doors opened onto the third floor. The first started with apartment letter “I” marked on the door to their right. Apartment “J” was right next door. Dean had Stacey’s keys and after getting her enthusiastic nod opened her door.

“Hello?” Dean called out. “My name is Dean Flynn. I’m a paramedic. I’m here to help you.”

“Reggie’s back in the bedroom, silly. He needs his rest.”

“Alright, why don’t you stay here with Barry and officer Shorter while I go back and check on him. I’ll make sure he’s okay and then we’ll head out and get you some help.”

Barry stepped up to stand on one side of their patient and Dean turned and stepped inside the apartment. The place was a mess. There were dirty dishes piled up and the smell of food rotting in the sink and garbage can wafted out at him from the kitchen.

He saw an overturned chair, books and knick-knacks knocked to the floor, and a broken lamp was lying on its side next to the end table. It all pointed to a recent struggle in the living room. Dean reached out and tried the light switch to put some light in the hallway. He tried a couple of the switches before he found the right one.

“Hello, my name is Dean. I’m a paramedic I’m here to help you.”

He continued down the hallway to the bedroom door. It was closed and he listened pressing his ear to the door’s cool wooden panel. He didn’t hear anything in the next room. Reaching down, he turned the knob and pushed the door open, ready to jump back if there was trouble on the other side.

Dean spotted the ropes tied to the head and footboard. There was no one in the room, but someone had been tied up on that bed. He did a quick search of the closet and a looked under the bed just to be sure. There was a sliding door leading out to a small balcony. The door was open and a slight breeze wafted the curtains into the room.

Whoever had been in this room, they were gone now. Dean called out to his friends still standing outside the apartment.

“Jimmy, you need to come see this.”

The police officer entered the apartment and walked back to the bedroom.

“Hmmm, it seems like I need to have a talk with Miss Stacey. Unless she has some rather kinky habits in the bedroom, it looks like she may have been holding someone prisoner in here. I’d like to find out if she knows where that person is.”

“Me, too,” Dean said. “Especially since whoever she held here was likely some sort of Unusual and I’d like to figure out if they’re okay.”

“Dean, I’m going to stay here and call for a forensic team to come check out the whole apartment. Are you alright taking her to the hospital on your own?”

“Sure, she seems harmless enough. I’ll call ahead and make sure security meets us at the ambulance entrance to the emergency department. Do me a favor. Let me know if you find out anything about who might’ve been held here.”

“Will do, Dean.”

Jimmy pulled out his portable radio and started talking to police dispatchers to request the crime scene investigators.

Dean returned to the third floor landing outside the apartment.

“Did you find him? Did you find Reggie?”

“There was no one there, Stacey. But, Officer Shorter is going to stay here and see if they can figure out where Reggie went. For now, though, why don’t you come with Barry and me so we can get you checked out at the hospital.”

The woman’s shoulders slumped.

“He was my angel. He was mine. Now he’s gone and I’ll never see him again.”

“Never is a long time, Stacey. Come on. Let’s go back to the ambulance.”

On the way back out to the parking lot, Dean kept his eyes open looking for some signs in the apartment complex courtyard of the missing angel, or whatever or whoever it was she’d kept prisoner in her apartment. He didn’t see anything out of the ordinary, not that he was sure he knew what he was looking for.

They got Stacey situated and strapped into the ambulance cot, then Barry returned to the driver seat and they started on their way to the hospital. Dean picked up the tablet from its dock in the back of the ambulance and started filling out the patient report. It would electronically sync with the system both at the hospital and back at their station.

It didn’t take them long to to get their patient situated with one of the nurses in the emergency room. Once Stacey was in an exam room and settled in, Dean and Barry put a fresh sheet on the stretcher and headed back out to load up their ambulance for the next call.

Soon Dean and Barry were on their way back to Station U on the outskirts of Elk City. They never made it all the way back to the station. Another call came over the dispatch and Dean and Barry found themselves tied up with one ambulance call after another. As Unusual ambulance calls went, they were all pretty routine with nothing too serious. Mostly it was people dealing with the flu this time of year. The back-to-back runs did take up a lot of time and it was well after dark when they were finally put off shift and started back to the station.

When they arrived at the industrial park that housed their ambulance building, Dean spotted a beat-up white van parked next to his pickup truck. Gibbie was here. He wondered what the frumpy, middle-aged vampire wanted with the Station U paramedics to bring him out to their neck of the woods.

After helping Barry back the ambulance safely into its bay, Dean walked over to the squad room door and poked his head inside. Brooke and Tammy where already there having started their shift while Dean and Barry were still out running calls. Gibbie was there, as well.

Tammy looked up from her work on the station’s computer when he opened the door to look in.

“It’s about time you two got back. I figured we were going to have to take that beat up old backup ambulance out if we got a call. You guys been running all day?”

“Pretty much,” Dean said. “It’s been one run after another. Hey, Gibbie. What are you doing here? Do you need some more supplies for your first aid kit?”

“Yeah, that and I wanted to come hang out. It’s been kind of boring and I was hoping you might be offering some additional training for myself and the other CERT responders soon. We miss meeting up together like we used to. Any chances you have something coming up soon?”

Dean remembered training Gibbie and several other members of the Unusual community to be CERT responders for community first aid in the case of local emergencies or disasters. For a while, Dean had even gone on runs with them while the fire department suspended him from the job. It had been a scary time for everyone. Despite that, he had fond memories of hanging out with Gibbie and the others while they prowled the streets looking for people in need of help.

“You know, I think it’s about that time,” Dean said. “I should probably talk to Brynne about coming up with some new training scenarios for you guys so you can practice your skills. I’ll shoot her an email before I leave tonight. I think she’s the shift supervisor on duty.”

“That would be great, Dean. You know we miss you. You should come hang out with us sometime. We hold a regular get-together at Sabatani’s. It would be just like old times.”

“Are you kidding,” Brooke laughed. “He doesn’t have any spare time. Jaz has him wrapped around her little finger. Speaking of which, when are you going to put a ring on one of those fingers?”

“Haha, the joke’s on you, Brooke. I’ve actually been thinking in that direction and have been saving up to make a purchase.”

“So, the huntress becomes the hunted,” Tammy said. “Are you sure that’s what she wants, too?”

A knot started forming in the pit of Dean’s stomach. He worried about whether Jaz would say no to him if he popped the question. She was the successful CEO of an international security firm as well as the last survivor of a prominent Hunter clan. It wasn’t like he had all that much to offer her.

Tammy must have spotted the look of doubt on his face. She laughed.

“Dude, relax. You have absolutely nothing to worry about. I’ve seen the way she looks at you when she’s come over to the station to meet you for dinner or breakfast or we’ve seen her out and about. She’ll say yes for sure. I was just teasing.”

“I hope you’re right. I feel like the guy never knows for sure.”

Brooke chuckled.

“That, my good friend, is all part of the mystery. We ladies like to keep you gentlemen guessing.”

“Well, it’s working, Brooke. I’m guessing alright.” Dean looked around the squad room. “Is Freddy still here? I was hoping to catch a bite to eat before I headed home. I’ve got nothing in my kitchen.”

A shuffling of feet from the hallway leading back to the station’s bunk rooms drew Dean’s attention. Freddy, their personal zombie chef, entered the squad room.

“I already cooked dinner, Dean. There are plenty of leftovers, however, so help yourself to one of the containers I put in the refrigerator.”

“What did you make?”

“Pork chops with an apple glaze and green beans almondine.”

“Wow, what’s the special occasion?”

“A few of the families of fairies living out in the Barrens just butchered a hog. They dropped some of the meat off here as a thank you for all the times you guys have responded out there. There’s plenty more in the freezer including freshly smoked bacon and a few roasts.”

“Yum,” Dean said, rubbing his belly. “That sounds delicious and it will cut down on what we have to spend to stock the kitchen for you.”

“Every little bit helps,” Tammy said. “It’s not like we’re making bundles of cash working as paramedics for the city.”

“Amen to that, sister,” Dean said. “Alright, let me help Barry finish restocking the ambulance for you guys and then I’ll come in and grab some of those leftovers you’ve made for us, Freddy.”

Dean ducked back into the ambulance bay. Barry was already in the back of the ambulance with the gear bags open, replacing the supplies they’d used on their various calls that afternoon and evening.

“Hand me the medication bag,” Dean said. “I’ll go draw the meds we need from the dispenser.”

Barry handed Dean the blue med bag.

“What did Gibbie want? That was his van out there, right?”

“Yeah, I think he just wanted to hang out. He must be between girlfriends right now.”

“Ah, the life of the five-hundred-year-old vampire. It must be tough.”

Dean laughed. “Especially when you have his luck with women.”

Barry laughed along with him. They’d both seen plenty of situations where Gibbie had gotten mixed up with the wrong woman.

Dean set to work refilling the medication bag, checking off the inventory list as he went. He returned the bag to its cabinet in the back of the ambulance. By the time Dean was done, Barry had finished restocking the other supplies as well. Their shift was finally over since Dean had finished up his reports while they were at the hospital following their last call. It was going to feel good to get home.

When Dean returned to the squad room, Freddy had already packed up two meals of leftovers in plastic containers for him and Barry to take with them when they left.

Dean grabbed his containers and headed for the door. Before he went outside, he remembered the earlier call with Stacey and turned back to Tammy and Brooke.

“Keep your eyes open tonight. There might be some sort of angel or another type of unusual I’ve never heard of out there running around.” Dean recounted the earlier ambulance call with Stacey. “I’m not sure if this Reggie was even a real person or just a figment of her imagination. Whatever he was, if he’s real, he’s got some strange powers that affect people’s sense of guilt and regret strong enough to make a person want to kill themselves.”

“Sounds like a sin eater,” Gibbie said from where he sat on the couch flipping through a book on demonology from the Station U reference library.

“A what?”

“A sin eater. They are pretty rare. Honestly, I haven’t heard of one around these parts before, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t one here. The way you describe the effect on that woman makes it sound a lot like what I’ve seen before from one of them.”

“What are they?” Brooke asked. “Are they some sort of angel or Eldara?”

“They are a lesser form of angel from what little I know about them. They’re sort of a junior member of the Eldara clans. Usually, they only pop-up when big trouble is coming on the horizon. They seem to have a sense of dark times approaching. It’s those times when people want to repent their sins. The sin eaters feed on the guilt that people feel for their past transgressions and draw off that energy leaving the individual feeling as if they’d been forgiven. If your woman was holding one prisoner, I suppose they could reverse that effect and intensify feelings of guilt to the point that someone might want to hurt themselves.”

Tammy pursed her lips and whistled.

“Sounds like we all have some homework to do. I guess we should be looking up information on sin eaters tonight.”

“You two can do that,” Dean said. “I need to call Jaz. I told her I’d drop her a line when I was finished my shift tonight.”

“Ooh, sounds like a booty call,” Brooke said.

Everyone laughed, including Dean. You had to be able to take some teasing in this community. EMS crews grew very close to each other and there were few secrets between the close-knit ambulance teams in the city.

“You all are just jealous. I’ll tell her you said hi, though. See you in a few days. I’m back on night shift this coming Wednesday.”

Dean headed out to his pickup truck and pulled out his phone, tapping Jaz’s name at the top of his contact favorite’s list. He hadn’t caught up with her for a few days and it would be good to see her again. He hoped she wasn’t out on a stakeout or something for her security work.

“Hi, Dean,” Jaz’s voice answered on the first ring. “I was beginning to think you’d forgotten about me. Long day?”

“Yeah, I’m beat, but I wanted to come by and see you. I have some food. It looks like Freddy packed enough for both of us.”

“Sounds good. What did he make tonight?”

“Pork chops, apple glaze, and green beans almondine.”

“Sounds great. I’ve been bogged down with work stuff and haven’t had time to get dinner. That will be perfect. Come on over. I’ll buzz you up when you get here.”

Dean smiled and headed out of the parking lot. He needed a quiet night at home relaxing with his girlfriend. The last week of six straight shifts had been brutal. He was ready for a break.

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Book 7 of the Extreme Medical Services series opens the way every good Station U call does: with a dispatch that doesn’t add up. Paramedic Dean Flynn and his partner Barry Winston are sent Delta Response — full lights and sirens — for what’s supposedly just an “agitated subject” at a downtown office building. That level of urgency for a behavioral call is the first sign something bigger is unfolding, and readers familiar with the series know Station U only gets pulled into calls with an Unusual angle.

What they find is Stacey, a previously unremarkable office worker now locked in a conference room, bruised, half out of her mind, and insisting she has to “pay for her sins.” Dean’s instinct that this isn’t ordinary psychiatric crisis proves right the moment Stacey mentions the real reason for her breakdown: she’s been keeping someone captive in her apartment. Someone she calls Reggie. Someone she calls her angel.

Chapter 1 does the careful work of a series opener — reintroducing Dean’s calm, patient-first instincts, showing Barry’s steady partnership, and folding in Officer Jimmy Shorter, one of the few Elk City police officers read into the existence of Unusuals. It also plants the emotional hook that carries the chapter: Stacey isn’t a villain. She’s a victim of something powerful enough to warp her sense of guilt and self-worth, and Dean has to talk her down without knowing yet what he’s dealing with.

The chapter closes on a promise rather than an answer, which is exactly the kind of hook that makes this series so readable one chapter at a time — a captive “angel,” a battered patient who won’t explain herself, and a paramedic crew about to walk straight into whatever comes next.

📖 Read more of Dean Flynn’s story — get The Paramedic’s Doom on Jamie Davis’s site:

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Paramedic Dean Flynn flipped the switch on the ambulance dashboard and the red and white light bar on the roof started its dance of flashing strobes and LEDs. The emergency call came in just before noon for a behavioral emergency downtown in an office complex off of Hopewell Boulevard.

The dispatcher upgraded the 911 response protocol for this particular dispatch. The voice on the radio notified the crew to run in Delta Response which meant to run with full lights and sirens. Dean reached out to activate the siren as they approached the first intersection. It was strange for this type of full-on emergency response for an agitated subject and Dean wondered what could have triggered the dispatcher to raise the severity level of the call.

Dean’s partner, Barry, who was driving, must have wondered the same thing.

“What’s with the Delta Response? It’s only a crazy person. They know ramping up our response this way puts us and the public in greater danger.”

“I don’t know. Pay attention to the road and don’t run through any intersections without checking they’re clear first. It’s the middle of the day. The roads are going to be plenty congested.”

The Station U ambulance squad was housed in an industrial park outside the city. It always took them a few minutes to get to the more congested city streets of the downtown business district. In the middle of the work week, it took even longer.

There were closer ambulance stations to the city’s center but the Station U team was special. They treated the supernatural creatures, called Unusuals, who lived and worked in secret alongside their human neighbors in and around Elk City.

Dean picked up the mic and called in to dispatch.

“Ambulance U-891 to headquarters.”

“Go ahead U-891.”

“Do we have any additional information on the current situation?”

“All additional information we have is being sent to your data terminal now.”

“Copy, dispatch.”

Dean flipped open the newly installed laptop sitting on a swivel mount between the driver and passenger seat of the ambulance. He turned it in his direction and checked the screen after logging in.

*Thirty-seven-year-old female. Co-workers report agitated behavior on return from a restaurant with carry-out lunch. She is now locked in an office conference room and threatening suicide. Police en route.*

“It’s a woman who’s threatening suicide,” Dean told his partner. “We’ll need to be careful. People who want to harm themselves sometimes end up hurting others even if it’s by mistake.”

“You don’t have to tell me twice. Any clues about the Unusual connection?”

“Don’t know, but there must be something that triggered them to alert us at Station U rather than one of the closer ambulance units already downtown.”

Dean shrugged. He didn’t know any more than Barry did about the connection. The two paramedics would find out soon enough.

They pulled up on the street outside a four-story office building. A frantic man greeted Dean as soon as he opened the passenger door to get out.

“Thank God you’re here. Stacey is acting crazy up there and we’re all afraid she’s going to hurt herself.”

“Easy, sir,” Dean soothed. “Which office is she in? Which floor?”

“She’s up in the Global Traders offices on the third floor. Please hurry, this isn’t like her at all.”

“We need to grab some of our gear and then we’ll have you lead us upstairs, alright?”

The man nodded and Dean pulled open one of the side cabinet doors on the outside of the ambulance. He grabbed the trauma and med bags. Barry would already be grabbing the oxygen bag and the heart monitor from the back, along with removing the stretcher from the rear compartment.

Stacking the bags next to the oxygen and the monitor on the ambulance cot, Dean closed and locked the vehicle, then he helped Barry lift the stretcher up over the curb and followed the impatient man inside.

“Sir, I’m paramedic Dean Flynn and this is my partner and fellow paramedic, Barry Winston. And you are?”

“Sorry, I’m Fred Tanner. I’m the office manager at Global.”

“Can you tell us anything else about what happened? What set her off?”

“I don’t know. It was her turn to go out and bring back lunch for the rest of us. She came back just like any other time and set the food down in the conference room. Then she grabbed her head and started screaming. When we tried to help her, she started hitting us and throwing things at us. Then she locked the conference room door.”

“We received information that she threatened to harm herself.”

“She said she ‘needs to pay for what she’s done’ and she ‘had to die for her sins.’”

Barry jumped in with a question.

“Has Stacey ever acted strangely like this before?”

“No, never. She’s been with us since we opened the offices here in Elk City. Stacey would be the first to tell you she’s painfully normal and boring. There’s never been anything that would make me think she was dealing with any mental issues.”

The three of them boarded the elevator up to the third floor. People gave them curious glances and started collecting in groups, trying to figure out what was going on. The doors slid closed as the bystanders congregated and the office rumor mill started just like it did every time the paramedics showed up on a location like this.

“Any sign of the police?” Dean asked.

“No, why? Do you think we need them?”

“They’re dispatched along with us on situations like this. I was only checking to see if they’d gotten here ahead of us, that’s all.”

Dean and Barry shared a glance. Dean knew what his partner was thinking. They needed to decide if they should wait for police backup or go in and try to handle the situation as it was. A violent patient could be dangerous, especially if she were some sort of Unusual supernatural creature.

The elevator doors slid open on the third floor revealing a small vestibule with double glass doors opposite the elevators sporting a round logo topped with the words “Global Traders” in frosted white letters. There were other office workers clustered together on the other side of the glass. They all looked towards the paramedics as they exited the elevator. Worried but hopeful expressions showed on their faces.

Fred held one of the doors open while Dean and Barry wheeled their stretcher and all their gear into the reception area. They heard the shouting and occasional screams right away. The woman’s voice was muffled so Dean couldn’t make out what she was shouting about but the screaming and crying was easy enough to decipher. Someone was in pain of some sort. Whether emotional or physical, it didn’t matter either way. It was up to him and his partner to deal with it.

“Dean, should we wait for police?”

“I think we need more information. Let’s see if we can assess where she is and what her physical condition is before we decide for sure.”

“Sounds like a plan.”

Dean turned to Fred.

“Wait here and send someone else down to wait for the police officers. They should be arriving soon. My partner and I are going to head back and see if we can talk to Stacey and calm her down.”

“Her best friend, Meg, is back there with her, now. She hasn’t been able to get through to her.”

“Well, we’re gonna try anyway. Wait here.”

Dean picked up the trauma and med bags while Barry grabbed the oxygen and the heart monitor. They could leave the wheeled cot where it was.

Neither of them needed a guide. It was easy to follow the sound of Stacey’s anguished cries back through the office cubicles to the conference room. A distraught woman in her mid-forties stood outside the wooden door wringing her hands. A plaque on the wall read “conference room” next to the door.

“Meg?”

The woman turned and a look of relief crossed her face.

“Thank God you’re here. I don’t know what’s come over her. She’s gone completely insane. You’ve got to help her. This isn’t like her and I’m worried she’s hurting herself in there.”

“We’re going to see what we can do,” Dean assured her. “Please go back out to the reception area and wait there. It’ll be safer for all of us.”

“Don’t hurt her, please.”

“We’re here to help. We’ll do our best to keep her safe, I promise.”

After Meg left them alone, Barry looked from Dean to the door and back again.

“What do we do? She sounds like she’s trashing the room in there. There’s two of us and one of her but I don’t wanna get banged up by a patient today.”

Dean shook his head.

“We’ll make sure we can get out without her getting to us first. Keep the door at our backs and don’t let her get between us and the exit. That should be enough for now. No one has said she had any weapons on her. I want to see what her condition is. I’ll open the door a crack and see what happens. Based on her response we’ll reassess the situation. You ready?”

Barry nodded and Dean set his bags down and approached the door. He placed a hand on the handle and listened to the woman’s tirade on the other side, waiting for a lull in the shouting and screams. Much of what she said was unintelligible. He did keep hearing the words angel and wings. That got his Unusual radar going.

Pressing down on the handle, Dean pushed the door open a crack and leaned forward to peer into the room. A woman passed right by the door, her hands thrust into her hair as if she were trying to pull it out. She wore a floral print dress that was torn in several places so severely it barely remained on her body and didn’t do a very good job of covering her up anymore.

Her arms were battered and covered in bruises, as was her torso, though the latter seemed older than the wounds on her arms. Dean pulled the door closed.

“It looks like she’s pretty banged up from throwing furniture around and beating on the walls but there are signs she’s taken a beating sometime recently. Her torso is all bruised up. I wonder if she might be a domestic violence victim.”

“What’s that got to do with her condition now?” Barry asked.

“I don’t know for sure but maybe whoever is beating her is also the one responsible for her wigging out the way she is. There’s no sign she’s an Unusual herself which leads me to believe her condition is a side effect of contact with one. There are several types of supernatural creatures out there who have various powerful psychological effects on humans. We’ve both seen them.”

Barry nodded.

“So what’s the plan?”

“I’m going to go in. Stay behind me and keep the door open. If things get too hairy, I’ll try to disengage and you can pull the door shut behind me to keep her contained in there.”

“Alright, but you be careful.”

“Don’t worry. I have no plans on being any kind of hero. I have to try and talk her down, though.”

“We could wait for police,” Barry noted.

“Let’s try this first. If it doesn’t work, we’ll pull back and regroup while we wait for more help.”

Dean grabbed the door handle again, took a breath and then opened it, stepping inside the conference room.

The woman whipped around as soon as he stepped into the room. She snarled with rage and started to open her mouth to say something when her eyes softened and her face relaxed.

“You’re just like him,” Stacey said, pointing at Dean. “I can see it all around you. It’s beautiful but not exactly the same. Can you help me get him to stay longer.”

Dean didn’t understand what the woman was talking about but he wasn’t going to complain either. She’d settled down and whatever it was she saw, she wasn’t attacking him or hurting herself.

“Stacey, I’m Dean Flynn. I’m a paramedic with the city fire department. Do you mind if I talk to you for a little bit and see what’s got you so upset?”

“He was mine. I found him. I made him better. He should not have tried to leave me the way he did.”

“Who, Stacey?” Dean asked.

“Reggie – uh – Reginald. He’s been staying with me while he gets better. I thought he liked me enough to stay longer but he doesn’t want to. He tried to get away this morning but I was able to keep him here. That’s alright, isn’t it? He’s mine. I found him.”

“I’m confused, Stacey. Is Reggie a dog or a cat?”

Stacey laughed. “No, silly. Reggie’s an angel.”

That took Dean by surprise, even given the words he’d overheard earlier. It made him reassess the origin of her wounds. Maybe she got them struggling with someone else and she was the aggressor. It was unusual, but then, in this line of work, that was the name of the game.

“I’ll tell you what, Stacey. If you come with my partner, Barry, and me, we’ll take you somewhere you can talk to people who will help you with Reggie. The only thing is, you have to tell me where Reggie is now?”

“I don’t know if I should tell you. What if you try and go see him and he gets away. I found him. I nursed him back to life. I should get to keep him.”

“I just want to make sure he’s not hurt like you are. You don’t want him injured and hurt without help, do you?”

Stacey shook her head. “I don’t want him hurt. I nursed him back to health. You can check on him but promise you’ll lock up after you seem him so he doesn’t get away?”

“I’ll make sure nothing bad happens to Reggie, I promise.”

Dean was careful to never lie to patients, even in situations like this. He hadn’t promised not to help Reggie escape, if escape was what Reggie wanted. Luckily, Stacey heard what she wanted to hear, just as Dean hoped.

He extended a hand towards Stacey and she started towards him, placing a battered and bloody hand in his. Together, they walked out of the conference room. The police officers from their law enforcement version of Station U had arrived and waited in the hallway for them.

“Hey, Jimmy,” Dean said. Officer Jimmy Shorter was a cop who’d worked with Dean on cases before when violence was involved. He also knew about the existence of Unusuals in Elk City.

“Dean,” the officer nodded. “I heard the tail end of that. It sounded like she —“

Jimmy stopped when Dean shook his head.

“Jimmy, this is Stacey. She is going to go with us while we go and check on a friend for her. Can you follow along behind us while Barry and I go and help her with her problem?”

Jimmy looked a little unsure of what was going on but he followed Dean’s lead. They’d worked together enough that he knew Dean was trying to help the distraught woman. Treating people in these situations was seldom straightforward.

“Sure, Dean, but shouldn’t she go to the hospital or something?”

“Maybe not. I’m going to check with the docs over the radio first then I’ll explain when we get there. Just follow us, alright?”

The police officer nodded and they all walked with Stacey back to the lobby where the stretcher was located.

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Chapter 4 of The Paramedic’s Nemesis is among the most emotionally precise chapters in the entire series. It is built around a single test in a tiled room — the vampire “clean room” used to assess newly turned vampires for control over their bloodlust — and it derives almost all of its tension from what Celeste reveals about her own history before the test begins.

Celeste, James Lee’s centuries-old assistant, has always been presented as composed, capable, and slightly theatrical. In chapter 4 she drops the act. She tells Brynne what happened the last time she relapsed after her own turning during the Civil War: she killed her older brother, accidentally turned him, and he never gained control over his bloodlust. James eventually had to put him down. For readers who love a character reveal  that reframes a supporting character’s entire prior behavior — explaining the controlled manner as the hard-won result of an actual catastrophe rather than as a personality trait — this is an extraordinary moment. Celeste has been trying to protect Brynne from an outcome she personally caused to someone she loved.

The tiled room with a drain in the center is one of the series’ most quietly effective set pieces. Brynne examines it the way she would examine any emergency scene — practically, methodically, noting the drain and wondering what the human contractors thought it was for when they built it. That clinical detachment is what makes her a good paramedic. It is also, in this context, her armor. She is using professional analysis to keep herself from thinking about what she is actually about to be asked to do.

When Celeste tells Brynne flat out “You are a vampire, Brynne. You’re not the same Brynne Garvey you were before,” and Brynne refuses to accept it — “I’ve never failed at anything I’ve ever tried to do before. I won’t accept failure here” — it is the defining statement of the character across six books. Brynne Garvey has always been the character who does not accept impossible as an answer. The fact that this time the impossible thing she is refusing to accept is her own transformed nature makes it the most dramatically charged version of that trait the series has delivered.

✚  Find out if Brynne passes the test — get The Paramedic’s Nemesis now.Get the Book →

CHAPTER TEXT

Brynne felt the sweat beading on her forehead as Celeste came into the building’s clean room. She discovered that every modern vampire coven had at least one of these set up in their stronghold. It was the place they tested the newly turned to see if they could be trusted out among the human community unchaperoned. Brynne looked around the tiled room taking it in again as she had the first time she was here a week before. It was about ten feet square and tiled like a bathroom would be. There was a drain in the center of the floor, and the tile on the walls extended up to cover the ceiling. She wondered what the human contractors must have thought such a room was for when they were building the place.

“Ready to try again?” Celeste asked in her smooth southern drawl. Brynne thought the redhead laid the southern belle act on a little thick since it had been over a hundred fifty years since James turned the young southern girl in the midst of the Civil War. She became James’ assistant since soon after that, and she now managed most of his substantial assets around the world.

Brynne nodded. “I guess so.”

“There’s no guessing about this, honey. If you don’t think you’re ready to try again, don’t force it. Every time you backslide, it becomes harder to come back in here and go through the process of acclimation to blood again. Some vampires never quite get the hang of it and have to be watched whenever they are around humans and other sources of fresh blood.”

Brynne shook her head. “I’m ready to try again,” she affirmed. “I just don’t understand why it’s so hard for me to move past this.”

“There’s no shame in it. It takes time to gain control over all the changes your body has gone through. You’re stronger and faster than you’ve ever been before, certainly stronger than any human out there. Your new vampire self knows you’re the predator in the room and wants to assert that position.”

“But I’m not like that. I’m a healer, not a killer.” Brynne said it even though her recent string of failures in this room every day for a week proved otherwise. Lord, she could still feel the rush of pure joy she felt when she pounced on that poor lamb when Celeste had opened a vein in its neck. Brynne couldn’t help herself. She had to have the blood, even though it wasn’t human. The fresh coppery smell and taste in the air overwhelmed her control. When she leaped on the poor animal, she threw the metal chair in which she was sitting back against the wall behind her so hard it chipped the tiles.

“Brynne, honey, this is a process, a journey to reach a point of control over your inner nature. You can’t rush it. Every one of us had to overcome it in our early days after our transformation.”

“I know that I can master this, Celeste. I just need to force myself to remember who I am.”

Celeste’s voice turned uncharacteristically stern. “What you are is a vampire, Brynne. You’re not the same Brynne Garvey you were before the incident at Sensations. That version of you died the night Mike Farver shot you. You have to look at it like the former you died there. It is best to put all of it behind you and move forward in your new life.” Celeste’s voice softened again. “I understand how you feel, I really do. You just have to remember that you can’t go back to your past.”

“I’ve never failed at anything I’ve ever tried to do before. I won’t accept failure here.”

“Don’t think of it as a failure. It might just be too soon to try this. You wouldn’t try to run a marathon back when you were a human without the proper training and preparation, would you?”

Brynne shook her head. She knew where Celeste was headed with this.

“Look, Celeste, I see what you’re saying. The problem is I think I’m ready to push through this. I can’t keep spending every day locked up in the penthouse here without going out and doing something constructive with my life. I have to live my life, even this life.”

“You don’t want to rush this. That’s all I’m saying. I don’t think you’d do well if you had a relapse and killed someone.”

“But I won’t, I can’t kill someone. It’s not in my nature.”

Celeste’s voice became stern and hard as ice. “That’s a lie. It’s not only in your nature; it’s your only nature now. I know. I’ve had more than one relapse since I was turned. What would you do if you killed Dean or one of the other paramedics? What if you managed to turn them into a vampire like yourself by accident?”

“That won’t happen. I …”

Celeste interrupted her. “You don’t know that. I didn’t think I’d attack the people I loved either. In the end, I not only killed my older brother, I also turned him, and he didn’t take well to the transformation. He never got over his bloodlust. Eventually, James had to put him down.” Celeste held her gaze for a moment before continuing. Brynne could see tears welling up in her eyes. “They had to put him down like a rabid dog because he couldn’t stop killing people and it risked exposing all of us.”

Brynne had never heard that story before. She thought about what would happen if that happened to Dean, or Brook, or Tammy, or any of the paramedics at the ambulance station she had called her family for so long. It would devastate her. She thought back to the last failure here in the testing chamber. She thought she had mastered the feelings that overcame her the last time a few days before. Brynne stared at the redheaded vampire.

“I’m ready to go again. I have figured out what went wrong.”

“Alright, honey. We’ll start just as we did each time before. Building slowly on small successes until we get to the point where you can’t go any further by your admission, or you fail in your control over your predator urges.”

Brynne nodded, and Celeste went to a metal table in the corner. Lifting a white towel covering the table, she saw the other vampire pick up a white ceramic mug and a bag of warm blood. The bag was still sealed, and Brynne could smell nothing from it but disinfectant and the ever-present perfume that was Celeste’s signature scent. She hated the thought of what she had to do next, but she needed to do it. She needed to prove to herself as much as anyone else that she was in control.

Brynne sat down in the metal chair placed in the center of the room and squared her shoulders. She met Celeste’s eyes and gave one firm nod.

“Let’s begin.”

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Chapter 3 of The Paramedic’s Nemesis opens on the single most honest line in the series: “Being undead sucked.” And then it earns every word of what follows. This is Brynne Garvey’s chapter — the first extended POV sequence for the character who has been the series’ emotional backbone since book one — and it is one of the most compelling chapters Jamie Davis has written across the entire run.

Brynne was turned into a vampire to save her life. She did not choose it. She does not feel grateful in any uncomplicated way. She feels trapped — in a penthouse apartment, in a new body she cannot fully control, in a relationship dynamic where the person who loves her most is also, unavoidably, her jailer. For readers who love urban fantasy series that treat supernatural transformation as genuinely costly rather than glamorous, this chapter is the series at its most honest. Brynne is not thrilled to be immortal. She is furious to have lost the version of herself she worked hard to build.

What makes Brynne’s situation uniquely resonant in this series is her professional background. She is a paramedic. Her entire identity is built around healing people, managing crises with competence, keeping other humans alive. Now she is the crisis. She looks at human patients and wonders how they would taste. She cannot control the sensory input of enhanced vampire senses in a world full of warm blood. For readers who love character arcs built around a professional identity threatened by forces outside the character’s control, this is exactly the kind of crisis that hits differently than external threats do.

James tells Brynne it will take years before she can be trusted around humans unsupervised. He is probably right. She knows he is probably right. And she refuses to accept it anyway. For readers who enjoy character dynamics where the tension between two people who genuinely love each other comes from fundamentally different needs — security versus purpose, patience versus urgency — the Brynne and James dynamic in this chapter is written with real psychological precision. She is not wrong to want her life back. He is not wrong to be afraid of what happens if she goes out too soon. They are both right, and they are stuck.

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CHAPTER TEXT

Being undead sucked. Brynne stared at the ceiling in the darkened room and thought of all the glamorous stories that made it into powerful immortality or something out of a gothic romance.

Bullshit.

You lost everything when you changed. You missed half of every day. You lost your friends and family. You even lost control over your own body. You can’t turn off the massive sensory input you get all the time. As a vampire, she was bombarded by all the information from her enhanced senses needed to make her the apex predator she was. She could hear human heartbeats through walls now. That wasn’t a good thing when you couldn’t look at a normal human without wondering how they’d taste. She was thirsty all the time, thirsty for warm blood.

Brynne thought she knew a lot about vampires. She had studied them for her work as a paramedic at Station U. Hell; she had dated a vampire in an exclusive relationship for over five years. Then, when everything was finally working out for her, she was almost killed in a nightclub shooting by a crazy ex-mentor who secretly coveted her for himself. To save her life, her boyfriend, James Lee, had changed her into a vampire moments before her heart beat out its last pulse of life. It wasn’t like she wasn’t thankful for what he did. She was grateful. She appreciated what had gone into that choice. It had not been an easy decision for James or her human paramedic partner, Dean.

Still, here she was. She was spending another sunny day in this sunless un-life, resting as she stared at the ceiling in the room she shared with James. It was like she had nothing to look forward to anymore. She was a virtual prisoner in their apartment. She knew she shouldn’t complain. It was a beautiful apartment, sitting on the penthouse level atop the high rise Nightwing building in downtown Elk City, Maryland. The place had every amenity she could hope for, and she knew James would install anything she wanted if she asked. The fully stocked kitchen gave her access to blood of every type and almost every nationality. There were some who would say she had everything she could need in life, except it wasn’t a life at all, not anymore.

She forced a breath into her lungs and let out a long sigh. It was for effect only. She didn’t need to breathe except to talk and for dramatic emphasis, like now.

“Brynne, dear, is something bothering you?” James asked from where he lay next to her on the bed.

“I’m bored, James. I need something to do. I need a real life and job to give me purpose. I’m just a caged tiger here in this apartment, pacing the enclosure, longing to run in the forest and have a real life again.”

“It’s almost time,” James said, rolling over onto his side so he could look at her. “You’ve gained a lot of control in these last few months, Brynne. It won’t be long now. Soon you’ll be able to go out and mix with people again, I promise. Think about how it would devastate you if you lost control and injured someone because you couldn’t control your bloodlust. Imagine what you would feel like if you killed some poor innocent just because they cut their finger on a thorn when you walked by.” He shook his head. “You have to give it time.”

“You’ve had centuries to adjust to this type of life, James. I’ve had just a few months. I’m not suited to being cooped up, kept from doing anything useful. I need to be working, helping people. It’s who I am. I don’t stop being the person that became a paramedic just because I’m a vampire now. I have to have something to give my new life purpose.”

“I understand, my dear. I really do. Consider this merely a convalescence after an illness. You’re almost well, and we will find something constructive for you to do. You can have any job or role you want here in my business ventures; in our business ventures. I noticed how frustrated you are. I’ve had Celeste pick out a few likely opportunities for you. Would you like to begin trading in securities based on your medical and health care knowledge? That can be very exciting if you give it time.”

Brynne snorted a laugh at his last statement. “I don’t want to be a stock trader, James. There is nothing exciting about that life. I’ve been on the streets. I’ve seen excitement firsthand and know what it feels like. I know that stock trading is how you make most of your money these days, but that is not what I’m supposed to be. I’m a person of action. I need to do something constructive and active with my time. I want to go back to being a paramedic.”

“That is impossible, Brynne. You’d cross over and give in to the bloodlust the first time you ran a call for a person with a simple cut.” James reached over and turned her head towards him so she could see his eyes.

She looked at him and realized he wasn’t kidding. He really thought it would be impossible for her to return to her former job as a paramedic.

“You have no faith in me, then.” Brynne knew she was pouting and she hated it. She also hated how set in his ways James could sometimes be. He assumed things couldn’t be done if he’d never seen it done before.

“Brynne, it’s not that. It takes years to master yourself to the point that you could even consider returning to a career in the medical field, let alone the unpredictable chaos of emergency medical services.”

Brynne sat up and turned away from him. He kept telling her the same thing. He said it would take years until she was ready. She was determined to prove him wrong.

“Let me take the test, James. I’m ready now.” Brynne turned to look down at him laying next to her. She couldn’t believe she’d said it. Was she really ready for the test? It was a series of challenges for a new vampire to determine if they had gained enough control over their predatory nature to avoid killing humans when they encountered them. The test was a relatively new process for a race of Unusuals who had, only a few centuries before, routinely fed on humans without regret, killing without remorse the people who lived in this world alongside them.

James regarded her silently for a long moment. Then he nodded once. “I’ll tell Celeste to arrange it for tomorrow evening.” He reached up and took her hand. “I do have faith in you, Brynne. I just want to protect you from a failure that might set you back. But I hear you. I understand. Let’s see how you do.”

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Chapter 2 of The Paramedic’s Nemesis is one of the most distinctive structural choices Jamie Davis makes across the series: an entire chapter given over entirely to the villain’s perspective. Artur, the ancient vampire who has been engineering chaos in Elk City across multiple books, does not appear here as a caricature of evil. He appears as a strategist — frustrated, adapting, and genuinely dangerous in the way that only a being who has spent centuries thinking in terms of decades can be.

Urban fantasy readers who specifically seek out series with compelling antagonists — rather than just compelling heroes — will find Artur one of the most interesting characters in the series. Chapter 2 gives us his internal assessment of the funeral home failure: what went wrong, why the Station U paramedics continue to frustrate his plans, and what he intends to do differently. His analysis is cold, precise, and occasionally funny in the way that genuine arrogance tends to be. He notes that he had “a front-row seat” to the zombie attack he engineered, which he considers one of his better schemes until, once again, the ambulance showed up.

One of the chapter’s most significant revelations is that Artur has a specific reason for not simply attacking Dean directly: the last time he touched Dean, something protective in the contact nearly undid him. He does not fully understand the source of this protection — he suspects it is residual from Ashley’s Eldara presence — but he respects it enough to plan around it. For readers who enjoy villain narratives where the antagonist is genuinely wary of the protagonist rather than simply underestimating them, this detail is a significant and satisfying piece of series lore.

The chapter ends with Artur charming a health department worker named Felicity Richards and taking her home. It is a chilling ending precisely because of how efficiently it is handled — she is not a plot-significant character at this stage, she is simply convenient, and Artur’s casual willingness to use her as transportation and a meal flags more clearly than any speech could just how different his moral universe is from Dean’s. For readers who love antagonists whose evil is shown through behavior rather than stated through monologue, this closing beat is exactly the right note.

✚  Get The Paramedic’s Nemesis on Jamie Davis’s website.Get the Book →

CHAPTER TEXT

Artur watched Dean Flynn climb into the ambulance from his vantage point across the parking lot. The vampire lord had been able to conceal himself amidst the initial rush of people out the doors of the funeral home once the ambulance arrived. He had not counted on such a rapid response to the attacks. It had been his plan that the woman would attack all the people and they would disperse so that the local authorities would be unable to locate all of them. That would give them all time to start the turning of a larger zombie horde in the city and surroundings, creating a final confrontation between the humans and Unusuals here in Elk City. Unfortunately, that wasn’t going to happen tonight.

He reached into his overcoat’s pocket and felt the withered finger he held there. The artifact had been hard to locate and even more difficult to obtain once he’d discovered its location. The relic was the detached finger of the great Occulus, the Eldara warrior from the earliest days of the conflict between good and evil on earth. He had lost his right hand during a battle with the demon lord Asmodeus somewhere on the Assyrian Plains around four hundred B.C. The people of the time had divided the appendage up into individual relics that were used to do everything from heal mortal wounds and fatal diseases, to endow warriors with nearly endless endurance. This particular appendage, the ring finger, imparted on the user the ability to control the dead, either turning away and controlling Unusuals of undead types or creating new ones from the freshly dead.

Artur had used a substantial amount of the power stored in the relic that day to animate Gladys tonight. It had nearly worked out. Now he had to let the finger recharge for a day before he could use it again. He’d have to plan more carefully in the future if his plans were to work. There was also the challenge of avoiding the young human paramedic who seemed always to be there to counter him at the worst possible time. Mr. Flynn needed to be dealt with at some point, too.

The plan had been simple. Artur had shown up at the viewing and funeral with the intention of setting the woman loose on the visitors. He pretended to be a family member and mingled with the crowd. He blended in, playing the part as a distant cousin of Gladys McKellin. Even the closest family had not seen through his ploy, so there was not even need to use his vampire powers to charm anyone. They had invited him to visit the deceased in the casket, and he had accepted, waiting until he was alone to pull out the relic and touch the fingertip to the woman’s forehead and heart three times as the ritual demanded.

Then it was merely a game of waiting for the ceremony to begin. He was offered a seat in the front row with the surviving family members. He graciously accepted. It would be enjoyable to have a front-row seat for the coming festivities. He was not disappointed. He muttered one word under his breath while gripping the relic in his pocket.

“Rise.”

The gasps of alarm from those seated around him when she suddenly sat upright in the casket had been delightful to him. When she vaulted from the raised platform to attack the minister, who was delivering a tiresome sermon on living a virtuous life, the alarmed gasps turned to shrieks and screams of fear. He particularly enjoyed the memory of one little girl who sat crying through the whole attack, asking the same thing over and over again.

“Grandma, why?”

He had to admit it started out as one of the better schemes he had ever implemented in his long un-life, but that all changed when he ran outside with the others in the crowd to find the ambulance pulling into the parking lot. Once again, the cursed Station U paramedics showed up, plied their trade, and saved his victims from their fate. Artur contemplated more than once racing over to snap the necks of the paramedics, ridding the world of at least two of them once and for all. He thought better of it, though. He remembered the shocking touch he’d received before when contacting the Flynn boy.

The last time he’d tried to lay hands on that one, the contact had nearly undone him, though he covered it well. He wasn’t sure if Dean was under that protection anymore. He had managed to dispose of the Eldara bitch, even if only temporarily. There was no telling, though, if she had bestowed some lasting benefit from her presence on him. Over the past few centuries, she and her infernal Valkyrie sister, Ingrid, had done many things that had surprised him and foiled his plans. Artur would be more careful and bide his time on this go around. He had plans for paramedic Dean Flynn.

He was distracted a moment later from his contemplation of what he would do to Dean Flynn some day. An attractive brunette woman in a reflective orange and yellow vest that read “Health Department” walked up to him in the parking lot. He had been careless standing in the shadows so close by. She had noticed him standing on his own and came over to ask him to join the others.

“Sir, excuse me, but have you been inoculated against the infection from the outbreak?”

She laid a hand on his arm, and he spun on her in anger, gazing into her eyes. He was frustrated by his failed plan this evening. Perhaps this young cutie would offer him some entertainment for the night, as well as a meal later on. He bared his fangs at her in a broad grin as he poured the power of his charm ability over her like a deluge of water. She had a moment’s fear in her eyes, and then her face went blank.

“What is your name?” The ancient vampire asked.

“Felicity. Felicity Richards.”

“Well, Felicity, do you live alone?”

“I do, sire.”

“Did you drive here on your own or did you ride with a group?”

“I came in my car, sire,” she answered in a monotone.

“Excellent. I would like to leave here now without anyone noticing. Bring your vehicle over here so I may enter from the shadows. Then you may drive me to your abode.”

“Yes, sire. It will be my pleasure.” She turned and walked away to fetch her car without any further hesitation. Artur smiled. The evening had not been a total loss after all.

✚  Get the full Extreme Medical Services series — available now on Jamie Davis’s website.Get the Book →

Book six of the Extreme Medical Services series opens with one of the most economically effective scene-setting chapters in the entire run: Dean and Barry arrive at a funeral home to find multiple people streaming out with bite wounds, a zombie still loose inside, and no police backup. The call type is “multiple victims of an assault.” The reality is considerably worse.

For readers who love urban fantasy thrillers where the supernatural threat escalates quickly and the procedural response is immediate, chapter 1 of The Paramedic’s Nemesis delivers exactly that combination. Dean and Barry are now genuine equals — no more probie dynamic — and watching them divide responsibilities at a chaotic multi-casualty scene with calm efficiency is one of the payoffs of following a character’s competence arc across six books.

Chapter 1 saves its most important reveal for the villain POV buried inside it: Artur, the ancient vampire who has been orchestrating chaos in Elk City since book three, is back. He was at the funeral personally. He used a relic — the detached finger of an ancient Eldara warrior — to animate the corpse of Gladys McKellin right in her casket during her own viewing. For readers who love urban fantasy series with a persistent, intelligent antagonist who thinks in centuries rather than weeks, Artur’s return is the hook the chapter hangs everything on. He is not impulsive. He plans. And his plans involve a “zombie horde” that would force a final confrontation between the human and Unusual communities of Elk City.

The Occulus relic — the severed ring finger of an ancient heavenly warrior — is the book’s central supernatural MacGuffin, and it is introduced with exactly the right level of mythological specificity. It can control the undead and create new ones from the freshly dead. It needs time to recharge between uses. It is the kind of precisely defined supernatural weapon that makes urban fantasy world-building feel internally consistent, and readers who love series that track their rules carefully will appreciate the care taken here to establish the relic’s limits alongside its powers.

✚  Get the full Extreme Medical Services series on Jamie Davis’s website.Get the Book →

CHAPTER TEXT

Paramedic Dean Flynn walked into work ready for another night on the ambulance at Station U, the team of paramedics that served the creatures of myth and legend making up the Unusual community in Elk City. No sooner had he dropped his backpack on the break room table when the tones sounded from the overhead speakers for the first ambulance call of the night. He sighed. Dean had been a little late getting in today, so there’d be no time for dinner tonight before the shift. It was a shame, but that was the life of the working paramedic. Their live-in zombie chef, Freddy, would keep dinner warm for him until he returned in a few hours. His partner, Barry, had arrived early enough to wolf down what looked like an amazing Pasta Bolognese before their shift started. Dean waved at the departing day shift and headed to the ambulance bay with Barry.

“Do you want me to drive?” Barry asked.

“No, I’ll drive. You can have the first run tonight.” As full partners now, Dean and Barry divided the workload for their ambulance calls. They’d alternate who took the lead all night so they’d each get an equal chance to manage individual patients. Even with their unique and Unusual patients at Station U, most 911 calls were routine. Even the creatures of myth and legend got regular chest pain and had trouble breathing after an asthma attack.

The dispatcher’s voice sounded from the speakers as the two paramedics climbed inside the ambulance. “Paramedic U-191, respond to 1327 Central Avenue for multiple victims of an assault. Unknown at this time if the assailant is still on scene or not.”

Barry picked up the mic from the center console and keyed it to answer. “U-191 responding. Confirm if the police are responding as well?”

“Police units are responding but may be delayed due to an additional incident across town,” the female dispatcher’s voice replied.

There were special police units assigned to respond to Unusuals who needed law enforcement assistance as well. If there were some mythical creature rampaging and attacking people, it’d be good to have knowledgeable police officers there to back them up while they took care of any victims. Most of the human residents of Elk City were unaware of the true nature of their Unusual neighbors. Most Unusuals kept a low profile preferring to live quietly among the humans of the city.

Dean pulled the ambulance out of the bay, checking to make sure the garage doors were closing behind him before he pulled out onto the street and headed off to the scene of the incident.

“We need to stay on our toes, Barry. It could be anything.”

“Agreed.”

Dean had been Barry’s training officer until a few months ago, and he still slipped into instructor mode. The new Station U paramedic had lots of experience with human patients, even more time on the street in total than Dean did. But Dean had gained a lot of knowledge about their special class of patients in his short time on the Station U ambulance, and he had worked to bring the more experienced medic up to speed. Barry was a quick study, and he quickly passed his Station U probationary period, graduating to equal status with Dean.

It took them seven minutes to get to the address the dispatcher gave them. Dean pulled the ambulance into the parking lot of a funeral home. People were streaming out through the doors into the lot. Some of them were clutching bleeding wounds. Dean looked around for signs that police had arrived but saw no flashing blue and red lights that signaled law enforcement units were on the scene. He should have checked before they got to the location so they could stage at a safe distance. It was too late now, though. The injured funeral home visitors saw the flashing red and white lights of the ambulance as Dean pulled into the parking lot and started moving in their direction.

“It looks like the assailant is still inside from the way they are all running out of there. Let’s set up here, and we’ll start treating the ones in the parking lot until police arrive,” Dean suggested.

“Sounds like a plan,” Barry agreed. He unlatched his seatbelt and popped open his door to jump down and start pulling out supplies to treat whatever traumatic wounds the victims had.

Dean knew that often, in the case of an Unusual attack, it would be bite or claw wounds. Usually, they were not too serious as far as wounds went. The problems came from the magical side effects such bites tended to have. Every creature that bit humans could cause different problems. That made it necessary to identify the type of attacker as soon as possible so they could initiate counter-measures. There were herbal extracts and simple vaccinations that could treat most Unusual bites if they caught the victims in time.

Hopping out of the driver’s side, Dean turned and reached back inside the cab and switched on the perimeter floodlights that lit the area all around the ambulance. It was just getting dark outside, and they were going to need the light to assess any significant number of patients tonight. It would also help them spot any potential attacker mixed in with the retreating human victims. On the way to the rear of the ambulance, Dean got out their emergency bites kit from a compartment on his side of the unit which had all the vaccines and herbal extracts he might need for whatever was attacking people. He jogged around to the back of the unit to open the back doors and prep for receiving their first patients. Judging from the people streaming across the parking lot, it wouldn’t take long.

A woman walked up assisting a middle-aged man in his early fifties. They were the first to arrive. Dean smiled at her, all while watching around and behind her for signs of any disturbance that could signal the arrival of the assailant. He wanted to be ready to defend himself if needed. He and Barry had both been inoculated against most of the infectious magics that Unusuals carried. That didn’t matter much if you didn’t survive the initial attack.

*   *   *

Artur watched Dean Flynn climb into the ambulance from his vantage point across the parking lot. The vampire lord had been able to conceal himself amidst the initial rush of people out the doors of the funeral home once the ambulance arrived. He had not counted on such a rapid response to the attacks. It had been his plan that the woman would attack all the people and they would disperse so that the local authorities would be unable to locate all of them. That would give them all time to start the turning of a larger zombie horde in the city and surroundings, creating a final confrontation between the humans and Unusuals here in Elk City. Unfortunately, that wasn’t going to happen tonight.

He reached into his overcoat’s pocket and felt the withered finger he held there. The artifact had been hard to locate and even more difficult to obtain once he’d discovered its location. The relic was the detached finger of the great Occulus, the Eldara warrior from the earliest days of the conflict between good and evil on earth. He had lost his right hand during a battle with the demon lord Asmodeus somewhere on the Assyrian Plains around four hundred B.C. The people of the time had divided the appendage up into individual relics that were used to do everything from heal mortal wounds and fatal diseases, to endow warriors with nearly endless endurance. This particular appendage, the ring finger, imparted on the user the ability to control the dead, either turning away and controlling Unusuals of undead types or creating new ones from the freshly dead.

Artur had used a substantial amount of the power stored in the relic that day to animate Gladys tonight. It had nearly worked out. Now he had to let the finger recharge for a day before he could use it again. He’d have to plan more carefully in the future if his plans were to work. There was also the challenge of avoiding the young human paramedic who seemed always to be there to counter him at the worst possible time. Mr. Flynn needed to be dealt with at some point, too.

The plan had been simple. Artur had shown up at the viewing and funeral with the intention of setting the woman loose on the visitors. He pretended to be a family member and mingled with the crowd. He blended in, playing the part as a distant cousin of Gladys McKellin. Even the closest family had not seen through his ploy, so there was not even need to use his vampire powers to charm anyone. They had invited him to visit the deceased in the casket, and he had accepted, waiting until he was alone to pull out the relic and touch the fingertip to the woman’s forehead and heart three times as the ritual demanded.

Then it was merely a game of waiting for the ceremony to begin. He was offered a seat in the front row with the surviving family members. He graciously accepted. It would be enjoyable to have a front-row seat for the coming festivities. He was not disappointed. He muttered one word under his breath while gripping the relic in his pocket.

“Rise.”

The gasps of alarm from those seated around him when she suddenly sat upright in the casket had been delightful to him. When she vaulted from the raised platform to attack the minister, who was delivering a tiresome sermon on living a virtuous life, the alarmed gasps turned to shrieks and screams of fear. He particularly enjoyed the memory of one little girl who sat crying through the whole attack, asking the same thing over and over again.

“Grandma, why?”

He had to admit it started out as one of the better schemes he had ever implemented in his long un-life, but that all changed when he ran outside with the others in the crowd to find the ambulance pulling into the parking lot. Once again, the cursed Station U paramedics showed up, plied their trade, and saved his victims from their fate. Artur contemplated more than once racing over to snap the necks of the paramedics, ridding the world of at least two of them once and for all. He thought better of it, though. He remembered the shocking touch he’d received before when contacting the Flynn boy.

The last time he’d tried to lay hands on that one, the contact had nearly undone him, though he covered it well. He wasn’t sure if Dean was under that protection anymore. He had managed to dispose of the Eldara bitch, even if only temporarily. There was no telling, though, if she had bestowed some lasting benefit from her presence on him. Over the past few centuries, she and her infernal Valkyrie sister, Ingrid, had done many things that had surprised him and foiled his plans. Artur would be more careful and bide his time on this go around. He had plans for paramedic Dean Flynn.

He was distracted a moment later from his contemplation of what he would do to Dean Flynn some day. An attractive brunette woman in a reflective orange and yellow vest that read “Health Department” walked up to him in the parking lot. He had been careless standing in the shadows so close by. She had noticed him standing on his own and came over to ask him to join the others.

“Sir, excuse me, but have you been inoculated against the infection from the outbreak?”

She laid a hand on his arm, and he spun on her in anger, gazing into her eyes. He was frustrated by his failed plan this evening. Perhaps this young cutie would offer him some entertainment for the night, as well as a meal later on. He bared his fangs at her in a broad grin as he poured the power of his charm ability over her like a deluge of water. She had a moment’s fear in her eyes, and then her face went blank.

“What is your name?” The ancient vampire asked.

“Felicity. Felicity Richards.”

“Well, Felicity, do you live alone?”

“I do, sire.”

“Did you drive here on your own or did you ride with a group?”

“I came in my car, sire,” she answered in a monotone.

“Excellent. I would like to leave here now without anyone noticing. Bring your vehicle over here so I may enter from the shadows. Then you may drive me to your abode.”

“Yes, sire.” She turned and walked away to fetch her car. Artur smiled. The evening had not been a total loss after all.

✚  Don’t stop here — get the full Extreme Medical Services series by Jamie Davis.Get the Book →

Chapter 4 of The Paramedic’s Witch belongs entirely to Sam — an ordinary Elk City resident, enthusiastic Dungeon Master, and completely oblivious vessel for what is about to go very wrong. It is a chapter the series has been building toward without the reader quite realizing it, and it pays off the jade idol subplot with perfect deadpan horror-comedy timing.

Sam has no idea the jade figurines on his dinner table are real cursed artifacts from a demon hunter clan’s archive. He found them through some arrangement not yet fully explained to the reader, and he put them on his game table because they “would add a nice supernatural touch to the Lich’s lair.” He Googled “ancient transformation curses” for his Dungeon Master script, let random chance pick one, and printed the results. Readers who enjoy urban fantasy that finds genuine horror in the mundane — the everyday human who wanders into supernatural danger through pure innocent obliviousness — will find Sam an immediately recognizable and sympathetic character.

The reader has spent three chapters watching Dean, Jaz, and Jo scramble to find the missing idols before something goes wrong. Chapter 4 reveals that something already has — and that “something” is a D&D night. The chapter cuts between Sam’s game-master enjoyment (his players are having a string of terrible dice rolls that he is loving) and the growing green glow from the jade figurines on the table that nobody in the room notices. When Sam picks up his printed incantation and begins to read the “weird, alien words” aloud, the reader’s dread is absolute while Sam’s mood is pure delight. The gap between those two registers is where the chapter lives, and Jamie Davis works it expertly.

Sam’s D&D group — his wife Jill, longtime friends Eddie and Steve, and work colleague Sandra — are sketched in just enough detail to feel like real people rather than props. The easy camaraderie of a long-running tabletop group is captured with genuine warmth. For readers who love urban fantasy that finds its stakes in ordinary people’s ordinary lives being disrupted by supernatural events they did not ask for, this chapter is a miniature model of why the genre works at its best.

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CHAPTER TEXT

Sam continued his search for the perfect, creepy magic words to use in the weekly Dungeon Masters game with his friends. They had been participating in this role-playing game campaign with him as the Dungeon Leader for the last five years. He, his wife, and a few of his old high-school buds had been playing off and on for years, but this was the longest running game any of them had been involved with.

They had each invested a lot into their characters, and Sam worked hard to make each week’s adventure special in some way. This week, he had them invading the lair of a Lich, a supernatural being of the undead variety. This particular Lich he had designed was a real bastard and he was going to enjoy playing his part in the upcoming gaming encounter.

The Google search had turned up several options for old incantations and it was hard to choose from them. He wanted something that was not English and would lend a dark tone to the pretend spell-casting he had planned. In the end, he let random choice make the decision for him, closing his eyes and stabbing at the screen with a finger to pick one of the search engine’s choices.

Sam opened his eyes and saw a link to ancient transformation curses. Perfect, he thought. Sam clicked the link and hit the print icon on his computer screen to print out the strange and alien words that came up. He got up to start setting up the dinner table for the game in the small apartment he and his wife leased. A black table cloth went on the table first, followed by the three electric candles from the bookshelf. On a whim, Sam brought the two jade idols over, too. They would add a nice supernatural touch to the Lich’s lair.

His friends would be arriving soon, and he went back into the bedroom to see what was keeping his wife from coming out to help set up for so long. He didn’t see the faint glow in the eyes of the two green figurines on the dinner table, or the shifting text on the printed paper nearby.

*   *   *

A groan went up from around the table as Eddie exhibited another of his horrible rolls on the pair of twenty-sided dice. The low result on both dice meant the team would fail to find any traps as they entered the passage that led to the Lich’s lair. Sam just smiled and gave a mock laugh “mwa-ha-ha-ha.” He was enjoying this night’s game a lot. Every one of the four players had shown horrible luck when rolling their dice for the game and several characters had come close to dying. Everyone was tense and the mood in the room was both excited and a little annoyed at the string of bad luck.

Sam asked them what they wanted to do next. He knew that there was no real choice. They had come here to play the game and the game led them down into the underground lair of the undead creature waiting for them. The trap had been laid.

“Man, Sam, you’ve outdone yourself this time,” Sandra said. “The whole scenario tonight is super-creepy. The hair on the back of my neck is standing up.”

“Thanks, Sandra. Jill and I like it when you guys come over and play. I thought we could go the extra mile for tonight’s session. So what do you all want to do next? Eddie detected no traps ahead.”

The players all looked at each other around the table. Eddie and Steve had both gone to high school with Sam and even though they had gone off to college, they both had kept in touch with their old friend, rejoining his weekly games when they graduated and returned to Elk City to settle into their adult lives. Sandra was a work friend of Sam’s wife, Jill. She was a divorcee and the newest member of their group. He suspected she was using this as a way to get out of her house once a week now that her ex-husband had moved out. She added a lot to the group, though, and she was easy on the eyes, too.

“We will go down the passage to the door at the far end,” Steve announced. “It’s what we’re here for. Let’s kill this Lich and steal his treasure.”

There were nods of approval and Sam smiled. Now it was time for the fun to begin. Eddie had failed his attempt to find traps and the party of adventurers was about to walk right into the Lich’s first defensive trap, laid out just for invaders like them.

“You step forward and hear a ‘click’ from down the hallway,” Sam announced.

“Run away!” Sandra shouted.

“I duck to the floor,” Eddie proclaimed.

“I draw my sword,” Steve said standing up.

“Me, too,” Jill added.

“Too late,” Sam said. “You are all transported by magic to a large room. There is a pentagram drawn on the floor and you find yourselves within it. None of you can move so much as a muscle. You hear a weird deep voice begin to speak nearby and you can’t understand what the words are saying. It is in a language you have never heard before.”

Sam picked up the sheet of paper and began to read the words printed there. He was really in the groove and was surprised that he didn’t stumble over the unfamiliar word structure he encountered. There was a strange, green glow from the center of the table as the last word of the first line left his lips — and the eyes of both jade idols opened wide.

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Chapter 3 of The Paramedic’s Witch introduces the book’s central supernatural problem with a truck barreling directly at Dean on a city sidewalk. He freezes, time slows, and at the last moment Jaz yanks him backward by the collar of his jacket, saving his life for the second time. Readers who love urban fantasy plots structured around a cursed object spreading chaos through a city will find the setup here both elegant and immediately threatening.

Dean has accidentally touched a demonic idol — a jade figurine — that has placed him under a cloud of supernatural bad luck. Jo cast a protection spell to mitigate the worst of it, but as this chapter makes clear, “mitigate” is doing a lot of work in that sentence. The truck was real. The accident site where the remaining figurines are buried is causing a string of worker injuries that the foreman describes as “fluke accidents.” Readers who enjoy urban fantasy plots where the supernatural threat is diffuse and environmental — spreading outward through a community rather than targeting a single individual — will find this premise a satisfying change of pace from the more direct threats of earlier books.

Chapter 3 is the first chapter where the three of them operate as a real investigative team. Jaz handles the contractor negotiation to get them access to the demolished building site. Jo uses her witch’s sight to scan the rubble for traces of the idols’ aura. Dean spots the pattern connecting the worker accidents to the supernatural cause. Each of them contributes something the others cannot — exactly the dynamic that urban fantasy readers search for when they look for “ensemble urban fantasy with each character having a defined role.” The trio works because none of them overlaps; they are genuinely complementary rather than redundantly capable.

The half-demolished remains of the Errington Security building is one of the most emotionally loaded locations in the series. It is where Jaz’s parents died, where her clan’s history was housed, and where the cursed idols were presumably stored before the explosion. Bringing the team back to search through the rubble puts Jaz in the position of grieving and working simultaneously — a combination that reveals character more efficiently than almost any other narrative device. Readers who have followed Jaz since book four will feel the weight of this setting immediately.

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CHAPTER TEXT

Dean, Jaz and Jo left the apartment building and started the short, two-block walk to the burned out remains of the former Errington Security headquarters. They had just gotten to the intersection across the street from the site when a delivery truck swerved out of passing traffic. It hopped the curb heading straight for Dean. He wasn’t paying attention. He was going through some emails on his phone and looked up, startled by the noise and shouts, to see the truck barreling towards him. He couldn’t move. He just froze in place.

He tried to move out of the way, but felt like he was mired in glue. Then he felt an iron grip clamp onto the collar of his uniform jacket and yank him backwards out of the path of the out of control vehicle. He fell backward as he lost his balance, and landed on top of whoever had rescued him. He realized after a moment of struggle that it was Jaz.

“You can get off me now,” she said.

“Oh, sorry.” Dean rolled off of her onto the sidewalk and got back to his feet. He extended his hand to help her up, and after looking up from the ground for a moment, she took it and he helped her back to her feet. “Thanks for that. I couldn’t move. It was all going in slow motion, kind of like one of those dreams where you can’t get away, no matter how hard you try.”

“Dean you need to be more careful. I mean seriously, Jo and I told you that you’ve touched a demonic idol that will bring you bad luck. You would think that you’d be more aware of your surroundings when you know your luck is compromised.”

“I thought Jo’s spell solved that problem.” Dean looked at his daughter. “What was all that mumbo jumbo back in the apartment about if it wasn’t to protect me?”

“It was a protection spell, Dad, and it worked. Mom grabbed you and saved your life. You were lucky. That truck could have splattered you all over the sidewalk.”

Dean turned to look at where the truck had come to a stop just before crashing into one of the shops that lined the street. The store owner had come out and was shouting at the driver. Dean looked around to make sure no one else was injured. There didn’t appear to be any other casualties, just his own pride.

“Come on, Dean, we need to get over there and find the other two figurines before it’s too late,” Jaz said.

Dean joined the two women and together, after carefully checking that all oncoming traffic was stopped by the light, crossed the street to the newly erected construction fence that surrounded the remains of the Errington Security building. The three of them had to walk halfway down the block to get to the construction entrance where trucks and workers were coming and going from the site.

“Let me talk to the construction foreman when we get inside. They are pretty careful about anyone but their demolition workers coming on the site,” Jaz said once they got inside. She walked up to an office trailer nearby and went inside.

While she was inside, Dean and Joanna looked around as the workers went about their work knocking down the remaining brick walls. A front end loader was scooping up rubble and filling a dump truck nearby.

“Do you see anything, Jo? Any sign of the other figurines?”

“No. They could be covered by the rubble and wouldn’t show as easily, but I think I would still see the aura emanating from where they were.”

Jaz came out of the trailer, followed by a tall man in work khakis and a blue button-down shirt. He was wearing a white hard hat and carried two others. Jaz was putting a similar hard hat on, adjusting it for her ponytail.

“Guys, this is Joe Anderson, the construction foreman.”

Dean shook his hand and took the offered helmet, putting it on. Jo did the same.

“Yeah, we need to be careful,” the foreman said. “I’ve had three guys injured in the last three days by fluke accidents and the insurance inspectors are due here any minute. Everyone on the site has to wear their helmets and I have to ask you three to stay back from the work. I know you are looking for some personal effects and I’ve had my guys keeping an eye out. We’ve been putting whatever we find over in that storage trailer over there. If you’ll follow me.”

The three of them filled in behind him as he walked over to storage container trailer nearby. Dean brought up the rear and leaned forward so that his companions could hear him over the machinery. “Fluke accidents sounds like we have a confirmation that the other idols were here, right?”

“I was thinking the same thing, Dean. Jo, keep your eyes open.”

“I am, Mom. Nothing pops out to me so far.”

Joe unlocked a padlock and opened the other trailer. There were a few boxes and dusty items set on tables inside. There was no light in the trailer, just what streamed in the door.

“I’ll be outside if you need anything. I’ve got to keep an eye out for that inspector,” Joe said. He stepped outside the trailer and left the three of them to look through the piles of stuff.

Jaz went in first. To Dean, it seemed as if her steps were tense and deliberate, as if entering the remains of her family’s legacy required a private act of will each time. He followed quietly, giving her space, and let Jo slip in beside him to begin scanning the dusty shelves with her witch’s sight.

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