Annette replies in a pained voice, “I’m not sure that’s a good thing. He’s…”
“Suffering,” Foley murmurs. “Isn’t that right, Trisha? He’s suffering?”
Trisha hangs her stethoscope around her neck. “I don’t know how conscious he is, since he can’t speak, but if he’s aware at all, then yes, I imagine he’s in a great deal of pain.”
“Is there anything we can do?” I ask.
Trisha gives me a once-over, but her expression reveals no obvious judgment. “I’m afraid I’ve already tried everything I can think of. I used every application of human medicine I felt applied to his injuries, but nothing appeared to have any significant effects on his condition. I also fed him a cocktail of human blood, vampire blood, and faerie blood in an attempt to jumpstart his healing factor. But whatever he came into contact with seems to have disabled it somehow.” She gently lifts Lucian’s arm and gestures to his wrist. “Oddly though, it appears he was healing from this at one point. Some patches of his skin show signs of regeneration.”
I run a hand through my hair. “He was hit by a synthetic poison, and according to the man who dosed him with it, the only antidote is the blood from one of the Children of Enoch.”
“And who was it that dosed him?” Annette says. “He hasn’t been able to speak since we brought him in, so we don’t know precisely what happened, to him or you, after he sent his last status update.”
“The last update was the one he sent while we were resting in the park, right?”
She nods.
I breathe through my mouth, trying to ward off the reek of decomp. “All right. Let me just start from there.” I return to the moment that Lucian and I sensed something was wrong with the atmosphere of the park and carry the story through to the moment where the ifrit detonated and I was thrown against the DSI SUV. “I’m guessing you guys showed up shortly after the explosion?” I say when finished.
“Yes,” Annette replies. “Lucian requested a pickup, so two of us were on our way to the park when the explosion occurred. We arrived about thirty seconds too late to help. We saw you get arrested by the DSI team and elected not to confront them then and there, because the explosion attracted a lot of attention from the mundane authorities. Instead, we searched the area for Lucian and found him lying on a rooftop, in his current condition. We carried him off before any additional DSI agents arrived on the scene.”
Foley, who’s started pacing in a circle, speaks up. “Okay, so now we’re all up to speed, but how will any of this information help us fix Lucian?”
“Well,” I say, “clearly the cloaked man was telling the truth about his blood. Lucian was in far worse shape than this before he drank some. So if I had to guess, I’d say the reason he’s not fully healed is because he didn’t get enough. So if we can pin down one of the Children and convince them to ‘donate’ some blood, maybe we can coax his healing factor back into working order.”
Trisha makes a sound of disapproval. “If that’s your plan, you’ll have to be quick about it.”
“I thought you said he wasn’t getting any worse,” Foley snaps.
Trisha tugs on her messy bun, clearly struggling to restrain some level of natural sass so she doesn’t insult her house elder. “The poison is no longer causing additional damage. The problem is, he’s already incurred so much damage, particularly in his lungs and airway, that if he doesn’t regain his healing factor soon, his body will begin to shut down.” She rubs her chin. “I suppose we could try putting him on life support to give him more time, but I don’t have ready access to the required equipment.”
Foley stops pacing. “Surely we can buy whatever we need.”
“We can,” she says, “but it’s a matter of logistics. We can’t very well set up a makeshift ICU in this swanky hotel. We’ll have to move him elsewhere, to an actual medical facility or a rough equivalent of one. To do that, we’ll need an ambulance, because he’s too fragile to be tossed into the back of a car again. Furthermore—”
“I understand,” Foley interrupts. “It’s not going to be a quick and easy process.”
“There’s another option we can try first.”
The entire suite falls silent. It isn’t until every pair of eyes in the room, as well as those peering through the crowded doorway, swing my way that I fully realize I was the one who spoke. The words that bubbled out of my mouth were a product of the vague and uncomfortable ideas that I’ve been batting around in my head while listening to the others argue over how to best handle Lucian’s care.
Ideas that first took root when I was retelling the tale of the skirmish in the park, when I glossed over the fact that I recognized the golem’s design. Ideas that have wormed their way into the darkest corners of my memory and dug up fears and suspicions I hoped would never see the light of day.
When I opened my mouth and blabbed that sentence, my brain still hadn’t agreed to talk. But it seems that, like usual, my heart is in the right place. And it’s willing to act on that morality even if it hurts me.
Here I go again, the world’s biggest glutton for punishment.
“To what option are you referring?” Trisha asks me. “If it’s magic, I’m afraid that’s a moot point. All we can do to regenerate damaged tissue is accelerate the body’s natural healing ability. Lucian currently has no healing ability whatsoever.”
“It’s not magic. It’s blood.”
Trisha raises an eyebrow. “Were you listening a minute ago, when I said—?”
“You tried human blood, vampire blood, and faerie blood.” I shed Foley’s spare coat, let it fall to the floor while I roll up the torn sleeve of my shirt. “You didn’t try mine.”
Taken aback, she says, “And what are you?”
“Don’t know.” I step closer to her and hold out my arm. “But if you give Lucian my blood, I think I’ll be a step closer to finding out.”
Trisha looks from my proffered arm to the half-dead man on the bed who’s fighting for each breath, and starting to lose. “Well, I suppose anything’s worth a shot at this point.” She squats next to the bed and digs through a bag of medical supplies until she locates a needle, an elastic band, and a few empty vials.
“Make a fist,” she orders me as she ties the band above my elbow. When I comply, she spends a few seconds picking from the visible veins. She then jabs the needle into my arm without warning.
I grimace. “Jeez. Could you give me a countdown next time?”
“Don’t be such a baby.” She attaches the first vial to the end of the needle. “Weren’t you hit by a car earlier?”
“Among other things,” I say, “but most of them I saw coming.”
“If you didn’t see the needle in my hand, you might need to get your eyesight checked.”
“You’re a very polite doctor, you know that?”
“One, I’m not a doctor. And two, I have no obligation to be nice.”
“Oh great. So a random person with no qualifications is drawing my blood?”
“Not what I said.” She yanks the first vial free and sets it on the nightstand behind her. “But you—”
“Can we save the verbal sparring for a less harrowing moment?” Annette cuts in.
“She started it,” I say at the same time Trisha says, “He started it.”
Annette is less than impressed. “Just shut up and get on with it, will you?”
“Fine,” we both mumble and finish the blood draw in irritated silence.
Once she has the third vial filled, she tugs the needle out and hands me a cotton ball to press over the puncture for the seconds it takes to scab. I step back from the bed to watch her work, morbidly fascinated as she unscrews the cap on one of the vials and attaches in its place a contraption with a long tube hanging off the end. She proceeds to carefully thread the tube through Lucian’s right nostril—or what’s left of it—and down his throat, like a feeding tube. Once the end of the tube is far enough down to send its contents to his stomach, Trisha tips Lucian�
�s head back, lifts the vial high, and flips it over, letting gravity do the work.
Nothing noticeable happens immediately. Lucian remains in his comatose state, hardly breathing, pieces of his ruined skin flaking off every time his chest twitches.
Trisha doesn’t let that deter her. She holds the vial aloft and lets it completely drain. When it’s empty, she deftly slips the tube out of Lucian’s throat and backs away.
“Could be a few minutes before it takes effect,” she says. “In his condition, any response will likely be belated.”
Grim, we all wait. And wait. And wait. For two minutes. Four minutes. Six.
Trisha checks the watch on her wrist for the umpteenth time and opens her mouth to inform us my grand idea was a bust. But as the first syllable forms on her tongue, something catches her eye. She returns to the bedside and grabs Lucian’s limp wrist, examining the same section she pointed out earlier, the area that showed regeneration after his ingestion of blood in the park. She brings the mottled skin close to her keen eyes, scrutinizing every millimeter, until she finds whatever she spotted from afar and exclaims, “Aha!”
“What?” Foley says. “Is it working?”
“It is,” Trisha replies. “Slowly, but it looks like his healing factor is coming back to life.”
Relief sweeps the room in a chorus of sighs.
“Will more blood help?” Annette asks, gesturing to the two remaining vials.
“If his healing stops again”—Trisha sets the expended vial on the nightstand beside the others—“I’ll administer another vial. For now, I think it might be best if we don’t try to make him heal fast. Too large a shock to his system might make him react poorly, depending on how badly his nervous system and circulatory system are damaged.”
“Very well,” Annette says. “But please let us know if his status changes.”
“Oh, you’re leaving me so soon?” Trisha chuckles. “And here I was, enjoying all this company.”
Annette rolls her eyes. “We have a great many problems to solve, and we cannot wait for Lucian to recover.”
Foley, who’d fallen into a daze, staring wistfully at Lucian, snaps back to attention after he processes Annette’s statement. “Yes, that’s right. We have those messages Lucian and Cal retrieved from the flophouse. We need to try and decipher them to figure out where this ‘Hays’ is planning to hand over the sword, if he hasn’t already done so.”
I turn toward Foley. “Lucian said something about sending them to—”
I blink, and suddenly find myself looking up at the ceiling, with Foley, Annette, and Trisha leaning over me. It takes me a second to figure out I’m lying on the floor, with my neck supported by Foley’s hand and Annette gripping both my arms.
Concerned, I ask, “Uh, what just happened?”
“You fainted,” Trisha says. “You’ve exerted yourself too much today. You need to eat and sleep, in that order, to restore your strength. You’re pretty hardy for being half human and half…whatever the hell you are, but everybody’s got limits. You’ve hit yours. So shovel a burger and fries down your gullet, and then take a nap.”
“You’re such an eloquent orator. You must make so many friends.”
She flips me off and says to Annette, “Go toss him into some other room.”
“Gladly.” Annette hauls me up like I’m a bag of feathers, slings me over her shoulder, and proceeds to carry me toward the room next to Foley’s master bedroom.
Foley, however, jogs up behind us and instructs Annette to deposit me in his room instead. When she gives him a mystified look, he says, “The other bedroom is our makeshift armory, remember?”
Annette pauses a foot from the door. “Oh, right. I probably shouldn’t throw him onto a box of grenades.”
“Grenades?” I squeak out.
“We like to be prepared, Kinsey,” she says, “unlike some people I know.”
Changing direction, Annette takes me into Foley’s room. True to form, she literally throws me onto the bed.
I roll myself up into a sitting position. “Hey! I’m not a sack of flour.”
Annette smirks as she backtracks to the door. “I know. Sacks of flour don’t complain nearly as much as you.”
I give her the same rude gesture Trisha gifted me a minute ago. Annette makes to respond, but Foley cuts her off.
“Gather the group. I’ll join you all in a few minutes,” he says to her. “Let me get Cal settled with some food first.”
Annette glances between me and Foley, sensing that something’s amiss. But she doesn’t point it out. “As you wish, my lord,” she replies and trudges off.
Foley heads in the direction of the kitchen, and returns shortly after with three whole bags of hot food delivered from a local pizza joint. “Your pizza options are pepperoni, sausage, or three cheese, and you’ve also got your choice of barbecue wings, cheesy breadsticks, garlic bread, and something that roughly translates to ‘chicken tenders from hell.’ I guess that means spicy.”
“Ah, the dinner of champions.” I shimmy up the mattress until I’m leaning against the headboard, a pillow propped behind my back. “I’d expect nothing less from the great House Tepes.”
“We’re running a covert op. Fast food comes with the territory.”
Foley sets the bags on the same table we ate at earlier, and then drags the whole table over to the bed. He dishes out a considerable portion of food for me and unscrews the cap on a bottle of water like he thinks I’m too bushed to do it myself. Handing me the water, he demands I drink half of it before I eat. I don’t argue with him because my throat’s as dry as a desert. Once I drink enough to satisfy him, he hands me the paper plate piled high with food.
I expect him to leave at this point, but to my surprise, he shuts the door to give us privacy. He grabs one of the chairs left near the window and carries it over to the table’s new location. He arranges the chair so that when he sits down, he faces me head on.
I have a brief flashback to my interrogation at the DSI Moscow office, and realize that Foley had Annette place me in his room not because he was concerned I’d accidentally kick a box of grenades over, but because nobody would dare enter Lord Tepes’ bedroom without express permission.
He wants to talk to me alone.
Foley grabs a cheesy breadstick for himself and says, “How did you know that your blood would cure Lucian?”
I pause with a slice of pizza halfway to my mouth. “I didn’t know for sure. I had a sneaking suspicion.”
“A suspicion that…?”
“That I might in some way be related to the Children of Enoch.”
Foley lets out an exasperated breath, but stifles his frustration by ripping a chunk out of his breadstick. He uses the time it takes him to chew and swallow to consider all the implications of my response. “What made you think that might be the case?”
I drop my pizza slice back onto my plate, my appetite waning. “My mom.”
“Come again?”
“You know how my mom died, right?”
Foley nods, not sure where I’m going with this. “Lucian gave me a brief rundown of what you told him after the museum incident.”
“Yeah, well, here’s the thing. The creature that my mom died fighting—what I thought was a summoned Eververse monster—was actually one of the golems used by the Children of Enoch.”
He reels back in his chair. “Are you serious?”
“I wish I wasn’t. But those golems have an unmistakable look, and the creature that my mom took on in my recovered memory…it was a little bigger, a little broader, a little uglier, but it was the same type of creature. Without a doubt. And since that day and this day are the only two times I’ve ever encountered them—”
“It stands to reason that the first one was also created by the Children of Enoch,” he finishes. “But that doesn’t necessarily mean you’re related to the Children.”
“I would agree with you, if it wasn’t for the fact my mom died protecting me from the crea
ture. That thing was after me, and the reason why is in here.” I prod at my chest. “It’s in my blood. It’s in my soul. It’s whatever makes me nonhuman.”
Foley rolls his breadstick between his fingers, either unconcerned or unaware he’s smearing grease all over his hand. “You believe the golem was sent to kill you because you have a blood connection to the Children?”
“Kill me, or abduct me.”
“Maybe its master wanted you as a ‘recruit,’ you mean?”
“It’s a possibility.”
“There are a lot of possibilities here,” he counters.
“But only a few make sense in the context of what just happened with Lucian.”
“Right.” He rests his half-eaten breadstick on top of the box it came from and grabs a napkin to mop up the grease that has dribbled onto the table. “The man in the cloak said that only the blood of the Children of Enoch could cure the golem poison, but your blood appears to have worked just as well as his. So the logical conclusion is that your blood is genetically similar, which implies you’re at least partly the same species.”
“Exactly.” I scratch the back of my neck. “Looks to me like you’re dining with the enemy.”
“You’re forgetting something.”
“What?”
“Your aura. It’s different from theirs.” He grabs his breadstick again and stuffs the whole thing into his mouth. “They have a…What did you call it, a ‘rusty edge’?”
“But there’s no telling if that’s something they’re born with or something they develop as they age,” I say. “That discoloration could be a result of the ‘blood restraints.’ If that curse is progressive, like we postulated earlier, then it could be that their souls degrade over time and the damage is reflected by their auras.”
“Is that what you’re worried about?” he asks, finally cleaning his greasy hand with the crumpled napkin. “That if you’re the same species as the Children, the blood restraints will hit you too, and your soul will start to unravel or something?”
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