by Chloe Garner
Vince was a miracle worker, and the bottle showed up in less than an hour.
“Me,” Tina said when the man Vince had sent up with the bottle was back on the elevator heading downstairs again. “It has to be me.”
Tell shook his head.
“I don’t like it.”
“What is she talking about?” Colette asked, coming to stand where she could see both of them.
“You’ve both fed,” Tina said. “It has to be me.”
“Either one of us is more likely to survive if you’re wrong,” Tell said. “And there’s no reason to be this certain that the techniques they’re using to resurrect people are the same as what they used on me.”
“Yes there is,” Tina said. “It has to be me.”
“What’s going on?” Colette asked. Tell held up the bottle.
“She wants to inject you with a rather large dose of this and feed off of you, and then have me shoot her.”
“I’ll inject myself, too,” Tina said. “No way to know which way is going to work better.”
“Shoot her,” Colette said, taking a step back. “With one of their guns.”
“Yes,” Tell said. “If she’s right - and the odds seem to be against it, given how simple this is, as a solution - then we can go into the Order and they’re going to have a lot harder time stopping us than they expect. Their go-to weapons aren’t going to kill us. It doesn’t make it a safe trip, but it makes it so that they probably wouldn’t kill us on the way in the door.”
“I have no intention of going in the door,” Tina said.
He looked over at her for a moment and then nodded.
“Somehow, I didn’t see that coming,” he said.
“Should have,” Tina said, and he nodded.
“I very much should have.”
“What are you saying?” Colette asked. “That… Do you think I should do it or not?”
“I never fed on you,” Tell said. “I’m not going to ask you to do it now. But this…? This is a secret that I’d like to keep away from my people as much as I can, because if it comes out that any of this is possible, people are going to kill each other over it.”
“I’ll do it,” Colette said.
Tell looked at Tina with exasperation.
“You’re actually going to make me shoot you, aren’t you?”
“No,” Tina said. “I’m going to start by cutting myself with one of their fancy knives dipped in the pink goop and see what happens. What kind of scientist are you? You start with the small-scale test.”
“Oh,” he said.
“So dramatic,” Tina said. “We have to work quickly, but it doesn’t mean we have to be stupid.”
Hunter had let the last fountain take a shower upstairs, and he escorted her back down, now.
“It was fun,” she said to Tell as the doors closed, and he waved in a polite but unencouraging way.
“So,” Hunter said. “You’re going to test out the cure for the cure for vampirism tonight, and Tell doesn’t want you to because it’s risky and untried. Have I got that all about right?”
“Yes,” Tina said after working through it once. “That’s right.”
Hunter shrugged.
“And you aren’t going to kill her by accident?”
“No,” Tina said.
“Then can we decide whether or not you two are storming the castle separately? I kind of want to see what happens here.”
“If she reacts to the… pink goop… the same way that I did, we’re going to have to react quickly,” Tell said.
“I’m not going to stab myself in the chest,” Tina said. “We’re talking about a small cut that won’t close with pressure. Nothing more.”
“Until you decide it worked,” Tell said.
“If I was really going to be scientific about it, I’d test the cut to make sure it did fail to close, first,” she said. “But I’d rather not deal with a weeping wound that we don’t know how to close, if it turns out that healing Tell was a fluke.”
“Don’t even say that,” Tell protested. “You haven’t had any time to think about this.”
“She said I’d be the one to figure it out,” Tina said. “I’m close. Let me do my thing.”
Colette went to sit on the couch, and Tell shook his head.
“You’re in way over your head, here,” he said, going to sit next to her.
“It’s the same as getting drunk,” Tina said softly, watching. “Just much faster.”
The night was short.
So short.
They had so much to do, yet, if they were… Next things next. She wasn’t going to worry about what Kyle was going to choose, if they did go in after him.
Not yet.
Tell measured the fluid into a syringe and injected Colette.
Colette looked up at her.
“I don’t feel any different,” she said. “Should I feel different?”
“No,” Tina said, taking Tell’s seat next to the woman on the couch.
“Is it going to hurt?” Colette asked, and Tina shook her head.
“I’m going to give it a couple of minutes to kind of… spread out and circulate. I’ll bite your arm, here, and there isn’t any risk that I’ll either take more blood than you can afford or that I’ll turn you by mistake. Neither one of those is possible. Once I let go of the bite, the holes will close over. You’ll want to make sure you get something to eat, but it’s about the same as giving blood.”
“Aren’t you tidy about it?” Colette asked, sounding nervous. Tina swallowed.
“I still hate it,” she confided. “That someone else has to be involved just for me to stay alive. It’s the worst part in a life that has lots of bad parts.”
“I’m going to go ahead and inject you, too, as long as I’m set up,” Tell said, drawing another dose.
“Aren’t you going to use a different needle?” Colette asked. Tell snorted.
“She’s about to drink your blood. And if you did have anything contagious, it wouldn’t find anything inside of her to cling hold off. Vampirism cures almost every disease in the world, because diseases don’t live inside of dead hosts.”
Colette nodded, and Tina checked her phone for the time.
“You ready?” she asked.
Colette put her arm out, entranced, and Tina let her fangs drop in, biting Colette’s forearm where her pulse was tangible. Her blood didn’t taste any different than any other Tina had had before, and that concerned her, but the decision was made. She wasn’t going to further shoot the woman up and try again.
She didn’t feed hard because she didn’t need it, and she retracted her fangs, leaving two small bloodmarks on Colette’s wrist where she hadn’t sucked it clean. Tell gave Colette a napkin and Tina leaned away, as awkward as she’d ever been at this.
“It didn’t hurt at all,” Colette said. “I thought you were lying.”
“Have to keep ‘em coming back somehow,” Hunter said, kneeling and opening the box. “You like the serrated one or the straight one?”
“Straight,” Tina said. “The stuff is up on the fridge.”
“I remember,” Hunter said, disappearing. When he came back, he was holding out his arm and looking at it with curiosity.
“Well, it works, whatever it is,” he said.
“What did you do?” Tell demanded.
“I don’t want her going in there thinking that her magic fix works if she heals something that any one of us would have healed,” Hunter said, dropping onto the floor in front of her. “It does burn, and it’s warm and that is so strange.”
Tina looked at the two-inch-long gash he’d put on the back of his arm, not very deep, but enough. It should have stopped bleeding almost before it started, and the two corners of the cut should have been drawing closed.
It just seeped blood.
“You want to try to turn me?” Hunter asked, daring her. “Or should I be the first vampire to ever turn myself?”
“Do you want her to s
ee it?” Tina asked Tell, and he shook his head.
“No. I don’t.”
“Tell,” Colette said as he tried to get her to stand up. “Don’t do this. I’m a part of it, and I deserve to be here. You said no, every single time I asked you to turn me, and I’ll never know why, but you’re just being secretive to be secretive now. I’m not asking you to turn me. I’m asking you not to treat me like a child.”
“It’s one of our secrets,” Tell said.
“I think I’ve proved I’m pretty good with those,” Colette answered.
“I want to try,” Tina said. “But I don’t want to contaminate my blood with yours or yours with mine or… it confuses the test. I need to see if it works, first, and then… I still want to try.”
Hunter nodded, sitting cross-legged on the floor and presenting her with the knife.
She put the blade to her skin, but found it oddly difficult to pull it across.
“Not there,” Hunter said, taking the blade away from the inside of her arm. “Better up here.”
He moved her arm around so that the knife was against her shoulder.
“Hurts less,” he said.
She nodded.
Looked away.
Braced.
“I can’t do it,” Tina said.
“You had a knife sticking out of your back last night,” Colette said. “And this is too much for you?”
“You try,” Tina said, sour.
“I’ll do it,” Tell said, stepping around Hunter. “You ready?”
She nodded, and there was a slight pull, and then her arm felt wet.
“Ouch,” she said. “That does burn.”
She looked over at the gash in her arm, at the way the blood turned from purple to red, and she frowned.
It hadn’t worked.
“Wait,” Tell said, folding his arms.
She waited, and slowly the blood turned back to purple and the cut began to zip itself closed.
“Re-dose the knife and try again,” she said. “Make sure that Hunter didn’t get all of it on him, instead.”
“It worked,” Tell said. “You saw it.”
“I saw something,” Tina said. “But I want to know for sure. Cover the knife again and do it again.”
Tell cut her other shoulder, and the result was the same.
“All right,” Tina said, standing. “Here.”
She marked a spot on her thigh and Tell shook his head.
“You’ve proved your point. It works.”
“Stab me,” she said. “Don’t just cut me.”
Tell’s eyes met hers, and she shrugged.
“You’re going to shoot me tonight,” she said. “This is to be as sure as we can be that it’s not going to kill me. Better to know our limits now than to find them out while we’re fighting.”
He licked his lips and nodded, stabbing her.
He let go of the knife and took a big step back.
“I think that was harder than turning you,” he said, turning around and putting his hands over his face. “I can’t believe I just did that.”
Tina was trying very hard not to react, but it hurt a lot, and it burned like the knife was red-hot. Hunter glanced over his shoulder at Tell, then reached up and pulled the knife back out.
“Thank you,” Tina mouthed at him, and he ducked his head.
“So?” he asked, sitting up.
Tina covered the hole with her hands, just reflexively.
“It hurts,” she said, trying not to whine. She pressed harder, then closed her eyes. “But it’s working.”
She let it sit for maybe thirty seconds, then took her hands away and pulled the fabric of her pants around to show that there was no wound left.
She stood up.
“It’s time,” she said.
“Is it really necessary?” Tell asked, not turning to look at her again.
“We need to know now, not later,” Tina said. “They almost killed you.”
He sighed.
“I’ve fed twice tonight,” he said. “I can’t take in enough blood to have it work for me.”
“If it makes you feel better, we’re going to do you next, with just the injection,” Tina said. “And I’m not going to hesitate to pull the trigger, if it makes it so that we both know that we can trust each other to take a bullet and keep going. I need to know, Tell.”
He nodded.
“All right. All right. Give me the gun.”
Getting shot definitely hurt worse, with the pink goop in it.
Serum, Colette had called it as Tell had loaded the bullet and they’d backed her against a thick reference book that Tell said was seriously outdated, anyway.
The outer walls would stop bullets, he assured her, but it didn’t negate that he’d have to clean up the paint after the bullet bounced off it.
Colette had an academic interest in watching what happened, and Hunter… Tina wasn’t sure what Hunter was thinking, but he wasn’t trying to talk her out of it. Tell struggled.
She could see it on him. She could smell it on him.
He didn’t want to do it.
She wasn’t sure she could have.
He pulled the trigger.
And it definitely hurt worse.
It burned, the way the knife wound had burned, but it faded quickly and stopped bleeding after a couple of minutes. It never bled bright red.
“All right, now me,” Tell said. “Just the injection.”
Tina nodded, watching as he injected himself, then lined up in front of the book.
“Make yourself comfortable,” Tina said. “I’m going to go get a drink to sip on, and I want to be sure that has time to spread.”
“We don’t have time,” Tell said. “Do it now or I will.”
He put the gun into her hand and went to stand against the book there at the wall again.
Tina looked at Hunter, who shrugged.
“I told you,” he said. “I’m not worried. No matter how strange what the two of you get up to looks from the outside, there’s a method to it.”
She nodded, taking aim and shooting Tell in nearly the same spot he’d shot her.
He grunted, putting his hands over the spot reflexively.
“Your world is weird,” Colette observed. “I should be calling the police right now, by my old standard.”
Tell shook his head, wincing his mouth up and tight, then nodding toward Tina.
“It worked,” he said. “You did it.”
She nodded, putting the gun down and going to make sure for herself.
“This isn’t the same as what the Order was doing,” Tell said. “We aren’t doing this because we’re curious what happens. That’s the whole objective of everything they do.”
“Is that all the difference, though?” Colette asked, watching closely. “They’re curious, but I guarantee a bunch of them think that this is going to be the secret to immortality, once they get it dialed in. You’re killing each other to make sure that it doesn’t take. Same thing, as far as I can work it out.”
“It’s not different,” Hunter said, going to sit down on the couch. “What is different is that neither of them would kill you for deciding you no longer wanted any part of it.”
Tina had been formulating a nuanced answer that tried to separate the one from the other, that they were trying to save lives, that they were trying to stay safe, that what they were doing was actively defensive… But Hunter got it right.
It was exactly the same, and if the Order was stabbing each other to try to figure out how to stay alive eternally, but doing so as carefully and methodically as possible only using fully-informed volunteers?
She nodded, going to sit down next to Hunter.
“Yeah,” she said softly. She looked over at Tell.
“Well,” he said. “If they’re all carrying guns, we’re still toast, regardless. What are you thinking for going in?”
She leaned against Hunter, closing her eyes and picturing the building.
�
��A building is a building,” she said. “When you built this one, you were trying to keep out highly-motivated, well-funded vampires. I bet they didn’t design their building to keep them out anywhere near as well as you did.”
“Are you suggesting that they are, indeed, up against highly-motivated, well-funded vampires?” Hunter asked, and Tina grinned.
“When you say it straight out like that, it’s not as fun,” she said. “Of course that’s what I’m saying.”
“I don’t think I can get a helicopter on this late of notice,” Tell said, and she shrugged.
“Who needs a helicopter when you can climb buildings?” Tina asked.
“Then we have to get in,” Tell said. “I’m strong, but I’m not punching-through-brick strong.”
“I’ve got an idea for that, too,” Tina said. “What I need to figure out is how far we’re taking this.”
“Just kill the knowledge,” Colette said quietly, settling onto a couch by herself. Tell was over against the wall, making sure that his wound healed up completely, and Tina and Hunter were facing Colette, which made her feel very small and very alone, over there, the way she was sitting.
“Which knowledge?” Tina asked.
“Necromancy,” Colette said, rubbing her arms. “The specifics of it only exist in a few minds. It’s very exclusive. You have to be a part of the inner circle or going through the process yourself in order to know anything about it. Without them, it’s just a social club.”
“Elroy,” Tell said. “Bellany.”
Colette nodded.
“My names are going to be twenty years out of date,” she said. “I don’t know that there’s a perfect way to do it.”
“I don’t know if I can do that,” Tina said, tucking her feet up under her and leaning her shoulder against Hunter. “Just go in and wipe them all out. Sure, they’ve been doing some really skeezy things, and someone needs to go put them straight, but a strike with the intent to just kill them all? That’s not who I am.”
Tell was watching her with a knowing expression.
“We’re going,” he said. “You and me, right now. We don’t want them to bunker in any further than they already have. I get that you don’t want to ambush them and then slaughter them, so if we fight them, it won’t be unprovoked.”
“What?” Colette asked. “If you let them hit you first, they’ll go for the kill.”