But I can’t.
Darkness surrounds me, pulling me down and pinning me against the cold, hard ground. A fire burns behind me, crackling and smoking, burning something that leaves the most awful smell in the air. A baby’s cry rings out, blood-curdling and full of pain. His endless cries fill the night. Suddenly, there’s silence, followed by a woman’s scream. I can feel her pain as if the loss were my own.
Wind blows embers onto my face, and the sky above me is red.
He’s been here before, and he’ll be here again, as soon as they find someone worthy of calling him forth. He’ll walk amongst the living and spread his—
Something sharp pierces my arm and my eyes slit open. Lucas is standing at the bedside, fear in his dark blue eyes. I go to jerk my arm back, moving away from whatever sharp thing is after me.
“Hold still, my love,” Lucas urges, stepping closer and holding my arm still.
“Can you hear me, Callie?” It’s Abby, and she moves around the bed, giving instructions to the person who’s stabbing me. I tip my head, looking for Lucas, and see the nurse instead. She’s trying to put an IV line in me.
“Get ice packs,” Abby tells another nurse. “As many as you can get. We need to get her fever down.”
I flit in and out of consciousness, seeing flashes of a blood-tinged sky. The IV fluid is cold inside my veins, and Abby arranges ice packs against me as another nurse wraps a blood pressure cuff around my arm. In just a matter of minutes, I have an IV going and am hooked up to several monitors.
I start to feel alive again as my fever goes down. I’m exhausted, though, and still can barely open my eyes. Screams echo around me, and a deep feeling of satisfaction seeps through my bones. Horse hooves click and clack over a cobblestone path and dozens and dozens of rats scurry around the horse.
“Callie?” Lucas’s deep voice pulls me away from the burning village. I’m getting really fucking sick of these cryptic visions. Premonition isn’t one of my powers, though this wasn’t like I was seeing the future. It’s not even like the other visions I had before where the Blue-Eyed Man purposely showed me.
No, this is different, like I’m accessing memories from a part of my brain that was only recently unlocked. Not by me, but by someone—or something—else, that has a connection with me.
I force my eyes open and look at my wrist, where the demon scratched me yesterday. He didn’t break the skin and left only a neat little welt. My hospital bracelet is on that wrist, the thick plastic band covers that little red welt.
Only, the red line isn’t red anymore. It’s black.
Chapter 29
“I don’t understand,” my sister says into a phone. “That’s not possible. Run it again.” She looks at me and then turns away, talking to whoever she’s on the phone with. Lucas has my hand sandwiched between his, and hasn’t left my side for even a second.
The IV was placed about twenty minutes ago, and that paired with the ice packs have lowered my fever, but not as much as Abby thought it would. She ordered blood work and is waiting on the results before prescribing an antibiotic. She’s been in and out of the room a few times, and I thought she was giving me special attention because I’m her sister.
But it turns out I’m actually really fucking sick.
“What do you mean, it came up as inconclusive?” Abby lets out a frustrated sigh. “Okay. Send someone up, please.”
“What’s going on?” I ask, throat sore. Every word hurts.
“There was an issue with your blood work.” Abby puts the portable phone in the front pocket of her lab coat. “It’s probably a machine malfunction. It doesn’t happen often, but I’ve seen the computer readings be way off for blood work a few times over my years in the medical field.”
“What’s the issue?” Lucas asks.
“It’s not reading it correctly.”
“What could make that happen?”
Abby shakes her head. “A computer error, I’d guess. They can try to run the report again, but in order to do a new test, they’ll need to take more blood.”
“It’s fine,” I say, knowing that my sister is worried about me. I’m handling being in the hospital better than I thought, though I’m honestly too weak to be freaked out. And after talking to Lucas about my time in a research lab, being treated like a zoo animal, I was able to let go of a lot of the repressed fear and emotion. “They can just take it from that little port thing, right?” I look at the IV line in my arm.
“Right. You won’t get poked anymore.” She types something into the computer and stands. “I don’t want to wait any longer for antibiotics, though. We need to start fighting off the pneumonia. I just put in an order for IV antibiotics and some pain medicine for the headache.”
“Thanks, Abby.”
“Of course, Cal. I have to go see another patient, but the nurse will be in soon. Hang in there, and we’ll get you better.” She pats my shoulder and leaves. I close my eyes, turning my head and snuggling with Binx until the nurse knocks on the door. Binx shadows away, staying close but out of sight.
Lucas gets up, moving out of the way. I take a pain pill and then the nurse hooks the antibiotics up to my IV. She stays in the room for the next few minutes, taking my vitals and making sure I don’t have a reaction to the medication. I’m starting to feel sleepy from the pain pill, and my mind is all fuzzy when a girl comes in for more blood to take to the lab.
The nurse checks on me again, and the constant poking and prodding is getting annoying. I just want to sleep. The blood pressure cuff on my arm automatically inflates every twenty minutes, so even when someone isn’t in the room, I’m being bothered.
“You feel hot again.” Lucas gently runs his hand up my arm. “Your whole body is hot.” He stands and touches my forehead. “The fever is back.”
“It can’t be,” I mumble.
“It is.” He smooths back my hair. “I’m getting your sister.”
“There’s no need for that.” As soon as the words leave my mouth, I feel something take hold of me. It presses down on me, dark and heavy. My heart rate spikes, making an alarm on one of the monitors start going off. Sickness twists in my stomach, and it’s a struggle to sit up. I make a feeble attempt to point to the trashcan, and end up puking all over the floor.
My hands start trembling uncontrollably, and the sick smell of death surrounds me. The sound of a horse trotting along cobblestone echoes through the room, and my body heaves again, pushing up the last bit of food left in my stomach.
Lucas calls for the nurse and holds my hair back. Everything starts to echo again, and I can’t hear what he’s saying. It’s a fight to keep my eyes open, and the trembling in my hands plagues the rest of my body. I go limp in Lucas’s arms, and he holds me upright, afraid I’ll choke on my own vomit.
A team of nurses come running in, and the rapid beeping of the alarm grows louder and louder until it turns into children’s cries. They’re all together in one room, and two men wearing masks and robes walk in.
Lucas lays me back down against the mattress and the head of the bed is raised to keep me from choking. Everything happens in a blur, and I go back and forth between the ER room and the dark room with rows of cots, filled with sick children.
“Callie.” Lucas’s voice sounds so far away. He’s holding my hand again, and he picks up my wrist, fingers sweeping over the welt from the demon scratch.
And then I pass out again.
Silence.
Everything is silent.
The sky. The air. Even the ocean.
I look at the line where the water meets the sky, not wanting to turn around and see the piles of bodies behind me. I bring my hand up to block out the sun, and I see it. The welt on my hand has darkened, and the veins around it are turning black.
“How’s she doing?” a voice rings out, but I can’t tell where it’s coming from. I recognize that voice.
“They can’t figure out what’s wrong.” Deft fingers run up and down my arm. Cool fingers. Luca
s’s fingers.
“She’s strong and incredibly stubborn. If anyone can pull through this, it’s her.”
“She is strong,” Lucas agrees, and I place the other voice. It’s Eliza. I try to open my eyes but can’t. They’re too heavy and I’m too weak.
The sounds of the hospital slowly start to register, but I don’t think I’m in the busy ER anymore. The blood pressure cuff tightens around my arm, and someone knocks on the door.
“Did you get the test results back?” Lucas asks someone.
“The results are still inconclusive,” my sister answers. “Are you sure witch blood is the same as human blood?”
“Yes,” Lucas tells her. “Biologically witches are human. There is nothing in their blood that’s different than humans who don’t possess magical powers.”
“I don’t understand what’s happening then. The lab ran her blood twice and got the same results. I can’t treat her if I don’t know what I’m dealing with, and so far nothing is working to keep her fever down.” She comes around the bed and picks up something that was resting against my head, replacing it with another.
Oh, it’s more ice packs.
“People can’t survive with fevers this high. I honestly don’t know how she’s alive and not having febrile seizures.”
“But she’ll be okay, right?” Eliza asks.
“Yeah,” Abby says and even I don’t believe her. “I’ll…I’ll figure something out. I was able to pull a favor from a friend who works in pathology in a private lab. She’s analyzing her blood now and will call once she gets results. Until then…we’ll keep her as comfortable and stable as we can.”
Abby smooths my hair back and rearranges the ice packs. “I have to go back to the ER, but I’ll come up when I can.”
Back to the ER? I was right, I’m not there anymore, but where am I? Exhausting myself trying to open my eyes, I fall asleep again. For how long, I have no idea. I’m woken up when someone moves my feet, bending my knees a bit and putting a pillow under my legs. It’s the nurse, and she repositions my weak body to keep it from getting any sores.
“There’s something familiar about this,” Lucas says once the nurse leaves. He leans in and puts his face to the IV port, smelling my blood. “And I think I might know what it is. Stay with her,” he tells Eliza.
“Where are you going?”
“To find her sister,” he says. “Because it all makes sense now.”
“What does?” Eliza’s heels click against the tiled floor.
“The rats and the demon and now Callie’s symptoms. Remember the way that body smelled? So rancid you didn’t think it was human?”
“I’ll remember that smell forever.”
“I smelled blood like that before, but not since the 1300s.” He turns away. “Fuck! I didn’t see it until now.”
“What are you talking about, Lucas?”
“She has the plague, Eliza. The Black Plague.”
“People still get that?”
“Not this strand.” I can hear Lucas pacing around the room. “The hunter, Melinda, brought over police reports. All the bodies were found in a state of advanced decomposition but hadn’t been missing for more than a week. And whatever is making Callie sick is burning right through her, faster than it should.”
He comes over and wraps cool fingers around my wrist—the one that the demon scratched.
“Holy fuck,” Eliza exclaims. “What is that?”
“The demon scratched her, but instead of trying to hurt her, it was infecting her.”
“I’ll stay here, go get her sister,” Eliza tells Lucas. “They can treat her now that you know what she’s sick with, right?”
“No,” Lucas replies in a grave tone. “They can’t help her because what’s making her sick isn’t biological. It’s supernatural. I need her sister to sign her out of here. There’s a demon virus coursing through her veins and if it’s not vanquished, Callie will die.”
Chapter 30
Binx nuzzles his head against me, and I blink my eyes open. Two people are arguing in hushed voices at the foot of the bed. My vision is hazy and I can’t sit up even if I tried. I turn my head and realize I’m in the ICU instead of the ER. There’s a small window in my room, and it’s edging toward dawn. Lucas and Eliza won’t be able to stay here much longer.
Binx meows, getting someone’s attention.
“Callie.” Lucas rushes to my bedside and takes my hand and laces his fingers between mine. “You’re awake.”
“I am.” I try to push up and fail. Abby stands on the other side of the bed and raises the head of it up a little more. “What’s…what’s going on?”
“Lucas wants to check you out against medical advice,” Abby spits out, which must be what they’re arguing about. “You’re way too sick to go anywhere.”
Memories come back in flashes and I’m not sure what was real or not real. The piles of bodies ready to be burned? That didn’t happen.
Black veins stemming from the demon-scratch? I don’t know. I twist my wrist and look down.
That’s real.
The rats. The demon. The way the bodies were covered in thick, dark veins, just like the ones on my wrist.
Lucas is right.
I’ll die if I stay here.
“You should call Tabatha.” Lucas paces around the little room again. “Other than you, she’s the most powerful witch I know of, and we’re going to need all the help we can get.”
“I can’t call her,” I protest.
“I will for you.” Lucas picks up my phone from a bag of personal items the ER sent up with me.
“No.” I use my powers to take the phone from his hand and terrible pain ripples through me. It starts in the center of my chest and spreads, burning and stabbing and contracting all my muscles.
The monitors go crazy, beeping and blaring with warning. I cry out in pain and Abby and Lucas both come rushing over.
“What’s happening?” Lucas asks.
“I…I don’t know. It’s like her body’s going into shock!” Abby calls for the nurse but as suddenly as the pain came on, it goes away.
“It happened when she used magic,” Eliza whispers before the nurse runs in.
Lucas turns my wrist over, watching as the black travels up my veins. He covers it with his hand.
“I’m…I’m okay,” I pant, shaking from the pain. Tears well in my eyes and I rest my head back against the pillow. Abby tells the nurse to go get more ice packs just to get her out of the room.
“You can’t call Tabatha,” I breathe. “It’s too risky.”
“I don’t care about the Grand Coven,” Lucas counters. “And neither will she.” Lucas moves his hand and looks down at my arm.
“What is that?” Abby leans in. “That wasn’t there last time I saw you.”
“It’s the demon virus.” Lucas straightens up and looks at Abby. “It kills fast. If we don’t act now…” He casts his eyes down. “I’m not losing you, Callie.”
“You won’t,” I tell him, but I feel like I’m lying. I didn’t know it was possible to feel your body shutting down, but that’s exactly what’s happening right now as the virus courses through me.
“I thought you killed the demon.” Eliza crosses her arms tightly over her chest. Her hair is up in a fancy braid again, one so elaborate Daenerys Targaryen herself would be jealous. Her dress is pale pink with little flowers hand-stitched along the hem. She really is pretty.
“We did.” Lucas takes my hand again. “Unlike the rats, the virus isn’t linked with the demon.”
“Rats?” Abby echoes. “You’re talking about demon rats?”
“Don’t worry, they’re dead.”
The lights shine down on Eliza, who’s pacing back and forth now. Apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, it seems. “You look like a fairy princess.”
“Who are you talking about?” Lucas asks.
“Eliza. She’s so pretty. Like a fairy.”
Eliza stops pacing. “As much as I
like compliments of any kind, that has to be the fever talking.”
“The plague makes you delirious,” Abby explains. “I can’t believe I didn’t think of it. I mean, we’ve seen modern cases. It’s rare, but her symptoms do fit. It comes on suddenly too, not this sudden, but if it’s paired with a demon virus…medical school did not prepare me for this.”
“It prepared Sister Ross.” I reach for Binx, wanting to feel his sleek fur. “Actually, she might…she…” I start coughing again. My chest hurts and the pain radiates through my body.
“Take your time, my love.” Lucas smooths my hair back, taking the old ice packs off. “Who is Sister Ross? Could she help?”
Binx stands and jumps off the bed, shifting into shadow-form before he hits the floor. Abby has never seen him like that before, and I will say he’s quite terrifying. He moves like black mist through the air, taking on a human shape with red eyes that glow like coals in the dark. Abby jumps back and screams, but Lucas is faster and covers her mouth before anyone can hear her.
“Sister Ross is a witch-doctor, so to speak.” Binx’s voice is deep and raspy at the same time. It fills every inch of the room while being impossible to tell where it’s coming from.
“Where is she?” Lucas asks, letting Abby go.
“At the Academy.” Binx shadows over to the bed, hovering above me.
“Can you go get her?”
“I will not leave my master.” Binx turns into a cat again, right as the nurse walks in with more ice packs. She comes to a sudden halt, eyes wide. If only she’d come in a second sooner…
“Therapy cat,” Abby blurts. “It’s a therapy cat.”
“Oh, how, uh, nice.”
“I’ll take those.” Abby holds out her hand for the ice packs. “Thank you.” She ushers the nurse out and closes the door. “That’s what Binx really looks like?” Quickly shaking her head, she puts the ice packs around me. “Will she be able to help you?”
“She might,” I say.
“It’s worth a try then.” Lucas gets my phone. “Do you have her number?”
Call of Night Page 23