by A. L. Larsen
His driving calmed down significantly when we got into town, though a truck with blacked out windows still garnered plenty of stares. Eventually we pulled up to a side entrance of the hospital, and Joey parked under a big portico. He tossed Athos a flannel shirt as he got out of the truck, and I asked, “Did you steal both this truck and the shirt off somebody’s back?”
“Not stole. Merely borrowed by way of compelling.”
“Yeah, that’s way different,” I told him.
“Thanks,” Athos said as he pulled the shirt on. Then he added, “I don’t think I’m really needed inside, so I’ll meet up with all of you a bit later.”
“What? Where are you going?” I asked him.
“It became clear to me in that fight that I’m even more of a target than Alastair right now, as far as Zane is concerned. He’s not taking my desertion lightly. I know he’s going to come after me again, and soon. It’s best not to lead him right to this hospital while all of you are trying to save Bryn.”
“But you won’t be safe on your own,” I protested.
“I’ll be fine.”
“What are you going to do?”
“Well, I actually think I’m going to go back to the Bellagio and round up your luggage. I’m sure the commotion died down as soon as Alastair left, so I should be able to get your stuff without much hassle.”
“Why?”
Athos shrugged and said, “It’s something to do. The whole point is just not to be here, to draw Zane away from all of you, so it doesn’t matter much where I go or what I do.”
I sighed and handed him my cell phone. “I think going off by yourself is a bad idea. But at least take my phone along, so we can keep in touch. Call Alastair’s number if you need anything, it’s programmed in there.”
He gave my arm an affectionate squeeze and told me, “Thanks. See you soon.” To my companions he said, “Be safe, bro. You too, Joey.” And he turned and jogged across the parking lot.
“Be careful!” I called after him, and he waved at me without turning back around.
Alastair took my hand and we stepped through the sliding doors into the stark, antiseptic hospital. Our little party garnered as many stares as the muddy truck had as we made our way to the information counter. We were all in various states of dusty, wind-blown, torn up and bloody, though fortunately Joey had somehow managed to wash up a bit, so he looked less like a serial killer.
“Hi,” Joey said to the severe-looking, overly thin nurse behind the counter. “We’re all extras in a post-apocalyptic zombie movie, so there’s nothing odd about our appearance. And you’re going to tell us where to find Bryn Maddock, and then forget you ever saw us. Also, you’re going to have a piece of cake with lunch and stop starving yourself, because that’s not a good look for anyone.”
“Manipulative much?” I muttered, as the compelled nurse turned to the computer and pulled up Bryn’s information.
“Mr. Maddock is in a private room, number 406, fourth floor. Elevators are right there. I like cake,” she murmured. Joey thanked her with a big smile.
“Seriously,” I said as we got on an elevator. “Do you always mess with people like that when you compel them?”
“I did her a favor,” Joey said. “I could hear her stomach rumbling. She’ll enjoy the heck out of that cake.”
“What if she’s diabetic?” I persisted. “Then you really didn’t do her any favors.”
“She’s not.”
“How do you know?”
“Because I can smell sickness, especially diseases of the blood. And let me tell you, being in a hospital is a treat,” Joey said, wrinkling his nose as the elevator opened on the fourth floor.
We found Augustine seated at Bryn’s bedside, holding his hand while balancing an expensive-looking laptop computer on his knees and studying the screen intently. He glanced up when we came into the room, and knit his brows. “You all look terrible,” he said by way of greeting. “There’s a shower through there.” He inclined his head to the right. “Why don’t you take turns getting the desert off of you?”
Joey went first since he looked the worst for wear, and I stood behind Augustine so I could peer over his shoulder. A scan of a hand-written text was on the screen. “Have you found the right spell yet?” I asked.
“No. I’ve found a couple that were close, but I don’t think they’ll do the job,” he said.
“What are you looking at?” Alastair asked him.
“I had the foresight a couple years back to have my entire library scanned into a large internet accessible database,” Augustine said, his blue eyes flickering across the computer screen as he scrolled quickly past several pages. “I’m looking through old volumes of witchcraft and alchemy. Bryn can’t be the only warlock in all of recorded history to do something like this, so there must be a reunification spell out there somewhere.”
“And you just happened to have a computer with you?” I asked.
“Of course not,” Augustine said. “I compelled a doctor to bring me her laptop.”
“Handy.”
I took a good, long look at Bryn. He looked thin and pale and fragile in his green hospital gown, tubes and wires everywhere, a bank of monitors on the other side of the bed confirming that his heart was still beating while an i.v. dripped steadily.
Bryn was normally so animated, so alive, more so than anyone I’d ever met. And to see him like this now, so still, clearly an empty shell, was just heartbreaking. “Are you sure it’s not already too late?” I asked quietly as I stroked Bryn’s dark hair.
“It’s not,” Augustine said. “I’m going to try everything in my power to make him whole again.”
A doctor came into the room, checked Bryn’s vital signs, made a note on the chart, and left again without so much as a glance at any of us. “Don’t tell me, let me guess,” I said. “You’ve compelled the entire staff.”
“Of course. And that reminds me.” Augustine pressed the call button and a moment later a nurse appeared. “I need clothing in a range of sizes. Bring me whatever you can find,” he told her, and she went off wordlessly. “You all need to blend in more if you plan on keeping Alastair alive. And as soon as we get Bryn put back together, you need to get the hell out of town.”
“But we haven’t found Jin yet,” Alastair said.
“And you’re not going to, now that a whole army of vampire hunters are looking to cash in on your bounty.” As Augustine was talking, his eyes never strayed from the computer screen. “So I’ll find Jin for you when this is done, and I’ll bring him to you. And if I can’t find him, then I’ll try to remove the spell myself. I know enough about its structure to at least have a shot at extracting it.”
All morning was spent in Bryn’s hospital room. We took turns cleaning up, and changed into some of the random articles of clothing the nurse brought us. Some of us tried to nap, with varying degrees of success.
I went to the cafeteria for lunch after a while. The TV was showing a continuous loop of the riot that had taken place outside the Bellagio, wrongly attributing the outbreak of violence to attempted looting as a result of the blackout. This of course made no sense, since the blackout lasted mere moments and two events had actually occurred several minutes apart. But ok, whatever.
I thought it was pretty miraculous that the camera crew had failed to capture footage of two big, bright angels darting from the top floor of the hotel. What would that have done to the human race’s concept of reality? And how could people be that unobservant?
Nothing had changed when I returned to Bryn’s room, and I settled in to wait.
About an hour later Augustine sat up and finally announced, “I think I may have found something.”
Joey leapt up and read over his shoulder. And then he said, “There’s no way you can pull that off, Augustine.”
“I have to. There’s no one else that can do it,” Augustine said, pushing his blonde hair out of his eyes. “And we have one advantage – Alastair’s blood is full of m
agic. That’ll amplify the spell exponentially, and should somewhat compensate for my lack of natural-born magical ability.”
Alastair tore his wrist open without hesitation and spilled his blood into a little plastic hospital cup as Joey jogged out into the hall, found a nurse, and compelled him to act as a guard so no one would interrupt us. We took up positions around Bryn and sat on the edges of his mattress, and Augustine marked the backs of each of our hands by dipping his thumb in the blood and drawing a quick line across our knuckles. Augustine drew a line down Bryn’s forehead and on his knuckles as well. And then he set the cup aside and joined hands with Bryn and the rest of us so that we formed a circle.
He started the spell by reading from the laptop, and after a few minutes began reciting from memory. He was chanting in a low voice in what I initially thought was Russian. But after a while, I wasn’t so sure.
The chanting went on. And on. And…on.
An hour passed. Absolutely nothing happened, unless you count my butt going to sleep.
Augustine was visibly fading, but he went right on chanting.
Another hour ticked by. Slowly.
Almost all of me had long since fallen asleep, but I was careful not to let go of Alastair’s hand to my left or Joey’s to my right. I glanced at one guy and then the other. Both had reverted to states of total immobility, eyes half-lidded and unblinking.
Finally, sometime during the third hour, a faint ring of light appeared around us. The room was fairly dark, heavy blankets hung over both windows, or otherwise I might not have noticed it. Augustine seemed encouraged by this, and his raspy voice got a little stronger.
I was ready to fall over at this point, lack of sleep and total inactivity lulling me into a stupor. But no way was I going to be the weak link, no way was I going to break the circle.
The ring of light surrounding us got a few degrees brighter after a while, and Augustine started shaking. He hadn’t stopped chanting in nearly four hours. He wavered for a moment, and then he fainted dead away, breaking the circle as he landed on the floor behind him, the ring of light immediately disappearing.
“Well, that was a good use of four hours,” Joey said, letting go of my hand. He went to the door and released the nurse on guard with a few words. The poor nurse looked exhausted as he wandered dazedly down the hall.
Joey turned back to us and said, “This is never going to work. We need a real witch or warlock. Someone powerful, not just a wanna be like Gus.”
Alastair meanwhile had crouched beside Augustine. He’d reopened his wrist, and was feeding his maker by letting his blood drip into Augustine’s mouth, which he held open with his free hand. After a few moments, Augustine’s eyelids fluttered, then opened. Alastair pressed his wrist to Augustine’s lips for a long moment, pulling away only when Augustine sat up shakily.
“Thank you,” Augustine murmured. “Did I pass out?”
“Like a southern belle in July,” Joey told him.
Augustine rolled his eyes, then pressed a hand to his forehead, wincing in pain. But he pushed himself to his feet with Alastair’s assistance and said, his voice hoarse, “We have to try again.”
“You can’t,” Alastair told him, holding him up by his shoulders. “You’re not strong enough.”
“I’m not quitting,” Augustine said. “I don’t care what it does to me. I have to bring Bryn back. There’s no one else that can do it.”
“Well, that’s not entirely true,” I said, and all eyes turned to me. “I know one person that could work this spell. And I’m going to go find that little jerk if it’s the last thing I do.”
I started to leave the room, but Joey caught my arm and asked, “What are you doing?”
“I’m going to find Jin. He’s an incredibly powerful warlock, he can do this. He can bring Bryn back.”
“We spent days looking for him and couldn’t find him,” Joey pointed out.
“Yeah, but I’m done being subtle. I’m going to march into that hotel and scream his name until I get results.”
I started toward the door again, but Joey was still holding my arm and acting like an anchor. “It’s still light out. Wait until dark and I’ll go with you.”
“So will I,” Alastair said.
“I’m not waiting. Augustine said the longer Bryn is like this, the worse his chances for recovery. I need to go now. Never mind the fact you’re both wanted men. You really can’t show your faces at that hotel without inciting yet another riot among the masses that want to kill you.”
“Yeah, you kind of have a point there,” Joey said.
“But you’ve been seen with all of us,” Alastair countered. “The vampire hunters probably are looking for you as a way to get to me.”
I thought about that for a moment, then walked over to Bryn’s bed and pressed the call button. “You’re right. Joey, get ready to do some compelling.”
The young female nurse that appeared a few moments later was immediately pressed into service. She took me with her to the employee locker room and helped me wrap my hair into an up do. I put on her coat and big dark sunglasses, and she handed me the keys to her car, explaining in her cheerful compelled state as I put on her red lipstick that it was a brand new powder blue VW bug, parked at the far end of the employee parking lot. And yes, I felt bad for the way she was being manipulated, but my main concern right now was saving my friend’s life.
I thanked her and jogged back to Bryn’s room, sticking my head through the doorway and declaring, “Ok, this disguise is as lame as Augustine’s was the other day, but at least it’s something. So, I’m going to go do this, and I’ll be back soon.”
Alastair was in front of me in an instant, drawing me into a hug. “Are you sure this is a good idea?” he asked.
“It’ll be fine. Don’t worry,” I told him with a smile, displaying more confidence than I actually felt.
“Do you have your knife with you?”
“Yeah, always. I can’t help but have it with me,” I said, patting the pocket of the nurse’s coat and feeling its reassuring weight there.
He handed me our room key. “Just in case you need it to get past security, which is probably thick at the hotel right now after that riot.”
“Good thinking.”
“I love you, Luna. Please be careful,” he whispered in my ear as he held me close.
“I love you too, Allie. And I’ll be back soon.”
The powder blue bug was fun to drive, purring down the Strip as I headed to the hotel. There were still news cameras out front, and I had to show a police officer my room key to be allowed to pull up to the hotel. But despite the police presence, it was still business as usual at the Bellagio, and I drove right up to the main entrance and handed the keys to a valet.
I tried to appear confident as I strode though the crowds in the casino, and hoped my hair and makeup made me look older, so that I wouldn’t immediately get kicked out for being under age. “Please let Jin be in here,” I murmured as I arrived at the high roller section, cordoned off behind velvet ropes and behind a couple disinterested casino employees. No way were they going to let me past, I knew it was pointless even asking. And the fact that they didn’t immediately wander away from me showed that these two hadn’t previously been compelled by Joey.
So I improvised.
I jumped up onto an unused blackjack table right outside the high roller section, and yelled at the top of my lungs, “Jimmy Cheng! I need to talk to you, right now! Show your face, or else I’m going to your mom, telling her you’re gambling in Vegas and not on a year abroad program, and telling her that you’re my baby daddy! Do you hear me, Jimmy? Or Jin. Or whatever you’re calling yourself! I’ve been looking for you for days, and I’ll bet you know that. And I’m fed up! So get out here and talk to me!”
The handful of casino employees that had been missed during Joey’s rounds of compelling gathered around me, trying to coax me off the table. “Come on down, miss,” one of the guards said. “You’re goin
g to get hurt up there.”
“No,” I said. And then I yelled, “I’m not leaving until I find Jimmy Cheng! Jimmy, you really want me to tell your mom you’re my baby daddy?”
“Miss, pregnant woman really shouldn’t be climbing around on furniture and yelling,” one of the guards told me. “It’s not good for the baby. Come on down from there.”
“Not until I talk to Jimmy Cheng!” A big crowd was gathered around by now. I bluffed, “That’s it, Jimmy, I’m calling your mom! I have that big new house in Pacific Heights on speed dial. You’re going to be so busted!”
“Telling my mom on me? Really?” An amused voice to my left said. I spun in the direction of the voice. An Asian gentleman of about sixty stood there with his arms crossed over his chest, a grin on his face.
“Well hey there, Jimmy,” I said. “You should return Tyler’s calls. He’s worried about you.” And I jumped off the table, landing right in front of him.
“Tyler’s like an old lady,” Jimmy told me. “Always nagging. And call me Jin. Jimmy is so five minutes ago.”
“That’s your baby daddy?” One of the guards asked, looking from me to the disguised warlock.
“Don’t judge,” I said, linking arms with Jimmy. “He’s a lot more youthful than he appears. And I mean that literally.”
We took a few steps away from the crowd and Jin said, “That was hilarious. I kept waiting for you to do something bold to get my attention. But I never predicted that you’d tell a crowd of strangers I knocked you up.”
“So you did know we’ve been looking for you.”
“Of course I did.”
“And you couldn’t have made finding you any easier on us.”
“Why should I? It was entertaining, watching you do lap after lap after lap. I especially liked the part where the hotel staff were all compelled to stay away from you, and kept being repelled like reversed magnets.” He was smiling cheerfully.
A man that looked about forty joined us then. “Mikey, I presume.” I stuck out my hand. “Luna Harper.”