He raised his head and looked at her with sagging eyes.
“Claude, my God, what’s the matter?”
“Shhh, don’t wake them,” he said, nodding to Lindon.
“Drink,” she said, pushing the water over. “You’ve got to be parched.”
He glanced at the water and pushed it away. “I came here to warn you.”
“About what?”
“They’ve put out a PatrioCast on you… you and Isaiah. All of us now.”
“Well I suspected that, Claude.”
“Descriptions too,” he said. “You got rid of the purple hair… good.” There seemed to be more, but he didn’t say it.
“It’s pink,” said Willa, trying to lighten the mood. “You look awful. We can find you a doctor. Lock has connections.”
“Too late for that, now,” he groaned.
“No, it isn’t,” Willa said, trying to make it the truth.
“I need to tell you–” He doubled over, pushing through a wave of pain, though Willa could see no external injury.
“Tell me what, Claude?”
Then he looked at her in a way he’d not in all the years they’d known each other. A look that pierced every layer of who he was to the outside world, Claude Vergenne: the fifty-three year-old, single, quiet, nondescript, supervisor of Patriot Donor Station Eight. Now he was just a person talking to another person. Then he whispered, “I’m going to die soon.”
“Die? No, you’re not,” Willa’s voice cracked and she went to stand. “You’re just tired! What’d they do to you?”
Claude squeezed her arm and yanked her close. “Be quiet and listen to me!” he growled.
Her eyes welled from the pain of his grasp, but more the shift in her friend. “OK.”
“I didn’t steal that blood to sell it.”
“Claude, I don’t understand what’s going on.” She wiped a tear from her nose.
“It was to give me enough time to find you, that’s all. Now I’ve found you.” He paused and took in the room as if seeing it fresh for the first time. “I can’t go back out into the world anyway. And I’m not going to get what I need the Old Way.”
“The Old Way?” She pulled her arm free and shifted in her chair, a kernel of fear taking root somewhere in her core. “What were you doing walking around with fifty units of A-neg, if you weren’t selling it?”
“You remember the blood bag yesterday?” he asked. “The leaking one.”
“Yes,” she said, recalling it. “The bad suturing.”
“Yeah.” He paused, allowing her to piece together what he was saying.
“Oh my God,” Willa said, her gears turning. She remembered his shock when he’d seen her arrive. The bag he’d been holding was A-negative. He’d played it off like he’d been startled by her showing up early. But that wasn’t it at all. It was because he’d been caught. “The bag… it wasn’t really leaking was it?”
“No.”
Willa stiffened, tying it all together. “You… you were drinking it?”
He nodded.
Time stopped. Everything crystalized. Claude was the same thing as Scallien. And suddenly her brain was screaming, imploring her to be as far from him as possible. After what had happened before, her instincts came on strong and potent, like ammonia. She felt her calves and hamstrings tensing automatically – her body going through its involuntary pre-flight coil. She glanced to Lindon, wishing he would come awake. Could Claude move as suddenly, as viciously, as Scallien had? Could she get to Isaiah before he got her? Could she get them both out of there?
“Willa,” he said, placing a hand near to her on the table.
But she wasn’t listening. She was panicking. Indecisive. Frozen.
“Stop that,” he whispered, seeing her distress. “Look at me. I’m weak.”
She looked at him. At first she saw nothing. Her brain was elsewhere. Then her eyes regained their focus. He was still just Claude. Same as he’d always been. And he was right. He could barely hold his head up. She knew in her heart that the man she’d always known would never hurt her. She just wasn’t sure if that was the Claude seated next to her now. Trying to assume the best, she fought her fear, doing all she could to push it away, to swallow the scream that welled up from the atavistic place within that recognized a predator.
“I came here to help you,” he said.
Her head was spinning, with one word flashing again and again. A word from her youth, from books and horror movies, posters on the wall and Halloween. It was the stuff of fantasy, not the real world.
Her voice croaked, “So, you’re… you’re a–”
“Basically.”
Willa took the reins of her mind and forced it to slow down, to silence the alarms going off while she processed. “And what happens if you don’t eat?” she asked.
“Already happening.”
She didn’t want to say the word, tried not to think it, but here she was, scanning the room for a duffel bag full of blood. Blood that she would feed to her friend if she found it. Then again, what if they didn’t? What would he do then? Would nature compel him to fall upon her and drink his fill? She shriveled some. “We’ll get you your bag.”
“The other woman. She has it,” he said. “Doesn’t matter.” He dropped his head to his wrists again. “I’m dead anyway.”
“No, no. We’ll figure it out.” Willa cased the room, her attention divided between the vampire at her side and her desire to save his life. She had so many questions, turned to ask them, but he had nodded off, as if his own blood had drained. What would Lock and the others do if they knew the truth? What was the truth, anyway?
“Claude,” she said, rousing him. “Claude.”
“Hmm.”
“Can I… can I… I want to… help?” she asked, pulling up her sleeve and sliding her wrist over the table.
He pushed upright, considered her crepe-paper skin and smiled weakly at her kindness. “Wrong type… you’re the wrong…”
“Wrong type?”
“I’m A-neg,” he said, muffling a cough into the crook of his arm. “I can only… A-neg, O-neg. Anything else would kill me.”
“What about him?” she asked with a chin-tick toward the sleeping Lindon. It was callous, but Claude was her friend, and he was dying.
“I won’t do it the Old Way.” He crossed his arms a little tighter, as if smothering discomfort, and glanced at the sleeping man. “Besides, even if he wasn’t sick, he’s AB-negative.”
“You can tell type just by looking?” She wasn’t sure what Claude meant about Lindon being sick, but that seemed less important.
“Smell.” His eyes fluttered and his head looped to his chest and back up again.
“Claude.” She placed an arm over his back in a lopsided embrace.
“Hmm.”
“What do we do… Claude?”
His head rested on the table, facing toward the window. It took all his strength to turn and face her. “I brought you proof.”
“Proof of what?”
He remained there with the side of his face on the tablecloth, his body slumped and precariously balanced in his chair, his breath shallow. His eyes opened against the weight of mortal stupor. “Of who we are,” he said. “The inside pocket…”
“Claude?” her voice rose higher as she saw him slipping away and she pressed her face into his shoulder.
“…of the cooling bag. All of us…”
“What, Claude? All of us what?” She squeezed him. “Oh, Claude.”
“Scallien.” His final exhalation made the words. “All… like her.”
Willa felt the moment that death took him, his back where her cheek lay, at once rising with breath and then not. She wanted to reach out and catch his life, put it back inside of him. She pressed her weight upon him – this person who had been her only friend, who had saved her – and wished for her body with its warmth to revive him. But his skin was already taut, the flesh beneath it like hardened wax. With cool light filter
ing around the blinds on the kitchen door window, Willa laid her head beside his and prayed that it was all just a dream.
* * *
“Rise and shine!” hollered Lock, bursting through the kitchen door with a bowl of fruit. Lindon jumped to attention and Everard cursed something from the front room. Willa stayed where she was at Claude’s side.
“What’s going on?” Lock asked, setting the bowl on a countertop. “Hey,” she paused, “is he dead?”
Willa did not answer.
Everard entered, but stopped cold upon seeing the corpse. “Whoa! He stroke out or something?”
“What the hell happened?” said Lock.
Willa sat up and put the heels of her palms to her tear-streaked face. “He died.”
“I can see that!” Lock said. “How?”
“He starved.”
“Come again?” Lock said, stepping closer as if she hadn’t heard. “How could he have starved in a day?”
“He…” she tried to put it delicately, “didn’t have any food.”
“There’s food here, Willa.” Lock gestured to a freshly commandeered The Box resting on a shelf.
“He didn’t have his food.”
“His food?”
Willa struggled to formulate a way to explain what she knew, or thought she knew. “The cooler bag with the A-neg,” she said. “He wasn’t trying to sell it.”
Lock’s demeanor intensified. She spun a chair opposite Willa and sat. “What’d he steal it for then, Willa?”
Everyone had their eyes on her. How do you tell someone something that breaks reality?
“He was… He was something else. I don’t understand it. Another one like him attacked me at work, a Patriot manager. She was… going to kill me,” her voice wobbled. “And Claude saved me. He killed her. He was on the run, like me, and that blood was his lifeline. I think… I think maybe…” There was no easy way to say it. “It was his… food.”
“Food?” exclaimed Lock.
“The blood?” Everard spat.
“Calm down,” said Lock. “This is all bullshit. He probably just had a heart attack.”
A line of children had gathered at the threshold between the front room and the kitchen. Lindon, who hadn’t said anything to this point, ushered them back and away from the spectacle.
“It was a heart attack, Willa,” said Everard. “A stroke maybe. Too much stress at work.”
“Lindon?” Willa called.
He returned into the kitchen. “Yeah?”
“You’re AB-negative, correct?”
His eyes popped. “How did you know that?”
She nodded to Claude. “He told me.”
Everard nervously fumbled with his pack of cigarettes. “How he know that?”
“He could smell it,” Willa said, feeling a sense of pride in speaking for her friend. “From across the room, he could smell it inside you.”
The air went out of the room. Even Lock was at a loss.
Willa went on, “Claude said there’s more of them. All of Patriot. The Harvest… the blood trade…” She cast her eyes to her dead friend. “I don’t think it’s for the people in the Gray Zones. I think it’s for them.”
CHAPTER TWELVE
HEMATOPHAGOUS
Feeding on blood; sanguivorous.
Everard had finally had it. “You sayin’ he’s Dracula?”
“I don’t know what they are,” said Willa. “All I know is he needed that blood to live, and he said he didn’t want to get it the Old Way.”
“I think you need to leave and take him with you,” said Everard, stuffing his cigarette back into the pack. “We been flyin’ under the radar just fine by ourselfs. Who knows if he did something to lead Patriot or whoever to us.”
“Agree,” said Lindon.
Everard stormed into the next room and began loudly packing up Willa’s and Isaiah’s things. Willa crossed her arms and didn’t budge, waiting for Lock’s reaction.
Lock held Willa’s gaze for several long seconds. “Stop.” She glanced at Claude again. “What if it’s all true?”
“You believe this?” asked Lindon.
“I don’t not believe it,” Lock answered, giving Claude a poke. “We already know the blood drones are a lie.”
“What?” said Everard, reentering the kitchen. He let Willa’s duffle drop to the linoleum.
“Yeah, I shot one down,” said Lock. “Empty.”
Lindon shook his head. Everard furrowed his brow and rubbed his face as if he’d just been awakened from a deep slumber.
Lock went on, “Why’d he only take A-neg from the donor station? He could have grabbed O-neg just as easily.”
“All that mattered to him was compatible blood,” said Willa. “He wasn’t looking to sell.”
Everard leaned back against the wall, clearly trying to keep his distance from Claude. “Still don’t make him a blood sucker,” he said with some disgust as he considered the corpse. “Just a rogue employee carrying around a sack of blood who had an infarction in our kitchen.”
“But he knew Lindon’s blood type,” said Lock, raising an eyebrow. “That’s something.”
“Lucky guess,” Everard shot back.
“Everything Willa’s said so far has been true,” said Lock.
“May-be,” he said, “but now she’s tryin’ to tell us he’s a vampire. A vampire, y’all.” Everard was genuinely incredulous, which surprised Willa. She would have believed him most likely of anyone to embrace the paranormal as an obvious explanation.
Lock stepped to the center of the room. “If this is all true, which I’m still not sure about, everything is turned on its head. I never liked the blood trade, but it had a reason for being. If it’s all just a way for these… things to get blood–”
Everard interrupted, imploring her to stop. “We and these children survive here. ’Cause a your hacks. We can’t risk everything based on the delirious ramblings of the soon-to-be-dead.”
“Wait,” Willa interrupted. “Where’s the cooling bag?”
“Cellar out back,” said Lock.
“He said he brought proof. Get it.”
Lock grunted and rushed through the back door.
Willa finally noticed Isaiah nearby, transfixed by Claude’s stillness. In all the confusion, she’d not thought to keep him away. “Claude died, Grandma? How?”
“We’re trying to figure that out, baby,” said Willa. The boy had already seen his mother fade from anemia and Willa felt a pang for introducing death into his life again. “I have a lot of questions too, ’Saiah.” She held his cheeks and rubbed his temples lightly with her thumbs. “Sometimes we don’t know why things happen the way they do.” She shuffled him into the room to be with the other children. “Claude was our friend. I’m going to find out.”
She reentered the kitchen just as Lock stomped back in with the duffle. She heaved it onto the table and ripped open the zipper. Willa pulled up on the top flap and sunk her arm to the elbow in blood bags as she fished around for the inner pocket. “Here we go,” she said, her fingers grasping hold of something hard and pointy.
Then they all saw it.
“The hell?” said Everard.
It was gold. And a lot of it. A solid chunk, beautiful and rich in color, shining brilliantly but with liquid depth. It had shape too, and once the room was over the shock of treasure in their midst, Willa joined in their confusion as to what it could possibly be. It was an artifact or a sculpture of some type, a tiny jawless skull no bigger than a squirrel’s, with vacant orbitals. Sprouting from below the eye sockets were a pair of golden tendrils that snaked out from the face, like forward-facing whiskers, their tips cambered to pointy spines, fine as fishhooks.
Willa set it on the table and zipped the bag shut.
Lock touched it, let her finger flow across the smooth dome on top. “Creepiest little knick-knack I ever saw,” she said, poking at a tangle of tentacle-like outgrowths peeking from the underside, opposite the twin spines.
&
nbsp; Everard put his hands on his hips, mumbled, “Satan’s paperweight.”
“OK. Alright. That’s weird. Not sure it proves much, though,” said Lock. “I mean, it’s not worthless. We could melt this sucker down and issue our own currency.”
Willa, meanwhile, couldn’t take her eyes from the two slender barbs that ran down from the eyes. She recognized them. Those little needles at the ends had been meant for her, and she envisioned Scallien’s face rendered around them as the memory of the attack rekindled. “It’s her,” she said.
“It’s who, dear?” asked Lock.
“The one who tried to kill me. The one Claude killed. Her name was Scynthia Scallien. Patriot executive. It’s from her… or, it was part of her,” Willa said. “These were in her mouth, right behind her teeth,” she pointed to the needles but did not touch.
“This whole rig was inside her head?” Everard gushed, his voice high with excitement.
“Well, those fangs sure were.”
Lock used a nearby pen to flip it over and they all moved in for a look.
“Fangs are hollow, see?” said Everard flicking one with a fingernail. “Like a rattler. All pit vipers got ’em.”
“So maybe she was poisonous too,” replied Lock. “OK, well,” she clapped her hands together. “We’re going to need a new abode.” She gathered the bag onto her shoulder and scooped up the relic. “Find somewhere to melt this down. Sell it, or something.”
“You mean leave?” asked Willa.
Lock pointed at Claude. “Maybe you didn’t notice the sanguivorous dead Patriot employee in the kitchen, Willa! The one who came here with a stolen satchel of blood containing the final remains of a murdered Patriot executive!” She slapped the table. “And you, a should-be-dead Patriot ex-employee. You were risk enough by yourself. Now three paths lead to our door. So. Time to va-moose.” She took a quick inventory of the house. “The kids. Two loads. Lindon, take half to the Bahamas. Everard, bring the rest to Seychelles.”
The Phlebotomist Page 11