Bloodborne (Night Shift Book 2)

by Margo Bond Collins

  I finally allowed Will to pull me toward the portal, but not until I had reached back to take Scott’s hand. This time, he went first.

  As I stepped into the frigid nothingness of the crossing, the voices in my head stayed silent.

  I wondered if I had managed to close them off for good.

  Somehow, I doubted it.

  # # #

  Susan, Kenny, and Felicity were all huddled together on Kenny’s hospital bed when we stumbled back through. Susan held a small ax in her hand. Out in the hallway, sharp shards of glass littered the floor where the nurse had broken into the “In Case of Fire” box on the wall. When she saw it was us, she dropped her hand to her side. “Oh, thank God,” she said on an exhaled breath.

  “Don’t get too comfortable yet,” Iverson said from behind me as he finished stepping through the portal. “If we don’t find some way to shut this down, that ax won’t be enough.” A smile softened his tone. “Still, good work, Susan.”

  He walked around me to lean against the foot rail of the hospital bed. “Okay, Dr. Banta,” he said to me. “I think it’s time for you to tell us the rest of what you know.”

  “I don’t really know anything,” I said.

  “Back there, in that place you said you thought you might be a monster.” Will crossed his arms and glared at me.

  “I think I was,” I said. “For a minute or two, something inside me took over.”

  “Something inside? Tell me more about that.” Iverson’s voice was soothing, prompting—I could see that he was probably an excellent interrogator. I let myself relax for a moment, letting him lead the conversation.

  Tell him what he wants to know.

  A faint echo sounded from deep inside. Don’t tell, don’t tell, don’t tell.

  “I’ve still been hearing those voices, I guess,” I said.

  “You guess?” Will’s tone turned accusing. “You’ve been hearing voices and you haven’t told anyone?”

  Iverson held one hand out to Will, palm down in a placating gesture, but he never took his eyes off me. “Are they the same ones from your childhood? And are you still hearing them?”

  “Yes, they’re the same ones, and no, I’m not hearing them at the moment,” I said. But then honesty forced me to add, “I can still feel them, though, down there somewhere, inside me.”

  Scott’s question was gentle. “Do you still think blood magic is the answer?”

  From the corner of my eye, I saw Susan flinch at his words.

  Silently, I nodded.

  “And do you really think that the disease is bloodborne, from the aswang to the children?”

  “Yes.”

  “Okay, then,” he said. “We need to hurry. Let’s get out of this gear.”

  “Not entirely,” Will said. “I want everyone in paper gowns and masks, no matter what.”

  Scott rolled his eyes, but he didn’t object.

  It took less time to strip down than it had to gear up, but only because we didn’t follow protocol very closely. Unlike Scott, Will, and Iverson, I didn’t even bother to gown up again—whatever this was, I had already had it.

  Was it.

  When we met back in the room, Will kept a careful distance between us. Susan had spent the time preparing an instrument tray. The silver caught the blue light from Kenny’s wound and bounced it back to me.

  I shivered, and Scott caught my hand between both of his. “You’ll be okay,” he whispered.

  “I don’t know if this requires any sort of ritual,” Iverson said. “If it does, we’re screwed.”

  I shook my head. “It’s not magic,” I said. “It’s biology. I’m sure of it.”

  “This is no biology I’ve ever learned.” Will shook his head and blew out a long breath.

  “I know I’m right. It’s from some other world. Place. Realm. Something. But that place has rules, just like this one—different rules, but rules nonetheless.” I didn’t know how to explain the certainty I felt, but it settled into me. I knew it like I knew the periodic table—without even having to check.

  “Then let’s try it.” Iverson took a scalpel from Susan’s nerveless fingers and bounced it in his palm.

  “No,” Will said, finally stepping closer as he reached out to take the instrument from the detective. “A doctor should do this.”

  Iverson didn’t resist, and Scott didn’t try to stop Will.

  But when Will turned to me, the voices reared up in my head, breaking through the barrier I’d erected and throwing me back against the wall away from my friend.

  “No,” I screamed, a hundred voices erupting through my vocal cords. The sound bounced around the otherwise empty ward, and everyone in the room stared at me. A whimper escaped from Kenny. Susan threw herself across the bed, protecting the two children, but Felicity pushed her way past the nurse to stare at me.

  “I think,” I said, my throat raw, “that maybe you should hurry.” I turned to Scott. “If you have to, hold me back.”

  Scott nodded and slipped one hand to my hip, ready to wrap it around me to hold me still. He used the other hand to steady my trembling arm.

  No no no no.

  With a nod, Will stepped forward to take the arm I held out to him. I couldn’t tell which of us was shaking more, but the slicing motion he made was swift and sure. I didn’t even feel it at first, in that way of truly sharp blades—the pain welled up along with the blood, a thin line that dripped toward the floor.

  “Now what?” Will whispered.

  “Now we see if we can close this door.” Iverson swiped a gloved finger through the blood on my arm, leaving a dark red smear behind.

  “I think that’s it,” I said as he stepped toward the portal.

  “How do you know?” Felicity asked, voice hushed.

  “Because the monsters in my head are screaming.” I squeezed my eyes closed, but it didn’t relieve the sound. A tear trickled down my cheek. Scott wrapped that arm around my waist anyway, and wiped the tear away.

  “It’s working. We need more.” The touch of Will’s hand on my bare arm brought me back to myself, and I opened my eyes. Where Iverson had smeared a bloody line across the portal, it had retreated, drawing into itself.

  The voices grew louder, bouncing off the inside of my skull until I couldn’t hear—Will was still talking, but I couldn’t tell what he was saying.

  Black stars sparkled at the edges of my vision. No matter how hard I fought, I couldn’t regain control.

  And then I was gone.

  # # #

  If we allowed them to cut us again, we would be trapped here.

  Alone.

  Forever.

  They could use our blood against us.

  But they didn’t know that we could use blood magic, too.

  We could smell our others, drawing nearer to us. On the other side, through the crack in the world.

  They would be here soon.

  “Lili?” The one with the tiny blade spoke, stepped closer, and we hissed.

  Will.

  Time to change.

  The one holding us might be a problem.

  Scott.

  But in our true form, we were stronger than he was. And we had bested him before.

  We ran a finger through the sticky, drying blood on our arm, slid the finger into our mouth.

  Blood.

  Love.

  Drawing power through the portal, from the sun of our world and the stars of the passage, we breathed our form into the very cells of our body—

  Sliding—

  Changing—

  And as we stretched out into ourselves, our battle cry echoed from the throat of our mother-body, a shriek of pain and joy as we unfurled—

  Hands and feet stretching into claws—

  Wings spreading out behind us—

  The humans in the room cried out in words: What’s happening to her? What is that? What the fuck?

  And when we snarled, the littlest ones screamed.

  They knew us—remember
ed us from the dreams we gave them when we drew power from them as they slept.

  We spread out our wings, stretched them side to side. They filled the room, and when we swept them down and back up again, the air around us swirled with power.

  With a bellow, Iverson leapt toward us, arms wide to catch us.

  Tackle, we heard Dr. Lili Banta whisper in our mind.

  We jerked sideways, using our wings to pull us up a few feet into the air. Iverson missed—but his glance behind us gave us enough time to pull forward to avoid Scott and Will as they threw themselves toward us.

  The three male humans now stood between us and the portal.

  We hissed then laughed as we realized that only the nurse stood between us and the children. The noise sent the woman scrambling out of our way.

  With a pulse, we sent out the call.

  Come to us.

  No, Lili screamed in our mind, pushing against us as we had pushed against her. Leave the children alone!

  Too late.

  The boy was already sliding off the bed and walking toward us, his unfocused eyes churning in the blue light that pulsed from his arms as he held them out to embrace us.

  Our long tongue flickered out in anticipation, almost tasting the heat of his blood.

  The men grabbed our arms, attempting to pin them against our sides, but their strength did not match ours.

  With one mighty heave, we threw them back against the wall, hearing the crunch as they hit.

  And we could reach the boy with our tongue. It unfurled, the barb at its end swiping against his skin, tasting the blood and the power that poured out from the child.

  Lili pushed against us, willing us to stop.

  Step back.

  Retract our…my…tongue.

  And I was once again in control.

  But I wasn’t sure how long I could maintain it.

  I pulled back from Kenny, who swayed on his feet.

  Chapter 32

  Scott

  “What the hell is that?” Iverson’s screech sounded surprisingly like his voice through the microphone pickup of the communication system—the vocalizer—with all its usual distortion and tinny sounds.

  “I think…” I trailed off as I examined the creature in front of me. It was the size of a small human, but looked like a cross between a flying dinosaur and a nightmare, brown-skinned and horrific, with a mouth that snarled every time it looked our direction. “I think that’s Lili.” I heard myself speaking as if from a distance.

  Surely that horror couldn’t really be the beautiful woman I had held in my arms less than twelve hours ago.

  But I had watched it happen, had seen the transformation occur in front of me.

  Lili Banta is the monster.

  The words played through my mind as if they should make sense.

  They didn’t.

  Slowly, Iverson began backing out of the room, ushering the children in front of us. I followed his lead, never turning my back on the fiendish figure in front of me. It—I found it easier to think than Lili—had flattened itself against the wall, as if guarding that strange blue hole in the world.

  Will slid past me as I held the door open for him.

  The creature made no move at all to follow us, but I pulled the door closed as I left the room, anyway.

  Whatever it was, we couldn’t let it out into the rest of the world. We couldn’t even let it out into the rest of the hospital.

  Gasping, I threw my back against the wall outside the door, clutching Kenny against me, my arms crossed over his chest. Iverson held his niece in his arms, her long legs dangling from beneath her gown. Will and the nurse, Susan Yi, stared at us wide-eyed.

  “Can we lock that?” Iverson gestured toward the door.

  Will shook his head, lips pursed. “Not this one. There are a couple of vamp rooms that were retrofitted with locks, but we didn’t put any of the kids in them.”

  We were all breathing hard, but no one said anything for a long minute. No sounds came from inside the room.

  My thoughts circled around and around.

  How could that thing inside the room be Lili?

  I had been so sure that I was growing to know her.

  But the creature she had morphed into was definitely the one I had seen outside the house where it—she—had almost claimed another victim.

  Unless there’s more than one.

  No. I knew it as surely as I knew anything. There was only one creature, and it had been Lili—or Lili had been it—all along.

  It made a horrible kind of sense. Placing Lili in the role of monster made all the missing pieces fall into place.

  That’s why the hospital was the center of the pattern. The first victim, Kenny, might have been chosen at random, though somehow I doubted it. But once Kenny was infected and admitted to Houston General, the rest of the victims had to follow in order to create the sigil I had matched up to the map.

  I still didn’t know why that image was the one she had chosen, or precisely how the blood magic I had seen in Dallas tied to what was happening here, but I did know that the monster inside Lili had been directing everything, all along.

  “What should we do next?” Susan whispered.

  No one answered for a long moment, and then Will spoke. “We completely lock down this wing. We go to Level Two.” He and Susan exchanged a long look, and then she nodded, her mouth firming as she squared her shoulders and moved toward the nurses’ station. For the first time since Lili had started shifting into the monster shut in the hospital room, Susan Yi looked more determined than terrified.

  I knew, at least theoretically, that having things to do—or merely a plan of action—could help with that.

  But I didn’t even know where to start.

  I had to figure it out, though.

  And to do that, I needed more information. “I thought this wing was already locked down.”

  Will nodded, even as he glanced at the closed door separating us from the Lili-monster inside. “Sort of. It’s a contact isolation ward—everyone who comes in has to scrub down and suit up. But you were able to cycle out into the scrub-in room to get your guns. Our earlier lockdown was a Level One, designed to keep anyone from entering. A Level Two Lockdown will keep everyone, including us, from exiting.”

  “What if there are more sick kids?” Felicity asked.

  “I don’t think there will be, sweetie.” Iverson finally released his tight grip on his niece and swung her feet to the floor. “Not as long as that—” He paused as he searched for the right word. “Not as long as the creature is trapped in here.”

  “With us.” At Felicity’s whispered words, Kenny whimpered and shivered.

  “We’ll be okay.” I didn’t know if my words were meant to reassure the children or myself—but in either case, they didn’t help much.

  “Felicity, you take Kenny and go down to the other patient’s room, okay?” The girl gave her uncle a long stare, but took the younger boy’s hand and moved away from us.

  At the nurses’ station, Susan hung up the phone and nodded at Will. “It’s done,” she said grimly.

  “We need to come up with a plan,” I said. “Somewhere away from this door, where…that thing inside can’t hear us.” If we were going to stop having awkward pauses in our sentences, we also needed to come up with a way to refer to the Lili-monster, but that was lower on the to-do list.

  The nurse’s eyes were huge as she stared at me, and her words came out on an exhale that echoed my own labored breathing. “Okay. What’s the plan?”

  I shook my head. “No idea.”

  Felicity had moved closer to her uncle, and he rested one gloved hand lightly on her shoulder. “Was that really Dr. Banta?” the little girl asked.

  “I think so,” Iverson said.

  Felicity turned her face up to his. “How?”

  “No idea.”

  We all stared at one another for a long, silent minute, until Susan Yi repeated her question. “What is the pla
n now?”

  Someone had to try to talk to it—to the Lili-monster in the hospital room.

  I knew that would have to be me.

  # # #

  In some ways, its eyes were the worst part of the creature.

  They were Lili’s eyes. Dark brown, widely spaced, and fringed with lashes, they held a human intelligence.

  This thing really was Lili, at least on some level.

  I glanced away, but the thought haunted me.

  This monster is Lili.

  It had her eyes. Its skin was leathery, but it was the same tone as Lili’s. Its hair, wild and flyaway, was the same color.

  My gaze dropped lower.

  Lili’s shirt hung in tatters from the creature’s torso.

  Its breasts were Lili’s, too.

  I closed my eyes for an instant.

  This is Lili.

  Oh, hell. What if my attraction to Lili had more to do with the monster inside her than who she really was? I remembered my first glimpse of her in the hospital, the way that power had seemed to spill out from her in all directions. What if that wasn’t Lili at all?

  No. I banished the thought, shoving it out of my mind with almost physical force.

  Like the children in the ward, she was infected with something. This thing in front of me was only one physical expression of the disease that we had all been fighting, the disease that Lili had been fighting as hard as any of us.

  Maybe harder. If this thing had been inside her all along, then she had been fighting the disease on two fronts, with no backup or help or even acknowledgment on that second front.

  Lili was still in there.

  The woman I had known so intimately—the woman I suspected I might be falling in love with—was inside this monstrous creature. I could not leave her to fight it alone.

  Slowly, I lowered myself to the floor to sit cross-legged, less than five feet away from her.

  Lili’s eyes stared out at me warily.

  “Lili,” I said, keeping my voice low, my tone even. “I want to talk to you.”

  She tilted her head, as if cocking an ear to better hear me.