Talon of God

by Wesley Snipes

  And then we can all panic.

  The thought was ridiculous enough to help her focus. But the idea of the man helping her wasn’t. He was her proof that this craziness wasn’t just, well, craziness. But when Lauryn opened her eyes again to tell the stranger that she’d need him to stick around for a statement, she discovered she was alone by Lenny’s side.

  Lauryn shot to her feet, turning in a confused circle, but the dark alley was empty.

  There’d been no footsteps, no noise at all, and now there was no strange man with a sword, either. Her dropped cell phone, however, was sitting right in front of her, the screen displaying a text from emergency services saying they’d be right there. Sure enough, sirens were already blaring in the distance. Half a minute later, an ambulance screeched to a halt in front of the alley entrance, the flashing red lights filling the alley with chaotic motion as Lenny woke up screaming.

  2

  Physician, Heal Thyself

  Ye will surely say unto me this proverb, “Physician, heal thyself.”

  —Luke 4:23

  By the time they got Lenny loaded into the ambulance, Lauryn was more worried than ever.

  He had woken up screaming when the ambulance arrived, having clearly slipped further into his delusions, yelling about flying castles and demons and armies of monsters pouring out of the sky. This would have been creepy under any circumstances, but everything was made infinitely worse by the wounds to his corneas, which caused him to weep blood. Given the extent of the damage, Lauryn wasn’t sure his eyes would recover, and there was still the matter of the strange necrotic discoloration that covered his skin, particularly his face, neck, and hands. At this point, the best she could say was that at least Lenny wasn’t violent anymore, though she didn’t have much hope as the paramedics lashed him to the gurney in the back of the ambulance.

  “Doc?”

  Lauryn tore her eyes off her patient to see Manny Ortega, one of her favorite paramedics, walking over with a first aid kit. “Your turn,” he said, holding up the kit.

  “No need,” she said, shaking her head. “I’m fine, really. But can I catch a ride back to Mercy with you guys?”

  Manny gave her a funny look. “You want to go back? But I thought you just got off shift.”

  She had, in fact, just gotten off a twelve-hour shift. And she was less than a block from the apartment she shared with Naree. But sleep was impossible given everything that had just happened, and she’d be damned if she let Lenny go into the cattle call that was the general emergency room after all that.

  “Just give me a lift. I’m already acting as attending physician. Might as well see it through. I can sleep when I’m done.”

  “Why is it doctors make the worst patients?” Manny said, shaking his head. “Fine. You can ride along, but only if you let me patch you up. For the love of God, Lauryn, I can see the burns on your hand from here. What did you do, grab the crack pipe out of his mouth?”

  “It wasn’t like that,” Lauryn said irritably, shoving her burned hands into her pockets. “Lenny doesn’t do drugs. I can’t even get him to take his prescriptions.”

  “No drugs,” Manny repeated, turning to look at Lenny, who was still shouting at the top of his lungs about the end of days. “You sure about that?”

  Lauryn wanted to say yes, that the Lenny she knew wouldn’t have touched a street drug if his life depended on it. But she couldn’t, because this—not the monster who’d attacked her earlier, but the raving madman being tied down now—wasn’t the Lenny she knew. Now that she was back in the familiar medical world, the strangeness of everything that had gone down under the bridge was finally starting to hit, and as much as Lauryn hated to admit it, Manny was right. Drugs were the most likely explanation.

  “Come on,” Manny said, hopping up into the back of his truck. “You can tell me the rest while I deal with your hand.”

  With a defeated sigh, Lauryn climbed into the ambulance beside Lenny. When she was safely strapped into the little fold-down seat, Manny banged on the door to signal his partner, and the ambulance pulled out, the sirens kicking up as they started down the street toward the hospital.

  “So,” he said, gently taking her injured hand. “What happened? Really.”

  “To be honest, I’m not sure,” Lauryn admitted, wincing as he started smearing the freezing cold burn salve all over her fingers. “I was on my way home when I saw Lenny down at the end of the alley, so I came over to help. When I touched him, he had some kind of slime all over his face and shoulders.”

  “Is that what got your hands?”

  Lauryn nodded. “I wiped it off as best I could, but not well enough apparently. He didn’t respond to his name, so I called you guys. He attacked me immediately after.”

  Manny shook his head in disbelief, which was exactly how Lauryn felt. Manny’d worked this route for years, and he’d picked up Lenny before. She wasn’t sure how well they knew each other, but anyone who’d spent time with Lenny knew the old man was terrified of violence since the war. “It’s gotta be drugs, then. Poor bastard wouldn’t hurt a fly otherwise.” He shook his head again and turned back to her. “What about you? You look a little freaked, and I’m not talking upset. Do you think you could have been exposed, too?”

  Lauryn dropped her eyes. She’d been trying very hard not to think about it, but given how all the weird stuff she’d seen tonight—Lenny’s transformation, the fight, the Bible-obsessed stranger with his sword and burning water—had happened after she’d gotten the green goop on her skin, Manny’s theory made way more sense than she liked. She’d never heard of a hallucinogenic drug that took effect instantly and could be absorbed through the skin, but toxicology wasn’t her area of expertise. Plus, however much she hated it, the idea that she’d been accidentally tripping made a lot more sense than Lenny actually turning into a monster.

  She must have looked horrified, because Manny patted her arm reassuringly. “Don’t worry, Doc,” he said. “We’ll get you taken care of. To be honest, though, I knew it was drugs the moment you told me about the slime.”

  Lauryn’s head shot up. “What do you mean? I’ve never even heard of a drug like this, and you know we get the full spectrum in the ER.”

  “You wouldn’t have heard of this one ’cause it’s brand-new,” Manny said as he finished wrapping the bandage around her fingers. “I don’t even know what they’re calling it yet, but Lenny’s the second druggie gone loco we’ve picked up tonight. First guy had green slime all down his front, too. He also attacked someone who tried to help, but his rescuer wasn’t as lucky as you. By the time we got on site, he’d torn her into confetti.”

  That description was enough to make even Lauryn’s iron stomach turn. “That can’t be a coincidence, can it? The green slime?”

  “Don’t know,” Manny said with a shrug as he tied off her bandage. “Cops wouldn’t tell us nothing, but my buddy in Dispatch says everyone’s going nuts about some new drug on the streets. A bad one. Don’t know what it does, but the police are freaked real good.” He gave her a worried look. “I really hope you didn’t stick your hand in a hornet’s nest, but just in case, I’m going to have to ask you to put this on for the rest of the ride.”

  He reached up to grab the restraint straps hanging from the wall of the ambulance, and Lauryn’s heart began to sink. “I’m not hallucinating.”

  “I know,” he said. “But better safe than sorry, no?”

  Lauryn couldn’t argue with that. Cover Your Ass was the mantra of modern medical work, and that was all Manny was doing. It was what she should have done in the alley, and so, with a sigh, Lauryn dutifully put her wrists behind her back, letting him bind her to the steel wall of the vehicle as the ambulance careened down the snowy street toward the bright glowing tower of Mercy Hospital.

  And this was how, twenty minutes later, Lauryn ended up a patient in her own hospital.

  She felt like the main show at the circus. Even though she was technically only there for observa
tion, her room was a nonstop stream of visitors. Everyone she’d met over her two-year internship at Mercy, from nurses to tech staff to desk workers, seemed to have found a reason to drop in and ask how she was doing.

  All the attention would have been touching if Lauryn hadn’t been well acquainted with how hospital gossip worked. She was the interesting case of the evening, and she was the new doctor. Combine the two, and everyone on staff was itching to get all the gory details firsthand so they could tell the others later. Even her boss stopped by, though he was only there to bitch her out for saddling them with Lenny, a known write-off patient who could never be expected to pay for his treatment. He also wanted to make sure she was going to show up on time for her shift tomorrow, something Lauryn was also wondering about, because despite all the uproar, she felt fine. Sure, her hand hurt, and she was bruised all along the side where Lenny had thrown her on the pavement, but none of that required her to be in a bed hooked up to the full diagnostic suite. Constant monitoring was part of standard drug-reaction observational procedure, and until her blood work came back from the lab to prove exposure one way or the other, there was nothing Lauryn could do but wait.

  Lauryn hated waiting. She was well aware of the irony, since waiting for test results and transport and rooms to open up was a core part of working at a hospital, but at least when she was on duty, there always some kind of task to keep her busy. As a patient, though, Lauryn was stuck. All she could do was sit in her bed and wait for the labs she’d ordered to finish processing. In an effort to speed things up, she’d asked for all the results to be sent straight to her, but she couldn’t do anything about the number of tests in line before her or how long each one actually took to run. Given how late it was getting, she supposed she could have slept, but even that was impossible thanks to the parade of nosy coworkers—not to mention the thoughts flying through her mind at a thousand miles per hour.

  Finally, around midnight, Lauryn gave up all pretense of politeness and closed her door, the universal hospital sign for GO AWAY. She starting to think she might actually be able to get some sleep at last when someone knocked.

  “Unless you’re my blood work, bug off,” Lauryn grumbled, pressing the pillow over her head. “I have work in six hours.”

  The door opened before she could finish. But when Lauryn yanked the pillow down to chew out whatever nosy secretary, nurse, or junior med tech had stopped by “just to see how she was doing,” she saw it wasn’t a hospital employee at all. It wasn’t even her roommate, though she was sure Naree would come storming in the moment she got Lauryn’s email about what had happened. The man standing in the doorway was someone she hadn’t seen in a long time, and he was the very last person Lauryn expected—or wanted—to visit tonight.

  In hindsight, she didn’t know why she was surprised. Tonight had already gone to utter crap, and if there was anything that could put the crap bow on top of the crap cake, it was a nighttime hospital visit from her ex-boyfriend Will Tannenbaum.

  “Hi,” he said awkwardly, looking around at the darkened room. “Is this a bad time?”

  Lauryn’s answer was a long, silent stare. Will looked exactly the same as he had when she’d last seen him. Like, exactly exactly, right down to the scruffy, curling dark hair, five-o’clock shadow, and tired eyes he’d stared at her with the night they’d broken up. He was even wearing the same jacket, the leather one she’d bought him back before things had fallen apart, and for a stupid moment, Lauryn’s heart sped up. When she saw him standing in the doorway looking just like he used to, she could almost believe he was here because he wanted to be. That he’d heard she’d been attacked and had rushed to the hospital to make sure she was okay . . .

  And then she remembered Will was a cop. Worse, a detective. A vice detective . . . and she was currently under observation for possible narcotics exposure.

  With that, all her stupid hopes fell right back into the gutter. Will wasn’t here to see Lauryn, Girlfriend Who Got Away. He was here to see Dr. Jefferson, Witness. His work brought him to the hospital like this all the time. It was how they’d met in the first place, when she was a student doing her clinical rotations. Back then, it’d seemed like a perfect match. Since in addition to being a very attractive man, Will was also a vice detective, he was one of the only people in the world who’d understood Lauryn’s crazy schedule, because his was just as bad.

  Unfortunately, this common ground was what had ultimately ended their relationship. Not because they hadn’t gotten along—when they actually managed to spend time together, things were great—but because those moments were just that: moments, little teases of what could have been if only they were less busy. And that was the trouble, because neither of them was willing or able to be less busy. Lauryn had tried for a while, reorganizing her classes and even taking one less shift at the hospital, but despite promises to the contrary, Will hadn’t made the effort to match her. There was always something else he had to take care of—a case, an emergency, a bust—and after a month of constantly being stood up for his work, Lauryn had decided she was better off cutting her losses and ended it.

  That was half a year ago, ancient history, and Lauryn had every intention of keeping it as such. But it had also been a long, scary night, and she was only human. That was a combination tailor-made for bad decisions, and seeing Will like this after so long, Lauryn was teetering on the verge of a horrible one. She almost told him she was happy to see him, that she missed him . . . but thankfully he opened his mouth then and saved her from herself.

  “Don’t worry,” he said, pulling out his badge. “I’m here on business.”

  For the second time in as many minutes, Lauryn’s newborn hopes flatlined. “Of course you are,” she said, slumping back down into the scratchy hospital pillows. “Never thought otherwise.”

  “I won’t be long,” he assured her, grabbing the battered plastic visitor’s chair and moving it closer to her bed. “I just need to take your statement about the attack tonight.”

  She looked away. “I didn’t realize detectives did that kind of grunt work.”

  Angry or not, that still came out snippier than Lauryn had intended. Thankfully, Will seemed to be as oblivious to her feelings as ever.

  “I don’t, normally,” he admitted, pulling a hand-sized spiral notebook out of the back pocket of the department-provided brand-name jeans that were part of his street-clothes uniform. “But we’re shorthanded, so I’m taking this one on myself. I actually came here to interview the homeless man. I didn’t even know you were involved until I arrived.”

  Lauryn didn’t believe that for a second. Will had been a lousy boyfriend, but he was an excellent cop. He might look like the nice Jewish boy next door, but he was a smooth operator with a network of informants reporters would kill for. He’d probably known she’d been hospitalized before the ink was dry on her admission form. Lauryn supposed the lie was proof that he really had sought her out, which meant he must still care at least a little, but after the crash and burn of a few seconds ago, she wasn’t going down that road again. If he wanted to pretend everything was normal, that was fine with her, so she pushed herself up, folding her hands in her lap as she gave him her best “nothing you say can possibly surprise me” doctor stare.

  “Ask away.”

  Will cleared his throat as he glanced down at the questions he’d written in his notebook. “Why don’t we start when you left work?”

  For what felt like the millionth time that night, Lauryn told the story of how she’d gotten off the train, seen Lenny, gone to investigate, and been attacked. She’d also explained how she’d known the victim, a detail Will seemed particularly hooked on.

  “So, again, you claim Lenny had never shown signs of violence or drug use before tonight?”

  “Never,” Lauryn said firmly. “He’s a vet who suffers from severe PTSD and a whole host of other unmanaged mental issues, but he’s terrified of violence and has a pathological mistrust of chemicals, including medicines.
The guy won’t drink artificial sweeteners, for God’s sake. I can’t believe he’d take a street drug knowingly.”

  Will shrugged. “Life on the streets makes people do a lot of things they’d never consider otherwise.”

  “Maybe,” Lauryn admitted. “But Lenny’s been on the streets for at least a decade without incident. Why would he change now?” She gave him a sharp look. “One of my EMT buddies told me there’s a new drug on the streets. Something you guys don’t understand. Do you think that’s what’s going on here?”

  “You know I can’t answer that,” Will said, shaking his head. “You’re a witness. If I tell you what I’m looking for, it’ll change your answers.” He looked back down at his notebook. “Just describe what happened after you got the stuff on your hand.”

  Lauryn shifted uncomfortably in the bed. Lots of people had asked about that, but Lauryn had yet to actually tell anyone what she’d actually seen—or thought she saw. But dodging nosy coworkers was very different from an official police interrogation. If they were ever going to get to the bottom of what had been done to Lenny, she needed to tell Will the truth. The whole truth. But while that made sense in her head, getting up the nerve to say it out loud was another matter entirely.

  “It’s going to sound kind of crazy.”

  “I work Vice in Chicago,” Will reminded her with a wry smile. “Whatever you saw in that alley, it won’t even ping my Strange-o-Meter. Just tell me what you think happened, and we’ll go from there.”

  Lauryn still wasn’t convinced, but there was no turning back now. So, with a deep breath, she told him everything she remembered, which was actually a surprising amount. In her experience, trauma victims and people suffering hallucinations both had trouble recalling specifics, and yet Lauryn could remember every stumble and fall and blow of the fight with Lenny so clearly, it made her lingering bruises ache.