I realized that as a whole, they lacked bargaining power, knowing she wouldn’t let them slaughter us, her court, off one by one. But their dissent could cause chaos, and if she was low on blood, no true vampire would think twice about sacrificing a pawn for their cause.
How much had she bled? How much more could she make? How fast? The longer this took, the more they would know she was stalling for time, and there were thirty vampires that still needed sating.
“I accept your challenge.” She took another step forward. “I am afraid I cannot put my Ambassador again through such stress.” She gave me a look overly full of pity, and then turned back to them. “I am forced to let you all drink from the source.”
She crossed the distance between them and held her wrist up for the taller man who neared. He was looking for a trap. To drink was to put yourself in danger. Everyone here had also, if only in distant memory, been a gazelle.
“Drink deeply,” she demanded, shaking her wrist as the last of the scarificator marks healed. He grabbed her arm, steadied himself and her, and bit her.
They were like sharks when they fed, eyes open, dark, then rolling back. His teeth fastened into her wrist, both sides. I could hear the force of his bite, fangs cutting into her. Behind him, the members of Bathory House leered. He couldn’t even drink all of her blood—it seeped beyond the edges of his pulled-back lips, and dripped onto the floor.
Other jealous vampires were becoming restless—and not all of them were Bathory.
It would not go well for me in a bloodbath.
I watched him as they watched her. He closed his eyes.
She beheaded him. Without changing position or alerting him in any way, her free hand punched through his neck. Maybe he was drunk on blood, entranced by power—one second he was drinking, hunched over, and the next his head was still attached to her arm while the rest of his body staggered to the floor.
Instead of dusting, blood spurted out of his neck’s open wound, on both sides. House Bathory crowded, stunned, dismayed, and she kicked his body toward them.
“You may drink of him, and through him, drink of me. When my blood in him is gone, all you will get is dust, and those of you who are not mine will die.”
They fell on him like wolves. I heard fabric shred, then the sound of tearing meat, the break of bones. Anna pried his head off her wrist, where it sat whole, latched on, like a rattlesnake. As it fell it started crumbling to dust, peppering her clothes. The rest of the body crumbled accordingly, and the Bathory vampires who hadn’t fed yet wailed.
Anna turned to the master of ceremonies. “Am I a member of the Sanguine, or am I not?”
A cruel smile played across his lips. He looked around to the others whom I had thought were mere servants, stuck holding trays, and I watched them nod one by one—the other members of the Sanguine, walking among us all along. The vampires had known, of course, but not me, till now. When he spoke, he showed black-stained teeth. “If you were not when you walked in, you have become so.” He turned toward the Bathory vampires, now licking at drops of blood in the carpeting, eating fistfuls of dust. “We will handle the herd.”
I closed my eyes. I didn’t want to see what came next.
CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN
I didn’t know I was pressing my hands to my ears until I felt someone tugging at them. I’d been through too much tonight, done too much, seen too much blood.
“Did we break you?” Sike was holding my hands now, and shaking me. I focused on her again. Her face was clean, her smile high and bright. She raised a hand between us and snapped her fingers. “She’s going to be very busy for a while now.” We both knew she meant Anna. I didn’t want to look around.
I’d never hurt someone intentionally like that before. And then I remembered how I’d stabbed Jorgen, and was still covered in his blood, and the blood of the driver before him, and—
“Do not throw up.” Sike put her arm around my shoulder. Where she could have been angry or demanding, instead she finally seemed sympathetic. She led me through the groups of vampires still congregating. Tonight had changed things between us. She and I were finally on the same team.
* * *
This whole thing now seemed like some Hollywood-Halloween-themed wedding reception. The glamorous people in charge, those who toadied up to them, from all apparent walks of life and day jobs. Men in suits, trench coats, women in latex, necks strung with pearls. But then there were the off-kilter ones who looked like they’d just come in from the gym, or were just going out to a punk show.
I’d have sworn I saw a woman in sweatpants with something I could only see half of written across her ass, talking earnestly to one of the men with anime hair. I saw a glimpse of white—Anna was the only one wearing it—but then she was whisked away.
“You still need to get to the hospital for were-shots,” Sike said. She propelled me toward the church’s front, helping me as I limped. She nodded to the people who were guarding the entrance, and they opened the doors. “I’ll call a car,” she said once she’d gotten me to where I could lean against the wall. Her earpiece in again, she rattled off commands, then returned her attention to me. “You look like hell. Don’t go were on me out here. It would make us look bad.”
I plucked at the bloody shirt that I was currently freezing in. “Gee, thanks.”
She shook her head and started fishing for a cigarette. “Sorry.” When she found one, she looked up. “So what happened to you tonight?”
“How nice of you to ask.” I watched her light up, wishing I had a bad habit to count on in stressful times. “Jorgen—a bitten member of the Deepest Snow pack—came after me.”
Sike’s eyes narrowed. “Anna’s going to have words with them then. Now that her place is assured—we can’t allow that kind of affront.”
“Why them, though? It was supposed to be some other were. Viktor.”
She took a deep drag and exhaled smoke. “I checked him out. He’s too young. Too brash. House Grey would never make use of him. And if they were orchestrating things against Anna—they would have done it here.” She drew a circle in the air to indicate the church behind us, her cigarette leaving a tracer of light behind. “She’s in. She can make her own House now.”
“Yay?” I asked with sarcasm.
“You’re so small-minded. You don’t even realize what that means.” She blew smoke out of her nose like a dragon. “Because she’s alive she can make more blood whenever she wants. People who belong to her will never have to go to Y4 and beg.” She smiled, and I could imagine a time in the near future when the act would show the world her fangs. “Blood is power, and Anna’s a fountain of it.”
“So you’re saying I’m safe now?” I asked her, my hands tucked into my armpits. She was calm and glamorous, dressed up for the occasion, smoking dramatic, and not shivering. I was her opposite, and becoming too cold to care.
“I’m saying get to Y4, get the shots, and stay there until we come and get you. Don’t worry, the Shadows can protect you until dawn.”
I inhaled her secondhand smoke deeply and leaned forward. “About that—”
A rush of vampires came out the doors, talking among themselves. And a car pulled up behind Sike. She turned and knocked on its hood twice, then smiled at me. “See? Good as my word. What were you going to say?”
I couldn’t tell her what I wanted to, with so many vampires in earshot. “You shouldn’t smoke. It’s bad for you.”
“What’s it matter? Soon I’ll be dead.” She pursed her red lips and took another drag.
“You’re not dead yet.”
She looked at the cigarette she held and gave me a sour grin. Then she dropped it and stomped it out with a snort.
* * *
Sike flagged down Gideon and put him in the car with me. Our driver was under strict orders—from people who were far more frightening than I could hope to be—to take me to the hospital. The claw marks on my leg were screaming as I got inside, and I hoped that was all mechanical injury and not were
-infection starting.
“Fancy meeting you here,” I told Gideon in the backseat. He was wearing gloves and a leather coat now. It looked like he’d upgraded his webcam for a lens that sat on his forehead like a third eye. He groaned an acknowledgment and put a hat on his head.
The limo driver took off without asking where we were going; I figured he already knew. I tried not to move, and cursed vampires for getting me into these messes.
I wanted to call ahead and warn Y4 we were coming—and also text Lucas and ask him what the fuck was going on. I didn’t want to believe that he could be in on it. And with the cuts on my leg, it was impossible to get comfortable.
Gideon saw me fidgeting, reached into his coat, pulled out a new-looking phone, and offered it to me.
“Thanks.” Maybe people looking for cigarettes and people wishing they had their phones fidgeted the same. “I don’t know his number, though.”
Gideon kept holding it out. I took it, turned it on, went for the call icon, and hopped onto the contact list. “When did you get this?”
Gideon grunted. Jake’s name, my parents’ names, old nursing school friends—“You backed up my phone for me?”
Gideon shrugged. To think I’d been only worried about my brother making long-distance calls before now. I pulled up Lucas’s information and sent him a text message. Jorgen attacked me. What the fuck? He would be a wolf until dawn, but maybe I’d hear from him in the morning.
* * *
We drove along, in from the countryside until we hit the freeway, and then the freeway to the less good part of town. Two exits away from County, the driver looked up.
“So where’s your house?” He peered at us through his rearview mirror.
“What?”
“Your house. It’s around here somewhere, right?”
I tensed in the backseat, and then hissed in pain. “I thought you were taking me to the hospital.”
“Oh, I can’t. The weather’s just awful.” The limo began to slow.
I looked out the window. It was snowing, but no more than it’d been an hour ago, and the road ahead of us was empty. In other circumstances, it would have been pretty in the moonlight. The driver braked the limo to a stop.
“I can’t drive in this ice, lady.” His reflection frowned at me. “I don’t want to get trapped down here in this weather. You need to make up your mind.”
“What are you talking about?” I leaned forward, gritting my teeth, and Gideon grabbed my hand. The driver reached to put the limo in reverse.
“Never mind. We’re here.” I opened my door, hopped out, and Gideon followed. The limo driver did a U-turn in the middle of the intersection and drove away.
* * *
“Maybe I can change into a were, heal up, and then get shots,” I muttered to myself as we hobbled on our way in. Gideon offered me his arm, and I took it. “This is bullshit.”
It was eerie in the moonlight, walking in the middle of the road. A crunching sound began ahead of us, and I kept waiting for headlights to shine and force us to dive away. The crunching sound continued until we crested a small hill, and then its source was revealed.
People were hobbling toward us. Some of them had walkers that they were using in the ice. Others had crutches, wheelchairs, knee braces, walking alone or in pairs, pushing strollers, clutching one another for support.
They weren’t on the way to some fabulous New Year’s Eve party—they were leaving County, in nothing more than hospital gowns. It was a mass exodus, and we were in their way.
Gideon put his arm out and buffeted most of them aside. I tried to get some of them to talk, but they were as silent as the weres had been the night before—no, just this afternoon.
“Something’s wrong, Gideon,” I said. Gideon turned and looked at me with his eyeless-camera-lensed face. From somewhere near his chest, Grandfather said, “Du hast jetzt sehen?”
I was pretty sure he was agreeing.
* * *
County loomed on the horizon as we I neared. Hundreds of people passed us—I saw employees in their number. Lab techs with coats on, nurses and doctors in scrubs. I hoped none of them had left anyone behind in surgery.
In the moonlight County’s squat cement exterior made it look like a factory. I remembered a simpler time at another hospital, when I’d worked aboveground, and I’d check for lights in certain rooms as I walked in to work my shifts—a light on meant my prior night’s patient was still alive. I wasn’t sure what the lights inside County stood for now.
Gideon and I hobbled to the emergency entrance doors together. The doors slid open, and boy did the heat feel good. Gideon pulled his hat lower as the security officer arrived. It made sense—if I saw me wandering in from the street, looking like this, I’d wonder who got shot.
“Miss, I’m afraid we can’t see you tonight.” The officer blocked my path.
“I’m in need of emergency medical treatment.” The magic words that should get me through the door.
He stared over my shoulder, as if I weren’t even there. “We’re full—”
I pulled my badge out from my pocket, bloody lanyard and all. “I’m a hospital employee.”
“Then you know. It’s a Code Triage, we can’t take any more—” He kept talking. Whatever he was seeing, it wasn’t me. “You’ll have to go to another facility.”
Behind him, nurses and doctors and their assistants, my distant co-workers, were hustling a critical-looking patient out the door. That almost never happened. We were a level one trauma center. We could do it all. We didn’t discharge vented patients at—I looked up at a clock—three A.M.
“I’m going to my home floor. I work here.” I held up my badge in his field of vision. It glowed briefly before dimming again.
“Please go to your home floor to help with the immediate evacuation,” the officer said. I nodded.
“Will do.”
As much as it hurt me to walk, we took the back way, through the empty halls, so we wouldn’t be confronted again before we reached Y4.
CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT
Gideon and I could hear howls when the elevator doors opened. He helped me limp toward the double doors.
Meaty looked up from the main desk as I came in. “Edie? Are you okay? You look like hell.”
Gina came around the corner with a smile for me, and then pointed at Gideon. “Who’s he?”
“A friend. It’ll take too long to explain.” I hobbled over to the desk. Gideon took off his hat and started walking around the unit, looking at things.
“What’s going on?” Meaty asked as I slowly sat in a chair.
“The whole rest of the hospital is evacuating up there. It’s Code Triage—they’re not taking new people in, and they’re sending everyone inside out.”
Meaty said, “Tell me everything. Now.”
I whitecapped my past two days of events. They didn’t need to know about Gideon or Veronica, sex with Lucas, or the details of the whole ordeal I’d just been through. But they deserved to know why I had blood on me. It would be enough.
“So I came here to get were-shots, only then I saw all the chaos up above—”
“Did they get you?” Gina asked.
“Define get?” I held up my hand, where Jorgen’s teeth had grazed me. Two knuckles were open, raw. And the claw marks on my thighs …
“Shit,” she cursed. “On a full-moon night? You’re going to need the full series.” She stood and went over to the Pyxis to pull out meds.
Meaty sighed deeply. “Protocol says to lock the doors and sit tight. Access to our floor is regulated anyhow—it’s not like they can come barging in.”
“Even when the Shadows are gone?” I asked Meaty.
Gina interrupted. “The Shadows are gone? What?”
Meaty looked away. “We thought it best not to tell anyone.”
I didn’t remember getting a vote, but it was spilled milk now. Behind us, in the newly expanded were-wing, the full moon was working on its children. In between h
owls, I could hear scrabbling claws, digging at tile—and the occasional thump as a wolf-person threw itself at its room doors. I wasn’t so worried about what might barge in, as what was trying to barge out.
“Who’s watching the zoo?” I asked.
“Rachel,” Gina answered, returning with a box of shots. I pulled out my cell phone.
“Do I have permission to call friends?”
“Are you sure they’re friends?” Meaty asked.
“After the night I’ve had, they’d better fucking be.”
I didn’t call, I texted—Sike, then Lucas. Something’s wrong at work. Can you come?
Sike responded shortly. “On my way.” From probably phoneless and definitely thumbless Lucas, more silence.
Gina stabbed the first were-vaccination into my upper arm, smack into my deltoid muscle.
“That really freaking hurts.” It wasn’t the needle so much as the sensation of burning that spread out from the injection site. It felt like being slapped.
“Just be glad it’s not in the stomach anymore.”
Meaty was checking news links online. “I don’t see anything about our Code Triage here. Gina, start barricading doors.”
Gina moved behind Meaty, reaching up into the pneumatic tube system like she was searching for a flue. She pulled a metal sheet down, latched it into place, and pulled down a plastic sheet after it. She went from room to room after that, pulling down hidden latches and bars.
“Where’d Mr. Hale go?” I asked her. Charles’s daytimer wasn’t in his room.
“Out for a cigarette, about an hour ago. As soon as he left, that’s when they started howling.”
From around the bend, Rachel screamed. Gina startled and ran down the hall. Meaty did too. I followed, much more slowly.
“Who is this? Why is he by my rooms?” Rachel asked, pointing at Gideon. Fluorescent light was not doing him any favors. It highlighted the strange curlings of things that shouldn’t have been traveling under his skin.
“Sorry. He’s helping. Honest,” I said, and Gideon walked back over to me, again offering me his arm.
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