Woman King

by Evette Davis

“Gabriel could have done the seating at Versailles,” Aidan said with some exasperation as he passed us in search of his own chair. “He excels at social management.”

  The first course arrived, a mixture of Vietnamese-inspired rolls, hot and cold, stuffed with combinations of shrimp, pork, cilantro and cellophane noodles. The rolls were followed by a series of clay pots that had been simmering for hours. They were filled with sauces in every color of the rainbow: yellow curry with potatoes, green curry with shrimp and green onions, red curry with chicken. Next came bowls of noodles tossed with Dungeness crab meat. Platters bearing whole steamed sea bass followed the noodles. It was a feast, paired expertly with sweetly crisp Rieslings to keep pace with the spicy food on the table. For dessert, pot de crème—chocolate pudding—was offered, but made the French way with more egg yolks and cream than one person should eat. It was a decadent, but satisfying, way to end a rich, spicy meal.

  I glanced around the room, watching people under the sway of good food and wine. Aidan’s remarks about Versailles struck me as prophetic, for we seemed perfectly suited, our small band of like-minded comrades, now sated, savoring our hard-fought victories.

  After the luxurious meal, we all walked out of the Moss Room together, climbing the restaurant’s steps in pairs and exiting through a steel gate located at what would normally have been the “backyard” of the Academy of Sciences. In the evening, the gate is unlocked so that guests can enter the restaurant when the museum is closed. We walked through the gate one by one, full of laughter and heady from multiple bottles of wine. We all walked slowly, lingering in the warmth of a good meal, made better by good company.

  As we approached the street, something shiny and black caught my eye. I was not the only one; the group turned its collective head in unison. There, a few hundred feet ahead, sat a row of black Lexus SUVs. Clearly, Gabriel had arranged yet another luxury for his guests.

  William and I stopped for a moment to admire the front of the Academy. It was early November, but the museum had already decorated its façade with Christmas wreaths and red bows. One of the largest natural history museums in the world, the front of the building was a mix of old and new, consisting of a set of massive, glass walls affixed atop the historic stone shell of the original building, built in the early 1900’s. Steel beams run in a grid through the glass. The panels create a feeling of transparency, a fitting metaphor for the goals of an institution devoted to science and learning. Dozens of solar panels above the entryway serve as an awning in inclement weather, and provide electricity to the building.

  Aidan was the first to approach his car, a smile on his face as he regarded Elsa from a distance. For some reason, she was trailing far behind him, deep in conversation with Madeline, who’d come late to the meal. Strangely, there was no driver standing outside his vehicle, or any of them, for that matter. The absence of drivers should have made us question the arrangements, but we were too much in the afterglow of our meal to notice the details.

  The moment Aidan opened his door, the car exploded.

  ****

  CHAPTER 36

  The detonation of the first SUV set off a chain reaction, causing each car to explode and burst into flames, followed by the next, and then the next. I toppled over, dazed. Thick, black smoke filled the air around us, making it impossible to breath. Seared by the intense heat, the steel of the museum’s façade began to whine as it twisted and bent against the inferno. The force of the explosions blew out the building’s glass entrance so that the solar-panel awnings, having nothing further to rest on, collapsed to the ground.

  It all happened so quickly. One minute we’d been standing together laughing, the next we were trapped—on one side by a wall of fire, on the other by a cascade of jagged glass shards falling to earth. There seemed no way to escape. Confused, disoriented from the deafening noise and blinding smoke, I lay on the pavement panting, listening to the chaos around me. At one point, I thought I heard Elsa screaming, but I couldn’t be sure. I felt the heat of the fire on my skin, but could not see beyond where I lay.

  William, who had been standing next to me, was gone. I didn’t know when he had vanished and felt a pang of desperation to find him. The commotion all around me was disorienting and I had no idea where to look. I needed to move, but it was impossible to tell what direction to go as the cars continued to explode, sending pieces of metal everywhere. Finally, I realized that I had to get up immediately, and find my friends so we could escape the inferno.

  I pushed myself up, only to nearly collapse from a sharp pain in the back of my leg. I made an awkward pivot to my left and immediately collided with Josef, who seized me tightly and started to shout. Despite the volume, it was hard to tell what he was saying over the ringing in my ears.

  “I have her!” Josef yelled. “William, I have her!”

  “How do we get out of here?” I asked, worried the fire would kill the vampires before they could escape the flames.

  “We run,” he said. “Now that we’ve found you, we run like hell.” Josef grabbed my hand and started to pull me through the smoke. I resisted. It felt as if we were heading straight for the inferno.

  “What about Elsa? And Gabriel? We have to find them too,” I yelled, struggling against him. I could sense the immense fear my friends were feeling, but I could not see them through the smoke and ash of the fire.

  “Don’t stop,” he growled. “Not for anything, not for anyone.”

  I obeyed, hearing the sound of fear in his voice, something I would have thought impossible a few weeks ago.

  “Where is William?” I asked, wishing it was his hand dragging me through the curtain of smoke.

  “He’s moving the wounded to the fountain,” he said quickly. “We’re going to make a jump.” He meant the portal; the fountain Elsa had called the Guardian. I realized we were only a few hundred yards away. Josef’s mention of the wounded brought my thoughts back to Aidan.

  “Aidan?” I asked, choking back a sob as I remembered that last moment when he had turned to smile at Elsa before reaching for the door handle.

  “Dead, I presume,” Josef said quickly, yelling over the noise. “We couldn’t get close enough to see. We were looking for you. The force of the blast threw you backwards, away from the car, but then you seemed to disappear. Until you bumped into me, William and I couldn’t see you through the smoke.”

  Although I tried, I wasn’t able to pay attention to his words. I could barely hear. There was a tremendous buzzing in my ears. I was suddenly aware that my leg was throbbing, and it was difficult to walk. Josef was forced to drag me toward the fountain, my shredded leg trailing behind. I leaned down, trying to locate the pain, running my hand quickly along the back of my left thigh. My fingers returned, crimson, covered in my own blood. Josef saw my hand, but wouldn’t let me stop.

  “Later!” he said. “We need to get out of here before the police arrive. All of us; there can be no trace.”

  I nodded, trying to keep up with him, but it was a losing battle. The pain overwhelmed my mobility. My leg began to feel chilled in the night air thanks to all of the blood collecting in the fabric of my pant leg. When I caught a glimpse of Josef, I opened my mouth to tell him to leave me, that I was too injured to move, but I never had the chance. Darkness closed in and I felt a faint sensation of falling, and the sound of my name being called from far away.

  I’m not sure how much time passed, but sometime later I awoke to “Drink, Olivia. Drink!” Those were the only words echoing in my head, and I struggled to respond, unable to awaken from a deep sleep. Someone was pushing me, imploring me to wake up, but I didn’t want to. I was very tired, so I resisted. The person on the other end of my dream, though, was relentless and persisted, shaking me and rattling my bones until I regained consciousness.

  I blinked several times, trying to make sense of the chaos and bloodshed before me. People were leaning against the walls of the room, some slumped on the floor, bodies wounded, bloodied, bandaged and disoriente
d. I scanned the faces, trying to piece it all together. Elsa was on her knees, hovering over a body under a sheet. Why, I wondered, were we all here? Then, as if to make the answer obvious, the searing pain returned, passing through my leg and shooting up my spine until it caught in my throat, forcing me to choke back the agony. Now, I was present, in the moment. My eyes opened wide and quickly recognized Josef’s face directly in front of me.

  “Drink, Olivia, you must drink from William,” he implored me. William was also kneeling inches away from me. He was holding his arm in front of me, revealing an open cut, his blood pooling at the edges of the incision.

  Despite my injuries, I managed to recall Lily’s warning about drinking a vampire’s blood.

  “Why?” I managed to ask, my tongue rough and swollen in my mouth. “Is it safe? What will happen to me?”

  “It’s safe enough. Besides, you won’t survive unless we stop the bleeding right away,” Josef said. “You’ve lost a lot of blood. Drinking from William will help close the wound at the back of your leg more quickly.”

  William, stone-faced, nodded softly in agreement. He held my gaze, and I could hear him clearly inside my head pleading with me to hurry up before I bled to death.

  I was in no position to doubt them, so I nodded.

  William brought his arm to my lips and I opened my mouth. His blood was warm and sweet, quenching a terrible thirst I wasn’t aware of until the liquid ran down my throat. After a few seconds of timid sipping, my body’s survival instinct kicked in and I began to drink more robustly. Feverishly I drank from him until finally he pulled away. I mewed like a kitten whose milk bowl had been removed, but William soothed me.

  “That’s enough for now, darlin,” he said softly. I heard him from a faraway place, his voice slightly muffled. I felt drowsy, maybe from his blood, and once again, I succumbed to sleep.

  My rest was short-lived. I awoke a few minutes later to witness something I could hardly believe. William was stitching up the back of my leg. I came back to life with a start, just as he pulled a stitch through my skin.

  “Olivia, love, stay still,” William urged me. “Someone come over and hold her down.”

  “This hurts like hell,” I said, to no one in particular, tears springing from my eyes.

  I was rewarded with a sharp prick in my arm, and looked up to see Elsa holding a needle.

  “You’re a nurse too?” I asked, my words slurring as the painkiller dulled my senses.

  “Try to rest, Olivia,” Josef whispered. “This will help with the pain.”

  I did as I was told, and when I awoke the third time, I found myself in bed at William’s house. This time I knew where I was, and sat up quickly, desperate to see William, to know that he was OK. I rose and saw that he was sitting in a chair across from the bed, a guitar on his lap, great sadness written on his face.

  “I thought you were going to die,” he said quietly. “You lost so much blood. The glass from the museum. You wouldn’t wake up.”

  I began to recall the events at the concourse, the injury to my leg, Josef dragging me to the fountain to make the jump. I remembered drinking William’s blood in a strange room I didn’t recognize.

  “I did wake up though,” I said. “We were in a room with lots of people and you put your arm out. I did drink from you, right?”

  William looked down at his guitar. “I didn’t want this to be the way it happened,” he said. “I wanted you to do it freely, to want to bind yourself to me.”

  “You saved my life,” I said earnestly. “I would have died without your help.”

  “I know, but,” he said, and then paused.

  “But what?” I asked.

  “You drank a lot of my blood,” he said. “Once I drink from you, our bond will be very strong.

  “Go ahead,” I said, holding my arm out, wrist up. “Let’s finish this so we can stop worrying.”

  “No,” William said. “You’re too weak. We’ll have to wait until you are better to even consider it.”

  I was fully aware of the depths of his anguish. His feelings were strong inside me, almost parallel sensations to my own. I wondered if it would wear off eventually, but for now, I had another question.

  “My leg,” I asked. “Will I be able to walk again?”

  “That depends,” said a surly voice from the opposite corner of the room. It was Josef, walking into the room carrying a serving tray carrying a glass of water, a bowl of broth, a bottle of Jack Daniel’s and two tumblers.

  “Do you promise to listen to your nurses and follow their instructions?” Josef asked, setting the tray on my bedside table.

  “Maybe,” I grumbled. “What do I have to do?”

  “Your leg will be fine,” William said. “I asked Nadia to come over and examine it. You needed a lot of stitches. You sustained a pretty severe cut in the back of your thigh. It will heal, but you will be stiff for several days.

  “What did Nadia do?” I asked, curious to know the extent of her healing powers.

  “She made a salve that she rubbed over the wound. It was already healing rapidly because of my blood, but she says her salve will help keep the swelling down and prevent too much scarring.”

  I ran my hands along the bandages, admiring the tightness of the wrappings. “Did you learn how to do this when you were an ambulance driver?”

  “A bit,” William said. “But mostly later in the Resistance. We couldn’t be sure there would be a doctor around so we had to learn to care for our own. Being the least squeamish about blood, I learned how to stitch wounds.”

  I paused for a moment, steeling my courage. “Did you have a lot of wounds to sew today?”

  “It was yesterday, actually,” Josef said, finishing his bourbon in one gulp. “You’ve been asleep for almost a day.”

  His words made me feel even more separated from my friends. People I’d seen last lying against a wall, covered in blood, perhaps their own, perhaps not. I had no idea who’d survived.

  “You must tell me everything,” I said. “I need to know.”

  William and Josef grimaced, but nodded in agreement.

  “Aidan is dead,” William said. “He was killed instantly when he opened the door of the car. We left his body at the scene when we first made the jump, but Elsa went back to search for his remains. She brought back what was left.”

  I buried my head in my hands, trying to banish the ghastly images William had described.

  “Everyone else is alive,” Josef added, pulling me out of my thoughts. “I was burned pretty badly on one arm. Gabriel suffered a series of cuts on his face from the glass.”

  “What about Elsa, and Lily?”

  “Lily broke her arm,” explained Josef. “It was a compound fracture which made for a lot of blood. She is in the next room resting. She wouldn’t leave until she knew you were OK.”

  “Elsa was not harmed physically,” William said. “She was the furthest away from the blasts when they happened, but…”

  “But she saw the man she loved blown to pieces in front of her eyes,” I said, tears streaming down my face. William came to sit on the bed with me, holding me gently in his arms.

  “Yes. She’s not said a word since it happened. She helped hold you down so I could sew your wound, gave you the shot that knocked you out, and stayed to see that you were stable. Then she left. I warned her not to go to Aidan’s house, that it might also be booby-trapped. She nodded, but left anyway.”

  “Where’s Gabriel?” I asked.

  “He made a call and asked a security team to meet him at his apartment,” Josef said. “He’s expected back here tomorrow morning.”

  “Were you hurt?” I asked William.

  “Miraculously, no,” he said. “A piece of shrapnel hit me in the leg, but it was minor. Josef and I took turns feeding after we treated your wound. Both of us are fine.”

  “Where were we? When I drank from you? I didn’t recognize the place,” I said.

  “Vampire safe house,” Josef
said. “You know, vampires and our privacy. Occasionally we need a place to rest or to heal after an altercation. We have a spare house. We use it for those kinds of moments. It contains an infirmary of sorts and a doctor who’s on call. She set Lily’s bone in her arm. When you were all stabilized, we brought you and Lily back here. She was given a very powerful painkiller to ease her pain for the next few hours. Fortunately, fairies have rapid healing capability.”

  The three of us sat quietly for a moment, absorbing the details of the conversation we’d shared. Car bombs, vampire safe houses, security teams—so much for ghost stories and fairy tales. The real version was infinitely more lethal than the fables parents sent their children to bed with.

  “Someone tried to kill us all last night,” I said, wiping my eyes. “It wasn’t some fluke accident or a case of mistaken identity, was it?”

  “Car bombs are a specialty of the Serbian mafia,” Josef said. “The door detonator is one of their signatures.”

  “Let’s finish this conversation when Gabriel arrives tomorrow morning,” William said abruptly. “Olivia needs to rest.”

  Josef bade us goodnight, saying he was going to look in on Lily. I wasn’t sure how much I could rest thinking about my role in Aidan’s death. If I hadn’t pressed him to investigate, if I hadn’t taunted Nikola in the lobby, maybe Aidan would still be alive.

  “This is my doing,” I murmured.

  “No,” William said. “Aidan was a grown man with years of experience. He wasn’t sloppy. He wasn’t emotional. He wouldn’t have done anything simply because you asked him. He was killed because he either uncovered something, or confronted Nikola directly.”

  “That doesn’t make me feel any better,” I said, lying back on the pillows. My leg was beginning to throb and suddenly I felt exhausted. “Can I have something for my pain?”

  William nodded and brought me a bottle. “Gabriel sent it over, it seems he has a pharmacist that fills prescriptions on demand. Take one, it’s a Tylenol with codeine.”