“Well, I’d tell you all the things I’m sorry for,” I say, wiping my face and standing up, “but right now I’m going to get you out of here. Then we’ll have time to tell each other all our mistakes.”
“You can’t just take me out of the hospital. Besides, they’ll find out what you did, and you’ll get in trouble. You don’t need to do that for me.”
“Yes, I do.”
“I’m going to die anyway, Joe. I might as well pay my debt.”
“Well, we’re certainly going to make it look that way.”
She frowns, and I can tell she’s not following me.
“I’m going to have to drain you of some life energy, Mom.” I can hardly believe I’m saying these words to her, and they twist a knife in my gut. “The nurses think I’m here to collect your debt, so we need to convince them that I have. They won’t be fooled if you don’t look, well, like you’ve been collected. I won’t take all your life energy… but I’ll tell the nurses that I’ve transferred you out. You’ll have to lie very still and, well, pretend that you’re dead. A nurse will come to take you away, but she’s a friend. She’s going to help us get you out. Then, once you’re away, I’ll give it all back to you—and more. You’ll feel better. I promise.” I don’t tell her that I’m afraid her heart won’t be able to take any of it. That I might actually kill her with this horrible, desperate idea to save her. But I know that her true debt collector is on the way, and we don’t have any other options.
“I don’t know, Joe. I’m worried that you’ll get caught for this. It can’t be legal.”
I give her a small smile. “It’s very not legal. One of the better not legal things I’ve done in a while, let me tell you.”
That earns me a smile. It’s a faded echo of the smiles I remember from my childhood. It almost breaks my heart.
“Okay.” I shuffle closer to her. “We don’t have a lot of time. I should probably… start.” I strip off the monitor patches and their signals go dead. The nurses shouldn’t be alarmed because this is what they expect to happen.
My mom nods, then looks up into my eyes. “Will it hurt, Joe?”
“Yes.” I bite my lip to stop it from trembling. “It will feel like you’re dying. But I promise you won’t. I promise, Mom.”
“Okay.”
I lay my hand on her forehead and take a shaky breath.
“I love you, Joe.”
“I love you, too, Mom.”
Then I start the transfer. The flush of energy through my palm does nothing to keep the stabbing feeling from my chest as she seizes up, the death cramps taking hold of her as I drain her life energy. Tears stream down my face, and my hand shakes so bad I can barely keep contact. I close my eyes, feeling past the contact point, sensing how much life energy she has. It’s not much. I keep draining down, but I want to leave plenty of margin for error, so I stop, probably too soon.
My mom’s arms and legs fall limp, and her head lolls to the side. My heart lurches, and I’m afraid that I somehow made a mistake. I press my fingers to her throat: I can barely feel her heart throbbing in her neck, but it’s there. I bend my ear to her half-open mouth, and a whisper of air tells me she’s still alive.
But barely.
I swipe open my phone and quickly punch the number. Elena picks up, and before she can say anything, I whisper into my hand, “We’re ready.”
“We’re on our way.” She hangs up.
They should be here in less than a minute, just enough time for me to clear out and meet them downstairs. At the morgue. Where Elena and her nurse-friend will be wheeling my mother in just a few minutes.
I wipe my face and slap my cheeks a few times, to remove all traces of tears, then stride out of the room. I barely slow down at the nurses’ station, just long enough to say, “Patient in room 403 has been collected,” and move on. I force myself not to hurry to the elevator, but it takes an interminable amount of time for it to arrive.
My jackboot taps nervously on the tiled floor, but finally, the elevator door slides open. Inside is a man in a long, dark trenchcoat. With black boots. I hardly think, just react, striding quickly into the elevator, brushing past him, then reaching back to grab him around the neck.
But it’s too late; he saw me coming.
He reaches back to grab my face, grasping for skin contact, while I wrench him backward. We both fall to the elevator floor as the doors start to close. His reservoir of life energy is deep, but he’s not as strong as me. I have a lock on his face with my hand, draining him at a near scorching pace, while simultaneously choking him with my arm cinched around his neck. He’s pulling life energy through his hand on my face, but he keeps losing contact as I whip my head back and forth, just out of his reach. It’s a death dance on the floor, but I’m winning, and we both know it.
“Wait!” he chokes out, beating against my head instead of trying to draw life energy from it. I don’t let him loose. His movements slow as the elevator starts to plummet. We were only on the 8th floor, so I don’t have much time. I shove him away, still alive, and spring to my feet, ready for more, if he’s going to push it.
“Walk away from this collection,” I say. “I’ve already taken care of it.”
“What the hell…?” he says, his voice still raspy.
I slam the button on the elevator for the third floor. Less security there. Easier to make my way to the morgue undetected.
“Say you’ll walk away, and I’ll let you live,” I say.
He just stares at me.
“Say it!” I take a step toward him.
He cowers back into the corner with his hands up. “Okay!”
“Just walk away. Tell your bean counter the patient was already dead.”
He frowns at me like I’m crazy, but he gives me a slow nod. The door slides open. I punch the button for the bottom floor and slip out just as the doors close. At least he’ll have to make a trip to the ground floor first. With any luck, he’ll walk away. Or Elena will do her thing before he thinks it through and checks on the patient.
My mom.
I fly down the stairwell, heading for the exit out the back of the morgue and hoping to actually find my mother there alive.
There are four ambulances lined up at the back dock of the hospital. Three are empty and the fourth has a driver who looks way too young to be involved in the illegal smuggling of bodies out of the morgue. But he looks over my debt collector trenchcoat and boots like I’m just another day at the office for him.
“You coming along for the ride?” he asks.
“Yeah.”
He opens the back of the ambulance and I climb in. I take a seat on the cushioned bench where the EMT’s would sit while treating their patients. The driver stands guard in front of the open door, arms crossed, watching the back door to the morgue. It seems like a small eternity, but it’s only a few minutes later when Elena and a young nurse in scrubs wheel out a gurney with a bright blue body bag strapped to it. They’re in no small hurry as they run down the ramp. The driver throws open the second ambulance door and the three of them slide the gurney inside. Elena climbs in first, and the nurse gives the driver a quick kiss before following her in. The driver slams the doors shut, and we roll away from the hospital while I’m still working at the strap over the body bag.
The nurse shoves aside my hands and expertly unlocks the strap. The front of the bag peels away with one heart-ripping sound, and inside is my mother, limp and still as death, just as I left her. I quickly place my hand on her forehead and pulse in life energy, praying I won’t feel the same nothingness that Ophelia had when she died. Or when Valac slipped away. There’s only a whisper of presence in my mom, but I feel it, and I step up the rate of transfer. The nurse places monitor patches on her cheek and chest.
“You should infuse here,” the nurse says, laying her hand on my mother’s chest, right above her heart.
I put my other hand there, pulsing energy in through both hands while carefully watching the nurse’s electronic readouts pla
y out on the screen mounted on the ambulance wall. I don’t know what all the numbers mean, but there’s a blip for her heart, and it makes a reassuringly steady rhythm.
My mom’s head stirs under my hand, and she pulls in a deep breath. Her eyes flutter open, and after a moment of searching, her gaze finds my face.
“Joey,” she says.
“Hey there.” I don’t try to say anything more.
“Where are we going?”
I let out a small laugh and look to Elena. She’s smiling, her eyes shining. Even the nurse grins.
“Somewhere you’ll be safe,” I say.
I keep trickling life energy into her all the way to Madam A’s.
My mom’s eyes are closed, her body lying still on the bed. She’s not dead—her chest rises and falls, rapidly, like she’s perpetually short on breath. Even in sleep her body has to fight to stay alive. I want to reach out, lay my hand on hers, and give her another hit of life energy, but I don’t. She can only take so much, and she needs her rest. I keep my hands on my knees and lean forward in my chair to peek, for the hundredth time, at the monitor by her bed. Morning sun glares off the screen, but I can still see the pulsing electronic signature that says her heart is beating: too fast, irregular, but pumping life through her, nonetheless.
The nurse set her up in a private room—Madam A didn’t want my mom out with the sick kids and neither did I. It would be too stressful, too much to explain. It's private, but there’s not much more décor in my mom’s room than the bed and the chair I’m sitting in. I think it’s actually Grace’s apartment, but it’s devoid of personal effects, so I can’t be sure.
I lean back, rub my face, close my eyes, and wrestle with the debate that’s been raging through my head since we arrived at Madam A’s church-turned-hospice yesterday. Do I stay by my mom’s side and continue to feed her as many small life hits as her heart can tolerate? Or do I finish spying on my psych officer so I can stop her from transferring out more terminal kids? The interruption at her office yesterday might have destroyed any chance of digging through Candy’s files. Now that she’s expecting me, she’ll be more likely to shoot me than let me get close to her Agency records.
Yesterday there was no question where I had to be: my mom needed me. But now the nurse says she’s stabilized. Of course, there’s no guarantee that her heart will keep beating from one moment to the next. And the idea of not being here, for even an hour of the few she has left, has kept me in my seat ever since we arrived.
The apartment door creaks open, and feet shuffle across the polished wood floor behind me. I don’t move, keeping my eyes closed, hoping whoever it is will take the hint and leave.
“’Morning, sugar!” With that perky Southern accent, it has to be Annabelle, the girl Madam A sent while I was still trapped in Kolek’s mob. “Thought you could use a jolt. You’re moving slower than a Sunday afternoon.”
I give in and open my eyes. She stands next to me, holding a steaming cup of something. I pray that it’s coffee.
“You’re not actually human, are you?” I ask with a grin. “You’re some kind of Southern guardian angel.” Then my smile dims. I called Ophelia that, and I only managed to get her killed.
“The angels are busy looking out for your mama.” She hands me the cup. “I’m just looking after the collectors who help them.”
“Collectors and angels aren’t exactly on the same side.” But I give her a smile and breathe in the rich coffee bean smell, cradling the cup in my hands. The mercy hits I’ve been doling out to my mom have left a low-burning golden feeling inside me, but my body is running on too little sleep. Exhaustion crowds my mind. The coffee is hot on my throat, but it jump-starts my brain almost immediately.
“How is your mama?” Annabelle asks.
I look at my mom’s wrinkled brow, the torment showing on her face even in sleep.
“I’m afraid to leave her. I don’t know how much time she has.”
Annabelle eases onto a corner of my mom’s bed, her small frame hardly weighing down the mattress at all. “Everyone feels that way, sugar. We practically have to throw the parents out of here every night. But she needs to rest, and you lingering here all the time isn’t going to make her get any better.”
“The hits I can give her might,” I say, even though I know it’s not true. The hits might postpone her death, but they can’t give her a new heart.
Annabelle leans over to pat my hand. “There are others who need those transfers, too.”
I nod slowly and take another sip of the coffee. “I can do those while she rests. Are the kids ready now? I know Madam A wanted their parents present.”
“There are a few who are waiting in the main room.” She tips her head to the door. So, she’s not just bringing me coffee; she’s wrangling me to fulfill my promise. Not that I need much prompting. I want to pay out, or transfer, or whatever it is they need. And staying near my mom, just in the next room over, eases the wrestling in my mind for the moment.
I rise up from the chair, careful with my coffee. “Lead the way, Miss Angel.”
“Oh, don’t get all flirty with me, mister,” she says, batting her eyes as she rises from the bed. “I know you’re sweet on someone else.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” I say, and I sincerely hope she doesn’t either. Annabelle’s far too perceptive—and talkative. I’m sure my special… relationship… with Elena and her sister Tilly is the talk of Madam A’s brothel, especially now that Elena literally saved my mom’s life by helping me get her out of the hospital. No one knows it was part of our deal, in exchange for me helping with Madam A’s kids, but either way: I owe Elena a debt I can probably never repay. The least I can do is not feed any rumors about her. Or us.
Not that there is an “us.”
Annabelle shoots me a knowing look as she sways toward the door. I roll my eyes with dramatic effect, hopefully quashing any rumors before they get started, then follow her out of the room.
I’ve transferred three small hits to three even smaller children, all without losing control. I consider it a major win. Or it could be the roiling inferno of goodness burning inside me, the after-effect of the mercy hits lasting well past the time I lift my hand from the kids’ tiny foreheads. Each of the transfers was donated by a different one of Madam A’s girls, and each time I doubled the payout. I’m not sure if anyone has noticed yet—I hope not. I don’t want to explain where that extra life energy is coming from.
But everyone—parents, nurses, sex worker donors—are all focused on the flushed faces and happy smiles of the children. I take a couple steps back from the little girl I just paid out to and hold onto the foot railing of the bed next to hers. The nausea is still working its way through my system, and I’m afraid the coffee will come back up. I close my eyes and take a few deep breaths to fight through it. I should probably take a break. Go check on my mom. Maybe rest a little before attempting any more.
I don’t want to push my luck.
Better to pace myself than have an uncontrolled payout, like with Tilly. I don’t know why that one was so hard to pull back from. Maybe it’s the remembered connection to that first time, when paying out to Tilly was mixed up in my mind with Apple Girl pressed against me in that bathroom.
“Joe?” A soft voice, close to me, startles me out of my thoughts and pops my eyes open. It’s Elena, which makes me panic for a moment, as if somehow my thoughts were written plain on my face.
She frowns. “Are you all right? Maybe you should sit down.”
I sigh with relief. She only thinks I’m sick from the payout. Which my seized-up stomach reminds me is actually true.
“I’m fine,” I say, and swallow down the sourness at the back of my throat, just to be sure. I glance at the parents still huddled around the girl and gesture Elena to follow me a few more steps away. “Hey, I wanted to thank you. For helping me get my mom out of the hospital. I can’t really repay you for that, but,” I incline my head to the girl in t
he bed, “I’m going to give it a try.”
She studies my face. “You didn’t need my help this time with the mercy hits. You must be getting better at it.”
My gaze drops to my feet. “Yeah.” Embarrassment makes my throat thick. “With a little more practice, maybe I can even pay out to Tilly without passing out.”
She doesn’t say anything, so I look up. She’s holding something back.
“What?” I ask.
“Before, you said you were going to visit your psych officer. To find out more about who’s ordering the kids to be transferred out. Did you get a chance to do that? I mean, before I called you away to the hospital.”
“I started to, but…” I don’t want to go into the details about my visit with Candy.
“You were with your psych officer when I called, weren’t you?”
“Yeah,” I say, my head spinning back over that brief time on the phone. Did Elena hear anything? “My plan was to have Candy give me access to her files without suspecting that I know about the kids. If I can find some evidence of what she’s doing, and who’s involved, then I can take it to my bean counter, Flitstrom. He’s a pretty straight arrow. I think he can help.”
“You thought your psych officer would give you access to her files? Just like that?” Elena’s skeptical look makes me squirm.
“Well, it wasn’t exactly going to be voluntary,” I say, hoping she won’t think I’m a monster again.
But instead she nods, bites her lip, and looks like she wants to say something, but isn’t quite sure how to spit it out.
“These aren’t nice people, Elena,” I say, a little too defensively. “I’m not going to get the information I need just by asking nicely.”
“I know.” She nods her head more vigorously. “That’s why I want to help.” She peers up at me, her dark brown eyes catching bits of the morning sun. “If that’s okay with you, I mean.”
Okay with me? My heart does a small lurch, and I’m a bit lost for words. Then my better sense gets hold of me. “This is dangerous stuff. The people involved—they’re more than willing to kill children. They’re not going to hesitate to kill anyone else. I don’t think—”
The Debt Collector (Season 1) Page 28