by Linda Wisdom
“I’ll talk to the head of pediatrics as soon as possible, so you can make the rounds up there.” Lili set out food and water in the Limoges bowls her furry roommate insisted upon.
“Be careful.”
The witch stopped at the door and looked over her shoulder. A warning from the cat wasn’t normal. Not one with concern layered over the words.
“What do you sense?” Lili asked, aware Cleo could ferret out things she couldn’t.
“A strange power in the air. Something that doesn’t belong here,” Cleo replied. “Or perhaps it’s because of the asylum. They never give off a good aura. Just like there was something odd in the house from last night.” She stared long and hard at Lili who conveniently ignored her.
“No, they don’t.” The witch remembered working in London’s Bethlem Hospital, also known as the infamous Bedlam, in 1633. She’d done her best to hide her magickal skills during the months she was there as one of the matrons, since the idea of a woman doctor was unthinkable. They considered nurses little more than maids. In their eyes, a patient who was insane didn’t require medical treatment. The fear they’d label her mad and find a way to incarcerate her was a nightmare that still haunted her.
“Off with you.” Cleo raised a paw in farewell. “I have a nap to savor.” She curled up and closed her eyes.
Lili learned no elevator descended to the lower depths of the building and finally found the stone steps that did. She felt as if she were transported back in time as she ran her hand along the damp stone walls and felt the sense of hopelessness that pervaded the place.
She knew something was very wrong the moment she reached the last step.
The screams rending the air were filled with anger and fear.
Lili wasted no time running toward the large iron door. A wave of her hand opened it as if it were made of paper.
And the sight before her was one she thought she’d left behind hundreds of years ago.
Two ogres, the size of eighteen-wheelers, held a wild-eyed male who twisted and turned in their bone-crushing grips that left dents in his dirty flesh.
“Get the fuck outta here,” one of the ogres growled at her. The name Turtifo was etched on a pendant circling his tree-trunk-size neck. His tan leather shirt showed food stains down the front, and she didn’t even want to think about what the discolorations on his ankle-length pants meant. She doubted he’d bathed in the past few months.
“I’m Dr. Carter, and I belong down here,” she told him, easily staring him down even if he was a few feet taller than she was. “What in Hades is going on here?”
“Nothin’ you need to think about, sweetheart.” Even with one on each side, their prisoner refused to go easily.
“Stop.” She projected her authority into her voice. It was enough to halt them in their tracks. Both creatures glared at her as she moved toward them.
“This asswipe has to be returned to his cell,” the second ogre whose pendant stated he was Coing informed her in a voice that grated on her ears. Even standing a few feet away, he tried to loom over Lili, using his great size for intimidation. She noticed he didn’t smell any better than his cohort.
He had no clue that terrorization wasn’t even in her vocabulary.
She stared at the trio, not missing the fresh black blood streaming down their charge’s face. It’s him! She kept her features schooled, so she wouldn’t reveal she had already met the patient. Except at the time, he’d been cleaned up and incredibly… no, don’t go there, Lili.
“This patient needs treatment.” She knew the cuts and bruises would heal, but she wanted the blood cleaned from his skin.
“Dr. Mortimer will take care of it when he finally gets down here.” They struggled vainly against her magickal order that she knew would hold until she released them. “Demon asshole needs to be back in his cell.”
She narrowed her eyes at them. “He’s not here, and I am. Where’s the treatment room?” She looked around.
“They’re taken care of in their cells,” Turtifo snickered. “Can’t afford for them to be too comfortable, ya know.”
“Then take him there,” she informed him before turning to his cohort. “One of you will bring me supplies to treat his wounds. Now.” There was no doubt she’d just made two enemies. It didn’t matter. She wasn’t about to allow anyone go without prompt healing.
“He’ll kill you as soon as look at you,” came the grumbling as the male was dragged to an end cell.
Lili was almost rocked back by the stench in the rock-lined cubicle that seemed to be swamped in suffocating shadows.
“When was this room last cleaned?” she demanded.
“There’s a drain. We try to hose it down every so often.” Turtifo tossed his captive onto a bundle of straw that doubled as a bed. “His kind don’t need much.”
“Here.” Coing returned, pushing a metal tray into the room. “Don’t know why you’re bothering. He’ll heal eventually.”
Lili glared at the two ogres. “You can go about your duties.”
Turtifo crossed arms the size of a cow across his massive chest. “Dr. Mortimer wouldn’t be happy if we left you here alone.” He leered in the direction of her breasts.
“I’ll make sure he knows I insisted.” Her fingers tingled with the idea of dropping the ceiling on their heads. Even if only the rocks would break. The battle of glares eventually broke when the ogres looked away.
“We’ll be right outside,” Turtifo growled, leaving the cell but keeping the door open.
Lili turned back to her patient. “It’s all right,” she said softly. “I won’t hurt you.” She gently pushed back the filthy strands of shoulder-length coal-black hair that hung loosely around his dirt-streaked face. The large tear in his shirt revealed the brand marring his shoulder. Her lips tightened as she looked at it, knowing it declared to all that the bearer of the mark was nothing more than an insane animal.
Her skin burned with awareness the moment she touched him.
Protective runes kicked into gear while she stared into blazing cobalt eyes.
“What in Hades is going on here?” she asked once she regained her voice. She kept her voice low so her guards couldn’t eavesdrop. She knew most ogres didn’t have excellent hearing, but for all she knew, those two had been enhanced. “How can you be here when you were in my house last night?” And how come you looked all clean and gorgeous then? Now you look as if you just rolled out of a county dump. All this filth isn’t recent, either. Not to mention I don’t sense one shred of insanity in your blood. So what is going on here?
Then she remembered the shadows that lingered around him. That he’d disappeared in the blink of an eye.
Lili picked up a packet of wet wipes and began cleaning the black blood from the wicked gash marring his forehead. She could see the torn skin was already knitting together, but not as quickly as it should. She carefully touched her fingertips to the wound to speed up the healing. Her skin warmed with her power. Her lips tightened at the sight of raw abraded skin and jagged scars on his wrists and ankles. Iron shackles took power away from supernatural creatures and created as much pain as silver did. She didn’t care how qualified Dr. Mortimer was; she was going to make sure that kind of treatment didn’t happen again.
Her patient uttered guttural words that hurt her ears and caused her to wince as the painful sound bounced around inside her head.
“Oh puleeze.” She rolled her eyes as she tossed the bloody wipes in the air and torched them. She knew that blood was a priceless commodity for many spells, especially the darker ones. A demon’s blood was considered extremely valuable for baneful charms. She always made sure anything bearing blood was promptly destroyed by fire to protect the patient. “I may not be fluent in your language, but I know enough demon profanity to know it when I hear it. Do me a favor. Translation spells are a royal pain in the ass and hurt my head like Hades. But if that’s the way you want it, I’ll fire one up. Just be prepared for a mega-migraine, because I’ll m
ake sure you get it instead of me. So why don’t you cut the shit and tell me how you can be in here and yet get outside without anyone knowing about it.” She wiped away the last of the blood and now saw nothing more than a faint pink mark that soon disappeared entirely, not even leaving a scar. That cloth likewise went up in flames.
“Dr. Carter.”
Lili looked over her shoulder to find her superior standing in the open doorway. Two gleeful-looking ogres stood behind him. The expression on the wizard’s face wasn’t good.
I can see we won’t be friends. She didn’t glare at them because she didn’t want to give away her feelings too soon.
“Good morning, Dr. Mortimer. It appears one of the patients suffered an accident. I was making sure he was all right.” She didn’t move away from the demon.
Dr. Mortimer’s normally genial features were twisted in a frown. “You shouldn’t be in here alone with Patient 1172,” he stated.
“We told the witch that, Doctor,” Turtifo piped up with a smirk. Lili’s hand itched to smack it off his face.
“That’s Dr. Witch to you,” she snapped. She reined in her fury a bit as she turned to her superior. “I came down here and discovered that one of the subjects had been badly hurt.”
“Demons are remarkably fast healers,” he needlessly reminded her.
“That doesn’t mean he should be covered in blood when he’s returned to his room.” It took every ounce of willpower not to throw some anger his way. He was a doctor, for Fate’s sake!
“Please come with me, Dr. Carter.” He consulted his old-fashioned gold pocket watch before tucking it in his vest. As usual, he was dressed in a black frock coat and neatly tied cravat along with narrow black trousers. Gold-rimmed spectacles were perched on his angular nose. “We have much to do.”
Lili looked at her patient. “We’ll speak again,” she said, sotto voce, after hastily throwing up a privacy shield so no one else would hear her words. “You have a lot of explaining to do.”
His lips barely stretched in a smile. “Like I told you, Doc. A demon does it better.”
She heard the heavy thud of the cell door closing as she caught up with Dr. Mortimer.
“Patient 1172 is very dangerous,” he informed her, not even bothering to look at her. “You should not have gone in there alone.”
“He was out of his cell when I arrived.” She didn’t care if she was throwing the two aides under the bus. Damn ogres deserved it and more.
“He tried to escape when we took his meal to him,” Coing hastily explained when the wizard showed his displeasure.
“Then we must ensure that doesn’t happen again,” Dr. Mortimer murmured. He directed her down a curving hallway that was as dark and dank as the first one, with torches lining the walls.
“How many patients are you presently treating down here?” she asked, hoping to bypass a lecture. She was tempted to witch up a few candles to shed some light on their surroundings.
“At this time I have seven,” he replied, seeming to momentarily forget her transgression. “Three males and four females. This is why I wanted additional help down here. Each patient has their own unique problem that I know with time and care can be restored to full health. Although 1172, the one you tried to help,” his visage darkened, “well, let us just say he is more dangerous than all of them put together. He is a demon who slaughtered more than one clan because of his insanity. Even his kind did not want to deal with him.”
“Why would you have someone so hazardous housed here?” Lili asked, curious, since she didn’t sense any of the treacherous peril her superior hinted at. “Demons have always been very insular. I would think they would have preferred taking care of their own, or he would have been instantly destroyed for his crimes.” It was because they stayed so much to themselves that most of her knowledge of demonkind came from books and scrolls.
“Normally it would be that way, but I was given the golden opportunity not only to treat one of their kind a few hundred years ago, but bring her back to a full, useful life. The woman’s sire is on the Demon Council and suggested that I work with Patient 1172,” he replied stiffly, apparently disliking her disbelief. “It appeared even their healers did not want to deal with this particular demon. Patient 1172’s mother is also a member of the Council and was willing to allow me to work with her son. Naturally, I could not refuse their request to see if there was a chance in rehabilitating the creature. It was a challenge I could not refuse,” he replied. “One hundred and eighty years ago, he destroyed an entire vampire clan deep in the Carpathian Mountains. During the battle, one of the vampires managed to force him to ingest some of his blood. It left him seriously deranged. Sad to say, I do not think he will ever leave, and the Demon Council need not fear he will escape from here. The asylum is heavily shielded to prevent anything of that sort happening.”
Lili thought about seeing said “deranged” patient in Inderman, but she silent. She preferred to find out on her own what was going on. “Considering his crimes, why wasn’t he immediately destroyed?” She might not know a lot about demons, but she did know that they preferred to kill first and forget about asking any questions.
“As I explained, his mother is a high-level demon. She interceded on his behalf. She believes that I can find a way to counteract the insanity the vampire blood ingestion caused.”
Lili felt the abrupt drop in temperature. A heaviness in the air indicated a strong magick that raised uneasy prickles across the surface of her skin. She tucked her hands in her lab coat’s pockets and felt relief from the magickal protection her clothing provided her.
He wants to keep this place as a true Bedlam. A madhouse of old. His own kingdom.
She sensed a noxious miasma of sorrow and pain in a place she could only call a dungeon.
Upstairs was modern, healing magick at its finest. Down here was a return to the dark past. She was grateful Dr. Mortimer hadn’t tried turning the rest of the hospital back to an earlier time.
“Dr. Carter, is there something wrong?” Dr. Mortimer asked, frowning at her inattention.
Lili quickly snapped herself back to the present. “No, sir. I just realized that this place reminds me of a hospital I worked at in London years ago.”
He nodded with a smile, taking her statement as a compliment instead of dismay at the gloomy surrounding. “I was very lucky to find a sorcerer who could create just the right receptacle for the inmates. All of the wards here are set very high. How Patient 1172 left his cell is a mystery I intend to solve.” His expression momentarily darkened then shifted to his usual bland face. “Since I was given free rein, I thought I would create a place that reminded me of the hospitals I presided over in Europe. They were all excellent institutions that kept the patients safe.”
Lili’s nose twitched at the musty scent of old tobacco that lingered on the wizard’s coat along with something else she couldn’t detect. She wanted to ask more questions about the demon. She refused to refer to him as 1172. She needed to learn his name. She had a good idea the only way she could do that was to go to the source.
“What afflicts the other patients held here?” she asked. As they passed each iron slab that doubled for a door, she felt the mental infection leach out of the metal and the walls. She knew it wasn’t just from the present patients but also from those who’d been here in the past. She wasn’t an empath, but her healing power meant she sensed all kinds of sickness. Sometimes even illness that had happened in the past lingered. This kind was strong and skittered over her nerve endings.
Her first inclination was to open the doors and bring the ones incarcerated there to the main floors. They needed heavy waves of healing and calming magick that could help them more than anything down here. Luckily, she knew better, since some distressed patients didn’t do well unless they were cocooned in a comforting darkness.
As she turned her head, she caught sight of a wisp of pink smoke swirl in the air before the form of a little girl wearing an old-fashioned blue
print ankle-length dress materialized.
Lili glanced at Dr. Mortimer and realized he either didn’t see the tiny wraith or preferred to ignore her presence.
The little girl stood there, her small face upturned, staring at the witch with a sad expression in her eyes.
He never sees me, the ghostly girl told her in a breathy voice that echoed softly inside Lili’s head. I don’t think he wants to talk to me. She clutched a tattered teddy bear in her hands. Will you talk to me? she asked plaintively. I’m very lonely and afraid. I can’t find my mommy. Can you find her for me?
Lili hung back just enough to nod her head and smile at the girl and communicate wordlessly that she’d speak to the girl later, and then ran to catch up with Dr. Mortimer.
Her steps faltered when she passed one cell door, where a pair of blazing orange eyes suddenly appeared behind the iron bars set in the heavy wood. A sharp hiss told her the occupant had come in contact with the metal that burned preternatural flesh. She swiveled her head and stared momentarily at the darkness before moving on.
The wizard doctor directed her into a room furnished with a square table and four chairs. A counter along one wall held a coffeemaker and a row of mugs along with a small refrigerator. The faint coppery tang of blood hung in the air.
Dr. Mortimer pulled a small stack of manila folders from a cart stationed under the counter and set them on the table. He picked up the top file and opened it.
She wondered why he hadn’t bothered digitizing the files and privately vowed to scan them into her computer tablet as soon as she could. She might have been born in the thirteenth century, but she enjoyed keeping up with all modern conveniences.
“I am afraid I must insist that you not be alone with the demon again,” he told her with a hint of regret in his voice that she really didn’t believe. “I am aware you are extremely gifted in the healing arts. You must always realize I feel Patient 1172 is still much too dangerous for a lone female to deal with.”