“Kai and I will be in the bunkhouse,” Sorino announced, then turned for the door.
“Okay,” Amari called after him. “But some of the other bunch are already in there, so you may have to fight for a bed.”
Sorino’s back stiffened, and Katelina could imagine the angry expression twisting across his face. Without looking back he disappeared out the door.
Amari turned to Jorick. “Now, where were we?”
The door opened again and the young vampire threw up his hands and muttered something in a foreign language before he turned toward the newcomer. “Yes?”
It was Fethillen, dressed in her usual incognito sweater and boots. “So you made it. I’d started to think you weren’t coming.”
Jorick stepped toward her. “We’d have come faster if we didn’t have to walk to the airport.”
“You were welcome to leave yesterday.” They stared at one another, and Katelina detected the subtle power struggle going on. She was fed up with all of it.
“Etsuko was too sick to leave.” She turned toward Amari. “All I want is a real shower and then I don’t give a damn where I sleep.”
The vampire grinned. “There’s a shower in Celia and Burke’s cabin. It’s right—”
“I know where it is. I was here last time too,” and without waiting for an answer she strode out the door.
She was in the shower when Jorick came in. He waited until she got out to say, “You shouldn’t have taken off.”
“Yeah, yeah. Place is crawling with vampires. I got it.” She toweled off and pulled out the clothes she’d washed in the jungle. They’d seemed clean there, but now they didn’t. “What I’d give for a washing machine.”
“Katelina, you’re not taking the threat seriously,” Jorick snapped. “You’ve become—”
“Used to ‘friendly’ vampires?” she suggested.
“Desensitized,” he said. “Indifferent. Complacent. Vampires are deadly. It’s the same as looking a lion in the face and stooping to scratch its chin.”
“I hardly call taking an unchaperoned bath the same thing as tickling a lion.” She stopped from shouting and took a deep breath. He meant well. Between the coming battle, Etsuko’s condition, and the stress of their recent living conditions everyone was on edge, and it wasn’t worth it. “Fine. I’ll try to be more careful.”
Jorick blinked in surprise, but quickly recovered. “Good. The bunkhouse and the room under the main house are full. The humans have volunteered to give up their cabin, but I think they’ll still be short on space. I suggest we sleep on the plane.”
“As long as it’s not on the floor I’ll sleep anywhere.” And she meant it.
The seats on the plane reclined, but Katelina couldn’t get comfortable. She woke more than once to the sound of Etsuko moaning in Japanese and had finally fallen into a deep sleep when she jerked awake to someone shouting.
“Is this normal?”
Something was being waved in her face. She grabbed it, and recoiled at the wet, sticky texture. She forced her eyes to focus on a towel covered in something gooey and black.
“What the hell is that?”
“You tell me!” Oren cried.
Katelina dropped the seat into a sitting position and struggled to stand. Was the plane leaking something? If so it probably wasn’t dangerous, it would only delay them tomorrow. She yawned and wondered toward the bathroom. “Where did it come from?”
“She’s throwing it up!”
Alarm bells went off in Katelina’s head. Throwing up something black was never good. She hurried to the Japanese woman, who lay on her side. The black vomit was on her lips and she choked and wretched out another string of it.
“Oh my God.” She looked up at Oren. “She needs a doctor. Now.”
“And where the hell are we supposed to get one?”
“I don’t know. Maybe Burke or Celia?” He looked blank and she added quickly. “The people who work here with Amari. Go—” she broke off. “No, the sun’s up. I’ll see if I can find them. You stay here and… and make sure she doesn’t choke to death.”
Katelina grabbed her coat from her seat and started for the door when Oren called, “Her mouth is bleeding. What do I do?”
“Just, uh, just hang on,” and with that she threw the door open and plunged out.
The countryside was transformed under the late afternoon sunlight. The snowy mountains glittered in the distance and the barren lands looked somehow less barren, though she barely noticed as she ran to the building and hurried inside.
Celia, an older lady with graying hair and glasses, sat at the control desk reading a magazine, and she looked up with surprise. “Yes?”
“We need a doctor,” Katelina said quickly. “There’s a woman, on the plane. She’s throwing up black stuff. She has a fever. Her mouth is bleeding.”
Celia stared and then said slowly, “The nearest doctor is in the village. It’s forty-five minutes one way. Is this, you know.” She mimed a vampire bite.
“What? No! She got sick while we were in that stupid jungle and—”
“Jungle?” Celia drew back. “I’m sorry. I…I don’t know.”
Katelina stopped from shouting at her, and ran back to the airplane. Jorick was up, rubbing his face and trying to come to terms with the situation. Katelina pushed past him to see Etsuko bucking with a seizure. Oren knelt next to the couch and held her down.
“Well?” he cried.
“They said there’s nothing they can do!”
Etsuko’s face was contorted and purple, like a wadded up fist. Blood ran down from her mouth and nose, and her eyes rolled back in her head. Katelina wrung her hands hopelessly. It had to be some freaky monkey illness. She’d known all along that something like this would happen. Ever since that movie. And now there they were, where Neil had died, where Etsuko would—.
Oren gave a savage, frustrated growl and Katelina realized the fallacy of a vampire holding a bleeding person. She started forward, the words, “I’ll do it,” on her lips when Oren reared back and bit into Etsuko’s neck.
“No!” Katelina shrieked and lunged toward him. Jorick grabbed her and pulled her back.
“What are you doing?” she shouted, struggling to get free. “Jorick!”
He pulled her away, turning so that he blocked the scene with his body. “Hush, little one. Leave it.”
Torina groaned and sat up. “What’s all the racket about? You’d think something was on fire.” She stiffened, eyes wide. “There’s not something on fire, is there?”
“No,” Jorick said. “Oren’s—”
“God dammit!” Torina was up and around them in a moment. She stood, staring, and Jorick let Katelina go and moved to her, ready to hold her back.
Katelina pushed past them and stopped as Oren pulled away from Etsuko’s limp body, his lips and chin red with her blood. Katelina gaped, and something sick thudded in her chest. Had he killed her? Was she—?
Oren bit into his own wrist and shoved it into Etsuko’s mouth. Katelina clutched the seat next to her, watching in horrified fascination as he forced the blood between the woman’s trembling lips. Her mouth tried weakly to clamp around the wound. Moments passed, and then Etsuko latched onto his arm, like someone trying to suck the last bit of juice from an orange. Oren’s face strained and he tried to pull away, but Etsuko’s grip was too strong. He made a strange, pained noise, and tried to pry her fingers loose. Etsuko sat up, clinging desperately, and finally Oren wrenched free with enough force to knock him backwards into the seats.
Etsuko’s chin was red like Oren’s, damp with his blood. She made a strange, gurgling sound, and a rivulet ran out of her mouth and down her white dress, like the black vomit had earlier. It hadn’t worked! It hadn’t—
Etsuko fell back on the couch with a moan and clutched her face like someone with a toothache. She rolled on her side and Katelina started forward, but Jorick grabbed her shoulder. “Her fangs are coming in. It takes a while. Come.” He motioned her
toward the other end of the plane, but she was too mesmerized by the drama in front of her.
Etsuko writhed and her groan turned to an agonized cry. Katelina stepped back as the woman thrashed on the couch, clutching her face, her stomach, her chest. The cries turned to screams and Katelina moved quickly to the safety of Jorick’s side. “What’s happening? What went wrong?”
“Nothing,” Jorick said quietly. “Her body is changing from what it was to something else. Do you think that’s painless?”
In truth she’d never imagined it before, and she wished it had stayed that way. She turned her back on it and pressed her hands to her ears to drown out the screams. “How long does it last?”
“It takes a full day to be complete, but it isn’t all like this. It goes back and forth.” He slid an arm around her and drew her close. “When the first wave subsides she’ll thirst. You shouldn’t be near her.”
“You mean she might attack me?” It was contrary to the mild mannered Etsuko she knew.
“Perhaps. Each fledgling is different. You never know how the first lust will take them.”
Katelina perched on the edge of a nearby seat. Sure enough, Etsuko’s screams turned to moans and then faded away to ragged breathing. At last she said, “Oren– Oren-sama?”
Oren stood, and moved next to the couch. He’d wiped most of the blood from his mouth and chin onto his shirt, but the stain remained. Etsuko stared at him, as if she’d never seen him before, and then she whispered, “I’m, I’m so thirsty.”
“Torina, get her some blood from the refrigerator.”
“You. She’s your fledgling.”
Oren spun toward his sister. His amber eyes glittered like cold fire. “I said go!”
She jumped and then covered it with sarcasm. “Whatever.”
She disappeared to the kitchenette and came back again with two glass containers of crimson. She shoved them into her brother’s hands, then stormed past him and took her seat, her arms and legs crossed and her face furious.
Oren opened the first bottle and handed it to Etsuko. She tried to sip it, but after a drink or two she gulped the whole thing, and grabbed the second bottle from his hands. She downed it and looked on the point of asking for another when she fell back moaning and clutching her stomach.
“Did drinking the blood do that?” Katelina asked.
“No,” Jorick answered. “The timing is a coincidence. I told you this goes on for some time.” He pulled her down into his lap. She struggled to watch, and then softened against him. He drew her closer and pressed a kiss to her head. “Best try to sleep, little one.”
She nodded and closed her eyes, but she doubted sleep would find her.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Despite Katelina’s pessimism, she eventually drifted into the rest of the exhausted. Her dreams were a tangled mass of jungle branches and chattering monkeys with bloody mouths. The trees faded away and she was standing in a room with a platform at one end, like a low stage. He sat on a pillow in the center, his face turned down, so that his long hair fell around his shoulders in a shower of shimmering obsidian.
The familiar, overwhelming feeling of peace washed over her and she breathed it in and held it, as if she could trap it in her lungs.
“The truth approaches, are you ready to leave the dreams behind?”
She wasn’t sure of the answer. If this was the dream he wanted her to give up then no, she didn’t want to.
“Not this dream, but the other. It does not matter. The time for waking approaches. He will try again to use that which he has hidden. Do not allow him to. The door should not be opened until I arrive, and then I will seal it for all days.”
She was aware that she was nodding along to the words, as if she understood them.
“Then we will feast on her blood together and I will make you eternal.”
“Her?” What woman would Jorick want to feast on?
“Lilith.”
He looked up and she gasped as she found herself staring into eyes like two burning suns. It wasn’t Jorick. It had never been Jorick in the dreams but—
Katelina woke with a start and clutched Jorick’s shirt. There was something important in her dream, something that made sense, something—but it faded and she was left with a vague sense of shock and confusion.
Jorick stirred and she was suddenly aware of Torina and Oren arguing in the background.
“What was I supposed to do? Let her die?”
“You could have! We barely know her and now we’ll be stuck with her!”
“She can hear you!”
“I don’t care if the whole God damn world can hear me, Oren! That was a mistake and you’re going to live to regret it!”
When Katelina woke they were airborne. It took her a moment to focus on the cabin. Etsuko lay on the couch, curled on her side and covered up with Sorino’s sleeping bag. Oren was reclined in his seat, his arms under his head. He looked as if every muscle was taut, and Katelina suspected that if someone were to touch him he’d make a sound like a plucked guitar string.
She turned to Jorick, who sat next to her, his nose in a magazine. “What’s wrong with Oren?”
Jorick glanced at her, then back to his article. “He’s tired. Making a fledgling weakens a vampire and it will take him several days to fully recover. Right before a fight is a bad time to do it.” He turned the page. “I can’t think of a worse time, except during the battle.”
“And Etsuko?”
He spoke like a detached doctor laying out the progression of an incurable disease. “She’ll be fine. She knows who she is, where she is, and how she got there. She’s past the first agonies. Those are the worst. She’ll go back and forth between waking and sleeping for a while, and then she should have the second agonies. That lasts a few hours and there is often some delirium with it, but it usually passes. By tomorrow afternoon she should be fine. Usually if they survive the first agonies there won’t be a problem.”
Katelina pushed her seat into an upright position. “You say survive as if there’s an option.”
“There is.” Jorick turned another page. “If you don’t give them enough blood they can die, and if they’re not drained enough they won’t change. If you leave them too long on the threshold of death they can lose part of themselves to the oblivion.” His eyes flicked to Verchiel and back to his magazine. “And I’ve heard of conflicting blood causing a rejection, but I’ve never seen it. I suspect it’s only a legend.”
“What’s that?”
“They claim that if a human has had too much blood from another master, trying to turn them can be fatal. Like if someone besides Sorino tried to turn Kai. I doubt it’s true. Weak blood, however, can have ill effects.”
“What do you mean weak?”
“If one hasn’t fed enough. It’s the same thing as Samael. When he gave you blood it hadn’t been in his body long, so very little of his power passed to you. Had he turned you, you would have been a weaker fledgling than if he waited a couple of hours to let all of the blood mix. I’m not sure Oren fed enough before this, so she’s likely to be weaker than she’d have been otherwise.” He turned another page. “That seems to be his pattern. He turned Jesslynn and Torina nearly back to back, and I doubt he’d fed enough before either one. Of course he was only two weeks old himself, so thankfully the pair of them didn’t inherit much.”
Katelina had listened to the blood/power connection before; the older a vampire was when he made a fledgling the more powerful he was and so the more powerful the fledgling would be.
“Do you think Etsuko will be able to read minds?” Katelina asked.
“We’ll have to wait and see.”
Silence fell and then Jorick said, “I suppose you’re having second thoughts about being turned.” He stared at the magazine, but it didn’t look like he was reading it anymore. “Now that you’ve seen it.”
She hadn’t actually considered it. “Not really. Is it always like that?”
“Some
times it’s worse.”
That explained his sudden concern. “Maybe it looks worse than it is?”
He finally met her eyes. “I honestly don’t remember.”
She patted his leg comfortingly. “I guess we’ll find out someday.”
They beat Fethillen and the others to Indonesia. “With that plane it will take them some time,” Sorino said. “We’d be best served by finding accommodations.”
The city was all lights, glass, and pulsing neon. Katelina clicked off a few pictures, including one of the hotel Sorino selected. There was a last minute scramble about who was paying. Despite being a vampire, Micah was always broke. Ume was, too, and Loren had some cash, but not enough for a place like that. In the end Verchiel whipped out his handy Guild issued credit card.
Katelina waited in the lobby with the others. The room was modern; lots of glass, marble slabs, and a splattering of bright green plants. She expected he’d be back any moment, announcing that his card was cancelled. Instead he showed up with keycards. They took the elevator to their rooms, and when Katelina walked in she clutched her dirty travel bag and stared. The room was half the size of the summer headquarters’ house. The double bed was black wood. A pile of fluffy pillows gleamed white under the many lights, and the swirl patterned bedspread echoed the more subdued markings on the carpet. The dresser and night stand matched, and there were a pair of low chaise longues with a glass topped table between them. The bathroom was through a large open door and consisted of a spa tub and lots of light wood paneling.
“I don’t want to know how much this cost.”
Jorick grunted. “It’s the idiot’s problem. I assume you’ll have to try out the bathtub?”
Though the open floor plan was a little uncomfortable, she refused to let it dampen her spirits and happily mixed the provided bubble baths to create a perfumy, sudsy mess that she sank into for an hour. When she finished she slid into her least offensive clothes just as someone knocked on the door.
Jorick opened it to reveal Etsuko and an uncomfortable Oren.
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