by Susan Illene
“I guess the garlic could help,” I said, wavering.
“Fine.” Cori clasped her hands together. “Let’s eat.”
“Wait, I want to put this on first.” Emily handed Hunter the necklace and turned so he could pull it around her neck.
She was really going to pretend everything was okay. I could sense her tamping down all negative emotions so that only hope remained. Whether that was a healthy way to deal with the situation or not I didn’t know, but I’d leave it alone for now.
“Okay, we’re ready,” she said once her necklace was on.
We went into the kitchen and filled our plates in silence. It almost felt like the last supper. So far, all the supernaturals who’d come down with the plague were either in bad shape or dead. None had actually gotten better yet that I’d heard. It might have only been five days since we found the first victim, but the track record for the supernatural version of the illness was not looking good.
Would Hunter be able to beat it?
Chapter Fifteen
We pulled up to what had once been a human clinic, but had shut down a couple years ago and not been used since. After the plague had broken out Derrick leased it for our use. It had taken the alpha’s people a few days to get it ready, but they’d been able to move all the patients inside late last night.
Emily held Hunter’s hand as we walked up to the entrance.
“Are there really that many people sick now?” she asked.
“Paula said they were up to twenty when I called on the way over.” More than that showed up on my radar, but the rest would be the caregivers and family.
“I used to go to this clinic,” Cori said, running her gaze across the building. “I was sorry when finances forced them to shut down.”
“Rob is in there.” Emily’s gaze swung to Hunter. “Did you know that?”
Alarm blazed in his eyes. “No.”
I wasn’t about to point out that I had known his dad was here.
The scent of fresh paint and harsh cleansers hit my nose as we entered, quickly followed by the stomach wrenching odor of sickness and death. The front lobby area was empty except for a vampire stationed at the front.
“Can you get the doctor?” I asked him. “Tell her Melena is here.”
He nodded and headed down a hallway on the right. We moved toward it and peered down. There were several open rooms on either side and a big glass door at the end where the vampire entered. Judging by my radar, that was the patient treatment area. From a distance I could only make out a couple of cots in there with sups lying on them.
Paula came out a few minutes later. Emily gripped Hunter’s arm as if she could somehow protect him from all of this. He murmured reassurances to her that didn’t do very much to ease the feelings of doom she was emanating. She’d put up a good façade during dinner, but her bravery was gone now. It hurt to see her like this.
The doctor gave us a pleasant smile and then addressed Hunter. “I need to examine you to determine how far the disease has spread. If you could go into room number two and change into the gown in there?”
She nodded toward one of the side rooms down the hall. The door was open and I caught a glimpse of an exam table inside. Derrick had worked fast to get this place set up. It appeared to be a fully functional clinic.
Hunter crossed his arms. “Can you tell me how my dad is doing first? I didn’t know he was here.”
“He insisted we not tell you.” She gave him a sympathetic look. “But I’m pleased to report that he is the first of my patients to show signs of improvement.”
“So you think he’s going to make it?” Emily asked, a hopeful note in her voice.
“According to his latest test results, I think there’s a good chance,” Paula reassured her. “He’ll just need some time to recover. This disease takes quite a toll on the body.”
Hunter relaxed a little. “I want to see him later.”
“Of course, I’ve got someone setting up a bed for you right next to him.” She waved an arm at the exam room. “Now if you could go in?”
“Uh, yeah, sure.” Hunter headed for it.
Emily tried to follow him, but Paula stopped her. “Anyone who wants to stay needs to wash up and change into scrubs. I’ll come get you when I’m done examining Hunter.”
“Do we really have to stay?” Kerbasi asked, sounding annoyed.
I supposed I should have been grateful he’d remained quiet this long.
Cori shot him a dirty look. “Don’t be such an ass.”
I was really glad she’d decided to come along. She could handle the guardian as well as I could. Plus Paula might get upset if I started shooting Kerbasi in her medical facility.
“I’m staying with Hunter,” Emily argued.
“I’m afraid you can’t, but it’ll only be for a few minutes. The washrooms are that way,” Paula said, pointing to a couple of doors at the back of the lobby.
“Come on.” I took her arm. “Let Hunter have some privacy.”
The werewolf in question gave me a grateful look. I’d tended enough plague patients before to know the groin was another place where the lymph nodes could swell. He wouldn’t want her to see that.
Emily grumbled but didn’t argue any further. We went to the washrooms and found one marked for men and another for women. Kerbasi hesitated in front of his door. I opened it and shoved him through.
“Get in there.”
“Tyrant!” he yelled.
Cori, Emily, and I went into the women’s room and found Diane inside. She was Yvonne’s daughter and also mystic. She and her family weren’t very active in the supernatural community, but they pitched in when they were needed.
The middle-aged woman had her dark brown hair pulled back in a bun and was currently standing in front of a washer and dryer sorting clothes. She looked worn and tired. I imagined balancing this duty with her regular job at the hospital wasn’t easy.
She looked up and the lines across her forehead eased. “It’s good to see you, Melena. If you ladies could take off all your clothes—including shoes—and put them in the hamper I’d appreciate it. You’ll find scrubs in the sizes you need on the shelf against the wall.”
“You’re running a tight ship,” I said.
“Under the circumstances I’m afraid even this isn’t enough, but we’re doing the best we can.”
We stripped down and tossed our clothes into the designated hamper. There was no point in arguing. She was right. People were dying and we had to do what was necessary to protect them and those who could become sick.
“How are your mother and son?” I asked, pulling on a blue scrub top.
“Good, thank you.” She gave me a brief smile as she continued sorting clothes. “Mother is helping here during the day and I come in the evenings. That way one of us is always with Patrick.”
Patrick was her fifteen-year-old son who she home-schooled.
I pulled on some booties that were also on the shelf. “Will you stay all night?”
“No. Just until ten o’clock. I have to sleep sometime.” She let out a heavy sigh.
Emily was eyeing a blue cap I handed her with some reluctance. “Do I have to put this on?”
“Yes,” Diane and I said at the same time.
She groaned and pulled it over her nicely curled hair, tucking in the loose strands. Just because her boyfriend was sick didn’t mean she didn’t want to look good for him. Everyone had their own way of dealing with stress and Emily’s could be odder than most.
She’d been through so much in her seventeen years of life that sometimes I wanted to wrap her in a cocoon and protect her from the world. All I could do for now was hope the treatments we had available would be enough to help Hunter. If she lost one more person in her life, I wasn’t sure she could handle it.
I glanced at Cori and found her ready to go. She’d faced us the whole time while changing so I didn’t catch the tattoo on her back. We might be good friends, but she still wouldn’t let
me see it. She’d only admit one existed there.
Diane grabbed a mop and rinsed it out in a large sink in the corner. “Your clothes will be ready in a couple hours. You can change back into them when you leave.”
“Thanks,” I said, following the others out.
Kerbasi was waiting in the reception area tugging at his scrubs. It took every ounce of control I had not to laugh. The big hulky guy looked just as uncomfortable as the last time he’d had to wear them. It was even more amusing to see him with the blue cap on his head. I pulled out my cell phone and took a picture of him.
His expression turned thunderous. “You will delete that.”
Emily leaned toward my phone and amusement lit in her eyes.
“No way.” She shook her head. “Mel’s keeping it so we can blow it up and frame it later.”
He studied her for a moment. “If it pleases you that much, I’ll allow it.”
Emily’s jaw dropped. She looked between Cori and me as if she needed confirmation of what she’d just heard. It must not have occurred to her he was trying to be nice under the circumstances. The guardian might not like Hunter all that much, but he did like her. He simply had a strange way of showing it.
I shrugged my shoulders and led the way toward the patient treatment area. We found Aniya and Cage standing in front of the glass door entry. They were chatting and she was smiling. It was good to see the male vampire was helping to bring her out of her shell.
“Hey, Melena,” she said, breaking off her conversation.
“How are things?” I asked.
She glanced behind her at the patient ward. “They could be better.”
I looked past her shoulder and saw Hunter sitting on a bed wearing a hospital gown. Paula was standing over him with a clipboard. There was no fear in his eyes as she spoke to him, just calm acceptance. I had a feeling it was all an act. No one could get the plague and not be worried.
“Emily, you go in first.” I gave her a gentle nudge.
Her hand hesitated on the door handle before she pulled it open. The room was full of demon magic coming from the patients. It probably made her feel even sicker to her stomach than it did me.
Emily walked haltingly through the maze of cots, wincing when she saw one guy—an older werewolf—with black marks on his nose, mouth, and hands. He lay in bed moaning in pain. The morphine drip attached to him could only do so much.
Emily reached Paula and the doctor gave her a warm smile. Ramping up my hearing I caught her telling Emily that Hunter was still in the early stages. It gave them a better chance of saving him since the antibiotics seemed to be helping those who got treatment soon enough. Emily clutched at the opal necklace on her neck and rubbed it. Some of the tension I’d been sensing from her eased.
“Hunter’s a tough guy,” Cori said, watching the same scene, though she couldn’t listen in on it. “I think he can beat this.”
“Me, too,” I agreed.
Aniya glanced at us. “His father is getting better.”
“Paula mentioned that.”
I caught a glimpse of Rob off to the right of Hunter. He did appear a little healthier than the last time I’d seen him—clear eyes and no visible black spots. I was also glad to find father and son looking at each other with some kind of warmth. Maybe they’d find a way to work things out while they convalesced.
“Do you know what might’ve helped him get better?” Cori asked.
“The antibiotics and garlic oil helped him a little,” Cage said, speaking with a deep voice, “but we think it was the Dead Sea water that finally pushed him toward recovery.”
Fresh hope rose inside me. “So it’s really working?”
“Not for everyone,” Aniya answered, looking back at the room with sadness in her eyes. “But Paula says it’s still too early to come to any conclusions.”
“How’s it been going for you? Working here, I mean.” I’d wanted to check on her for days.
Aniya hesitated. “Exhausting, but it’s also made me realize how lucky I am that I’ll never get sick again.”
“And she’s finally making friends,” Cage added, nudging her in the arm.
By the looks of him one would take him for a tough guy, but the only vibes I got from him were positive. I made a mental note to talk to him some more when I got a chance.
“One or two, maybe.” Aniya nudged him back.
“I’m not sure this is the place to be making friends,” Kerbasi said in a scornful voice. “Shouldn’t you two be in there caring for the patients?”
“Hey,” I addressed the vampires. “Do you all have any bedpans that need emptying? The guardian here needs something to pass the time.”
A brief flash of light brightened the hallway. A moment later Kerbasi resurfaced on my radar down the street from the clinic. I was fairly certain there was a coffee shop that way.
“Never mind.”
Emily came back through the door a few minutes later.
“Paula wants to start the saltwater treatment on him,” she reported. “It helped his dad so she thinks it might help him.”
“Good.”
“Mel, can I talk to you for a minute?” she asked.
“Sure.”
We found an empty exam room and shut the door. She stood in front of me shifting from foot to foot. I waited, not wanting to rush her.
“The demon magic is going to make it harder for him to fight the plague,” she began, choosing her words carefully. “And I can sense it’s getting stronger inside of him.”
“That seems to be what it does, but that doesn’t mean he can’t fight it.”
Her expression hardened. “I could break the magic and then he’d get better.”
“No,” I said, voice resolute. “The moment it breaks you could catch it. This strain is more virulent and could pass onto a human—or sensor—easily once the spell is gone.”
That was one of the things Paula had told me after she’d studied the blood work. The bubonic plague only spread through rodents and fleas, but this version had mutated. It acted more like the pneumonic plague in that it could pass by touch or even through air particles. Someone had modified the strain to make it that much more dangerous to break the demon magic—to discourage it. If supernaturals could barely fight it then humans didn’t stand a chance.
“What if we used a specially sealed room?” Emily paced across the floor. “Paula could draw my blood and then take it to him really fast.”
Our blood could only nullify magic for a few minutes after it left our bodies. Any longer and it lost its effectiveness. Emily would have to be in the next room over to pull that off, and even then it would still be dangerous.
“I know you want to help him, but you’re forgetting a few things. Even with the spell broken it would take time for his body to fight back and get better. In the meantime, he would be contagious to anyone who is not immortal. We don’t have the facilities here to keep him contained.”
She threw her hands up. “Then we build it!”
I couldn’t fault her thinking entirely. I’d thought of the same thing myself, but it was more complicated than she realized. She needed to see that.
“You aren’t considering the risk we’re taking using this building as a private clinic. Vampires are out there right now compelling the humans who live or work nearby so they won’t get suspicious, but we can’t compel the whole city. If we start ordering special equipment and modifying this place more than we already have—which could take weeks—we’ll draw even more attention. Never mind how much it would all cost.”
Her lips trembled. “Can’t Lucas pay for it?”
She was killing me. This was one of those times where I didn’t know what to say that would help. So I did the only thing I could think of, pulled out my phone.
“Call him and ask.” I handed it to her.
She shifted on her feet. “Can’t you ask him?”
“It’s your idea.”
She reluctantly took the phone. I sto
od there and listened as she gave all the same arguments to Lucas as she’d given to me. I’d never asked him to help like this before. It was sort of nerve-wracking, considering it set a precedent, but if anyone could talk sense into her it would be him. I trusted Lucas to do the right thing—whatever that was.
She finished her explanations and there was silence. Emily gripped the phone so hard I thought it might break. A tear fell down her cheek as he began to reply.
“Do you love him?” Lucas asked.
“Yes.”
There was a grunt on the other end of the line. “Enough that you would do anything to save him?”
“Yes.”
Another brief moment of silence. “Draw up plans for how this room would need to be built according to the Center for Disease Control specifications. Make a list of the supplies that would be needed and estimates on manpower. You would also need to find volunteers to do the work since most of us are busy taking care of the afflicted. Do all that and I’ll consider it.”
“But I don’t know how,” she complained.
“You assume I do?”
“You’re smarter than me. Can’t you figure it out?” she asked.
“Perhaps. But I would have to sacrifice my efforts here—which could result in other people’s loved ones dying—and I would have to cancel my plans tomorrow night with Melena. She would have to go without me. Is that what you want?”
More tears streaked down her face. “No.”
“Then you either come up with the plans or you have faith that Hunter is strong enough to survive this without your blood. The choice is yours.”
Damn. Why hadn’t I thought of all that? Maybe I should have been getting Lucas’ help sooner than this, though I’d have to draw the line at confining her to Siberia as he occasionally suggested.
Emily drew in a ragged breath. “What if he isn’t strong enough?”
“Look at Melena,” he ordered.