by Evie Byrne
“Oh no, Faustin. What happens to you if you’re tied to an invalid for the rest of your life? Or what if I die in surgery? No way. I’m not going to let you.”
Lifting his head, he met her eyes. His expression was resolved, his eyes, breathtaking blue. “That’s not how I see it.”
Maddy dug in her heels. Save and Protect. It worked both ways. She could save him. “Offer declined. I want you to leave now.”
“Maddy—”
“Go!”
Gregor glanced over at her heart monitor, which was beeping fast and no doubt looked like the Pyrenees. “I’m going to let you think about this,” he said in a placate-the-crazy-person tone. “I’ll come back tomorrow.”
“Don’t.” She softened her voice. “Gregor, I appreciate what you are trying to do. No one has ever done anything so nice for me. But the dice have already been thrown, you know? I’m okay with this.”
Gregor scowled. “You’d better not die before I come back tomorrow.”
Alex met him at the nurse’s station. He and Felix had been busy fascinating the nurses. “How’d it go?”
Gregor slammed through the exit without answering. As he did, he heard Alex saying goodbye to all his new friends, then he and Felix were falling in behind him as he walked down the hall.
“That good, huh?”
Felix said, “I should not have told her the odds.”
“No, it’s fair for her to know. We all have to know what we’re getting into.”
“Well, I should vanish before one of my old colleagues sees me.”
“Yes, go, Felix. Thank you. The plan for tomorrow is still in effect as far as I’m concerned.”
Felix bowed. “We’ll be ready.”
After he left, Alex said, “So?”
“She won’t do it. She’s trying to protect me, to keep me from being hurt if she dies in the process.”
“Great. That means she likes you. But doesn’t she know that you’re screwed either way?”
“I didn’t explain to her that I’m already bound to her.”
“Why not?”
“Think, Alex. I don’t want to guilt trip her into this. She has to want it herself. She has to want an artificial heart. She has to want to be like us. She has to want to be bound to me.”
They stopped at the elevators. Gregor felt a lot like driving his head through the wall, because even as he said these things, he knew it was hopeless that she would want any of it. “If she went through it just because she felt sorry for me, I don’t think she’d have the will to survive.”
“So you’re helping all this along by fighting with her?”
The elevator doors opened. “It’s what we do best.”
“Have you told her you love her?”
“I asked her to marry me.”
Alex sighed. “Yeah…good…but did you tell her you loved her?”
“Well, no, but she knows.” The elevator doors opened, Gregor glowered at the people waiting outside, none stepped forward, and the doors closed again. “Of course she knows. Why else would I be doing all this?”
“You know, you and Mikhail make fun of me for watching Oprah, but Misha is a monk, and you’re a Neanderthal.” Alex folded his arms and leaned against the railing. “You make me proud to be a metrosexual.”
“What?” He couldn’t understand a thing Alex was saying. “What the fuck are you talking about? Just tell me what I’m supposed to do!”
“Grisha, you’ve got to make with the nice.”
Chapter Ten
The next night, just after sundown, Maddy had an unexpected visitor. All day she’d dreaded seeing Gregor again, fighting with him again. Her own family had moved into resignation mode. It was hard to watch, but they were troopers. They’d been at her deathbed more than once. When they left, she just wanted to sleep and sleep, but a strange woman slipped through her curtains, hardly stirring them. She had the build and posture of a dancer. Her dark hair was pulled back into a chignon and streaked with a single blaze of white. She wore a simple black dress and a little crocheted cardigan sweater that looked like they dated from the 1930s.
“Madelena López de Victoria,” she said in a thick Russian accent, her hands folded in front of her as if she were at a recital. “My name is Natalia Grigorevna Faustin.”
Oh no. The Mom. Gregor guessed she wouldn’t kick his mom out.
What else was there to say but, “Thank you for the cross”? She gestured to her IV stand, where the cross dangled like a Christmas ornament. Mrs. Faustin smiled. Maddy could see Gregor in her coloring, her broad cheekbones, and especially her wide mouth.
“You are most welcome. I do not wish to tire you, my daughter, but I wanted to tell you of the dream.”
“The dream?”
“The dream I had of you and my Gregor Ivanovich.”
“Oh, okay.”
“I cannot describe the dream in many details, you see. It was much about knowing.” She lifted her hands, waggling her fingers dramatically. “But I saw your name, written in fire, one single letter at a time. It burned my brain, so when I woke, I could find paper and write it down. Madelena Victoria de López. Such a pretty name.”
Maddy gave her a little smile, thinking okay dokey, lady.
“And I saw my Gregor’s name too, the names they were…tied?” She laced her fingers together in illustration. “And then I knew it was a true dream. Or is it a truth dream?” She frowned. “I’m sorry, I don’t know the English for this, but I knew you were for Gregor, his only one. My first son to marry! I gave him your name and told him to find you, my darling Madelena.”
“You told him to find me? When?”
“Almost three months ago now.” She perched on the edge of the bed and put her hand over Maddy’s. It was very cool. “If he had listened, if he were not such a stubborn bear, we would not be where we are now, would we?”
“Mrs. Faustin, I’m sorry, it might be the drugs, but I’m really not following you.”
“All that is important for you to know is that I would not have dreamed of you if you are going to die. You and Gregor are meant to be. You must have faith.” She reached out, took the cross in her fist, and gave it a shake. “Faith, huh?”
Then Mrs. Faustin leaned over and kissed her brow. “Sleep now, Madelena. Have no more worries.”
When Maddy woke again, she felt more rested than she had in days. She was not surprised to find Gregor sitting next to her bed, waiting for round two. She played possum for a few minutes, thinking about what Mrs. Faustin had told her, then she said, “Your mom was here.”
“I know. I can smell her, her cigarettes. What did she say?”
“Did you know who I was when you ran me over?”
“Of course not!”
“So it wasn’t an assassination attempt?”
“Maddy.” He sighed and massaged the bridge of his nose.
“When did you figure out I was me?”
“After I left your apartment, I saw your mailbox.”
“Then you came back to suck on my feet. Was that a test drive?”
“I felt guilty. I wanted to help you somehow, clean the slate.” He leapt out of the chair, and made a sad attempt to pace in the two square feet available to him, cracking his knuckles and shaking out his hands, like a fighter in his corner. “At least, that’s what I told myself. Now I think I was curious, looking for an excuse…but anyway, I told myself I didn’t want to get married. Not to anyone.” He turned back to her. “I was wrong.”
“Maybe you weren’t wrong at all. What is our history? A cab ride, a beer, one great night of sex? Or is it because of your mother’s dream? Are you doing this because you think you are supposed to marry me?”
“I goddamn love you, Madelena.” He shouted it, pointing at her. Then he seemed to think better of shouting, so he grimaced and shoved his hands in his pockets. “I love your smart mouth. I—I love that you carry a lunchbox and play with toys, and wear awful shoes. I love that you make me laugh.”
The ice around her heart began to give way. It hurt like hell. She fought it. The plan was to keep Gregor safe and die gracefully. She had to stick to it. Finding her voice, she said, “You never laugh.”
“I’m laughing inside. Teach me how to laugh aloud.”
The bastard knew how to hit hard. If she could run, or turn away, she would, but all she could do was close her eyes and feel the tears run down her cheeks.
Knowing he’d struck home, he crouched by her bed so their faces were level. “I love that you aren’t afraid of me. Most people are—but you never were. Remember how you ordered me to drive you home that first night? I love that you can look straight at death. You might be the bravest person I know.”
“Stop, please.”
“And I love your ass. It’s the biggest, roundest, most perfect… I’d really miss your ass if you died, Maddy.”
Maddy rubbed her eyes with the heel of her hand, brushing away the tears. She was going to snot up her oxygen if she wasn’t careful. “I told you yesterday why we can’t risk this.”
“Is that your only worry? If the operation were guaranteed to be successful, would you do it?”
“That’s a hypothetical question. What does it matter?”
“What about the rest of it? Do you want to be a vampyr?”
The way he said vampire made her smile. It sounded like vham-peer, all sexy and Russian. She’d been thinking about it, of course, all day long. “I’m enough of a geek to admit I’m curious. It seems like a big adventure. A whole second life, you know? I don’t think I’d mind, really, except I worry about my family. What would I tell them?”
“That’s always tricky, but you wouldn’t be the first to go through it.” He began to say something else, stopped, found something interesting in his fingernails. “Tell me something, and be honest. We can’t afford to be polite here.”
“Gregor, we’ve never been polite with one another.”
“There’s that.” Still he studied his hands. “So, I know you’ll tell the truth. Are you hesitating to do this because you don’t want to be with me?”
“Don’t be an idiot. I just wish we met years ago, when I had the time.” She reached out for him. “My biggest regret is leaving you behind.”
He took her hand, his fingers cool like his mother’s. “Maddy, this is the deal. I started bonding with you the night we met, the first moment I tasted your blood. I’m already in too deep for you to protect me. If you die…” The rest he left unsaid, but she knew it was not good.
“You need me.” The idea took a while to sink in.
With his free hand he reached up to stroke her hair. “So much,” he said, his voice cracking.
It’s okay to love him, it’s really okay. The realization burst on her like sunshine through clouds, like rain in the summer. “Okay.”
“Okay what?” Gregor’s expression looked neutral, carefully composed.
“Okay…I’ll live for you. If you can put up with me.” Now she really was snotting up her oxygen, but she laughed though her tears. “See, I’m going to save you, Gregor Faustin.”
Gregor smiled like she’d never seen him smile before. First it was a smile of relief, but it grew and grew until it became incandescent. He pulled out his phone. “Felix. We’re a go.”
“What are you doing?”
“We’re kidnapping you.” He leaned down and brushed his lips over hers. “I can hardly wait to get all this shit off you.”
Who knew vampires had their own hospitals? Of course they couldn’t go to regular ones, but Maddy just didn’t think they would need them, because in books they were always regenerating in dark, stinky tombs, fueled only by their own diabolical will.
“We don’t need doctors as much as you do,” Gregor said. “But sometimes something gets chopped off, and then we have to get someone to sew it back on.”
“That’s a real sophisticated take on medicine.” Her voice was muffled under her oxygen mask.
“Don’t worry. You have Felix.”
“I know, and you guys have a fiendish plan.”
They were in the back of their own vamp ambulance, which, much to Maddy’s disappointment, did not have bats emblazoned on the side. The only difference between it and any other ambulance was that it had no back windows. They’d left the hospital without the slightest fuss. Felix and some helpers loaded her onto a gurney, and Gregor walked beside them, making drawing gestures in the air, like he had that night in her room. Nobody even looked their direction.
Maddy smiled up at him. “You’re so cool.”
It was easy to get caught in the excitement of the moment, to enjoy just being alive and having hope. She didn’t want to think about how much heart transplantation frightened her, or the pain and the weakness that would follow, or the foreign thing which would live in her body afterward, prodding her heart along. What she thought about was Gregor. He needed her. And Mrs. Faustin said they were supposed to be together. Watching Gregor’s face turn from fierce to tender whenever he looked at her, she wanted to believe this was true.
While Felix fussed with her on-board monitors, Gregor explained a little bit about what was to come. Ordinarily, he said, they’d bind by drinking one another’s blood over many weeks, until she assimilated the vamp blood, or maybe more accurately, the vampire blood assimilated her, and she became what they called a “convert”. Gregor seemed to think conversion was a very romantic, a honeymoon experience they’d miss out on. Things being as they were, though, they were going to speed up the process. Gregor was going to drain her as much as he could without quite managing to kill her, and then he and his whole family would donate blood to her to make her some kind of insta-vamp.
“And of course you’re not worried about blood typing?”
Felix shook his head. “There’s only one type, V, and it will trump yours.”
“Of course it will.” Even their blood was pushy. Maddy closed her eyes and tried to rest, but she was too wound up. Then she remembered: “Mom! I have to call my mother.”
Gregor dialed the number for her and handed her his phone. Maddy tugged off the mask. Appalled, Felix held it near her nose and mouth for the duration of the call. The phone rang on the other end, and Maddy tried to swallow, tried to figure out how to say what she had to say. But the machine picked up. Maddy grabbed Gregor’s wrist and looked at his watch. 10:00 p.m. Maybe she was at late Mass?
When the beep sounded, she said, “Mamá, it’s Maddy. Are you there? Look, I’ve left the hospital. Don’t freak. I’m in good hands, I might be getting better. I’ll call you tomorrow night?” She raised her brows at Gregor. With any luck she would. “Or if I can’t, someone will call you and tell you what’s going on. His name is Gregor. You can trust him, okay? Te amo, Mamá. Siempre.”
Maddy handed the phone back to Gregor, and Felix slapped the mask back on her face. She pulled a couple of deep huffs of O2 into her starved lungs, enough so that she could say, “Man, she’s going to be so mad. If I’m not dead the next time I see her, she’ll kill me. I better come out of this with full vampire powers.” The ambulance slowed and stopped. The driver spoke to someone, and Maddy heard the rattle of gates.
“Where are we?”
“Red Hook,” said Felix. “Welcome to Vamp General.”
The ambulance drove into the delivery bay of the warehouse, and the steel doors rolled shut behind them. Gregor jumped out and helped unload Maddy.
Alex, Mikhail and his parents came out of the waiting area to meet them. They surrounded the gurney, each of them laying a hand on Maddy first thing. Gregor bristled a little—laying hands on her was rude, but expedient. They each needed to know a little about the woman they were going to give themselves to, and this was the fastest way to do it.
Maddy’s eyes went wide and liquid over the top of her oxygen mask. It could not be easy to be touched by four such powerful vamps at once. She sought him for reassurance, and he laid his hands on her shoulders, hoping his touch would override them all. “T
his is my family, Maddy.”
Her eyes remained wide, darting around, taking in their faces, the high, beamed ceiling of the loading bay, everything. They started to move, and his family fell in beside the gurney like an honor guard. This is my wife. The thought was new, unfamiliar, but absolutely compelling. She was almost a stranger, small and sick under her blanket, but he’d jump into fire for her.
He caught his folks exchanging a look. His father was always the pragmatist, and now his expression said, “this is never going to work”, because he, like all of them, knew the scent of impending death. But his mother said aloud, “The will is everything.”
Vamp General was indeed a retrofitted warehouse. It had only ten rooms for patients, more than were ever needed, but it had a well-equipped surgery, one which had received an influx of special equipment over the last two nights.
The staff gathered along the hall to surgery to greet them.
Maddy whispered, “Why are they bowing?” He just heard her question beneath the squeak of the gurney’s wheels and the clicking of his mother’s heels.
Gregor hadn’t even registered the bows. He bent close to say, “They’re acknowledging my father.”
Well, maybe all of the family, really. It wasn’t too often that they were all out in public together, for security reasons. Mikhail had been working on locking down the hospital for this occasion, because they were all going to be vulnerable during the transfusion.
A snuffling noise came from her mask, then she said, “Don’t tell me you’re royalty.”
That made him laugh. “Royalty? No, we’re more like mafia.”
“Better and better,” Maddy said, her eyes drifting shut.
At the doors of the OR, Felix took command. Maddy went one way for prep, Gregor and his family another way to change into scrubs, and to wash up. Ordinarily, Felix was a pretty mellow guy, but in surgeon mode he was an imperious prick, and Gregor was glad to see it.
“That is not sterile. That is not even close to sterile,” he berated the nurses, who were scrubbing to their elbows. Sterility was not something they had to worry about much under normal circumstances, since vamps didn’t get infections. Maddy would be full of vamp blood soon, but they were not sure exactly how long it would be until the blood granted her immunity, so they erred on the side of caution.