The Isis Collar bs-4

by Cat Adams

  His expression didn’t change, but his eyes did. They deepened somehow and the flames I remembered so well flickered and flared. They moved from mage to male and made parts of my body tighten with memories of his touch.

  “Um. That’s—”

  “DeLuca?!” Dr. Sloan’s voice echoed down the hallway. “Aren’t you coming? You didn’t follow me.”

  Bruno chuckled when I did and sharing the laughter felt good. He stood, then reached out to help me to my feet, but I got up awkwardly and my right leg gave out. Bruno grabbed my arm and kept me standing.

  “You okay?”

  I shook my head. “My leg’s been bothering me since the bomb in the school.”

  Crap. I shouldn’t have said that. I could tell from his reaction that he didn’t know what I was talking about. How could he? I doubt it had made the papers back east. His eyes went wide, then narrowed suspiciously. “Bomb? School? What the hell, Celia.” He looked at my leg and sucked in a sharp breath. “What attacked you? That looks bad. Have you had a healer look at it?”

  I looked down but only saw the denim of my jeans. “Only a dozen or so. I’ve been to doctors, specialists, and witch doctors. None of them can figure it out. What are you seeing that they haven’t? The latest one thinks there’s a spell on me, but I don’t know if they’re connected.”

  He knelt down next to my leg, moving one of the chairs out of the way in order to put both hands on my calf. Dr. Sloan walked in the door just then, followed by Rizzoli. His brows rose so high it looked like his bushy eyebrows were a toupee and I felt I had to explain. “It’s not what it looks like.”

  Bruno didn’t even look up. “This is bad, Celie. I mean like killing you bad. What is this?”

  “That’s a very good question, Mr. DeLuca,” Rizzoli interjected. “What do you think it is? None of our Bureau people have a clue.”

  “Joh … Creede is working to unravel whatever’s attacking my aura around my head. Is the problem with the leg the same thing?”

  Bruno shook his head. “I don’t know anything about auras. Not my specialty. But this is attacking your flesh. Medical magic is what I’m good at. It could well be the same. I’d have to compare notes with … John.”

  “Hey, a witch with the Bureau, Gail Jones, said top mages like you can identify the caster. Any idea who to talk to about this mess?”

  He looked at me, his eyes both surprised and suspicious. “This is a spell? Wow. I pegged it as some sort of magical virus. It doesn’t feel like a spell at all.”

  “Magical virus?”

  Dr. Sloan nodded. “Oh, yes. The Centers for Disease Control doesn’t talk about it much, especially not in public, but there is a magical branch of the organization for viruses that mutate and bacteria that can be magically transmitted, changing from a magical event to something that can affect more than the original target.”

  “Wow. That’s seriously scary. But one’s physiology and the other is … well, magic.”

  Bruno let out an odd chuckle. “Magic is part of my physiology, Celie. If I caught something that backfired from a spell, it’s possible I could pass it on to family members. Even human ones. After that … well, it could take off. Like this has.” He motioned to my leg. “I think we need to call in the Centers for Magical Disease Control to take a look at you. In fact, I’d like to look at your skin myself.”

  I couldn’t help but smirk. “I’ll just bet you would.”

  He didn’t smile in return and that made my stomach hurt. “I’ve got an ugly suspicion. But first I need to put you in a quarantine circle.” He looked at Dr. Sloan. “Could we use the lab for this? We might need the restraints.”

  Suddenly I was less than excited about this idea. “What exactly do you think I’m going to do, Bruno?”

  He paused and his face was set in stone to keep from showing me what he was really feeling. When he finally spoke it chilled my blood.

  “Scream, Celia, if I’m right, I think you’re going to scream.”

  12

  I refused to scream. But I was turning the air blue with cursing and yelling. “Bruno! Stop it! I swear to God I’m going to rip your head off if you don’t let me up!” My knuckles were white from straining against the titanium restraints. The metal was bending but not enough for me to get loose. Everything looked red. It was too close to sunset for this crap. I don’t like being tied down and Bruno knew it. At that moment, I couldn’t remember why I’d agreed to this at all, except that he had me really worried about my leg.

  His voice was calm from across the room. From my position on the table I could just see him on his knees, drawing runes on the floor where a thousand other symbols had been drawn by countless undergrads. This room had been built for that very purpose, to allow students to examine dangerous creatures without much worry of reprisal. Rizzoli was watching from the corner of the room, but Dr. Sloan was nowhere to be seen. That surprised me a little. He’s usually first on the scene to examine stuff. “Celie, if I let you up, you will rip my head off. The bat in you is talking right now. Your eyes are bright red and you’re glowing so much that I don’t need the overhead light. Those bindings are the only thing between me and my head. So, dream on. You’re staying right where you are until I’m done with this casting.”

  Being held down was really starting to mess with my head. It was too close to the past, not just right after I’d been turned into an Abomination, but further back, to when I was twelve. I tried to keep the panic out of my voice without much success. “Bruno, you really need to let me up. I’m starting to flash back.”

  He stood up and looked at me, his eyes filled with sympathy. “I know and I wish I could make it better. But it’s too close to sunset. This can’t wait until morning. You could be dead by then. Would it help if we knocked you out with drugs?”

  He looked like glowing bands of shiny color to my vampire sight. He smelled heavy with sweet, rich blood and my stomach growled audibly. He jerked back a few inches and I strained to follow. His words had sunk in but just barely. Panic was rising in a black wave that lapped at my sanity. “Yes. You need to do that. Because if you don’t, I’ll call you. I can feel it inside me. I’ll call you to me like your brother was called by Lilith and everything will change. Give me the drugs, Bruno. Please. I don’t want this thing inside me to get out, but the restraints are too much for me.”

  His heartbeat sped up and he began to smell of fear. I felt a needle pierce my arm and I felt my body react without my will. The blood flow to that arm slowed to nearly a stop. “It’s not working. My body’s stopping the drug from getting to my brain. You have to do something more drastic.”

  Bruno’s colors turned more blue. He was sad and worried, which wasn’t as exciting as fear. “I don’t want to hurt you, Celie. Isn’t there another way?”

  Anger flared for no reason and I knew the vamp inside was taking control. The only thing I could think to do was let it take over. Maybe Bruno would see there was no other choice. He’s so sweet and I knew he wouldn’t want to hurt me, but I also knew he would react in self-defense if he had no choice. I snarled and bared my teeth, then raised my head abruptly to grab those colors. He reared back, fast and hard, and I couldn’t follow because of the metal band around my chest. But the band did bend a little. “Whoa! Okay, I guess not. Just promise you won’t hate me in the morning.”

  His glow increased until it was blinding. I shut my eyes to escape from the bright sunshine, but the light crashed through my eyelids and all I knew was pain. I screamed, long and loud. It kept getting brighter and more painful while I screamed as fast as I could draw breath.

  Then came a burst that was like the rising sun. It hit me in an agonizing flash and everything went black.

  It was dark and filthy. I had finally stopped flinching when bugs crawled on me. I had too many bites to count, but I couldn’t scratch them because of the ropes that bound me spread-eagled on top of a wooden table. “You don’t want us to hurt your sister again now, do you, Ivy?”

>   She was sobbing. I wanted to say something to her, but I couldn’t. They’d used duct tape over my mouth.

  “All you have to do is call the ghosts, get them to tell us where the money is hidden.”

  A second male broke in. And while the first man had at least tried to sound gentle, this one didn’t bother. “C’mon, kid. Call up the ghost or I’ll use the cigarette again.”

  “I can’t! She won’t talk to me.” Another burst of tears from Ivy made me crazy. “She’s a mean lady.”

  “Do it!” Pain! Oh God, the pain. My back arched off of the table, my shrieks stifled, but still audible through the tape. Burning, searing pain on the skin of my upper thigh. The scent of burning meat, my flesh. Tears streamed down my face as I struggled against the ropes, but all that did was make me bleed worse.

  “We’re going to find out from the ghosts where that buried treasure is or it’s all over for you and your sister, kid. Do you want that? Huh? Do it or someone is going to die!” I pulled against the ropes that didn’t feel like ropes anymore. They were heavier and stiffer, like metal, and it was hard to expand my chest.

  The darkness was beginning to suck me down, the dirt and bugs covering me until I couldn’t breathe. Maybe if I stopped struggling the dirt would cover my ears and I wouldn’t hear the screaming anymore.

  “Celia!”

  “Celia. C’mon, Celie, wake up. You need to wake up or this isn’t going to work.” The voice was deeper now, a sound of strength and warmth, filled with pain and love and fear. Fear for me. The power of that voice pushed away the men and my sister’s dying screams, back to where they usually lurked, waiting for me to try to fall asleep at night.

  My eyes fluttered open and I could see Bruno through the golden glow of a quarantine circle. I became aware once again of the pain in my leg. It was worse now than when I’d agreed to lie down on the table. “What’s happening? How long was I out? God, my leg hurts.”

  “Yeah. I’m sure it does. The muscle is necrotic, and with every step you take, you spread the damage further. Your flesh is dying, Celia, and it’s going to keep dying unless we can stop this disease.” Bruno’s voice was harsh and angry, but I didn’t think he was mad at me.

  He was scared—and that frightened me. “But you can fix it, right? It’s magic, so you can heal me?”

  His eyes closed and I thought I saw a tear roll down his face. Surely that was just a trick of the light playing and his magic? Then he spoke and I knew better. His voice cracked as he said, “No, Celie. I can’t, any more than I can heal the common cold. But the CMDC is sending over a specialist from the unit they’re setting up at St. Anthony’s.”

  That seemed odd, because St. Anthony’s isn’t one of the bigger hospitals in the region. It’s a community hospital and I knew they had set up a program of rotating specialists from the major hospitals in L.A., but a permanent unit? “They’re setting up a special unit here, instead of in L.A.? Why?”

  “Yeah,” Rizzoli answered grimly. “They are. For a good reason. The hospital here has a bigger morgue.”

  13

  When the CMDC agent walked into the lab, he was wearing a hazardous-material white suit, complete with hood and air pack. That didn’t really help my emotional state. I tried to ignore him, to take my mind to a calmer place. I fixed my gaze on one particular tile in the ceiling. Tiny rust-colored blossoms, probably from a leak in the roof, were sprayed across the white acoustic tile in a random pattern. I’m pretty good at meditation and I’ve done yoga for years. But right then, with the night beating on my brain, with the urge to feed growing, it was hard to find inner peace. The part of me that was still human and thinking needed to warn the new man. “If you’re going to try to touch me, you need to feed me first. Get me some beef broth or at least a nutrition shake. And you’d better hurry because I can feel these restraints starting to give.”

  My voice sounded strangely calm, as if it was separate from my body, which was thrashing around on the table, testing the limits of the titanium. I worried that I was going to destroy myself trying to get loose. But I couldn’t help it, couldn’t stop my body’s actions.

  “Mage DeLuca had something delivered. Think you can drink or should I just pour it down your throat?”

  My body stilled as I focused on the figure in white. I knew that voice. “Gaetano?” The medic, who’d shown up from time to time in the company of John Jones, couldn’t possibly be a member of the CMDC.

  The man hesitated, then spoke slowly and cautiously. “Yesss. Have we met?”

  Now that I was listening closer, I could tell that the voice wasn’t quite the same. “Christopher Gaetano?”

  The muscles in his shoulders relaxed a bit. “No. I’m Thomas. Chris is my son. People say we sound alike.”

  I nodded. “Pour it down my throat.” I leaned back and tried to relax. I trusted Chris Gaetano, and I was betting he learned his bedside manner from his dad. Chris had been the first person to ever take me to Disneyland. He had a joy of life that was infectious, and while we eventually decided that there was no romantic spark, I still considered him a friend. “Don’t get too close to my hands. I’m not really in control of them.” Thomas came forward, too fast. I felt my muscles tense, my fingers become claws that grabbed at his arm. The metal groaned from the sudden strain. “I’m serious, Doctor. I don’t want your son to be picking up pieces of you.” I raised my head and stared at him with glowing red eyes, letting him take a good look at my fangs. “Little tiny pieces.”

  He was close enough that I could see his face, dimly, through the hazmat suit’s hood. He swallowed hard; the hand holding the tall Styrofoam cup trembled a bit. I couldn’t smell him through the plasticized suit, but I could see his pulse beating hard against the thin skin of his neck through the face shield. “Okay, Ms. Graves, we’re going to take this slow. If you start feeling the need to attack, raise your hand, or at least a finger, so I know to back up.”

  That made sense, provided I retained enough control to do it. “What’s in the cup?”

  “It’s meat broth from some barbeque restaurant. Actually, it smells pretty good. I’ll have to try that place.”

  I knew the broth would work. It had before. A little while back, Dawna had gotten the staff of the barbeque place to start saving the drippings from under the massive steel smoker. The juice came from a variety of meats and tasted amazing. More important, it satisfied my hunger splendidly. With any luck, Bruno had called the same place. “Okay. Let’s do this. Can you pour through the quarantine circle?”

  He shook his head. “No. That’s why it’s important to tell me if you’re getting stressed. Mage DeLuca is suiting up now and is going to lower the shield and keep an eye on you while you … feed.”

  I shifted my gaze back to the ceiling, letting the scent of the meat fill me. If I concentrated on the meat broth, anticipating the taste, I wouldn’t focus on anything else.

  Like pulsing veins.

  “Cheer up, Doctor. Your son worked on me a couple of times. And he didn’t have titanium bands to hold me down.”

  He actually chuckled. “Yes, but my son’s insanity is well known in our family.”

  That made me laugh—and it pushed the vampire back enough to let me control my mind. I motioned to the quart-sized container. “Just get the bottom close enough to me that I can bite it. It’ll come out slow enough that I won’t choke while drinking it.”

  He looked nervous and I knew why. Holding the container near my mouth would put him within reach of my hands, and if I got hold of him, no way he was getting loose. “Mage DeLuca should be ready in just a second. We’ll see what he suggests.”

  Bruno walked in just then, wearing a similar suit to Dr. Gaetano’s. He’d left his gloves off. I raised my brows and looked at his bare fingers. He shrugged. Or at least I thought he did. Hard to tell under that all-white fabric. “Need my fingers to craft. So, are you going to be able to keep your hands to yourself, or do I need to cast a body binding on you?” He used a joking t
one, but he was serious.

  “I need to eat, Bruno. If I don’t, it’ll get ugly later. I don’t know how much of my head will be left by morning. My leg’s making me irritable and the restraints are making me crazy. Bad combination.”

  He reached over and took the container from Gaetano Sr.’s hands. “I’ll do it, Doctor. I stand a better chance of getting it down her throat. You start cutting her pant leg off.”

  I looked at him with shock. “You’re going to cut my pants? Bruno, I just bought these jeans. They’re designer originals.”

  He shook his head in the typical guy way, having no clue how hard it was to find clothes that fit and look good at the same time. “I’m sure Dawna will be happy to go shopping with you for another pair. You’ll never even notice.” The hell I wouldn’t! “You’ll be too busy eating.” He took the lid off the container and the thoughts about my jeans faded behind the hunger. The scent, thin but clearly perceptible to my vampire senses before, now burst into the air and my mouth immediately started to water. He put two fingers into the liquid and drew them out again. My gaze followed his every move, every drip of the juice back into the plastic tub. “It’s warm, Celia. Right at body temperature.” His hand moved over my face, and after several precise movements of his fingers, I felt the pressure from the quarantine magic release so abruptly it made me dizzy. A few drops of broth dripped onto my lips and slid into my mouth.

  I heard a growl erupt from my throat, a sound I didn’t realize I could make. Bruno lowered the container toward my face and I met him halfway, my teeth snapping so hard I was surprised my lips weren’t sliced. He was startled, but not enough to drop the cup. He let me grab the edge of the container with my teeth and slash at it as much I needed to. Because I did. I needed to.

  I hated that.

  But the moment the beef, pork, and chicken au jus hit my tongue, my self-consciousness disappeared.

  Hunger. I needed.

  I drank and let a shudder of pleasure overtake me. I wanted to grab the cup, but I couldn’t. So I was forced to drink only as quickly as Bruno poured—slow, just a trickle, so most of it went down my throat instead of down the side of my face.