“I wish you’d stop saying that!” Cole snapped.
“And since I may not be around, you need to keep your head on straight so you can not only think about what to do next, but when to do it. There are things in motion that could affect us all in a big way real soon.”
“You mean like the Full Bloods working with Mongrels to run away with whatever the hell was locked up at the end of the hallway in Lancroft’s dungeon?”
Despite everything that was going on, Cole couldn’t help but get a little bit of pleasure from the shocked look on Paige’s face. “Are you sure about that?” she asked.
“I put Ned’s drops in my eyes to help find the Nymar when the lights went out. I could see those other scents down there as well.”
“The Amriany crawled in through some Mongrel tunnels,” Rico added. “They had a nice little system using some handy equipment. We might wanna think about knocking off something like that for ourselves.”
“Where’d they go from there?” she asked.
“Don’t know yet. Prophet’s with ‘em, but I haven’t heard back. I was about to give him a call.”
“Well, it’s another hour or so before we get to Chicago. See if you can find him. Once we get there, I doubt we’ll have much time to take a breath.” As if demonstrating her point, Paige pulled in a lungful of air and lowered her head. She busied her hands with the process of fishing a small tin of silver-tinted varnish from her pocket and applying it to the edge of one of her batons. Having the Blood Blade fragments melted into the varnish gave the weapon a steely texture, which meant it couldn’t be shifted into as many shapes as before. The trade-off was an edge that could cut through anything from cement and iron bars to Full Blood hide and was thin enough to keep from setting off metal detectors with any more frequency than a few coins at the bottom of someone’s pocket.
“What’s going on with you, Paige?” Cole asked. “Did something else happen in Miami?”
Working the foul-smelling paste into her baton, she asked, “How far did you get with those notebooks?”
The only thing worse than reading about the Nymar attack Paige had experienced was seeing the pain resurface on her face as she thought about it. “I got through the party where your friends were jumped.”
“Amy?”
“She was … I got to the part with her.”
Paige took another deep breath, tightened her grip on her weapon and took some bit of solace from the familiar pinch of the handle’s thorns against her palm. “I don’t know how long I was out after they started feeding on us. When I think back to that night, it’s all just a blur of sharp teeth, black tattoos, claws, and—”
“You don’t have to do this now, Paige. I’ll get to it.”
“No,” she insisted. When her fingers were sliced open as they grazed the edge of the wooden blade of the machete, she barely seemed to notice. Although her left hand could get the baton to shift into multiple shapes, her right could barely manage the machete’s basic form. “After the attack, there wasn’t much of an investigation. The cops came and asked a bunch of questions, but there wasn’t a lot to find. Amy’s body was gone by the time anyone knew something was going on downstairs, so nobody even thought to look for her right away. The rest of it was chalked up to drunk assholes being drunk assholes.”
“I thought that whole dorm would have known you were in trouble.”
“Nope,” she sighed. “Wes blocked the front door, so everyone either stayed where the music was or found another way to get to the first floor. Just another loud night at the Residence Hall. I don’t know. Maybe someone else did know something was happening, but it didn’t matter.”
“What did they do to you?” he asked. The question had come out no matter how badly he’d wanted to choke it down.
“I remember someone finding me,” she said softly. “I may have walked upstairs on my own or maybe someone helped me. I’d … lost so much blood that I could barely see straight. Somehow, I got to a hospital. Now that I think of it, there may have been an ambulance. I remember sirens. Yeah,” she said as her eyes took on a fresh intensity and her grip tightened around the handle of her weapon. “There were sirens, and they didn’t come from any cops.”
Chapter Nineteen
Carle Foundation Hospital Urbana, Illinois The past
Paige awoke several times after the attack, but this was the first instance when she had the strength or desire to keep her eyes open. The room was well lit, warm and quiet, enveloped by multiple sets of footsteps, hushed voices and a few blaring televisions in other rooms. In every aspect other than the square arrangement of its four walls and ceiling, it was the antithesis of the residence hall where Wes had thrown his party.
His name fluttered through her brain like a horsefly with hairs bristling on its body and wings cut from dirty plastic wrap. She closed her eyes, shifted in the bed, and took enough comfort from its clean sheets and sterilized pillow to give the whole waking up thing another chance.
She finally did open her eyes, and immediately wanted to close them. Then, as that desire soured into weakness, she choked it down and raised her lids, no matter how much it hurt or what was beyond them.
Someone was visiting whoever occupied the other bed in the room. The figure stood there, fussing with the sheets, straightening them until they were perfect. The back of his head was covered in coarse, salt-and-pepper hair. There were deep wrinkles along his neck, which could have been scars. When he reached for the other patient’s head, he did so with such recklessness that Paige sat up to see what he intended to do with the pillow he’d just grabbed. “Hey!” she said.
The man turned around, gripping the pillow in both hands. It might have been a more threatening image if there had been a face at the head of the bed or a person beneath the sheets. Now that she was sitting up, she could tell that the other patient she thought she’d seen was just a trick of shadows being cast by the light pouring through the window and the haziness within her own mind. A few more blinks cleared her vision enough for her to see that what she’d mistaken for feet was actually a bundle left at the foot of the bed.
“There a problem, miss?” the man asked. He wore simple blue pants that were too smooth to be jeans, too loose to be tailored, and too cheap to be anything but mandatory hospital issue.
“Do you work here?”
“Yes I do. Can I get you anything?”
“No, I don’t want anything. Were the police here?”
“Were you expecting them?”
She turned away, suddenly ashamed of the disappointment that made her feel like a kid who’d just discovered the sad truth about who hid the eggs on Easter morning.
The man walked over to her bedside, tossing the pillow so it landed exactly in its place. “You look like you’re doing pretty well.”
“Yeah? Maybe you should look again.” When he took another step toward her, she tensed and added, “Forget it, guy. If you think I’m helpless just because I’m in this bed, then you’ll really be surprised when I jam that IV stand up your ass.”
“That’s good to hear.”
“And if you say you like a little fight in your women, I’ll jam another IV stand up there to keep the first one company.”
“I wasn’t about to say it quite that way,” the man told her, “but your point’s been made. My name’s Ned.”
“I know.” Seeing the flicker of surprise on his face, Paige eased back against her pillows and told him, “It’s written on your shirt.”
“Oh, that’s right. It sure is, isn’t it? Normally someone in your condition isn’t so quick on their feet. Actually, many of them don’t get back onto their feet at all.”
“My condition,” Paige huffed. “I’m a little bruised, but I’ll be out of here soon.”
Ned walked over to the door, took a quick look to the hall outside and eased the door shut. “That,” he said while walking over to the bundle he’d left at the foot of the other bed, “isn’t exactly what I meant.”
/> “So what did you mean?” she asked as her hand drifted toward the call button hanging from her bed frame.
Although Ned looked at her long enough to see what Paige was doing, he didn’t make a move to stop her. Instead, he carefully unrolled the bundle, to lay it on the unoccupied bed, and began sifting through its contents. “You weren’t attacked by just some bunch of drunken idiots. That fella, Wes, had some very unusual friends that put you and your friends through hell on earth.”
“Don’t try to tell me what happened.”
“I know what happened to your friend with the glasses. I also know what happened to the pretty, quiet little one, and the girl who turned up missing.”
“You mean Amy?”
Ned nodded and turned around to face her. In his hand was a syringe the size of a little pencil. It wasn’t the cloudy liquid in the narrow plastic tube or the needle at the end of it that frightened her as much as the calm certainty in Ned’s eyes regarding what was going to happen next.
“The police say Amy’s missing,” he said. “Everyone around this hospital caring for the patients from that party along with other kids from the university all say the same thing, but you know better. Amy’s not missing, is she?”
Paige’s eyes narrowed as she sat up in her bed. The muscles in her legs tensed in preparation of unleashing a flurry of kicks. Her fingers clenched around the sheets and the edge of the mattress as if she could somehow pull those things up and use them as weapons. “What’s in that needle?”
“It’s an antidote for what may be running through your system.”
“The doctors already put enough into me. Get that crap away before I call someone.”
Ned stopped, lowered the needle and looked at her with a contemplative expression. “Those Nymar left you alone for a reason. I think I see what that could be.”
“Namor?”
“No. Nymar. It’s what the vampires call themselves.”
And there it was.
Paige had heard people talk about life-changing moments. Most of those were soldiers or survivors of catastrophes, or maybe even people who were critically ill. She might have had a moment like that during the attack, but her brain had done a pretty good job of wiping those memories away like hot breath from a cold window. Not only did Ned’s words bring the memories back, but they convinced her that she hadn’t simply exaggerated things to cover a more earthly violation. If she’d been beaten or raped, it was something she could comprehend. There were support groups she could visit, doctors to comfort her, others who might understand her pain. There were no support groups for victims of vampire attacks.
Or maybe there were. Somehow, she figured Ned might know about such things.
“You saw the vampires,” he declared. “You saw what they did to your friends. They killed one and most likely fed on the others. More than one of them must have fed on you. That’s why those wounds haven’t closed yet. If just one bit you, there wouldn’t be much of a trace left. When their saliva mingles, that gets messed up.”
There were bandages wrapped around Paige’s left forearm, a few taped to her shoulder, and a thick chunk of gauze attached to her neck. When she moved, she could feel the twitch of pain beneath the antiseptic wrappings. “I don’t know for sure what they did. They knocked me out when I tried to fight back.”
“See, that’s the difference. You fought back. More than that, I’m guessing you fought back real well. Did you wound one of them?”
“I don’t think so. Grabbed a corkscrew and tried stabbing him, but it didn’t do much of anything.”
“Where did you stab him?”
Tapping into her reserve strength, she lifted her chin and arched her back so she was almost standing up in the bed. “Right on those fucking moving tattoos. I mean,” she added as her posture slipped, “the thick black tattoo on one of them.”
Ned smiled warmly. “No, you’re right,” he told her while calmly patting her shoulder. “Those black markings moved. They’re not tattoos.”
“Is that why they came for me? Because I can see that kind of thing?”
“I can’t say for certain, but I doubt they came for you. That one fella, Wes, lives on campus and has been feeding on students because they’re easy pickin’s. The others are friends of his, and I’m pretty sure one of them is the leader of the group.”
“Was it a woman named Hope?”
For the first time since he’d made his presence known, Ned seemed shaken. “Is that really her name?”
“That’s what I heard the others call her.”
“You’re sure about that?”
“Yes!” Paige snapped. “How the hell could I not be sure about what a bunch of freaking vampires called each other while they were tearing me and my friends apart?”
Ned sat down on the edge of her bed. “Most people in your situation would have been too frightened to remember such a thing or too affected by the Nymar to remember. Either that or they’d just keep their mouths shut, pretending to forget what happened or force their brains to push it out. This is what I’m talking about. You’ve got a strength that separates you from the rest.”
“My name’s Paige.”
“I know.”
“Then call me that. Don’t just talk about me. Talk to me.”
A trace of amusement crossed Ned’s face. “All right, Paige. Since you seem capable of handling the truth, that’s what I’ll give to you. The serum in this syringe is poison to Nymar. If they left anything in you, this will kill it. If they infected you in any way, this should get rid of that as well.”
“Infected me with what? Will I become a vampire?”
“I could examine you, but I’d want to give you the injection no matter what. Considering all the examinations you’ve endured, I figured I’d just skip the middleman. Hold out your arm.”
Paige got as far as tensing a few muscles, but stopped well before her arm rose above the sheets. “How do I know you’re doing what you say you are?”
“I’d inject myself with the syringe, but that would waste some serum and wouldn’t be very sanitary.”
“I got chewed on by Namor and you think I’m worried about getting an infection?”
“You should always be worried about infection,” Ned replied with a face that was as straight as the plastic tube in his hand. “And it’s ‘Nymar.’ ‘Namor’ is the Sub Mariner from those comic books.” Before she could say anything to that, Ned added, “Lots of people make that mistake. Are you ready for this or not?”
She pulled in a deep breath, held onto it and let it out. “Guess I don’t have anything else to lose.” When Ned extended his hand, he almost got close enough to push the needle into her arm before she said, “What about the others? My friends? You said you knew what happened to them.”
“I know Amy Crabtree is dead. We saw the Nymar drag away the body. Jennifer Walsh was discharged after being treated for blood loss. She recovered quicker than expected, which is normal for someone who’s fed upon normally. The one with the glasses must’ve slipped away.” He then held up the needle and raised his eyebrows as though asking her to proceed without forming the words.
Fixing a stern glare on him as if certain that would be enough to hold him back, Paige asked, “Who are you?”
“Ned Post. I’ve been working at this hospital since about a month or two after Wes and those other Nymar set up shop at the university.”
“Unless the Carle Foundation has some sort of vampire ward, there’s more to it than that.”
Someone walked by the door to Paige’s room. The footsteps stopped, but moved along once Ned nodded toward the door’s little square window. Keeping the same casual, vaguely bored expression on his face, he said, “I’m a Skinner.”
“A Skinner? Is that another comic book thing?”
“No. It’s just what we’re called. The condensed version is that we know about creatures like Nymar and hunt them down.”
“So if you know about Wes, then why aren’t you hunting
him down?”
“There’s more to it than that,” Ned hissed. “We need to stay as discreet as possible. There’s no telling what could happen if something is handled sloppily. All of us could be compromised. There could be other Nymar that we don’t know about. If they’re confronted and we don’t have all our bases covered, things can get very bloody very quickly.”
“You mean like what happened to Amy? Like what happened to me?” When she held up her arm to illustrate her point, Ned grabbed her wrist. She tried to pull it away but was held fast within the grip of his rough, thickly scarred hand. Even so, she continued to make it difficult for him to accomplish his task. “You’ve known about these assholes for a month and that’s not enough time to get them?”
“Like I said before, there’s a lot to it.”
“Maybe you Skinners aren’t good for anything but standing around and watching people get hurt.”
Ned jabbed the needle into her arm and injected the serum into her. Then he turned and walked over to the bundle he’d left on the other bed. “You want to do something to the things that did this?” he asked. “You can help us get closer to Wes. Find out how many of them are in town and where they are.”
“You don’t even know that much? Fuck you. I’m calling the cops.”
“They’ve already been here and filled out a missing persons report on a dead girl.” He took the chart from the foot of her bed, quickly looked it over and put it back. “I’ll be keeping an eye on you.”
Those words slapped Paige in the face hard enough to keep her quiet.
After putting the syringe away and rolling the bundle up again, Ned tucked it under his arm and approached the door. He stood with his hand on the knob and his foot against the bottom edge in a way that would allow him to keep it from being opened if anyone else tried to join them. “We’ve killed three of those Nymar since we arrived,” he said. “And still, whenever they show themselves again, there’s three in the group other than Wes. Until now we’ve had the leader pegged as a man who looks to be in his thirties with slicked-back hair. He leads the charge on nights like the one you experienced, but that woman always follows. We never thought she was the leader.”
Vampire Uprising s-4 Page 21