“I didn’t peg you for a doctor,” I said. “A magic doctor, at that.”
The corners of his eyes crinkled, though his mouth remained stoic. “Yeah, well, these days, I like science more than magic.”
What a curious thing for a witch to say. “Why?”
“It’s more…secure,” he said. “Anyway, I’d like to scope out the hospital first, and I’d like you to come with me to use your scent magic to throw the Berkano off our tail if the need arises. I think that will help our odds. Bast is coming, too, when he finishes upstairs.”
I put the thought of Bast finishing anything upstairs out of my head. “You trust me that much?”
“I think the real question is do you trust me?”
More so by the hour.
“I would never make you do anything you didn’t want to, Fin.” His soft gaze caressed my face, searching for an answer. “You say the word, and I won’t think twice about you coming.”
I sat back in my seat with a sigh. I hated the thought of going outside again, but I also hated the thought of him going out there without me to save me when I could help him. Besides, we needed to get these collars off, and if a trip to the hospital helped make that happen, then I was on board.
“We take the whiteboards,” I said.
“Fine.”
“You use it instead of throwing it.”
“I apparently need all the communicating practice I can get.” He smiled, a real one this time, and it charged my heart into unsteady booms. It would be okay with me if he did that more often.
“I also need some of those wooden stakes you had on the roof,” I said.
“Consider it done.” He stood, leaving the ice bag on his seat, and rounded the desk, his steps steadier than they had been. “Ready?”
No, not really. But if this trek resulted in ridding the death sentences from around our necks, I would get there fast.
We walked through the large entryway and up the spiral staircase with me leading the way. On the second floor, faint moans behind closed doors heated my skin until it tingled. I forced myself to ignore the sound, because I needed to focus on the act of going outside. Again.
The hospital was only three buildings away. Plus, we were only scoping it out for now. We’d be fine.
“Bast is already outside, sugar,” one of the women said.
“Thanks, Rhonda,” Hendry said.
Past the third floor, he handed me the key, and with a deep breath, I unlocked the door and opened it. My stomach cramped, and a clammy sweat clung the back of my shirt to my neck.
“Fancy meeting you here!”
I flew back into Hendry behind me at the sound of the voice, my heart knocking down my ribs. Hendry grabbed me around the waist to keep me from rolling down the stairs.
The rectangular door in the roof opened wider, and there stood Bast, a shit-eating grin stretching his mouth wide. I cursed his name and his mother inside my head, but I had no idea if we operated on a two-way communication street. He chuckled and held out one hand to help me the rest of the way. I glared into his closed, empty eyes and joined him on the rooftop.
“I’ll go set the fallen ladders to right while you two go on ahead. If the Berkano stole them, I know where to get more. It’s a daily battle with them, always trying to get us to walk on the street.” Bast’s spurs jangled as he walked through the black sludge that had once been a vampire. “You two go on ahead, and let me know when you see the hospital so I can point out some things to you.”
Hendry nodded and opened his pack while I kept a wary eye for stray vampires in the eucalyptus tree’s shadows behind him.
“Oh, and miss,” Bast said, turning around again. “Sorry I shot at you earlier.”
But not for calling me a whore. It didn’t matter in the scheme of things, I supposed, so I gave a sharp nod.
He crossed the ladder to the other building quickly for an eyeless man, leaving Hendry and me alone. We traded wooden stakes for a whiteboard and marker that matched the smudged target between his eyes, and then once the ladder was moved a couple of feet from the tree, we set off.
We crossed the ladders and roofs of the next two buildings, moving as lightly as we could. When a large hospital came into view, it was a distance away over an overgrown garden, the stretch longer than any ladder that I knew existed. Aside from flying, we wouldn’t have an easy time getting there, and I’d forgotten both my broom and my superhero cape.
Hendry pulled out his whiteboard and marker and wrote, The door off the garden is unlocked. That’s where we enter.
I nodded and fished out my supplies as well. How do we get there? Then I drew a broomstick with a question mark after it.
He frowned and erased his first message to write a new one. Octopus?
I rolled my eyes up to the blue sky. Apparently, my artistic abilities could use some work.
Magic, he wrote, grinning. Watch what I do when the time comes.
When are we doing this?
“Well, that’s what I wanted to talk to you two about,” Bast said from somewhere unseen.
My heart slammed into the back of my throat, and I jumped. I fumbled with my whiteboard to keep from dropping it to the ground below. Hendry gazed out over the top of the hospital, unfazed.
“Sorry, Miss. Sorry. I’ll be sure to turn down my volume when we go live with this plan.”
I pressed my hand to my chest to settle everything back into place and then breathed again.
“What you’re looking at right now is a vampire nest,” Bast continued.
My muscles locked up. Oh, hell no. No wonder Hendry’s last few trips inside didn’t go well. It wasn’t worth going inside a vampire nest to get supplies to free us from these collars. We could find another way, another hospital.
“I’m afraid every hospital and doctor’s office is a nest on account of the blood banks. The blood is probably long gone by now, but the vamps aren’t. At night, a flood of them come out through the front doors. Whether all of them come out to celebrate the night, I don’t know.”
But the building would be emptier then. Not that I was clamoring to try it. I glanced at Hendry, who was studying me closely.
“Wandering around outside in the dark when the Berkano own the town and going straight into a nest is not my idea of a party,” Bast said. “But with your scent magic, it’s possible. I guess it depends on how much you want inside.”
Hendry gazed out at the hospital again, his eyes narrowed to two precise points of determination. No words were required for me to read his intent—he was going, with or without me. It was just as much his life on the line as mine.
We can find something else. Not science, I scrawled and shoved my board in front of him.
He faced me, his curls turning on the breeze. You don’t have to go, he wrote.
Didn’t I? It wasn’t fair of me to let him risk his life yet again. He needed my help, and that wasn’t something I was used to since I’d always thought my scent magic was kind of useless. Not to me, though, only because I had such a sensitive nose. Instead of practicing practical magic when I was younger, I’d begged Mom to teach me songs. We sang in the choir room of the church between her kitchen duties, either songs she’d heard or ones we’d made up. If there was a chance I could help Hendry ease her Rift Curse, and everyone else it affected, and get our collars off, I had to do it. But it didn’t change the fact that I was terrified.
“Whatever you decide, Hendry, you’ll have to light up the location of the laboratory on your maps again because my mind leaks like a sieve…” Bast said, and the sound of his voice siphoned out of my mind.
Hendry jerked his head toward the brothel for me to follow, and I did, with the vampire nest behind me chasing fanged threats up my spine.
The brothel employees and quite a few clients, including Bast, sat in a large room with a long serving table down the middle and several smaller, circular tables on either side. There were about one hundred people, roughly the same number as in the C
hurch of Hangmen, all with plates piled with roof-grown vegetables and fruits, homemade bread and butter, and spiced kangaroo. Or snake. It was probably best I didn’t know.
Laughter and relaxed chatter filled the space. Some women had happily given up their seats to sit on men’s laps, the long feathers in their hair flirting with the brims of cowboy hats. Others had dark smudges under their eyes and horrible, barking coughs, both symptoms of the Rift Curse. The brothel obviously didn’t see the point of quarantining them, though in all my reading, the Rift Curse didn’t appear to be contagious. Witches either had it or they didn’t. Dad had always said Mom was quarantined for her safety, and I’d never known what that meant.
Here, there were maybe twenty or so who looked like they didn’t feel well, more than I’d ever seen at once. The ache that had rooted in my chest for Mom sprouted sharp, heavy thorns for these people. They shouldn’t have to suffer.
At a table near the front of the room, I sat next to one such girl, maybe a couple of years younger than me, with a side braid decorating blonde bangs that kept flopping in her face. A bird’s nest had hijacked the rest of her hair, or so it seemed. Her arms looked as though she’d rolled them in dirt every day for a year, and she smelled like maybe it had been that long since her last bath. If she bathed today, my cleaning duties that started tomorrow would be super delightful.
“Lavandula,” I coughed into my hand. Soothing lavender wafted around us, both to cover up her smell and to calm my frayed nerves.
“You sure you want to sit here?” the girl asked. “Everyone was told to stay away from me on account of the Rift Curse.”
“Really? But there are others who have it here.”
“Maybe it’s on account that the Tessa lady said I looked feral.”
“Yeah. Me too.”
Eyes scraped the back of my neck, and I turned to see Tessa staring from a table near the middle of the room. Hendry leaned over her, his hand on the table, the sleeve of his black shirt rolled up to reveal his muscular forearm. I could guess at who they were talking about, and I would probably be right.
“Checking out Hendry, huh?” the girl said.
I stiffened and then slowly faced my plate again, the tips of my ears flaming at being caught. “Just making sure he’s still…alive.” Lamest excuse ever, yes, but it was the truth to a degree. It meant he hadn’t gone to the hospital without me, since I still hadn’t given him a definite answer. He’d poured too much inside my head lately, what with wanting me to lead these people who didn’t even know me and saving our lives by going on a suicide mission. My life had changed from church safety to brothel oxymoron in the span of a day.
She snorted. “Okay. You and every other lady here must think he’s on his deathbed, then.”
I dug into my food, ready to change the subject if she continued about what the ladies thought of him.
“Speaking of deathbeds, I see you met the Silence Collectors.” She pointed at my collar and propped her elbow next to her plate, resting her head on her knuckles. “I wonder if they’re even close to ten thousand vocal cords yet. Because I feel like shit.”
“I’m sorry,” I said around a bite of carrot.
She gave a half-hearted shrug and frowned down at the plate she hadn’t touched. “My sister had it worse than I did. Even the slightest bit of light hurt her, natural or not. With me, I just can’t go out in the sun, which made scavenging for food a ton of fun since I couldn’t go out at night either. Eventually, the Berkano broke in to the office building we lived in and killed my sister, putting her out of her misery. Honestly, it was a blessing.”
I choked down the rest of my carrot. “They broke in? Can’t you keep them away by ha—han—” The word refused to curl off my tongue. Hanging.
The girl stared at me, her eyes watery and rimmed in red. “Are you having a stroke?”
“Um, no.” I had no idea what was happening. I glanced over my shoulder toward Hendry, but he wasn’t there anymore. “Where I used to live, at the Chur—” It was as if that word had been blocked from me saying it, too. “To keep the Berkano away, we would tie up a ro—” What the hell was happening?
The girl coughed into the zipper of her hoodie. “Do you need the Heimlich?”
I shook my head and sighed in frustration. “Do you live here? How did you get here?” There. That wasn’t so hard to say.
“For now, I live here. Hendry said I can start working when I feel better. He killed the vampires and carried me here in a black bag early yesterday,” she said. “Can you even believe it?”
“Yeah. I can.” Was there anything he wouldn’t do to save someone? I had severely underestimated the size of his heart. Sometimes, it seemed he was a little careless with it. Even so, it dwarfed me, warmed me, and sent out a steady pulse to mine I couldn’t ignore.
Tessa sashayed past to the front of the room, the fabric of her green dress like a cruel whisper. It was time for me to sing, but I couldn’t even speak. Sweat tracked down my sides and beaded across my upper lip. I wrenched around to search for Hendry, but I didn’t see him anywhere.
She gave a sharp whistle and turned a smile on the room. “Everyone, we have a special dinnertime treat for you. Our newest servant is going to sing for you. Ladies and gentlemen, Fin Vee.”
“Who?” the girl next to me said.
A scatter of claps filled the room.
Who, indeed. Maybe if I joined everyone in looking confusedly around for this Fin Vee character, no one would notice it was me. But Tessa already knew. She aimed an exaggerated smirk right at me, and soon the others looked, too.
I stood, my knees wobbling, and flicked my gaze around for Hendry once again, my only source of familiarity. But I didn’t see him. I strode toward Tessa and forced my hands to remain loose instead of the fists I wanted to throw to knock that stupid smirk right off her face. I was so not in the mood for her, but I had one more chance before she kicked me out on the streets where I’d have to try to survive as vampire bait. Better to punch her with my voice—if I still had one that worked when I wanted it to—instead. Or something. My thoughts were fleeing for the hills, and I suddenly had to pee.
It felt like a lot was riding on this performance, when normally I just opened my mouth and did my thing. I still wasn’t convinced I could spark a resistance when these people didn’t have a clue who I was.
I turned my back on Tessa and faced everyone. Some stared at me like Allison always did, with their upper lips scrunched to their noses as if they smelled something foul. But that image helped me visualize the rest of the church. My home. I could so do this as long as my voice didn’t catch on certain words like it had earlier.
A deep breath later, I parted my lips and hoped. The first note of a sad melody floated to the back of the room. Relief eased my pinched lungs and carried my voice higher.
It was a song about a witch who had lost her baby to a lake. Mom had taught it to me when I was about nine, winding the mournful alto part around my soprano. It was a heartbreaking song, one that moved me every time I sang it.
Hendry had said to pay attention to the crowd, so I did. Most of them sat frozen. Others melted forward in their seats. Tears tracked down cheeks and chins trembled as I pushed my way through the song.
The last verse was the hardest, the most emotional, and ended with the witch so distraught that she begged the lake to take her life, too. I ended with a long, solemn note and then went quiet.
Silence. No one moved, except a few who batted away tears. Others just let them fall. Usually Dad was the first to applaud, leading the rest of the congregation to follow, but not this time. Several murmurs broke the quiet and then a few sobs.
It unnerved me to stand there like a scarecrow. I supposed I should’ve jumped on in with another, maybe a slightly happier, song, but perhaps they needed a moment. Wiping my palms down my thighs, I swept toward my table for my plate to make a quick escape.
The blonde bird’s nest at my table swiped at her wet cheeks. “Damn
ninjas always cutting onions near my head.”
I gave her an awkward smile as I picked up my plate on my way out, but by the door, I glanced back. Tessa stood at the far corner of the room with her back to everyone, her head bowed low in her hand. My eyes widened. Had I just proved she wasn’t totally rotten?
One older man who sat at a table near the back nodded as I passed by him, tears dashing down his cheeks. “Thank you.”
“Any time,” I said.
Okay, so I had affected them, but I didn’t see how making them cry would bring down the vampires. Besides, the rest of them didn’t even seem to notice as I left.
But, deep down, I knew singing to them would never be enough of a reprieve from their illness or living their lives in constant fear. Or for them to trust me, to accept me, whether I chose to lead the resistance or not. First, I had to be alive long enough to do it, which meant I needed this collar off. Second, if there was even the slightest chance Hendry could help ease those with the Rift Curse, including Mom, I had to help any way I could.
I needed to find him and tell him—we were going to the vampire nest/hospital tonight.
Chapter 7
132 Hours Left
A knock sounded on the door of the tiny cleaning closet next to the first-floor bathroom. I hadn’t been assigned a room to sleep in, and the door had been unlocked. After years of working in the baptismal, I was used to cramped quarters. In fact, I preferred it. Maybe one of Hendry’s medical books touched on psychology and had a name for that.
When I opened the door, Hendry stood there, both palms braced against the sides of the frame, his hazel eyes lit by flames from the candle chandelier hanging behind him. The light’s gentle leaps and sways rushed moving shadows in behind him.
Blood Song: Division 7: The Berkano Vampire Collection Page 8