by A. J. Aalto
“What happened in the hospital?”
“She brought me yellow roses. Told me she was your fiancée. Said she hoped I felt better soon. She went to the vending machine for me and got me a Dr. Pepper. I remember it distinctly because she wouldn't let me pay her for it.”
“How did she know you were in the hospital?”
I smiled at him sourly. “You mean if she didn't see it on TV or hear it at the office? She is, or was, a second degree clairvoyant. Retrocognition. She can perceive past events, people, places, objects from a distance. If she wanted to know where I was, all she had to do was meditate on it.”
“Why did she make up being engaged to me when she hadn't met me yet? And why didn't you just ask me if it was true or not?”
Because I'm a fucking coward. I sank sadly in my pillows. This had nothing to do with Batten. This woman hated my guts, and not because I'd had sex with some Fed. This was personal. Batten was a weapon used to hurt me. What I couldn't imagine was why? What the hell had I done to incur homicidal wrath? Was this about taking Harry? Or was that also just a way to hurt me?
Batten clued in. “She came to see you at your worst. Injured. Prone, in the hospital.”
“She must have searched the events of my recent past for something that was making me happy.” My eyes strayed to his lap and I dragged them away, blushing gloomily. “So she could take it away, kick me when I was down.”
I avoided his gaze but felt it searching me. If he didn't know why I was so pissed at him before, he knew now. All this time, I'd been furious for no reason. He wasn't a liar, or a cheat, or a jackass. Well, he might be a jackass, the jury was still out on that one. But I didn't have the hots for a lying cheater; maybe my taste in men wasn't as horrible as I thought. It was too much to think about. I resolved to deal with it later.
I hurried on: “She must have convinced herself it was true in that demented little skull of hers. Three weeks later, she shows up in your life for real.”
“She came to Virginia with her lawyers, asking about getting some footage in and around Quantico for her reality TV show. We turned her down; she hadn't done work for the PCU at that time. But it was amicable.”
“Those pictures you showed me this morning,” I pointed out. “She was there.”
“We called GD&C on our flight in. They said they had a psychic living in Denver, said she could be there in fifteen minutes. I assumed they meant you. She showed. We made her leave her TV crew in the van. She wasn't pleased, but she did it.”
“She's been living in Colorado?”
“Think you better tell me exactly what happened in that motel room.”
I didn't want to get you fired so I got myself stabbed.
“Please.” I shook my head, pushing my water aside. “I'm sick of hearing myself say it.”
“You went to the Ten Springs Motor Inn because Sherlock called and said she had a clue…” he encouraged, but his eyes had narrowed in on something in my face, reaching shrewd with alarming rapidity.
“The End. Please. I've over-explained to two men already.”
“Sheriff Hood,” he listed.
“And Harry.”
“You said two men. Harry's not a man.” He could never resist.
“Well, I know for a fact he has a penis,” I pointed out, feeling petty. “I've seen it about eight hundred thousand times. Penis still equals male, right?” A little white lie; I've never seen Harry naked, not once in ten years together. Harry would never get caught with his pants down.
“He's not human.”
“He's human-ish,” I established. I didn't like getting sucked in, and Batten's jaw was starting to do his clench-y thing. He didn't seem in the mood to let it go. “Why not date Sherlock?”
As always, there was a disturbing lack of feeling in his corner, like I was facing a projection of a person but not the real thing, an empty wall with a handsome reflection.
“She's too…” His lips puckered in a bizarre imitation and he cupped his hands in front of his chest. The result was so ridiculous that I nearly choked on surprised laughter. I huddled up protectively around the pain and slapped the spare white hospital blanket.
“Stop!” I gasped. “Don't make me laugh, tool.”
“Sorry,” he said, but a smile had slowly spread across his mouth, reaching his eyes: a genuine Mark Batten smile, just for me. “You don't think she looks a bit…overdone?”
“Guys love her.” I informed him sternly. “You're breaking ancient traditional man-rules by not being completely senseless about her.”
“Sorry. When I grab an ass I like it to have some—” He broke off with a cough as the door opened and a nurse came in.
I grinned at him steadily as the nurse came to the bed side with a tray.
“Yes, Agent Batten? By all means, finish that intriguing sentence.”
“A discussion for another time, Miss Baranuik,” he replied smoothly, his face perfectly blank, easily business-like. An unexpected memory slid into my brain thick and sweet like honey, the sound of him going over the brink, panting oh baby, oh fuck yeah, hotly into the crook of my neck while the bathroom door slammed repeatedly against drywall. I dropped my eyes to his crotch to look for signs of stirring. He gave me a warning glare behind the nurse's back, stood up suddenly and went to finger the curtains open to look down at the rear parking lot, glittering with ice under a full winter moon.
The nurse prepared to take blood and I said, “Uh, nurse, wrong vials. You need gold caps for mine.”
To her credit, the nurse's eyes widened only momentarily then she said, “All righty, hun, I'll be right back then. Don't you go anywhere.”
I gave the required polite chuckle. When the nurse had gone, Batten asked, “Gold caps?”
“Anyone who feeds a revenant directly from the vein gets residual saliva in their system. Undead saliva contains a minute amount of their telomerase. The medical community still thinks they need to keep those samples conspicuously marked and separate from “normal” blood from “normal” people. Didn't you wonder why I'm stuck at the end of ICU in isolation? You watch, she'll come back in a Hazmat suit.”
“I'm sure I should know what telomerase is? Vampire disease?”
“I'd give you a bio-chem lesson if I thought there was any chance you were honestly interested.” He nodded without a dig, which surprised the truth out of me. “When normal human cells divide, the chromosomes lose telomeres at the ends. This is related to aging, the loss of telomeres. Revenant telomerase is a protein complex which replaces the tips, halting deterioration of chromosomes during cell division, a supernatural version of the regular stuff found in human cells, produced in the gastrosanguinem in their stomachs. It flows through their bodies when they feed. It's why they never change, one source of their immortality.”
Batten's lip curled slightly. “And this stuff is in you?”
“Tiny bits, yeah. It's like when you swig from a can of Coke, and there's backwash left behind. When Harry feeds…” I felt suddenly exposed. “He leaves traces of it in my veins. End of lesson.”
The nurse came back in, and to her credit she neither hesitated or slowed her stride. She hadn't even doubled up on the latex gloves. After taking my blood, she got out the cuffs to take my blood pressure.
Batten stared out the window at the dark parking lot for a long time while the nurse pumped up the cuff and put a stethoscope to the inside of my elbow. Nearby in my purse, my cell phone started grinding out Bobby Brown's My Prerogative. Horrified, I snatched the bag and frantically dug for the illusive noise maker.
The nurse's eyebrow wanted to creep up but she got it under control. “You'll have to turn that off.”
Batten smirked at me over his shoulder, like he'd somehow figured out my dirtiest secret. I flipped the phone shut, wishing Harry would stop messing with my ringtones. If he wore underwear I would give him the wedgie of a lifetime.
Batten said, “This shit shouldn't have happened.”
“I didn't pick th
e ringtone,” I told him.
“I meant the altercation. You should have called me. You had no business going out there.”
Altercation? That sounded a lot like a tango, for which two parties were needed. A mysterious valve slapped open in my stomach dumping acid like a breached dam. “I gotta call you before I leave my house, now?”
“When it has to do with me or my job, yes.”
“You don't get it.”
“Fill me in,” he said tightly, folding his big forearms over his chest. My jaw clacked shut, and I backtracked.
“I thought it was the capital-R right thing.”
“Right thing for who?”
You, jackass! “Everyone.”
“Fail to see how getting stabbed was the right thing for you.”
“Oh, I suppose you would have seen that coming?”
“You're supposed to be psychic!” he shouted, ignoring the nurse's tearing Velcro and alarmed retreat. Guess my blood pressure reading would have to wait.
“I'm not that kind of psychic.”
“You should have called me.”
“I called Chapel!”
“I would have asked better questions,” he threw in my face. “Like, where are you?” Point: Batten.
“This wasn't my fault!”
“I never said it was,” he belted back, his voice vaulting octaves. “Why do you fight me about every goddamned thing?”
“Because the minute you open your mouth, you turn into a ginormous dill hole.”
“And you turn into a neurotic little twerp.” He paced. “Just hear what I'm actually saying, Marnie, without imagining insults between the lines.”
“I don't do that!”
“You never actually listen to me.”
“Well, right back at ya, jackass.” I settled back against my pillows carefully, ignoring the pull of stitches here and staples there.
Batten stalked back to the window, speechless with glittery-eyed anger. The silence that followed was a mire of unspoken questions, unexpressed feelings, and I understood none of it. He finally said, “You're not done hating me, obviously.”
I think I preferred hating him; it was a lot less complicated. “I don't like cheats and liars, especially ones I can't read.”
“You can't read me?”
I'd told him that already, more than once. I didn't know why he needed to hear it again. “After what Sherlock said, I thought you were a sleaze-ball.”
He didn't turn around to face me. “Don't know me as well as you think.”
An ugly truth. We'd known one another only a week before we drove each other into a frothing argument that got twisted into clutching, thieving, frenetic sex up against a bathroom door. That's so not me. If he hadn't taken that first rushing stride towards me with his hand out, I'd have had time to remember that I don't screw guys I don't know. But his hungry forward motion sparked something primitive in the non-thinking animal part of my brain, and touching him back seemed like the next obvious step. Of course, my version of touching him back was an attempted slap across his face, but it quickly turned into an eager pull to my open mouth, my lips quivering for contact. Guess my “oh no ya don't” needs some work. Sexual chemistry: one. Self-control: zilch.
Between that romp and the next, we barely spoke two words to one another that weren't directly related to the case, and even then it was tight and sparing. We pretended we were focused on the job, stake-outs done in strained silence, neither of us trusting ourselves to say the right thing. I thought he was trying to make believe it didn't happen.
“After she visited, I was sure you didn't return my calls or come to see me in the hospital in Buffalo because you'd been busted.”
He spun around, frowning. “I was there. Three days, then the PCU got called to Philadelphia and we had to go.”
“I didn't see you,” I argued.
“They had you on some pretty heavy drugs. Don't remember any yellow roses in your room. Chapel brought you Godiva chocolates. Was hoping you'd sober up enough to offer me one, but you never opened them.”
“I was awake?” What had I said? Oh, God.
“We had a few odd talks. You weren't making a lot of sense. Ranting about Barbary pirates, and lazarettos in Venice, and vampires behind the scenes of the Velvet Revolution. Figured you were out of it.” He jerked a thumb behind at the door. “Are you going to remember that I was here tonight, or should I write a note on the back of your hand?”
“All right,” I snapped. “It's irrelevant, I guess. It's better this way.”
It wasn't at all better. Better was exactly the wrong word for it. But it was the only thing that made sense.
Batten quietly showed me the back of his head. What he was thinking, or staring at through the glass, I couldn't imagine. But he was still here and that was something. “This hostility toward me, you sure it's all yours?” he asked carefully.
“What the hell does that mean?”
“Harry's back.”
“My emotions are entirely my own.”
He made a noise like he wasn't so sure. “You seem determined to write me off. I'm sure Harry's on board with that idea. Maybe the idea's his.”
“It hardly matters; the Feds aren't going to dissolve their fraternization rules any time soon.” Then again, if Sherlock carries through with her threat to expose our fling, neither of us have a career to worry about.
If I could touch him again without getting him in trouble, or without getting hurt…I distracted myself from that dangerous line of thinking with a brief revenge fantasy, during which I carved a hunk slowly out of Sherlock's impossibly tiny ass. I felt my lips curl up, and it felt ugly, cruel. But can you blame me? I had staples in my guts because of her. Having her arrested wasn't going to be nearly so satisfying.
“Speaking of rules,” Batten started. “When Harry was in the hall before, I think I made a gaffe.”
“Shocking,” I deadpanned. “You keep jerkin’ his chain, I will let him eat you.”
“I asked if he was here for a snack. He seemed upset.”
“Ya think?” I pointed my straw at him. “Harry's got indescribable patience, born of four centuries tolerating people's quirks. But when that patience runs out, he holds a grudge like nobody else. He'll either thrive on it, or chew your chest open. Neither will be pleasant.”
He ignored that. “He said, “Even if I were so selfish, it is not allowed. What'd he mean by that?”
“If your DaySitter can't provide you with enough while maintaining their own health, it's more honorable for the revenant to go hungry.”
He snorted softly. “There's an honorable way to use someone as food?”
“As a matter of fact there is, smartass. You've killed how many immortals? You still don't know a goddamned thing about them.” I glowered. “Noob.”
Batten scratched along the underside of his chin, where an evening beard was shadowy. “Tell me.”
“The Bonded revenant must consider the DaySitter's well-being before his own. They've been known to go into starvation mode if their partner is ill, and boy is that ugly.”
“Uglier than…” He let it go with a chesty rattle followed by a cough. “Ugly how?”
I folded my arms and waited until the argument had gone out of his face completely, until I thought he was ready to be civil. Caesar Millan would have called it a calm submissive state. I wondered if there was a Jackass Whisperer.
“A starving revenant enters lich-form, shrivels up, gets all ropey and sinewy. Think Harry's a monster now? Tie him up and don't feed him, then you'll see monster.”
“I wouldn't do that.” He must have thought it necessary to point that out to me. I nodded that I accepted his word.
“I've seen a sketch of a starving revenant. It was like a human died weeks ago and someone forgot to tell it to lie down.”
“Sketch, you mean an artist's interpretation?”
“In a doctor's file. A sketch because you can't take photographs of revenants, they don't show up on
film, and they tend to fry digitals. This patient was starving because his DaySitter was in a coma and he had become depressed, refused to feed from anyone else.”
“So give him something for the depression?”
“That would have worked, if he had fed.”
“Animal blood?”
“Doesn't cut it. Only human blood works. Once a revenant feeds, he has a circulatory system. But how is Prozac going to help if you have no working circulatory system?” I pointed out. “Starving can drive them completely, irreversibly insane. A lich-form revenant gone too long without resting and feeding becomes like a rabid animal. Or he goes the other way, becomes melancholy, suicidal.”
“So what happened to the sketch vamp?”
“When his DaySitter died in the hospital without ever regaining consciousness, he…” Thinking of my Harry, I remembered my manners… “Antony Brossard Ledesma walked to the nearest baseball diamond, six miles from the hospital in Pittsburg, sat on the pitcher's mound in the snow, and waited for sunrise.”
A flicker of sadness crossed Batten's eyes. I said nothing, lest I break the bubble of momentary empathy I saw. Maybe there was hope for him yet. He rubbed his mouth with one hand, deep in thought.
“Antony was eight hundred years old,” I continued carefully. “In that time, he'd observed the invention of the printing press, the microscope, the first steam engines, submarines and hot-air balloons, vaccines, batteries, rockets and locomotives, the pianoforte and friction matches, sewing machines and streetcars, ether and nitroglycerine, dynamite and typewriters…” I drifted, but there was no lack of fascination in the vampire hunter's gaze; in fact, he looked like he'd never thought such things. I gave him a chance to disappoint me. He didn't. Encouraged, I added with an envious smile: “Steam turbines, combustion engines, telephones, microphones, fountain pens and elevators, X-rays and airplanes, motion pictures and neon. Helicopters. Microwaves. Nuclear energy. In the end, none of it meant a damn thing to him, not when he lost his Bond. Antony sat in the cold Pittsburg night waiting; he had hours to reconsider. When the sun rose, the eyes that had witnessed both the invention of the steam turbine in 1629 and high-temperature superconductors in 1986 lasted less than a minute. He was a waist-high pillar of ash in twenty-five seconds. According to witnesses, his final shriek could be heard for twelve blocks.”