Famine's Feast (The Templar Book 4)

by Debra Dunbar

  I didn’t either, but vampires had a right to live. As long as they didn’t go on a feeding frenzy, I wasn’t going to try to bring the hammer down on them. Which brought me back to these victims. Seventy—that was more than the vampires who’d been infected. It made me think the plague demon had spread his ick to a group of regular donors, knowing that they’d pass it along to the vampires. Even if the illness was dormant for a while, or some vampires were asymptomatic, seventy versus twenty-three felt like a shotgun approach to infecting the vampires. It was just the sort of thing I’d expect a plague demon to do—fill all the chicken with bacteria. If some went in the trash, oh well. Better to infect too much of the food supply than leave perfectly good people—or vampires—unpoisoned.

  I put the papers back into the folders. I really needed to talk to the patients, or if I wasn’t allowed then maybe Kyra could talk to them. Either way I needed to know which vampire they’d each donated to and if they remembered encountering the plague demon. I had to figure out the connection, as well as begin to trace down the mage who was responsible for the demon being here.

  “Did any of the patients have a mark like this?” I stood and lifted the edge of my shirt to show Kyra the demon mark on my side.

  “No.” She reached out a finger to touch the mark, and just then the door opened.

  Crap. I’m sure this looked bad, me with my shirt hiked up to my bra, Kyra bend over, her hands reaching for my waist. Although she was a doctor. Perhaps I could explain this all away as an impromptu exam.

  “Sorry, I didn’t realize…”

  The man’s voice trailed off. I glanced up and caught my breath in surprise. There standing in the doorway in an official white coat with the stereotypical stethoscope around his neck, stood my nemesis from the tourney—Wolfram.

  Chapter 18

  “Dr. Berengar!” Kyra scrambled to her feet, knocking the chair backwards in her haste.

  “You!” He ignored Kyra, his eyes focused on me with a mixture of surprise and hostility.

  “You!” I replied. “Dr. Berengar? You’re actually a doctor?” I’ll admit to thinking Wolfram’s profession to be something more physically demanding, like in the fire department or military. I would have never connected the man trying to cleave a notch in my hip with a medical doctor.

  “Aria Ainsworth, meet Dr. Hugh Berengar.” Kyra was clearly flustered. “Dr. Berengar is an infectious disease specialist here on consult. He’s back this year from an assignment with Doctors Without Borders. Aria is—”

  “A Templar.” Wolfram had composed himself and was now eyeing me curiously. “Who is at the hospital for what reason? I know I hit you pretty hard Sunday, but I doubt it was hard enough to send you here, plus you’re pretty far from the emergency room.”

  Doctors Without Borders. A medical doctor. Suddenly the tattered standard with the eight-point Maltese cross made sense. It wasn’t just a cosplay device.

  “You’re a Hospitaller.”

  The Knights Hospitaller had been a rival group during the Crusades. We’d been focused on securing the Holy Lands, i.e. the Temple, and protecting pilgrims on the path. They’d also done their part, fighting with great skill in those battles, but they’d concentrated most of their efforts on providing medical attention to the poor and the pilgrims. Over the centuries, this became their focus where we’d become the bankers of Europe and wealthy beyond all but a few of the royalty.

  It hadn’t started out as greed. Traveling pilgrims couldn’t carry large sums of valuables and coin with them. It wasn’t practical, and it made them vulnerable to robbers. Templars were everywhere. No robber would dare mess with us. It made sense for pilgrims to “deposit” the funds they needed with us, then draw upon that throughout their journey. We were the ATMs of the Middle Ages. But with that came loans and interest and forfeiture of holdings. Donated money and land had made us wealthy. Banking had made us rich beyond belief, and with the riches came greed and envy. It was our downfall. It made it so easy for the King of France to whisper in the Pope’s ear that we were heretics—and heretics forfeited their property to the King and Pope.

  Throughout all this, the Hospitallers continued on, acquiring their own riches, but spending nearly every dime on medical care for the poor and needy. They’d been gifted with many of our holdings after that fateful black Friday when we’d lost the Pope’s blessing. In spite of all the centuries, in spite of the good they did and the valuable service we, sometimes, provided, there was still an animosity between our groups. I’d never met a Hospitaller before, and I was pretty sure Wolfram had never met a Templar, until that day on the tourney field, that is.

  “Yes, I’m a Hospitaller. And I need to insist that you leave this hospital. Get whatever bandages you came for and get out.”

  That was a far cry from him feeling up my leg. I wondered what was going on? Whatever it was, Wolfram seemed stressed, not like the carefree combatant I’d encountered just a few days ago.

  “I’m here at the invitation of Dr. Tremelay,” I told him. “She has seventy patients with some unidentified illness that might be infectious, and might be fatal.”

  His eyebrows lifted. “Sounds like a job for a doctor, not a Templar.”

  “They all had been fed from by a vampire right around the time of the onset of their symptoms.”

  He sucked in a breath. “The vampires infected them with a new and potentially untreatable disease? Will that finally be enough for you Templars to take those bloodsuckers down? How long will you ignore their predation?”

  “We don’t know that,” Kyra interjected. “The bites are the only commonality so far, but that doesn’t prove causation. Although we’ve yet to identify the infection, it might not be ‘new.’ You, of all people, should realize there are vast numbers of bacterial and viral infections that can quickly mutate.”

  I stared at her, surprised that she’d gotten over her intimidation and spoken that way to a senior doctor whom she was obviously in awe of. Wolfram was also surprised. Then his head tilted, a glimmer of respect in his eyes.

  “Well then, let’s go examine one of the patients. The first one who came in. That’s why I’m here, to give input and expertise on the unusual infectious disease cases.”

  The pink was back in Kyra’s face. “Yes, sir, doctor, sir.”

  We followed her down the hall, me in step beside Wolfram. “So are you guys just regular doctors? Do you have any special healing ability beyond normal doctors, I mean?”

  He glared at me. “We can’t perform miracles such as the ones Our Lord and Savior did, but I’d like to think our faith provides us with an ability to heal beyond what our hands and medicines can provide on their own.”

  So, yes. Just as I could banish demons and defeat supernatural creatures with the use of blessings and my consecrated weapon, he could banish illness and heal with greater skill.

  “So are you?” he demanded. “Are you finally going to rid this world of vampires? Or are the Templars still pouting over the loss of their castles, disgraced and retreating from their holy mission? Are you all actually going to care about anything but the Temple, or remain sitting in your mansions sipping martinis all day?”

  I winced, but couldn’t say his opinions were false. “I can’t speak for the Templars as a whole, but I care. I’m here in Baltimore, protecting the city from murdering mages, demons, and recently Boo Hag teens on a killing spree. I’m also being evicted from a ratty apartment in Fells Point in two weeks. I’m about as close to both of our Orders’ original vow of poverty as possible.”

  “And the vampires?” He gestured in front of him. “The vampires who preyed upon these people?”

  “Some humans are voluntary donors,” I argued. “They’re compensated. They enjoy it. I might not like the situation, but humans have free will and I’m reluctant to interfere with that. Plus, we don’t know that the vampires caused this. There’s a plague demon in the city. If anyone is to blame for these seventy being ill, along with all of the food po
isoning cases, it’s him, not the vampires.”

  We stopped outside a door. Wolfram glared at me. “There’s a plague demon in the city? Please at least tell me you have a plan to banish him?”

  “I do. I just have to figure out exactly who he is first.”

  Kyra opened the door and we went in. The patient was a man who appeared to be late forties in age. His light brown hair had flecks of gray and was sharply receded at the temples. His dark blue eyes were foggy, and his hands by his side shook.

  “Is it mealtime yet? Have you brought my food? Nobody brought me breakfast.”

  “We did bring your breakfast, Mr. Standen,” Kyra told him soothingly. “Lunch is on the way, I promise. In the meantime, we also have you getting supplements through your IV.”

  Wolfram picked up the chart, flipping through it as Kyra spoke. “Negative on intestinal parasites. Thyroid okay. Nothing on the blood test. Metabolic disorder? Normally I’d suggest a genetic screening to rule out mitochondrial disease or enzyme deficiency, but with seventy patients having a recent onset of symptoms and nothing in Mr. Standen’s history indicating past pancreatic or muscular issues, it’s unlikely.”

  “We’re completing the paperwork for the CDC just in case,” Kyra said. “But at this point were thinking it might be neurological. We’ve scheduled him for a CT scan.”

  Wolfram nodded. “A tumor pressing on the areas of the brain controlling hunger.” He snapped the file shut and smiled down at the man. “Let’s take a look, shall we?”

  Mr. Standen was unmoved by the doctor’s handsome looks and charming smile. “Look at what? I’ve been poked and prodded, had to swallow the most horrible thing ever for some type of contrast X-ray, and now they’re about to scan my head.”

  Wolfram took the man’s hand and turned it over, examining the man’s wrist. “Sometimes there’s more to an illness than we think. How long have you been providing your blood to the vampires Mr. Standen?”

  The man inhaled sharply, averting his gaze. “Vampires? What, you think I’m crazy?”

  “No,” I told him. “We think you’re sick, and it might be connected to your recent blood donation.”

  He swallowed a few times. “I…uh, I did donate blood, but I’ve done it for years and never became sick. I’m a regular…a regular donor. Every eight to ten weeks. I’m sure this has nothing to do with it.”

  “Others have the same symptoms as you,” Kyra told him. “And they too have ‘donated’ blood within the last few days. It’s the only connection we’ve been able to find between you.”

  “Who is the vampire, Mr. Stanton,” I asked. “We need to know who the vampire is. Seventy people have what you have. Assuming that seventy people haven’t suddenly developed a brain tumor in the same place at exactly the same time, then the vampire donation has to be the connection.”

  He sighed. “His name is Pierre. I tend to donate to Pierre, Michael, or Tomaz. They’re guys, and they are okay taking blood without sex. I’m married. I won’t cheat on my wife. They pay well, and…okay, I like the way it feels. I’m hungover as hell for a few days afterward, but that hit is worth every minute. I’d donate more often, but they won’t allow me, and I’m not desperate enough to go trolling for random vampires in bars or anything. Is lunch almost here? I can barely stand it. These sheets are starting to look tasty.”

  Kyra eyed the IV bag. “Soon, Mr. Stanton. Soon.”

  “I’m going to try to see if I can tell what’s wrong with him, or at the very least where the illness is rooted,” Wolfram said, putting the man’s hand down with a quick pat on his wrist. “Is it okay if I touch your forehead, Mr. Stanton?”

  The man shrugged. “Sure. It’s not like I haven’t been felt up everywhere the last few days. And not in a good way, either.”

  Wolfram put a hand on the man’s forehead, then bent his head and closed his eyes. Mr. Stanton’s face relaxed, and for the first time since we’d entered the room, I saw peace come over him. The Hospitaller’s lips moved in silent prayer and I felt the surge of power in the room. It lifted me up, it gave me strength, it made me feel as if I could stand in front of a legion of demons, sword in hand, and defeat them without a second of doubt. The Knight’s faith washed over me, and in that moment, I realized how shaky my own had become.

  The doctor removed his hand, squeezing Mr. Stanton reassuringly on the shoulder before turning to leave the room. We followed him, and I saw that I wasn’t the only one affected. Kyra stared at Wolfram in awe, her face lit up from within.

  “I’ve given him some peace, so he shouldn’t feel the hunger as acutely as before. That’s all I was able to do. Whatever this is, it’s not a normal human illness. You won’t find it on your CT scan and you won’t find it through any other test. Medicine won’t cure it. It has an active tie to a supernatural being—a horrible, evil being.”

  “Will he die?” Kyra asked. She glanced behind her at Mr. Stanton. “Will they all die?”

  Wolfram shrugged, turning to me. “That’s up to you, Templar. Cut the tie with the evil, and they’ll survive. Delay too long, and they’ll die. You’re going to need to pick up your sword and do the job God charged you to do nine hundred years ago. You’ll need to kill the evil to save your pilgrims.”

  “The plague demon. I can banish him, but I can’t kill him. Will banishment be enough to save these people?”

  The doctor shook his head. “No, because it’s not just a plague demon, it’s also a vampire. To save these people, you need to also find the vampire responsible, and kill him.”

  Chapter 19

  I threw my bag on the table and collapsed on the couch, head in my hands. Dario had said two vampires were the first affected, so maybe the pair of them were responsible for this. But he’d euthanized them last night after leaving my place. Did that mean all I had to do was banish the demon, or was there another vampire I’d need to kill? And none of that answered the question of how the blood donors originally came to be infected. The humans might be able to wait a few days until I had enough information to banish, but the vampires couldn’t. I needed to figure out how the donors were getting the infection, so I could halt the spread among the vampires, otherwise there wouldn’t be any of them left to save.

  A knock sounded on my door, interrupting my thoughts. As I got up to answer it I saw Raven’s words on the whiteboard. What’s wrong?

  “I’ll tell you later.” I peered through the peephole, and immediately dismissed the wards and opened the door.

  “Plague demon?” It was Reynard, and he didn’t look happy. Not that I expected him to look happy after the numerous messages I’d left for him. Beyond that, he and I had never been friends even though he’d been Raven’s boyfriend.

  “Yep. Not my fault, though. I didn’t summon him.”

  “What’s his target?” Reynard strode into my apartment and stood by the table, arms crossed as he glared at me. “Or rather, who is his target. And whoever summoned him is an idiot. The goal is to always get the target with maybe one or two collateral damage max. This demon has been wantonly set on the city. We’re even having epidemics in DC and the suburbs. I’m sure he’ll soon take care of his mark, but in the meantime he’s spreading sickness and disease everywhere.”

  I hadn’t thought about that. Summoning a demon under contract required very precise language. Either the mage was an idiot and hadn’t worded the task appropriately to limit the scope, or the summoner just didn’t care who or how many this demon killed along the way.

  “I’ll deal with the mage later. Right now I need this demon gone.” I told Reynard what information the demon had revealed.

  Reynard pulled a tiny laptop from his backpack, deposited himself on my couch and began tapping away. I wasn’t sure what to do, so I put on a pot of coffee and waited. By the time the coffee was done, he set the laptop on the end table and leaned back against the sofa cushions.

  “Black. Two sugars,” he told me.

  I made other people coffee for a living, but I di
dn’t have to take orders from Reynard. I poured myself a mug and hesitated a moment before reluctantly pouring him one too and dumping two spoonsful of sugar into the cup. He was helping me out here. I guess I could tolerate some ordering around.

  “Find anything?”

  He took a sip of coffee and tilted his head, eyeing the mug in appreciation. “I’ve got a database I’ve been putting together over the last ten years. It cross-references Goetic and other source detail on specific demons along with information I’ve gleaned from mages at conferences and chat groups. There are a lot of plague demons, but twenty tend to be the primary ones slipping across the veil on a mark. Of them, eight are the go-to plague demons that modern mages are summoning these days.”

  I blinked. Who in their right mind would summon a plague demon? What horrible person did that?

  Reynard eyed me, as if he knew what I was thinking. “Some fight their battles with guns and bombs, others do so with magic and demons.”

  I guess he was right. Didn’t mean I had to like it. “Did you know which demon was responsible for the C. diff outbreak in Los Angeles three years ago?”

  He shook his head. “I’ll put some feelers out. There’s got to be someone on the West Coast who’s got connections and knows the demon responsible. Otherwise we’ll need to narrow it down by accessibility and specialty area. You said gastrointestinal symptoms?”

  I nodded. Demons weren’t as easy to summon as most people thought. There were very specific rituals, names, incantations that needed to be followed. Ninety percent of the time, an unskilled or amateur mage got nothing for their efforts. The other ten percent of the time they got something far different than they’d intended—and that something usually ended up killing them. Mages shared information within their groups, as well as with other trusted practitioners. Out of hundreds of plague demons, certain ones would get the reputation as reliably summoned. Clearly Reynard knew, which was kind of odd since Haul Du primarily specialized in Goetic knowledge or skill-granting demons.