Stronger Than Blood

by Genevieve J. Griffin

  Chapter Thirty

  It wasn’t far to the hospital I’d been avoiding most of my life. Having to talk through the entire drive, though, made it feel like it took fifteen years instead of fifteen minutes. My throat was parched by the time we got there. Barron, looking solemn, pulled a water bottle out of the glove box of the police cruiser. Somehow, I hadn’t thought that was what policemen carried in glove boxes. I drank it anyway.

  We stopped just outside the entrance to the ER. Barron, who’d listened without comment throughout my tale—I didn’t leave much out—at last rubbed a hand over his eyes, then gave me a long, judging look. “Accelerated healing, huh?”

  “Um, yes.”

  “You do look mostly healed.”

  I touched the spot on my skull where I’d cracked it against the floor. Dried blood flaked off, but nothing underneath felt sore. “I think so.”

  “And here I drove you all this way,” he said, his voice dry. Then he gave me a sidelong look. “I bet you have some questions about what you found in that clinic.”

  I was too tired even to feel surprised. “You knew about it already, didn’t you?”

  Barron tipped his head back against the seat. He looked older, somehow, than I’d been remembering. “That place has had…specialists for a long time. They put up a good front, but they’re too well equipped. Everyone’s drastically overqualified. And the deliveries alone…” He made a face. “Your doctor came to me after Grey’s unscheduled visit. He told me quite a bit. I don’t know if you’re going to believe this, but… He said he was trying to protect you.”

  “Protect?”

  “He never once told Ilsa about you. Not even with the way she and Kane were bullying him through the work. You were the one thing he felt like he had to keep secret. That might be worth remembering.”

  I felt off-balance at the implications. Barron watched me think through it. Finally he made ready to get out of the car. I stopped him when I flashed on a memory. “Wait—I started telling you about stopping Brandon, up there at the cabins, but…”

  He slowly closed his car door again. “Yes?”

  “I don’t know exactly what happened to him,” I said uncomfortably. “When I left, he’d been hurt pretty badly. I don’t know if he came to, or where he went if he did, or…”

  There was a long pause. Barron rubbed the back of his neck. “I sent a team up there already.”

  “You sent—but they could have been killed.”

  “Sort of in the job description.”

  “I doubt werewolves were in the job description,” I muttered. He smiled wryly.

  “Moot point in the end. Briggs and Pierce didn’t find anyone there. They found some other strange things, I’ll tell you that much, but…”

  “Nobody at all? Did they find the medicines, at least? Dr. FitzP gave Grey a whole supply.”

  He shook his head. I thought it through, and felt queasy. Brandon was gone. So were the meds. He had enough to last him for weeks. And as hurt as he was, and as angry…

  I wanted to plead with Barron to help fix this somehow, but he said, “Listen. I think the best thing for you to do now is go see your friends.”

  I wiped my nose with one knuckle. “Aren’t I…in trouble?”

  He raised an eyebrow. “Are you volunteering?”

  “I’ve told you all sorts of things about the pack. About attacks on people and…and murders, more than one, and—”

  “You’ve also said you didn’t commit any of those crimes.”

  I felt even more bewildered. “Isn’t there some kind of process to this? Formal investigations and charges and me probably being considered complicit or something, or—”

  “B,” he said heavily. “Of all the parties involved, you’re the only one I’m willing to take at face value at this point, and the little bit of extra insight I’ve been afforded is telling me no, you are not to blame.”

  “Afforded how?”

  “Long story.” He gave me a very strange look. “I’d accept the favor if I were you.”

  I gave it one more shot. “Breaking and entering?”

  “We’ll negotiate that one later.” He opened his door again. “For now, there’s a doctor who wants to see you.”

  I finally took the hint.

  Barron took me in and acquired Antonella and Lacey’s room numbers. Before long I was tailing him down the halls. I limped past people who were making even more difficult walks, still tethered to IVs or walkers. Doctors and nurses passed us both, sometimes at an urgent clip, sometimes ambling by and chatting at a casual, careless pace that seemed totally at odds with what I could see around the curtains. The whole place smelled of antiseptic and disease. I put a hand to my nose, which didn’t help the burning.

  Then we got to 322. Lacey’s room. My stomach twisted as Barron pushed back the curtain.

  To my shock, Grey was already there.

  “B,” he said in a choked voice, standing up. His head was bandaged, and he still looked unsteady, but he was here. For the first time in my life, I was faster than he was as I propelled myself across the room for a hug.

  “Oh, God, Grey,” I said into his shoulder. “I’m so sorry.”

  “It’s okay.” He shook a little, as if he was trying not to cry. So was I. I failed first. My brother didn’t tease me about it, though. I just hung on, crying out my guilt and relief onto his shirt. He didn’t seem to mind. “It’s okay, B.”

  “It’s not. I got you all into this.”

  “We got out alive. I’m calling it a win.”

  “But your head—”

  “They say it’ll be back to normal soon enough. If it was ever normal to begin with.”

  “Debatable,” I joked wearily. I pulled back at last and stared at him. Then we both looked at Lacey, lying there in the bed. Grey hugged me tighter.

  “Is she going to be okay?” I said faintly.

  As if on cue, the curtain slid back again. It was an all-too-familiar face on the other side.

  “So,” Dr. Fitzpatrick said. “Made an after-hours office visit to my clinic, did you?”

  I fell silent. I hadn’t a clue what to think, let alone what to say, since I was still trapped between anger, an odd sort of betrayal, and terrible confusion. I was, however, far too exhausted to begin pointing fingers. I kept remembering the Elder’s point, the same one Raoul had returned to at the end: that our lives were supposed to be about choice. From the sounds of it, thanks to Kane, too much of Dr. FitzP’s ability to choose simply hadn’t existed. I couldn’t get angry about anything that had come of that. What mattered, ultimately, was what we all chose now.

  And he’d obviously come to help.

  Dr. FitzP’s hands were full of papers, his hair mussed, his eyes bruised with lack of sleep. He gave me a long, wordless look, and nodded slowly, as if he understood what I was wrestling with. Then he got down to the business of filling me in.

  Antonella, it turned out, was being treated as if she’d overdosed on speed. “It’s the closest equivalent I could put on the report, at least,” Dr. FitzP said. “The treatments should be safe. She’ll be all right.” I wasn’t sure he’d be able to say the same once her parents heard that excuse, but never mind.

  Lacey was, of course, a more complicated case.

  “Near as I can tell,” Dr. FitzP said, while reading his notes, “the dose you gave her countered the effects of the bite, but we’ll still have to keep her here for a few days for further evaluation.”

  I made a low, guilty noise and shuffled closer to Grey. Dr. FitzP looked surprised. “You didn’t do anything wrong, B. She needed that much of a kick to the system. There were a few traces of irregularities left in the blood when she got here, so I’m trying to see if that can be eradicated.”

  I looked up at the IV bag, oddly tinted in some way I couldn’t put my finger on. Barron stepped forward while I studied it.

  “Let me get this straight,” he said with remarkable calmness. “B’s already told me that Lacey wa
s bitten. Just like B was years back.”

  Grey and I nodded uncomfortably. Barron frowned. “So how exactly does this so-called infection work?”

  “A bite to the throat,” I said. “That’s what turned me.”

  Dr. FitzP made a skeptical sound. “Near as I can tell, location makes no difference. It’s all the work of the venom.” I felt appalled at the very word. Venom? I’d had no idea. “Lacey’s blood work still shows traces of it. My best guess is that werewolves subconsciously release it when they intend to turn someone. Everything else is just ritual. Maybe the bite-at-the-throat rule helps trigger the right response, I don’t know.”

  I rubbed at my mouth with the back of my hand, as if I could scrub the offending substance clean. Venom? God. But then, it made more sense than just biting the right vein. I knew as well as anyone that the pack had a hard-on for ritual the size of your average skyscraper.

  But although Dr. FitzP’s explanation made sense to me, it hardly satisfied everyone in the room. My brother’s expression looked both hard and a little bit lost.

  “I still can’t believe that you knew,” Grey said. “You knew this much about werewolves and you never said anything.”

  “You never permitted me to test her properly,” Dr. FitzP replied softly. When Grey looked as if he was about to shout another accusation, I stopped him.

  “You wouldn’t have wanted me to go through those early experiments anyway,” I said. “Trust me.”

  Grey looked grim. So did Dr. FitzP. “All along, I’ve done whatever I can to help,” he said quietly. “But there’s no easy answer.”

  Barron contemplated that, then waved at the IV attached to Lacey’s arm. “So…this experiment? Is this meant to be the answer?”

  “I hope so.”

  Barron’s voice sharpened. “How long until we know?”

  Grey and I both knew the answer by heart—we who habitually counted the days—but we didn’t want to say it aloud. It was my doctor who finally had to speak up.

  “The full moon’s in two days,” he said. “If she’s still human by then, we’ll know.”

  *

  Technically, Grey was already released from the hospital’s care, but neither of us could gather ourselves enough to go anywhere. We ended up downstairs in the late-night coffee shop, where I discovered exactly how exhausted I was. When I dropped into the cushy chair in the corner, I nearly passed out again. Grey wordlessly kept feeding me caffeine until I stopped feeling too bleary to think. It required an awful lot of coffee, and the barista started eyeing me suspiciously by refill number two. I glared him into submission, which gave Grey, sitting on a shipping box beside me, the chance to lean close enough to talk.

  “How did you get here, anyway?” I asked him.

  “Garden-variety ambulance. We all got hauled off together. Except for—”

  “Raoul.”

  “Yeah,” he said quietly. “I have no idea where he disappeared to.”

  So Raoul—and Brandon—were MIA, Ayu and Pandora were off somewhere with Ilsa, and the rest of us were here, in anything but optimal condition. I studied the dregs of my coffee and took an inadvisable gulp. It was going to take years to get this taste out of my mouth.

  “Need another one?” Grey said.

  “I’d rather drink a vat of acid.” I set it aside. “Listen…”

  “No, wait. There’s something I wanted to say.”

  I waited until he got his thoughts together. It took a while.

  “That drug they’re giving Lacey,” he said at last, rubbing his hands together where they dangled between his knees. “You really think it’ll work?”

  “You’re worried about her, aren’t you?”

  “Just answer the question.”

  I stared at the ceiling. “He’s done so many experiments and tests and it’s gone really, really wrong, before. The werewolf who bit me went crazy because of one of those so-called treatments, Grey. The drugs didn’t help then.”

  “But Dr. FitzP’s done ten years of work since. And this treatment is different.” There was a terrible sort of hope creeping into his voice. “You know what that means, B. It’s not just about killing the pain. It’s not about making her better. It’s about not being a werewolf at all.”

  I swallowed hard, tasting bitterness all the way down. I wanted to believe it, for Lacey’s sake. But for me? Sure, I’d wanted for years to be rid of this, but as much a part of me as this was now, would it even work? Or would it just wipe out everything I’d become?

  I wanted to be rid of the pain. But there were a few things I had gained that I didn’t want to lose, either.

  I began my explanation slowly.

  “Grey, giving Lacey that stuff was a last resort, and it was necessary. She would’ve died if I hadn’t tried something. But Cee wasn’t even fully turned. It’s not the same. I’ve been like this for ten years! It’s normal for me now. And I’d rather be a little bit broken than make it even worse.”

  “Normal is bullshit. You have been getting worse, and I’ve tried to help you and can’t, and Dr. FitzP could have helped you and I stopped him, and—”

  I could tell where he was going with this. “This isn’t about you, Grey.”

  “Fuck that,” he said, with such vehemence that it startled me. “It’s about both of us. I’m not going to sit here and watch you play martyr and not get to have a say.”

  “But you’ll try to talk me out of having any, when it’s my fate we’re talking about?”

  “I don’t understand,” he said, his voice pleading. “Haven’t we been trying to find you a way out ever since it happened? Don’t you want to be better?”

  I shut my eyes, suddenly overwhelmed. Grey reached over to grasp my hand.

  “B. Please. Just tell me. I won’t force you either way, I promise, just…help make this make sense for me, please. You owe me that.”

  I worked my thoughts over, finding every excuse in the book to delay it. I surveyed the halls for onlookers, watched out for the barista, fussed over the scrape on my hand that had healed hours ago. Finally, though, I had to force out my answer.

  “It’s not all awful,” I murmured. “I mean, I’d never even been…outside, like that, under the moon. I know I had to stay in the cellar before—there wasn’t really much choice, the way I was. But it was different in the pack, before things went crazy. I was able to change without being scared of myself.”

  “You won’t have to be afraid at all if this stops, B!”

  “I know, but it’s not over, Grey. Brandon’s missing, and I don’t know where Pan and Ayu have taken Ilsa, or what’s going to happen to—to any of them. And I feel responsible. I can’t just take my shots and lie down and forget all this, and end up being helpless if any of it comes back for me. I’m getting stronger as a werewolf, Grey—”

  “You’re hurting as much as you ever were!”

  “I mean mentally. I don’t know how to explain it, but…the pack listens to me. I know how to handle them now.” A strange little shiver went up my spine. “I can’t just throw all this away to make things simpler on myself.”

  “You don’t have to be the one to handle them. You never deserved getting dragged into it. Don’t you want to escape that? Have a safe, normal life? Wasn’t that what you always wanted?”

  I thought of the Elder, and the mission he’d taken on: to take care of all the lone wolves out there, one way or the other. To protect what he had of a family. He’d wanted to do what was right, but had been brought down before he could finish. I wasn’t about to let that happen to me.

  “Can’t I at least think about it?” I said. “Please?”

  Grey put his face in his hands, then slowly lowered them and sighed. “Just promise me you’ll let Dr. FitzP do a proper blood test on you in the morning. Let him figure out for sure what he can do for you. Just so we know.”

  That was exactly what Grey had been trying to prevent for the last ten years. The irony nearly did me in. All I could do was mumble an a
greement.

  “And you need to get some sleep, and think on a clear head.”

  “After all this coffee?”

  He made a wry expression. “Well, you can try.”

  “And I want to talk to Lacey when she wakes up.”

  Grey went quiet, his eyes haunted. I wondered again what she’d said to him when I was gone. “Yeah. So do I.”

  After that, we ran out of things to say.

  So in the end, we both slept in chairs outside Cee’s room, dead to the world until the sun started rising the next day.

  *

  “I got the bass, you know,” Grey said to me, while we sat watch over Lacey the next morning.

  She was still out cold, but that was intentional. Dr. FitzP had said she needed the rest. Her father had been there an hour or so before, and we’d stayed clear while he sat with her. Then he’d stumbled off to be lied to by Dr. Fitzpatrick. We finally went into Cee’s room once he was gone. Around us, roses and lilies turned the air sticky-sweet.

  In the midst of all this, I tried to think back to the day Raoul and I stole that instrument for Grey. It felt like a lifetime ago. “Have you played it any?”

  “Cee found me alone in the house with it. I guess I’d left the door open. She listened to me, and by the time I was done, she was crying. I…kind of told her everything, then.”

  I bowed my head and rubbed the sore spot on my arm from Dr. FitzP’s blood draw. “What did she say?”

  “She stayed,” he told me, and I guess that was answer enough.

  *

  Lin was the first of Lacey’s friends to visit. I felt like I was seeing a ghost from some past life when she stepped inside. She’d lost weight, her face had narrowed to sharper edges, and her eyes had a nervous quickness now that hadn’t been there before. Still, she didn’t hesitate to run up and give me a hug. I held on so tightly it surprised me. “Missed you,” I said, and realized I meant it.

  “Where on earth have you been? The whole school was in an uproar, and then this?” Lin looked at Lacey, then shut her mouth hard and sat in Grey’s vacated seat. He’d gone out for food. He at least was ravenous, but I couldn’t stomach much yet. “What happened, B?”