by Skye Knizley
“Thank you, Rupe. I’m happy for you and Sloan, too,” Raven said.
“I know you are, partner.”
He squeezed her hand and held onto it as they drove. “Listen, I’m sorry about what I said the other day. I was feeling stressed. I’d just found out Sloan was kind of like you and I was confused.”
“She’s a were-eagle,” Raven said. “I know. She’s perfect for you and you have no reason to be sorry.”
“How did you know?” Levac asked.
Raven grinned. “Cause she’s like me. Now you’re really in trouble, all the women in your life are monsters.”
Levac blinked and Raven couldn’t tell if he was going to smile or cry. “I hadn’t thought of it that way.”
He paused and rubbed at the three-days of beard growth clinging to his chin like lichen.
“There’s only one thing for it. I’ll have to plan a vacation every twenty-eight days, just in case.”
Raven smacked Levac on the back of his head and was about to say something when his phone started ringing.
“Levac,” he said once he’d fished it out of his pocket and removed the chocolate wrapper.
“Hey, Sloan— what? Okay, hang on.”
He turned to Raven, all playfulness gone. “Lupeski is not in his room and they found another vic on the fourth floor.”
“Tell them to seal off the floor and the hospital,” Raven said. “At this rate we’re still an hour or so away.”
Levac relayed the message and Raven pushed the Shelby as hard as she dared on the snow-slick streets. She adored the car and nobody drove it better than she did, but a rear-wheel drive muscle car wasn’t the best choice in the middle of a blizzard. She slid and drifted through intersections, kicking up plumes of snow. The next hour and fifteen minutes was the most harrowing ride of her life. Four blocks from the hospital the Shelby spun out, coming to rest against a light pole with the screech of aluminum sheering. It wasn’t a good sound.
“I think you broke something,” Levac said.
“I think you’re right,” Raven replied. “Come on, it isn’t far. Call Sloan and tell her to meet us at the emergency entrance. I’ll take care of the car later.”
She started running, grateful she’d chosen to wear flat boots for a change. She could hear Levac jogging behind and trying to reach Sloan. After a few moments he caught up. He had worry etched in his face.
“She isn’t answering,” he said.
“Maybe she’s busy in the ER,” Raven said. “Snow causes accidents.”
Levac shook his head. “She isn’t in ER tonight. She normally works ICU with a stint in the ER every nine days.”
“I’m sure it’s nothing,” Raven said.
“Do you really believe that?”
Raven didn’t answer. She was too busy worrying about Sloan. She could see the Mercy building down the street and it was dark. All of the lights including the sign outside were out, but all the surrounding buildings were lit up and full of holiday cheer.
When they arrived at the hospital, several blue uniformed officers were directing ambulances away from the emergency room. Raven recognized Jimmy and slid to a halt beside him.
“What’s going on, Jimmy?” she asked.
“We don’t know. The hospital sent out a message that they were in a black situation and were evacuating. They got most everyone out and asked the police to direct any emergency vehicles to other hospitals,” he said. “It’s damn peculiar, we haven’t heard a peep from anyone since then and all the doors are locked. The place is sealed up tighter than a drum.”
Raven turned to look at the hospital. There was a one inch layer of snow over the sidewalk and the only lights she could see through the glass doors were the emergency strobes flashing on and off at three second intervals. There was no sign of the security guards who should have been standing inside the door.
Raven drew her Automag. “Keep everyone back, Jimmy. I don’t know what’s going on, but Levac and I are going to find out.”
“Wait, I thought you were suspended,” Jimmy said. “I can’t let you in.”
“She’s with me,” a new voice said.
Raven turned to see King hobbling through the snow with his cane. When he reached them he flipped open a wallet and showed them the FBI credentials inside.
“Agent Abraham King,” he said. “Special Agent Storm and Detective Levac are here on my authority. Do as she says and keep everyone back.”
“Agent King?” Raven asked at the same time that Levac said, “Agent Storm?
“I told you I was working with your father,” he said. “I’ll explain later.”
“Yeah but, Agent Storm? I mean, is there an Agent Levac in there somewhere?” Levac said.
King looked at Levac with cold, grey eyes. “You are wasting time, Mr. Levac.”
“Right. Sorry.”
Raven turned away, but was stopped by King. “One moment, Ravenel.”
He held a black credential wallet out to her. “A woman like you shouldn’t be in there without a badge. It’s part of you.”
She opened it. Inside was a set of FBI identification and a badge.
“Are you serious?”
“I always am,” King replied. “You have work to do.”
The hospital doors were locked and like most in the city had been retrofitted with bullet-resistant glass. Raven emptied the Automag’s magazine into the glass making a circular pattern. She then kicked as hard as she could at the center of the target she’d made. The glass dented and popped, falling inside like so many Lego blocks being dropped on the floor. She reloaded and stepped through into a wide hallway that smelled of electrical smoke and blood.
“Do you smell that?” Levac asked.
“Yeah. It smells like there is an electrical fire in the wall somewhere. Where would Sloan be?”
“Second floor, intensive care or the wound center,” Levac said. “This way.”
Raven followed Levac through the dark corridors, trying not to think about where any survivors might be. All of the rooms on either side were empty and looked as if a hurricane had hit them. Papers, medical devices and gowns were strewn all over the floor, some spattered with drying blood.
Levac pushed through a fire door at the end of the hall and Raven passed him, weapon at the ready. The staircase was clear except for a smear of blood on the wall of the landing above. Raven nodded at Levac and started up in a cross step that left her balanced and her weapon pointed at the opposite staircase. When she reached the landing, Levac repeated her performance and continued on to the second floor under her watchful gaze. She followed and joined him peering through the small window in the door.
The second floor hallway was a scene out of a nightmare. Papers and medical equipment all streaked with blood covered the floor and blood was spattered on the wall in patterns Raven recognized as low velocity impact splatters. Claws left traces like that.
There was no sign of anything moving, alive or dead. Levac pulled the door open and Raven went through with her weapon held in front of her in a Weaver stance. She could smell the blood along with something else she didn’t recognize. Something that smelled almost like disease.
She led the way down the hall, checking rooms on either side; all were empty save for bloodstains.
At the end of the corridor was a glass enclosure that opened into the Intensive Care Ward. The inside was smeared with blood that looked as if someone had been fighting to get out and had been dragged backwards away from the doors.
Levac touched the ‘open doors’ button and it beeped, but the doors didn’t open. Raven didn’t want to waste any more ammunition and was looking around for another option when Levac picked up a chair and slammed it into the glass. The door shattered on the second impact and he tossed the chair through to the other side.
“Subtle,” Raven said. “Very subtle.”
“I learned from the mistress,” Levac said with a wry smile.
Raven followed him through the broken gla
ss and into the intensive care unit, where patient beds were separated only by banks of monitoring devices. Patient care was more important than privacy when someone’s life might depend on a millisecond response.
All of the beds were empty though many were stained with red, viscous blood that was still wet. Raven closed her eyes and shook her head, trying to block out the smell.
“This is my fault,” she said after a moment.
“What do you mean?” Levac asked.
She opened her eyes, which had changed to those of a Master vampire.
“I brought Church here. Don’t you see? This is what he wanted. A building full of weak victims ripe for whatever he plans to do to them. It’s my fault.”
“Ray, you couldn’t have known what he was or what he was going to do,” Levac said. “Keep a little perspective, huh? Raven Storm isn’t responsible for every bad thing that happens in Chicago.”
Raven glared at him but she knew he was right. Beating herself up wasn’t going to save anyone.
“Right. Let’s find those survivors.”
She stepped past him and continued toward the back of the ward where there was a nurse’s station. The wood veneer had been almost completely peeled off of the wide desk that served as both a home base and workstation for the nurses on duty. More paper and medial items had been strewn about and there was no shortage of blood, but there was something else. A barricade had been built within the curtained-off area reserved for nurses to take a break and change, if necessary. Raven paused outside and motioned for Levac to call for Sloan.
“Sloan? It’s Rupert,” he called in a soft voice.
Raven could hear movement then Sloan’s voice. “Rupe? Is that you?”
“Yeah, it’s me. Raven is here too. Are you okay?” Levac asked.
“For the moment. We’ve got wounded in here, but everyone is still breathing,” Sloan replied. “What happened to the others? Did you kill them?”
“Kill who?” Raven asked.
“The…things. The vampires or whatever they are,” Sloan said.
“There’s no one out here but us, doc,” Raven said.
“They are, I can hear them,” Sloan said. “All around us, trying to get in.”
Levac raised his weapon and pointed at something to their right. Raven turned and leaned around the corner. Coming toward them, slowly and laboriously was a newdead vampire, less than an hour old. He was pulling himself toward them with one blood-covered arm. The other, apparently injured in an accident when he was still human, dangled at his side and his legs trailed uselessly behind him. The vampire would heal, but not for several more hours.
Behind him were more than a dozen more, all previous inhabitants of the ward, now Church’s victims.
“I didn’t know Church was a vampire,” Levac said.
“I don’t think he is,” Raven said. “He was out in daylight. I only know of one other that can do that and he’s dead. There’s someone else in here with us.”
She holstered her pistol and drew the blades from her boots. It was the work of but a few minutes to destroy the newdead victims. When she was through, she stood amidst a pile of ash and flame that smelled different than other vampires she’d killed. The scent of blood and burning flesh was still there, but it was accompanied by the underlying scent of death and decay, like what she’d smelled when they first entered the building.
She dismissed the strange odor and rejoined Levac, who was telling Sloan and the rest of her people it was safe to come out. It took a moment for Sloan to clear a section of the barricade. When it was open, she embraced Levac through the gap like she was drowning.
“I thought you were dead when you didn’t answer,” Levac said.
“Not a chance,” Sloan said. “I lost my phone during the evacuation.”
“What happened?” Raven asked.
“I was trying to do what Rupert had asked when the second victim was found on the fourth floor, then on the third and the administrator called for an emergency evacuation. Most of the patients and staff got out, but the elderly and immovable were still here. And those things started feeding on them.”
“What about Lupeski?”
“I haven’t seen him,” Sloan said. “He woke up while I was between shifts and they moved him to a room. When I came in and checked on him he was gone.”
“What about security? Were you able to find him on any cameras?” Levac asked.
Sloan shook her head. “There wasn’t time, love. It was just chaos.”
Levac kissed her forehead and looked at Raven. She knew what the look meant.
“We’ll find him. You and your people sit tight and don’t let anyone but us in.”
“Can we leave?” another voice asked.
“No, sir,” Levac said. “The area isn’t safe. Stay here with Dr. Patlii until we come back.”
“But what if you don’t? We could die in here!”
“Calm down,” Raven said. “I’m Special Agent Storm of the Federal Bureau of Investigation and I promise you, we will be back. You have my word. Just sit tight a little longer.”
She turned to Sloan with more confidence than she felt. “Do what you can to keep them safe. They’re more important than secrets. Understood?”
Sloan nodded. “Understood, Fürstin Ravenel. I will keep them safe.”
Raven clasped her hand and smiled. “Good. We’ll be back. Rupe, seal them up tight.”
Levac leaned through and kissed Sloan again then helped her reset their barricade. When he was done, he dusted off his hands and joined Raven.
“How come you get a ‘special’, anyway? It sounds very officious.”
Raven shrugged. “I just read what it said on the identification. It’s probably a fake.”
“I don’t think so, Ray,” Levac said. “The old guy seemed pretty confident in his orders and Jimmy seemed to know him. Besides, it worked.”
“That it did. I’m heading to the next floor, you coming with?”
Levac drew his Sig again and gave her a grim smile. “I wouldn’t miss it, Special Agent.”
THE THIRD FLOOR LOBBY WAS worse than the second. More than a dozen corpses littered the floor. Most looked as if they’d been torn apart and scattered by some maddened giant on a rampage. The walls were spattered with blood, organs and other things Raven was in no mood to speculate on. Blood and offal sucked at her boots and she had to fight to keep her traitor stomach under control as she moved through the carnage.
“You take me to the nicest places,” Levac said, pulling his shoe free from a pool of blood.
Raven glanced at him and kept going. “It’s in my contract, take you to one bloodbath a week.”
“You’re past quota then. Can we go to an amusement park next? Maybe someplace without body parts?” Levac asked.
“Why would you possibly want to pass on all of this?”
Levac put his shoe back on. “I want to eat again before the year is out.”
“I can’t argue with that. Blood, guts and mayhem are tough on the digestion.”
Raven turned left into the western wing of the hospital. There was less carnage, as if whatever was raging had calmed somewhat and had chosen to feed. She squatted next to the corpse of a doctor and checked his wound. It was different from what she expected. Rather than a pair of puncture wounds there were four around a much larger central wound.
“That doesn’t look like a vampire bite,” Levac said.
“No. It doesn’t. I’ve never seen anything like it,” Raven replied. “It looks like some kind of snake bite."
She pulled one of her silver blades from its sheath and rammed it through the victim’s heart, just to be sure, then stepped over him and continued down the hallway.
“That’s it?” Levac asked.
Raven looked over her shoulder. “It’s all we have time for, Rupe. Whatever did that is still in here. We can either find it and kill it, or we can mourn the dead. I for one would rather limit the number of corpses to be buried this sp
ring.”
Levac nodded and stepped over the body, his weapon at the ready. Raven turned away and continued down the curving corridor. She encountered three more bodies like the last; she staked each one through the heart, ensuring they wouldn’t rise behind them. At the end of the corridor was another fire door. Someone had rammed a fire axe through the handle making a makeshift barricade. The handle was covered in blood that still dripped to the floor with a faint splat, splat, splat noise.
Raven touched the blood and raised it to her nose. It was human, untouched. She wiped it off on her pants and turned to Levac.
“Continue up or clear this floor?”
Levac cocked his head and looked past Raven to the door. “Clear it. We don’t know where Church might be hiding.”
“Who said anything about hiding, Detective Levac? I’m right here.”
MERCYHOSPITAL, THIRD FLOOR
PRESENT DAY
ANTON LUPESKI ROSE FROM THE floor, a collection of insects, worms and blood that swirled like a tornado to coalesce into his nude humanoid form. Raven raised her Automag and leveled it at his head.
“Lupeski. I’ve been looking for you.”
“Detective Storm,” Lupeski said. “I didn’t think you would find us so soon. Your father might have, but not you. I know I had you fooled, you’re just not very smart. Who told you about me?”
“That isn’t important,” Raven replied. “What’s important is I have a thirty caliber slug aimed at your head and no reason not to pull the trigger.”
“Just the slug?” Lupeski smiled and began to pace. “Oh, Ravenel, you have no idea what you have, do you?”
“I know I have the gun, Lupeski. Stop moving and tell me who else is with you,” Raven said. “You didn’t turn these people. What did?”
“I shan’t spoil the surprise, Ravenel,” Lupeski said. “Perhaps it would help if you called me by my proper name. Reinfeld Church, at your service.”
“What are you?” Levac asked.
“Ah, the sidekick. I’m sorry, I didn’t see you there,” Church said. “I’m just a man, Mr. Levac. Just a man.”