by Amy Fecteau
A curvy brunette in a hospital shift sat on a bench in the cell. She looked at Matheus with no expression. Only her eyes tracked his movements.
“I’m looking for someone,” Matheus said. “Um—”
The woman stood up. In a blur of movement, she reached the glass, then pointed one light brown finger at the box in the wall. Her nail had been ripped out. A trail of blood crusted down to her wrist.
Matheus glanced away. The others had moved to the glass as well, all faces turned to him, set in the same eerie stillness Matheus associated with Quin. Matheus looked at the box instead. He pressed the button on the bottom, leaning toward the speaker.
“I’m looking for someone,” he said. “Tall, olive skin, black hair, face like a bag full of knives.”
“Quin,” said the brunette. “You came to visit Grigori.” A soft West Indies accent rolled out of the intercom.
Matheus remembered the dark-haired woman curled at Grigori’s side, her face turned away.
“Where’s Quin?” he asked.
“Let me out and I’ll tell you.” The brunette pressed her palms against the glass. Sores ringed her wrists.
“Tell me first,” said Matheus. He bounced the tire iron on his shoulder, flashing a quick look at the door.
“Don’t be stupid. The guards know you’re here. They won’t be much longer. Let me go and maybe one of us will get free.”
“One of us,” repeated Matheus.
“Preferably me.” The woman gave him a lightening smile. “Quickly. Before the guards come.”
“Jesus. Fine. Stand back.” Matheus assumed a batter’s stance in front of the glass pane. He’d never played cricket, but Bianca and Stephen had dragged him to enough games that he knew the pose. He squeezed his eyes shut as he swung. A bang reverberated through the room as the impact rippled through the glass.
“Try again,” said the brunette. “Hurry.”
Matheus moved closer to the glass and raised the tire iron.
“I better not lose an eye,” he said to the woman.
He felt the strike on the glass, then the hollow sensation of shattering through solidity into empty air. Matheus staggered, crushing some of the still-popping glass beneath his sneaker. He looked the woman in time to see the surprise flash across her face.
“Where’s Quin?” Matheus asked.
“They took him away an hour ago,” said the woman. “Give me that. I’ll get the others.”
Matheus stepped back, holding the tire iron over his head.
“I know he’s here somewhere,” he said. The bond wrapped around his stomach, bisecting his flesh with barbed wire. As far as directions went, he preferred Google maps. At least they had instructions other than, “Go that way for indeterminate miles. Your destination will be somewhere.”
“We’re staked when they move us. There’s a room….” The woman faltered. She gave a tiny shudder, then threw her shoulders back. “You can see the top of the warehouse next door. Fourth floor, I think.”
“Thank you.” Matheus tossed her the tire iron. He sprinted from the room, slapping open the damaged door and bouncing off the wall opposite. His shoes squeaked on the tile floor.
“Shit, shit,” he muttered. He took the turn toward the elevators, lab coat flapping behind him. He skidded to a halt in front of the elevator doors, just as the bell binged the car’s arrival. A screen of white-hot panic rose in Matheus’ mind.
He choked, wide-eyed and staring at the group of guards standing in front of him.
“Help me!” he screamed, waving a finger behind him. “They’re loose. They’re free. Oh, God!”
One of the guards grabbed the front of Matheus’ shirt and threw him into the elevator.
“Get to the safe zone,” said the guard. Motioning to the rest of the group, they moved down the hallway, half-crouched and fingers on triggers.
Matheus hit the close button like he was a telegraph operator on the Titanic. He let out a manic laugh as the elevator started to move upward. He slumped back, rubbing a hand over his face. The elevator slowed. Matheus straightened, letting out a shaky exhale. The bell chimed, and the doors opened onto the fourth floor.
Matheus stopped, blinking at the bright, cold light. From his position, he saw into a half-dozen laboratories, complete with lab-coated scientists. They looked into microscopes, scribbling notes blind, their hands gloved in purple latex. A couple fiddled with flasks and mysterious fluids, using what looked like over-sized syringes to drip the liquid onto small colored disks. Matheus jumped as a glass door to his left slid open with a hiss. Two people walked out, ignoring Matheus as they started down the hallway. Matheus ducked his head and followed them down the hall, through the future set of the next CSI show. CSI: Undead.
“—solutely amazing. The oldest specimen we’ve ever found. By nearly a thousand years. Imagine what it’s seen.”
Matheus’ attention snapped to the pair he trailed. He increased his pace, hoping to hear more clearly.
“It’s not here to give a history lesson,” said the other one.
It, Matheus thought. He pressed his lips together in a tight line, his jaw aching.
“I know, but—”
“Be quiet. If he hears you talking like that, you’re out.”
“Surely, he’d understand—”
“Permanently out.” They walked past a plain door, the only one Matheus had seen not made of glass.
Matheus jolted to a stop.
Quin was behind that door.
The bond pulled tighter, barbs biting into his organs. He bit his cheek until the taste of rotten blood filled his mouth. He glanced around the glittering Advertisement For Science. He expected more black and red, leather and spikes, not the interior of a paranoid research company. The employees-cum-minions paid him no attention, busy with some evil purpose. If Matheus were still human, he might be on board with exterminating the undead. Scientists knocked out smallpox, didn’t they? On paper, getting rid of a plague on humanity seemed like a good idea. In reality, they’d captured Quin and hurt him, and Matheus felt as though his teeth were about to rattle out of his skull. Humanity could swing.
He reached for the handle, freezing as an alarm split the air. He jerked away, looking left and right. People were standing up, rushing around their labs, gathering notebooks. Doors opened up and down the hall; the air filled with questions.
“It’s a drill. It’s got to be drill, right?”
“What’s going on?”
“Didn’t we have one last week?”
“I don’t know. You think it’s a test?”
People moved around Matheus, paying him no attention. The two men he’d followed turned around, joining the crowd to the stairs.
Matheus stood frozen in the empty hall. He giggled in the silence.
The door opened into a tiny office, with two desks on either side only a couple of feet apart. Another door stood between them, padlocked shut.
Matheus snorted. Squeezing behind one of the desks, he searched out some paperclips. He twisted one in half, then began to work.
A few minutes later, the lock clicked open. Ten years ago, Matheus could open a lock like that in under forty seconds. He was out of practice.
The padlock hit the floor with a heavy thunk.
He opened the door.
“Hurensohn,” he said.
Quin lay in a modified dentist’s chair. Silver cuffs circled his wrists, ankle, and neck. Overkill, considering the wooden dowel driven through his chest. Tubes ran over his body, connecting to an I.V. bag. Tracks of needle-marks covered his arms. One hand had twisted in the cuff, the last two fingers bent completely around.
Matheus had no idea what the rest of the room looked like. He stumbled forward, numbness spreading from his fingertips. He braced one hand on Quin’s shoulder, grabbing the stake with the other. With a grunt, he yanked the dowel free.
Quin screamed, contorting into a rigid arc. His limbs shook, head wrenching side to side. He slammed down. The
chair rocked with the impact, the bolts holding it in place groaning, vinyl squeaking against Quin’s skin. His knees and elbows bent and rose as though he wanted to curl into a fetal position. The metal cuffs bit into his bare wrists.
Matheus heard a pop, like someone cracking their knuckles.
Quin shrieked louder, a mountain range of broken bones dividing the back of his hand.
Matheus thrust the stake into Quin’s chest. He staggered back a step before his legs gave out.
“Mother of Christ,” he said, drawing his knees up and wrapping his arms over his legs. For less than a minute, he’d felt a fraction of what Quin felt, and his veins still burned. Faint red marks on Matheus’ skin matched where the cuffs touched Quin.
He barely noticed them, overwhelmed by the acid in his blood, eating into him from the inside out. Matheus dug his fingers into his calves, hard enough to feel the muscle fibers beneath his pants.
After a few minutes, Matheus stood up on jittery legs. He focused on removing the IVs, pinning his attention to each needle sliding from underneath Quin’s skin. His gut curled back against his spine. He shuddered as each needle’s tip broke free of Quin’s flesh.
The IVs out, Matheus shoved the tubes and rolling contraption hanging with bags into the corner. Then, he attacked the cuffs. After a couple of lost nails, and painting the air blue, Matheus realized the controls hung on the back of the chair. He hit the button, and the mechanism whirled, bending Quin into a jackknife. Matheus swore, mashing buttons and giving Quin the abdominal workout of the century.
Finally, the cuffs snapped open.
Matheus let his head drop onto the back of the chair. If they didn’t get out soon, he was going to spend the rest of eternity with a twitch and a stutter. His nerves pushed the red line. Matheus imagined them snapping with tiny pings, one after the other, like the strands of rope holding the star’s love interest over a cliff. Matheus really hoped the producers hadn’t opted for the downer ending.
He moved around to the front of the chair. The stake still jutted out of Quin’s chest. Matheus reached for the dowel, then paused, raising his fingers to his mouth. He’d worked his way down his pinkie by now.
He left Quin in the chair, closing the door after him. He poked his head into the hallway in time to hear the elevator chime. The sound of combat boots on tile travelled down the hall. Matheus ducked back inside. He grabbed the padlock, slotting it through the latch. Dashing to one of the desks, he crammed himself underneath, pulling the rolling chair into place.
Matheus’ chin touched his knees. The soles of his sneakers pressed against the cheap plasterboard of the desk. He squirmed, trying to ease the ache building in his bones. The wheels on the chair dug into his back. He didn’t have a plan. He needed a plan. If he’d had a plan, he wouldn’t be rehearsing his new contortionist routine while waiting for mercenaries to use his body for target practice. Unless getting killed was his plan.
I need a new plan, Matheus thought. His toes were going to sleep. He tried to wedge himself into a new position, biting back curses as he smacked his head on the desk. With a lot of wiggling, he managed to place one foot flat on the floor. Better for his leg, less so for his nose, now mashed against his thigh.
“Urgh,” he said.
The door opened, and the clank of weaponry entered.
Matheus bit his tongue. He pressed his lips together, swallowing the automatic cry.
The footsteps stopped in front of the desk. The wooden frame creaked as guard leaned his weight against the side.
Matheus heard cellophane and the rustle of paper, then the miniature roar of a lighter. The smell of smoke filtered down. Matheus held his breath. He’d quit smoking ten years ago, and he still had the niggling desire to bum a cigarette off the guard. Minutes passed. Tingles ran up and down Matheus’ legs. His nose molded itself to the curve of his thigh.
“What the fuck are you doing?”
Matheus choked, then realized the voice had come from the door.
“Relax,” said the guard above him. “Nobody’s up here.”
“Yeah,” said the man by the door. “What’s in there?”
“You like this job?”
“It’s all right.”
“Then stop asking questions. Come on, let’s report in.”
The door closed behind them.
Matheus counted to five hundred, then unpacked himself. He stumbled, unsteady on numb feet. Leaning against the wall, he rotated his ankle in circles, wincing as feeling returned. He checked the hall, then left.
Voices rose up the stairwell.
He waited around the corner, joining the crowd of people in white lab coats as they returned to their stations. He glanced at their faces, wondering who to pick, how to separate him or her from the others.
Maybe he was a hypocrite, taking a life to save a life, especially when the savee had been around for seventeen hundred years—and wasn’t that long enough?—but Matheus didn’t care. He didn’t care that the person might have kids, or volunteer at the food bank on the weekends, or had a secret dream of sailing around the world in a triple-masted schooner. Quin could recover on his own, but he needed time and Matheus didn’t have any. He also didn’t have centuries of ass-kicking experience. Whatever other faults Quin had, physical inability was not one of them.
Matheus veered around the corner without paying attention. A soft weight bumped into his back. He glanced over his shoulder and saw the woman from the elevator.
“Oh, hello,” she said, giving him a smile. “Crazy, huh.”
“Yeah,” said Matheus.
“It’s not normally like this,” said the woman. She leaned closer to Matheus, stepping out of the flow of people.
“Did something happen?” Matheus tried to keep one eye on the unmarked door.
“They never say. It’s probably a drill. I don’t usually come up here, but everyone’s all muddled now.”
“Mmm,” said Matheus.
“Do you know Jeremy? A little shorter than you with buzzed hair? He’s the only one who can override the automatic shutdown on the computers.”
Matheus switched his gaze back to the woman. He forced a smile. “I think I do,” he said. “I’ll take you to him.”
“You don’t have to bother,” said the woman.
“No, no,” said Matheus. “My pleasure.”
“I’m really sorry about this,” Matheus said. “You seem like a perfectly nice person.”
He knelt down and straightened the unconscious woman’s skirt.
“Except for the whole attempting to claw out my eyes. Which I can hardly blame you for; I would do the same thing. Not quite as effectively, perhaps. I bite my nails. I had quit, but then my life just became a whole mess of unholy stress and I don’t smoke, so….”
Matheus trailed off, ending the stream of babble. He shifted his weight from side to side, putting his hands into the pockets of his lab coat, then taking them out again. He was about to sacrifice a living, breathing person to save a murderer. His murderer. He shoved his hands into his pockets again. The woman looked in her twenties, with a neat pixie cut, and gold-rimmed glasses. A bruise covered the left side of her face, where Matheus had struck her with a paperweight. She’d lost one of her shoes when he dragged her into the back room. A run in her nylon stretched from her toe to the top of her knee.
With a lurch, Matheus spun, facing Quin. He took a step forward, then paused, scrubbing both hands over his face. She worked for a place that advocated kidnapping, murder, and the mangling of body parts. Is it still murder if the people are already dead? Matheus wondered. He didn’t feel dead. He didn’t have a pulse, but how many people walked around with their fingers on their wrists, double-checking that their hearts still beat? How necessary was a pulse, really?
“Okay,” said Matheus. “Okay.” With a deep breath, he yanked the stake out of Quin’s chest.
Quin jerked, as though an electrical current had just shot through his body. He rose out of the chair a few inch
es, then slumped, sliding down the vinyl cushion. His head lolled on a neck made of putty. Blinking, pupils blown, he gazed up at Matheus.
“Sunshine?”
“Hey,” said Matheus. He touched Quin’s arm, then snatched his hand back. He straightened. “There. Take her.”
Quin flopped his head to the right, his eyes narrowing as he tried to focus on the woman.
“I don’t think I can walk,” he said. His voice sounded like two pieces of granite rubbing together.
“She’s two feet away!”
“Oh, God, Sunshine, don’t shout.”
“I didn’t shout,” Matheus waved his finger in Quin’s face. “I brought her here and knocked her out. You want me to bite her for you, too?”
Quin extended a hand and stroked the inside of Matheus’ wrist. His fingertip followed the faint red line, a pale copy of the raw wound on Quin’s skin.
“Fuck,” said Matheus. “Fine. Just let me….”
With an oomph, Matheus manhandled Quin out of the chair. He swayed, arms around Quin’s waist, apologizing every time Quin hissed.
“Stop saying sorry,” said Quin, his face buried in Matheus’ shoulder. His arms hung limp at his sides, his feet dragging on the tile floor. “If you say sorry one more time, I’m going to glue your tongue to the roof of your mouth.”
“Sorry,” said Matheus.
With visible effort, Quin lifted his head to look at him.
“It was a reflex,” Matheus said. “You could help me, you know.”
“Sure, and after that, I’ll do a tap dance on the countertop.”
“You do realize I’m rescuing you, right? That I am risking my life and sanity to save your pathetic ass? Maybe a little less sarcasm and a bit more gratitude?”
“You’re telling me not to be sarcastic?”
“Right. I’m dropping you.”
“Are not,” said Quin. “Just set me down. Gently.”
“I’m trying.” Matheus’ knees shook as he sank into a squat. “God, you’re heavy. How much do you weigh? Two-fifty?”
“One-ninety-five,” Quin said indignantly. “And that’s muscle.”