“Artemis,” Thomas said, grabbing her arm, “What happened to your wrist? Are you okay?”
“It’s fine,” Charles said, “She isn’t infected. Just a bite.”
“I can fix this. Let me get my stuff.” Thomas released her, already tripping over his feet to rush downstairs.
Something tugged at the back of his shirt, but Thomas slipped from the weak grasp. He stopped anyway, spinning to see Artemis pulling her hand back and refusing to meet his eyes. She whispered something, blushing harder, then spoke again a little louder. “No, Tom, it’s okay.”
“You should have seen her,” Charles continued. “There’s spirit in her, I tell you. Stabbing the blood junkie with a wooden comb. Even Lawrence would be impressed. She’s got some fight in her.”
Artemis’ blush deepened. Thomas couldn’t look away from the dark crimson warming her cheeks. Her heart pounded faster, and Thomas found himself walking back to her and pulling her into his arms again. He carefully pulled the handkerchief from her wrist, the dried blood ripping the clots. Two small droplets of blood welled from two deep points in her flesh. Bruising impressions left by the rest of the vampire’s teeth spanned the distance between the two points.
“Artemis, I can’t apologize enough. I’m so sorry.” Thomas placed the handkerchief back on her wrist, closing his eyes to ignore how much he wanted to raise her wrist to his mouth. “You’ll be safe here. I promise.”
She shivered and pulled from his grasp. “It’s okay, Thomas. I’m fine.”
“That she is,” Charles added.
A female cleared her throat from behind Thomas. He snapped his eyes open. Julia.
“Well, these aren’t ideal circumstances for an introduction, but here goes nothing,” Julia said, stepping up to Thomas’ side. “I’m Julia, and I’ve heard a lot about you. Welcome to the Red Lightning Pub.”
12 Under One Roof
“I didn’t recognize this bunch and that worries me,” Charles said as he closed his eyes. “I feel like we’ve broken the backs of every two-bit gang in this city, but every time we go into Ernest’s territory, there are more idiots backing him.”
Charles lay on his back on the medical table, muttering about the night’s events as Thomas prepared the room for an operation. Anyone else could have delivered the report, but Thomas wanted him to stay remain conscious and stay distracted while Thomas rushed preparation. Charles tensed as Lawrence pressed on the injured vampire’s bicep and shoulder. Jericho sat in a corner, swooning from the retching that came from fighting vampire fang poison.
Boston Bob, the official mouthpiece of the Boston Boys and the self-proclaimed leader of the gang, held down Charles’ left side. Bob was definitely the most open member of the Boston Boys. He was loud and friendly with a face only his mother could love. Thomas quite liked him.
James, who went straight back out on patrol after helping drop off Charles, was a little harder to get used to. He was a small man, a few inches shorter than Sean, and he was the quietest vampire Thomas had ever met, which was saying something. From what Boston Bob had said over drinks last night, Jugular James had gotten his nickname from his habit of sneaking up behind his enemies and garroting them with his favorite weapon, a steel wire. According to Bob, he’d never seen James miss his target.
“I don’t care if Ernest is hiring his muscle and callin’ in every gangster from here to the east coast. The way I see it, every one of those idiots we put down is saving the world from a whole lot of trouble down the road,” Bob said in a voice that would have made the rasping of a chain smoker being strangled sound melodic. “But I won’t forgive that bastard for creating so many blood junkies. Half of them are mad with the red thirst. It’s sick. It’s like we’re putting down rabid dogs because someone thinks it’s funny to make ‘em foam at the mouth.”
“Yeah, Vivian said the cops are getting too suspicious with the number of disappearances. She said the precinct chief shrugged off one of her suggestive trances,” Charles whispered, doing his best not to wince as his friends pressed him hard against the table. “She barely had time to get out of there before he started questioning her.”
“Who can blame ‘em?” Jericho asked. “Only five days into this war and twenty dead already. To the cops it must be like hell’s opened its gates.”
Everyone fell silent, listening to Thomas finish sterilizing the last of the equipment he needed. Charles had been brought in before he finished cleaning up after the last injured vampire. He sterilized his scalpel twice, letting his nerves take control. His fingers itched and sweat was starting to build on his neck and forehead. It was the closest to death a vampire had been for Thomas in the pub’s basement, and he wasn’t about to break his record for saving lives during the war.
Jericho stood and tripped his way over to Charles’ uninjured leg. Thomas tapped his shoulder.
“Go sit down. You won’t help much.”
Jericho nodded and vomited over the tray of equipment Thomas held in one hand.
“Shit.”
The orangish-brown liquid pooled around the once sterile equipment and dripped onto the flood. Blood. Stomach vile. Its rotten smell gagged Thomas as he returned to the sink to sterilize the tools again.
“These guys weren’t just hired muscle this time. There were half a dozen blood junkies, probably some of the disappeared humans. All fledglings, half feral from drinking blood from veins.” Charles grimaced. “Are we doing this or what?”
“Almost ready.”
“Bloodiest fight yet. We thought we were going to crack some skulls and scare a human gang leader from working with Ernest. James took down two thugs, and we went in firing at the hired muscle. The new gang fled. Hell, we’d done a good job. No injuries for us. Then the damn blood junkies showed up. They couldn’t fire a weapon straight; they were so high on blood. The ones with guns shot themselves. The rest only had their fangs. Jericho staked three of them.”
Julia slipped into the room. She stood by her father and rolled up her sleeves. “Still not started? God, he looks awful. Who all was there?”
“Me, Charles, Jericho, and the Boston Boys,” Lawrence grumbled. He was covered in his own slew of scratches and dirt, and cement crumbs dusted his suit.
“God, what did this?” Julia leaned over Charles’ injured leg.
Lawrence twitched, still applying pressure on Charles’ shoulder. The injured vampire groaned at Lawrence’s slight movement. “A group on the rooftops. Experienced fighters. Perhaps even Ernest. They fired somethin’ I’ve not heard since London during the Second World War.”
“Some kind of mortar,” Boston Bob said.
“We scattered.” Charles groaned, his face covered in sweat. Thomas had to act now. “Can’t fight that.”
Julia straightened and sucked her teeth. “A trap.”
No one answered. Thomas finished cleaning his equipment and set up by Charles’ wounded leg. Whatever had been shot had embedded in Charles’ leg. The flesh was a blackish green that belonged to a year-old corpse, not someone with a gunshot wound who could still talk and move.
Thomas’ stomach rolled, but he was ready. “Okay, hold him tight.”
“Wait,” said Al, as Thomas leaned over the leg. “Just . . . one second. . . .” Al reached into his vest pocket and pulled out a hip flask that could be described as “generously constructed” by someone being polite and “bigger than anyone could possibly need” by someone a little more honest. He gave it a little rattle, liquid sloshing, and arched an eyebrow at Thomas.
A moment of internal debate crossed Thomas’ mind before he gave a single nod.
Smiling, Al unscrewed the lid of the flask and held it to Charles’ lips.
The broad vampire raised his head and drank greedily, draining the flask in record time.
“Thanks, Al,” Charles said as the flask was pulled away. “Okay, enough stalling. Let’s get this over with.”
The tension remained in the air, but now it was honed into a determined focus.
&nbs
p; “Okay, hold him down. Tight,” Thomas said.
Bob and Lawrence pinned Charles’ arms to the medical table hard enough to leave bruises on a human. Julia helped hold down Charles’ uninjured leg.
Al put away his flask and placed a strip of leather between Charles’ lips, which would hopefully keep him from biting off his own tongue during the procedure.
An entire flask of red lightning sloshed in his system, but he was still going to be in incredible pain. The unnatural resilience vampires shared made local anesthesia pointless. Anything stronger was impossible for Thomas to get on such short notice.
Charles would have to bear the pain as Thomas surgically removed the ammunition that should have cost him his leg.
With a steady hand, Thomas separated the nearly necrotic flesh of Charles’ thigh with a blunt waistline retractor and inserted arterial forceps into the gap.
Charles nearly bit through the leather as agony racked his body, the combined efforts of the others in the room being the only thing keeping him on the table.
“Keep him down no matter what,” Thomas yelled over the shouts of pain. “Al, make sure these straps will hold his legs.”
Thomas’ experience in medical school and his residency program had prepared him for this kind of procedure, but never before had he seen an injury this extensive and the person was still alive, let alone conscious.
Because of a vampire’s inhuman constitution, Thomas wasn’t sure whether or not amputating the leg would be a safer bet. Since he lacked any of the necessary equipment for amputation in their makeshift field hospital, he had to do the second-best thing. He only hoped he could do his job well enough he wouldn’t need to amputate.
“Goddammit, Charles, stop struggling,” Boston Bob hissed as the broad vampire strained against Thomas as he guided his surgical tools deeper into the gunshot wound.
Charles was far too gone with pain to hear anything.
No one in the room knew whether or not it was more horrifying or relieving when Charles finally succumbed to the combination of alcohol and pain, passed out, and went limp on the medical table.
In either case, it made Thomas’ job easier.
He navigated the blackened wound the best he could, relying on instinct and luck to find the cause of the injury. After some experimental probing with the forceps, Thomas hissed in triumph when he found something.
A small object was lodged deep into Charles’ muscle, and Thomas had to abandon the forceps and use a scalpel to cut it out.
The object was a round metal ball nearly the size of a thumbnail. It looked suspiciously like the ammunition used for muskets Thomas had seen in history books, but that didn’t make any sense. Why would Ernest use such ancient weaponry?
He doused it in iodine to remove the coating of blood and held the metal ball closer at eye level. It had cracked like an eggshell, spilling the last of a messy substance.
“What the hell is that?” Al demanded.
It took Thomas a moment to respond, mostly because his mind was going through several memories as he stared down at the liquid staining his gloves.
He swore he’d seen this very substance somewhere.
It clicked. Thomas cursed, peeling off his gloves and tossing them into the trash before hastily getting another pair.
“We need to flush the gunshot wound—immediately.” Thomas shouted, grabbing a bottle of rubbing alcohol. “That bullet was a casing for wine.”
“What the hell? Are you saying booze has been doing that to my insides for a hundred years, doc?” Boston Bob demanded, a sour expression pinching his features.
“No, it isn’t regular wine. It can’t be, not when it’s causing a reaction like that. It’s probably sacramental wine.” He didn’t have time to do a delicate procedure. He talked as he ripped off the bottle cap of the rubbing alcohol and poured it directly into Charles’ open wound. “I’m willing to bet this particular wine was blessed by a priest before one of Ernest’s lackeys filched it. If Charles took another bullet and it fragmented . . .”
The ugly, disgusting wound came from their inherent reaction to all things sacred. All eyes watched Thomas work. Jericho left the corner and hobbled over to observe, staying a safe distance in case he started puking again. The necrotic rotting caused by the wine could be spreading all through Charles and eating him alive from the inside.
Tossing the empty bottle aside, Thomas took the retractor from the first injury and inserted it into a second gash along the leg and indicated for Julia to grab a fresh bottle.
It was going to be a long night.
◆◆◆
Thomas’ fingers ached bone-deep, reminding him of gripping the chain on a swing for too long as a child. He might have been able to feel some nostalgia over the comparison if he’d been able to feel anything other than fatigue.
Despite his exhaustion, Thomas managed to haul himself up the steps of the pub’s apartment complex. He sighed, too tired to be angry at Lawrence for disabling the elevator. Lawrence had claimed the single stairwell would make a good chokepoint if the building was ever raided by Ernest’s goons.
At least the long surgery had been a success. Charles would live, and he would keep his leg. He might even walk around on it within a few days if the vampiric regeneration remained unhindered.
The specialized sutures Thomas had received did more than treat the toxicity of an enemy vampire’s bite; they had soaked up the communion wine that had nearly cost Charles his leg. The synthetic fibers absorbed or sterilized any alien substances in a vampire’s system, allowing their inhuman healing to kick in. Thomas had started rationing the sutures more intensely than Lawrence rationed his red lightning.
With Charles in a stable condition, Thomas was able to check in on his friends. Their move into a small apartment at the pub’s complex had been a hasty event, and while they hadn’t been happy with their new arrangement, their arguments had died when they saw how cramped some of the other apartments were. Thomas would have offered to let some of them stay with him, but his own pub apartment housed four vampires.
Thomas worried about how his friends were handling the change. Sean struggled the most during the move. The attack on his sister had stolen most of his humor, and Thomas feared they couldn’t sooth his anger or alleviate his frustrations. Even Artemis hadn’t been able to calm him. Despite all of his talk, his bluster, and his anger at the city and his situation, Sean hadn’t followed through on his threats to drag all of his friends to Mexico. How long would his patience last?
Besides, seeing his friends offered the mental break Thomas craved. With Julia busier than he was, he suspected visiting his friends was his only way to relax. There were no calming breaks in the pub when it was supplying a war.
Lost in his thoughts, Thomas didn’t see Sean as he rounded the corner for the third-floor landing. They bumped into each other, and Sean bounced back several feet, stumbling as he landed.
“Oh sorry, um. Hey, Sean. Where’re you going? It’s late,” Thomas said, surprised at seeing his best friend in such a rush.
“What do you care?” Sean’s reply was uncharacteristically cold as he stepped past Thomas and continued down the stairs.
The venom in his voice caught Thomas off guard, and he reeled for a response.
“I care because we moved you here to keep you safe, or did you forget there’s a war going on?”
“Well, I’m not your damn prisoner, so I’m heading out,” Sean replied.
Thomas’ temper drove away some of his exhaustion, and he replied just as sharply, “I never said you were a prisoner, but you are being an asshole. Now tell me where the hell you think you’re going.”
Thomas didn’t remember reaching out for his friend, but when Sean batted away his already cramped hand, he winced.
“I’m going to see Clara, the only thing in this goddamn city that’s worth sticking around for since everyone I know has gone insane enough to sit in this damn cage,” Sean shouted, his eyes narrowed in anger. “Oh
wait, you don’t know who Clara is, do you? Because you haven’t met her. All you’ve been doing is sticking to the shadows and rounding up everyone who has ever cared about you and shoving them in a box.”
After his outburst, Sean turned and stomped down the stairs. Thomas stood at the top of the stairs, trying to gather his thoughts. It had been a long time since Sean had spoken to him like that.
Only his anger geared him into action, and soon he was racing down the stairs, barely catching Sean’s shoulder as he left through the door.
“You’re mad because I haven’t met your girlfriend yet? Are you serious?” Thomas yelled as he grabbed Sean’s shoulder and spun him around. “Ten minutes ago, I was barely two hundred yards from this spot pulling bullets out of someone. I’m caught in the middle of a war, Sean. A goddamn war!”
Sean shrugged off Thomas’ grip and did not relent.
“No, this isn’t about meeting my girlfriend, idiot. It’s about this war you involved us in. My sister could’ve died because of you,” Sean snarled as he drove an accusing finger into Thomas’ chest. “And your response is what? Lock us in some rundown flophouse until this thing blows over? Is that it? Is trading a noose for a life sentence your idea of fair?”
“Fair? You want to talk about fair? I was attacked and fed on in an alleyway. Do you think I wanted this? That I wanted to be transformed and thrown headfirst into a madhouse?”
Thomas reached out and grabbed Sean by the front of his shirt.
“Do you think I’ll feel sorry for you for spending time in the one place I know you’re going to be safe? The one place I fought with my boss for you? If you leave, Sean, you may never see your girlfriend again.”
Sean’s expression softened, and Thomas’ anger faded.
“I did it all because I care for you. All of you. I’m sorry I got you into this, but I’m doing my damn best to make things right. I swear to you that’s all I’m trying to do, Sean. And to be honest, I need you guys around. There are days where I wake up thinking I’m hallucinating all of this, that I must be crazy. But you guys keep me here. You keep me grounded and keep me strong.”
Shadows of Colesbrooke Page 21