Nightshifted es-1 Page 25

My first cogent thought was that I wanted to brush my teeth and I was afraid to turn on the sink.

  I clambered up my towel rack, shivering, grabbing a towel to dry myself off. My badge was lying on the ground in my shower, its lanyard halfway down the drain. I retrieved it, and slammed the shower door shut afterward. I threw a second towel down on the mess I made and ran out of the room.

  I sat on my bed, knees to my chest, with my hands clutched over my mouth. My trial was forgotten … or maybe this was it somehow, already begun.

  German began from the other room and my phone rang. I got it off my nightstand.

  I looked at the number. Ti. Last time I’d seen him, he’d been missing half his face—but …

  “Ti—you wouldn’t guess what just—”

  A different voice cut me off. “Edie? It’s Rita. Madigan’s wife.”

  That made more sense. “I remember. How is Ti?”

  “About that—look—Edie,” she began. “My family, we pass for normal. We’re good people, Edie. You met us, you know that, right?”

  I nodded into the emptiness of my bedroom, wondering what her speech had to do with me. “Of course. Rita, what—”

  “And there’s no moon tonight, Edie. That meant that Madigan couldn’t stop him. We’re all normal, all human, tonight. There’s nothing we could have done.”

  I crept to the edge of my bed. Grandfather’s German went up another notch in volume. “Rita, what are you talking about?”

  My doorbell rang.

  “I’ve got to get the door now—” I stood.

  “Edie, don’t answer it,” Rita said.

  “What?” I pulled on my robe and ran down the hall to look through the peephole. A man with broad shoulders, a hat, and a high scarf was there.

  “Madigan didn’t want me to call. But—we’re the same, Edie. I thought you’d want to know. He’s done horrible things and you don’t want any part of what he’s done.”

  Outside, the man knocked.

  “Edie,” said a slurred voice that I thought I recognized. “Edie, let me in.”

  The man outside looked up at me. I recognized his eyes. “Gotta go,” I told Rita and hung up.

  Chapter Fifty

  “Edie, please. Open up.”

  I looked out the peephole at him, looking in. He was talking to me. And one hand was flexing in apparent frustration, while the other—the other that should not be there—sat quietly inside a leather glove.

  “How is it that you can talk?” I closed my eyes and pressed my forehead to the door. What was it the wolf pretending to be the grandmother had told Little Red Riding Hood about his teeth?

  “Edie—” Ti said from outside, his voice still slurred. “Edie, come on.”

  “Not until you tell me how it is that you can talk.” I could still taste salt on my tongue.

  There was a slam against the far side of the door. It rattled in its hinges and I jumped back. “Edie, they’re going to kill you. We’ve got to leave here, now.”

  I reached out for the doorknob and opened the door with the safety chain on, for all the good it’d do me. “What about the trial?”

  “It’s a sham, Edie. Go pack some things. We’re leaving now. We’ve got to hurry.”

  I stared at what I could see of him, underneath his hat, and above the scarf, the eyes I knew, and wondered what I couldn’t see. Those eyes—I remembered them. Staring down at me as he’d covered me with his body, intense and earnest. “Please, Edie—we’ve got to go.”

  I unlocked the door, and ran back into the safety of my bedroom. I pulled on clothing as fast as I could, and hauled out my biggest bag. I threw things into it quickly, stupid things, things you could buy at a drugstore, a fistful of underwear, an old hairbrush, a half-empty bottle of Diet Coke. Grandfather’s voice became commanding. I chunked him into the bag too.

  “Hurry!” Ti urged from the hallway.

  I upended a bag of cat food in the kitchen, and set the faucet onto low. Grandfather’s commentary was muffled by my undergarments.

  Ti was waiting for me, motioning me down the hall like an air traffic controller with his good hand, scarf still protectively high. I stopped at the sight of him. “You have to show me.”

  “Damn it, Edie!” He twisted his face away from me and pointed out the open door. “Go get in the goddamned car!”

  “Not until you show me!” I yelled back at him.

  “I’m trying to save your life—” he said, his voice sibilant like a stroke victim’s. I stalked over and reached up for the scarf. His golden eyes stared down, but he didn’t move to stop me. I yanked it down.

  His skin was his, until just under his nose. And then a lightning bolt of scar began, zigzagging up his cheek and down his chin where whole white flesh seamed against his original black. I took a step back. Lips I’d never seen before, never kissed before, spoke again. “It’s still me,” they said. “And we need to go. Now. They’re going to kill you and drown her.”

  “Drown her?” I paused.

  “Anna. In some ritual. They’re going to drown her like a witch,” he said.

  “Oh, no.” My experience in the shower, and everything Sike had told me—I kept trying to add it up, but I couldn’t quite make it match.

  “Edie, we’ve got to go. We don’t have much time,” Ti pleaded.

  “I’ll say!” said a cheerful voice from behind Ti, outside. “Is there another vampire tribunal I don’t know about? I’d hate to miss anything.” Dren the Husker leaned forward and rapped on my doorjamb. He spotted me behind Ti and waved. “I don’t suppose you’d care to invite me in, eh?”

  I crossed my arms. “Not in the least.”

  “Ah. Well.” He folded himself up against the wall behind him, putting his boot heel up so that his bent knee blocked the door. “Say, you weren’t thinking about running, were you?” He unholstered his sickle with nonchalance and reached up to play its tip along the brick face of the wall behind him. The sound of metal on stone echoed through the small alcove.

  “Actually, no.” I dropped my bag.

  “Edie,” Ti said, his voice low. He was gesturing to me, and I knew what he wanted. He’d tackle Dren, I’d run out the door, and somehow we’d make it out into the night, and leave everything I knew behind.

  But I couldn’t. If my time in the shower had been anything like what Anna was going through—I couldn’t let her be abandoned to that awful dark.

  “Edie, she’s a monster.”

  “I know.” I’d seen what she’d done to Sike, twice over. But she was also one hell of a damaged little girl, with no one else left to look out for her. The Rose Throne wanted to use her, the Zver wanted to kill her, and I—I wanted a clean conscience. I couldn’t just run away. I turned toward Dren.

  Ti caught me with his good hand. “Edie, they’re going to kill you. And I’m going to try to stop them, but I don’t know if I can.”

  Dren pushed himself off my alcove wall. “You can’t, zombie. But you might as well come along. The Zverskiye have invited everyone. I’m as fond of carnage as the next person. Only, you stop me from doing my job before we get there, and I’ll husk her without a second thought.” He made a gesture with his sickle in midair.

  Ti pointed at him. “If you touch her, I’ll pull you in two.”

  “Not before I husk out what’s left of your soul, and leave the rest of you to rot.”

  He and Ti stood there, at an impasse. I pulled out Grandfather and set him in the hallway. “Watch Minnie, okay? If I’m not back soon, get someone’s attention, so she won’t starve.” He made what I took to be a noise of assent. Then I stood and straightened out my shirt, looking between Dren and Ti. “We’ve got to go.”

  Dren twirled his sickle up into a saluting motion, then reholstered it, and waved me forward with his hand. “Of course, my dear. It doesn’t do to make vampires wait.”

  Together, we all went outside into the darkest night.

  Chapter Fifty-One

  “I’d have never told you a
bout Anna if I’d thought it’d inspire this,” Ti muttered, walking beside me in the open night. The Hound shuffled along behind me, waddling its bulk, nostrils flaring, breathing me in.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Stop apologizing.”

  We walked side by side in the cold, and I wanted to hold Ti’s hand. His scarf was pulled high again. My gloved hand reached for his, and too late I remembered I was on his left side, and the hand that I held was most likely not his either.

  For most of a mile, silence ruled. Some few people were out on the streets. Whenever they saw Dren, they seemed to veer away, sometimes at right angles to their current path. They never made eye contact with the Hound, as if the Hound were too horrible to exist at all. I could hear it behind us, nails clicking on the sidewalk, preventing any escape.

  That entire time I held Ti’s hand I tried not to think about where it’d come from. I felt like I was the star of some cheap horror film, where the call was coming from inside the house—only in my case, it was coming from inside my boyfriend.

  At the train station we took the stairs down, and the Hound followed us awkwardly, leaping past us to land on the platform below. We took the next train, even though there were people in it. At Dren’s entrance, all of those sitting stood, and all of them now standing turned to look away, showing us only their backs. The doors closed, and the train rattled along.

  It was then that I turned to face Ti. I opened my mouth to ask how. But then I realized the better question was: “Who?” I shook the hand that I held, so he’d know what I was talking about, and wondered how loudly I’d scream if it up and fell off.

  “I have a friend who is a cop. I help him take care of problems, sometimes,” Ti said, deliberately slow, his S sounds sibilant. He, or what remained of him, looked down at his still left hand that I held. “Nerves take the longest to regrow.”

  “You … just killed someone. Today. For me?”

  “I didn’t kill him. I just took his face and broke off his arm.”

  I blinked. “Is that supposed to make me feel better?”

  “He was alive when I left.” Ti shrugged, then continued, “It’ll be hard for him to make meth anymore, missing an arm.”

  And he thought Anna was atrocious! He gets to rip off someone’s face, just because they run a meth lab? “You’re the monster.”

  Ti’s bearing stiffened at this, and he turned away to look resolutely out a nearby window.

  What else was there to say? Nothing. I couldn’t go back in time and undo what he’d done, or change what I’d done to set him in motion before that. I thought about all the things I should have done differently, when I’d had the chance—but I realized that this conversation here, now, had been deliberate. I’d known things were wrong for almost a mile. But I’d waited to have this conversation until we were stuck in the train together, when he couldn’t leave me, even if I wanted him to. Because deep down, I didn’t want him to go.

  “Is s-s-someone having a lovers-s-s’ s-spat?” Dren asked. I glared at him, and saw his lips curve into a vicious grin. The lights in the tunnel passing outside glinted off his fangs and his hand stroked the holster of his sickle in a suggestive manner. I could see the Hound out of the corner of my eye, its clawlike hands fluttering together over its bloated torso. I swallowed, and looked back to Ti, who was still staring away from me, chin high.

  “I have a thing for monsters, remember?” I said quietly. He turned to look down at me again. I pulled his scarf down and leaned up. I kissed him full on his strange new lips, which parted as he drew me near. His tongue was cool like I remembered, and I tasted metal. I pressed into him before we parted. “You’re my monster, all right?”

  He nodded into my hair. “All right.”

  Because the monster you knew was always better than all the ones you didn’t.

  Chapter Fifty-Two

  The train made three stops, during none of which any passengers got onto or off the train. I knew it had to be someone’s stop, but they were all frozen by Dren’s look-away/stay-away. I held on to Ti’s good hand, wrapped around me, and stayed quiet.

  Four stops past that, Dren snapped his fingers, and the Hound began bringing up the rear.

  “Uptown?” I asked.

  “It’s unsettling how well you know the trains of this, your own fine city,” Dren said, rolling his eyes. He made a gesture toward the open doors for both of us to pass. “Shamble on, sir,” he said as Ti walked by. Ti growled in response.

  This platform was empty. The train behind us closed its doors. I turned and watched it go with longing.

  Dren moved around us and began mounting the stairs two at a time. The Hound managed them awkwardly, sidestepping itself up. We emerged into the station, and up from there onto the surface again, and Dren began leading us deeper into the night.

  “Are you sure you don’t want to run?” Dren asked as he walked ahead. He’d pulled his sickle out of its holster again, and was twirling it from hand to hand.

  “Yes.” I continued to walk along the path he’d taken.

  Dren turned around. “Both of you could, you know. I would give you a head start. Cross my heart.” He ran the tip of his sickle in an X over his own chest. “I’ll count to a hundred. You and your zombie lover. Take off now, go.”

  “No.”

  “To a hundred and three,” Dren said, matching pace with me. The Hound waddled alongside of him, gnashing its teeth. “Oh, fine, a hundred and twelve, then, will you take that?”

  Ti put his hand out to stop me. “What’s your angle?” he asked Dren, sounding like he had a mouth full of marbles.

  “Souls are sweeter than bloodrights. You should know that, zombie. And bloodrights are all I’m getting paid for this mess.” He pointed his sickle at me. “But fair’s fair, I’d give you both a fighting chance. No fun in chasing after you if I didn’t get to stretch my legs.”

  “No,” I repeated, walking along. Our surroundings were getting noticeably more familiar. The lighting was improved, and the litter on the streets was lessening. We were near my old hospital, the one I’d worked at oh-so-briefly what felt like a lifetime ago.

  “You want to know what the difference is between a reaper and a husker?” Dren asked. “A reaper—”

  My nerves snapped. “Can you just tell us where we’re going? And then after that, shut up?”

  Dren squinted at me. “Someplace where you should feel right at home.” He ran ahead twenty steps, then clapped his sickle against the Providence General sign behind him. “And look, we’re not alone.”

  Ti and I turned toward the hospital. The lawn in front of Providence General looked like a triage zone, with clusters of people standing around. I covered one eye, and saw that most of them glowed.

  “What the—” I began to ask, as a car turned beside us and pulled in. More vampires disembarked, chatting with one another. They were all dressed glamorously, in long velvet dresses, like they were attending a show.

  “The Zverskiye sent out invitations to all the players. Of course their entourages came, and with the entourages, the merely curious. Vampires hate to be left out.”

  Ti made another growling noise from beside me.

  “Invitations to what, precisely?” I asked.

  “If you don’t know, then how should I?” Dren looked back at me, eyes glittering. “But it’s all very exciting, isn’t it?” He trotted down the hillside, and more reluctantly, Ti and I followed.

  * * *

  The automatic doors of Providence’s well-appointed lobby opened up for us, and it looked like a freak circus had been set up inside. Regal-looking ladies sat across the backs of sturdy leashed men, hobbled into kneeling positions with chains, occupying open spaces where the lobby had run out of seats. Vampires who looked like British mods lounged on the coffee cart in tight leather pants, sifting their hands through open bags of beans. Others fit right into their surroundings, wearing normal clothing, leafing through the available magazines and looking like bored soc
cer moms detoured by skinned knees on their way home from the park.

  Among all these, health care workers wandered through on nightly duties, studiously ignoring any of their activities, oblivious even to the sound of coffee beans plinking onto the floor.

  “I had no idea there were so many vampires in the city,” I whispered. Ti took my hand and rubbed it against his coat. I could feel the heel of something metal in his pocket. I nodded to him, as if to myself.

  “You don’t often see them all in one place. This is big.” Dren directed us through the emergency medical service’s doors.

  Providence was a private hospital now. It was older, but with privatization had come the funds to refurbish their facilities, one overpriced MRI at a time. I knew from prior personal experience that there wasn’t too much action here. Any real traumas they sent off to trauma centers—especially any real traumas without adequate health insurance. But you wouldn’t have known how boring it was from watching the vampires. The first cubicle had a businessman with a GI bleed set to suction—I could tell by the tube going into his nose, and the coffee-colored residue that’d been sucked into the suction canister on the wall. Vampires sat on the countertops and empty beds in the room, watching him like bored cats eyeing an errant bird.

  The next cubicle had a shrieking child, holding both his ears. His mother was trying to console him, and the doctor there was writing a prescription for antibiotics as fast as he could. Only one vampire sat in this room, watching the child over steepled fingers.

  “Why’re they so bold?” I asked Dren. Was it always like this? Had I just never noticed before?

  “The Zverskiye have been making promises of change. We shall see. You, it seems, will have first-row seats.”

  I didn’t look into the rest of the trauma bays as we passed. I pressed against Ti’s side, and felt what I hoped was Ti’s gun against my ribs, until Dren showed us to the back stairway, which had clear plastic taped up over the door and WARNING—CONSTRUCTION signs posted. A black-robed vampire with a waist-length beard stood in front of this, his hands hidden in his sleeves. He was metering in guests like a doorman. Two stockbroker-looking vampires were let in with a small nod. Behind us—behind the Hound, really—a woman with an ornate headdress and a corseted waist was waiting her turn.