Nightshifted es-1 Read online

  “We’re on the guest list. Look under D for dinner. Or Dren. One of those two,” Dren said to the man.

  “Who’s he?” the vampire asked, with a thick Old World accent.

  “He’s her protector. He’s going to try to kill you all,” Dren said.

  The vampire looked Ti up and down. “Your hat, scarf, coat, all of it, now.”

  Ti unwound his scarf first. I could see the muscles of his jaw tense and release underneath the darker portion of his skin. He took off his hat then, and coat, revealing his new arm, connected just below the elbow. It was oddly larger than his own—it made him look like a mutant creature from a video game. His gloves came off last.

  The vampire patted down Ti’s jacket and found the gun. He put it inside his robe. “Anything else?” he asked Ti, eyeing his tight shirt and fitted jeans. Ti shook his head, and the vampire stood aside.

  We walked inside single file down the stairs. It looked like we were nearing the old operating rooms, but I couldn’t see past Ti’s shoulders. The Hound was behind me, talons clattering on the sea-foam-green tile, its hot breath foul.

  “This is their home turf, you see. They don’t find you terribly threatening,” Dren explained. “Neither do I.”

  “That’s too bad. By the time this night is through, I might need another arm,” Ti said ahead of me. We reached the lower level, where vampires were standing from wall to wall.

  Dren laughed. “I suspect you will end up needing more than that. But now my deed is done.” He stepped aside and turned around. “It’s a pity you couldn’t be bothered to run, girl, but I’ve earned my keep. I might as well stick around to watch you die.” He dipped into one of the crowds; the Hound followed him after a final gnash in my direction, and I moved to stand beside Ti.

  Chapter Fifty-Three

  In a previous incarnation, my first hospital had been a teaching institution, back before private practices had bought it out and made it into a for-profit money machine. In those days, before monitors and cameras, they’d had the grand teaching amphitheaters, with steep rows of seating so that surgeons-to-be could watch. Without the teaching angle, and with the for-profit money, building new operating rooms was sexier than remodeling old ones. These rooms had been abandoned, used for storing random items or having random hookups.

  That was the basement I remembered. Waist-high green tiles, all the better to hose down with bleach later, low ceilings, and broken lights, all the better to not closely look at who you were fucking after shift. Not that I had ever done that, more than once or twice.

  But what was in front of us now was different—all of the operating bays had been conjoined, the walls between them ripped out, leaving disjointed seating behind. Pipes and ducts were exposed from above and below, huge metal conduits that thrummed with live wires or running water. Lights hung from copper wires on the ceiling, shooting down thready illumination that didn’t penetrate much. And everywhere, vampires, sitting atop pipes, standing on the rubble between the rooms, crowded into the remaining seating. They were in separate groups, gathered into crowds that were dressed alike, or were at least alike in their bearing, and all of them were looking at me. I hid behind Ti.

  “Let her pass!” shouted a voice from below. Ti started making his way down, and I followed him, balancing one hand on his back as we went down the rubble-strewn wall. I looked around behind us, and almost twisted my ankle on a loose piece of concrete. What was there to see, anyhow? More vampires? I stood briefly taller than Ti, as he jumped down a level, and saw Sike there, standing beside Mr. Weatherton at the bottom. I scanned desperately for Anna, but didn’t see her light, and I wondered where they were keeping her. Ti picked me up and set me down beside him.

  “This is grim,” he said when I was nearest. I nodded.

  * * *

  The bottom was rubble and concrete, like a giant hand had scooped out the clearing, leaving uneven furrows behind. Geoffrey and Sike were on the opposite side of a massive drainpipe, as wide as I was tall, which had jagged cement edges exposed to air. We made our way toward them and when we passed the pipe I looked into it, expecting only hollow black. Instead, it was full of fluid, almost to the brim, and small waves caused by unseen sources made it ripple, revealing sulfurous yellows, curdled whites, and streaks of gray. The whole thing, from the cement pipe to its rotten core, reminded me of an abscessed tooth. I hoped that wasn’t what they were going to drown her in.

  Mr. Weatherton gestured us forward, the sleeves of his robes making him look like a skeletal bat. He wore a high white wig, and there was a dusting of powder on his shoulders. The elderly vampire made a face at Ti’s addition to our party, but did not send him away. Sike stood beside him, in a modern suit with a high collar that hid her neck.

  “My client is here! Shall we begin?” he addressed the space in front of us. His voice echoed up the hall. I hadn’t realized till now how quiet the entire room was—now that I’d stopped concentrating on not falling, I could hear that there was nothing moving in this room but me.

  Behind the drainpipe, there was another half-chamber and its seating area. We were facing a gallery of Zverskiye, black wool coat after black wool coat, lining the rows like crows on power lines. The only hint of color in their midst was a vampire with ornately embroidered robes, red silks patterned and lined with gold, his arms crossed and hands hidden in their opposite sleeves. He wore a crown.

  “Who is that?” I whispered to Sike, and was embarrassed by how far my voice traveled.

  “They call him their Czar. He’s their judge-king for this region,” she answered back.

  “If you are not interested in conducting this trial—” Weatherton continued, addressing the vampire that appeared to be their ruler.

  “Silence, spy.” A vampire emerged from the darkness. He was dressed like a cross between a doctor for surgery and a janitor, with hip waders and a blue sterile gown shrouded around him, sleeves ending in elbow-high black rubber gloves. The drainpipe belched a cloud of noxious fumes as he passed it, coming toward us, and the disgusting slurry of its contents began sloshing over its edge.

  “I was invited,” Weatherton said in an insulted tone, lifting his robes as the first tendrils of fluid started rolling near.

  “Indeed you were. But we both know that you are a spy.” He flourished upward with one gloved arm. “As are most of those here tonight, whether they’d admit to it or not.”

  There was a stirring in the crowd around us, like the sound of rubbing leaves. “I was told there would be a trial here? Soon?” Weatherton asked archly, sidestepping a small stream. “If there is not, perhaps you would like to call a plumber—”

  The gloved vampire ignored this jibe. He looked up to the Zverskiye judge, who inclined his head slightly. “We have certain rituals that must be accommodated, before we begin.”

  “Do they include moving to higher ground?” Geoffrey asked.

  “We require that the accused is bound while we deliberate,” the gloved vampire snapped. Another vampire rolled up an empty operating table, with empty four-point leather cuffs. “Given that our normal trials involve vampires, I’m sure you understand.”

  “She is a mere human—”

  “A human who killed a vampire. A rare human indeed.” The gloved vampire gestured to the table. Ti held on to my shoulder and shook his head.

  “I would know who it is that I am arguing with, before I make any accommodations,” Weatherton said.

  “I am Koschei the Deathless.”

  Weatherton’s eyebrows arched high. “You seem very young to be deathless.”

  “You seem very old to still be alive.”

  Weatherton ignored this and turned to survey the surrounding vampires, before coming full circle to focus on Koschei. “I am Geoffrey Weatherton, Esquire. I have never lost a case, and I do not intend to start now.” He stepped forward, and reached back for me.

  “Edie—” Ti began. Weatherton’s hand shook a command. If I let them tie me to that table, what wer
e the chances that I would make it off it again? Sike had told me that my trial was incidental—all the Rose Throne wanted was Anna. But—I scanned the room again with my strange vision. She was nowhere in sight. If they didn’t have her yet, then they wouldn’t give up on me. I shook my head at Ti and stepped forward.

  Weatherton held the table still while I sat on it and lay down. He fastened each of the leather restraints comically loose—and as he did so, my badge began to heat up, glowing even through my sweater.

  The same vampire that’d brought out the table circled it again, reaching for the cuffs, tightening them one by one. At the end of this, he pointed to my badge.

  “Is this a trick?” he asked gruffly.

  “I’m a noncombatant,” I explained.

  “Not anymore.” He picked up my badge through my sweater and cut it off, taking a chunk of sweater with it, leaving my empty lanyard behind. He cast it behind himself, and I watched it fall like a shooting star. Any protection it might have given me was gone.

  Weatherton tsked aloud. Weariness radiated off him, not caused by his age, but by his exhaustion at the fools he was being forced to deal with here, and the revolting circumstances he was being forced to work under, what with the drainpipe still vomiting up dark fluids that coated the room’s floor. Weatherton walked around the head of my table, looking at his sodden shoes before returning his gaze to Koschei, his voice both bored and irritated at once. “I heard you have a witness? If so, bring him forth.”

  “I make the rules here, grandfather,” Koschei said.

  “The rules are the rules, as they have always been. The Consortium requires propriety, and I require speed. As you have noted, it is already past my bedtime.”

  There were snickers from some in the audience at this. Near the edge, I could see Sike nodding her head.

  Koschei frowned and produced a piece of paper to read from. “We are here to prove that the accused caused the untimely death of our brother Kristoff. We will show that she went to his place of living, lied to gain entrance, and then assaulted him with holy water, resulting in his horrific demise.”

  “And I heard that you had a most excellent witness to this crime? Someone who saw it himself, or herself?”

  I inhaled softly. Would the Zverskiye admit that Anna had been there?

  Koschei held up a small bag and continued as though he had not heard. “These are Kristoff’s ashes. I will scatter them now, so that you may know him, by his scent.”

  He flung the bag outward and it went end over end, spewing out not all that many ashes in a thin gray stream. As I squinted to protect my eyes I could hear those vampires around me breathing in deeply, intentionally, along with their murmuring to one another afterward.

  Weatherton took a step forward. “This bag of ash is all the proof you offer?” He turned widely, arms outstretched, making a show. “Where is your real proof? I was informed there would be firsthand testimony.”

  The surrounding crowd rustled again. I strained my eyes around their sockets to see without lifting my head. Even if they weren’t going to produce Anna, where was the horrible apple-tobacco-scented vampire I’d seen that night, and later on? The one with the stone-gray eyes?

  “If you cannot prove she killed him—” Weatherton continued, after a dramatic pause.

  Koschei shook his head. “Then we will go on Pascha’s prior testimony, which we were previously a party to.”

  “And I will not have the chance to cross-examine him? My client is not up for only death, but psychophagy, and she is to be convicted by hearsay?” Weatherton’s voice was indignant.

  “Silence, Rose Throne! This is our court, not yours.”

  “Obviously!” Weatherton threw his hands up into the air. It was strange to see a full vampire displaying such emotion. “How am I to prove her innocence, when you will not let me speak?”

  “As we know from Pascha’s prior testimony, she is guilty, and your speech is not required,” Koschei said. The red-robed judge-king vampire seated behind him nodded.

  Weatherton shook his head violently. “This is a travesty, and all those present know it.” He began to pace back and forth at the crater’s edge like a wild beast. His actions and gestures were meant to telegraph emotions to the farthest reaches of the upcurved room—he was putting on a show, and the Zverskiye vampires had front-row tickets.

  I got the feeling that nothing Weatherton could do would change events; the Zver had seen to that. It was obvious that he was buying time. How long? I looked down, and saw that there was an even layer of the noxious substance from the drainpipe across the bottom of the floor now, still multicolored and revolting.

  “We here know what it is like to consider eternity. To be deprived of it is a horrible thing. But consider the plight of a human, who works at a hospital, no less, and knows full well the brevity of human life!” As Weatherton’s voice echoed around the cavern, I looked to Ti for strength. He was offset behind Sike, watching Koschei, while using Sike to block himself from Koschei’s view. But I could still see him, working the fingers of his good hand at the seam where his new arm met his old. I imagined I could hear the wet tearing sound as the tissue gave.

  “It is as hard for us to understand them and their motivations as it is in turn difficult for them to understand those of a gnat or a fly. But try to imagine what it is like to be compelled—as she was, tired from a long shift, facing daylight on her own—with the whispers of an ancient and rogue Zverskiye daytimer echoing in her mind, forcing her to go against her will and better judgment—”

  As Weatherton paused at this, letting those two words in particular ring out, Ti paused in his labors too. Then he reached into the hole he’d created in his arm with one probing finger. I bit my tongue not to make a sound of disgust. Whatever he was doing, I knew I should look away. But—

  “Surely you can understand that working on Y4 has its dangers,” Weatherton continued, as I saw Ti begin to pull something forth. “And I would like to introduce briefs as evidence, showing how hazardous working there is for its nurses. There have been three workplace homicides there this past year alone—”

  It was a gun. I could see it out of the corner of my eye. Ti’d pulled a revolver out of the meat of his arm. He slid it into his armpit to hold, with the barrel cocked open. I was trying to ignore him and pay attention to my defense when he started fishing his fingers into the space between his jaw and his lower lip.

  Weatherton went on, addressing the Zverskiye judge in particular. “Her value to your society, to my society, and to the Consortium as a whole, working at Y4, is far more than any cost you can extract from her now, here.”

  “Are you saying she is innocent?” Koschei asked, his tone incredulous. I watched Ti extract a bullet from somewhere inside his lip and quietly place it in a chamber of the gun.

  “Without a doubt. And even if she is not, she deserves leniency.”

  Koschei laughed. “Pascha said she is guilty.”

  “But where is Pascha?” Weatherton proclaimed.

  “He … is indisposed,” Koschei said slowly, tilting his head with a leer.

  There was a ripple of assorted emotions through the crowd. Amusement, disgust—boredom now that Weatherton’s show had stopped. I saw Sike in front of Ti rock forward to stand even taller, to look desperately around the room.

  “There were two witnesses that night!” Weatherton yelled, regathering attention to himself. “There was your Pascha, who apparently cannot be bothered to show—and another. A female vampire, a mere child. You are preventing her from testifying as well!”

  Koschei’s lips lifted, revealing a row of predatory teeth. “I regret to inform you that she was captured killing Pascha. As such, her fate is already sealed.” He looked behind himself, and the other vampire, the one who’d cut off my badge, pushed a sheeted someone forward on another bed, making a wave in the foul substance on the ground before them. I could see her light beneath it, even before Koschei took off the sheet.

  An
na. Tied in four points like me, but hers were silver chains. Weatherton’s arms sank as she appeared. Her face was angled away and up from us, and I prayed that she’d turn to see me there trapped like her, so I could make some gesture, to let her know that she was not alone. And then her head twisted toward me, and I saw her black-and-blue, bruised face and swollen-shut eyes—and where the Zverskiye had riveted a silver plate over her mouth.

  “Oh, no,” I murmured, before biting my own lip in horror.

  “So you see,” Koschei continued, “she is already being punished for her crimes. And now it is your turn to be punished for yours, Edith Spence. The verdict is guilty, is it not?”

  “This is a mockery of a trial—” Weatherton protested as Koschei advanced.

  “Don’t worry, old one. I’m sure you’ll still get paid.”

  “When the Consortium hears of this travesty you have conducted, you and yours will be held accountable—”

  “By then, it will be too late.” Koschei didn’t even turn around to see the nod of his judge’s head condemn me. He shoved Weatherton aside, and the older vampire fell. “We will have both her life, and her soul.”

  “I don’t think so.” Ti spit the last of his bullets into his gun, slapped the barrel closed on his thigh, and aimed over Sike’s shoulder at Koschei’s face. There was a click as the trigger pulled the hammer back, and then a thunderclap as the bullet shot forth.

  Chapter Fifty-Four

  Koschei’s head reeled back and I saw him drop. I strained at the cuffs, trying to get free—I could see innumerable vampires swamping Ti, as his gun kept ringing out. “Don’t kill him!” I screamed. “Take my soul! Don’t kill him!”

  “Why not? He’s already dead.” Koschei arose from the ground, covered in the ghastly fluids that were still pouring out of the cement pipe, and braced himself on the edge of my operating table. I got to watch the wound the bullet left in his forehead heal as he looked down at Weatherton, who was still laboring to stand. “Deathless, you see?”