by Vivian Shaw
“Two,” said Grisaille, and Fastitocalon looked at him, eyebrow raised. “You’re going to be arriving with two vampires. I don’t care what you are, nobody gets to take my boyfriend to Hell without me.”
“… make that one cursed and one not apparently cursed sanguivore,” Fastitocalon said. “Yes. Quite. Thank you.” He hung up and put the phone away, sighing. “Greta, can you unhook all the tubes and wires and so on, please?”
She nodded, beginning to remove the various sensors taped to Ruthven’s chest; the monitor squealed in sudden anxiety before shutting off. “I can’t believe both Varney and Ruthven get to go to Hell before I do,” she told Fastitocalon. “And I can’t go with you: we have enough trouble here as it is, something mysterious is affecting several of the patients and I have no clue what’s going on with that, either, and—God, at least Ruthven will be safe in Hell, won’t he?”
“Safe as houses,” said Fastitocalon, and when she’d finished removing Ruthven’s IV line and the rest of the sensors, he simply bent and scooped the vampire up as if he weighed nothing at all. He lay in Fastitocalon’s arms with no grace whatsoever, grey-white and deeply unconscious, and Greta’s chest hurt sharply to see it.
“Hold on to me,” he told Grisaille. “This will be unpleasant and disorientating, but the effect will pass quickly.”
“I don’t care, just—fix him,” Grisaille said between his teeth, and took hold of Fastitocalon’s shoulder. An instant later they were gone, with a small thunderclap of air collapsing into the space they had just inhabited.
Greta looked from Varney to Tefnakhte, whose wrappings made it very easy to look unimpressed by the situation. “Well,” she said. “That’s out of our hands. Time to get back to doing my real job—Christ, what time is it, anyway? How long have I been awake?”
“Nearly midnight,” said Varney. “Can you get some rest now?”
“… maybe,” she said. “I have to check on Maanakhtef first. Tefnakhte, nothing else is on fire just at the moment, right?”
“Not as far as I know,” said the mummy. “The night shift will take care of it unless there’s a dire emergency. Go and rest, Doctor.”
She nodded, and glanced over at Varney. “Wait here while I look at Maanakhtef for a minute and make sure he’s doing all right, and then I’ll show you the private residence,” she said.
“I can stay in a spare room,” he told her, “it’s quite all right—”
“Please,” said Greta. “I’d very much rather not be alone right now.”
“Well,” said Varney with the edge of one of those sunrise smiles, “if you put it that way, I suppose I can oblige.”
CHAPTER 8
Greta had been the kind of tired where she didn’t even remember lying down; she’d simply fallen away from consciousness like a stone into black water, and it seemed that no time at all had passed between climbing into the bed and being shaken very gently by the shoulder.
“Nnh,” she said into the pillows.
“Greta, love,” said a beautiful voice, very close at hand, and she rolled over and squinted up at Varney, who looked intensely apologetic. “I’m so sorry to wake you—”
“What time is it?”
“Half past four,” he said. “There’s been a—”
“Who is it this time?” she asked, scrubbing at her face with both hands. “And how badly are they damaged?”
Varney paused. “Er. Well, yes, there’s been another incident, and the patient is—not very well, I gather, but nothing like Mr. Maanakhtef—they’re asking for you, though—”
Greta squeezed her eyes shut for a moment longer: her level of fatigue had now reached the point where it was painful to keep them open. Then she sat up, took a deep breath, and got out of the bed. Varney watched, that expression of apologetic sympathy very difficult to look at, while she shrugged into her dressing gown and found a pair of shoes. “Go back to sleep,” she told him, hooking her stethoscope around her neck. “No sense in both of us being awake at a truly ridiculous hour, if one of us can be asleep, then they ought to be—fuck, I need coffee—”
“I’m all right,” said Varney. “And I can at least bully people into making coffee for you. Go on, I’ll join you when you’re free.”
The thought of being able to get used to that, of having someone always there to help, of not having to do everything by herself all the time, was still delicious in its novelty. Greta couldn’t help smiling at him before she turned to leave, despite the fatigue.
Sister Brigitte was waiting for her in the main spa facility, irritatingly perfect in her white scrubs; she seemed to be able to look like a statue of a queen no matter the hour of the day or night. “It’s Antjau,” she said without preamble. “He was in bed when it happened, of course, so there was no danger of a fall, but he’s not strong.”
Greta knew the TB treatment wasn’t going as quickly as they had hoped, but he’d seemed to be making progress. This on top of his preexisting condition was absolutely not going to help. It was Antjau’s second attack—she could remember Brigitte mentioning a previous instance.
“I have to find out what’s doing this,” she said almost to herself, and walked a little faster; Brigitte had to hurry to keep up. “This thing, whatever it is, coinciding with Ruthven’s curse—it feels intentional. More than just terrible luck.”
“The symptoms are completely different,” said Sister Brigitte. “Then again—”
“—so are the species,” Greta finished. “We’re in totally uncharted waters here. I’ve never dealt with supernatural illness in vampires other than the standard reaction to sacral exposure—holy water, crosses, all that sort of thing, but I’ve never seen a curse in action before.”
“Would your witch acquaintance have any experience with such a thing?”
“That’s a damned good question,” said Greta. “Soon as I’ve seen Mr. Antjau, I’ll call her and ask. Thank you. I’m—not at my best right now.”
“None of us are,” said the nurse, ruefully. “You’re doing quite well, in my opinion.”
“I haven’t been able to do anything about this,” she said.
“But the work you did to repair Mr. Maanakhtef was remarkable, even if we don’t understand why it’s happening.”
“… all right, that’s fair enough,” said Greta with a little smile. She was, in fact, slightly proud of the job she had done repairing and replacing all the bits of him that had broken on impact. “I just wish I hadn’t had to. All right, let’s see what we’re dealing with here.”
They had come to Antjau’s room; Greta knocked gently. “Mr. Antjau? It’s Dr. Helsing, may I come in?”
His yes sounded fairly awful: much raspier than most mummies, with a wheeze to it. Greta sighed, put on her brisk and sympathetic talking-to-patients face, and went in.
Antjau lay propped up with several pillows; the head of his bed was raised almost as far as it could go. She wasn’t surprised to see the careful pattern of amulets tucked into the wrappings around his chest: Tefnakhte must have come to see him already. “I hear you’ve had another one of these attacks,” she said, settling into the chair by the bed. “I’m so sorry. Can you tell me what happened?”
“I woke up,” he wheezed, “and couldn’t breathe—this terrible weakness in my chest—I could barely manage to push the call button—”
He was interrupted by a dry, rasping, crackling cough that sounded as if it hurt, pressing his hands to his chest. Greta bent over to get her arms around him, helping him to lean forward, carefully rubbing his back. He stiffened for a moment in surprise, and then leaned into her hands.
Every student of mummy medicine had to come up against a specific mental wall in the course of their research and discoveries: the point of but that makes no sense. Greta’s own had been fairly early on: How can they talk when they have no actual lungs in situ to do the breathing part with, followed sharply by, And how can they do literally anything, let alone think, with no brain? Once she’d got past the
no-brain thing and acknowledged to herself that, no, it did not make any sense at all but nonetheless was objectively true, she found herself able to look past the wall for the most part. Mummies were made largely out of magic, and magic did not have to make sense, even if the version of it Fastitocalon played with could be described in terms analogous to particle physics. Treating someone whose lungs were in another room exactly the way she’d treat someone who retained their originally installed equipment was second nature to her now.
When the fit passed, she let him lie back against the pillows. “That sounds like it’s not even slightly fun to experience,” she said. “I’m sorry—but I think we can make you a bit more comfortable.—Have you done anything to his lungs?” she added, turning to Sister Brigitte.
“The oxygen flow rate was increased,” said the nurse. “It seemed to help a little.”
“Good. Keep it turned up, and start him on a bronchodilator and benzonatate. What’s the dose on the main cocktail?”
Sister Brigitte checked his chart. “Three hundred for the isoniazid and five for the streptomycin. We could go up.”
“Leave the isoniazid, increase the streptomycin to seven hundred, check the titers more frequently,” she said. “The sooner we knock out the infection, the better. I think we’ll have you feeling better soon,” she told Mr. Antjau.
“Will it happen again?” he asked. “The—the attack.”
“I’m afraid I don’t know yet,” said Greta. “We’re working on it. In the meantime if you start to feel worse again, ring for someone right away, all right? Did Tefnakhte’s amulets make any difference?”
“A little,” he said, poking at a particularly fine agate djed pillar. “The—having the words said helped more, I don’t know why—just hearing the language spoken—”
“I’ll ask him to come and check in on you regularly,” she said, getting up. “And declaim.”
That got a raspy little chuckle out of Antjau, and almost made him cough again; she could see the effort involved in holding it back, and sighed. “All right. I’ll see you on my rounds, Mr. Antjau. Sister?”
Brigitte nodded. “I’ll mark the changes on his chart and start the new medication.”
“Excellent.” Greta gave her a tired smile and left her to her patient, hoping against hope that she could find either coffee or a flat surface to pass out on for an hour.
At least one of those was forthcoming. Varney met her at the door to the nurses’ lounge with a steaming cup. “How is he?”
“He’ll do. I think the bronchodilator will help a bit, and the antitussive will definitely make a difference, but God, I wish I had any idea what’s behind the attacks—”
Her phone vibrated in her pocket, and she sighed, fishing it out. This time it would be Ed Kamal calling to tell her off for being a useless excuse for a physician, no doubt.
It was not. Varney looked at her with an inquisitive eyebrow while Greta stared at the screen, which read EREBUS GEN HOSP/FAUST, J.G.
“… I have to take this,” she said, and thumbed the screen. “Hello?”
“Dr. Helsing?” said a female voice. “Please hold for Dr. Faust.”
Greta looked around and to her relief saw an empty conference room, away from the comings and goings of the nursing staff. She nodded at Varney, and they went inside and shut the door—and she half-fell into a chair, her knees suddenly little sacks of water. This was something she’d always dreamed of, never thought could happen, and it was happening now at the most inopportune time it could possibly occur—
“Greta Helsing?” said a brusque voice in her ear, the accent faintly German. “Johann Faust. Calling about your vampire patient, if you have a few minutes.”
“Y-yes,” she said. “Of course. What—how’s he doing, do you know what’s wrong?”
“Yes and no,” said Dr. Faust. “At first it looked like an absolutely standard self-referential escalating Type Two vengeance curse with a strong angelic signature, but then we ran him through the mirabilic resonance scanner a couple more times because of an anomalous reading and it turns out the signature doesn’t map to any of the actual angelic strains that exist.”
“Angelic?” Greta said, sounding stupid even to herself. “An angel did this to Ruthven?”
“Something that looks like an angel to the MRI algorithms,” said Faust, “but if it’s an angel, it’s a type we’ve never seen before. Gabriel and his bunch wouldn’t go in for this sort of thing, anyway; it’s politically unwise and they don’t get involved. It’s a mystery.”
“What looks like an angel but isn’t?” she asked.
“You tell me,” he said, sounding about as disgusted as she felt regarding her own medical mystery. “Anyway, he’s responding well to treatment, the symptoms have mostly resolved, but the bad news is that the second he gets back on the prime material plane, it’s going to snap right back on again.”
“You mean he’s… stuck in Hell indefinitely?”
“Until someone can find whatever cursed him and get them to take it off again—yes. I’m sorry, but that’s the way of it.”
“Does he know?”
“Yes. He took it rather well, all things considered, but I think part of that is sheer relief at not being in pain. His boyfriend is less sanguine about the prospect.”
Greta pictured Grisaille’s reaction, and covered her eyes with a hand. “Yeah. I bet. Is—can I talk to Ruthven? Is that allowed?” She had no idea how she could receive calls on a cellular network from a completely separate plane, but nothing else was making any sense lately, either. In a way it felt almost comforting that Faust was as baffled by Ruthven as she was by her mummies, and in a way it was a sinking kind of horror: there weren’t any more advanced authorities to ask for help.
“You can have a few minutes with him,” Faust was saying. “The symptoms have almost completely resolved, as I said; he’s experiencing mild headache and moderate lassitude.”
“I won’t tire him out, I promise,” she said. “Is he still in the hospital or have you moved him to the spa?”
“Hospital for now. If he continues to improve further, I’m happy discharging him to the spa, although most of the treatments they do that work best for demons won’t do a great deal for him. But the beds are more comfortable and the food is better.” She could hear background noises; he must be walking down a corridor with people in it, and closed her eyes to try to picture Hell’s main medical facility.
Greta was aware of Varney being intensely patient and incredibly curious across the conference table, and gave him an apologetic grimace. On the phone Faust said something aside to a nurse, and then, “Lord Ruthven? I have Greta Helsing on the line. You can have ten minutes—”
Ruthven’s voice in her ear. “Greta? Oh Christ, it’s good to hear from you, I’m so sorry about everything—”
“Edmund,” she said, rolling her eyes, “are you seriously apologizing for being cursed?”
“For making a colossal nuisance for you and—well, scaring everybody,” he said. He sounded just like himself, if a bit worn. “And now apparently I’m stuck in Hell, which I could probably make some terribly clever jokes about if I thought hard enough.”
“I’ve got Varney here,” she said. “Shall I put him on, too?”
“Yes. God, yes,” Ruthven said, and she put her phone on speaker and set it on the table.
“Now both of you have been to Hell before I got to,” she said, “and I am envious in the middle of everything. Are you really feeling better?”
“I’m quite all right,” said Ruthven, and then had to laugh a little. “Well. I’m not quite all right, but I can see and my head only aches in an ordinary sort of way and I don’t want to be sick, so it’s a vast improvement.”
“I’m so glad,” said Varney self-consciously. “I—you were in a pretty bad way when you arrived in Marseille.”
“Thank you for helping,” Ruthven said. “I—we—really appreciate it.”
“De rien,” said Varney.
“I was very impressed with the facilities there on my quick visit. I know you’re in good hands.”
“Everyone’s been very kind. Even if Grisaille has had to sleep in a not-very-comfortable chair thing in the corner of the room.”
“My back will never recover,” said another voice sepulchrally. Greta could picture Grisaille draped over the not-very-comfortable chair looking effortlessly stylish, and had to smile. “I shall demand to be known as the Hunchback of Victoria Embankment. That’s if we ever get to go home, of course.”
“Dr. Faust said the signature of whatever did this to you looks angelic but isn’t,” Greta said. “How is that possible?”
“Don’t ask me,” said Ruthven. “I thought angels were angels were angels, not that I’ve had the displeasure of meeting any. Except—”
“Except?” Varney repeated.
“I can’t seem to remember it clearly,” said Ruthven. “It’s—something strange did happen in Rome, but I don’t know what it was. Neither does Grisaille.”
“Something on the Spanish Steps,” said Grisaille. “That’s all I have. I think you told me about it but it’s like—oh, like a conversation you have right before getting extremely drunk, and all the details are gone.”
“That must be when it happened,” said Greta. “At least you have that much. Up here I have nothing to go on with this weird micro-epidemic business, except that it seems to be getting worse.”
“What micro-epidemic?” said Ruthven.
“There’s been a rash of completely inexplicable sort of fainting spells affecting the mummies here,” she said, blithely ignoring confidentiality protocol, too tired to think better of it. “And nobody seems to be sneaking around in the middle of the night cursing them—I think we’d know if something like that was happening—”
“I didn’t faint,” said Ruthven, “I just had the worst migraine of my life. Fainting would have been far, far preferable.”
