Death of Connor Sanderson_Prequel to Fire & Ice Series

by Karen Payton Holt

  He relived this morning’s rude awakening, and Sir John’s face, wearing an expression of glowering censure, filled his mind. Being late is not an option. Connor wondered how much time he had already wasted.

  The ticking of his pocket watch invaded his consciousness. It most likely had always been there, but once he noticed, it became a strident plinking noise he couldn’t tune out again. Connor palmed the watch, glanced at the pale ivory face, and felt the spring twanging inside it like the buzzing of a trapped hornet resting in his hand.

  He hurriedly tucked the watch inside his pocket, and he could still feel it oscillating against his chest, even through the tightly woven fabric of his jacket. Connor dragged both hands down over his tight face and prayed that this was a nightmare. Its fatigue, I guess. Or a brain tumor.

  Laughing bitterly at his own joke, standing still became the torture of unfamiliar sensations which he needed to escape, and so, he started walking along the corridor, fast.

  His agitated footfall echoed off the white, porcelain-tiled walls and bounced around inside his skull. But, more disconcerting, the impact juddered up each leg, vibrating his tendons, and tingling along muscle fibers that pumped like pistons and whisked him along at an exhilarating pace. But, still his heart rate slumbered.

  Barreling forward, without pausing, he marched the half mile of the hospital’s hallways and arrived outside Sir John’s office. His mentor was a force of nature. After six months under his tutelage, Connor knew everything about the anatomy of the human eye. And, he also knew the one thing that would not be countenanced by Sir John. Being late is a crime rarely forgiven.

  As always, Connor stopped outside the door and gathered his wits. He drew himself up to his impressive height, filled his lungs with a steadying breath, and held on to it. His routine was to pause for ten seconds or so, and, when his lungs ached as they hunted for more oxygen, release it in a slow forceful puff through tight lips... and my nervousness along with it.

  The ten seconds ticked away to thirty. Still holding his breath, he slipped his angry waspish watch from his pocket and watched the minutes tick by. The rustling noise of Sir John shuffling papers on the other side of the thick oak door brushed over his eardrums and clawed at his concentration. Connor gently released the breath in a whistle of disbelief. Seven minutes. Impossible. There was no suggestion of lactic acid being burned inside his tissue. Impossible.

  He rapped a distracted staccato on the door as his expression tightened to stony confusion.

  “Come,” said a baritone voice, thick with disapproval.

  Connor folded his fingers around the brass doorknob, turned it silently and braced his muscles to push on the door. With the slightest bump of his shoulder, it flew open. The heavy oak did not offer its customary resistance, but moved effortlessly as though skimming over ice. He released the handle quickly as though it were hot coals when the polished-brass ball began to buckle in his hand. Perplexed, Connor entered the room, and the atmosphere rushed into his lungs, chest, and throat as though he had breathed in syrup.

  A nauseating cocktail of odors settled in the pit of his stomach. The oak paneling tainted the air with a greasy, linseed aroma. The musk of furniture polish wafted from the desk; its decoratively tooled leather top smelled of tanning chemicals. The gas mantle lamp casting a yellow glow over the sheets of parchment-colored paper smelled of carbon, and Connor could taste the motes of dust which danced like fireflies in the eddying current of the moist atmosphere.

  Even as he tried to make sense of the thickened air, he turned and carefully closed the door behind him, and stood still when Sir John appeared content to ignore his arrival. He thought about coughing, but taking in more of the toxin-flavored atmosphere did not seem like a good idea. He slowly took the nine strides needed to arrive in front of the aromatic desk, and gazed at his mentor’s lowered head with its carefully combed gray hair. Connor’s lip curled, easing his tongue over teeth that were on edge. He smells of blood.

  “Sanderson, you are...” Sir John flinched as though startled by a pistol shot. “...late.” He darted a glance towards the closed door before finding Connor’s face once more.

  Connor’s apology for being late died on his lips while he struggled to decipher the scene unfolding. He absorbed Sir John’s open-mouthed, shocked expression, and as the static hum of the older man’s alarm ionized the atmosphere, tingling through his nerve endings, he registered the truth. He didn’t see me move.

  Sir John’s puzzled air persisted. A bouquet of iron and sugar swelled to fill the spaces left inside Connor’s brain which were not yet cramped with his own fear, and this time, he realized the pounding, accelerated heart rate, vibrating through his ribcage like a bass drum, was not his. It is Sir John’s.

  “Oh, I didn’t see you standing there, Sanderson.” Sir John’s brows were undecided as his face fought to smother a shocked reaction and rediscover his usual quiet authority. Clearing his throat, Sir John injected disapproval in to his tone and started again. “What happened last night?”

  I wish I knew. Connor stiffened. “In what regard, Sir John?”

  “I charged you with tagging Mr. Donahue and arranging for his delivery to the teaching hall in readiness for my lecture first thing this morning. And, you were to choose a specimen of your own for dissection. It would appear that you managed to achieve neither one.” Sir John rose up out of his seat, meeting Connor’s carefully neutral regard with a spark of disappointment in his brown eyes. “My teaching hall is still empty. So, what happened?”

  “My apologies-” Connor ran through his own recollection. Descending the stone stairwell down into the morgue was a clear image, now that Sir John’s words had stirred the mire of his thoughts. “I’ll go now, and remedy the situation.”

  Ten minutes later, Connor was re-enacting the lost hours of last night. He walked, with a determined stride, down the stone steps into the bowels of the hospital. An incantation seeped into his brain like a dim recollection of a childhood playground chant. “Mr. Donahue, and one for you.” He remembered it now. It was all that had kept him awake. I was literally dead on my feet, and longing to fall into my cot and sleep as soon as it was done.

  Connor arrived at the basement level and the dusting of quartz-fragments in the stone floor distracted him with a scattering of sparks. He hastily averted his gaze from the needle-sharp pinpricks of light which stabbed at his eyeballs, imprinting bright dots onto his retina. Staring straight ahead this time, he drove forward and shouldered open the rubber-sealed door to the morgue, recoiling when, instead of the sucker-like resistance he was accustomed to, it whipped back, cracked into the tiled wall, and a shower of annihilated porcelain hit the floor.

  His palm rested on the cold tiles as he leaned around the door to inspect the crater of crumbling ceramic fragments, and he snatched it away as if an electric shock jerked through him. The cold tiles were warm. I’m going crazy. Connor expelled a deliberate breath, and, when there was no reassuring plume of warm vapor fogging the air and warming his cheek, the muscle in his jaw ticked as fear gripped the back of his neck.

  His foot tapped out an agitated rhythm as his muscle fibers locked tight, and he resisted the urge that shrieked through his brain. RUN AWAY.

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” he muttered.

  Using his eyes as a scouting party, he scanned the room. Running slowly down one wall, his glance touched briefly on each cadaver chamber door, and finally took in the snowy landscapes of the white linen-draped corpses. His silent footfall followed the path as he steeled himself to walk slowly across the slick ceramic tiled floor, avoiding the slippery trough of the terracotta gullies in which a copper-colored stain meandered, like the shed skin of a bizarre boa constrictor.

  He flipped back the hem of the sheet on the eighth body in the row. “Bingo,” he whispered as he read the toe tag. “Mr. Donahue.” So, I found him, then what?

  Connor’s tight features blanched his cheekbones to chalk-white as he concentrated on chasin
g down the elusive memory. He idly plucked at the toe tag, the back of his fingers brushing Mr. Donahue’s foot, and then he froze. He pressed his hand more firmly against the hard, cold flesh. Not cold? His harsh gasp hung in the air as Connor whipped his hand away and folded it into a fist. No, I can’t be colder!

  The snatched breath remained trapped inside his chest as panic slammed his vocal chords shut, and the lump in his aching throat swelled like cotton gauze dipped in water. Connor waited for his brainstem to recognize oxygen starvation, turn out the lights, and bring him the blissful release of a blackout. But, no such luck.

  Ten minutes passed before he forced his eyes open and faced facts. I’m not sure what the hell is going on, but, this is not a dream. Connor inspected his milk-white palms, turning them over to focus on the blue-tinged rims of his nail beds. Cyanosis, that can’t be good. Anemia, maybe? The straws of hope he grasped at were hard to wrestle from his grip. ‘I don’t need to breathe’, was a realization he ran away from.

  His gaze wandered past his outstretched hands to settle on the brown-colored residue sitting in the bottom of the curved terracotta gutter. A frown etched into his smooth white skin as he studied the network of channels in the floor, and focused on the darker, thicker puddle clustered around the square iron-grated drain.

  Tracing its path back up the line, his eyes followed a trail that reached beyond Mr. Donahue. The irregular-shaped bulk of three other covered bodies loomed as outcrops of quarry chalk, obscuring his view.

  The morgue attendant should have sluiced the gullies with buckets of water. So, why is that one branch of the conduit dirty? The fluid must be blood. The candy-sweet smell which clung to his nose and suddenly punched a hole into his mind told him that. The alarm bell humming through his cerebral cortex, strangely, filled his mouth with a wash of citrus-tainted emulsion again and unleashed hunger to gnaw through his stomach lining.

  His insides knotted with fear, and he took a side-step that gave him a better view. His roving vision settled on an empty stainless-steel trolley where a soiled sheet lay like a tumbled avalanche of ice, punctuated by dark shadows of reddish-brown stains.

  Dread-filled curiosity moved him slowly past the foot of each of the three corpses, until he arrived at the scene of what looked like a murder. Of a dead person?

  Nervous laughter grated through his vocal chords as reaching out to twitch the rust-blotched sheet aside, plumed the cloying smell of congealed blood into the air. A flood of saliva soaked his lips as he tried to breathe, and his pupils dilated to polished beads of jet framed by rims of steel-blue. His touch skimmed the tacky surface, collecting the brownish red paste on trembling fingertips that moved inexorably to brush across his lips, as though compelled by an invisible grip on his wrist.

  When the smear of blood touched his tongue, an electric shock yanked every tendon in his body tight, snapping his head back. A guttural breath stirred gravel in the back of his throat as the taste coated his mouth. Connor fought for control as muscles spasms crushed his ribcage, clenching his sluggish heart in a relentless fist which emptied the chambers until it collapsed.

  The acid bile of thirst rushed up from his stomach, and corded sinews in his neck tightened like vines around a tree trunk. As unbearable heat trailed over his skin, his spine arched into a taut bow, pulling him up on to his toes, and he hung there for an endless moment, like a macabre puppet with invisible wires twisting his limbs into a grotesque pose. The death rattle in his throat was the only sound that broke the silence.

  The sip of blood which had fired the synapses in his brain, like a hit of cocaine, dissipated. His body suddenly snapped forward, his cold fingers, grappling for support, folded around the edge of the metal trolley and crushed ingots of steel into his palms.

  His muscles relaxed and he gasped for breath, dry heaves racking his chest as he hung his head, and, as he squeezed his eyes tightly shut, a vision darted across his retina like a faded slideshow. He saw his own body lying there on the trolley with his vacant eyes staring up at the white ceiling, his muzzle and upper torso covered in blood. The dried blood on my chest? No.

  A sudden breeze feathered over his cheek and a whisper stroked through his brain. “You are feeding too soon, your heart has not yet stopped.”

  His eyes snapped open, and a gray shadow snatched at his peripheral vision, jerking his head swiftly around. Who said that?

  Finding nothing there, he twisted quickly in the other direction. No one. I am going crazy.

  “You will see, I will show you.”

  Fear, riding a turbulent tide of frustrated anger, rushed up through his tensed thighs and gripped the girdle of his pelvis in a cramped embrace. It fizzed up along his spine like the flare of a lit fuse wire, and forced a bellow of pain from his throat. Rearing up and raising an arm, he accelerated one fist downward in the driving arc of a hammer blow and punched a hole in the metal trolley.

  Shock stole every thought and movement as he stared at the torn metal; the fractured pieces folded back in an inverted parody of flower petals in bloom.

  The clinician fought with the superstitious fool, and self-preservation found comfort in explanations he could believe in. Hearing voices, the smells, hallucinations and violent behavior, even the incredible strength. Delusion clung firmly to his shoulders, and his mind embraced the tunnel of vision that would save his reason. “Hebephrenia, of course. Voices, smells. Classic presentation. That’s it.” It was sanity of a kind, dressed in insanity, but it helped. “I’ll find, Reggie,” he muttered, “His uncle knows about this stuff.”

  He wheeled around and headed blindly towards the door, ignoring the rumble of laughter which filled the air, billowing like a rolling cloud of acidic poisonous gas that singed his nostrils. His long forceful strides were the blur of a comet trail, had the dead eyes of corpses been able to see them. Connor yanked the door open and another shower of dislodged porcelain fragments hit the floor in a thundering avalanche. Shouldering his way up the stone steps, he ricocheted from the walls as, despite his fear, he had to fight a magnetic compulsion to turn around and go back.

  Chapter 3

  As Connor emerged through the door, and back into the hospital corridor, he paused and tidied his appearance. Performing the actions by rote, his splayed fingers combed his hair back into place, he checked his black neck tie still fitted snugly beneath his starched collar tips, and adjusted his cuffs to ensure the correct margin – three eighths of an inch – of white shirt showed below his jacket sleeves.

  For the first time, he did not run his palm over his pocket watch. He knew it was there, he could feel the vibration of the spring rocking inside its silver shell. He straightened his jacket, smoothing his palms over the soft fabric which now felt like wire wool to his sensitive fingertips.

  Connor set off at a determined pace, although, his brisk walk soon dwindled to a frustratingly slow stroll as anything faster drew surprised looks from nurses and fellow medical students. It took him less than a second to register that the nursing staff were bustling as industriously as ever, with the crackling of their starched aprons a symphonic accompaniment to their movements. It is me, that is faster.

  A frown settled on his pale features and he gathered the threads of the morning’s experiences – Was it only two hours? – And tried to weave the events into a picture he could understand. Normality seemed the best place to start, so he headed for the lecture auditorium where he would find Reggie. I hope he slept better than I did. Connor’s lips crimped in an ironic smile at his own humor. Is there a subtle way to ask him about his Uncle Edgar’s study on insanity, and this new-fangled electro-shock therapy?

  Connor was lost in the aromatic world of becoming a vampire. Suddenly fascinated that every nurse he passed along the corridors smelled differently. Not their perfume, they were not allowed that in any case, and certainly not their brand of soap, it was so much more. It was the pH balance of their skin, and the food they had eaten during their day, and finally, the amount of iron and v
itamins in the bloodstream. All Connor knew was that some nurses made his mouth water, but he had no idea why.

  Connor registered heavier male footfalls following on behind, and he recognized the smell of his adversary before he saw him. His hair pomade had an oily odor that Connor always found irritating, but now, it thickened the air around its wearer like the dense pea-soup smog which was the scourge of London. Apple pulp and lard are a truly nauseating combination. Connor preferred a sparing application of beeswax ointment.

  “Well, if it isn’t, Sanderson. The blue-eyed boy.”

  Stopping in his tracks, Connor turned on his heel to look into the mud brown eyes of Rufus Clare.

  The sarcastic tone marred the young man’s face with a spiteful sneer. “Been licking Sir John’s boots again, if your sour expression is anything to go by.” His slick hair glistened like polished, beaten copper, and his face was devastatingly attractive.

  Connor’s frosted regard was hard with barely veiled disgust as he savored the wash of confidence rolling like an electric storm through his mind. It short circuited his confusion and fear for a moment, and he embraced the prospect of sparring with an opponent of whom he had the measure. Rufus’ blonde companion, Lester Cartwright, instinctively hung back a step. Connor absorbed his aroma also, as a sheen of nervous perspiration broke out on the young man’s skin. Wise man, perceptive it seems.

  Throwing up his hands in a parody of startled surrender, Connor said, “Clare, I didn’t see you there, been hiding in any linen closets, lately?” He grinned, enjoying his new-found sensitivity for a moment, when his senses were assaulted with delicious odors. Rufus’ salty, dopamine-soaked sweat as he started and rocked back on his heels was enticing, as was the hot rushing tide shunting up his carotid artery as a ruddy flush stained his tight cheeks dull red.