Garden of Snakes

by Keary Taylor

  I dial Aleah as he helps me lock up, just like old times. She doesn’t answer. Kai takes my hand in his, pulling me down the street, looking at the walking directions on his phone. I follow behind him, not looking where we are going as I next pull up Duncan.

  Hey, you’ve got Duncan, leave a message.

  I swear under my breath as we walk down Charles Street. Next I try Lexington, only to get his voicemail, as well.

  “Something must be going on,” I huff as we walk swiftly toward Boston Common. “Nobody is answering. Maybe they finally got a lead on Charles.”

  I dial Ian, and I’m not surprised when all I get is his machine.

  “Where is Michael right now?” I ask, hopeful he’s close by, but also hoping he’s far, far away from the danger of Killian.

  “He’s with the other Bitten,” Kai says. I’m huffing as we dart across the massive park, dodging dozens of people. I’m holding my side as he cuts us across the street at Park Street Church, heading into downtown.

  We pause at the corner of Tremont and School Street, and Kai looks up and down from the address and his phone, and our surroundings.

  Straight ahead of us is King’s Chapel, an old and beautiful church built in 1688. Beyond that lies the graveyard, and to the right is the Old City Hall.

  “It’s got to be in the City Hall building,” Kai says. “But there’s no way whatever is going on is waiting just inside the front doors.”

  He hesitates again for a minute, looking at the front doors of the City Hall building.

  “Maybe we’re supposed to take some kind of back door in,” I breathe. I tug him forward, cutting in front of the church. We round it, stepping into the graveyard. The side of the City Hall building stretches all along the back fence of the graveyard, framing it in. There’s a good crowd of people wandering around.

  This cemetery was the first ever in the city of Boston, established in 1630. The headstones at the front of the graveyard are flat and thin, the old style that easily breaks. Almost all of them feature the image of a skull with wings on either side.

  A man looking around catches my attention. He seems lost too, not simply a tourist wandering, checking out the old dates and looking for possible family history.

  No, he’s looking for something else, too.

  I nudge Kai in the side and indicate him.

  He wanders for a minute longer, and finally, he ducks behind a bush.

  Holding my breath, we watch for a full minute. But he doesn’t return.

  Looking around, seeing if there’s anyone else who might be searching for entries, we head to the bush.

  One lone tomb sits behind its thick branches. Making sure no one is paying us any attention, I step behind it.

  “Look,” Kai says. “The cement is loose.”

  Indeed, the end of the tomb looks loose. Kai grabs it and pulls it away from the other walls, and it easily swings out.

  Revealing a staircase.

  “Holy…” I breathe. I look up again, checking that no one is looking. And I step down onto the first step. Kai follows closely behind, covering the opening.

  Through pitch black, we descend. I drag my fingers along the walls, carefully stepping down to each step. There are sixteen of them before it levels out and makes a sharp turn to the right, and then another turn.

  “This has to connect to the basement of the Old City Hall building,” I whisper. And as soon as I utter the words, my eyes pick up on faint traces of light. I make out the tunnel around us, lined with old cinder blocks. Slowly, the light grows brighter and I see a series of doors ahead.

  “We can’t just walk straight in,” Kai breathes close to my ear. “But we need to know what’s going on.”

  I nod and press my finger to my lips for him to be quiet as we approach.

  The doors all look ancient. Old. Original from when the building was built.

  Kai pauses, listening. Finally, he grabs my wrist and pulls me through one door.

  The room we enter is dark, barely any light to see by. But Kai leads us directly to another door, which leads into a closet. At the back of that, he feels around a wall, and pushes. It pops open and we duck inside.

  It seems to be a utility room. There’s barely any room for the two of us, much less my extra belly size and Kai’s broad shoulders. But we tuck ourselves between a water heater and a furnace. Right behind a vent. And through that vent, we can see a fairly large room with over a dozen people gathered in it. And Jonathan quietly speaking with most of those people.

  From everything he was ranting about at my shop, I’m assuming none of those people are vampires. But I’m still scared someone will hear my racing heart or too-quick breathing.

  Two more people file into the room and Jonathan looks pleased to see them.

  “Please, come in,” he says. “We’re just about to get started.”

  Those who just walked in seem nervous. Almost everyone does.

  And it’s quite the random assortment from what I can see. A police officer. Some girl sporting a lot of black. A guy wearing running clothes. A man and a woman dressed for the boardroom. A guy wearing a cowboy hat.

  I can’t imagine a stranger assortment of people.

  “Well, it’s six o’clock now,” Jonathan says as he looks down at his watch. “I had hoped to see a few more faces, but I suppose this is the sum total of people who are ready for the truth right now.”

  He claps his hands together, causing several of the audience members to startle. He rubs them together, looking out over the crowd, and I can see the wheels turning in his head. “Ladies and gentlemen, this world is much bigger than you ever could have imagined.”

  Oh no.

  No.

  My heart starts racing.

  Sweat breaks out on my palms.

  Kai places a hand on my shoulder, and there’s something knowing about the gesture.

  “You’re here because you’ve grown suspicious about the stories that have popped up over the last year. You can’t quite believe the explanations of animal attacks that have left so many dead, many others missing.” Jonathan looks around, folding his hands behind his back. “You might have come here, feeling like you’re a little crazy. Wondering if you’ve finally lost your mind.”

  He finally stops pacing, standing stark still in the middle of the room.

  “Ladies and gentlemen,” he says quietly. “I’m here to tell you that you haven’t.”

  A door that I cannot see is opened and I hear two more people enter the room. One of them is breathing hard, so sharp and strangled that I can feel their distress from here.

  Instantly, the room takes a sharp intake of breath, and most of them lean back in their seats. Two or three of them stand up sharply, taking a few steps back toward the door.

  Into our view walks a man, holding a woman’s hands bound behind her back. As she turns to face the audience, I see very distinctly her glowing yellow eyes and extended fangs.

  She breathes hard, her chest sharply rising and falling. Black veins spread out over her cheeks. She’s fighting her hunger right now, but it’s not easy.

  “This is the monster that’s been hiding in the dark,” Jonathan says. “It’s her kind that is responsible for all those stories that just don’t quite add up. It’s her kind that have spawned centuries of horror stories. She’s a vampire. Once a human, who had her willpower sucked away, to become a slave. Once to the individual who turned her, and now only to her thirst.”

  I would expect these people to be spitting off a million questions, demanding the full story. But they only sit there in stunned silence.

  “I know all this, because I once was one of them,” he continues. “There is a cure. It’s difficult to come by, and I’m not even sure who is responsible for its creation.”

  So at least some of them know that I’m not the one who made it.

  “But their existence will be an ongoing problem. The world needs to know they’re real. And the world needs to help end them all.”<
br />
  “That could just be colored contacts and a good actress,” a man pipes up. But there’s enough doubt in his eyes to tell me he’s afraid.

  “I thought you all might think that,” Jonathan says with a sad smile. “That is why I have called tonight a demonstration.”

  The man holding the Bitten woman captive turns her restraints to Jonathan.

  “You sure you got a full dose?” the man nervously asks Jonathan.

  “I’m sure,” he nods. “I promise I won’t let it last long.”

  The man nods, and I can see a sheen of sweat on his forehead.

  “Show them what has happened to you, Abigail,” Jonathan says. And he loosens the chain he holds.

  With not a second’s hesitation, Abigail leaps forward, sinking her teeth into the man’s neck.

  Several people in the room scream. Others jump forward as if to help. Others retreat further toward the door to run and leave.

  But Jonathan holds his hand up, imploring them to stay.

  “She drinks enough blood to ruin a person, but not quite enough to kill them,” he explains in a hurried fashion. “It’s a fine balance, but one that most are good enough at striking. After that, the change only takes a little bit of time to happen.”

  The people in the room are once again silent, just watching in morbid, frozen fascination as they see the color drain from the man’s skin. As his body grows more and more limp.

  And suddenly the woman pulls back from him, letting him collapse to the ground.

  The second she lets him go, Jonathan jabs a needle into her shoulder.

  I know what comes next.

  She screams out in agony, folding in on herself, trying to make herself smaller, to contain the pain that burns through her body. The audience is in a panic, unsure of what is going on. Their breath is collectively held as they watch.

  Finally, Abigail collapses to the ground, utterly still and silent as the cure rages through her system, returning it to its human condition.

  “Neither of them is dead,” Jonathan reassures. He wipes the sweat from his brow with his sleeve. “She is in the process of turning human once again. He is transitioning into what she was.”

  He looks up from the two unconscious people, his eyes very serious and deadly.

  “We cannot let their kind, my former kind, continue to carry on in the shadows. They’ve been doing it for hundreds, maybe thousands of years, and they’re only growing more powerful.”

  For thirty minutes, Kai and I barely breathe as we listen to Jonathan Harper tell them every detail he knows about how the system works. About the science.

  He doesn’t seem to know everything. He doesn’t know how vampires came into being. It doesn’t sound like he knows about Cyrus or Court. Or just how worldwide this “infestation” is.

  But he knows generally about the House systems. He knows how a Born or Bitten can create more Bitten. He knows about the Debt and how to get out of it.

  “You see?” he says when he gets to the end of his tale. “Despite this cure, despite the miracle that it is, this cycle is never going to end. Because the Born will always crave the blood of our kind. Not all of them will ever get their thirst under control. There will always be slaves. There will always be people killed. We have to stop this.”

  I didn’t realize how much time had passed, until suddenly the man on the ground takes a deep breath in.

  The room is utterly silent, save for his breathing, as every eye turns to him.

  The speed at which his chest rises and falls gains. His hands, which were resting at his side, curl into fists.

  I see Jonathan pull another syringe from his pocket, his knees slightly bent. His eyes tense, his muscles prepared.

  The man on the floor suddenly leaps to his feet. Fangs bared, he gives a great roar, sounding utterly inhuman. His brilliant yellow eyes glow in the dim light.

  The crowd screams and scatters back away from the newly awoken threat.

  Jonathan doesn’t wait another second. He darts forward, burying the needle into the man’s neck, and depressing the plunger.

  Having lived as a Bitten for less than a minute, the man cries out in agony, and collapses to the floor.

  Everyone in the room is breathing hard. They’re stunned silent. Trying to process an entirely new world they didn’t want to know existed.

  “You see, ladies and gentlemen,” Jonathan says as he tries to get his breathing back under control. He pushes his hair back away from his forehead, “this is the reality of what lives in the shadows. There is an entire House full of them, somewhere right here in this city. And the world is not safe with them in it.”

  The audience settles back into their seats, and I’m so scared when I see determination, anger, revenge settling into their eyes. They’re seeing for the first time. And they’re ready to do something about it.

  “Will you help me?” Jonathan says in a low voice. “Will you be the founders of the purge? Will you help me hunt them down, one by one, and make the world a safe place once again?”

  “Yes!” two voices suddenly cry out. The cop and the cowboy. And with their readiness, it bolsters others. Soon half the room is crying out that they’re ready and willing.

  Jonathan smiles. “This is how history is made, ladies and gentlemen. Your names will go down in the books as heroes. As martyrs, and saviors.”

  I shake my head, horrified.

  This is exactly what we’ve been so afraid of, ever since Charles stopped doing his job. We’ve feared exposure.

  But in the end, it didn’t come from bold Born, or out of control Bitten.

  It came from someone who should have just let it go and moved on.

  Kai reaches out, pulling me against him.

  He’s one of the only people in the world that could understand the bitter feelings I’m experiencing in this moment.

  It’s another hour before everyone in the room clears out. I don’t really process anything said after Jonathan’s speech. I’m sure they were making plans, but all I could think about was getting out of here and warning the House.

  Considering if I need to tell Killian.

  All those people just want to help. By telling Killian, he would kill them, innocents. But if he doesn’t, they could lead to the deaths of so many more people.

  Finally, Jonathan says goodbye to the last person. And he drags Abigail out of the room, and a few minutes later, he returns for the man.

  Not saying another word, we wait another ten minutes, and finally, we dare leave.

  Silently, we walk back through the tunnel, and up the stairs. When we step out of the tomb, it’s growing dark.

  “This,” I breathe as we slip into a crowd of people and exit the graveyard, “this is bad. This is going to change everything.”

  “He’s the reason I came back,” Kai says. I pull out my phone and track Lexington’s location. A little dot with a picture of his face shows up, and with him is Ian, Aleah, Duncan, and Po-Sun. They’re on the move. I try calling them all again, but still no one answers.

  Kai and I head down the street, taking off in that direction.

  “Jonathan found our camp about five weeks ago,” Kai explains as we walk quickly. “He showed up with this woman, Patricia, and they just said they wanted to help. But not really curing, Michael and I were taking care of that. They more seemed like they wanted to help…transition all the Bitten back to their human lives. Almost like…like…”

  “A support group?” I suggest as we take a left and head down a street while I watch my phone. The House is headed to an area on the south end of town so I aim us for the closest subway station.

  “Yeah, I guess that’s what you could call it,” Kai says as we turn a corner and head down the stairs into the station. We both swipe our commuter cards and wait for the next subway car to arrive.

  “I don’t know as much as I should about Jonathan,” Kai admits. We stand at the far end of the station so we won’t be overheard. “But I know that when he
was turned, he killed his wife and his youngest kid. I think he had one more kid who was gone at the time, or something. Whoever his sire was kept him as a slave for two years before the Debt finally wore off.”

  I shake my head, swearing under my breath. Sadly, almost all of the stories I hear of the Bitten’s early days are the same.

  “Jonathan killed his sire, and sometime later he met Patricia, who was on her way to you, telling him about a cure.”

  I nod. “I kind of remember having two of them show up at the same time.”

  The train car pulls in and the small crowd files onto it. We linger at the back, trying to keep distance between ourselves and all the people who don’t want to hear this story.

  “I’m really not sure what happened to him after you cured him,” Kai says.

  “He said it’s been about ten months,” I fill in what little information I have.

  Kai nods. “My guess is something happened, maybe with the kid who survived. He’s certainly the bitter type, and was never all that pleasant when he was helping me. But about two weeks ago, he had this…freak out. Ranting about injustice, and bloody cycles.”

  “He must have gotten word about Killian enforcing the Bitten eradication. And he may have even heard about Ian cleaning things up,” I whisper, looking around at all these normal people who surround us while we have a very abnormal conversation.

  “I should have been more worried at the time,” Kai says. He watches the dark and light flash by as we race beneath the city. “But honestly I was a little relieved to have him gone. It wasn’t until he started calling and asking to talk to anyone I cured that I started getting worried.”

  “He’s trying to recruit soldiers,” I fill in the gaps. “He’s playing on their bitterness and pain.”

  Kai nods. “I screwed up, Elle. He’s probably talked to fifteen or twenty of them in the last few weeks. Two days ago a woman told me he was talking about ending it all, and that’s when I finally started realizing what he was talking about.”

  I shake my head. A weight settles on my chest. This is big. This could be bad.