The Vessels

by Anna Elias

  Javier wiped his mouth and eyed the black wrought-iron fence. His gaze followed it from the soup kitchen, around the street corner, to the building’s entry on the other side.

  A gate separated the sidewalk from the courtyard and hung open on hinges that yearned for new welds. Downspouts sagged from the roof and the upper floors, marked by rows of broken and boarded windows, signaled ongoing renovation. Javier took another deep breath and strode quickly to the shelter’s entrance.

  He opened the front glass door, steeled his nerve, and walked into the lobby. Light blue walls welcomed him, each boasting poster-sized nature photos. Tasteful draperies framed the front windows, and vertical blinds hung open to catch the last dregs of rain-soaked daylight. Javier strapped on a smile and approached the young Asian-American woman filing papers at the desk.

  “Rooms are full,” she said without looking up. “Dinner starts at six. The line is outside.” Her voice was firm but kind, and she didn’t cringe at his smell.

  “I’ll share a room,” he told her, adopting a Brooklyn accent to further his disguise. One fellow inmate had been a New York transplant who’d turned to stealing after his father left the family high and dry. Javier had imitated him for fun then. Now, it could help save his life. “I got nowhere else to go.”

  The girl glanced up and gasped at his busted lip, his missing tooth, and the blood on his chin. “You need ice.”

  “I need a room. My mom’s dead and my old man did this before he took off.”

  “Other family?” Her voice softened with concern.

  Javier shook his head, praying she would buy his cover and not recognize the fugitive underneath. His prison escape made hourly news, as did the reward for turning him in.

  “We don’t have many beds,” she said, “and those are first come, first served. I’m afraid you’ll have to—”

  “It’s all right, Victoria.”

  Javier spun around to see a tall man with salt and pepper hair standing behind him. The man studied his split lip, the bruise on his jaw, and his soiled grungy clothes. Javier buckled slightly when the man spied the edge of a tattoo peeking out from under his long-sleeve shirt. Javier’s tats were plastered all over the news, especially this one. He eyed the door, ready to bolt.

  “May I see it?” the man asked.

  Javier gulped and unbuttoned his sleeve. He pulled up the fabric while keeping one eye on the door. If need be, he could shove the old man back and be several blocks away before anyone called the cops.

  “Who did this?” The man’s voice was kind but intent.

  “I did.” Javier made his Brooklyn-coated words sound as nonchalant as possible and hoped no one would think an inmate could ink his own skin this well. Especially with the pathetic tools available behind bars.

  SAM

  Sam’s eyebrows shot up at the angel’s intricate detail. Her gown and long tresses flowed between the boy’s wrist and elbow on the soft underside of his arm. Her feathery wings wrapped up and around either side until they touched in the fine layer of black hair on top. The detail in her face was heavenly.

  The owl’s cry echoed in his ears, as did Chief Black’s words. See them with your heart. Listen with your soul. Sam shivered. “Family?”

  “No.” The boy’s accent sounded harsh. He softened it. “Not anymore.”

  “Are you in school?”

  “I’m ... out.”

  “Where are you from?”

  The boy hesitated. “Brooklyn.”

  “Anyone to stay with in Reno?”

  He shook his head.

  Chief Black’s voice whispered again. The right artist will know.

  Sam steadied himself. “What’s your name?”

  “Um, friends call me Link.”

  “Interesting.”

  “My welds link any metal. And I ink pretty well.”

  Sam had been around enough Brooklyn accents in his time to spot a fake, and he recognized a newly coined nickname when he heard it, but this boy, whoever he was, needed to be here. And his tattoo defied description. Sam extended a hand. The boy shook it. “Nice to meet you, Link. I’m Sam Fullerton.” He studied the boy’s lip. “You need a hospital. Some stitches.”

  “No.” Link jerked his arm back. “I mean, I don’t have money.” His fingers trembled as he buttoned his sleeve. “Maybe I can work around here. Get a bed. Some food. Earn my keep.”

  Sam cocked his head at the boy’s quick-witted desperation. Most teens passing through here were just as bold, driven by hunger, hate, and hormones. But none were this composed and deliberate.

  You will know. Chief Black’s voice whispered a third time, along with the lapping waters of Prism Lake.

  Sam adjusted his glasses. “What can you do besides weld?”

  “I’m good at fixing things.” His voice was so earnest he forgot the accent. He grabbed it back. “Small engines, kitchen appliances, laundry machines. You need work like that, I’m your man.”

  Sam towered over Link, but his height did nothing to calm his queasiness or the gut feeling that this boy belonged. “I have two broken washing machines. You fix the motors, do the chores we assign, you get to stay. A bed and three squares a day, a small stipend and I’ll fix that lip.”

  “‘A bed and three squares?’” Suspicion edged the boy’s voice.

  “That’s what we called it in the Army.”

  Link sighed. “Oh. Right.” The accent sharpened. “You won’t regret this. I promise.”

  This boy was broken, lost, and beaten down. He overflowed with secrets, too, but Sam knew he belonged, just as Chief Black had predicted.

  “Come on. I’ll show you to your room.” Sam’s head whirled as he led Link down the carpeted hall. “Grab a shower and some fresh clothes. The motors are in the back workroom.”

  The long painted walls seemed to morph and narrow into a portal, rather than remain a connected series of rooms. Sam felt the first Vessels puzzle piece click into place.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  SAM

  Sam gazed from her résumé to the fiery, petite woman sitting across from him in the shelter’s clinic. She was the third doctor he’d interviewed, but the first this overly qualified. He took off his glasses. “I’m curious, Ms. Lawson. You’re experienced enough to run any ER in the country. So, why here?”

  “Please, call me Eva,” she said, her words wrapped in a refined London accent.

  “All right, Eva.” Sam admired her self-assurance. “Why?”

  “It’s simple, really. To make a difference without dealing in all the red tape.” She shifted in her seat and pushed back a few strands of short wavy hair that smelled of almonds and coconut.

  Sam studied her sharp hazel eyes. Few such life-changing decisions were born from something so simple. “You studied at Tulane, then stayed for ten years,” he said. “You must have liked New Orleans.”

  “I loved it, truthfully—the food, the people, the music, and culture. After Tulane, I moved to Charity Hospital.”

  “Why leave Tulane?”

  Her smile dimmed. She tucked an auburn curl behind one ear. “I lost twin girls at birth, my marriage dissolved, and my husband moved back to Memphis. I needed a change but wanted to remain in NOLA.”

  “I’m sorry.” His stomach tightened. He’d lost children, too, but at least they were alive. He sliced into the next layer. “You came to Reno in 2006. That means you worked at Charity during Hurricane Katrina.”

  Her eyes hooded and she crossed her legs.

  Her experience must still be raw and tender from that time. Sam had read many horror stories about hospitals during Katrina, but he’d never heard a firsthand account. “What happened?”

  Eva’s face tightened. “The storm itself was a nightmare, but the broken levees flooded New Orleans into desperation and chaos. The worst part”—she crossed her arms—“was the government’s utter disregard for people and their basic needs. They knew this storm’s strength and force from the beginning. They knew the damage it wa
s capable of inflicting. And yet their negligence reduced a precious, first-rate American city into second-class rubble almost overnight.

  “I worked seven years at Charity, a public hospital caring for the city’s poorest and handling some of its most violent crimes. We made life-and-death decisions every day based on our patient’s needs, not on their insurance cards or wallets.” A tiny smile turned her lips. “Friday and Saturday nights were ‘The Gun and Knife Show.’ We often had more patients than operating rooms and some of us became quite adept at working on the less critical victims right there in the ER.”

  The smile faded. Her eyes narrowed. “Then Katrina came. Water flooded waist-high and the electricity shut off. With it went the lights, telephones, operating room equipment, IV devices, and elevators for gurneys and wheelchairs. The toilets overflowed, medicines ran out, and the inside temperature reached one hundred degrees with no air-conditioning. We broke open windows. We rigged ventilators so we could ‘breathe’ for our patients. We stacked dead bodies in the stairwells because the morgue grew full, then unreachable. What little sleep we got came on the roof, away from the stench.”

  Sam braced himself.

  Her cheeks reddened and tears filled her eyes. “Children’s Hospital, the VA, and Tulane were evacuated quickly, efficiently, which was wonderful. We expected the same for everyone. But Charity, Memorial, and those in the worst areas were all but abandoned. We begged for helicopters or ambulances or some way to carry out our patients. We faced life-and-death decisions once more, but this time about who to save first and who to possibly leave behind. If every soul is indeed sacred, how do you choose? And yet, the lack of response forced us to do just that—between neonatal children, critical-care patients, those with spinal injuries, or surgical recovery, and patients in the hospital’s prison ward. It took a week to get everyone out. A week. And we were among the more fortunate.”

  “FEMA?” Sam prodded.

  “A disaster. Run by a crony whose previous job was in the horse business. They confiscated medical supplies; diverted fuel for backup generators to other hospitals farther away, turned back ambulances sent by outside agencies, and simply did not show up where people most needed them.”

  Sam held on as the dam broke.

  “I witnessed God-awful inequality during Katrina. Those with means fled, but the poor were completely victimized: by their circumstances, by the levees, by the lack of planning, and, honestly, by the lack of care.” Her eyes blazed and her cheeks reddened with anger. She uncrossed her arms and shifted in the chair, taking a moment to calm before speaking again.

  “And to make matters worse, two hundred of us worked like Trojans after the storm to pump out the basement and clean Charity for use again. But powerful figures blocked its reopening, and the governor pulled the plug ten days before we finished. The owners turned their back on one of the nation’s oldest and best teaching hospitals in order to build a new and more expensive complex with government funds. It was criminal.” She took a deep breath and exhaled. “Putting politics, greed, and profit before people is what I detest most in corporate business, particularly where it concerns medicine.” Her trembling stopped and the crimson receded from her cheeks. “My apologies.”

  “Don’t.” Sam handed over his crisp clean handkerchief. “That was the most honest job interview I’ve ever held.”

  Eva sat back and wiped her eyes with Sam’s handkerchief. “I took a job here in Reno to get away, then worked my way to Chief of Surgery. Now, more than ten years later, the red tape has become too much, the malpractice too expensive, and, in spite of solid attempts at healthcare reform, insurance and pharmaceuticals remain too controlling. So here I am, wanting a fresh start.”

  The fresh smell of Prism Lake stirred again, as did Chief Black’s words. You will know. Sam squirmed, noting Eva’s nice clothes and expensive purse. She was not poor, broken or alone, having told him about her friends in the States and her family in England. She did not fit the Vessel profile at all.

  So why her?

  His question was answered by silence. But in that silence, Sam knew. She was not a Vessel, but she would play a vital role in the Program.

  “I can’t pay much,” he told her. “Not yet, anyway. How soon can you start?”

  She grinned like a Cheshire cat. “I believe I already have.”

  CHAPTER NINE

  THE ROGUE

  A helicopter hovered in the blustery mountain air as Jose and two other Bolivian Search and Rescue workers scraped the young boy’s remains from the rock. One of the workers threw up. Jose’s stomach surged at the bent and twisted body. It looked as though this muscled young man had been slammed onto the boulders instead of falling.

  When he tucked the boy’s shattered head into the vinyl body bag, a bead of red light flashed inside the jaw. Icy fingers gripped Jose’s spine. He blinked hard and wiped his eyes. When he looked again, the light was gone. He wrote it off to the gruesome nature of the call, but the hairs on his neck never did go down.

  Jose zipped the bag and helped his fellow workers strap it into their basket-shaped stretcher. The three men hooked four helicopter cables to the metal frame. As the wires tensed and tightened, Jose climbed aboard and rode the stretcher toward the metal bird.

  As they lifted higher in the air, the Rogue Spirit scanned Jose from his position inside the body bag. The man had not suffered much personal loss—certainly not enough to become a Vessel—but his flesh would make a sufficient cocoon until other plans could be made. He just needed the man to turn so he could enter through his back.

  The Rogue slipped into Sanjay’s mangled legs and made them jerk from inside the bag. Jose turned to look, his face a mask of horror as the legs lifted and lowered again. The Rogue returned to the dead jaw, then drifted up through the bag and into the rescue worker’s back. He penetrated the canvas safety vest and down-filled coat then disappeared inside the moist skin underneath.

  Jose yelped and doubled over when the Rogue’s icy fingers wrapped around his insides. The organs were not as pink and healthy as Sanjay’s, and the wheezing and darkness made it obvious that this man had smoked cigarettes most of his life. Still, his body would keep the Rogue safe, and his mind would be easy to control until a healthier human could be found—one more fit for travel.

  The stretcher reached the chopper, and Jose helped load it before scrambling to a pull-down jump seat. He bent his knees to his chest and wrapped his arms around them, sweating and wheezing deep breaths.

  The Rogue tested him for control, lifting Jose’s head from his knees and wringing his hands as if on their own. He tapped the man’s thoughts, his desperate fear of a nervous breakdown. Evidently that happened to some after years on this job—they could only handle so many bloody, broken, or rotting corpses before something snapped. Jose squeezed his eyes shut, clasped his hands, centering his thoughts on the fishing trip he’d planned in Rio, drinking beer, and casting his line into a calming blue sea.

  The Rogue settled into place and let the man rest. He would have no problem trading this fleshy cocoon for a younger, healthier body in Rio.

  CHAPTER TEN

  TAL

  Reno’s inner-city maze grew more foreign at every turn. Tal shoved her hands in her pockets, rounded another corner lined with vandalized buildings, and searched for a quiet place to die.

  Homeless figures huddled around garbage can fires. Others slept in boxes or doorways. Two prostitutes stepped onto the corner as a small red car slowed. The vehicle looked similar to the one in which Owen and Darden had died, and grief washed over Tal again like a wave of splintered glass. She turned into a short alley, between a barred thrift store and gang-tagged electronics shop, and hunched behind an overflowing dumpster. She gagged at the smell of sour, rotted food but swallowed down the bile and curled up in a far corner. She slipped the Klaw from her pocket and whipped out the blade.

  “You have your mother’s fire.” Her father’s voice jumped into her head, haunting her with the
memory of a dinner they’d shared one night. “That’s why we named you Tallulah.”

  “I know,” she’d retorted, stabbing at her peas. “Tallulah Bankhead. Some old snow-white movie star who loved to wear makeup. What about Billie Holiday or Halle Berry or—”

  “Skin color don’t make a name, Tal. Soul makes a name. Tallulah was spirited and determined, and she followed her dreams, just like you.” He’d shot her a sly smile while cutting his steak. “Besides, you were the only Tallulah in your class.”

  “I may be the only Tallulah in the modern world.”

  “As it should be. Now go live up to it.”

  Her father had died that same night, in his chair, watching a Tallulah Bankhead movie on cable. Heart failure had taken him to join her mother, who’d left them six months earlier after losing her battle to cancer.

  Tal hugged her knees to her chest against the cold. Her parents hadn’t meant to, but giving her that name had pressured her to perform two or three times as well as anyone else—in school, in life, at work. Parents had no idea how names messed with their kids.

  She smiled. It’s why she and Owen had chosen Darden—unique and notable, but no pre-determined stigma and not easy to twist into some demeaning nickname.

  The dumpster’s pungent smell burned her nostrils, but Tal ignored it and toyed with the tiny gold cross on her necklace. She thought of Darden, Owen, and Jake—their faces, their laughter, their deaths. Her mother had given her this cross “for protection” when she’d become a cop. A lot of good it did. Neither she nor God had saved those she loved when they needed it; now neither could save her. She curled her fingers around the chain and started to yank, but visions of her mother’s sweet face stopped her. She let go, and the cross fell limp against her neck.