Bat and the Bone

by Alexa Gregory

  “Whoa,” is all I can think to say when we walk into the cell.

  There isn't an inch of the walls that isn't plastered with drawings of DNA strands, mathematical calculations, and pages upon pages of notes that don't seem to have a beginning or an end.

  Instinctively, my eyes go to Mila to see how she is faring with the scene before us. Her arms are crossed, and she is staring daggers at Carlyle.

  "Your mother has been quite ill recently,” Carlyle says by way of explanation for the state of the cell. “It's been going on for weeks now," he adds, taking care to look saddened by his own words.

  "She was fine when I came two months ago," Mila responds, narrowing her blue eyes slightly.

  "Yes, well, around that time, she started being more erratic. She spent quite a bit of time in solitary. More so than usual."

  "How often does she get sent to solitary?" I hear myself asking.

  "More than the others. She makes the other prisoners uncomfortable. There's also the fact that they love to poke fun at her. They know just what to do to get a rise out of her. They call her the Bloody Doctor, and a fight breaks out. Every time, without fail. It's easier for everyone if she's kept from the general population sometimes. Especially when she is agitated. And as I said, she's been ill. She was hallucinating a few days before she escaped."

  "What?" Mila, who is pale to begin with, goes even paler. Her face goes ashen, her hands trembling. "Hallucinating?" she repeats, her voice barely above a whisper. "She was seeing things?”

  "I'm afraid so," the warden confirms.

  It's on the tip of my tongue to say something, but the look in Mila's eyes stops me. I could swear that her blue eyes go black as she squares her shoulders.

  "Why wasn't a psychiatrist called to look her over?" It's a demand for a real answer, one that makes a hell of a lot of sense. “Between hallucinations and the state of this room, it’s pretty clear she needed help.”

  Carlyle shakes his head. "This cell is nothing compared to those of some of our more… creative inmates. And as you know, your mother was thoroughly evaluated by multiple psychiatrists when she was on trial."

  "It's been over a decade. She should have been reevaluated."

  "Oh?" Snark drips from Carlyle's tone. "You don't think I wanted that? The system is flooded with psychiatric requests. Your mother was put on a waiting list, just like any other inmate."

  "You're telling me that when the Bloody Doctor, a woman responsible for hundreds of murders, started hallucinating, you weren't able to put a rush on things?"

  I haven't known Mila for very long, but I can tell that there is wrath in her eyes. It's not quite fury that plays in her gaze, but something wilder, something that is both beautiful and impressive. More intelligent than simply raw anger. She faces Carlyle, her face set in a serious mask.

  She is formidable. Though I'm quickly becoming addicted to Mila's blue eyes, that is not a look I would ever want to see directed at me.

  “You have to understand. Despite her notoriety, she doesn’t rank above anyone else in the prison. They’re all humans, all get the same treatment.”

  "But she isn’t human, is she?” There is no question in Mila’s tone. “Those bodies we found at the cabin, they fall on you for not being more careful. It falls on me for not providing care. Do you understand that?" Carlyle shakes his head. "We found a fresh dumpsite earlier. She’s killed again. We have blood on our hands."

  I don't agree with her, but the force of her conviction keeps me quiet. It's shaken Carlyle to his core. This is Mila's battle, and I'm man enough to let her be the general in this fight.

  Mila shouldn't feel like she is responsible for her mother's actions. It's clear that she has felt guilty for Sveta's crimes her whole life. I don't know how to appease her, to tell her that it's not her fault. That no matter what she believes, there is nothing she could have done to stop any of it.

  It's not my place.

  Maybe if Mila was mine, I could take her in my arms, hold her close, and whisper in her ears, over and over again, that she doesn't need to be absolved... Maybe then she would believe me.

  The thought strikes me deep in the chest, and I have to shake my head to clear it from thoughts of tucking Mila into my side to protect her from the world, from her own beliefs.

  She crosses her arms, her eyes still narrowed at Carlyle.

  "Had this been brought to my attention, I would have paid for an evaluation out of my own pocket. Hell, I could have gotten FUC involved. They would have sent someone over if they thought the Bloody Doctor was a rising threat."

  "Be that as it may, there is a long process to get a private evaluation completed. It involves lawyers and about a mile’s worth of red tape. We had no way of knowing that her situation would go into a tailspin. We sure couldn’t predict an escape."

  "And now my typically deranged mother is on the loose and in an unknown mental state." Mila inhales sharply. "We should have warned the public."

  It's Carlyle's turn to blanch this time around.

  "No, absolutely not. That would be nothing but a huge mess."

  "Sure. For the system that let her go. For the jail that, perhaps, has faulty security systems." There's an underlying threat in Mila's words. Carlyle doesn't miss it.

  "I assure you, Miss Starling, that we have every security in place, just like any other prison."

  "If that were true, she would still be behind bars. And please address me as Agent Starling." When those last few words leave her mouth, I want to fist-bump the air in victory.

  Carlyle's demeanor slips and changes slightly. "I didn't realize you worked for an agency."

  9

  T-Bone

  Standing in the horribly upsetting cell that housed her mother, Mila crosses her arms, staring down Carlyle.

  "I do work for FUC. I'm not here as a daughter. I'm mostly here as a professional who has to find her before Sveta adds another victim to her long list. Now, we would like to see the visitors' log." She points to a stack of letters on the floor by the bed. “I didn’t write her those. I want to know if her pen pals paid her any visits.”

  There's a dare in Mila's blazing eyes. With a sigh and a headshake, Carlyle turns on the tablet he brought with him. After a few keystrokes, he turns the screen toward us.

  "She very rarely has visitors. Besides, she spends too much time in solitary to be available for visits."

  My eyes scan the list of people who visited her. Mila's name is the only one there, but then, out of nowhere, a man by the name of Oscar Trow appears. He's come by to see her a handful of times in the past six months.

  "Who the hell is this Oscar Trow person?" I ask, taking out my phone to run his name through a search engine.

  “That sounds sort of familiar,” Mila says, scrunching up her face, deep in thought. “Oh.” Her blue eyes go wide. “I know where I’ve seen it before.”

  Mila takes out her phone and starts scrolling through it. “I have media alerts for Sveta Markov to keep an eye on things. A little while ago, I ran by this sick, twisted fan page operated by this guy.” She flips the phone over to me. “It’s anonymous, but I had Jessie, the FPU’s super hacker, look into the IP address. It was Oscar Trow. I check the website every now and again to keep an eye on him.”

  As I scroll through the site’s blog posts, I get a deeper sense of just how twisted this man is. He has a website dedicated to the research and study of Dr. Sveta Markov's work. It's all praise and filled with hypotheses on where her exploration of blood, eradication of diseases, and the quest for immortality went wrong. He offers up what the next avenues of analysis should be.

  None sounds very plausible. Or sane.

  “The last blog post is a long, drawn-out description of his visit with Sveta,” I say, my eyes scanning the entry. “He gushes about her bright intelligence and the scintillating conversation they shared.”

  “So he’s visited her a few times. The last was a couple of weeks ago," Mila says, her eyes still trained on
the visitors’ log.

  As she does, something catches her attention, and she takes a step toward the wall.

  “The body at Willowbend…” Her voice is pensive. “I don’t think it was my mother. I think it was Trow. He might have become a copycat killer. Maybe that’s what’s in those letters. That could even be what they talked about during their visits. Look at these dates. My mother was still in jail during these. Could she be tracking Trow’s kills as part of her own work?”

  If I’ve learned anything in the last few hours, it’s that anything is possible when dealing with Sveta Markov.

  “Shit. That’s not just participating in a jailbreak. He’s a person of interest in a murder.” I send texts to a few of my team leaders for both the RCMP and FUC, letting them know they need to be on alert for a man of Trow's description.

  Armed, dangerous, and definitely to be arrested on sight.

  "I still need to understand how she was able to escape,” Mila asks while I’m penning the last note to our field teams. “It’s one thing to be in contact with a crazed fan, but it’s another thing to bail out of prison.”

  "Well”—Carlyle sighs—“she disappeared from the hospital wing. She flew out of an infirmary window using her bat shape. This can only mean that she found a way to stop taking the anti-shifting serum.”

  “Or it wasn’t administered properly.” My tone is clipped because I seriously doubt this man’s capabilities. There is no way I’m letting Markov get put back here. It’s a FUC prison for her.

  Carlyle sputters, but I ignore him.

  "In the security footage, she can be seen getting into a truck." I direct my words to Mila. "It would only make sense that Trow was the driver. We won't know for sure until we apprehend them, but it's a valid guess."

  "It tracks," Mila agrees. "Any way of knowing if he's a shifter? I didn’t think to ask Jessie to check. I should have paid more attention to this website."

  “No, don’t do that,” I say, reading through the barrage of messages flooding my phone since putting out an APB on Trow but a few moments ago.

  "He doesn't seem to have a record, so there's no way of knowing for sure," I answer. "There's an all-points bulletin out for Trow now. Director Cooper has someone checking into his background to see if he is a shifter.”

  Carlyle’s tablet dings with a notification. “Oh. I need to see to this. I'll leave you to it and go back to my office. There's a lot to deal with because of this escape." He gestures to his device as if that explained it all.

  Mila shoots him a warning glare, and he clamps his mouth shut.

  “If you have any questions, please let me know,” the warden adds before turning on his heels.

  His footsteps echo down the hall before Mila lets out the breath she’s been holding. Her tough exterior cracks a bit, and her hands go to her mouth. She shakes her head in complete disbelief.

  "This is… I can’t quite believe what I’m seeing. This doesn’t look like her space. She was always such a clean freak. If I didn’t recognize her handwriting, I would say that this isn’t her cell," she whispers.

  She isn't wrong. From what I’ve learned of Markov from reading Mila’s book, she kept very clinical notes, and she was known to be methodical. There seems to be no method to this particular brand of madness.

  “There is clearly something even more deranged about her,” Mila whispers. “And that’s saying something.

  "She isn't well. She might actually be worse off than she was before," Mila goes on, taking a sheet down from the wall.

  As she continues to pluck notes off the wall, I go to the metal locker at the foot of the bed. Thankfully, Carlyle has already had his men unlock the compartment.

  I flip the lid up and immediately cover my mouth as a foul stench assaults my nostrils.

  "What is it?" Mila asks, taking a step toward me in the small cell.

  "You don't want to see this, Mila."

  She narrows her eyes at me, stepping around me to look in the locker.

  "Those are vials of blood." Her voice breaks on the words as she begins to comprehend just how badly her mother's state has worsened. "Those are a lot of vials of blood."

  Using a latex glove she produces from her messenger bag, Mila wraps a few vials into tissues and slides them carefully into her bag. Some have cracked and spilled, explaining the vile odor.

  "I'm going to tests these," she says. "We need to know if she is taking blood from herself, other inmates, or both.

  "That hardly sounds sanitary or clinically sound."

  Mila points to the writing on the walls. "I don't think she's too concerned about being clinically sound anymore. Something is clearly wrong with her. Look at her handwriting. It’s barely legible. That isn’t her. And this?” Mila points to red ink splotches on some of the notes. “That’s blood. I can smell it.” Mila gasps. “Steaming bloodbag!” She rushes to the wall, barely touching it with the tips of her fingers. “I think I know what it is.”

  “What could be compounding her past afflictions?” Because, really, how much worse can things get?

  “I think she has the Foamies.” Her tone is serious and her face grave, but the word she’s just used doesn’t track.

  “I hate to ask…What the fuck are the Foamies? Sounds like a bath product for children.”

  “It’s not good,” Mila answers, shivering as she backs away from the wall. “It's the vampire bat shifter version of rabies, and it's a very dangerous affliction. It’s pretty rare but more common in older bats who don’t digest enough blood. It basically attacks the brain, breaking down the protective mucus around the organ. As it gets worse, hallucinations and delusions get increasingly worse until the person dies from a dried-up brain. Can you imagine the kinds of delusion a person like my mother is having right now? Out there in the world?”

  Mila grabs her phone and quickly flips through her contacts. It’s on the tip of my tongue to ask her what she’s doing.

  “Nolan.” She sighs in relief. “I’m so glad you answered my call. I’m in my mother’s cell. She escaped.” Loud gasps and fast talking blares out through the phone. “Yes, yes. I know. Look, I have every reason to suspect that she has the Foamies. We need to be prepared for treatment when she gets to the FUC prison.”

  I miss the end of the conversation, but Mila signs off and shakes her head.

  “I’m guessing that was the FUC doctor?”

  “Yeah, Nolan the lion. He’ll have all the necessary treatment for her when we bring her in.”

  “So there’s a cure,” I assume.

  “Yes, it’s different than or rabies. She needs iron-fortified blood and to be given a few antibiotics. And sooner, rather than later. She won't be getting any better. In fact, it's only going to get worse."

  “The Foamies sound atrocious. They really should have picked a more threatening name for it,” I grumble as the gravity of the already intense situation sinks in.

  Mila takes a deep breath, closing her eyes against the heaviness hanging in the cell.

  "Are you okay?" I wonder if Mila will get sick of me checking in on her. But I can't help the concern. This is some heavy stuff. I have to commend her for being a force of absolute composure. But again, I fully reserve the right to worry about her. I can’t help it.

  The color of her eyes is softened, the corners of her mouth downturned.

  "I'm okay," she whispers. "I hate to admit it, but I truly appreciate how you keep checking in on me. Really. But I'm only going to be fine when we get out of here and get her back."

  "That's fair. So what can we do? Logically, we should head to Lake Murray. But perhaps we should look into Oscar Trow and see if he has any properties."

  As I speak, I pull out my phone and start typing away furiously as Mila packs away the series of journals kept by Markov and the stacks of letters.

  "I have my best guys digging into Trow. Let's just head to Lake Murray."

  Taking one last look around the small cell, Mila sighs heavily.

&n
bsp; "When I was a kid, she baked the absolute worst sugar cookies. They were always a tiny bit burned, and the icing was always too clumpy. But she would hand me one, beaming with pride. I'd eat it because she was my mom and I loved her. It's hard to reconcile the two people she is."

  As we walk back to the car, I don't say anything.

  I don't know the words that could possibly make this better for Mila.

  10

  T-Bone

  The sun is fully rising by the time we get back to the SUV. I drive the car as close to the entrance door as possible so that Mila only needs to put on sunglasses and tuck her head under her hoodie to avoid the sun's damaging rays.

  In the safety of the dark vehicle, she takes a deep breath and leans her head back on the seat. Tears line her eyes, and her entire body begins to tremble. Mila shakes her head, and I get the distinct impression that she is trying to dislodge whatever emotion she's having about her mother and the state of her cell.

  Seeing strong, energetic Mila so affected by this is hard. I feel bad for involving her in this mission. If I had known from the get-go that she was Sveta Markov's daughter, I like to think I wouldn’t have approached her for her help.

  But that's a lie.

  I would have, for the good of the case. The only reason why I'm reacting so strongly to Mila's distress is because I want to protect her from the turmoil she is living.

  "Mila, it's okay." I pitch my voice low.

  "No." Her voice is so small, so hurt that I just let my instincts take over.

  I tug her toward me, over the center console, settling her on my lap. I wrap her up in my arms and squeeze her small, curvy form to mine.

  "It makes sense to feel a whole mess of things right now," I whisper against the crown of her head. "It's all right to be torn between caring for a woman who raised you, who is sick, and the woman who did horrible things."

  Mila stays very quiet, her hands pressed up against my chest. She inhales deeply, eyes closed, and a shiver runs across her body.

  "After all this time, I still try to make sense of the things that she has done, you know? Some days, I hate her. Flat-out hate her for ruining our lives, for hurting people. And other days, I think that she wanted to do good but let her hubris get the better of her. On those days, it's not her that I hate." Her body begins to shake in earnest, as she has stopped breathing. A few tears escape her, making the blue of her eyes go gray. "It's me. For even thinking of sympathizing with her, even just a fraction. If she had just gone through the proper channels. Getting grants and permissions, using blood donors..."