“He’s awake?” I cried, springing out of my chair. “Is he going to be okay?”
The nurse bobbed her graying red head, gesturing for me to accompany her while Carson and Jake waved me off. “He’s awake but just a bit disoriented, so go easy on him. He’s getting stitches now, and we’ll need to keep him here overnight thanks to that nasty pair of bumps on his noggin. What happened to him?”
“Accident on the Burke-Gilman trail. I was biking.” By the third or fourth telling (I’d lost track) the story had gotten fractionally more solid, and it was the best story I had. So I stuck with it. I wasn’t about to explain that the accident in question was a rampaging troll. Not until I could talk to Christopher—and nail down whether I hadn’t dreamed the whole damned thing. I wasn’t convinced I hadn’t, though my presence in a real hospital, on my way to check on a man who’d gotten real injuries trying to defend me, was a mighty strong argument against the dream theory.
I hadn’t set foot in an emergency ward in five years. But I had vivid memories of when I’d broken my arm (falling off a high stool changing a light bulb of all things), memories of hours of pain in a ward like this one. I shivered a little as I followed the nurse down one long hallway, around a corner to another, and to the open door of a treatment room. My escort, clearly accustomed to ushering nervous visitors to patients, gave me another friendly pat on the shoulder to go with the ones I’d been getting from Carson and Jake. “You can go right on in, sweetie,” she said, and bustled off.
Just inside were three people. Christopher lay half-propped up on an examination table between a doctor and a nurse. The blood was gone from his face and hair; the latter looked damp, sponged clean. His black flannel shirt was gone too, presumably because he’d bled all over it, though he still had on his jeans and hiking boots.
To his right the doctor, a blonde woman in powder-blue medical scrubs, squinted through round glasses as she worked at the delicate task of sewing stitches into his scalp. Her long, agile hands caught my eye, and I bit my lip at the sight of the needle glinting between her fingers. On the opposite side of the table, the fresh-faced, gangly young nurse held Christopher’s head steady while the doctor worked. Apparently the nurse was also handling the requisite friendly bedside—or in this case, table-side—manner, for as I slipped into their presence he was saying amiably, “Kind of far from home, you sound like. We don’t get many Scotsmen in this corner of the country.” He glanced up as I approached, adding, “Ah, somebody here to see you.”
“Not Scotland. Newfoundland,” Christopher muttered in a hollow, toneless voice. “I’m from…”
He trailed off as he saw me. Though it was still dimmed by pain and wooziness, his gaze nevertheless gave me the spooky feeling that he was seeing past my skin and flesh, straight into my blood and bones. The moment I was in range his hand snaked out to capture mine, an extra, physical hold on my attention to go along with the intangible pull of his stare.
“You’ve got to tell ’em,” he pleaded, his voice turning rough with desperation. “You saw it—you know. I’ve got to go!”
“Whoa there,” the doctor chided while she tied off the last of the stitches. “You’re in no condition to go anywhere but to bed. Nathan, about that bed?”
“Already prepped, Dr. Weigner,” the nurse replied.
“Good. He’s not terribly rational, I’m afraid. Go easy on him.” This last was clearly to me, pitched too low for Christopher’s ears. I scarcely noticed, for Christopher’s terrified eyes and his hand gripping mine trumped everything else for my attention.
To him, I ventured, “You can go tomorrow, okay? They, um, really ought to keep an eye on you tonight.”
His head and shoulders jerked up, but if he was trying to rise he immediately changed his mind—or else his injured body overruled him. He fell back to the pillow even before Dr. Weigner and Nathan had to press him down again. But he hung onto my hand, croaking at me, “You don’t understand, lass… if I stay, I’ll never leave! Got to go, got to go before I’m claimed…”
“Mister, ah, MacSimidh, you’ve got a serious concussion and you’ve lost a considerable amount of blood,” the doctor said, leaning down a bit to double-check her handiwork before taping a thin gauze pad over Christopher’s brow. From her his last name came out ‘macsimmith’, and she sounded no more certain of the pronunciation than I’d been. “If you’re bent on going out that door I can’t stop you, but I strongly advise you to stay put. Be a sport and don’t make me sue myself for malpractice, what do you say?“
“Listen to her, Christopher,” I entreated, aiming for a soft, steady tone. Both the nurse who’d brought me to the ward and Dr. Weigner had said to go easy on him, but his inexplicable panic somehow seemed more important a reason for comfort than any medical advice. An urge to smooth a few strands of damp hair away from his forehead welled up in me, but I tamped it down; the doctor was securing the last side of the gauze pad and I didn’t want to get in her way. “You’ve already gotten your head cracked open twice on my account. If you do it again, I’m not sure I’ll be able to cope, okay?”
That seemed to perplex him. Christopher couldn’t furrow his bandaged brow, but his eyes sort of crinkled up as he looked up at me, the panic in them ebbing a little—though that just might have been his vision going out of focus. “Had to,” he whispered. “She’d have done…”
She? What ‘she’? “Christopher, listen, is there somebody you need me to call?” I asked. “Somebody I should let know where you are?”
“No, no one, I’ve no one this far west…” His head tossed a little, restlessness fighting its way out through his fog. “I’ve got to go, I’ve got to go…”
With long-suffering mock resignation, the doctor sighed and gestured Nathan at a hypodermic. “Why do the big rugged ones never want to stay put?” she inquired of no one in particular as the nurse deftly pulled Christopher’s jeans away from his hip and administered a shot.
“Is that safe?” My attention swiveled to the nurse, some half-formed recollection about keeping people with concussions awake flashing across my head. “I mean, putting him to sleep?”
“Don’t worry,” Nathan said. “This is just an analgesic to get his pain under control.”
“We will need to wake him up periodically tonight,” Dr. Weigner explained. “Once his head stops hurting so much, he’ll be better able to rest.”
Christopher stirred again as if in protest, but his eyes grew drowsier as the doctor spoke. Still disquieted by his frightened stare, I squeezed his hand even as I bobbed my head at the doctor. “Just rest, okay?” I murmured. And since he seemed to need to hear it, I added, “You can go tomorrow.” Wherever it was he was so dead set on going.
He pulled in a shuddering breath, his head turning to the side and staying there, his focus starting to drift. But he didn’t let go of my fingers. As if suddenly remembering he held them, he renewed his grip and pulled insistently at my hand.
“You can see ’em,” he breathed, his words thickened by his accent and his pain, but still unnervingly clear. “See ’em with your shinin’ eyes. Look sharp, girl. Watch your back.”
Chapter Four
True to their word, Jake and Carson got me home once Christopher was ensconced in a bed for the night. I could easily have collapsed into one of the ER ward’s beds myself, but I had no injuries past scrapes and bruises and I was still coherent enough to want to cling to the few scraps of dignity I had left. So I stayed on my feet long enough to let the boys escort me to their car, and on the way out wrote down my name and phone number for the orderly—the land line at home, since my cell was toast. The hospital couldn’t contact me about Christopher since I wasn’t family, though Nathan promised to relay my note in case the patient wanted to do it himself.
On the way back to the house, I started to drift off in the back seat. But I snapped awake when Jake said, “Kendis, if you need us to stay with you tonight, we will of course cancel our trip.”
“What?” Ru
bbing my eyes, trying to refocus my weary thoughts, I peered at my housemate. “Right. Trip.” The boys liked to take weekend jaunts sometimes, to places like Whidbey Island, the San Juans, or the hot springs out on the Olympic Peninsula. Sometimes I tagged along, but not often—third wheel and all that. I couldn’t remember what they’d planned this time, but I frowned at them both nevertheless. “You can’t cancel on my account. I’ll be okay.”
“We can’t cancel at all,” Carson muttered. Most of his attention was on his driving, but his gray eyes flicked a glance at the rear view mirror by way of looking at me. “Kind of late for that.”
He didn’t look like a man planning a weekend with his partner; he looked nervous, an expression I didn’t often see on Carson’s face. Jake looked pensive. I squinted back and forth between them and demanded, “Am I missing something here?”
Sighing, Jake said, “We’re going to deal with family business of mine this weekend. It’s complicated.” He swiveled his head around to regard me with a look so thoughtful and direct that I jerked my own gaze away. I was still twitchy about what I’d seen in the bathroom mirror, and not at all certain how I’d explain it if Jake noticed anything new about my face. “And it isn’t pertinent to tonight, anyway. If you’d like to talk about it, if you need us, my business can wait.”
I wanted to talk, all right. I wanted to shriek, wail, and howl that I’d seen a monster. But the moment I gave in to that impulse was the moment the boys would wonder if I’d gone nuts and I wouldn’t lay that on them. Especially not on the night before they left to take care of ‘complicated family business’. I could do the math. They were a male couple, after all. And from what I knew of Jake’s family, only settled in America in the last couple of generations, they were big on traditional Japanese culture. And conservative to boot.
“Right now,” I said, slumping back and closing my eyes, “I just want to decompress. I’ll be fine, Jake, I swear.”
“If you’re sure…”
“I’m sure.”
He let it go, to my relief. But to ease his and Carson’s minds, once we got home I accepted their offers of chamomile and peppermint tea and the recovery of my bike from the Burke-Gilman trail. Once I had the former, they set off to retrieve the latter, leaving me to the company of my cat and my wildly churning thoughts.
The haven of my bed temptingly beckoned, as did my favorite quilt all done in fiery shades of red, yellow, and orange. But my hands needed the warmth of the cup of tea, and after that, my violin. I settled on the couch with the instrument, not noticing what I played aside from slow, gentle airs in minor keys that suited my mood. Each note’s vibration through my palms and the physical act of drawing the bow across the strings provided the comfort I sought. Forgiving me for my earlier negligence, Fort curled up at my side, lending his purr to the violin’s soft meditations.
When my eyes refused to stay open any longer, I stumbled off to sleep without bothering with the usual nighttime bathroom rituals. The bathroom had a mirror; the mirror meant my reflection. And right under “real, live monsters” on my list of things I least wanted to see on the planet was a pair of yellow eyes staring out of my mirror. I shed clothing and shoes and crawled beneath the quilt, wrapping its vibrant hues around me, and imagining myself an ember in a fireplace’s heart.
Fort jumped up to join me, bonking me with his substantial head until I rolled over on my back. Then he climbed atop my chest, jammed his whiskery muzzle under my chin, and launched into a steady, rib-rattling purr. I kept most of me under the quilt, but snuck an arm out to hug my cat close. And after a while, I slept—somewhat.
They never blossomed into full-blown nightmares, but scattered fragments of dreams continually sparked like bolts of summer lightning across my mind. I remember running along a Burke-Gilman trail overgrown with sinister vegetation through which I glimpsed misshapen shadows and implacable, glowing eyes. I remember the presence of something huge and ancient behind me giving chase, something I needed to elude at all costs.
But I never saw what gave pursuit. Far clearer were the flashes of Christopher’s searing, pleading gaze and the strange electric pressure of his fingers, his skin hot against mine in dreaming as it had not been in truth, almost too hot to bear.
* * *
A sane, sensible person would have called in sick the next morning. But when the alarm clock jarred me awake, neither sense nor sanity had gained much ground against the night before. I still felt in physical and mental shock, queasy and off kilter, as though I were fighting off the flu. My skin itched and stung in random places. My eyes, gritty and heavy with inadequate sleep, burned.
I risked a glance into the mirror when I stumbled into the bathroom to make myself fit for public consumption. My hair was a wild mess, but a fast shower and several determined swipes of a brush fixed that. Less easily mended were my haggard complexion and the shadows at the corners of my glassy and all too yellow eyes. Once out of the shower I shook my head vigorously and scrubbed a towel across my face, hoping my eyes would revert to normal if I just woke up a little more. No dice.
Idiot, I chastised myself. If they didn’t change overnight, they’re not changing now!
Of course, they shouldn’t have changed color in the first place, but my battered prudence sternly recommended I not go there.
Instead, I retrieved my blood-marked biking top from the bathtub. It bore one small stain, high on the shoulder where Christopher’s head had rested. The sight of it reminded me of the shape of his body in my grasp and his agitated eyes, and I swallowed a little while I mechanically scrubbed Woolite into the garment and left it to soak in the sink. I dressed without noticing what I was wearing, confined my unruly hair with a scrunchy and my favorite patchwork-hued cap, and grabbed my backpack and keys.
En route through the kitchen to get Fort a few of his favorite kitty treats, I found a note from Jake on the table. In his clean, spare handwriting it read:
Kendis,
We got your bike last night and put it on the porch. Your phone was trashed, but we found the SIM card, so you should at least be able to recover your data. We’re setting off for the weekend, but I really do want to talk to you when we get back. It’s important. Please call if you need us for anything.
Jake, 6:40am
I didn’t recognize the number Jake had written down; it wasn’t Carson’s cell. Fort, however, gave me no time to mull it. He pawed my shoes and yowled until I forked over the treats, and only then was I free to flee to work. I fled gratefully. If anything could banish last night’s weirdness from my brain, it was the prosaic clamor of a software department about to ship their latest product.
The sight of my bike stopped me in my tracks. I’d forgotten my worry about some passerby finding the troll’s remains; the memory brought new panic with it now as it came flooding back. I slumped against my front door, wondering wildly if the boys had seen what was left of the monster, and terrified that it might have come back to life.
Then clearer thoughts prevailed. The bike was here. Damaged, its mangled frame and sliced tires mute testimony to the reality of the ambush on the trail, but here. Chances were slim that the troll, even if it had reanimated, had politely returned the bike it had almost bent in half. No one but my housemates knew I’d abandoned the bicycle. Therefore, they must have reached Burke-Gilman, found the bike, and brought it home without mishap.
But as I stumbled off to the nearest bus stop, I still felt like a heel for endangering them, and sick with nervousness besides. When they got back, what would I say? ‘Did you guys happen to see a petrified troll with my Swiss Army knife sticking out of it when you got my bike?’
Yeah. Right. That’d sound nonchalant.
As I walked I fought to keep from jumping at random sounds or flinching every time I hastened by a bush or a hedge. At first all I saw within the neighborhood greenery were sparrows and finches and a few foraging squirrels, but the sparkling, translucent-winged shape flittering in the curlicue limbs of a monkey-p
uzzle tree was no bird. Not when it peeked down at me with doll-like but unmistakably humanoid eyes as it vanished into the shelter of the higher branches.
Nor was the thing scampering across someone’s lawn a squirrel, though it was squirrel-sized. Clutching a discarded fragment of uneaten pizza, it ran upright on two feet and cackled to itself in triumph. It hissed at me in passing. Squirrels don’t do that, and they don’t have wicked little goblin faces and shaggy lime-green hair either.
Okay, midget, pizza-filching goblins? Not as scary as trolls. But I bolted across the street anyway, choking back a scream as I went. Unfortunately, I made the mistake of looking where I’d been rather than where I was going, and tripped headlong over the curb. I staggered, went sprawling, and crashed through the thick green laurel hedge that blocked off the sidewalk from the yard behind it.
Twigs scratched at my cheeks and snagged my hat off my head; my left palm and elbow scraped against concrete as I landed hard. I lay stunned for a few seconds with my eyes squeezed tightly shut. Then I groaned a string of curses and tried to extricate myself from the hedge.
But before I could get up, I blinked through frustrated tears and saw a dozen pairs of eyes glaring malevolently down at me. They belonged to a swarm of creatures with twig-thin bodies no bigger than my hand, and long brown noses and fingers of a bark-brown color that made them seem like mobile pieces of the hedge. Some of them hissed. The rest shrilled in anger, a noise that echoed somewhere to the immediate right of my head, and in alarm I realized two more of the twig-creatures were writhing through my hair.
Worse yet, they were calling out comprehensible words.
“Nasty Big One falling into nest!”
“Scratch it! Sting it! Make it hurt for falling on us!”
“Magic in eyes, magic in smell, sting it before it smashes us with magic!”
My brain reeled at those high, piping voices, but I didn’t stop to make sense of any of it. I hurtled to my feet, snatched up my hat, and flailed out with it at the creatures. They swarmed after me with preternatural speed. Half of them leapt up to cling with sharp, miniscule fingers to my limbs and sides before I’d run ten feet, and I swatted at them as though they were a cloud of mosquitoes out for blood. The jabs of their fingers and the nips of their teeth stung and itched like any mosquito bite, only worse.
Faerie Blood Page 4
