by D. R. Perry
I turn around, my back to the elevator, then hang a right down the hall leading to Dr. Maris's ICU. I know she's here tonight. On the way over in Scott’s truck, I called and asked. But then again, I didn't leave a message. I start thinking maybe she’ll be busy, and I can just leave and have my chat about Maury with DeCampo instead.
Going to the king empty-handed, however, is probably not a good way to make as enormous a request as turning my best friend when I’m still so new myself. I’ll only get one shot, too. Decisions about someone becoming a vampire are always final.
I can't even make a good case that Maury would be useful. He's got almost the same skill set I do, so the others wouldn’t think he could help us retake Providence from Whitby. I have to hope Dr. Maris is willing and able to give us access to the thing Stephanie thinks we need to cure the king’s ailment, whatever it is.
As I walk through the hallways in the Intensive Care Unit at Kent County Hospital, I turn my head left and right to peer through the glass that fronts each room, separating critical patients from passersby. Probably protecting them, too. I don't see Dr. Maris in any of those.
A door with her name on it is at the end of the hallway. I walk straight up to it and raise my hand, about to turn the knob and open it. Or not, if it’s locked. Scott grabs me by the wrist.
"You never know what's behind the door when centaurs are involved."
"How would you know? You met her the same night I did."
"I've had way less to do than you over the last handful of weeks, and Gramps has lots of lore he’s happy to share with me."
"Good point." I bow my head out of respect for my dearly departed free time. "Thanks."
"You're welcome." Scott raises his hand and knocks. Which was what I should have done in the first place because it’s just polite.
I hear the tap and squeak of Dansko clogs on linoleum tile from the other side of the door. Yeah, she's in there. The knob turns and the door pushes out, almost hitting me in the nose. I step back in time, thank God.
"Crispo. Don't tell me one of your friends is currently a guest in a room down the hall."
"No, I can honestly say none of my friends are occupying beds on your ICU."
"They’d better not be in the emergency room, either."
"Nope, none of my pals are down there, either."
"Well, you'd better come in and tell me why you're here already. I figure it isn't something to discuss out in the hall." She steps aside, making room for me and Scott to enter her office.
"You figure right." I walk in, Scott following me.
“Always.” Dr. Maris doesn't sit behind her desk or offer us the chairs in front of it. Instead, she closes the door and leans her shoulders against it. I hear the snap of a pushbutton lock that she engages behind her back.
"I hate to incur any more debt than I'm already in, but I need your help if it's possible."
"I'm not opening the vault for you again."
"That’s fine. I'm not here for that. Somebody else needs help."
"Oh, so you're taking out new debt to pay off the old, then?"
"No, actually. I'm doing some research for a friend."
"Is this the type of friend who also drinks blood?"
"Yes, I tend to have a lot of those. Funny, huh?" I smirk. I can't help it. Dr. Maris’s assumptions are almost absurd, and it's been all I can do to keep from laughing to break some of my tension anyway.
"Like a clown." She looks at Scott, clearly done talking to me.
"Don't look at me. I'm just here for moral support."
"Now I've seen everything. An emotional support werewolf.” She snorts. “Give me a break."
"Look, all I want is to ask if Stephanie McQueen can have a look through your spare blood, if there even is any at Kent County."
"Stephanie? Why didn't you say so in the first place?" Dr. Maris rolls her eyes, tapping the toe of one clog-clad foot on the tile.
"I don't know."
"That was a rhetorical… Never mind.” She tosses her head as though to clear it. “Sure. If Stephanie's got the time, I've got some supply. But there's one problem."
"Okay, lay it on me."
"Most of it is dead blood."
Her words start what feels like a tornado in the pit of my stomach, even though I'm reasonably sure all the blood I drank tonight came from living people. Great. Now I'm getting flashbacks to my dead blood vision episodes. Well, it's not great, actually, but maybe you don’t know or remember what I mean.
Let me refresh your memory. Each vampire has a signature ability besides the usual extra hearing and sense of smell. Most of us even get more than one, which I learned very recently. My first and worst one is having visions. Why worst, you ask? Because there's a catch.
I have to drink a substance it turns out I'm allergic to in order to get those visions. Yup, you guessed it. Dead blood. For other vampires, it’s just not very nourishing, like junk food, but it makes me spectacularly ill. The one upside to all the pain is I get to see how the person the blood belonged to died. This has helped me on more than one occasion, because supernatural deaths are mysterious. But my bad reaction is a bitch and a half.
Some people’s allergies cause hives. I'm not so lucky. Dead blood doesn’t just make me vomit. When vampires get sick, it ain't pretty. Not everything that comes up is blood. After a certain point, I start sicking up the lining of my stomach, and then parts of the organ. If someone doesn't snap me out of it, I could die by puking. Definitely not the way I want to go out for good when it's time.
So that’s why I surprise myself by not immediately rejecting Doctor Maris’s gift horse. I shock her, too, because she knows about my allergy. But maybe you’re in the same boat as Scott and not too surprised. He says I’m an altruist, even though I don’t agree.
“Well, that might work, I guess.”
“Do you know what she’s looking for, exactly?”
“No, not at all.” I shrug. “She says she can’t tell me about it. Beyond what you just heard.”
“Here.” Doctor Maris plucks a business card from a wire mesh holder on her desk. “Tell your sire to call me at least ten minutes before she comes in.”
“Will do.”
“Is that all?”
“Well—” I’m about to ask about Maury and whether she knows his oncologist.
“It’s got to be. I’m out of time.” Doctor Maris points at the door. “Now get out of here.”
I raise my hand like I’m back in school.
“Skedaddle.”
“Okay.”
“Scram.”
“I said, okay!”
I’d say she didn’t have to tell me twice, but apparently impatient centaurs have a knack for repetition. Or at least that’s what I assume until I open the door.
Leaning against the wall outside alone is a fifteen-year-old kid. You might wonder why a teenager younger than Scott is loitering in an Intensive Care Unit at an hour when most of his peers are doing their homework. Don’t ask me, because I’ve got no idea. But unfortunately, I know this particular urchin. He’s not what he appears to be in more than one way. And that’s why I step backward instead of heading out of the doctor’s office.
“Mr. Crispo.”
“Mr. Caprice.”
“You can call me Sebastian.”
“Thanks, Mr. Caprice.”
“Tino, come on. Give the guy a break.” Scott actually tugs on my sleeve. He hasn’t done that since he was eleven.
“No.” I pull my arm away from Scott, then cross my arms and scowl at the other kid.
Yeah, I’m being hard on someone who’s acting friendly enough. But Sebastian Caprice only happens to have decent manners. His mundane connections are all Mafia, and his supernatural ones are even worse.
He recently became a type of creature that’s going to haunt my nightmares for a century or more. And that’s no surprise. There isn’t much out there that can eat a vampire. Sebastian can. He’s a Lethian, also known as a memory-
drinker.
I’ve still got holes in my memory, and my short-term recall will probably be on the fritz for decades because of a creature like Sebastian. Stephanie tells me it’ll improve somenight, but one of them fed from me for years, literally messing with my mind.
Like I said, it’s supposed to get better, but only if another Lethian doesn’t come along and think I’m a tasty snack. So, of course, you understand why I’m not happy to see the Caprice kid here, there, or anywhere.
“Give him a break, Tino.” Scott elbows me in the ribs. “He’s new. You remember what that’s like, right?”
“Yeah, no thanks to someone like him.”
“Get out of the doorway.” Doctor Maris stamps and snorts, making me wonder whether she’s about to charge through and knock Sebastian over.
“Maybe I’m protecting you.”
“From my student?”
“Wait, what?”
“You heard the good doctor, Tino.” Scott nudges me again. “Move it.”
I step aside, and Scott follows. I watch the werewolf give Sebastian a sheepish grin. Yeah, that’s a prime example of irony right there.
“Sorry about my partner.” Scott shrugs. “But really, even if you want to blame him, you can’t be surprised.”
“Maybe you’re right.” Sebastian shakes his head, then looks at me. “Mr. Crispo, I’m trying to do the best I can with this whole thing. It’s why I asked the doctor here to help me learn to control myself. I don’t want to make more enemies than I already have, but I couldn’t let things stand the way they were with my mother in charge, either. Some part of you has to get that, right?”
I freeze in that wide beige hallway, silent. I can absolutely grok where this cocky kid is coming from, and hating every second of empathy I’ve got for him doesn’t make either emotion vanish. His situation is familiar, and his words even more so. But I can’t shake the idea that trusting him could be a big mistake. Not every anti-hero gets a redemption arc, and the odds are against him.
“Do what you’ve got to. But stay away from me and mine.”
Sebastian blinks. Why are his eyes so wide afterward? How could he be surprised by my reaction to him? He’s a monster now, chose to be one, went out of his way to steal his power from the Lethian who preyed on me.
I watch him walk into Doctor Maris’s office. She reaches out and shuts the door in my face. That’s fine by me. I do an about-face and start striding down the hall, Scott at my heels. I don’t want to be cruel, just cautious. But that idea sits on my heart like a lead weight the moment it enters my mind.
Caution has never come with such a steaming heap of guilt before.
As we stand outside the elevator, waiting for its ascent, an unwelcome thought occurs to me. Maybe Sebastian only struck his predecessor down because I told him to take power over his life. The shame from that night already drags on my conscience, though I wasn’t aware of its exact nature until now. I open my mouth, about to make a confession of sorts to Scott right there in Kent County Hospital’s fifth-floor hall.
But the muffled sound of Sebastian ugly crying in Doctor Maris’s office silences me.
There’s no room for words in the echo of a Lethian’s tears.
Chapter Six
Outside the hospital, I slip Maya’s spiffy new notebook out of my pocket. After flipping it open, I jot notes about the stuff Maury wants me to investigate. Scott stares at my jacket, where I tucked the manila envelope, then gestures at it, his eyebrows gaining altitude.
“Hey, thanks for reminding me I’ve got that, and sticking with me through that whole embarrassing episode.” I put the notebook away again, the notes finished. After that, I hold my right hand out toward my buddy. “Sorry about storming out of there, and for losing my temper. I was a dick.”
“Nah,” Scott snorts. “More like a prick, you know, because of the fangs?”
“Nice dad joke, kid.” My chuckle turns into a sob.
“What are we gonna do?” Scott sniffles, dabbing the corner of his eye. “About Maury?”
“This case, to start with.” I hold my hand out to let him pass the folder over to me. “After that, it’s going to depend on what happens with DeCampo.”
“Have you thought about asking the other guy?” Scott stares at his shoes. “Whitby?”
I freeze. Which looks pretty disconcerting on a vampire because we don’t have to breathe or blink. But I can’t really stop myself from stilling. I’m utterly shocked by Scott’s idea. I take a moment and try thinking about the situation from my enemy’s perspective.
I’m a major inconvenience for the fake King of Providence. The fact that my friends and I won’t join up with his court and acknowledge his rulership makes his position unsteadier than he probably likes. But my mind refuses to take the next step along this speculative path without verbalizing.
“Would he negotiate with me? Accept my vow to stay out of the struggle for the throne in exchange for Maury’s life?”
“I don’t know, man.” Scott shakes his head, which is still tilted down.
“I could find out, though.”
“They can’t stop you, right? Steph and the others, I mean. From going downtown to see him?”
“No. I’m a full member of vampire society now. I can go where I want unsupervised. It’s dangerous to go in there alone, though.”
“Why?”
“I might never come out again. I’m not important enough to the right people. My vampire etiquette skills are practically nonexistent too. That makes me both intolerably obnoxious and expendable.”
“Sounds like a gamble for sure. Are you going to take it?”
“I think my plate’s full enough without a heaping helping of whatever Whitby’s serving.” I shrug. “Besides, asking him seems too easy and not in a good way. What did that old wizard say?”
“Not all those who wander are lost?”
“Nah, the other guy.”
“The one about choosing between what’s right and what’s easy?”
“That’s the one.”
“So, I guess you’ve got a lot of hard work to do then.”
“Starting with Maury’s case.”
“Hmm.” Scott finally looks up, scratching his head. “Don’t tell me, I think I’ve got this. If one of Whitby’s people is causing this problem that the mundane police are looking into, then you have ammunition.”
“Right.” I nod, then clear my throat. “Dealing with Whitby alone definitely seems way too easy. And he doesn’t like me. I’d probably come out of any one-on-one meeting with him in a vacuum canister.”
“Ugh, Tino.” Scott takes a step back, his nose wrinkled and his eyes wide. “Don’t talk like that.”
“Sorry for that graphic little interlude, dude.” I take a deep breath that feels like a crutch. “Neither of us is an expert, but do you think Maury has time for you to do this the hard way?”
“I’m no expert, but I managed to get a look at the folder next to Mrs. Weintraub’s jacket.”
“What did it say?”
“Here.”
Scott shows me a picture he took with his phone. It’s of a medical document.
“You know this breaks all those HIPAA laws, right?”
Scott only shrugs. I read the words in the image.
“We’ve got some time. According to this, he’s still getting chemotherapy.”
“How long, do you think?”
“Six weeks of the chemo at least. Who knows, after that. So I’d better hustle my bustle.”
“Did you want to go and talk to Kayleigh now?”
“Yeah, let’s do it. I’ll skim this on the way over. And thanks for driving.”
“No problem.”
We get into the beat-up old truck and buckle in. Rhode Island is a click it or ticket state.
Looking through the file is interesting. The fact that Kayleigh and other women like her haven’t filled out reports or filed charges should result in just a page or two inside. But my old flame was foun
d by a beat cop in Roger Williams Park. The victim before her had an off-duty Cranston officer literally trip over her during a morning jog.
There are three victims in all, each found three days apart, and in places they don’t remember getting to. Each was unconscious with steady vitals, not rousing until at least five minutes after being found. The women vary in age, with my ex smack in the middle. The oldest is sixty-seven, and the youngest twenty. I only recognize Kayleigh’s name.
One other detail jumps out at me. The women all have bruising around their right wrists like someone grabbed them and pulled hard. As much as I’d like to suspect a Lethian, specifically Sebastian Caprice, that bruising doesn’t match that monster’s modus operandi. The memory drinkers don’t have to touch their victims.
“We’re here.”
Scott’s putting the clunky old truck in park out in front of the duplex Kayleigh moved into with her fiancé Calvin.
“Hey, Scott. Thanks for all the rides and stuff.”
“It’s all good.”
“You don’t have to go in with me.”
“I’m gonna anyway.”
“Thanks again.”
“No problem, my dude.”
I find the mailbox with their name on it, then ring the bell beside it. Shortly afterward, I get the impression we’re being watched. A glance upward confirms my suspicions that Kayleigh’s put a camera on the front porch. Another over my shoulder tells me Scott’s got a wolf friend hiding at the edge of the wooded strip between the street and a walking trail.
Supernatural people and the mundanes who hunt them are paranoid.
It makes complete sense, but I sigh anyway. Our tentative truce with the hunter group Kayleigh belongs to ended when Esther, Scott, and I gave Calvin the potion that woke him from his months-long coma.
You’d think folks would be more grateful.
The lesson here seems to be that it’s easier to make a lasting deal when it’s vamp to magician or werewolf to salamander. But vampo-a-mano is rarer than hen’s teeth.
