by Debra Dunbar
I’d somehow managed to get through an early coffee shop shift, calling Janice during my break to let her know that the sudden epidemic of gastrointestinal illnesses was due to a plague demon—and that I was on it. I also asked Kyra to coordinate a meeting for me with Doctor Wolfram, and gather additional information on the patients. Reynard had arrived at dawn to sprawl on my couch with Raven beside him as he researched, so I went straight to the hospital after work.
Wolfram was waiting for me in the lobby. I handed him a cup of coffee that I’d brought for him from work, hoping it was still reasonably warm.
“We’re up to nearly three hundred cases, but in spite of that I’ve got good news,” he told me. “I’m positive that I can heal the infected patients as soon as the magical link is broken. The demon needs to be out of this plane, as well as the vampire who spread it, then the infected should be back to normal within a few hours. It’s completely a blood-borne disease outside of whatever the initial infection source was. There’s no risk of epidemic as long as everyone takes the same normal precautions they do to prevent the spread of HIV or Hepatitis.”
Well for humans anyway. It’s not like the vampires could forego blood.
I gave him the short version of the conversation Dario and I had had pre-dawn outside my car. “We’re worried that vampires can spread the disease to other vampires as well as to the humans they drink from once infected, so there must be a saliva transfer at least from the vampire end.”
Wolfram nodded his head. “It could be their venom rather than their saliva. Humans don’t have those glands.”
“Are you sure the vampire needs to die? I can’t just banish the demon? I’m having a hard time pinpointing which vampire could be at the end of the magical link.” Was it Simon? Was it the traitor from Dario’s Balaj? Or was it another vampire entirely?
“No, banishing the demon won’t be enough. The magic is tied to a vampire. I can clearly feel it. Both the vampire and the demon need to go for any of the infected to be cured.”
Why was I always having to face killing someone? Russell, Dark Iron, the Boo Hag teens, and now this. “What’s the dormancy period?”
“I’m not positive, but if I were to make an educated guess I’d say one to twenty-four hours.”
An asymptomatic vampire could be infecting up to six humans per night. If I didn’t stop this, Dario’s Balaj wouldn’t be the only group at risk. The entire city could wind up infected. And the only good thing that would come out of that is that Simon’s Balaj wouldn’t have any Baltimore left to claim. A territory full of infected humans wouldn’t be worth winning.
Before I left I needed to ask Wolfram one last thing, one of the main reasons for my visit today. “Once the link is broken, you said you can heal the humans?”
He nodded.
“Then can you also heal the vampires?”
“No.”
I’d expected that. “There are infected vampires, locked up and suffering. They’re innocent victims. If they don’t get better, they’ll die.”
“Sounds good to me.” He stood. “Vampires are never innocent victims. There’s a chance once the magical link is broken, they’ll heal on their own. If not, well, that’s not my problem.”
I stood and chased after him as he walked away. “It is your problem. It’s all of our problem. The Balaj here in Baltimore has their flaws, but they’re fair. They don’t wantonly kill humans. They’re very strict about consent on donors and blood-slaves. I’ve been working with them for two months now, and we could have worse. It was worse before the current Mistress, and if we don’t help them, it’s about to get bad again. There’s a rival group poised to take over, and they’re not so careful. There will be deaths, there will be huge numbers of addicts. I know you don’t care about the vampires, but if we don’t help the local Balaj retain power, things in Baltimore will get worse. Remember Brasov? In 1329? It will be like that all over again.”
He paused. Which was a good thing because I was out of breath from trying to talk and jog beside him at the same time.
“Okay. I don’t like it, but I’ll do it. At least I’ll try. I’m not sure how well my particular brand of healing will work with vampires. My gift is God-given, and they’re damned. You banish the demon, and kill the vampire at the other end of this magical link, and I’ll do all I can to heal the sick vampires. Deal?”
It was better than nothing. “Deal.”
Chapter 24
Reynard was now sprawled across my carpet, coffee table and sofa shoved to the side and a pile of books leaning precariously against the TV stand. Raven’s fox figurine sat before him, the white board by her side.
“It’s Guziel.” Reynard announced triumphantly.
He’d told me earlier that a colleague had confirmed the link between Guziel and the LA outbreak. Still, the mage wanted to double check through magical means. When I’d left him and Raven, Reynard had been setting up for the ritual.
“It worked?” I was delighted. Well, delighted until I saw the melted, charred ten-inch circle of carpet right smack in the middle of the room.
“Yep, it worked. Although the spell did have some unintended consequences.”
Combustion. It was pretty cool.
Yeah. Pretty cool. There went any hope I had of getting my security deposit back. Not that I thought I’d get it back anyway. I was pretty sure an eviction was a forfeiture under the draconian terms of my lease.
“So now we’re positive that it’s Guziel, how do we banish him? Banish him without any of us getting killed, that is.”
Reynard scowled. It only enhanced his movie-star good looks. “I wish I knew what I was up against in terms of the mage that summoned him. In order to banish Guziel, we need to wrestle control from the summoner. Worst case scenario, we fail and don’t get the demon. Actually worst, worst case scenario we succeed and the demon breaks free and kills us. Or we banish him and the mage hunts us down and kills us.”
We should just kill the mage. Would make this a whole lot easier.
When had Raven become so blood thirsty? She’d always joked around like this, but I got the idea this time she meant it. Although maybe the proposal sounded far more serious when written on a whiteboard.
“We don’t have the time,” Reynard told her. “This mage could be anywhere—Beijing, San Francisco, Timonium. The mage will be easier to find once we call and banish the demon, then we can decide whether to go after him or not. I’m not really in favor of hunting down mages. It’s a professional courtesy thing, you know.”
“What if the mage is a vampire?” I asked.
“Well, then I change my mind. We should kill him.”
“Seriously. This particular infection that’s crossed between humans and vampires is linked magically to a vampire. I’m wondering if he’s the mage who summoned the plague demon.”
“Illnesses spread by plague demons are just normal illnesses,” Reynard argued. “They don’t have a magical link. They might be a mutated strain, or more virulent, but they’re still regular diseases.”
“But someone wanted this disease to affect vampires, which are normally immune,” I countered. “That would require some sort of magical link to make it stick.”
“Then we’re really hosed here.” Reynard tossed a book aside. “If this is the case, the mage didn’t just summon a demon, he knew enough about both medicine and magic to piggyback something onto a disease induced by the demon. It’s a double whammy. And any mage good enough to do that isn’t one I want to mess with.”
So in a battle for control, we’d lose. Well, we’d lose unless, like Raven suggested, we killed the mage first. Correction, I killed the mage first. Reynard would refuse to do it, and Raven was an earthbound spirit who couldn’t do much more at this point than poltergeist stuff and communicate in writing.
“So can a mage be a vampire? Or a vampire be a mage?” Vampire, mage, and knowledgeable about medicine. Next we’d discover he could sprout wings and fly as well as whip up an
amazing soufflé.
“I suppose if a mage were turned he still might be able to do a few basic charms. I can’t see one doing this or any decent level of magic though. Spells require a life force that vampires lack. They’re technically dead, soulless. Ninety percent of magic would be out of their reach. And even if they could, no demon would heed their call. Like I said before, vampires and demons don’t mix. Try as he might, a vampire is not going to be able to bring a netherworld spirit across the veil, control it, then craft a magical linkage to make an infection sicken a vampire.”
Well, that killed that theory. “Is there a way to find out who is magically linked to this illness? It’s a vampire, and I need to identify which one.”
“Yeah. That’s easy. You ask the mage or the plague demon.”
Everyone’s a comedian. “Right before I find the one and banish the other. I’ll get on that. In the meantime, is there a spell to trace the magical link?”
Reynard shrugged. “How’d you find out the disease even has a magical link, and that it’s connected to a vampire? That’s beyond anything I know how to do, or have even heard of. If someone has the know-how to do that then they probably can tell you who’s at the other end of the link.”
“That’s the problem. He’s not a mage, he’s a Hospitaller. Think physician-from-God. He can see the link, knows it’s a vampire, but that’s it. And he can’t heal the humans, or the vampires, until I break that link by killing the vampire.”
What if the vampire is just some poor schmuck who didn’t know what he was doing? Raven wrote.
That was my dilemma. Sacrifice one to save many. It made sense from a numbers perspective. Not so much if that one was your best friend, or your mother, or you. As much as Wolfram seemed to think killing a vampire was no big deal, it was to me. Raven knew that. She’d seen what Dario and I had together. She knew I considered his Balaj to be my pilgrims.
Could I sacrifice one innocent pilgrim to save a hundred vampires and as many humans? That was something I’d need to figure out, and quick.
Chapter 25
We’d agreed to try the banishing ritual in three days—the day before Halloween when the veil would be thin enough to give us an extra edge. That meant I’d be doing two major rituals back-to-back. Normally a banishing followed the next night by something similar to a banishing wouldn’t be a problem, but I got the feeling we were all three going to be using a lot of energy to grab Guziel and send him back. I only hoped that left me with enough on Halloween at midnight when I tried to rid myself of Balsur’s mark.
After Reynard packed up and left, I’d ordered in pizza deciding that if I couldn’t use magical means to track down the linked vampire, I’d need to use some good old fashioned detective work. So I stapled a bunch of papers to the wall and began a chart of infected people and a list of who-bites-who. Luckily Wolfram had relieved the hunger in the patients enough so that Kyra could ask them pointed questions about their blood-donor activities, which she happily texted to me.
I marked the human patients with a numerical identifier, and listed them on the top row. For each one, I put the date of his or her last donation, and the vampire’s name in red ink. Dario’s Renfield, Aaron, came by with a packet that contained the list of donors from the last week, each set grouped by date as well as the names of all infected vampires. I winced to see Leonora’s name on the paper, a question mark next to it. I’d feel horrible for rolling her down the stairs if she never got an opportunity to realize it, to hate me even more than she already did. Somehow having a nemesis wasn’t as satisfying when that person might be fatally ill.
I cross-compared the lists and when I was done a pattern had begun to unfold, as well as some anomalies.
Pierre had fed from three of the infected donors on the same evening. Michael had fed from two. It made sense, given that Dario said they tried to accommodate those who felt about to lose control of their hunger by allocating additional feedings.
Those two vamps were the first ones to come down with the symptoms. Marcus had also fed from an infected donor that first night, leaving to spend a quality evening with his blood-slave after drinking the donated blood to take the edge off. I was assuming his blood-slave was clean, no doubt giving him just enough of a dilution of the infection to hang on until early morning. But there were vampires that donors claimed they’d served who weren’t obviously ill as of last night.
They must be asymptomatic. I couldn’t believe a starving vampire like the ones I’d seen at Leonora’s would go unnoticed for three nights in the city. There would be a trail of bodies with bites and drained of blood, and Tremelay would have been ringing my phone off the hook.
And although the feast had been a free-for-all and there hadn’t been any records of who fed from whom, I was willing to bet the “clean” donors had been the ones that Simon’s vampires had grabbed.
I was positive the donor schedule was the key. Someone had access to this list and had access to the humans less than twenty-four hours prior to their donation. That pointed to our traitor vampire. Or possibly a traitor Renfield.
Which led me to Dario’s list of who had access to the donor lists, schedule, and had an opportunity to slip them something. The deceased Scotty was on it along with Bertram, Opal, Madeline, Lawrence, and Zoe. Leonora was also, but with her Balaj at risk, she’d hardly be a viable suspect.
Five vampires. And now I needed to consider bringing Renfields into the suspect list.
Some coordination with these donor schedules had to be accomplished during the day in order for the humans to be there and ready as the vampires awoke. That meant the traitor could just as easily be a Renfield. They were loyal, but served with the hope that one day they’d be turned. What if one had waited too long, for decades, and thought he’d die without being rewarded for his service with immortality? What if Simon were to have offered him that chance? A Renfield turned by a Philly vampire would be part of their inner circle, especially if the Master himself turned him, especially if he’d been crucial in the conquering of new territory.
But a Renfield wasn’t a vampire, and Wolfram had insisted a vampire was involved. I wasn’t willing to rule it out, but if a Renfield was our traitor, there still must be a vampire spreading the infection. Back to the papers and colored markers.
I sighed. Maybe if I interviewed these five vampires I could narrow it down a bit. Maybe Dario would know of a disgruntled Renfield who had means and opportunity to betray his Balaj. Maybe I should just go slaughter them all and let God sort them out.
Nah. Although I was beginning to understand the appeal of that approach. Trying to figure out who was to blame, who was righteous, who deserved saving was exhausting and complicated. It was easier to just assume God would guide my hand. Or to step away and refuse to judge at all, even when the most glaring injustice slapped me in the face.
“Banish the demon. Find the vampire. Possibly find the mage and the Renfield,” I muttered to Raven, throwing the marker away in disgust. “And do it all before Dario’s entire family is infected.”
And do it all before Halloween.
Yeah. And that.
Chapter 26
Dario awoke at sundown, crawling from the tiny space in between the walls that he used as an emergency daytime spot. He preferred his bedroom, or even the locked room just off the tunnels, but after last night he didn’t know who he could trust. Someone had betrayed them, infecting their donors and helping spread this disease. Only three knew about the locked room. No one knew about the space in the walls, and as uncomfortable as it was awakening there, at least he was sure he’d awaken.
Showered and changed, he headed downstairs to see Aaron in the hallway ushering three women into the study. He’d always preferred to feed from women. Actually he’d always preferred sex with his blood, but that was out of the question now. Would Aria ask him to limit his blood donors to men only? It was something he usually did only when there was no other choice. Having her body without taking her blood was
difficult enough. If he had to switch to only male donors, he wasn’t sure he could hold back with Aria. There was something sublime about having a woman give her all—body and blood—having her lose herself completely in his arms. He was willing to forgo the body part of that equation, but having a male donor orgasm as he was feeding was just…weird.
If restricting his blood supply to men meant Aria would be his then he’d get used to it.
“Sir, I have Patty, Barbara, and Kim,” Aaron told him.
He hesitated. Three of his favorites since they liked to watch as he fed from each. Actually they liked to do more than watch, but that was off the table. Aaron coordinated his schedule personally. Dario and Leonora had always used an exclusive list, but could he trust that it hadn’t been compromised? Were these three women in his study carriers? He trusted Aaron, but his list wasn’t exactly classified information.
He trusted Aaron, but not enough to sleep in a spot that the Renfield knew about. The last three nights he must have had clean donors, or he would have been infected already, but was that just luck? Now that the feast had turned into a massacre, would Simon step things up and ensure the most powerful of their family were taken out of the picture?
“I’ll grab something on the road,” he told Aaron. “Can you reschedule them? Please convey my apologies.”
Aaron shot him a quizzical look. “Sure. You’re heading to Leonora’s, sir?”
He’d told his Renfield about the feast and about the infection, but that was it. Just as Aaron didn’t know he’d slept between the walls, he also didn’t know that Leonora might be infected, or that they suspected a traitor had access to the donor lists and schedule.
“Yes. We need to regroup and plan. I’m supposed to meet Leonora, then we’ll connect with the rest of the Balaj elsewhere.”
If Aaron were the traitor, or was in the habit of spreading gossip, then this was the information he needed to get out. Simon would want to attack early evening, before they moved to an undisclosed location and when it was just him and Leonora with a scant few guards. Let him think they were vulnerable. If they could somehow manage to take Simon down, then the war would be over and they could mourn their dead.
