Blood Winter

by S. J. Coles

  Evgeniya panted, weakening as I closed in. Novák finally overpowered her and forced her to the ground, pushing her face-first into the snow, muffling her screams and stilling her wild thrashing.

  I dropped into the bloodstained snow at Terje’s side. His arms were flung wide, his long fingers curled delicately against his palms. His eyes were half-open, gazing sightlessly into the middle-distance. His chest was a pulpy mess of ruined flesh and broken bone. I said his name over and over, pressed my hands uselessly against his arm, his face, loath to touch the Blood. The rich smell wafted in the cold air—autumn leaves, red wine, sun-warmed heather. But the acrid, fiery smell of discharged bullets and charred fabric swamped it.

  I bent over his unmoving form, brushing my fingers over the cuts on his face. They’d stopped bleeding but weren’t healing. “Terje?”

  His eyes flickered. His mouth opened. I dragged him into my lap, ignoring the shouted warnings of the men closing in around us. His eyelids fluttered but his eyes didn’t focus. Blood ran down from his mouth. Up close I could see just how vicious the bites in his neck and jaw were. I wanted to scream but I held my breath, held him close. “Terje?”

  His eyes flickered again. For a second, they met mine. A breath rasped in his ruined chest. He lifted his hand and brushed his fingers over my chin.

  “Alec,” he murmured, so low I barely caught it.

  “It’s going to be okay,” I managed. “They’re going to get you fixed up.”

  His face changed, smile vanishing, and his eyes darkened. “Get away,” he whispered. “Now…”

  “Don’t speak. Save your strength.”

  “I don’t want to… I…” His face creased. His lips drew back from his teeth. Something flashed in his eyes and his whole body tensed. Everyone was screaming at me to get back but I couldn’t move. They reached to pull me away, but then his eyes dulled, his hand dropped and his head slumped against my chest.

  “Step away, son,” a deep, accented voice murmured in my ear. A huge but gentle hand was on my shoulder while the other was trying to pull Terje from me.

  “No,” I choked. “Not yet. He’s still alive.”

  “It’s too dangerous,” the voice said. “The Blood could still take over.”

  “Someone do something,” I shouted. “Get the medic.”

  The large haemophile knelt so he was on eye level with me. Soldiers hovered nearby. The heat of Terje’s Blood soaked through my clothes. I could taste it in the back of my throat. His body grew heavy in my arms. The tall haemophile’s eyes were large, a shade of impossibly dark midnight-blue, filled with a very human-looking pain. There were bullet wounds in his powerful calves and sliced into one thigh. But he knelt next to me like he’d never even known the idea of discomfort.

  “Let me take him,” he said.

  “Why aren’t you getting the medic?”

  “He’s lost too much.”

  “It’s not too late,” I protested, pulling Terje out of his reach. “You don’t die. I know you don’t die, not like we do. He needs blood. That’s all. Call the air ambulance and get him to a hospital.”

  “Novák, is it safe?”

  The haemophile raised his head. An older woman in body armor, an officer by her epaulettes, stood just at the edge of the nervous ring of soldiers. Evgeniya was being loaded onto a stretcher behind her, weakly trying to push against the people pressing dressings against the wounds in her legs and abdomen. Her face was a tight, white mask but her limbs had lost their power. The manic fire in her eyes had been doused.

  “This one’s no threat,” Novák said. “Too far gone.”

  I stared at Novák, his weird, wide, black-blue eyes holding mine, filled with unsettlingly deep sympathy. Slowly, carefully, he took Terje from me like he was no more weight than doll. I let him go, watched him being carried away, a stinging numbness that had nothing to do with cold settling into my guts.

  “I’m sorry,” the woman said gruffly, putting her hand on Novák’s broad shoulder. “This wasn’t supposed to happen.”

  “Blood begets blood,” he said in a low, bitter voice, laying Terje on another stretcher. “All I can do is try to stem the tide.”

  “Did you know this one?”

  Novák swept Terje’s hair away from his face, then gently closed his sightless eyes. “No.”

  “Looks like he tried to stop her,” she murmured, indicating his other wounds.

  “Yes,” Novák replied as they drew a blanket up and over his head. “That gives me hope.”

  “Wait,” I cried. “Wait, please.”

  Novák’s heavy gaze went right to the epicenter of my pain. The human officer watched me approach with a more wary expression. I hesitated then pulled back the blanket. If it weren’t for the blood, he might just be sleeping. I placed a trembling hand on his cheek. It was cold. I took several deep breaths to steady my voice.

  “Can’t I help?”

  “How?” Novák’s face told me he knew exactly what I meant.

  “He needs blood,” I said. “Human blood. To fuel his Blood, which can still heal him. Right?”

  “We’ll get him to a hospital,” Novák said. “We’ll give him a transfusion. But he’s already lost so much—”

  “He can have mine,” I said. “Give him my blood. Now. Give me a knife, and I’ll do it myself.”

  “Don’t be an idiot,” the officer barked, but Novák raised his hand.

  “A noble and selfless offer,” he said slowly, “but highly inappropriate.”

  “Inappropriate?” I choked. “He’s dying.” I held out a shaking hand, my eyes fixed on the sheathed knife at the soldier’s belt. “Please. Let me save him.”

  Novák held my desperate look for a long time before nodding to the men standing around the stretcher. They covered Terje up again and carried him off whilst I stood there, shaking, with my hand still held out for the knife they would never give me.

  “It would take more than you have,” Novák said.

  “I don’t care.”

  He sighed. “Another death will be another nail in the coffin of our future. Evgeniya has done almost as much harm as your friend and his Blood dealer.”

  “Jon Ogdell is no friend of mine,” I ground out. “Drain him dry for all I care. It’s less than he deserves.”

  Novák stood still and quiet until I met his eyes. “Jon Ogdell will answer for his crimes. You have my word on that. But remember… If your friend here fought his own Magister over this—over you—he wouldn’t want any more being sacrificed for his sake—and certainly not your life.”

  I watched Terje being loaded into a truck alongside the now-incapacitated Evgeniya, feeling like my insides had been gouged out with a blunt knife. The rear doors slammed shut. The night was suddenly darker and colder than anything I had ever known.

  “What’s your name, son?”

  “MacCarthy,” I replied, voice dead and low. “Alec MacCarthy.” I blinked a couple of times until the business card the haemophile was holding out came into focus.

  “Ivor Novák. I’m sorry the circumstances of our meeting aren’t more congenial.” I stared at the card. “We need humans on our side, Mr. MacCarthy,” Novák continued like he hadn’t noticed my unraveling control. “I still believe we can exist together. But we need allies. Please. Take my number.”

  I took the card with numb fingers. “Will you tell me which hospital he goes to?”

  He nodded gravely. “I will. Now you must excuse me. There’s a lot to do here. You should let the medics treat you.”

  He paced away. The army officer hurried after him, talking animatedly. The last of the other soldiers were all climbing back into the trucks, which one-by-one rumbled away down the track. The headlights disappeared and someone shut the lights off in the cottage, allowing the night to crowd in.

  The ambulance waited to one side, flooding yellow light into the snow with the woman in high-viz gesturing impatiently at me. I plodded over in a daze, my chest aching, head pounding, wound i
n my neck stinging. It was only when I drew close that I realized Ogdell was handcuffed to a seat in the back, a dressing pad taped on his forehead. His round face was puffy and bruised, his dull eyes red and watery. He slumped in the chair, pain etching lines around his mouth.

  I remained silent and let the medic wrap me again in the foil blanket, put the oxygen mask on me and hurriedly clean and dress the cuts in my neck. She bundled me onto the ambulance gurney and told me to lie back and relax. She shut the doors, then the vehicle rumbled and started to move.

  I scowled at Ogdell, contemplating hunting around for scalpels, scissors, anything to hurt him with. But instead, I just stared at his hunched, pathetic form until he finally lifted his head to glare at me.

  “And you can stop with the filthy looks, arsehole.”

  “You killed him.”

  “Good.”

  “You opened fire in cold blood.”

  “Cold blood?” He laughed, a choking, bitter sound. “Good one.”

  “You really don’t give a shit, do you?”

  “And my sister? Matthew? Hans?” he ground out. “Where are they on your giving-a-shit scale?”

  “Evgeniya needs to face the authorities, just like you do, to show the entire world that no one, human or haemo, gets away with shit like this.”

  “You sanctimonious prick. Entire governments get away with ‘shit like this’ every day.” He shoved his swollen face into mine. “Real men take matters into their own hands. They know that the whole world revolves on who’s on top. Who’s getting fucked. Who’s not. That’s something I thought a fag would understand.”

  I hit him. It had no real power behind it. I was too exhausted. But there was a satisfying crunch as my knuckles smashed into his eye and his head snapped back. He howled in rage, clutched at the eye and made a swipe with the back of his free hand, but I shimmied up the gurney, out of reach. After he’d flailed enough to exhaust himself and sat panting in his chair, I continued.

  “Your family tortured another living being for kicks. Don’t sit there and pretend you’re innocent victims in this.”

  “And what about you, huh?” he grated, glaring at me through his rapidly-swelling eye. “Fucking landed laird looking down at us all like pond scum—”

  “It’s you fucking people who think all that’s so important,” I growled. “I’m not like you.”

  “Very well, Lord Aviemore,” he drawled. “Tell me. How was the Blood, huh?” I flushed hot then cold. A warm smell rose in my mind, a hot taste in my mouth and throat. My blood thrummed. “Yeah, that’s it,” Ogdell sneered. “You drank, all right. Can’t forget it, can you? It’s in you now.” I wanted to hit him again but I couldn’t move, his pin-prick stare holding me in place whilst the truck bounced and rattled over uneven ground. “You think you’re so special,” he went on. “Pro-haemo bleeding-heart lefty. Their defender, lover, whatever. But you’re just another Blood junkie. The only difference between me and you is that I don’t let them fuck me to get a fix.”

  “You know nothing about it.”

  “Tell yourself whatever you want, MacCarthy,” he said, leaning back and closing his eyes. “In those long cold nights in prison, whilst the rest of us, the real men, are out hunting down every last one of the bloodsucking sons of bitches, you keep telling yourself that it really was deep and meaningful and not just your sad, desperate inability to connect with your own species. Did you catch any, by the way?” He cracked his good eye. “I know most of it went into the snow, but I bet there was enough to grab a couple of mouthfuls before it bled out, huh?”

  A swell of anger like a bubble of hot lead rose up my throat and burst in my head. My cuts and bruises and frostbitten fingers pulsed. When I came back to myself, the medics were wrestling me off the screaming Ogdell. Someone pushed a needle into my neck and the world went dark.

  * * * *

  “Alec? Are you awake?”

  I blinked my gummy eyes. My limbs ached. My bones throbbed. There were stinging scratches all over my skin, a pulsing pain in my neck and pounding in my head. My mouth tasted foul. Eventually a gray, tiled ceiling came into focus, the soulless mint-green of a hospital curtain at my side, the thin, bright light of strip lighting.

  “Alec?”

  Rolling my head on the stiff pillow caused the swirling to start anew and I had to wait a few painful moments for the fog to clear again.

  “Meg?” My voice sounded rusty.

  Her smile was warm with relief, her brown eyes sparkling, even whilst she forced her face into a mock-frown. “Jesus H. Christ, Alec MacCarthy. If you ever, ever frighten me like that again…”

  “What’s going on?” I mumbled stupidly. “Where am I?”

  “Belford Hospital, Fort William,” she said, dragging her chair closer to the bed and grabbing my hand. “You’ve got some cuts and scrapes, a minor concussion and some blood loss, but they say you’re going to be fine.”

  “What about Terje?” I murmured, struggling to sit up.

  Meg urged me back into the pillows with gentle hands. “Just rest for now.”

  “Meg, where’s Terje?”

  Her frowned deepened. “I don’t know what Terje is.”

  I fought back impatience. “The haemophile. The one that was shot.”

  “Three were shot—” Meg started, face uncomfortable.

  “You know the one I mean,” I said, begging her with my eyes to understand. Her lips pressed together. Her eyes were pained. “Tell me, Meg. Please.”

  “He’d dead,” a flat male voice said.

  “David—” Meg scolded as David appeared at the bedside. His dark eyes were empty, but they had a sunken look and his jaw was tight.

  “He’s dead, Alec,” he said again. There was no anger in his tone. No judgement. But there was no sympathy either.

  “I don’t believe you,” I said. “Where are my clothes? Where’s Ivor Novák’s number? I need to speak to him.”

  “Novák was here,” Meg said, face tight. “It… He…came to check on you.”

  “What did he say?”

  David sat on my bed and pinched the bridge of his nose between his finger and his thumb. He appeared drawn, tired, older than he was, like he’d let go of something that had been holding him together.

  “He said the blond one was dead on arrival, man. They tried a transfusion, though why you’d do that on a DOA I don’t know.” I flinched and David winced, flicking me a brief, apologetic glance and looking away again. “As I said, they tried. It didn’t work.” The room blurred. My head span. I jumped when David’s hand rested on my leg. “I’m sorry, Alec. But maybe it’s better this way.”

  Rage chased pain around my insides. I clenched my teeth together. I didn’t raise my eyes from the stiff, white sheets.

  “He’s a hero,” Meg said softly after a long moment. She tightened her grip on my hand and I wondered what she was trying to say to me that she didn’t want to say in front of her brother. “He stopped the killer getting into Callum’s apartment.”

  “Callum?”

  “The actor from the Blood Party,” she went on softly. “There’s footage of the female trying to get into his place and the blond one trying to stop her. It’s gone viral. It was…” She took a breath. “It was grim. He got hurt. But he did stop her. He couldn’t keep her from going after Ogdell, though.” I closed my eyes, trying to fight the information into some semblance of meaning. “Novák’s going to use this whole thing as a publicity campaign,” Meg went on. “He says it might repair some of the damage.”

  “How much damage is there?” I croaked.

  “It’s too early to say,” David said gravely. “As soon as that dealer’s body was discovered, it all kicked off. Humans attacked vampires. Vampires fought back. Humans attacked other humans and…well…” He finally met my eyes. I had expected more anger, but he just looked weary. “It’s not been good. Over a hundred dead, they’re saying. And that’s just here in the UK. But it’s over now, more or less.”

 
“But there’s more, Alec,” Meg said warily. David gave her a warning look but she ignored it. “You need to know… The police are waiting to speak to you.”

  “Ogdell,” I ground out.

  She nodded stiffly. “He’s made accusations, but I’ve made my own too.” She sat straight and tall in the chair. Her face had taken on a hard set. “I’ve been gathering evidence. Phone messages. CCTV from Lure. It’s his word against ours, but the police believe me.”

  “You were supposed to leave Glasgow,” I said.

  “I know we were,” said David, giving Meg a look.

  “I wasn’t going to run away,” Meg said, “not when you were willing to face it.” I squeezed her hand. “We’ll have to submit to questioning at some point,” she went on gently, “about the Blood Party and Brody Harris. But they’ve got forensics crawling all over Auchallater Keep. They’ll find out what really happened and Ogdell will be the one to answer for it, not us.”

  “I’m glad,” I managed to get out, though I couldn’t make it sound warm. “Thank you, Meg.” A pause. “Can I be alone now, please?”

  Meg’s face fell. David’s hardened. There was a painful moment where their eyes met, like they’d expected this, then they rose. I sensed David fight himself and lose. He leaned forward and kissed me on the cheek. Dampness brushed against my temple. He held his face against mine a moment longer than was comfortable. I smelled his familiar smell of tobacco smoke and fresh, grassy aftershave and, for the briefest of moments, felt comforted and was grateful to him.

  “I’m glad you’re okay,” he murmured in my ear.

  “You too,” I got out, emotion weighting the words. I grabbed his hand and squeezed it. He stared at our joined hands for a long moment then stepped back, swiped angrily at his face then strode off.

  Meg called after him but he was gone. She chewed on her lip a moment before speaking again. “I’m sorry, Alec. About the haemo.”

  “Are you?” I hadn’t meant for it to sound bitter, but holding it back was suddenly beyond me.

  “Of course I am,” she said with that infinite, unflappable patience that had allowed her to be my friend for so many years. I instantly regretted my anger and resentment, even though they continued to pulse inside me. I dropped my eyes so she couldn’t see it, but she raised my face with a knuckle under my chin. Her rich, brown eyes were earnest. “You’re hurt,” she said softly. “I can see that. I can see whatever it was was…real. For you. I’m sorry I doubted that.” She dropped her hand and turned to leave.