Ten, p.27
Ten, page 27
“You’re the doctor,” she said with a little salute.
She switched from research assistant to nurse mode as she survived the frozen streets of Chicago long enough to get from their makeshift campus lab to Lorcan’s downtown penthouse. She wrinkled her nose as she stepped inside. The smell only worsened as she opened the door to the interior lab tucked between the kitchen and living room. Although the lights had been dimmed, she could easily see her patient disobeying medical advice and sneaking onto a tablet rather than resting.
“Aren’t you supposed to be hibernating?” she asked.
“I’ve already slept too much,” Lorcan grumbled. “I simply wanted to make sure the world hadn’t fallen apart in my absence.”
She took the tablet from his hands and verified that any semblance of a pulse had died down to a gentle swish. She breathed easier as his temperature read a much more vampire-friendly eighty-eight degrees as well. He smiled as she switched out his IV with a fresh bag from the fridge as well.
“Contrary to what you might think, Lord Pendragon, the world does not revolve around you,” she chided him. “Kayleigh is watching every account, every login, and routing emails for you like a pro.
Nadia apparently took care of that thing in Nashville and gave me no other details than that, and Kyle is busy with Dr. Langer finding a way to fix you, so all you have to do is get. . . some. . . rest!”
“Kyle has done a great job of killing those pesky leukocytes and lymphocytes, so I am getting much better. Who would have thought that this two-millennia-old sack of bones would have even one cell left alive in it?”
“Aren’t you the one who keeps telling me that vampires aren’t dead?” Paige asked as she started the daily round of checking bandages. “Roll on your side, so I can check your back.”
“Yes, ma’am,” he said. “You really have missed your calling, Miss Paige.”
“I just need to keep myself busy,” she muttered. “You’ll have to deal with just Kyle in a few days. It’s my turn to go in the cage next.”
Lorcan sniffed the air. “I can tell.”
“I’m surprised you can smell anything over you,” she teased. “You are looking a little healthier for a two-thousand-year-old dead dude.”
“How is your mother?”
“She’s fine. She thanks you for the Christmas present of Pablo the pool boy,” Paige muttered as she finished up round two on the back.
“You seem distant today,” Lorcan muttered. “Didn’t you have a nice enough Christmas here?”
“I missed Thanksgiving when everyone was together. That’s all.”
“As soon as I am well, I’ll check on the progress of the sheriff’s investigations. Eventually this will pass, and she’ll dismiss it all as rumors. Everything will get better, I promise, Miss Paige.”
“Let’s not make promises that you can’t keep, Lord Pendragon,”
she sighed. She brushed the matted hair off his forehead. “You are such a mess.”
He grinned to show off his missing fangs. “At least now I know how my son felt. Mina would say this is what I deserve—” He broke into a fit of coughing.
Paige adjusted his bed and his pillows. As she wiped around his mouth, Lorcan grabbed her wrist with surprising force. He narrowed his eyes at her.
“Why do you waste your time with me?” he asked. “Even after all I’ve done, you care for a worthless dead man.”
“I could ask you the same question,” Paige said as she pried his fingers off so she could finish cleaning his face. “Here you are, a lord among vampires, a guy whose drunk Madeira with Leonardo da Vinci, and played poker with Benjamin Franklin—”
“It wasn’t poker, it was whist,” the vampire corrected.
“Anyways, why would you waste your time with an accounting clerk from Elvis-land? I thought vampire fantasies were all about high school girls and virgins.”
“You hear the stories about Lord and Lady Pendragon and our exploits, but do you really listen to them? What is the common thread?” he asked.
“Your wife. I must say her stories are the best since yours usually end with someone dying tragically,” Paige sighed. “Lady Pendragon ends up with a painting, or a poem, or something beautiful.”
“Exactly. I’ve often wondered if my ability to control shadows is a direct result of my familiarity with them, Miss Paige,” Lorcan said. “I find myself far more comfortable in a corner, avoiding the mob. So, to answer your question, Miss Paige, I was interested in you because you actually took the time to have a conversation with me.”
“One conversation was all it took?” she asked.
“I’ve gone an entire century without so much as a “how do you do” but then again that was the Dark Ages and not really a prime time for human interaction.”
Paige broke into a little giggle and took his hand. “Stop messing with me,” she said.
“Oh, that part is quite true. I made my way from what you would call Northern Ireland, swam across the bloody channel, and terrorized my way across plague-stricken Europe. I wasn’t particularly civilized back then, even by my crude standards. Merlin wanted me to find myself in the East, which was his way of saying get the hell out of Europe and find a good ally.”
“Mina,” Paige sighed.
“Indeed, but it wasn’t all doom and gloom. I saw the Himalayas, and India is one of those places that must be experienced once in your lifetime. It was so vibrant, and colorful, and alive compared to where I’d been. It saved me.”
“Now why didn’t I get any memories of that? I mean I’m a fan of the Arthurian legend as much as the next gal, but it was an awful lot of gloomy battles.”
“You needed Mordred to keep you safe, and in the end, he’s who I really am. I am the dreadfully gloomy soldier who takes more pleasure in a well-balanced arrow instead of a symphony.”
“But you have met amazing people—”
“You know what the trouble with amazing people is, Miss Paige?”
the vampire asked.
“What?”
“Amazing people, they usually know how great they are. Sure, they are witty and fun but ultimately exhausting. My wife can prattle for hours about nothing and summon a crowd of even more noise
around her in a matter of seconds. It simply wears me out. I suppose eternal life wasn’t made for introverts.”
“I never thought about it like that.”
“My dear, Paige, I have a certain sympathy and admiration for someone who simply speaks when they have something to say, to the girl who goes to the corner when she is tired of all the commotion. It was delightful to meet you.”
She stared at him. Even with his pallor and the bandages creeping over his body, his eyes looked more alive than ever. She leaned over and gave him a kiss on an unblemished spot on his forehead. The vampire laughed sadly.
“You know, it hasn’t been all bad,” she said, “But—”
“Miss Paige, I’m an ancient, surly, married, dead man. I’d never win your heart over a young, single, fantastically-endowed, werewolf boy. It’s how it should be.”
“Hah, you’re forgetting that said fantastically-endowed werewolf just left me. I don’t think I’ll ever see him again—”
“Stop selling yourself short,” Lorcan sighed. “Remember, I was inside both of you. I know exactly how he feels. Unfortunately, I feel it too, but that’s neither here nor there. If there is one thing my age has taught me, Miss Paige, is that patience is indeed the king among virtues.”
“It is really hard to hate you sometimes, old man,” Paige said as she leaned in closer again. The door to the lab opened.
“Ahem?” Kyle said. “I wouldn’t recommend any more exchange of fluids, you two.”
Paige jerked away. “We were just talking—” she said quickly.
“Well, I think you’ll be up for more than just talking soon, Grandpa. You just need to be careful with Typhoid Mary here until you are fully recovered,” he said as he pulled out his tablet.
“What is it?” Paige asked as she stared at an electron microscope image of something that looked nasty and purple.
“We found a virus within a virus,” Kyle said. His laughed like a giddy schoolboy. “I mean it’s absolutely terrible and terrifying long term, but you have to admit it’s pretty cool to find out all the players
in play. You should have heard Kunal yelling that the French bastards had finally met their match—”
“Kyle!” Paige barked.
“Sorry, but it was terribly exciting. Anyway, we did confirm that the virus inside the mummy was the same as the one inside Irvine and the one inside both Paige and me. However, the wolf pox in me and in Paige is fundamentally different in that it contains a virus within the virus; it’s some sort of unholy beast that alters and infects previously infected individuals. It’s not the alpha strain we need to combat but the monster within it.”
“This does not sound encouraging in the least, Kyle,” Lorcan said.
“It’s always encouraging if you know what you’re fighting against.
Paige was initially no more dangerous than if she had bit any one of us. Somehow she was given a secondary infection after she bit Irvine, and judging by the sophistication of this handiwork, there are only two groups that could even attempt it—”
“So, what you’re saying is that the infection was altered either by the remains of the Lung clan or by Dr. Langer?” Lorcan asked.
“Yup, pretty much, and, um, considering that he had something labeled “Trojan wolf” stashed in his freezer, I’m guessing that we’ve all been played.”
“You mean—” Paige growled as her claws popped out.
“I don’t even think he knows. I had my sister run through his computers this morning. They were almost scrubbed clean. If I hadn’t already been suspicious, I doubt we would have found something.”
“Wait, does that mean my great-grandpa was involved? Did he wipe Dr. Langer’s memories?” Paige asked.
“Probably, but he works for hire. The problem with erasing something like research is that it’s months and years of study. Even if Captain Amnesia messed with Kunal, he’d still have the fundamentals in the back of his brain. That’s why the research has been going so smoothly. He’s so close to developing an anti-viral that can stop the spread of mister death virus that I can taste it—”
Kyle said.
“But how can you possibly trust the guy who already made a super virus to infect werewolves—” Paige said.
“We don’t know what he’s doing, but I think that we can beat this.
The weirdest thing is that this virus is quite weak and limited. It can’t infect any other strains of the wolf pox other than the one in the three of us, so it’s definitely deliberate. Irvine had the same blood as the mummy. The infection definitely came from Paige—”
“So, one bite from Paige was enough to infect you but not Morgan. Don’t you think that’s odd? I’m fairly sure that she’s had more contact with him than you—” Lorcan said with a raised brow.
“There was a little extra contact, um, Grandpa,” Kyle said.
“Really?” the vampire asked.
“Yeah, this is getting filed away with all the other truly awkward conversations we’ve ever had, Grandpa. It seems, based on my tests with Kayleigh and Kunal’s blood that a fully expressed werewolf or a fully immunized human can’t contract this altered alpha strain.”
“So, because you and I both had weakened or no immune systems—” Lorcan added.
“Perfect storm, but like any infection, your vampire self is fighting pretty damn hard. I think with a mix of antivirals and keeping you as strong as possible, you can beat it back. I’m just afraid that if you were infected again with a fresher virus—”
Paige took another step back. Kyle sighed. “I’m just as dangerous as you are, so no Kyle or Paige blood for you. You were very lucky that you didn’t ingest any of her cerebrospinal fluid. That’s where the largest concentration of the wolf pox likes to settle long term—”
“Just tell me how long it’s going to take.”
“You’re going to have to hibernate for at least a month probably two. You’re going to have to trust us to feed you and keep you safe
—” Kyle said.
Lorcan looked over at Paige. “I supposed I’ll have to keep leaving my life and fortune in your hands,” he said. “You should also look into curing yourselves, for the long term.”
“Well we’re only dangerous to vampires infected with a supposedly extinct strain of the werewolf virus, right?” Paige asked.
“Yeah about that. How did you end up with both strains in you
—?” Kyle asked.
“Can we worry more about saving him and figuring out if Dr.
Langer is on our side or some sort of brainwashed crony?” Paige snapped.
“Yeah, it looks like it’s Kyle and Paige, mystery solvers extraordinaire, back in business. Oh, and I totally am calling in Nads and Toy,” Kyle said.
“Yeah, this time we’re getting the whole pack.”
18
“GEORGIA? Miss Sutherland, don’t you want to come down for supper?” Mr. Lambley asked as he knocked on her bedroom door.
George rolled her gaze over to her alarm clock. She let out a deep sigh. A rather ghoulish, bedraggled version of herself glared at her in the mirror. She then lurched out of bed in true zombie fashion.
“Georgia?”
“Coming, sorry,” she called back. She tripped on her empty vodka bottle and clawed open the bottle of painkillers on her way to the door. Once she had dry-swallowed a pair and straightened her top, she stumbled into the hall.
“I hope you are in the mood for curry, again,” Mr. Lambley said.
“Is your mother going to visit every month from now until the end of time?” Georgia asked. She sniffed the lovely mix of cumin and tomatoes in the air. “However, I love the food and appreciate the extra days off.”
“She very well might. Apparently, she has a great deal of business since father decided to take an ill-timed sabbatical,” the vampire said. They wandered down the stairs arm in arm, much to the delight of the woman dancing in their foyer.
Mina Pendragon clapped her hands in delight. “It’s so lovely to see you with my son. Tell me, have you reconsidered—”
“No,” both Georgia and Geoffrey said at once.
Georgia slipped a sly glance over to the redheaded vampire. Not only was his bright hair thick and neatly trimmed but also one of his
extra chins had vanished in his months of extremely clean eating.
Georgia shuddered as the faintest of inappropriate thoughts flickered through her aching brain.
“Mother, please,” Geoffrey sighed. “So, how long are you staying this time?”
“As long as you need me to, dear,” Mina said as she looked at Georgia. “I hope it wasn’t too presumptuous sending Neeha over early—”
“No, it was nice to have a few days off,” Georgia said quickly.
“Well, I wanted to plan a bit of fun, but, would you believe it, I’ve had to do work,” she said with a tremendous pout. “I swear, I’d kill that man if he wasn’t already dead. Oh, that was a terrible choice of words, wasn’t it?”
“It’s fine—”
“Is there anything you need help with, mother?” Geoffrey asked.
“I need to know a good place to get a stiff drink and some dancing, my boy. If I have to go to one more business meeting or look at another PowerPoint thing ever again, I will throw myself in a tanning booth—”
“Mother—”
“I even had to have your brother do paperwork and be nice to people. Figured since he was a Canadian, it would be second nature,” Mina sighed as she swept both Geoffrey and Georgia into the dining room.
Within seconds of being plopped into chairs, the kitchen door swung open and another tall, beautiful Indian woman swept into the room. She carried a tray overloaded with delicious smelling curries, fluffy rice, and enough carbs to send an Atkins dieter running for the hills. Georgia looked on in wonder as she was served first, and only after Neeha poured the human both water and tea, did the other servant dart back into the kitchen to get a second tray.
Georgia waited uncomfortably for the vampires to get their carafes before she dared to dig in. Neeha sat down at the solid food end of the table and started tearing into parathas, while Georgia nibbled at a bit of rice.
“It’s not too spicy is it?” Mina’s servant asked.
“Oh no, dear, she’s got the eyes of a woman who’s had a fifth of
– sniff – vodka,” Mina exclaimed. “If that’s truly your poison of choice, I’ll get you some of the good stuff next time I’m dragged off to Europe—”
Georgia made an effort to eat a little of each of Neeha’s curries but said nothing as Mina went on and on about the various parties she had attended and who was running off with whom. Soon Geoffrey tried to keep up. Neeha talked up a storm about places she had checked out online in the Boston area. After ten minutes, Georgia set down her fork and pushed away from the table.
“Excuse me, please,” she said. She made a beeline for the kitchen and then straight out the back door, muttering under her breath as she saw the pile of dishes. Once the chilly spring air slapped her face, Georgia smiled. She rubbed her bare arms a few times.
Eventually she settled into one of the wire mesh chairs. Soon, she became lost in watching the clouds dance around the moon and listening to the faint sounds of traffic in the distance. She gritted her teeth as she heard the door open.
“I’m sorry, it was a little loud, and I am hung over,” Georgia said without turning around.
“I’m not judging you, my dear,” Mina said.
“Thanks.”
Mina dusted off the other chair. “May I?” she asked.
Georgia nodded.
“My, can it really be almost April? Aren’t you cold?” Mina asked.
“I don’t really feel it,” Georgia muttered.
“I’m guessing that you still don’t feel much of anything, my dear,”
Mina sighed. “Then again, that’s probably the only way to get by, isn’t it?”
