Four, p.34
Four, page 34
Georgia watched Ren carefully scoop up Minerva and take her dutifully back to the bath area. Dr. Pang puttered about mixing little bottles into a bowl and creating something that looked nasty even by vampire standards.
“Is that to help Mr. Lambley regrow his fangs?” she asked as the half-vampire poured the liquid into Geoffrey’s mouth.
“Oh, no, no, no,” Dr. Pang said. “There is no medicine on earth that can treat the slow death once it gets this far.”
“What?” Georgia cried.
“There is no medicine, but that does not mean his case is hopeless. There have been Pendragons who have recovered. The key is to awaken their inner strength so they can heal themselves. The Pendragons are not strong . . . but they are resilient,” Dr. Pang said with a little nod.
“We came all the way out here to find out what we already know?” Georgia snapped. “Really?”
“Oh, little one, you should know by now it’s not what you know but what you believe that matters. I have given your master a little snake oil and tiger’s blood, and I will tell him that it will cure him and then it will. It may take time, but I think it will work.”
“Really?” Georgia asked.
“Indeed!” he said cheerfully. “Now, I sense you have questions. You had better ask now before your time is up because I cannot be sure we will ever meet again.”
“Do you know about the Matsuokas and their condition?”
Dr. Pang burst out laughing. “Oh, little one, you can say I know them all too well.” He slowly lowered his glasses to reveal two perfectly bright, perfectly green eyes. “You want to know if they can stop being bondsmen now that there is new treatment, yes? In fact, you want to know if it will work for that pretty young one, yes?”
Georgia nodded.
“Difficult to say, really. There is a chance the other blood would contain some trace of something incompatible and kill him instantly, but there is also a good chance that he would be fine. The real question is why? Vampire blood is much safer and kills every disease. The human treatment is only a stopgap.”
“Just curious.”
“Curiosity killed the cat,” Dr. Pang said with a little giggle.
“Too late for that,” Georgia muttered as she started rousing the sleeping vampire.
Just as she was almost ready to walk out with him, the old half-breed tottered over and handed her a little vial wrapped in pretty red silk. “In case of emergency,” he said. “One dose will cure almost any human disease, but you must use it all in one dose.”
“Why are you giving me this?” she asked suspiciously.
“Because you asked about the Matsuoka boy rather than yourself. You go with your Pendragon. I will have Walter set up a follow-up for a decade or two from now. You follow that routine, and the medicine will do its job, yes?”
“And that was how we got Mr. Lambley on the right track,” Georgia said as she futzed with her phone again. “It’s very important, however, that he continues to believe that he got a slow-working cure from Dr. Pang. Mind over matter, always. Dr. Pang’s people also gave each of us complimentary acupuncture and a full numerology workup. It did really help with the headaches, and they put me in touch with someone local if you ever need them.”
“And the schedule?” Gail asked.
“Ren helped me get it on my phone. I’ve really learned a lot about Eastern medicine this past year. I suggest that you brush up on it too.”
“And you and Stefano, err, Steve?” she asked hopefully.
“I did what any normal person would do. I didn’t rock the boat until we were back from vacation.”
“But did something happen? You and Ren—”
“It’s complicated. I just wanted to separate the two. I asked Ren to cool off on the perfect date nights because I needed to see just what Steve would do.”
“And?”
“We watched a lot of movies and had some pretty good sex,” Georgia said drily. “I mean, there’s not much to tell. Sometimes you get in a rut and do what is convenient. I had my hands full learning a diet, meditation, and exercise routine for a cranky English vampire who still tried to grind up crisps and mix them in his blood. The last thing I had time to worry about was my relationship with his friend. Everything was . . . fine, but—”
“Oh no, not a ‘but,’” Gail said. “I have a bad feeling suddenly.”
“You know that sinking feeling you get in the pit of your stomach when you know something is wrong but you can’t quite put your finger on it?” Georgia asked. “It’s that sort of dread that reminds you that you’re putting your head in the sand.”
“I hate that feeling when you know something isn’t quite right—” Gail started.
“But you don’t know what to do about it,” Georgia finished. “Minerva went back to New York straight from Tokyo, and I thought that would make things better, but it’s so weird, even though she was gone, something both she and Geoffrey had said kept gnawing at me . . .”
“A Jaeger is a hunter,” Georgia whispered as she sat at one of the laptops she had borrowed from Ren.
Across the bed Steve rolled over and blinked a few times. “What was that, sweetheart?” he asked.
“Sorry, just thinking about something your sister said,” she confessed.
Steve opened his eyes fully and looked at the alarm clock. “It’s after dawn, what has gotten into you?” he yawned.
“Your sister is a killer,” she said, furrowing her brows.
Steve responded by wrapping his arms around her and trying to pull her toward him. “You’re not having nightmares about the kittens again, are you?” he asked.
“Would you?” she asked.
“Would I what?” he asked as he started nuzzling her side.
“Would you have eaten them?” she asked.
“Any vampire would eat them if they were hungry enough,” Steve said sleepily. “But I wouldn’t tear apart helpless animals in front of you. I’m not like that.”
“In front of me?” she asked.
Steve looked up at her. “I am not my sister, now come on and curl up. If you’re not going to sleep, we might as well do something more interesting,” he said as his hand started to slide up her leg.
“You know I need to check on Geoffrey’s duck carcass order. It’s time to start the cooling phase of his diet,” she said.
Steven reached over and snapped the laptop screen closed. “Ren is over there. The man is so detail-oriented that he makes spreadsheets to document his toast. This is your one night over here, so can we leave Gingersnaps out of it? Pang gave him some magic juju, it’ll work.”
Georgia continued to stare at the ceiling and refused to answer any of Steve’s advances until he finally sat up and started twiddling his thumbs in annoyance. “Is this one of those moments where I’m going to have to talk?” he sighed.
“People in relationships usually talk,” Georgia muttered.
“What do you want to talk about?” he asked.
“Nothing,” she sighed before sliding down and rolling over as if to sleep.
“Fine by me,” he sighed.
No sooner had he closed his eyes than Georgia asked, “Steve, what is the Jaeger test?”
“The what?”
“The test. Geoffrey said that every Jaeger had to pass a test to prove their worth to the family.”
Steve wrapped his arm around her and hugged her tight. “Every Jaeger has to show their courage, that they have what it takes,” he said. “You know what happened to me. I had to volunteer to die a horrible death so that Claudia and Klaus wouldn’t slaughter the entire unit. It’s not the traditional Jaeger test, but I’m not your traditional Jaeger. Am I missing something here? What is going on in that pretty little head of yours, sweetheart?”
“You saved all those people,” she whispered as she curled against him.
“Yeah,” he said softly before kissing her goodnight.
As soon as she was sure he was out and snoring, she lifted his arm up and snuck back on the laptop.
By the time she had managed to get a tiny bit of sleep, a mix of thunder and the door opening snapped her awake. She could see sheets of water pouring down the windows and hear droplets plopping into the bucket left over from the previous nor’easter.
“Hey, sleepyhead,” Steve said as he came wandering in shirtless but in leather pants. “Matsuoka is back if you want coffee.”
“Just give me a minute,” she said before checking that the laptop was still on her side of the bed. She quickly got dressed and sent messages to both Mr. Lambley and to Nicolette.
Steve eyed her as she walked into the room with a computer in hand. “You’ve got your shoes on already,” he complained.
“I don’t think I’ll be staying long,” she said.
Ren paused in the kitchen as he saw her hands shaking as she set the computer on the breakfast bar.
“It’s awful out there,” he warned. “I made certain that Nicolette made it over before I dared leave.”
“Yeah, he’s got a babysitter and it’s awful out. You should stay,” Steve said playfully.
“I have some things to do before it’s too late,” she said, staring at the door.
“Baby, what is it?” he asked.
She looked him right in the eyes and said, “Steve, we really need to talk . . . alone.”
“I’ll be in my apartment should you need me, sir,” Ren said, but he continued to look at Georgia.
As soon as the door shut, Georgia walked the vampire over to the couch and gently took both of his hands. “Steve, I’m just going to say this and not sugarcoat it,” she said. “I think we need to not see each other anymore.”
“What?” he said.
“I need to focus on Mr. Lambley right now—”
“Bullshit!” he snapped. “What is going on here?”
“I need to focus on my job,” she said weakly.
Steve hopped to his feet and started to pace frantically. “Georgia, you can’t . . . I mean, just tell me the truth.”
Georgia let out a strained laugh. “The truth?” she asked. ‘Do you even know what the truth is, Stefano DeMarco?”
“Yeah, I lied about my name. You knew that already. I came clean!”
“Then tell me, what was your test?”
“I told you!”
“What happened to your unit back in France? What really happened to them?”
“I told you, I turned myself over to Claudia—”
Georgia flipped open the laptop and showed him the very same webpage she had left open last night. “Joshua Leibowitz—killed in action in 1944; Stanley R. Smith—killed in action in 1944; Robert Chandler, guess what, he was also killed in action in 1944. Can you guess the only member of that entire unit who wasn’t confirmed killed in France in 1944?” She clicked a link to show a small and faded portrait of a cute and familiar curly-haired boy in a uniform. “News flash, Steve: everything ends up on the Internet eventually.”
“They weren’t there,” he said, staggering back. “They don’t know the whole story.”
“They were found in a mass grave . . . by a brewery.”
Steve all but stumbled over his own feet as he looked at a picture of his old unit uploaded on some site called WWII Stories Online. Georgia didn’t wait to pounce.
“Did you think I wouldn’t be curious? Did you think I’d never find out the truth?” she snapped.
“That isn’t the truth,” he said.
“Then tell me the truth, please,” she begged. “Tell me what really happened.”
“Everything I told you was true, I swear,” he said, reaching for her. “I did turn myself over to Claudia and Klaus. They promised that if I gave myself to them that they wouldn’t kill the guys. They promised!” He closed his eyes and started tugging the ends of his hair. “A vampire always keeps a promise.”
“I know that. You all keep saying that over and over and over again! So if a vampire always keeps a promise, how did they all end up dead? Convenient Nazis?”
Steve turned his back to her. She saw his shoulders shake.
“They killed me. Klaus and Claudia took their turns with my dying corpse, and then they left me. They left me locked in the basement with Leibowitz and Smith and Chandler. As they promised, they didn’t lift a finger to harm the boys.”
Georgia covered her mouth with her hand in horror. Steve whirled around, his eyes welling up and his fangs bared.
“You—”
“You would have done the same thing,” he said even as she shook her head violently. “It’s easy to say that you’ll be noble and good until you’re really, truly backed in a corner and you know it’s you or them. I mean, do you even know what it’s like to be starving? You sit there on your high and mighty horse, woman, but you have no idea . . . no clue . . . no inkling of what I had to go through!”
“Every Jaeger is a hunter,” she said softly. “Every Jaeger is a killer.”
“You’re right. You know in those vampire movies when you hear all that crap about how you’re only really a vampire when you make your first kill?” he growled. “Well, guess what? That little bit of lore did come from my family. We are all killers.”
“You should have just told me,” she said as she started backing toward the door.
“Why? So you could look at me with disgust like you’re doing right now?” he growled.
“I’m gonna go.”
Before she could even blink, she felt the full body weight of the vampire crashing into her chest. She screamed as he dashed across the room until she was jammed against the wall. Posters came crashing down, sending glass shards across the floor, as she continued to struggle.
“Let me go,” she screamed.
“Listen to me!” he yelled in her ear. “Look at me!”
“Let me go!”
He grabbed her jaw and forced her to face him. “I am not like the rest of them, Georgia,” he snarled. “I may have killed, but I never enjoyed it. I’m not like them!”
She stared at him. His rage had turned his once puppyish brown eyes fierce and red. She could feel every inch of him forced against her, leaving her completely trapped. No amount of effort from her arms or legs could seem to force the inhuman creature back.
“You’re acting like them,” she spat.
“Oh really?” he snarled. “You want a vampire? You want to meet a real Jaeger? Then fine!”
She started to whimper as he tilted her neck and let his breath tickle her trembling skin. She felt the very tips of his fangs scraping the very top layer of skin, teasing and probing for her now-exposed vein. “Please stop,” she begged.
He pulled his head back for a second and closed his eyes. “I need to make you understand,” he said. “You need to have me inside you. You need the real me inside you.”
He rolled his lip back and bit into it violently until a large dot of blood welled up on the surface. She froze in abject horror as he changed to caressing her cheek gently, teasing her lip and urging her to kiss him.
“Just let me show you,” he whispered as he swooped in. Before he reached her mouth, he roared in pain and staggered back. The vampire grabbed the back of his neck, where a bright yellow pencil had been jammed into the gap behind his collarbone. Georgia wiped the drops of blood from her face, leaving a crimson streak across her cheek as the vampire began to shake.
“Run!” Ren yelled as he rammed his shoulder into his master’s chest.
Steve retaliated with a solid punch and sent his servant reeling.
“Ren,” she gasped as she watched him take another blow. Rather than wait, she grabbed one of the fallen frames and cracked it over her knee. She brandished the splintered wood and tried to get between Steve and the now-bleeding Ren.
“You dared to—” he said, still staring as Ren. “You—”
“Georgia, run! Run back to Lambley,” Ren shouted.
“I’m not leaving you with a monster,” she said, still pointing her little stick at Steve even as her hands shook.
The vampire pulled the remaining pencil shard out of his back and dropped to his knees. “What have I done?” he asked. “Georgia, Ren, I’m so sorry.”
“Georgia, go. I’m under the protection of Minerva. He can’t do anything to me without her permission,” Ren said. “Please, go to safety. Please!”
Steve wiped his lip and reached for her. “Sweetheart, please. Listen to me, that wasn’t me. I’m so—I’m so sorry.”
She grabbed her jacket and purse and ran out the door. Despite the torrential rain, she started walking from the relatively deserted waterfront area straight for downtown. She saw the bright black and white of the T, and a few taxis slowed down to stalk her as she started to soak through, but nothing slowed her steps.
Minute after minute she walked forward. She felt her phone vibrating against her hip every few seconds, but it only served to spur her onward. The cold autumn rain tried its best, but she could still feel his breath creeping down her throat. As she got closer and closer to home, she clutched the pit of her stomach. She looked over her shoulder, but there was only the rain.
She nearly got blindsided as she dared to cross Commonwealth Avenue. The car honked, and she flipped the bird. As she reached the corner where she could have turned to head toward Brookline, she instead chose to keep walking straight into her old neighborhood of Allston.
By that point the rain had run out of nooks and crannies to seep into, and instead flowed off of her in glistening sheets. She muttered a quick thank you to the weather gods as the torrents thoroughly drowned out her tears, no matter how many seemed to come out. She thought she heard her name but didn’t look back. Instead, she picked up the pace and hustled to a familiar convenience store and a door with a V-shaped crack in the vestibule glass . . .
“Oh my god,” Gail gasped as she now squeezed Georgia’s shaking hand. “I’m so sorry.”
Georgia smiled weakly. “It’s funny,” she said. “I used to hate the rain, but now it’s all I ever dream about.”
