Crimson Death
Page 188

   Some of them were lying in the beds now with IVs sending fluids to their burned, or just undead, flesh. Others in the room had called ambulances when they “woke” to themselves and found that they’d tried to rip out a friend’s or family member’s throat. Others had turned themselves in to the police after waking up covered in blood, with no memory of what was happening. If other of the new Irish undead had hidden after their first murder of the day, then we’d find them later by the bodies they left behind. They’d given drugs to the vampires to put them out of their pain, and some just a sedative in case the craving for blood returned. Most of them had volunteered for anything that would keep others safe.
   Nathaniel’s bandaged wrists had been the hospital’s insistence. He hadn’t thought either vampire bite needed the attention. To me later he’d whispered, “I get more hurt at home from sex with Asher than this.” Wisely, he hadn’t tried explaining that to the doctors.
   Devereux and Damian stood behind us. Fortune and Jake were off with Nolan’s people to try to answer more questions about vampires and how to take care of them. Edward and Nolan himself were off trying to get their/our group more powers of authority. There was some talk that killing the two vampires we had was going to get us kicked out of Ireland, but there were too many dead people and too many vampires waiting for nightfall for most of those in power to want to lose their experts on the undead. They’d keep us around until the crisis was over, but after that I wasn’t sure. I’d hoped to sightsee around Ireland for a few days when it was all done, but I was beginning to wonder if they were just going to escort us to the airplane and tell us, Don’t ever come back. Yeah, they were scared and they had a right to be scared, but fear makes people look for someone to blame. I was a necromancer and sleeping with the monsters; it made me an easy target for hatemongers.
   The room was very quiet with just the rush and whir of the machinery and monitors to break the silence. That, combined with the dimness, made it all unreal, or like a scene from a bad dream. They’d isolated all the vampires in their own area; even the burn victims weren’t being taken to the burn unit. The doctors had cut away the tissue that had to be excised, but they would heal even less than a human patient would. Fire was one of the few things that the supernatural could not heal from. I knew that burns from holy water scarred over eventually, but I didn’t even know if burns from actual fire would do that much. Would the open skin, so raw and painful, be where they were trapped for all eternity? God, I hoped not.
   “There are other rooms full of vampires; how did just your group give enough blood for all of them?” I asked. It was something I hadn’t thought to ask before. My stomach was settling down and the pain in my arm was just a dull ache, so I was thinking better.
   “People started coming up to us and offering themselves for feedings,” Dev said.
   I looked back at him. “You’re joking.”
   “He’s not joking,” Nathaniel said. “At first we thought the Irish were some of the bravest people on the planet, and some ordinary citizens did help us put out the flames, and even donated a wrist or two.”
   “We stopped letting civilians help once Griffin got hurt,” Dev said.
   “You said at first. What did you mean?”
   “I guess technically they’re Irish, too, like the original Irish, but they were Flannery’s friends.”
   “You mean Fey?”
   He nodded and squeezed my hand a little tighter. “What’s wrong?”
   “Some of them were too beautiful to be real, like they’d walked out of a wet dream,” Dev said.
   “Others looked ordinary,” Nathaniel said, “but there was always something about them that wasn’t quite . . . human normal.”
   “Auntie Nim came and offered her own blood,” said Dev.
   “Really?” I said.
   “Her and her people,” Nathaniel said.
   “They made you nervous,” I said, shaking Nathaniel’s hand.
   He nodded without looking at me.
   “What’s wrong?”
   “They liked us, me because I had blond hair and him because his was dark red. When I said, ‘Where are all the Irish redheads you see in movies?’ they said, ‘In fairyland, because we stole them away.’”
   “Nathaniel, are you worried they’ll steal you away?”
   He shook his head. “I don’t know, Anita. It’s the first magic that’s really . . . unnerved me, I guess.”
   “They kept asking him if he was one of theirs, like his ancestors had gone to America or something,” Dev said.
   “They said that only one of them would have flower-colored eyes.”
   “You’re wondering if they’re right,” I said.
   He looked at me with those lilac-colored eyes. “I don’t know anything about my family really, Anita; for all I know, one of my ancestors could be from here.”
   “Why does that bother you? Most people would love to have some fairy blood in them, or royalty.”
   “I don’t know, but it’s like I can feel something inside me that isn’t my leopard now. It’s like something’s awake that I didn’t even know was asleep.”
   “Flannery says that his magic only works really well here; if you have blood ties to Ireland maybe that’s true for you, too,” I said.
   He looked at me, startled. “You mean I could be a . . . what, a Fairy Doctor?”
   “Maybe,” I said.
   “They liked Nathaniel,” Dev said. “They kept touching his hair, his arm, the way people do when they’re flirting.”
   “You like flirting,” I said.
   “Normally, but this felt more . . . It wasn’t flirting, Anita, not the way we think of it, but we couldn’t have saved nearly the vampires we did if they hadn’t come to help.”
   “One of them called it a debt of honor,” Dev said.
   “What does that mean?” I asked.
   Damian moved up closer behind us, hugging us both lightly around the shoulders. “It means that something about what’s happened makes them feel they owe the help to the city, or to Flannery, or to the victims themselves.”
   “Why would they feel that?” I asked.
   “I don’t know. The few that I met over the centuries were very mysterious and kept their secrets better than most vampires.”
   “Why did She-Who-Made-You do this? What did it gain her?” Nathaniel asked, in a whisper. It was that kind of room; you just couldn’t raise your voice.