Because the monster you knew was always better than all the ones you didn’t.
Chapter Fifty-Two
The train made three stops, during none of which any passengers got onto or off the train. I knew it had to be someone’s stop, but they were all frozen by Dren’s look-away/stay-away. I held on to Ti’s good hand, wrapped around me, and stayed quiet.
Four stops past that, Dren snapped his fingers, and the Hound began bringing up the rear.
“Uptown?” I asked.
“It’s unsettling how well you know the trains of this, your own fine city,” Dren said, rolling his eyes. He made a gesture toward the open doors for both of us to pass. “Shamble on, sir,” he said as Ti walked by. Ti growled in response.
This platform was empty. The train behind us closed its doors. I turned and watched it go with longing.
Dren moved around us and began mounting the stairs two at a time. The Hound managed them awkwardly, sidestepping itself up. We emerged into the station, and up from there onto the surface again, and Dren began leading us deeper into the night.
“Are you sure you don’t want to run?” Dren asked as he walked ahead. He’d pulled his sickle out of its holster again, and was twirling it from hand to hand.
“Yes.” I continued to walk along the path he’d taken.
Dren turned around. “Both of you could, you know. I would give you a head start. Cross my heart.” He ran the tip of his sickle in an X over his own chest. “I’ll count to a hundred. You and your zombie lover. Take off now, go.”
“No.”
“To a hundred and three,” Dren said, matching pace with me. The Hound waddled alongside of him, gnashing its teeth. “Oh, fine, a hundred and twelve, then, will you take that?”
Ti put his hand out to stop me. “What’s your angle?” he asked Dren, sounding like he had a mouth full of marbles.
“Souls are sweeter than bloodrights. You should know that, zombie. And bloodrights are all I’m getting paid for this mess.” He pointed his sickle at me. “But fair’s fair, I’d give you both a fighting chance. No fun in chasing after you if I didn’t get to stretch my legs.”
“No,” I repeated, walking along. Our surroundings were getting noticeably more familiar. The lighting was improved, and the litter on the streets was lessening. We were near my old hospital, the one I’d worked at oh-so- briefly what felt like a lifetime ago.
“You want to know what the difference is between a reaper and a husker?” Dren asked. “A reaper—”
My nerves snapped. “Can you just tell us where we’re going? And then after that, shut up?”
Dren squinted at me. “Someplace where you should feel right at home.” He ran ahead twenty steps, then clapped his sickle against the Providence General sign behind him. “And look, we’re not alone.”
Ti and I turned toward the hospital. The lawn in front of Providence General looked like a triage zone, with clusters of people standing around. I covered one eye, and saw that most of them glowed.
“What the—” I began to ask, as a car turned beside us and pulled in. More vampires disembarked, chatting with one another. They were all dressed glamorously, in long velvet dresses, like they were attending a show.
“The Zverskiye sent out invitations to all the players. Of course their entourages came, and with the entourages, the merely curious. Vampires hate to be left out.”
Ti made another growling noise from beside me.
“Invitations to what, precisely?” I asked.
“If you don’t know, then how should I?” Dren looked back at me, eyes glittering. “But it’s all very exciting, isn’t it?” He trotted down the hillside, and more reluctantly, Ti and I followed.
The automatic doors of Providence’s well-appointed lobby opened up for us, and it looked like a freak circus had been set up inside. Regal-looking ladies sat across the backs of sturdy leashed men, hobbled into kneeling positions with chains, occupying open spaces where the lobby had run out of seats. Vampires who looked like British mods lounged on the coffee cart in tight leather pants, sifting their hands through open bags of beans. Others fit right into their surroundings, wearing normal clothing, leafing through the available magazines and looking like bored soccer moms detoured by skinned knees on their way home from the park.
Among all these, health care workers wandered through on nightly duties, studiously ignoring any of their activities, oblivious even to the sound of coffee beans plinking onto the floor.
“I had no idea there were so many vampires in the city,” I whispered. Ti took my hand and rubbed it against his coat. I could feel the heel of something metal in his pocket. I nodded to him, as if to myself.
“You don’t often see them all in one place. This is big.” Dren directed us through the emergency medical service’s doors.
Providence was a private hospital now. It was older, but with privatization had come the funds to refurbish their facilities, one overpriced MRI at a time. I knew from prior personal experience that there wasn’t too much action here. Any real traumas they sent off to trauma centers—especially any real traumas without adequate health insurance. But you wouldn’t have known how boring it was from watching the vampires. The first cubicle had a businessman with a GI bleed set to suction—I could tell by the tube going into his nose, and the coffee-colored residue that’d been sucked into the suction canister on the wall. Vampires sat on the countertops and empty beds in the room, watching him like bored cats eyeing an errant bird.
The next cubicle had a shrieking child, holding both his ears. His mother was trying to console him, and the doctor there was writing a prescription for antibiotics as fast as he could. Only one vampire sat in this room, watching the child over steepled fingers.
“Why’re they so bold?” I asked Dren. Was it always like this? Had I just never noticed before?
“The Zverskiye have been making promises of change. We shall see. You, it seems, will have first-row seats.”
I didn’t look into the rest of the trauma bays as we passed. I pressed against Ti’s side, and felt what I hoped was Ti’s gun against my ribs, until Dren showed us to the back stairway, which had clear plastic taped up over the door and WARNING—CONSTRUCTION signs posted. A black-robed vampire with a waist-length beard stood in front of this, his hands hidden in his sleeves. He was metering in guests like a doorman. Two stockbroker-looking vampires were let in with a small nod. Behind us—behind the Hound, really—a woman with an ornate headdress and a corseted waist was waiting her turn.
“We’re on the guest list. Look under
“Who’s he?” the vampire asked, with a thick Old World accent.
“He’s her protector. He’s going to try to kill you all,” Dren said.
The vampire looked Ti up and down. “Your hat, scarf, coat, all of it, now.”
Ti unwound his scarf first. I could see the muscles of his jaw tense and release underneath the darker portion of his skin. He took off his hat then, and coat, revealing his new arm, connected just below the elbow. It was oddly larger than his own—it made him look like a mutant creature from a video game. His gloves came off last.
The vampire patted down Ti’s jacket and found the gun. He put it inside his robe. “Anything else?” he asked Ti, eyeing his tight shirt and fitted jeans. Ti shook his head, and the vampire stood aside.
We walked inside single file down the stairs. It looked like we were nearing the old operating rooms, but I couldn’t see past Ti’s shoulders. The Hound was behind me, talons clattering on the sea-foam-green tile, its hot breath foul.
“This is their home turf, you see. They don’t find you terribly threatening,” Dren explained. “Neither do I.”
“That’s too bad. By the time this night is through, I might need another arm,” Ti said ahead of me. We reached the lower level, where vampires were standing from wall to wall.
Dren laughed. “I suspect you will end up needing more than that. But now my deed is done.” He stepped
