Paige awoke several times after the attack, but this was the first instance when she had the strength or desire to keep her eyes open. The room was well lit, warm and quiet, enveloped by multiple sets of footsteps, hushed voices and a few blaring televisions in other rooms. In every aspect other than the square arrangement of its four walls and ceiling, it was the antithesis of the residence hall where Wes had thrown his party.
His name fluttered through her brain like a horsefly with hairs bristling on its body and wings cut from dirty plastic wrap. She closed her eyes, shifted in the bed, and took enough comfort from its clean sheets and sterilized pillow to give the whole waking up thing another chance.
She finally did open her eyes, and immediately wanted to close them. Then, as that desire soured into weakness, she choked it down and raised her lids, no matter how much it hurt or what was beyond them.
Someone was visiting whoever occupied the other bed in the room. The figure stood there, fussing with the sheets, straightening them until they were perfect. The back of his head was covered in coarse, salt-and-pepper hair. There were deep wrinkles along his neck, which could have been scars. When he reached for the other patient’s head, he did so with such recklessness that Paige sat up to see what he intended to do with the pillow he’d just grabbed. “Hey!” she said.
The man turned around, gripping the pillow in both hands. It might have been a more threatening image if there had been a face at the head of the bed or a person beneath the sheets. Now that she was sitting up, she could tell that the other patient she thought she’d seen was just a trick of shadows being cast by the light pouring through the window and the haziness within her own mind. A few more blinks cleared her vision enough for her to see that what she’d mistaken for feet was actually a bundle left at the foot of the bed.
“There a problem, miss?” the man asked. He wore simple blue pants that were too smooth to be jeans, too loose to be tailored, and too cheap to be anything but mandatory hospital issue.
“Do you work here?”
“Yes I do. Can I get you anything?”
“No, I don’t want anything. Were the police here?”
“Were you expecting them?”
She turned away, suddenly ashamed of the disappointment that made her feel like a kid who’d just discovered the sad truth about who hid the eggs on Easter morning.
The man walked over to her bedside, tossing the pillow so it landed exactly in its place. “You look like you’re doing pretty well.”
“Yeah? Maybe you should look again.” When he took another step toward her, she tensed and added, “Forget it, guy. If you think I’m helpless just because I’m in this bed, then you’ll really be surprised when I jam that IV stand up your ass.”
“That’s good to hear.”
“And if you say you like a little fight in your women, I’ll jam another IV stand up there to keep the first one company.”
“I wasn’t about to say it quite that way,” the man told her, “but your point’s been made. My name’s Ned.”
“I know.” Seeing the flicker of surprise on his face, Paige eased back against her pillows and told him, “It’s written on your shirt.”
“Oh, that’s right. It sure is, isn’t it? Normally someone in your condition isn’t so quick on their feet. Actually, many of them don’t get back onto their feet at all.”
“My condition,” Paige huffed. “I’m a little bruised, but I’ll be out of here soon.”
Ned walked over to the door, took a quick look to the hall outside and eased the door shut. “That,” he said while walking over to the bundle he’d left at the foot of the other bed, “isn’t exactly what I meant.”
“So what did you mean?” she asked as her hand drifted toward the call button hanging from her bed frame.
Although Ned looked at her long enough to see what Paige was doing, he didn’t make a move to stop her. Instead, he carefully unrolled the bundle, to lay it on the unoccupied bed, and began sifting through its contents. “You weren’t attacked by just some bunch of drunken idiots. That fella, Wes, had some very unusual friends that put you and your friends through hell on earth.”
“Don’t try to tell me what happened.”
“I know what happened to your friend with the glasses. I also know what happened to the pretty, quiet little one, and the girl who turned up missing.”
“You mean Amy?”
Ned nodded and turned around to face her. In his hand was a syringe the size of a little pencil. It wasn’t the cloudy liquid in the narrow plastic tube or the needle at the end of it that frightened her as much as the calm certainty in Ned’s eyes regarding what was going to happen next.
“The police say Amy’s missing,” he said. “Everyone around this hospital caring for the patients from that party along with other kids from the university all say the same thing, but you know better. Amy’s not missing, is she?”
Paige’s eyes narrowed as she sat up in her bed. The muscles in her legs tensed in preparation of unleashing a flurry of kicks. Her fingers clenched around the sheets and the edge of the mattress as if she could somehow pull those things up and use them as weapons. “What’s in that needle?”
“It’s an antidote for what may be running through your system.”
“The doctors already put enough into me. Get that crap away before I call someone.”
Ned stopped, lowered the needle and looked at her with a contemplative expression. “Those Nymar left you alone for a reason. I think I see what that could be.”
“Namor?”
“No. Nymar. It’s what the vampires call themselves.”
And there it was.
Paige had heard people talk about life-changing moments. Most of those were soldiers or survivors of catastrophes, or maybe even people who were critically ill. She might have had a moment like that during the attack, but her brain had done a pretty good job of wiping those memories away like hot breath from a cold window. Not only did Ned’s words bring the memories back, but they convinced her that she hadn’t simply exaggerated things to cover a more earthly violation. If she’d been beaten or raped, it was something she could comprehend. There were support groups she could visit, doctors to comfort her, others who might understand her pain. There were no support groups for victims of vampire attacks.
Or maybe there were. Somehow, she figured Ned might know about such things.
“You saw the vampires,” he declared. “You saw what they did to your friends. They killed one and most likely fed on the others. More than one of them must have fed on you. That’s why those wounds haven’t closed yet. If just one bit you, there wouldn’t be much of a trace left. When their saliva mingles, that gets messed up.”
There were bandages wrapped around Paige’s left forearm, a few taped to her shoulder, and a thick chunk of gauze attached to her neck. When she moved, she could feel the twitch of pain beneath the antiseptic wrappings. “I don’t know for sure what they did. They knocked me out when I tried to fight back.”
“See, that’s the difference. You fought back. More than that, I’m guessing you fought back real well. Did you wound one of them?”
“I don’t think so. Grabbed a corkscrew and tried stabbing him, but it didn’t do much of anything.”
“Where did you stab him?”
Tapping into her reserve strength, she lifted her chin and arched her back so she was almost standing up in the bed. “Right on those fucking moving tattoos. I mean,” she added as her posture slipped, “the thick black tattoo on one of them.”
Ned smiled warmly. “No, you’re right,” he told her while calmly patting her shoulder. “Those black markings moved. They’re not tattoos.”
“Is that why they came for me? Because I can see that kind of thing?”
“I can’t say for certain, but I doubt they came for you. That one fella, Wes, lives on campus and has been feeding on students because they’re easy pickin’s. The others are friends of his, and I’m pretty sure one of them is the leader of the group.”
“Was it a woman named Hope?”
For the first time since he’d made his presence known, Ned seemed shaken. “Is that really her name?”
