“That really freaking hurts.” It wasn’t the needle so much as the sensation of burning that spread out from the injection site. It felt like being slapped.
“Just be glad it’s not in the stomach anymore.”
Meaty was checking news links online. “I don’t see anything about our Code Triage here. Gina, start barricading doors.”
Gina moved behind Meaty, reaching up into the pneumatic tube system like she was searching for a flue. She pulled a metal sheet down, latched it into place, and pulled down a plastic sheet after it. She went from room to room after that, pulling down hidden latches and bars.
“Where’d Mr. Hale go?” I asked her. Charles’s daytimer wasn’t in his room.
“Out for a cigarette, about an hour ago. As soon as he left, that’s when they started howling.”
From around the bend, Rachel screamed. Gina startled and ran down the hall. Meaty did too. I followed, much more slowly.
“Who is this? Why is he by my rooms?” Rachel asked, pointing at Gideon. Fluorescent light was not doing him any favors. It highlighted the strange curlings of things that shouldn’t have been traveling under his skin.
“Sorry. He’s helping. Honest,” I said, and Gideon walked back over to me, again offering me his arm.
“All of these rooms are secure?” Meaty asked.
“Of course.”
I could see their occupants in the monitors, the quiet men and women of yesterday, now half human, half beast, all furious. At the sound of our voices in the hall, they redoubled their efforts to come out and play with us.
“It’s too late to give them shots now, isn’t it?” I asked.
Rachel eyed me pragmatically. “Do you want to open up a door?”
“No.” But speaking of. I jerked my chin at Winter’s locked room. “Did the coroner ever come?”
“It’s a holiday. We called twice,” Gina said.
There had to be connections among everything—the attacks on me, the attacks on Anna, Viktor’s past, Lucas’s future. Either Winter had taken them to the grave with him, or the answer was behind his door.
“Gideon—” I said, and we walked over to Winter’s room together.
I turned on all the lights once we got inside—there was no reason not to see clearly now. I pulled the sheets off the bed, and the smell of necrosis that the weres had commented on was battled by the scent of shit, the final indignity of death, staining both him and middle of the bed like wet cement.
“What are we looking for?” Gina asked me.
“I’m not sure.”
“Wouldn’t want to have to give you twice the shots.” She handed me gloves, and I pulled them on. Only another nurse could joke in the face of death, and I loved her for it.
His naked body was free of the bite-mark scars that vampire-sanctioned donors had, zones where too many injuries had left keloided scars, neck, armpit, groin. All his lines were still in the same places, his ET tube too. What was it? What were we missing?
I ran my gloved hands over his chest, down his arms, down his legs, down to his one remaining big toe. I hit the bottom of his necrotic foot, expecting to find it like a rotting overripe tomato.
Instead, it dusted. Not the whole thing, but the topmost tips of his toes. I hit it again, and another line of dust flew off—like I was beating an old rug outside in the spring.
“Did you see that?” I asked Gina and did it again.
“He’s part daytimer,” Gina whispered. “No wonder he lived to be so old.”
“How come we didn’t know?”
“Do you give men pregnancy tests? We just assume that weres are not also part vampires. Up until now, we were right.” She reached out to hit his foot for herself, then reached back to hit his hand. Another cloud of dust came up, and a chunk of his wrist dusted away.
“Shit. This is it. What they were protecting,” Gina said.
“He still died, though. What does this change?”
“His whole family—if this got out, they’d be humiliated. They’d lose control of the pack.” Gina started pacing and talked as she thought. “But they already have lost control—I mean, Lucas will be pack leader now.”
“Only for the interim, until Fenris Jr. is of age,” I corrected her.
“Five years from now. A lot of things can change.”
Rachel returned to the doorway of the room. “I went and checked the conference room—Helen’s gone. She broke down the door.”
“Which vampire was giving him blood, is what I want to know,” Gina said. Gideon stood by the head of the bed, looking down at Winter. He leaned forward, almost like he was going in for a lipless kiss, and then stood straight again.
Gina kept pacing. I would have paced too, only my thighs were still on fire if I moved, and thanks to the were-vaccination my shoulder felt like someone had run a truck into it.
“Winter was leaving from here when he got hit—Charles and I saw him. Why the hell was he here to begin with?”
Gina stopped. “Which floors have security cams?”
I looked over at Gideon. “I think I know someone who can find out.”
We installed Gideon behind the fastest computer on the floor, and he pulled a USB cable out from a pocket and plugged it in. I didn’t know where the end of the cable was located, and I didn’t want to ask.
“Is that really happening?” Rachel said.
“Yeah. Ask him if he gets cable.”
Gideon communed with the computer, but nothing showed on the screen.
“By the way, Spence, this is for you. It came in earlier today.” Meaty held up a printout—I could see the lab’s insignia in the corner, from underneath. “Unknown specimen report. Hydrogen dioxide. Smectite. Feldspar.” Meaty shook the paper. “What sample did you send them? It wasn’t even spit.”
“It was this drug my brother’s been selling downtown.” I took the paper from Meaty to read it myself. “I don’t even know what smectite is.”
Images began appearing on the monitor in front of Gideon, and we all crowded around. There was a man who looked like Winter, having a fight in the hallway with a person wearing a lab coat. The security cameras didn’t have great resolution, and I couldn’t read lips. “Dammit.”
“I know where that is,” Gina said, pointing at something flowy and metal monopolizing half the screen. “I recognize that crappy statue. They’re outside the transfusion center. Weres visit the transfusion center all the time. They donate a lot of blood, to cover them during their mortal times.”
“He was probably just donating,” Rachel said, and squinted, leaning forward. “Why would you get mad about not being able to donate?”
The onscreen fight between Winter and a tech continued. “When you want to make a withdrawal instead,” I said.
Gideon switched screens. The monitor view divided into eight quadrants, each of them showing gray squares outside. It was snowing lightly in all of them, and black shadows were coming toward the screen.
“Is that now?” I asked him, and he nodded. “Is Triage over? Are those patients, returning?”
Gideon didn’t respond to me. He opened up one of the smaller rectangles so that it occupied the whole screen. The people coming toward the camera were not the helpless crutching group Gideon and I had seen leaving. These new people ran, strong, on two and four legs both. “Look at the way they move,” Gina said. “Weres.”
“Smectite and feldspar are types of clay,” Meaty said from behind us. “Your brother was selling water and dirt.”
“What? The way he talked that stuff up—it was like magic. And it wasn’t just him. I confiscated a vial of it from one of the weres here, too.” I was sure it had something to do with things—
Gina took the sheet from me and gasped. “No way.” And then she groaned. “He was selling it? To how many people?”
“I don’t know. He said business was good—” As I talked the color drained from her face. “Why?”
