The Beast

And then the brother went down.

Unlike the Omega’s boys, a direct hit like that would knock out any vampire, even a member of the Brotherhood. Nobody walked away from that shit, nobody.

As V screamed again, he hit his own patch of ground and discharged one of his weapons, plowing the slayer with the hole-in-one shot with enough lead to turn the fucker into a bank vault.

Threat neutralized, he scrambled to his brother, crab-walking on his guns and the balls of his shitkickers. For a male who never felt fear, he found himself looking into the gaping maw of pure terror.

“Rhage!” he said. “Jesus fucking Christ— Rhage!”

THREE

Havers’s new clinic was located across the river, in the center of some four hundred acres of forest that were vacant but for an old farmhouse and three or four new-built kiosks for entry into the subterranean facility. As Mary drove the last stretch of the twenty-minute trip in her Volvo XC70, she kept glancing in the rearview mirror at Bitty. The girl was sitting in the backseat of the station wagon and staring out the darkened window next to her as if the thing were a television and whatever show was on was captivating.

Every time Mary refocused on the road ahead, she cranked down harder on the steering wheel. And the accelerator.

“We’re almost there,” she said. Yet again.

The meant-to-be-reassuring statement was doing nothing for Bitty, and Mary knew she was just trying to soothe herself. The idea that they might not make it to the bedside in time was a hypothetical burden that she couldn’t help trying on for size—and, man, did that crying-shame corset make her feel like she couldn’t breathe.

“Here’s the turn-off.”

Mary hit the blinker and took a right onto a single-laner that was uneven and exactly what all her internal rush-rush didn’t need.

Then again, she could have been on a perfectly paved super-highway and her heart still would have been conga-lining it up in her chest.

The vampire race’s only healthcare facility was set up to evade both human attention and sunlight’s merciless effects, and when you brought someone in, or sought treatment yourself, you were assigned one of several entry points. When the nurse had called with the sad news, Mary had been told to proceed directly to the farmhouse and park there, and that was what she did, pulling in between a pickup truck that was new and a Nissan sedan that was not.

“You ready?” she asked the rearview mirror as she cut the engine.

When there was no response, she got out and went around to Bitty’s door. The girl seemed surprised to find they’d arrived, and small hands fumbled to release the seat belt.

“Do you need help?”

“No, thank you.”

Bitty was clearly determined to get out of the car on her own, even if it took her a little longer than it might have otherwise. And the delay was maybe intentional. The what-next that was coming after this death was almost too terrible to contemplate. No family. No money. No education.

Mary pointed to a barn behind the house. “We’re going over there.”

Five minutes later, they were through a number of checkpoints and down an elevator shaft, whereupon they stepped out into a sparkling-clean, well-lit reception and waiting area that smelled exactly like all the ones in human hospitals did: fake lemon, faded perfume, and faintly of someone’s dinner.

Pavlov had a point, Mary thought as she approached the front desk. All it took was that combination of antiseptic and stale air in her nose and she was flat on her back in a hospital bed, tubes running in and out of her, the drugs trying to kill off the cancer in her blood making her feel at best like she had the flu, and at worst like she was going to die then and there.

Fun times.

As the uniformed blonde behind the computer screen looked up, Mary said, “Hi, I’m—”

“Go that way,” the female said urgently. “To the double doors. I’ll release the lock. The nursing station is right ahead of you. They’ll take her in directly.”

Mary didn’t wait to even say thank-you. Grabbing Bitty’s hand, she rushed across the buffed, shiny floor and punched through the metal panels as soon as she heard the clunk of the mechanism shift free.

On the far side of the cozy chairs and the well-thumbed magazines of the waiting area, it was all clinical business, people in scrubs and traditional white nursing uniforms striding around with trays and laptops and stethoscopes.

“Over here,” someone called out.

The nurse in question had black hair cut short, blue eyes that matched her scrubs, and a face like Paloma Picasso’s. “I’ll take you to her.”

Mary fell in behind Bitty, guiding the girl now by the shoulders as they went down one hallway and then another to what was obviously the ICU section of the place: Normal hospital rooms didn’t have glass walls with curtains on the insides. Didn’t have this much staff around. Didn’t have dashboards with stats flashing behind the nursing station.

As the nurse stopped and opened one of the panels, the beeping of the medical equipment was urgent, all kinds of frantic blips and squeaks suggesting that the computers were worried about whatever was going on with their patient.

The female held the curtain aside. “You can go right in.”

When Bitty hesitated, Mary leaned down. “I’m not leaving you.”

And again, that was something Mary was saying for herself. The girl had never seemed to particularly care which of Safe Place’s staff were or were not around her.

As Bitty remained in place, Mary looked up. There were two nurses checking Annalye’s vitals, one on each side of the bed, and Havers was there, too, putting some kind of drug into the IV that ran into a shockingly thin arm.