Time's Convert

Marcus remained where he was until his innards returned to their natural place. It took rather longer than the redheaded healer found acceptable.

“Well?” she demanded, standing over a prone soldier whose eyes were bugged out from pain and fear. “Are you going to faint, or are you going to help me?”

“I’ve never set a broken leg.” Marcus felt that honesty was the best policy with Mistress Bishop.

“You’ve never killed a man, either. There is a first time for everything,” Mistress Bishop said tartly. “Besides, I’m not asking you to set it. You’re going to hold him down while I do it.”

Marcus stood at the man’s head.

“No, not there.” Bishop’s patience had been spent. “Hold his hip here and his thigh there.” She placed Marcus’s hands in the proper position.

“You have anything to drink, Sarah?” the man croaked.

Marcus thought a drink was a very good idea, based on the angle of the soldier’s ankle relative to his knee. It looked as though the tibia had snapped in two.

She slapped her flask into Marcus’s palm. “You have a sip first, then give John a swig. You’ve gone all green again.”

This time, Marcus accepted her offer. The liquid burned a path down his throat. He held the bottle to the soldier’s lips.

“Thank you,” the man whispered. “You got anything else for the pain, Sarah? Anything stronger, I mean?”

A long look passed between the soldier and the healer.

Sarah shook her head. “Not here, John Proctor.”

“It was worth asking.” Proctor sighed and laid back. “The rum will have to do.”

“You ready, MacNeil?” Sarah clamped her pipe between her teeth.

Before Marcus could respond, or indeed even fully understand the question, Sarah Bishop had pulled the bones back into place, the muscles in her arms rigid with effort.

Proctor howled in agony, then passed out from the shock.

“There, there. All done.” Sarah patted Proctor’s leg. “Not shy with their feelings, the Proctors.”

Marcus thought the patient had been remarkably composed considering the seriousness of the injury, but he held his tongue.

Sarah pointed to the rum. “Have some more of that. And the next time you set a bone, remember to do it just like I did: immobilize the limb, then put your back into one good tug. You’ll do less harm that way. There’s no point in being so timid with the bones that you shred the muscles to pieces.”

“Yes, ma’am.” It had been difficult for Marcus to obey Woodbridge’s orders, but Sarah Bishop was another matter.

“I’ve got more men to treat.” Sarah’s pipe had gone out, but she kept chewing on it anyway, as though it gave her comfort.

“Should I stay and help?” Marcus wondered whether healing some other mother’s son would help him feel more at peace with the fact that he had taken a life.

“No. Go back to Hadley,” Sarah replied.

“But the fighting isn’t over.” Marcus looked around at the casualties. Men had been killed, maimed, fatally wounded. “They need every gun they can get. Freedom—”

“There are ways to serve the cause of liberty that don’t involve bloodshed. The army is going to require surgeons far more than soldiers.” Mistress Bishop pointed the end of her pipe at him. Her eyes were dark, the pupils huge. Marcus shivered at the sight. It must have been the drink and the smoke that made her look so strange.

“Your time has not yet come,” she continued, her voice dropping to a whisper. “Until it does, go home where you belong, Marcus MacNeil. Be ready. When the future beckons, you’ll know it.”

10

Three

15 MAY

Miriam dropped off the cat early in the morning on Phoebe’s third day of being a vampire. It was black and substantial of build, with a white nose, four white feet, and a white-tipped tail.

“It’s time you fed yourself,” Miriam said, putting the carrier next to the bed. Inside, the cat made plaintive mewling noises. “I need a break from this relentless motherhood. Freyja, Charles, and Françoise are here, but they won’t answer calls for food or drink.”

Phoebe’s stomach growled at Miriam’s words, but it was more out of sympathetic habit than hunger. Where Phoebe now felt the gnawing sensation of want was in her veins and in her heart. Like her center of gravity, her appetite had moved up from her belly in a way that seemed impossible based on her study of biology.

“Remember, Phoebe. It’s best not to talk to your food. Don’t dote on it. Leave it in the cage until you’re ready to feed,” Miriam instructed in the schoolmarm tone that sent Marcus and Matthew scurrying for their test tubes and computers when she was managing their Oxford biochemistry lab.

Phoebe nodded.

“And for God’s sake,” Miriam added as she went out the door, “don’t name it.”

Phoebe released the door to the cage immediately after she heard the front door snick closed. The terrible twos were lingering, and her rebellious streak showed no signs of disappearing.

“Come here, kitty,” Phoebe crooned. “I don’t want to harm you.”

The cat, which knew better, plastered itself against the rear of the carrier and hissed, its back arched and its teeth—sharp, white, pointed—exposed.

Impressed by the cat’s display of ferocity, Phoebe drew back to study her first proper meal. The cat, sensing an opportunity for escape, ran out from the carrier and wedged itself behind the wardrobe.

Intrigued, Phoebe settled down on the floor and waited.

* * *

—

TWO HOURS LATER, the cat decided Phoebe meant no immediate harm and ventured to the rug in front of the closed door to the hallway, as though planning to bolt at the first opportunity.

Phoebe had grown bored waiting for the cat to make its next move and spent the intervening time examining her own teeth in the cracked windowpane. There were only a few hours when this was possible, Phoebe discovered, when the light hit the glass just right. Everything else that was shiny had been taken away last night for fear that Phoebe would become mesmerized by her own reflection and, Narcissus-like, find it impossible to break the fascination.

Phoebe ached for a mirror again almost as much as she ached for Miriam’s blood. The window glass provided some reflection, but she wanted to study her teeth in detail. Could they really have become so sharp that they would be able to bite through fur, skin, fat, and sinew and reach the cat’s life source?

What if my teeth aren’t up to it? Phoebe wondered.

What if one breaks? Do vampire teeth regenerate?

Phoebe’s active vampire mind skittered to life, hopping from question to question.

Can vampires feed without teeth?

Are they like infants, dependent on others for their sustenance?

Is pulling teeth a death sentence as well as a mark of shame, like taking a thief’s hand so that he can’t steal again?

“Stop.” Phoebe said it aloud. The cat looked up and blinked at her, unimpressed. It stretched, kneading the plush surface of the carpet before returning to a wary knot.

“You still have claws.” Of course, Miriam had not stooped to providing her with a defenseless cat. Along with the sharp teeth that the cat had already displayed, the claws were proof that this cat needed to be taken seriously.

“You’re a survivor. Like me.” The cat was missing the tip of one ear, no doubt lost in some alley fight. It was no great beauty, yet something in its eyes touched Phoebe’s heart—a weariness that spoke of struggle and a longing for home.

Phoebe wondered whether, one day when Freyja and Miriam finally allowed her to have a mirror again, she would see the same look in her own eyes. Would her eyes have changed? Would they continue to do so, growing hard and haunted, looking older even though the rest of her did not?

“Stop.” Phoebe said it loudly enough this time that the word echoed slightly in the sparsely furnished room. After two days of having people run to her aid whenever she so much as sighed in disappointment, Phoebe found the lack of response from the household both disconcerting and strangely liberating.

Miriam and Marcus had assured her, weeks ago, that her first attempt at feeding from a living creature would not be tidy. They had also warned that whatever unfortunate being Phoebe fed from the first time would not survive. There would be too much trauma—not necessarily physical, but certainly mental. The animal would struggle in her grip and probably frighten itself to death, its system flooded with so much adrenaline that the heart would explode.