Beautiful Monster 2 (18 page)

“Maybe it’s like that and maybe it’s not,” he said dismissingly. “But the truth is, when she is around me, the scent of death fills my nostrils. The law was not false invoked, Liam. They will find it true and you
will be safe.”

“No
.” I didn’t want to believe it, but like in my office when we caught Isabelle, I knew Connor was telling the truth. “No, no, no!”

“I’m sorry
.” His eyes were full of pain. “I know what it’s like to lose one you love. Even if you are at odds with them.”

“I’m not talking about this anymore
.” I shook my head. “Thank you for coming up with some weirdo law to save my skin, but I’m going to go get Amy to safety.”

I turned on my heel and stormed out of the
theater, leaving Connor there. I knew my path was crooked, I couldn’t seem to keep walking in a straight line.

Going to the dorms was harder than I imagined, and I tr
ailed a hand along the wall, trying to hurry and be careful at the same time.

“Hi Liam,” a few girls called
, as they walked down the hall, and I nodded, not trusting my own voice.

I knew what death smelled like, Connor wasn’t high and mighty. I had killed my fair share of people, and there was a similar tinge of the lord of necromancers on Peter, as much as it hurt me. Po
rsche had the same smell to her, near the end, and even Nina, as soon as I got down there, smelled the same way with a twist of vampire. Death was something vampires got used to, the scent becoming as familiar as the smell of strawberries or freshly baked bread.

I rapped on Amy’s dorm room
twice. We hadn’t seen each other in weeks, aside from rehearsal, and we hadn’t spoken a word to each other. Her first episode of Ranger had aired and it almost killed me to watch it without her, to not call her and tell her how proud of her I was.

This was going to be an awkward encounter, but
I needed to know.

There was no answer at the door and I leaned in, peeping through the peephole, but the distorted view showed an empty room.

“Amy? Amy?” I called through the door, rapping again and hoping she was just hiding inside.

It was probably about the third call, my voice a little louder than I meant it to be, when a door opened down the hallway and Sarah and Amy came out of Sarah’s dorm room.

“What the hell are you doing?” Amy asked, her arms crossed.

“Amy!” I headed towards her, lurching a little and she ducked away to avoid contact.

“Are you drunk?” she asked, with distaste. “That’s real responsible, Liam.”

“Liam, you shouldn’t be here,” Sarah said, clearly a bit annoyed as well.

But I focused on Amy, moving forward and trying to get my nose close enough to her neck. I was half in transformation, and I knew I shouldn’t be out, but it allowed me to get a whiff of her life force.

The familiar smell drifted into my nostrils. Connor was right. She smelled like death. My Amy was dying, far too soon.

At first, I just thought they were scrapes, cuts, bruises. Every theater actor has them, because it isn’t exactly a glamorous life. I had gotten a few in the summertime, during Gatsby, and now that I had been working on Ranger for a few weeks, with Drago’s ridiculously hard but supposedly safe stunts, there were more of them. I had ignored them for a while, assuming it was nothing.

I had also gotten sick a few times during the summer, horrible coughs and colds that I just couldn’t shake. I had even cancelled a visit home with Liam because I felt like crap for a week. But everyone gets sick, especially when they are working a hard schedule and traveling. So I ignored it.

But one morning, I woke up at dawn, coughing. I looked at the clock, hating my life at that moment. It was 5 am and I was still exhausted, despite having gone to bed at nearly 9 pm. In the dawn light, my arm was practically shining like a halo and the wound was shiny and purple, and a bit wet.

Lesions
.

Realistically, I shouldn’t
have been surprised. I was approaching twenty and had HIV since birth. I was what was known as a long term non-regressor, the disease was lying dormant for years. I took my medication daily, and I never skipped a dose. I guess, somewhere in my head, I thought that it would never show up. But here it was. And lesions were not the first sign, which meant I had been stupidly ignoring other signs for a while.

I closed my eyes, trying not to let a million doomsday thoughts enter my head.
This wasn’t the end. Times were different and modern science was progressing rapidly, and AIDS was no longer a death sentence.

But I couldn’t help
but think of Porsche’s lifeless body; of my mother’s grave. AIDS was a death sentence for them, and one day, it would be for me, unless a vampire got me first.

Sitting up, I rubbed my eyes, trying to wake up. With trembling hands, I reached for my cell phone. My father would just be up, getting ready for work.

“Daddy?” I said, when he picked up the phone.

“Amy, what’s wrong?”

“Daddy, can you make an appointment for me with Doctor Martin?”

“Why?” I could hear the alarm in his voice, but I wasn’t going to hide anything from him. He would find out soon enough.

“I have lesions on my arms.”

Silence came through the other end of the phone
, so long that I was worried that he had hung up.

“Dad?”

“I’m here, Amy. I’ll do it right away.”

“The sooner the better. You don’t have to come if you have to work…”

“I’ll get you an appointment and call you back. I’ll be there with you, honey.”

“Thank you
.” I hung up the phone and drew my knees up to my chest, trying not to cry. Had this been a few weeks ago, I would have called Liam and he would have rushed right over, vampire or not. But now, calling Liam would just seem weird.

And so the only person I called was the production office of Ranger to call
in sick. I then left a message with the dorm mother, calling in sick. That was official policy, but when I had been sick before, I had always just told Liam, and that was it.

My father called back just after six, which
was when Dr. Martin’s office had opened.

“You have an appointment at 8
am. I’ll pick you up at 7:30. And Amy?”

“Mmmm?” Really, I didn’t want to get out of bed.

“Pack a hospital bag, just in case. Maybe he’ll want to admit you and run some tests.”

My heart skipped a beat.
“Dad, I can’t miss that many days on Ranger,” I said.

He sighed.
“Amy….”

“I know, I know. I’ll meet you out front.”

My heart was beating so fast I could hardly think straight, let alone pack properly. My hands were trembling and I was hyperventilating. I really wished that Liam was here with me.

But at the same time, it was better this way. Liam was immortal, and I was clearly not. To put him through such a short relationship that ended in death, even I could see that was cruel. Liam had seen too much death already.

The cafeteria was open this early, but I didn’t feel like eating anything. I was pacing my room, doing nothing productive.

Eventually, I let myself out of my room and knocked on Sarah’s door. Both she and Connor answered the door, and I envied her. Connor had likely spent the night with her, her
Shield powers keeping his transformation at bay. If only that was something I could have given to Liam, maybe we wouldn’t be where we were now. But all I ever was to him was unappetizing.

“Hey, what’s up?”

I realized she wasn’t wearing very much, and that her door was half open, which made this encounter so much more awkward.

“I
, uh… I’m not going to be in class today. I have a doctor’s appointment.”

Her brow furrowed.
“You didn’t have one yesterday?”

“Yeah, well, these weren’t here yesterday either,” I replied, and rolled up my sleeve.

Sarah’s eyes widened. When we had first met online, I had told her everything about myself, including the diagnosis. She probably knew more about AIDS than I did and spent the first few months Googling and being overly worried. All I had to do was half mention a symptom and Sarah was on top of it, with about five different remedies. She should have been a doctor if acting wasn’t working out for her.

Which
I sadly realize was probably why she knew to take pennyroyal to induce a miscarriage. If there was a good way to use medicine, then there was also a bad way to use medicine as well.

“Call me as soon as you know
.” She placed a gentle hand on my arm. “Or do you want me to come with you?”

“No, it’s fine. My dad is coming with me
.” I shrugged and tried to put on a smile. “I’m sure it’ll be fine.”

“Yeah
.” She nodded. “But call me anyway.”

By the time my dad arrived,
I was a mess. The ride to the hospital was silent, both of us lost in our thoughts.

Dr. Martin didn’t keep us waiting long. After all, he had treated my mother right until the end and he had been my doctor since I was born. I had thought a few times about what I
would do if he retired, but now I realized I’d probably be dead before he retired. And that wasn’t a very comforting thought.

“Alright, Amy, let me
see.” He rolled up my sleeve.

He tried to keep his face neutral, but I could tell right away that he was concerned. I could see the slightest changes in people’s emotions, learning to mimic them when I was acting. But right now, I wasn’t too
grateful for that skill.

“Ok, then. So we’ll run a few tests. You’ve got time today?”

I nodded, although I wished that I didn’t.

“Hey, I’ve been watching your shows on TV. Congrats on that. I love Sites, and I couldn’t believe it when I saw you. Good for you!”

I blushed. “Thanks. Have you seen Ranger?”

“Yes, I have, Miss Cassandra Winters,” he said, and held out his clipboard. “Can I have your autograph?”

I grinned for the first time all day, and looked to my father, who smiled.

“
Uh, Dr. Martin, aren’t you supposed to sign this?” I asked, looking at the requisition form.

He flipped it to a
blank page and held out a pen. Technically, this was supposed to be a show stopping moment in my life. The guys on set had talked about it: the first time someone really asks for your autograph, and I supposed it counted even if it was your doctor. But I wished that it wasn’t in a doctor’s office when I was facing my death square in the face. Because I would remember this moment for the rest of my life, no matter how short it was.

I signed my name with a flourish and handed
it back to him.

“Thanks. I’ll sell this on
eBay,” he teased me and then handed me a requisition. “Go on down the hall and get this sorted out. You’ll be alright, Amy, you’re a strong one.”

“Yep,” I said, although there wasn’t much hope in my voice.

We sat in silence in the waiting room for at least half an hour to be called.

My father turned to me.
“You’re so much like your mother, you know that?”

“Uh…” I was about to call him out on how this really wasn’t the best time to be telling me that, but he continued.

“You look just like her, you know that? In the wrong light, I think I’m seeing ghosts.”

“Do you think ghosts are real?” I asked him, my breath catching in my throat.

He looked at me a long while, and then looked around, at the ceiling, at the floor, at anything to distract him. “I don’t know, Amy. I’ve seen some strange things in my time.”

“Did you…”
I took a deep breath. “Did you see the end of the Sites episode?”

“Yes,” he said
quietly, and it surprised me. My father was always a rational man, a logical man. Everything was calm and collected and everything had an explanation. “You saw her too?”

I felt like a whole weight had been lifted from my body.

“I didn’t know what to think, Dad. I mean, I never…” My voice caught and tears began to stream down my face.

He wrapped his arms around me, drawing me close. The emotions that had been pent up all came flowing out, anger and sadness, grief and fear. It had been such a hard few weeks, and I regretted not going to him sooner with the way I felt.
I cried until I felt that I was dry, and my head ached and my ears pounded and I could barely see. All the time, he held me, stroking my hair and making soothing noises. Eventually, he spoke.

“It just means that she
’s watching over you, Amy. It means that she’s proud of you. And she would be so proud of you. Your mother once fancied being an actress, did you know that?”

“What?” I pulled away from him to meet his eyes. “Really?”

“Sure. But I mean, no more than every young girl did. But when we were first dating, we would go to see theater shows all the time, sometimes two in one day. We didn’t have very much money, but she always knew how to get the cheap seats. She had all these tips and tricks, and we’d line up for hours for rush seats with a hundred coupons.”

“So she must have been so happy when you got a job at the Acad
emy,” I replied.

He
snorted. “She was just like you. She wanted to come to work with me every day. I think that she might have tried to be a student there if she was just a little bit younger.”

“
I never knew,” I said.