Mistwalker (7 page)

“Open the door,” Master said.

Carlo pulled the key from his pocket, inserted it into the lock and inched around the metal. He’d told Master the vampire was sick and couldn’t talk, but that didn’t mean he was safe. Carlo had already defended himself against three attacks and knew Master would not be pleased if he were bitten, especially by a sick vampire. “He’s hungry,” Carlo warned as he slid open the door. “Be on guard.”

Master swept into the cell. “Hunger is energy. I can cure that.”

Chapter Eight

Sloppy yellow pudding.
Blech.
Grey meat patty. A rice dome embedded with bits of hard-boiled egg next to some kind of lumpy gravy in the corner of her plate. Daring herself, Simone scooped the pudding onto a plastic spoon and popped the goo into her mouth. Chewed. Her jaw quivered.

She spat the goop into a tissue and wiped the vile taste from her tongue. When she got home, she’d make herself some real food.
Filtered coffee. Bacon and eggs on sour bread toast. She reclined in the bed, dreaming of the taste and pushed away the hospital tray in disgust. But she shouldn’t complain. Earlier in the evening, the nurse had taken her to see Tammy, and the sight of her friend lying immobile on the hospital bed with doctors checking her breathing and heart rhythm made Simone realise this was all her fault. She needed to resolve it somehow.

Tammy’s fourth night in Whitby had her in a coma in Intensive Care all from a bite to the neck. The doctors didn’t understand why. How could that happen? The creep who did it smelled awful…he’d obviously been sicker than Simone thought.

A knock rapped on the door, and another doctor stepped around the corner. “Miss Woods, how are you?”

“I’m fine. How is my friend?” she asked, eagerly.

“No change.” The doctor’s lips went thin. “But I have some good news; you’re all set to leave. The shuttle bus will take you back to your apartment now.”

Startled, Simone frowned. “Wait. What are you talking about? I haven’t…the police mentioned picking me up tomorrow—”

“There is no more we can do unfortunately. You are better, and we need this bed for another patient. You’ll have to leave tonight. Best gather your things.”

She glanced around the empty room.
Not exactly filled to capacity.
“If you say so,” she said, dubiously. She lifted a shoulder and gestured to the loose hospital gown and small bag that she’d taken with her to the Gothic Festival. “That is all I have.”

“Fine.
The driver is here to collect you.” The doctor’s bloodshot eyes stargazed at the wall beside her head. His mouth no longer pressed in a line, but hung open like he meant to say something else.

She pursed her lips and waved a hand in front of his slack face. “Hello?”

He blinked hard. Then blinked again, and finally, he rubbed his eyes with his fingertips. “Of course. Those were the arrangements. However, the driver is here.”

Obviously the long hours were getting to the good doctor.
Red lines road-mapped his eyes. He repeated his words. She could imagine him standing unnaturally still while his eyelids drooped, and he fell asleep on the spot. He yawned and tried to hide the action behind his hand.

“You already said that.” A sudden pang of guilt hit her heart. Why was she making life difficult for a caring professional trying to do his job? She couldn’t wait to get home. Doing so tonight with a hospital worker made no real difference. “Sure, I’ll go now.”

She caught sight of another man behind the doctor and shifted so he filled her vision. It wasn’t the guard she’d seen before at her door. The newcomer was late twenties, tall and lean. Firm muscles bunched across his biceps and forearms.

He leaned back with one black boot planted against the wall and had the look of someone who hadn’t seen a good meal in a while.
Hungry. Or maybe it was his eyes that gave her that impression.

She stepped forward, taking in his sandy brown hair; the pale skin stretched across his
chiseled jaw and eyes a light shade somewhere between green and grey. His muscled chest pushed out from a tight white t-shirt with no name tag. The blue jeans he wore were faded, ripped and snug over his lean hips and long legs.

He smelled strange, too, like musky cologne—a sharp, different tang that made her wrinkle her nose. Something wasn’t right, she
knew that, but was there anything right in the way her body behaved lately? The nurse said Simone healed too fast, slept all day, and woke at night. She couldn’t stand to look at the food yet possessed an unreasonable amount of energy.

“You’re the driver?” she asked, warily.

The man pushed away from the wall and strolled the short distance to her side. “Yes.”

“I must say, he’s a most accommodating fellow coming this late at night,” the doctor said.

“Well, then.” Her stomach growled, loud and deep. “Oh.” She laid a trembling hand on her belly and bent over, riding out the intense, stabbing pain.
“Oh…”
Sweat broke out across her brow, but the cramp eased, and she glanced up at the doctor, but he’d retraced his footsteps down the corridor. She breathed in and out, taking her time, thankful she didn’t have to explain why she was so hungry. Still, there was something that bothered her.
Him.
She straightened and turned to the driver. “You have photo ID? Name tag?”

His eyes lit with obvious amusement.
“A name tag? Don’t you believe the doctor?”

“I…” She looked carefully at him and silence descended. They stared at each other until he laughed.

“Righto. I left my stuff at the blood bank. Follow me, and I’ll show you.”

She grimaced.
“The blood bank?”

“Yeah.”
He nodded and grinned. “I need to make another delivery tonight. Lots of people, lots of hospitals. You know the drill.”

“Oh, of course.”
Double guilt trip. She was on a roll. Here she was asking him for identification when he needed to drop off blood and save someone’s life.
Way to go, Simone.
“Sorry.”

He held out a hand. “No problems. I’m Vaughn.”

She smiled and gripped it in a slow, gentle shake. “Simone Woods.”

He nodded.
“Heard you’d been through the ringer.” His gaze dropped to the fingers of her right hand, then rose back up to study her face. “You’re looking well enough now though. Brand new.”

Her stomach flip-flopped and growled so loud that she winced. “Yeah, hungry brand new. I couldn’t eat the hospital food.”

“That stuff will kill you,” he said. “Follow me.”

She grabbed her belongings, and they walked down a few corridors before he stopped in front of glass doors. Cold air blasted her at the entrance. Trolleys with shelves and stainless fridges lined the room. He lifted the lid to four large coolers, then pressed a sequence onto the electronic keypad and opened the fridge doors.

She stared at the full bladders of blood in his hands. Her stomach sprouted tentacles that wound up her abdomen and dug into her throat like thorny vines. She gasped and grappled with the door jamb.

“What is that?”

Vaughn glanced up from filling the coolers, but he didn’t stop. “Blood.”

“I know that but…” Her belly rolled again in hunger. The room spun. She hadn’t meant what he held in his hands, but the smell. Where was that delicious aroma coming from?

He lifted the large coolers onto a trolley and ambled toward the door. “Let’s go.”

The scent spiralled closer, and she looked around, mystified, until the trolley slid right under her nose. Then, she froze. The sublime smell was in the coolers.
In the room. In front of her.

The scent of blood.
She wanted the smell of blood.
No.

“You’re standing in the way.”

Her vision swam. “I am?” she asked, wavering.

“Uh-huh.”

She sidestepped the trolley and crept inside the cold room. “Can’t I stay…?”

He flashed a grin and walked out the doors. “Let’s get out of here, hey? You’re looking a bit peckish.”

“Yes. Yes. All right.”

She followed him on wooden legs in pursuit of that aroma. The ambulance exit doors were wide open. Darkness flowed over her skin, and the snow-capped North York moors glimmered in the distance. A chill wind coursed around her ankles, lifting the hem of her hospital gown.

He pushed the trolley down the ramp with a rush. “Jump on in while I pack this away.”

She hugged herself and surveyed the otherwise empty lot. Only one white van parked in the bays. A thin film of rain shone on the
asphalt. “What happened to the bus?”

“Cutbacks.”
He pulled open the sliding door and lifted the coolers inside. “Everyone’s losing their bleedin’ jobs. Better get in. This stuff’s got somewhere to go.”

She bit at her thumb nail. Could she ask him where he was taking the shipment? She didn’t want the smell to leave. If she got in the van, it wouldn’t. Her footsteps were soft and silent across the distance after years of learning to sneak up on her opponent. Should she sit in front or the back?
Next to the donor bags, for sure. As close as she could get to that smell.

She hesitated and then leaned in above his right shoulder before the smell left her. Vaughn unpacked the bladders into a mobile refrigerator with an unnatural haste. And so much blood.

“Oh,”
she moaned.

He jumped in surprise, cried out. A bag dropped from his hands onto the lower edge of the van’s sliding door where it teetered for a second, and then flopped onto the concrete, spilling in a thick red puddle at their feet.

Scent wafted up.

She groaned. Daggers pumped into her stomach, and something hard pierced her bottom lip. Tears gathered in her eyes, burning and abrupt. She folded an arm over her belly that felt like it turned itself inside out. “What’s happening to me?” she moaned. “This pain…is excruciating.”

He growled. She looked up and saw his flared nostrils, pupils enlarged as they bled black into the strange green. His white teeth elongated, descending into pointed incisors.

“You…you’re…”
Those teeth
. She pivoted, sprinting for the hospital doors, ignoring the agony in her stomach.
One of them.
“Fire! Help, fire!”

He covered her in a flying rugby tackle, and she furiously twisted out of his reach, grabbed him by the ears and kneed him in the face. He swayed and muttered something unintelligible. Blood coated his mouth. He swiped at the mess on his lips and bared his fangs in a low growl.

She stared at him in shock. They’d come for her.
Of course they had.
Hadn’t Juliun said he would?

Vaughn jerked up, his hand tight around her throat.
“Got you.”

She twisted his grip from her neck with her left hand, and simultaneously, threw a right hook. He stumbled, but she followed, stepped on his foot, pulled back her right arm again, tucked her elbow into her side and bent at the knees.

 Her uppercut mashed his teeth together. Spittle sprayed from his mouth, his head reared back and eyes rolled to white. A sharp kick to his torso from her slippered feet, and he landed flat on his ass.

“Don’t get up again,
Vaughn.
Next time, I’ll rip your bloody head off. That’s right,” she sneered, all pumped up. “You pieces of shit have a lot to answer for.” She frowned down at her fists, opening her hands and clenching them again. Wondering…if that was rather too easy. She knew her capabilities, but this was different.

 
The van rocked, and then a door slammed. A man strode beneath the beam of the yellow headlights. A veritable giant, his large arms were ripped with muscle. “We can make this hard or easy, girlie.” His deep voice boomed across the lot. He brought his hands together and cracked the meaty knuckles. “You decide.”

Sharp pain spiked into her lower lip, and she licked at the injury. She knew this world.
The realm of pain and living against all the odds. No man could be that big, but if he was with them, then all bets were off. She sank into stance and motioned come on with her open hand. “All talk…”

He raced toward her, and she judged the distance, and then vaulted onto the disabled rails. He came up, and she instantly twisted sideways, kicking his face with every ounce of power she held.

He catapulted into the hospital wall, crushing the bricks. He shook his head, scattering bits of block across his shoulders, then he stepped forward; faltered, breathed deeply, raised his head and rushed her again.

Lightning fast, she dropped to the ground and struck him with a violent roundhouse kick. Bones cracked. Blood gushed. He stumbled, big arms windmilling, but the weight of his head brought him down on his knees. Dark red blood spewed from his mouth onto the asphalt.

She sprinted toward him, grabbed his ears and then kneed him in the face, hearing a sickening crunch. Finally, she spun and struck him with another roundhouse kick. She had to be sure he wouldn’t get up. Not now. Then she madly dashed for the hospital on adrenaline-fuelled legs.