Vial Things (A Resurrectionist Novel Book 1) (5 page)

Again.

“Allie!” I wheeze.

Nothing.

“Allie?” This time it comes out a whisper. Wetness soaks into my jeans. Blood. Too much to live through losing. She’s not just gonna have to heal me. She’s gonna have to bring me back.
What if she’s not home?
I think. I’m propped up against the door frame. I can’t make it down to Jamison. Hell, I can’t even stand. Jamison had told me once these people had limits on how long after death they had any effect. The first time they’d brought his mom back, it’d almost been too late for her. I’d told Allie I wouldn’t be here until dark. One last time, I manage to lift my hand to the door.

She doesn’t come.

I
detour into a small grocery store, killing time. After walking the aisles for ten minutes or so, I pick up milk and a loaf of bread. I’ll have to ask Ploy what he likes to eat. Later, we can come here together and grab some stuff. With the extra money Aunt Sarah promised me after last night, I can actually afford real groceries.

Giving in to the inevitable, I hook the bag around my wrist and head home.

I’m a little surprised to see Ploy asleep against my door for the second time in as many days.

“Sorry, I was at the library,” I call, pulling the key from my pocket. He doesn’t stir. Halfway down the hall, I notice three streaks of maroon on the wall. I stop dead, the key frozen in my hand.

Dread worms up my spine. His head is drooped forward, chin resting against his chest. His legs are spread in front of him, one arm around himself, the other to his side, palm up on the carpet.

I crouch and drop the bag of groceries as my hand lowers to the knife strapped to my ankle. The handle is warm against my palm. “Ploy, wake up. Now.”

He doesn’t move.

Death isn’t exactly an unfamiliar state. I know a body when I see one. But still, my brain refuses to accept it. I ease my way forward, watching, sure any second his chest will rise and fall with a breath, that he’ll stretch and wake up and this will all be a terrible overreaction. My imagination gone haywire. Because he can’t be dead.

Reaching out, I give him a rough shake. His head lolls, rolls to rest against his shoulder. His eyes are open. They don’t blink.

“No.” I drop to my knees, my fingers racing up his neck to search for a pulse I know he won’t have. He’s warm.
It’s not too late
, a voice whispers.
You can save him.

I slide behind him as I unlock and turn the knob. A double trail of blood follows his shoes as I wrench him into the apartment.

Racing to the bathroom, I grab a towel to cover the stain outside my door. There’s no reason for anyone to wander by, but if they do, the makeshift mat will hide the worst of the mess. I can’t do anything about the wall. I take a last look at the empty hallway, then close and lock the door, slide the chain. With shaking hands, I click the deadbolt.

Standing over his body, I almost bite my nails before I stop myself. What are the chances he got hurt, in a fight maybe, and got himself to my door?
Not very likely
, my brain spits. Which means someone did this to him on purpose. To get to me?

“Shit,” I murmur. “Shitshit.”

I glance at the clock. It’s been almost four hours since I left for the library. His brown eyes stare at the ceiling, unfocused, dilated but unclouded. Which means he’s been dead less than three hours. Rigor mortis begins to set in less than half an hour after death. He hadn’t seemed stiff when I moved him.

I kneel. “Okay, Ploy. Tell me what happened to you. Give me something.”

I can’t look at his face and stay focused. His side is wet and red. I close my eyes, concentrating. “Okay, blood on the wall. You got yourself here.” Was he hoping I’d be home to take him to a hospital not knowing I could heal him myself? He wouldn’t have been thinking clearly with an injury like that. I peel up his shirt. I have to roll him to the side to see the wound. Just under his ribs is a knife slash. I squint, trying to remember anatomy. Left side. Whoever stabbed him hit the spleen. Once it was ruptured, he would have bled out in minutes. He probably hadn’t thought the injury was that serious.

My fingers slide across the sticky mess of the two inch slice, debating. The cut is clean, too small for someone to have gotten a hand inside, drawn out a fist. All his major organs are present and accounted for. “I can work with this,” I whisper.

My trembling, bloodstained hands in front of me, I walk to the bathroom. Under the sink, behind a box of maxi pads is a medical kit. I knock aside mouthwash and a bottle of lotion and grab it. Next, I go to my room. Under my bed where I’d hidden it earlier, is my messenger bag. Clutching them both to my chest, I stagger back to Ploy.

What are you doing?
a voice in my head screams. All Ploy was ever supposed to be to me was an alert system, which means he served his purpose. Maybe whoever cut up that kid in the boxcar was coming after me next. Maybe Ploy stopped them. Maybe they’re dead, too. But if it was a hunter who mixed Ploy up with one of us, they failed. They didn’t get to his organs. There’s a chance, however small, that Ploy saw something that I can pass along to Sarah.
And what if he was only robbed? Or attacked by another kid?
I think. He said he didn’t carry the knife for fun.
Better to cut ties then, leave him. He’ll only hold you back.
If I let him go, anything he possibly saw will die with him.

“Then I need him alive,” I say aloud. My voice sounds strange. I never meant to get close, to make him my friend.

I should be calling Sarah. We run our cases through a point person, get permission, document them. Call in favors from those who will owe us forever for saving their lives. To Sarah, Ploy’d be some random homeless kid. He can’t pay the prices we demand even if she gives him a sliding scale. “This is why I hate this shit,” I mumble.

What if she says no?
I think. She doesn’t know him like I do. I can deal with her anger if it means Ploy lives. I can tell her I’ve reconsidered. That I’m ready to step up. This resurrection, I can be the one she blackmails to get favors from.

I wipe my sticky hands on my thighs and get to work. I don’t stop, don’t reach for my phone. Instead, I sew individual stitches carefully, but quickly, snipping the thread and moving on to the next one, the wound in his side pulling together. Skin is the last to heal. My mother taught me to always do what I could to help it along.

With the last stitch, I set the needle and thread aside. I’m not after cosmetic perfection. I’m after less blood loss, keeping it inside his body when his heart gets going again.

Upending the messenger bag, I shake it until the contents spill onto the carpet. My eyes flit to the small coin purse containing my vial. I brush it aside.

I’ve still got the syringe from yesterday night. Sanitation isn't exactly necessary in what I’m using it for. I pull the cap off the needle’s point. I want to throw up but my hands move of their own accord, muscle memory burned deep. I lay the syringe on his chest and rummage through the mess on the floor for the rubber tubing, loop it around my upper arm and tie half a bow to hold it. I catch one end between my teeth. When I twist my head away, the knot tightens. I pump my fist, watch the veins in my inner elbow bulge. Taking up the syringe, I stare at the railroad spike of a needle. My hand is shaking. I have to stop shaking.

I take a deep breath and ease the needle into my vein, focus on a slow steady pull of the plunger. The syringe fills with my blood. I yank the needle free and set everything aside. With a snap, the half-bow tied with the rubber tubing comes undone. Feeling rushes into my arm. The wound leaks, a drip of blood streaking down my arm before the puncture hole has a chance to heal.

Ploy lays silent, unbreathing, unmoving. On the wall, the clock ticks audibly. “I know, I know,” I whisper to it.

The stillness is unbearable. My heart hammers away the last of my uncertainties.

I want him alive.

When I tear his shirt, the fabric splits to the neckline. It exposes his chest for me to do what I need. The movement feels good. Instinctive. I don’t think, just act.

I walk my fingers up his ribs, counting down and slip the three inch needle into the space between his fourth and fifth rib. Directly into his heart.

With a palm, I press the plunger, emptying the syringe into one of his unbeating chambers. I haven’t lost near enough blood to faint, but the sudden rush of endorphins and adrenaline has me lightheaded. Slowly, I slide the needle out. It’s done.

Coming back from death isn’t instantaneous. There’s no gasp of breath and lunge up from the floor. My blood needs time to do its work, repair oxygen starved cells that have already started their slow decline into decay. I drop my hand to his chest and wait.

The longest two minutes of my life pass. “Come on,” I whisper.

When it happens, the flutter beneath my fingers is so weak I can’t be sure I didn’t imagine it. I press harder and feel his heart contract with a thump. A smile tightens my cheeks.
Now we’re making progress.
Once his blood starts circulating again, it will carry mine with it. My cells are already changing his, copying themselves to get his blood volume up. Five seconds later, his heart thumps again, hard, fighting now. The pause between beats shortens as it settles into a rhythm.

“Good boy,” I say aloud, though he’s unconscious. “Next step.” Adjusting closer, I pinch his nose shut and use two fingers to tilt his head. My mouth presses against his. I blow a quick exhale and pull away. “Breathe, Ploy!” His lungs expand as I fill them again. I can’t afford to wait and see how long it’ll take him to start breathing on his own. The faster he’s awake and aware, the faster he can talk and tell me how he got to my door. I need to know exactly what kind of trouble I’m in. “Come on, breathe,” I whisper.

His hand lurches up in a weak punch that only narrowly misses my jaw. “That a boy,” I say, and then press his arm down, pinning him to the floor. “But you’re not exactly in fighting shape right now.”

His spine curves as he twists to the side, his muscles contorting him into an unnatural backbend as he finally sucks in a desperate gasp.

“Easy, Ploy,” I murmur. My voice seems to soothe him. He settles, his chest hitching with uneven breaths. Finally, his eyes flutter open and focus on me. The rapid blinks send a tear sliding from the corner of his eye. He groans.

“I know it hurts.” I let go of his arm and run my hand over his forehead. He’s damp, clammy with new sweat. My fingers leave a smear of red on his skin and I wipe it off with the back of my palm. His arm moves again, this time toward his side. The look on his face asks the questions he can’t. “You were cut. Bad. Do you remember? Blink once for yes.”

His eyes squeeze shut. His leg jerks in an involuntary muscle spasm. Right now, his blood is thick. For at least a few hours, clots will be working through his veins and arteries, gradually breaking down. If this plays out like every other resurrection I’ve participated in, he’ll spend most of that time sleeping off his slight case of death. As his muscles cramp, sharp pain creases his forehead. He fights to raise himself off the floor with shaking arms.

“Relax,” I say but he doesn’t seem to hear me anymore. Pushing his shoulder, I force him down again. “No, you have to stay still.” If he moves too much, he could rip the stitches and bleed out again. It would mean hours more of unconsciousness while his body starts the recovery process all over. Hours we can’t afford.

He stutters a sound. His vocal cords have started to work. “He cut...”

The smile on my lips feels fake. “You’re safe. You’re going to be fine, I promise.” No use overwhelming him with the details just yet. “But you need to listen to me now, okay? Who cut you?” This consciousness isn’t going to last. It never does--some combination of the brain and body being utterly overwhelmed with all those cells and systems reanimating at once. I have maybe a minute at most. “Please. Tell me.”

Eyes wild, he gropes madly until his fingers catch mine. “Allie,” he pleads. “I don’t wanna die.”

I squeeze his hand. “Tell me what happened.” His eyes slip shut. “Was it someone you know? From the boxcars? Did you go there?” I demand, leaning closer. His eyes roll back in his head even as he fights to stay conscious. He needs time. The blood needs to do its work.

I tap my palm against his cheek anyway and he rouses, barely. “What happened?” I press.

My name slurs out of him as his breathing evens, unconsciousness stealing him away before I can get the answers I need.

T
he pain squeezes through my veins like marbles covered in glass shards. And then it hits me; if it hurts this bad, I have to be alive.

I’m alive.

Adrenaline spikes my heart rate, drives the blood through me faster as agony grates across my bones. I can’t help my shocked gasp.

“Are you awake?” Allie’s voice pulls me from the fog. I hear springs squeak. Her moving on the couch nearby. An odd clarity washes over me as the early afternoon floods back and right on its heels, dread. There’s no way she healed me. Not if I’m in this much pain. “Ploy?” she whispers.

My eyes crack open. I’m on the floor, a pillow under my head. She’s draped a sheet over me, the one I normally use when I sleep here. When I look down, the tips of my duct taped shoes poke out from the bottom.

She slides off the couch and lands in a heap beside me. Her phone is clutched in her hand. She must have called an ambulance.

“Hey roomie,” I say. Exhaustion stretches the words like taffy. “Bad form to show up like this on the first day, huh?” I grip my side where the wound is and wince. “You’ve seen? It’s deep?” She opens her mouth to answer and then stalls. I glance around the room. “I passed out, didn’t I?”

“How’re you feeling?” she asks, avoiding the questions. The clench of pain’s released for the most part.

I blink slowly. “Sore.”

“You will be for awhile.”

“I’ve had worse.” I’m pretty sure it’s a lie. I nod to the phone clutched in her hand. “Are they on their way? The paramedics,” I clarify when she gives me a blank look. I swallow hard. My throat clicks, parched, and Allie leaps to her feet.

“I can give you a little water if you want. You can’t have more than a few sips at a time. Not for twelve hours. Like after a surgery. You’ve already slept through three of them though,” she says, the words streaming out of her in a babble.

She let me sleep for three hours?
I think as she hurries to the kitchen. The sink turns on, then off, but a long minute ticks past before Allie returns.

“You’re going to be okay,” she says. She holds the glass to my lips. The water barely wets them before she pulls it away and sets it on the floor beside us. “Tell me what happened.”

I need a story, something convincing. I reach for the glass to buy time but before I can grab it, my fingers curl, claw-like. “Damn it,” I whisper. To my surprise, she takes the hand and massages it straight with expert fingers.

“Better?” she asks, her blue eyes wide, nervous.

“Yeah, just a cramp.” I start the story slowly. “I was on my way back. Halfway here, I noticed a guy behind me.”

“And then what?” she prods.

The key to a good lie is sticking close to the truth. Getting the details right. “I turned the corner, kept walking. When I looked back he was there, so I waited.” She’s still holding my hand. I stare at our fingers, not sure if I should twist mine between hers. In the end, I settle for her touch. “He gives me this big grin like we’re old friends, just at the point I’m realizing something’s not right with him. He’s smiling but his eyes...he’s looking at me like he hates me.”

Remembering the scene now, I twist the look on Jamison’s face to match. Make it sinister. Cruel. It’s easier than I hoped. I wince, sit up and go for the glass again.

“Not too much,” she cautions as I fight down a few swallows.

My side throbs. I press a hand there when I set the glass on the floor. “So I start to get a little nervous about him. I mean, my friend was just hacked apart.” It’s a good detail. I can tell by the way she leans slightly forward, absorbing the story. “For all I know, this is the guy. I’m thinking maybe he’s got a hatred for street kids or something and I’m pretty sure I’m right because he asks me if I knew Brandon.” I meet her eyes. I think about what Jamison said. We need her afraid. “But then he asked me if I knew
you
.”

The color leaches from her cheeks.

“I hadn’t even answered when he hit me in the side. I didn’t know what happened until I saw the blade in his hand,” I add.

She’d figured Brandon was killed because he was like her. I want her to make a connection between what happened to him and what happened with me. I want her to be terrified enough to trust me. I’ve gotta get some sort of info from her. Because once Jamison hears she didn’t fix me, he’s going to take it personal. The same way he did when we were younger and he figured out the bruises were coming from my dad. I push away the memory. That life’s over. Gone. I’m someone new now.

“Allie,” I whisper. “What the hell are you mixed up in?”

She gives her head the slightest shake, presses the back of her hand against her mouth, and I know I did the right thing. A sudden burning sears my side and I have to take four deep breaths before I can talk. “I think I need a doctor. This...it was deep.”

Her brow wrinkles in concern. “It was.” The sheet she’d put over me is bunched in my lap. For the first time I see my shirt, the tear straight up the middle. Before I can pull the fabric aside, her hand touches mine. “Don’t,” she says quietly.

A small laugh chuffs from me. “You think it’s gonna gross me out? I need to see how bad it is.”

She licks her lips. She’s threading the bottom of her tank top through her fingers, up, over, twisting. “What’d he look like, this guy?” she says suddenly.

“Shaved head, no tats that I could see,” I say. “A little built. Jeans and t-shirt.” It’s a description for a hundred people, a thousand. But it also matches Jamison. I glance up at her. There’s a quiver to her chin. She bites her lip and her face crumples, a slow tear tracing down her cheek. I freeze. “You’re crying.”

“Yeah.” Her voice cracks on the single word. She swipes a palm against her cheek and rolls her eyes, embarrassed. “I’m kind of in a heap of shit right now. And I brought you into it. We’ve got to call my aunt. I’m going to have to move away from here.” She drops her face into her palms, shudders once and then scrubs the palms across her closed eyes. “Damn it,” she whispers. “I’m sorry. I was trying to get clear of it.”

I give her a minute to get herself together. Granted, we haven’t exactly known each other long, but I’ve never seen her look so completely wrecked. I can’t take it anymore. “Allie?” I say softly.

She sniffs hard and brushes a few stray strands of hair away from her cheek. “Forget it. I’m fine,” she says with a laugh that tells me she’s not.

Everything inside me itches, the same way it did at the camp before I found Brandon. I want to run, get away, but I’m not even sure I can stand.

My eye catches on a needle on the armrest of the couch. The thing’s huge; nothing like the used sharps dropped around the worst parts of the boxcars. Allie follows my line of vision. “Did you stick that in me?” I ask in shock.

“I...No. It’s…” She presses her lips together and then she starts again. “Fine. I did. I had to.”

“Why?” The question comes out shaky. It’s what anyone would ask, what she’d expect me to ask, but anticipation knots my stomach.

She gives me an uncertain look. “We need to talk.”

My fingers catch the sheet and move it aside to reveal the rest of my torn, bloodstained shirt. I can see the angry scarred edges of the wound, puckered and barely healed around the stitches. Healed. My fingers brush over it as my jaw drops.

“You told me you didn’t want to die,” she whispers.

She did it. I can’t believe she actually did it.

“You healed me,” I say in disbelief. I have enough sense to twist the end into a question.

“I
can
heal people.” There’s hesitation in her voice. “But you needed more than that.” My head snaps up. “Left side, right under your ribs is your spleen,” she says, laying a hand on the spot she’s talking about, the place Jamison got me. “I think that’s what the knife hit. By the time you got to my door, you’d lost too much blood.” She scoots away a bit as if to give me space, almost like she’s afraid of how I’ll react to what’s coming. “You were dead when I found you.” she says.

“You—”
brought me back
I start but I have the sense to swallow the words. A tremor starts in my fingers.

“It’s not a joke and it’s not a trick.” She keeps her voice steady, projecting a calm I can’t grasp as my heart hammers. “You’re alive now only because I got to you before the death became permanent.”

The bubble of fear and excitement and disbelief building inside of me bursts. My breathing ratchets up, pulse skyrocketing and suddenly the pain is back, throbbing and awful. Dead. I was dead. “What did you do to me?”

She winces as if I’ve accused her of something terrible, when really I need to know how, what. How did she bring me back? What’d she put in the syringe?

“I’m human, okay? Don’t look at me like I’m a monster!” she spits. “You’re human, too. Nothing’s different. You’re not a zombie or anything.” When I don’t react, she drops her eyes. “Do you think you can stand?”

The question throws me off. I nod distractedly as I flex my fingers. I don’t feel anything except for the ache low on my side. No power. No sense of being something more. She grabs the hand hovering in the air between us and I shift my legs under me, rise to my knees. If anything, as I stand I’m weaker, drained. My knees wobble. She catches my elbow and steadies me before I can fall.

“We need to get you to the couch,” she says, grunting under my weight as I struggle to keep balanced. “You’ll be more comfortable.”

I take tentative steps, sure any second I’ll drag us to the floor. I have to focus. Now’s the time to ask questions. She seems shaken. She might answer them. “I don’t understand how you can do this,” I start.

“What, drag your ass to the couch?” she says and I roll my eyes. It earns me half a laugh from her before she goes serious again. “It’s a genetic thing. My mom had it. So does my aunt.”

“And now me?” It comes out breathless. I can’t hide my anticipation.

To my disappointment, she shakes her head. “Don’t worry. It just gets you up and moving again.”

“Oh,” I say quietly. Jamison is not going to take this news well. She lowers me onto the couch. For a long moment, she only stares at me, biting her lip. I should be pumping for information but the odd mix of heartbreak and terror in her eyes is like cotton in my mouth.

“Ploy,” she says finally. “You can’t tell anyone what I can do. Geneticists would give anything to study us if they knew we exist. Test blood. Dissect our bodies. What government wouldn’t kill to have a soldier like me in their arsenal?” I feel like she’s reciting a speech she’s heard a dozen times. She sits down beside me and hugs her knees to her chest. “Other kids had nightmares about monsters under the bed. My monsters were always dressed in white lab coats, after bad little girls who couldn’t keep secrets.” Her eyes meet mine. “You have to promise me you won’t tell anyone about me, okay? People are killed for this ability. My parents. They were gutted to make sure they stayed dead. My dad wasn’t even a resurrectionist.”

“Gutted?” When I speak, my voice is small. “Like Brand was in the boxcar.” It kept them dead, scraping their insides away. I knew that much.

“My aunt knew Brandon. He was one of us. In hiding. The only way to kill us is to remove organs. That or poisoning the blood itself. Otherwise our blood heals everything.”

“Your parents weren’t the same as Brandon.” The words are out before I can stop them. I swallow hard and look up at her. “Whoever killed Brandon, I mean. It wasn’t the same person as your parents?” I say quickly, twisting it into a question, because to me, it’s a statement. Jamison couldn’t have had anything to do with them dying. Brandon had been a slip up, a mistake.

She gives her head a quick shake, her eyes downcast. “Someone broke in while I was gone and... That was a long time ago, though. Isolated incident.” The bitterness to her voice makes me suspect she’s not quite as over it as she’s pretending to be. “There have been others missing lately. Sarah...that’s my aunt...she doesn’t know what’s happening.”

“So you knew when I told you what happened to him. You knew what Brandon was.” Of course she did, but she needs to see me making the connections. “And you were scared.” Even before Jamison used Brandon’s death to shake her up, her parents’ deaths had ingrained the paranoia I see in her sometimes. And then something else occurs to me. I look up at Allie, everything I know about her suddenly shifting.
Someone broke in.
“Oh my God, you...”

“Ploy?” She must see the hurt on my face.

“You weren’t worried about me sleeping in the camp,” I say slowly. “You weren’t being a friend. You’re afraid. That’s why you let me start sleeping on your couch.”

She blinks rapidly. “We have tight time constraints. There’s no real way to vet out the people we bring back. We take the chance that some of them will come after the blood, want more of it even once we explain it doesn’t work like that. Hazard of the job.” She says the words flippantly but her tone’s all off.

So there are others after her.

“You used me to protect you?” Oh, the irony.

Her hands fist in her lap, an angry blush on her cheeks. “I don’t need you to protect me. I can protect myself.”

I lean back against the cushion. “Then why did you want me here?”