"Vishous?" She jumped to her feet. "What - ?"
"Go through the door marked housekeeping. There's a panel to the right that you push open. Make sure you put on a hazmat suit before you go in to see him - "
Butch... dear God, Butch. "What - "
"Do you hear me? Put the suit on and keep it on."
"What ha - "
"Car accident. Go. Now. He's dying."
Marissa dropped the phone and ran from Havers's study, nearly mowing down Karolyn out in the hall.
"Mistress! What's wrong?"
Marissa shot through the dining room, punched open the butler's door, and stumbled into the kitchen. As she made the corner to the back stairs, she lost one of her high heels, so she kicked off the other and kept going in her stocking feet. At the bottom of the steps, she entered the security code to the rear entrance of the clinic and burst into the ER's waiting room.
Nurses called out her name, but she ignored them as she raced for the lab's corridor. Tearing past Havers's laboratory, she found the door marked housekeeping and slammed it open.
As she panted, she looked around at... nothing. Just mops and empty buckets and smocks. But Vishous had said -
Wait. There were faint marks on the floor, a little pattern of wear that suggested a hidden door opening and closing. She shoved the smocks out of the way and found a flat panel. Clawing with her nails, she forced it open and frowned. It was some kind of dimly lit monitoring room with a high-tech setup of computers and vitals readouts. Leaning in to the blue glow of one of the screens, she saw a hospital bed. On top of it, a male was lying spread-eagled and restrained with tubes and wires coming out of him. Butch.
She barged past the yellow hazmat suits and facial masks hanging next to the door and pushed into the room, the air lock breaking with a hiss.
"Virgin in the Fade..." Her hand went to her throat.
He was definitely dying. She could sense it. But there was something else - something frightening, something that set off her survival instincts sure as if she were confronted by an attacker with a gun. Her body screamed for her to run, get out, save herself.
But her heart brought her to his bedside. "Oh... God."
The hospital johnny left his arms and his legs bare, and it seemed as if he was bruised everywhere. And his face... good Lord, he was desperately battered.
As he made a groaning noise in the back of his throat, she reached out to take his hand - oh, no, not there, too. His blunt fingers were swollen at the tips, the skin purple, some of the nails missing.
She wanted to touch him, but there was no place that she could. "Butch?"
His body jerked at the sound of her voice and his eyes opened. Well, one of them did.
As he focused on her, a ghost of a smile pulled at his lips. "You're back. I just... saw you at the door." His voice was weak, a tinny echo of the bass it normally was. "I saw you then... lost... you. But here you are."
She sat gingerly on the edge of the bed and wondered which nurse he thought she was. "Butch - "
"Where did... the yellow dress go?" His words were garbled, his mouth not moving much, as if his jaw were broken. "You were so beautiful... in that yellow dress..."
Definitely a nurse. Those suits hanging next to the door were yello - shoot. She hadn't put one on, had she? Holy hell, if his immune system was compromised, she needed to protect him.
"Butch, I'm going to go out and get a - "
"No - don't leave me... don't go..." His hands started twisting in the binds, the leather restraints creaking. "Please... dear God... don't leave me..."
"It's okay, I'll be right back."
"No... woman I love... yellow dress... don't leave me . , ."
Not knowing what else to do, she leaned down and softly laid her palm on his face. "I won't leave you."
He dragged his bruised cheek into her touch, his cracked lips brushing her skin as he whispered, "Promise me."
The air lock broke with a hiss and Marissa looked over her shoulder.
Havers burst into the room as if he'd been torpedoed inside. And through the yellow mask he wore, the horror in his stare was as obvious as a scream.
"Marissa!" He swayed in the protective suit he had on, his voice muffled and frantic. "Sweet Virgin in the Fade, what are you - you should have a hazmat on!"
Butch started to struggle on the bed, and she lightly stroked his forearm. "Shh... I'm right here." When he'd calmed a little, she said, "I'll put one on right now - "
"You have no idea - oh, God!" Havers's whole body shook. "You're compromised now. You could be contaminated."
"Contaminated?" She looked down at Butch.
"Surely you felt it when you came in!" Havers launched into all kinds of words, none of which she heard.
As her brother kept at it, her priorities realigned themselves, steel locking into steel. It didn't matter that Butch had no idea who she was. If the mistaken identity kept him alive and fighting, that was all that mattered.
"Marissa, are you hearing me? You're contam - "
She glanced over her shoulder. "Well, if I'm contaminated, then it looks like I'm staying with him, doesn't it."
Chapter Seven
John Matthew squared off at his target and tightened his grip on his blade. On the far side of the gym, across a sea of blue mats, there were three punching bags hanging from the bottom lip of the bleacher section. As he concentrated, the middle one became a lesser in his mind. He pictured the white hair and the pale eyes and the pasty skin that haunted his dreams, and he started to run, his bare feet slapping over thick plastic skin.
His little body had neither speed nor strength, but his will was enormous. And sometime in the next year or so, the rest of him would catch up to the power of his hatred.
He. Couldn't. Fucking. Wait. For his transition to hit.
Lifting his blade over his head, he opened his mouth to scream a war cry. Nothing came out, because he was a mute, but he imagined he was making a whole lot of noise.
As far as he was concerned, the lessers had killed his parents. Tohr and Wellsie had taken him in, told him what he really was, showed him the only love he'd known. When those bastard slayers had murdered her and Tohr had disappeared, John had been left with nothing but his revenge - revenge for them and the other innocent life that had been lost back in January.
John approached the bag running flat out, with his arm above his shoulder. At the last instant, he ducked into a ball, rolled on the mats, then shot up off the ground with the blade, hitting the bag from underneath. If it had been a real combat scenario, the knife would have gone into the lesser's gut. Deep.
He twisted the hilt.
Then he sprang to his feet and spun around, imagining the undead falling to its knees, holding on to the hole in its abdomen. He stabbed the bag from up top, seeing himself bury the blade in the back of the neck -
"John?"
He whirled around, panting.
The female who approached made him tremble - and not just because she'd surprised the shit out of him. It was Beth Randall, the half-breed queen, the female who was also his sister, or so blood tests proved. Strangely, whenever she was around, his head went on a little vacation, his brain seizing up, but at least he didn't pass out anymore. Which had been his first reaction to meeting her.
Beth came across the mats, a long, lean female dressed in jeans and a white turtleneck, her dark hair the exact color of his. As she came closer, he could smell Wrath's bonding scent on her, a dark perfume specific to her hellren. John suspected the marking happened through sex, as the spice was always strongest at First Meal when they came down from their bedroom.
"John, will you join us up at the house for the last meal of the night?"
I have to stay and practice, he signed in American Sign Language. Everyone in the household had learned ASL, and the concession to his weakness, to his lack of voice, irked him. He wished they didn't have to make any allowances for him. He wished he were normal.
"We'd like to see you. And you spend so much time here."
Practice is important.
She eyed the blade in his hand. "So are other things."
As he continued to stare at her, her dark blue eyes looked around the gym as if she were trying to find an appealing argument.
"Please, John, we're... I'm worried about you."
At one time, three months ago, he would have loved to have heard those words from her. From anybody. But no more. He didn't want her concern. He wanted her to get out of his way.