Nightshifted (Edie Spence 1)

Weatherton tsked aloud. Weariness radiated off him, not caused by his age, but by his exhaustion at the fools he was being forced to deal with here, and the revolting circumstances he was being forced to work under, what with the drainpipe still vomiting up dark fluids that coated the room’s floor. Weatherton walked around the head of my table, looking at his sodden shoes before returning his gaze to Koschei, his voice both bored and irritated at once. “I heard you have a witness? If so, bring him forth. ”

“I make the rules here, grandfather,” Koschei said.

“The rules are the rules, as they have always been. The Consortium requires propriety, and I require speed. As you have noted, it is already past my bedtime. ”

There were snickers from some in the audience at this. Near the edge, I could see Sike nodding her head.

Koschei frowned and produced a piece of paper to read from. “We are here to prove that the accused caused the untimely death of our brother Kristoff. We will show that she went to his place of living, lied to gain entrance, and then assaulted him with holy water, resulting in his horrific demise. ”

“And I heard that you had a most excellent witness to this crime? Someone who saw it himself, or herself?”

I inhaled softly. Would the Zverskiye admit that Anna had been there?

Koschei held up a small bag and continued as though he had not heard. “These are Kristoff’s ashes. I will scatter them now, so that you may know him, by his scent. ”

He flung the bag outward and it went end over end, spewing out not all that many ashes in a thin gray stream. As I squinted to protect my eyes I could hear those vampires around me breathing in deeply, intentionally, along with their murmuring to one another afterward.

Weatherton took a step forward. “This bag of ash is all the proof you offer?” He turned widely, arms outstretched, making a show. “Where is your real proof? I was informed there would be firsthand testimony. ”

The surrounding crowd rustled again. I strained my eyes around their sockets to see without lifting my head. Even if they weren’t going to produce Anna, where was the horrible apple-tobacco-scented vampire I’d seen that night, and later on? The one with the stone-gray eyes?

“If you cannot prove she killed him—” Weatherton continued, after a dramatic pause.

Koschei shook his head. “Then we will go on Pascha’s prior testimony, which we were previously a party to. ”

“And I will not have the chance to cross-examine him? My client is not up for only death, but psychophagy, and she is to be convicted by hearsay?” Weatherton’s voice was indignant.

“Silence, Rose Throne! This is our court, not yours. ”

“Obviously!” Weatherton threw his hands up into the air. It was strange to see a full vampire displaying such emotion. “How am I to prove her innocence, when you will not let me speak?”

“As we know from Pascha’s prior testimony, she is guilty, and your speech is not required,” Koschei said. The red-robed judge-king vampire seated behind him nodded.

Weatherton shook his head violently. “This is a travesty, and all those present know it. ” He began to pace back and forth at the crater’s edge like a wild beast. His actions and gestures were meant to telegraph emotions to the farthest reaches of the upcurved room—he was putting on a show, and the Zverskiye vampires had front-row tickets.

I got the feeling that nothing Weatherton could do would change events; the Zver had seen to that. It was obvious that he was buying time. How long? I looked down, and saw that there was an even layer of the noxious substance from the drainpipe across the bottom of the floor now, still multicolored and revolting.

“We here know what it is like to consider eternity. To be deprived of it is a horrible thing. But consider the plight of a human, who works at a hospital, no less, and knows full well the brevity of human life!” As Weatherton’s voice echoed around the cavern, I looked to Ti for strength. He was offset behind Sike, watching Koschei, while using Sike to block himself from Koschei’s view. But I could still see him, working the fingers of his good hand at the seam where his new arm met his old. I imagined I could hear the wet tearing sound as the tissue gave.

“It is as hard for us to understand them and their motivations as it is in turn difficult for them to understand those of a gnat or a fly. But try to imagine what it is like to be compelled—as she was, tired from a long shift, facing daylight on her own—with the whispers of an ancient and rogue Zverskiye daytimer echoing in her mind, forcing her to go against her will and better judgment—”

As Weatherton paused at this, letting those two words in particular ring out, Ti paused in his labors too. Then he reached into the hole he’d created in his arm with one probing finger. I bit my tongue not to make a sound of disgust. Whatever he was doing, I knew I should look away. But—

“Surely you can understand that working on Y4 has its dangers,” Weatherton continued, as I saw Ti begin to pull something forth. “And I would like to introduce briefs as evidence, showing how hazardous working there is for its nurses. There have been three workplace homicides there this past year alone—”

It was a gun. I could see it out of the corner of my eye. Ti’d pulled a revolver out of the meat of his arm. He slid it into his armpit to hold, with the barrel cocked open. I was trying to ignore him and pay attention to my defense when he started fishing his fingers into the space between his jaw and his lower lip.

Weatherton went on, addressing the Zverskiye judge in particular. “Her value to your society, to my society, and to the Consortium as a whole, working at Y4, is far more than any cost you can extract from her now, here. ”

“Are you saying she is innocent?” Koschei asked, his tone incredulous. I watched Ti extract a bullet from somewhere inside his lip and quietly place it in a chamber of the gun.

“Without a doubt. And even if she is not, she deserves leniency. ”

Koschei laughed. “Pascha said she is guilty. ”

“But where is Pascha?” Weatherton proclaimed.

“He … is indisposed,” Koschei said slowly, tilting his head with a leer.

There was a ripple of assorted emotions through the crowd. Amusement, disgust—boredom now that Weatherton’s show had stopped. I saw Sike in front of Ti rock forward to stand even taller, to look desperately around the room.

“There were two witnesses that night!” Weatherton yelled, regathering attention to himself. “There was your Pascha, who apparently cannot be bothered to show—and another. A female vampire, a mere child. You are preventing her from testifying as well!”

Koschei’s lips lifted, revealing a row of predatory teeth. “I regret to inform you that she was captured killing Pascha. As such, her fate is already sealed. ” He looked behind himself, and the other vampire, the one who’d cut off my badge, pushed a sheeted someone forward on another bed, making a wave in the foul substance on the ground before them. I could see her light beneath it, even before Koschei took off the sheet.

Anna. Tied in four points like me, but hers were silver chains. Weatherton’s arms sank as she appeared. Her face was angled away and up from us, and I prayed that she’d turn to see me there trapped like her, so I could make some gesture, to let her know that she was not alone. And then her head twisted toward me, and I saw her black-and-blue, bruised face and swollen-shut eyes—and where the Zverskiye had riveted a silver plate over her mouth.

“Oh, no,” I murmured, before biting my own lip in horror.

“So you see,” Koschei continued, “she is already being punished for her crimes. And now it is your turn to be punished for yours, Edith Spence. The verdict is guilty, is it not?”

“This is a mockery of a trial—” Weatherton protested as Koschei advanced.

“Don’t worry, old one. I’m sure you’ll still get paid. ”

“When the Consortium hears of this travesty you have conducted, you and yours will be held accountable—”

“By then, it will be too late. ” Koschei didn’t even turn around to see the nod of his judge’s head condemn me. He shoved Weatherton aside, and the older vampire fell. “We will have both her life, and her soul. ”

“I don’t think so. ” Ti spit the last of his bullets into his gun, slapped the barrel closed on his thigh, and aimed over Sike’s shoulder at Koschei’s face. There was a click as the trigger pulled the hammer back, and then a thunderclap as the bullet shot forth.

CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR

Koschei’s head reeled back and I saw him drop. I strained at the cuffs, trying to get free—I could see innumerable vampires swamping Ti, as his gun kept ringing out. “Don’t kill him!” I screamed. “Take my soul! Don’t kill him!”

“Why not? He’s already dead. ” Koschei arose from the ground, covered in the ghastly fluids that were still pouring out of the cement pipe, and braced himself on the edge of my operating table. I got to watch the wound the bullet left in his forehead heal as he looked down at Weatherton, who was still laboring to stand. “Deathless, you see?”

“Aren’t we all?” Weatherton said, finally righting himself with a dismissive shake.

“Stop them!” I begged him. Even I could smell the rot in the air, even over the stench of whatever the drainpipe held. “Take it already. Just stop!”

“Zver,” Koschei warned from the end of my bed, and the sounds of violence stopped. Cold drops of whatever it was—I hesitated to think of it as water when it was so repellent—spattered off him and onto me. They felt like shards of ice, and the skin they touched went instantly numb.

I—I had felt like that before.

“Ti!” I cried out, wrenching my hands against the cuffs. A groan answered me. He—part of him, enough of him—was still intact, but much of him was scattered. I saw Sike kneel down and start to shovel things toward his open torso. Intestines.

“Ti, stay there!” I yelled. Technically he didn’t need any of his organs … but how much of him could they remove and he still stay alive? Or whatever it was that he was? He reached the remains of a hand out toward me. He wasn’t whole, but— “Just stay there!”