The Drinker of Blood

Chapter Twenty-Two

When I awoke, all was black. Was this death, then?

No, the smell of pine oil was too great. And there was something greasy and wet pressed against my face. It took me a time to focus. Clearly night had fallen.

It took some moments more to rise to sitting and to wiggle my arm around in the right way to take a grip on the hunk of metal that had impaled my back. It took even more grunting and groaning and time for me to draw the thick sliver from my flesh. The thing was the size of a spearhead, and it was dug so deeply that the tip of it had emerged just beneath my left breast. How it had not pierced my heart I do not know.

It was an enormous relief freeing the damn thing. But where the fuck was I? Looking around ... I was in a broom closet? Heavens, I knew healthcare was a mess, but is this how they treated the uninsured?

No, there was no mystery. Somehow I'd crawled into this closet to hide. As I peeked out now, I realized the hallway outside was empty and the lights were off. This section of the hospital wasn't open.

The hallway floor was a mess of smeared blood, and I then followed that blood trail, my blood trail, back to its source. Along the way, I snagged a hospital scrub top, changed, and with a second one rubbed and scraped my face and arms free of the layers of blood that encrusted them.

I needed to find Fallon. I refused even to contemplate that the doctors hadn't been able to help her. That's what medicine was for, to help sick young girls get better. If they failed at that, what the fuck good were they?

I felt a little manic and more than a bit mad, mad in both senses of the word. Fallon had saved my life. I should not have had the strength to break chains, not during the day. It was only my need to shelter her that had given me the power to shatter steel that day. Only her need to protect me had placed her in such a terrible danger.

I'd seen that impulse in others before, but I hadn't recognized it in my darling friend until that very moment.

There are some souls who are so starved of something essential in their youth that they become consumed with a need to give that missing something to others. Fallon, the beautiful young girl who no one ever protected, needed nothing more in this world than to protect someone. And she'd chosen to protect me.

Well, if God let her live, I wouldn't let her down, not ever again. Not as long as I drew breath.

After a bit more cleaning, I was fairly presentable. By that time, I'd found the emergency room from where I'd slipped down a back stairs and hid myself in a closet. It all had been by instinct. I knew better than to let doctors poke or prod me—or to wait around for Whitefarrow's people to confirm their kill. My animal mind had known to hide.

Well, they could find me now if they wished. But they wouldn't like what they found. I was going to murder the man, and anyone around him, and I was going to murder him tonight.

But I needed something first, something I couldn't do without. It took only a little searching to find where they'd placed Fallon, a room on the third floor. I followed her scent from the emergency room, and halfway up the second flight of stairs I knew the smell I followed was that of a living person. My heart leapt.

I didn't stay long. The last thing she needed at that precise moment was me lurking around, drawing more danger. I saw that she was alive, checked her vitals myself, and spoke briefly with a nurse. The terror bombing at Foley Square was all people were talking about, and the hospital was awash with injured and dead.

I gave the nurse Fallon's name, listed Bess Porter as her next of kin, and found my way downstairs. Once there, I snagged a coat from a break room and slipped into the darkened street outside. I would be back to care for Fallon soon. First I needed to take care of something else.