| |
I woke up sucking on a stinky wool sock, a swarm of angry bees buzzing in my head and the Loch Ness Monster swimming laps in my stomach. I tried spitting out the sock but realized I had confused it with my tongue. When I sat up, the bees swarmed, stinging my brain en masse, and Nessie abandoned my stomach to try crawling up my throat. I rolled over and heaved, emptying my stomach on the floor of Erik’s train car.
I snarled and spat. Erik thought he was protecting me, but I would’ve preferred mutilation by an Unholy Wonder, a Meat-Eating Monstrosity, an—ooh, my stomach. I retched again, heaving until nothing but spittle strung from my lips.
Erik didn’t appear at my side, offering to hold back my hair or dab my face with a damp cloth, as he should have, considering he was the source of my suffering—him and whatever he’d put in my food—but the vomiting had eased the worst of my discomfort. Nessie settled into the darker recesses of my belly, the bee swarm retreated, and the wool sock thinned into a stale silk stocking.
I spied a stack of folded dishrags beside the brazier, near a pan of lukewarm water leftover from rinsing the supper dishes. As I stepped out of bed to grab one of the rags, I discovered I’d been stripped and left in nothing but my undershirt and cotton underdrawers. Well, I’ll add that to the top of my stack of reasons to murder Erik the next time I see him. I scrubbed my face and neck thoroughly then guzzled the few sips of clean water that remained in the pan.
Perhaps I should’ve left the cleaning up for Erik, but I couldn’t bear the smell of my sickness. Besides, I had plenty more direct and aggressive ways of letting him know how I felt about what he had done. So I wiped up my mess and tossed the rags outside the train car. Erik could deal with those later—it was the least he deserved.
Before I had passed out, Erik had said something about carrying out Dwivedi’s experiment on his own. To that, I thought: Bloom was my sister, and finding her was my problem. If completing Dwivedi’s experiment was the price to pay for getting her back, I would do it. Erik had no right to go without me.
As soon as I’d finished that thought, an ungodly howl echoed through the cavernous subway outside Erik’s train car. That singular cry turned into two then into a dozen. Those weren’t animal howls, either, although I had seen the occasional wild dog in the city. It was unlikely a dog would find its way into the subway, though not impossible. No, those howls had definitely come from what used to be a human throat.
Another shriek slithered into Erik’s cavern, closer, louder. Had Erik locked me in before he left? Rule number one: take nothing for granted. I leaped through the car’s doorway and dashed for the big, heavy door at the head of the maintenance bay. As I reached for the handle, the door flew open, and I stumbled back, barely avoiding a face full of steel.
Erik lurched in and fell to his knees. “Shut it,” he said, panting. “Shut it quick.”
I threw my weight against the door in time to stop an old woman with hair like steel wool from coming through. The door closed on her grasping arm, trapping it against the jamb, and she shrieked, her cries raising goose bumps across my neck and shoulders. Erik recovered his footing and helped me hold the door while I shoved the dead lady’s hand through. When the door finally latched, he threw a massive bolt. Then he bent and grasped one end of a nearby railroad tie, a four- or five-foot-long block of heavy oak, still rich with the stench of creosote.
“Help me get this across the door,” he said, hefting his end up and settling it into an iron holster on one side of the door. Together, we lifted my end into a matching holster on the other side of the door.
“Will it hold them?” I panted, still woozy from too much physical exertion and excitement after being so sick.
“Should,” he said, brushing his hands together.
“‘Should’ doesn’t instill a great deal of confidence in me.”
The dead keened and wailed like mourners at an Irish wake, and they threw themselves against the door. Their protests made a terrible clatter, but the door held against their attack. With my immediate safety restored, I sighed and sank to the floor. “I’m gonna be so, so mad at you when I have the energy for it. Maybe tomorrow, after I’ve slept off the rest of whatever you gave me.” I narrowed my eyes at him, which required minimal effort compared to punching him. “What did you give me anyway?”
“Something Dwivedi mixed up.” He wouldn’t meet my eyes, and he stared, unfocused, into the dark shadows behind his subway car. “Told him I was worried about your safety. He gave me something to help ease my concerns.”
“If you needed your concerns eased, then you should have taken it yourself.” I pushed myself off the floor and shuffled to the train car. Erik trudged behind me. “I hope to God it was worth it.”
After we climbed aboard, he collapsed into his corner chair, where the shadows were thickest. I paced the short open space in front of the bed, too mad to sit. Erik watched me, wearing a strange look, almost hungry or predatory like the Living Dead. It gave me the willies.
“What?” I stamped my foot and folded my arms over my chest.
He shook himself, and his face blanked. “What do you mean, ‘what’?”
“Why are you looking at me like you’re one of them?” I pointed toward the groaning mob outside his door. “Like you’re going to eat me.”
One corner of Erik’s mouth curled into a crooked smile. “Maybe I do want to eat you.”
“Not funny!” I grabbed a pillow from the bed and flung it at him. He caught it, chuckling. His mirth made me want to punch him even more than I already did. Instead, I drew a coverlet from the bed and wrapped it around my shoulders. Erik’s smile turned to a sulk. “So, did you stick one of them with Dwivedi’s stuff or what?” I asked.
Sitting up straighter, he peeled off his coat and folded it over the arm of his chair. “Yes, I stuck one.”
Leaning over, he unbuckled a boot. Black beads slipped from his collar, and the crucifix at the end of the long strand thumped onto the floor. I crossed the room, sank to my knees in front of him, and fingered the jet carving of Christ writhing on the cross. Going still, Erik watched me study his necklace.
My father had taken us to an Episcopal church occasionally, but I knew enough religion to recognize this set of beads. “A rosary?”
“It was my mother’s.”
“All I have left of my father are his guns.”
“Those are more practical.”
“I guess that depends on what you believe in.” I met his gaze. “Do you say the prayers?”
His Adam’s apple bobbed. “Every night.”
“Do you believe they work?”
Smirking, he flicked his fingers toward his ruined eye: the proof of his immunity and of a miracle, perhaps. “Yes, I suppose I have to.”
Dropping his necklace, I backed away and slumped on the bed. Erik tucked the rosary into his collar and finished removing his boots.
“Well, if you stuck one of those Rotters,” I said, “where is it? Dwivedi said we had to bring it back to him for observation.” I pulled my feet off the floor and crisscrossed them under me. “Tell me what happened.”
Now barefooted, he slumped into his chair and rolled up his shirt sleeves. He looked vulnerable without his big boots and long black coat. Purple smudges darkened the skin under his eyes, evidence of his lack of sleep. “Don’t be too mad at me for what I did to you, Sera. It looks like you’re going to see some action after all. Unless I can convince you to stay behind again.”
My heart thumped excitedly. “For what?”
“I found a girl, maybe about your age. I got Dwivedi’s inoculation into her, but I couldn’t get her back here and get away from the others at the same time. I had to dump her and run. I might be immune to bites, but I’m pretty sure an angry mob can still rip me to shreds.”
I waved toward the doorway again. “So we have to go back out there and get her?”
Erik’s head bobbed. “Yep.”
“You think we can find her again?”
He raised one shoulder and dropped it. “Dunno.”
“When are we going to look for her?”
“When they calm down and back off from the door. In a few hours, I guess.”
“You’re not leaving me behind,” I said in an emphatic tone that left no room for argument. “And I’ll be fixing my own meals from now on.”
Flinching, he ducked his head. “I don’t have any more sleep draught anyway.”
“Still...” I narrowed my eyes. “It’s going to be a long time before I accept any more of your hospitality.”
His dark brows knitted together. “What do you mean?”
Spying my canvas pants folded up at the end of the bed, I reached for them. “I mean that we’re going to go out and find this dead girl, and we’re going to take her to Dr. Dwivedi like we agreed.” Looking up, I met his gaze and held it so he would understand how serious I was. “Then our partnership is over.”
He gasped. “Sera—”
“I don’t want to hear it.” I slashed a hand at him as I reached for my shirt. “When this is over, you go your way, and I go mine.”