I still didn't like hospitals. I doubted I ever would. The weird smell of them would forever be associated with pain and fear. But it helped that, for once, it wasn't me in the hospital bed. I'd been checked out by paramedics at the scene and treated for the burn on my hand, but that was already healed.
Like the rest of me. At least, I hoped so. It still didn't feel quite real.
That it was over.
We had Smith; we had the plague vamps. Smith had told Esme where the others who’d stayed with him were in the back of the ambulance that brought him here.
Maybe he'd thought he was dying, and some semblance of a conscience kicked in.
Whatever the reason, he'd told the truth, and the Taskforce had been able to pick up all the other vamps. They hadn't resisted.
The surviving plague vamps were all now at Fort Lyman. So far, they were cooperating.
What happened next to them depended on what I was here to do now.
I stared through the glass of the prison ward at the man lying asleep on the bed inside.
Smith.
He'd made it through surgery, though he was now minus a spleen, and it had apparently been touch and go. The doctors hadn't let us interview him until now, nearly twenty-four hours after his surgery. It was night again, the sun not long set.
But I was used to the night now. My life would never be fully lived in the sunshine like most people. But that was okay. I liked the people who shared the moon and starlight with me just fine. Especially now that I knew there was no longer anything hiding in those shadows that wanted to kill me.
And that the man beside me would always be with me.
I might always carry some of the scars I'd accumulated. Wounds slow to heal. But he would always do his best to ease them.
"Ready to go in?" Dan asked me.
"I'm not sure," I said. I reached for the door, then pulled my hand back.
"This can be the last time you ever have to talk to him, if that's what you want," Dan said. "You don't even have to do this now, you know." He was dressed in his Taskforce agent clothes. Dark suit. White shirt. But he looked more relaxed than I'd seen him in months. Maybe since he'd first reappeared in my office to tell me Tate was back.
I shook my head. "Yes I do." I had to take this all the way to the finish line. So much of my life had been changed by what Smith had done. By his choices. I wanted to see if he would make a better choice now.
I squeezed Dan's hand, his right wrapping around my left. I didn't really want to let him go, and we'd spent most of the last twenty-four hours together. First sleeping, then…well, some other activities involving his bed. We'd spent most of the day with Bug, who had suddenly looked about ten years younger when we told her we had Smith. With the Taskforce building a no-go zone, Esme and Andy handling the retrieval of the vamps, and Smith in surgery, Dan had spent a lot of time on the phone or email, but he'd done it from home, and I'd stayed with him, not wanting to be apart from him.
We'd won, but it could have gone very differently. The fact that we'd both made it through, that we were safe together was something I wouldn't be taking for granted any time soon.
"Let's do this," I said, and Dan nodded at the agent guarding the door to let us in.
Smith didn't immediately open his eyes when we approached the bed, but one of his hands was handcuffed to the bed frame, and I saw the fingers flex, then straighten.
He seemed smaller somehow, lying on the bed. With his gray hair messy and salt-and-pepper stubble shading his jaw, he looked…old. Frail almost, though the doctors had said there was no reason he wouldn't make a full recovery so long as he didn't try something stupid.
Dan pulled the two visitors’ chairs closer to the bed, and we sat.
Eventually Smith opened his eyes, turning his head to look at us. He made no move to sit up. I didn't blame him. He had to be in pain after his surgery.
"Hello, Ashley," he said.
"Baxter," I said. "How are you feeling?"
"I've had better days," he said.
"You're alive. That's a good start."
"I guess." He looked at Dan. "Agent Gibson, here to take my confession, are you?"
Dan shook his head. "Not formally. We'll leave that part until you're off the medication. I don't want any questions about the legalities." He stared at Baxter, no pity in his silver eyes. "You understand that you don't have to tell us anything?"
Baxter nodded. "I understand."
"The doctors said you're stable and competent to talk to us. Consider this a preliminary discussion," Dan said.
"Before you drag me off to be thralled by vampires if I won't confess?"
There were legalities around using vampires in interrogation. But I didn't imagine Dan would have any problems getting the permissions he needed in Smith's case.
"I doubt we need an actual confession," Dan said. "We have your other vampires, and plenty of them seem willing to talk to us. So do the thugs Lancaster hired. And we have witnesses." He meant Bug and me.
"So why are you here?" Baxter asked. He turned his pale gaze back to me. "What do you want, Ashley?"
I stared at him. That was a leading question. And he was lucky, perhaps, that I'd had a day for some semblance of distance to begin to set in.
Because there was a big part of me that still wanted a more primal sort of justice than he was going to get through the legal system. But if I gave in to that part, it would make me as bad as the things that had haunted the shadows. I was a werewolf now. A creature of night. But I didn't have to be one of darkness.
I sighed. "I came to ask if you would do the right thing."
His gaze sharpened a little. "What exactly does that mean?"
"A deal of a kind," I said. "It won't win you your freedom, but maybe it can bring a little redemption."
"You think I deserve redemption?"
"I think those vampires you made do," I said. I was under no illusions that most of them had also done bad things. Especially the ones who'd gone with Lancaster. But regardless of that, they deserved a cure, if only to keep humanity safe. If one could be found. "I'm willing to give you what you want. My father's research. And the FBI will provide you with access to a laboratory and other researchers in time. If you're willing to continue your work to find the cure."
"And if I'm not?"
"Well, I'm guessing it's many long boring years in jail until you die," I said bluntly. "No redemption there. You'll only ever be a monster in the history books. A doctor who broke all his oaths and caused misery and destruction. Or you can be all those things, but also be a man who tried to repair some of the damage he did. Who didn't waste so many people's lives for nothing."
I stopped talking. I didn't have anything more to say. I had to hope there was something still decent in him. Or, failing that, that the scientist in him had enough pride to want to finish what he'd started. So, I waited. Until Smith finally nodded.
"All right, Ashley. You have a deal."