No matter how I twisted or heaved, Tanqueray had locked on, fingers rock-hard on my arms. My spine to his chest, I kicked backward and connected with massive thighs. I threw my head back, wanting to smash his nose. It hit his chin and pain flared, forcing air out of my body. Sweet, life-giving air. Gone.
Body starting to thrash in a need for oxygen, struggling against physical will to keep my mouth closed, my vision sparked with clean, white light. I got lightheaded. Water went up my nose, stinging and freezing, trickling down my throat.
God. What sort of diseases was I going to get?
That was my last coherent thought. My struggles grew weaker the deeper we went. I had no idea how deep the river was, but it felt like it went on forever.
Something brushed against me. Something that wasn’t Tanqueray, but wasn’t an old shoe, either. It was big and rough and supple and strong.
Instinctively, I panicked.
The bull shark snapped around but I got a boot in its gills and shoved it back. Kept kicking wildly for as long as I could, until my body got too heavy, too numb to fight anymore. And we sank, unmolested.
Tanqueray let me go.
No idea why. His fingers just spasmed and opened. He sank faster without my relative buoyancy slowing him down. I drifted for a moment, confused and dazed. Then I snapped to with a jerk.
Lungs burning, arms feeling like lead, legs barely kicking, I ploughed upward. At least, I hoped it was upward. It was too far, whichever way I was going. Too far and not enough strength, not enough air. I flailed, arms weakening. The left one dragged, feeling too heavy, too dead.
Something grabbed me. I thrashed, thinking it was the shark again, but I felt fingers. Long, strong fingers. They dug under my arm and hauled me upward.
We broke the surface. I clawed at the air, gasping, spitting and crying.
“Don’t do that,” a rasping voice said. “I’ll let you drown if you don’t stop.”
The voice soothed me and I sagged against the lean body. Kermit wrapped an arm around my chest and began stroking for shore. Mud and rocks under my feet and Kermit’s unrelenting grip on my arm guided me out of the water, to fall, coughing and panting on blessed land.
“Déjà fucking vu, Hawkins,” Kermit said. “That’s two you owe me.”
I could only moan and lie there. He pounded on my back, to get the water out of my lungs, he said. Had absolutely no strength to correct that misconception, so I just took it and was grateful we were both there for it to happen.
Finally, I could move, only to roll over to my back. The beautiful sky arched overhead, glowing with the reflected lights of the city, only the brightest stars burning through to twinkle sweetly at me. Every inch of me hurt and my lungs felt like they’d deflated to half their size. The ache in my head had subsided, fractionally. What remained was probably oxygen starvation not sorcery.
Sorcery.
The earth sorcerer. Mercy.
“Gurg,” I said, rolling over again. I got my arms and legs in general position and tried to get up.
“You should probably rest a bit,” Kermit advised. “Still got half the river in your lungs and the other half in your pants.”
“Gotta go.” Actual words now and I got half way up, wobbling. “Merce.”
Kermit helped me up. There might not be much of him, but he was strong and he all but dragged me up the slope and into the cemetery. Back to the caretaker’s hut and to Mercy.
She lay where she’d landed, against the gravestone, motionless. Erin was there, kneeling beside her.
“How is she?” I asked as Kermit lowered me beside Erin.
“I don’t know.” Erin’s voice was tight, her hands clenched into fists in her lap. “I know you’re not supposed to move potential neck injuries. I wasn’t sure if Mercy would be… What happened to you?” Her nose wrinkled up at the stench of the river and mud.
I ignored the question as pretty much self-explanatory. Leaning down, I brushed a hand over Mercy’s curls. “Mercy?”
Her eyes fluttered and rolled, finding me. “Matt,” she whispered. “I can’t feel anything.”
I swallowed a need to scream and hit something. “I know, baby. It’ll be all right. Don’t try to move.”
“What can we do?” Erin asked.
Shrugging, I said, “I don’t know. She should heal, but I’m not sure. Nothing like this has ever happened before.”
“Okay. What do you need?”
“A neck brace and a backboard, if you have them handy.” There was a tremor of fear in my voice. I didn’t know if this was the sort of damage a vampire could recover from. Bullet wounds, stabbings, broken bones, yes. But a severed spinal cord?
My first thought was to ring Aurum. He’d know. My guts twisted at the thought of having to rely on him for anything, but I’d do it. In a fucking heartbeat if it meant I could help Mercy. But he’d never given me a number to reach him, never given me anything but a headache and a complex.
Dev. Dev could get in touch with Aurum. I’d make him do it.
I didn’t realise Kermit had vanished until he came back. He crouched opposite us.
“Will this help?” He held up a neck brace.
“Where did you get that?” Erin demanded.
“Um, around,” he hedged and handed me the brace.
“Don’t care if you stole it out of the back of an ambulance,” I said, starting to adjust it to fit Mercy. “That’s three I owe you.”
Kermit waved it off with an aw-shucks gesture and watched avidly while I worked. When I had the brace ready, I put it down and looked Mercy over. She looked at me with wide brown eyes, a little worried. I could feel her fear down the link. She didn’t like this new feeling of not feeling. Where had her body gone? Her strong, reliable body. How would she fight if she couldn’t feel or move? How would she eat?
“It’s okay, baby,” I assured her. “I’ll take care of you. You’ll be fine, don’t worry.”
Mercy cocked a brow. “You can barely take care of yourself.”
There was a plaintive whine in her words that made me smile. If she could joke, she would be okay.
“It wasn’t a joke,” she said aloud.
“If you say so.”
Pushing aside my worries and weariness, I skimmed my hands over her neck and shoulders. Right now, she was lying twisted on the uneven ground and I daren’t move her until I had her neck secured. Moving to kneel at her head, I beckoned Erin up beside me.
“I’m going to straighten her neck and then you’re going to hold her head still while I put the brace on.”
Erin swallowed hard but nodded.
It had been a good while since I’d done anything like this, but I knew what I was doing. Gently, hands steady, I turned Mercy’s head until she was aligned with her shoulders. She didn’t make a sound, which was either good or bad. Erin took hold of Mercy, her elbows on the ground for support. Carefully, I put the brace on, doing it up as quickly as I could.
Only then did I move Mercy, lying her out flat, straightening out her limbs, checking for more breaks as I went. Pretty sure there weren’t, I pinched Mercy’s thigh. No response. I pressed her fingers, nothing.
“Can you swallow?” I asked her.
She did so. “Yup.”
“That’s something at least.” I sat back. “All right. We’ve got to move her.”
I was too tired, stressed and sore, and Erin wouldn’t be able to handle Mercy, so it was up to Kermit. He lifted her so gently I vowed to fight Dev and any Council goons to keep them away from the ghoul.
Erin brought the car in as close as she could and Kermit laid Mercy on the back seat. Getting her out at the other end would be an issue for an hour’s time.
I thanked Kermit, promised him anything he wanted, then climbed in and almost passed out.
At the house, Erin and I got Mercy out between us and into her room. Erin fussed while I rounded up Marcel and locked him in my bedroom. Then I sank into the Lay-Z-Boy and tried not to panic.
“What now?” Erin asked.
“She should feed,” I said listlessly.
Mercy looked at me from the corner of eye. “I don’t know if I’m hungry.”
“If you’re healing, you’ll need the energy.” I stood and waved Erin out of the room.
“I’ll get the bags,” Erin offered, hand out for the key. “One or two? More?”
“Um…” I closed the door to Mercy’s room and leaned on it. I felt about ready to collapse in on myself, and yet I needed the strength to ask something terrible of Erin. Something I wasn’t sure I had any right to ask of anyone, let alone her.
“What? Don’t you have any blood?”
“No, I do. Enough, but…” I raked a hand over my face, feeling the grit of dried mud.
“But?”
“Well, I’ve sort of had the impression the last couple of days that maybe… Ah, maybe the bags of blood aren’t enough.”
Erin frowned. “What do you mean?”
“I think, the bags are okay as far as they go, which is delivering red cells. But they don’t have everything she needs.”
Tired of having to prompt me, Erin stood back, arms crossed, and waited for me to man the hell up and spit it out.
“There’s no life in the donated blood. The red cells are functional, yes, but they’ve been removed from the body, processed and preserved. I’m reaching here, not really sure what I mean, but I think that’s part of what vampires need, is that life force of the human. When Mercy drinks from a human, which she hasn’t done in a long time, she becomes more… human for a time. More stable. She’s been acting up lately and I’m wondering if it’s diet related.”
Erin quirked an eyebrow. “You think the preservatives in her food are making her behave badly?”
“Heh. Yeah, when you put it like that it sounds better.”
“So… fresh is best?”
I shook my head. “Don’t agree with me, Erin. I’m out of line even mentioning it. I have no right and I should just make—”
“I’ll do it.”
The urges to cry and laugh warred nastily, ending in a tie and a pathetic little sound of defeat on my part. If only I could do this myself. And I could, it just wouldn’t help Mercy all that much. We had different blood groups and I was incompatible for her. She’d get some sustenance from my blood, but it wouldn’t do much to help her heal, rather the opposite in fact. Erin, however, was O positive, like Mercy. Nothing but helpful properties in her blood.
“Not a lot, though,” Erin insisted. “I have to be able to keep working. I don’t want another transfusion.”
I nodded stupidly. “Yeah, yeah. Of course not. She won’t need much to kick start the healing. No more than you’d give at Red Cross. I have juice and biscuits for after.”
She attempted a brave smile, but it didn’t really work. I was asking her to volunteer as prey for a predator. But hey, at least I was asking this time.
“I don’t think she’ll be able to manage a feeding compulsion,” I warned as Erin gestured me out of the way. “You’ll feel it.”
“Nothing new there, then,” she muttered and went into Mercy’s room again.
I followed, sick and desperate but willing to face the results of my decisions this time.
Erin settled on the bed beside Mercy and I sat in the chair, leaning forward.
“Merce, Erin’s going to let you feed on her. You’re only going to take as much as you’d get from a bag, okay?”
“Okay.”
“Promise me you’ll stop.”
Mercy rolled her eyes. “I’ll stop.”
It was awkward with Mercy unable to move her head, but she got her mouth open enough to get her fangs on Erin’s wrist. Erin ducked her head into the pillow and shuddered. When Mercy bit down, she gasped and tensed, but didn’t pull away.
I felt like some sort of pervert, sitting there while this happened in front of me. I wasn’t a part of this oddly intimate act. Just a sick voyeur; a depraved person who’d ask a human to make a sacrifice for a monster.
And there was no delusion in me as to who the monster was.
He was sitting there, watching two innocent victims of his monstrosity.