Kelly Meding - Wrong Side of Dead

“Such as?” Hey, wait a minute—“How’s Wyatt?”

Milo frowned. “Sedated, I think. You were out for only about twenty minutes, so I don’t think Dr. Vansis knows anything about his condition that you don’t already know.”

“Condition? What’s that mean?”

Dr. Vansis stepped into the cubicle, his customary scowl in place. “It means I still don’t understand the reason for Mr. Truman’s rather violent reaction to the Lupa blood and/or saliva,” he said. “I’ve made a formal request to the Assembly for information. Hopefully, they’ll have something more useful for me than speculation and hearsay.”

“So he’s still sick?”

“Extremely sick, unlike you.” He took a penlight from his lab coat pocket and flashed it in my eyes as he spoke. “He’s running a one-hundred-and-four-degree fever, has the shakes, complains of flulike aches all over his body, and both wound sites show signs of serious infection. I have him on IV fluids and a broad-spectrum antibiotic, but I don’t know that the antibiotic is helping.”

I followed his finger with my eyes, feeling like an idiot but understanding the reason for the little tests. I’d taken yet another blow to the head and, healing ability or not, he was a studious doctor. “All that from werewolf bites,” I said, once he seemed satisfied with my condition.

“The bites or the blood, I’m not sure yet,” Vansis said. “All of our knowledge of the Lupa is carefully guarded by the Elders. Hopefully, I’ll hear from them soon.”

“What about the vampires? They’re old. Isleen is centuries old. Maybe they know something.… What?”

The look Milo and Dr. Vansis exchanged set my teeth on edge.

“All the vampires in the Watchtower are being quarantined in their quarters,” Dr. Vansis said.

I couldn’t have been more surprised if he’d said they were staging a musical production in the cafeteria. “Why?”

“Because the purpose of detonating that half-Blood you captured wasn’t to cause internal structural damage to the facilities, or to necessarily try to kill whoever was standing closest to him at the time.”

“So why, then?”

“The half-Blood was used as a delivery system for some sort of pathogen,” Dr. Vansis said. “It was aerosolized during the explosion, and many of the vampires have become infected.”

“How many were exposed?”

“All of them.”

Oh God. The sun rises around 5:45 in the summer, and the majority of our vampires patrol at night. Even the vampires who used that fancy UV-blocking sunscreen preferred nighttime, as it enhanced their vision. They were always back by 5:30. Felix had known that. He’d known exactly when the most vampires would be in the Watchtower because he’d once been part of this, which meant that Thackery would have known the perfect time to blow his little present.

Walter Thackery and his hatred of all vampires strikes again. “Isleen?”

“She’s sick, as is Eleri and at least twenty more.” At least twenty out of the forty-five or so who worked here on any given day.

No, no, no, no! “Quince?”

“Fine, so far,” Milo said. “It’s affecting them randomly. So far there’s no way to know if they’ll all get sick, or if some of them are immune.”

“I’ve taken blood samples from a dozen, both sick and healthy,” Dr. Vansis said, “but contagious diseases is not my area of expertise. And seeing as how you’re fine, I need to get back to work.”

He left without further information. I hauled ass to my feet, and my very wet shoes squished on the floor. Pink water oozed out.

“Have any humans or Therians been affected by this pathogen?” I asked.

“Not so far,” Milo replied.

“What’s it doing to the vampires?”

“Hypersensitivity to light and sound, shooting pains in the extremities, and they bruise if you touch them too hard.”

Sounded like the vampire version of a migraine—except for the bruising thing. “And these are just the early symptoms?”

“Yeah. Like I said, it’s only been about twenty minutes, but the first ones infected got sick fast.”

“If they aren’t all sick, is putting them in one confined space a good idea?”

Milo shrugged. “It was Isleen’s decision. She called her Family’s royal Father and he agreed with her. I guess they don’t want to risk exposing any vampires outside the Watchtower until they know what this is.”

The choice was understandable, from the vampire’s point of view. We didn’t know what was affecting them, what else it would do, or how far it would spread un-contained. Still … “Are we allowed to leave, or are we confined, too?”

“I really don’t know, Evy.” A flash of distress creased his forehead, and he looked lost. Young. “I mean, I just saw Felix blow up and I’m really not sure … I don’t …”

“I’m sorry.” I took a step toward him, then stopped when he flinched away. “It’s not easy to reconcile the thing you saw die with the person you knew.”

“Yeah. He seemed surprised.”

“That he’d been rigged to blow?”

“Yeah.”

“I think he was. He said something about his tracker not being a tracker. And I don’t think he expected to be caught last night.”

“Thackery sure did. He had to know we’d be at the rave.”

“Well, Thackery likes to have backup plans in place.” Hell, he could have the Lupa set to explode somehow, too, and the thought made me doubly glad we hadn’t brought our prisoner back to the Watchtower.

Milo ran a hand through his short hair. “How do you not know someone’s planted a bomb on you? Or in you?”

I had no answer.

“I just …” Milo sighed. “I can’t believe so much has gone so wrong so fast.”

No kidding. In just the last six hours, we’d captured Felix, had half a dozen Therians kidnapped, Wyatt was attacked by a werewolf, Felix exploded, and now the vampires were getting sick. Somehow everything connected back to Thackery, but I hadn’t yet drawn all the lines between the crazy dots.

“Did we save any samples of Felix’s blood?” I asked.

“I think so. Why?”

“Because something besides willpower was helping Felix, and we might find a hint in his blood.”

Determined to do something, I circled past Milo and stepped into the short hall. My room was at the end of the row of four, with all the noise activity happening farther down in the main infirmary area. The next door down was half-shut, and Marcus was arguing with someone about being allowed to use a cane. I made a mental note to thank him later.

The third room was empty. Wyatt was in the fourth. The conversation just a few yards away had my attention, but I went into Wyatt’s room anyway. He looked awful, like someone fighting a losing battle with a deadly disease—all fevered, blotchy skin and labored breathing. The bandages on his neck and arm were stained red and yellow, hinting at the infection raging below the surface.

Frail came to mind, and I despised using that word to describe Wyatt Truman. Once again, the people I cared about were at the mercy of Walter-fucking-Thackery and his diseased whims.

I stepped toward the bed. Froze. I wanted to find a chair and sit next to Wyatt, hold his hand until he woke up. Be there so he wasn’t alone if he died from whatever ravaged his body. I needed to be there for him, like he’d been there for me countless times in the very recent past.

Only I couldn’t. There was too much to do, and if I could get to Thackery, maybe I could beat an antidote out of him. As much as my heart wanted me to stay with Wyatt, logic told me I’d help him best by being out in the city. Doing something.

I brushed his cheek with my knuckles, noting how the damp skin radiated heat. The last time I’d seen him in a bed like this, he’d just shielded me from another exploding Halfie and taken a piece of shrapnel in the back for it. The perfect alignment of it made me smile in spite of the situation.