A lot of things happened after that, but I don’t remember any of them because I sort of passed out at that point.
CHAPTER 93
Vicki
Windsday, Novembros 7
I woke up and found Ineke Xavier sitting in a chair beside the bed.
“What are you doing here?” I asked, trying to get my blurry vision to unblurry. “And where is here? Who’s looking after your guests?”
“Here is your bedroom in your apartment at The Jumble,” Ineke replied, marking her place in the book she’d been reading.
I blinked a couple of times and looked around. Yep. My place. My room. My bed. Yippee.
“My guests scurried off within ten minutes of being told the roads had reopened,” Ineke continued. “So did your guests, except for Ian and Michael Stern. Ian’s been offering free counseling to the Crows, as well as Lara Sanguinati, and Michael has been helping out around The Jumble, answering phones since Cougar snarled someone on the line into hysterics and Conan crushed one of the phones because it kept ringing. Julian purchased a new phone for your office. The receipt is on your desk.”
“Okay, but what are you doing here?”
“I’m doing my turn at Vicki watching,” Ineke replied. Her smile faded. “Kira almost drained you to the point of no return. You’ve been out of it for a couple of days. There has been someone here every hour since you were brought home. And Cougar has shown up every morning to stare at you and determine that you were not on the menu for breakfast.”
Good old Cougar.
I sighed as what Ineke said sank in. “More Grimshaw blood.”
She leaned forward and touched my arm as she grinned. “Xavier blood this time. Doc Wallace said Grimshaw was still recovering from his own blood loss and couldn’t be a donor. And I pulled up just as the EMTs carried you out of the woods to their vehicle. Turns out I was an acceptable donor, so they hooked us up, and here you are.”
“But . . . why were you there?”
“Someone named Aiden—scary guy but great hair—came to the boardinghouse and told me you needed blood or you would die, and the Elders and Elementals would be very unhappy with humans if that happened. I knew many humans in the village, so maybe I knew who had the kind of blood that would keep you alive. I remembered talking to you about this when you were recovering from your summer adventures and said I was a suitable donor. I got in my car and several terra indigene stood on the side of the road along the way and pointed me in the right direction. So there I was and there you were, and here we are now.”
“Oh.” I peeked under the covers, but someone had put me in a long nightgown and I couldn’t see my legs.
“What are you doing?” Ineke asked.
“Looking to see if I acquired any tattoos with my Ineke blood.”
“You don’t get tattoos from a transfusion.” She gave me a thoughtful look. “But if you’re interested, there is a tattoo artist in Crystalton who has a gift for creating tattoos that are perfect for each customer.”
“Oh, I don’t know. Maybe.” Hmm. “Has Grimshaw been here? Am I under arrest?”
“He’s looked in and called a couple of times a day for status reports. Didn’t say anything about you being under arrest. He grumbled something about fitting you with a tracking device, but your attorneys—both of them—went into full-fang mode and opposed that idea before they headed to Lakeside with some friends of yours.”
Ineke didn’t quite make it a question. She’d lived in Sproing long enough to know it was better not to talk about some kinds of friends who might have been staying in The Jumble.
“Natasha has checked in to see how you’re doing, but she’s been dealing with Lara’s trauma of being attacked by one of their own kind,” Ineke continued. “Boris has taken a turn at bedside vigil. And I was told there were five . . . beings . . . who kept watch for several hours the first night. No one but Julian actually saw them, but he stayed on guard in your sitting room to make sure no one disturbed them.”
Wow. The Five had come to check on me.
That was more than I needed to know right now.
“You probably don’t remember, but Julian kissed you,” Ineke said oh so casually.
“What?” I yelped. He kissed me while I had unconscious breath?
“Mm. Just a touch of his lips to yours. Very sweet and romantic. You might let him try it again sometime when you’re awake.”
Having delivered her opinion about kisses, Ineke started telling me the village gossip, but I fell asleep and didn’t hear most of it.
CHAPTER 94
Ilya
Windsday, Novembros 7
Ilya drove through the night, heading into the Addirondak Mountains. There were a few small shadows of Sanguinati tucked away in the wild country. Not an ideal situation for urban hunters, but the Sanguinati’s presence was necessary because human prisons were built far away from human communities, and some form of terra indigene was needed to act as liaison between the prisoners and the people who drove the supply trucks.
Besides, the inmates provided sufficient sustenance.
“It wasn’t my fault,” Kira said, sounding young and bewildered. “Viktor f-forced me to do those things.”
It wasn’t easy to restrain or confine a being who could shift into smoke, but the Sanguinati had learned to do such things out of necessity. Sometimes evil found fertile ground, regardless of species.
Evil sat beside him as he drove to the place that Stavros had confirmed was still used for private discussions. He would never know if she had been corrupted by Richard Cardosa or if the human had simply found her a willing acolyte who helped him conduct various experiments in manipulating behavior and feelings because that had been her nature all along.
It no longer mattered. For the sake of the rest of the Sanguinati in the Northeast Region of Thaisia, he couldn’t allow it to matter.
“And that professor . . . ,” Kira began.
“Best not to talk about him,” Ilya said, not interested in what lies she would tell about Richard Cardosa—or what truths she might tell.
He and Stavros, along with Natasha, Boris, Grimshaw, and Julian Farrow, had collected and pooled information from their various sources to create a kind of map of the destruction caused by Richard Cardosa’s experiments in manipulation and control of other beings. In other words, brainwashing humans and terra indigene alike.
Cardosa was not alone in his interests, but it was impossible to say if Ellen Cardosa Wilson had developed a taste for such things on her own or if she was her brother’s first experiment. Either way, she had left behind a trail of broken families, and several young boys who had been hastily buried each time she acquired a new test subject and left town.