The Medium

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Fifteen

The lights were too bright.

Something wasn’t right in the pit of her stomach and behind her eyes. It might have been a hangover or the leftovers from a nasty flu, but that wasn’t right. She hurt, and her head hurt, and moving hurt, and her neck felt like someone had taken a sizable chunk out of it…

Oh. Right.

She tried to roll over, but something restrained her, and she fell back only to whack her already-pounding head on the cabinet. She squinted up, already knowing what she would see. It was him, sure enough, not looking a whole lot better than he had… How long ago? Everything was fuzzy after she became a juice box.

She meant to say something like “How long was I out?” but “Geh” was all she could manage.

Rocky looked down at her. His eyes were still red, still empty of intelligence, still desperately hungry. He grimaced at her, showing fang. Even suffering head injury and hypoxia, Kim could tell he wasn’t in any state to decide to let someone live. She squeezed her eyes shut again. Some nonsense about the power of friendship crossed her mind, but she pushed it away. Whatever Rocky was, Broken or not, he was gone for the moment, lost under the instinct to end that thirst. For a time, at least, he wasn’t capable of love.

So something else must have made him stop. Self-preservation? But what about her kitchen could possibly be that threatening? She didn’t have a clue until a throat cleared itself about six feet above her.

“So,” Zeb said, standing there in his boxers and socks, revolver c****d and resting on his shoulder, “I was sorta thinkin’ ‘bout shootin’ him, but then I thought, if he jumps, might tear somethin’ an’ then you’d bleed to death. So I was thinkin’ maybe I oughta have woke up Coyote. Could maybe, I dunno, freeze him or somethin’. Guess not.”

“Mm? Huh?” Kim scooted away from where she’d been propped up on Rocky’s legs. She felt like she might be sick. “What did you do?”

“Came in. Thought ‘bout shootin’ him. Stood there a second. Then you blacked out maybe a second, an’ he stopped. What did you do?”

Only a second? It felt longer. Like days. When she thought about it, Kim was genuinely surprised she hadn’t woken up in a hospital bed. She was even more surprised she had woken up at all.

“I didn’t do anything.” Except flail uselessly. She grabbed the countertop and dragged herself to her feet, and from the corner of her eye caught a flicker of movement. The vampire was standing too, moving closer for a second go.

She didn’t try to duck around him, this time. She didn’t try to get away. She drew her fist back to punch his damn lights out. He cringed away, shielding his head with his arms, and cowered against the cabinets. It was tragic. Pathetic. She lowered her hand with a groan.

“Zeb, would you get the bags out of the fridge? Might be enough that we don’t have a repeat of this.” She edged out of the kitchen, supporting herself against the walls, and took an end of the couch. A year of following one of the most dangerous creatures in Texas, and it was a sad, sweet, damaged little weenie who got her. The rank irony hurt almost as much as her throat.

She caught a twinge of resentment in that thought and did her best to crush it. It wasn’t Rocky’s fault Duran could turn anyone into a weapon. It wasn’t his fault he’d been bled out beyond all hope of self-control. He couldn’t be held responsible for his actions any more than—she hoped—she could be held responsible for shooting Itzli. But no amount of rationalization could get rid of her sudden desire to kick him out of her apartment.

The refrigerator door opened and closed, and she heard a short scuffle and a high yelp. Silence.

Zeb plopped down on the opposite end of the couch and twisted to look at her, elbows propped on his knees.

“Ain’t no doctor,” he said, “but it looks to me like you need to see one.”

“I’ll be okay,” she told him. She prodded at her wound and winced, but most of the pain seemed to be bruising. The punctures felt small and neat, their clean edges already swollen shut. She wouldn’t be bleeding to death any time soon. But she wouldn’t be running on all cylinders any time soon, either.

“You know how to make tea?” she asked.

He nodded.

“Small box, cabinet to the left of the microwave, says ‘IntensiTEA’ in big letters on the side. Please and thank you?”

Zeb slid off the couch and stepped over the vampire, who was making a dent in the small pile of packages Zeb had left in the middle of the kitchen floor. Kim couldn’t help picturing herself in their place and had to look away.

The microwave whirred, the tea ball rattled, and after a few minutes, the scent of magical caffeine filtered through the apartment. It was a little like matches, a little like mint, and a little like old books.

Zeb passed her the cup and she took a sip, making a face at the amount of sugar he’d added.

“How much is left in the box?” she asked.

“Almost full.”

“Good. That’ll get me through long enough.” A cup or two would get her functional again, but a daily regimen would amp up her metabolism, replacing what she’d lost over a course of days instead weeks. It was a better option than trying to explain what had happened to a hospital staff.

“I almost didn’t hear over the rain. That boy is damn lucky Coyote didn’t wake up. Woulda put a knife through his heart.”

Kim grimaced and nodded. “Not like we can keep him from finding out, though. But we still need him to take a walk, set stuff straight. Duran said… Oh, crap, right, Duran was here. No, it’s okay, just outside the window, and then he left. The note must have washed off. He said he let Rocky go. That must be why he was able to come after me. But I’ll bet he left some way to take control again, and I don’t know anyone else who can, y’know, uninstall psychic switches.”

“He won’t be real keen on helpin’ someone that tried to kill you.”

“You said he stopped. Just stopped?”

“Yeah?”

“Then he wasn’t trying to kill me. If he was, I’d be dead. Or at least brain damaged. I’m not dead, so no one’s taking anything out on Rocky.” It shouldn’t have happened. She had looked into his eyes and seen nothing but thirst, but somehow, he’d stopped, and that meant something.

“You sure?”

“Look, if someone slipped you a roofie and you were high as a kite, freaking out, seeing things, and you attacked someone, that would be bad, but not your fault. It was just an accident. Duran’s the bad guy. Can’t forget that, okay?”

A low, inhuman wail drifted out of the kitchen, raising the hairs on the back of Kim’s neck. She threw back the rest of her tea, savoring the little jolt it sent through her bones, and walked over to the doorway. The vampire was pressed against the cabinets, his back hunched and his face in his hands. He rocked forward and back, forward and back. The sound continued unbroken long after his lungs should have been empty, a muffled cry of inarticulate terror.

And Kim realized she could feel it. Part of her was inside him, enveloped in that fear, carrying that resonance back to her, distinct and foreign. It wasn’t her fear, but she felt it all the same.

He had her blood. And that thought brought real fear, her own fear.

The smart thing would have been to kill him. Even if she could be sure he would never use the control that could afford him, there was no telling what Duran could do through him. Maybe that had been the plan. Maybe Duran had known that poor, broken Rocky wouldn’t kill her, either couldn’t or didn’t have the heart. Maybe the point hadn’t been to take her out, but to establish a connection, another link in his chain of control. He couldn’t get to her directly, but if he could control Rocky, and Rocky could control her… Did it even work like that? Was it possible? Her throat closed.

“Zeb,” she choked. “Go get Coyote.”

Zeb shot her a look of confusion and concern, but he disappeared into the bedroom, and Kim crossed the kitchen to crouch in front of the cowering, keening Rocky. She grabbed his wrists and pulled his hands away from his face. His eyes were blue once more, wide and frightened, and it only took her a glance to see he didn’t know her. Duran had wiped him clean again.

His gaze flicked to the marks on her throat, the horrible sound wavered, and he made a frantic attempt to pull away. He’d gotten stronger, almost too strong for her, but she held him still.

“I-I-I-I…”

“Yeah. You did that. I’m not going to hurt you, okay? But my friend might, so you’ve got to tell me how I get rid of this.”

“G-g-g-g…”

“You took my blood. It’s okay, I get why. I’ll get over that. But now you’ve got my blood, and I am not interested in being connected to you this way. So either you get rid of it, or you tell me how to get rid of it, or we might conceivably have a problem.”

His eyes grew even wider. “I… I-I-I-I-I c-c-c-c…”

“Oh. Oh, right. If you knew, he would have blocked that out. Well, that’s what we’ve got a shaman for.”

On cue, Coyote tottered in, leaning heavily on his cane. His hair had begun to come out of its braid, and a halo of gray frizz stood out around his head. He zipped up his jeans, surveyed the scene, and his black eyes narrowed to furious slits.

“Chindi son of a b***h,” he growled. “I knew it.”

He took a menacing step forward, and Rocky whimpered and shied away.

Kim moved to stand between them and toed the remaining bags of blood toward Rocky. “Finish those. I’m not up for round two just yet.”

Then she turned to Coyote. “You need to find out, right now, whether he knows how to cut through contagious magic. It would also be helpful to know who he is, why he didn’t kill me, and why Duran wants to hang onto him so bad.”

Coyote gritted his teeth. A vein bulged in his forehead, and he gripped his cane like he meant to crush the handle. “Fine. But no interruptions, this time.” He spun and stomped back into the living room, muttering.

Kim held out a hand, but the vampire skittered backward. She moved forward, and he moved backward, and suddenly, he was trapped in a corner. His chest heaved in a violent spasm, and he bared his teeth as cornered animals do.

“Look,” she said, “I’m sorry. Coyote’s old and cranky, but he can be really gentle.”

“I guess I could,” Coyote called from the other room. It wasn’t an agreement.

The vampire’s body stiffened. He thrashed once, trying to get away from something inside his own head, and collapsed. Tears welled in his eyes and spilled over onto the linoleum floor. Tiny beads of rancid sweat broke across his forehead. The keening began again, rose shrilly, and died in a gasp.

“What…” Kim leapt to her feet to stare at Coyote. “What in God’s name are you doing!”

Coyote didn’t answer. He sat stiffly, the tendons in his neck standing out. “Shut up,” he growled. “You want both our brains fried? There’s more traps now than a week ago. Hard enough shutting this mess down without wiping him clean, and you want I should make it not hurt, too?”

*

No amount of delicacy could numb the pain of remembering. All that time under the ground, alone with the whispering. The time above the ground, caught in Duran’s eyes and in his teeth.

*

Coyote sucked in a breath, his forehead wrinkling.

“Something’s wrong,” he said. “There’s some kind of… I don’t know. Some kind of disconnect. Like… There. There we go. I’ve got it.”

*

The vampire tried to scream. His chest cramped, but his lungs wouldn’t inflate, and the most he could manage was a strangled moan. The wizard girl caught hold of his hands to keep him from clawing his eyes out. Someone else filled his head, and he couldn’t bear it. All that time with someone else thinking his thoughts for him, groping, stretching things out of shape, making him forget, making him remember.

He didn’t want to come back. He didn’t want to be real again. But the shaman seized him, chained him, and everything closed in tight like a vice. Reality. It hurt.