Midnight Blue-Light Special

Twenty-four

Waking up in an unknown location—but at least it isn’t a warehouse somewhere in Manhattan, being held captive by the Covenant of St. George, which makes it a definite improvement (also, not dead)

“NOTHING” LOOKED a lot like the glaring white of an active cuckoo’s eyes. I opened my eyes. The unrelenting whiteness didn’t go away, although it did change forms, becoming the overhead lights which were shining directly down into my face. I groaned and tried to block the light with my arm, only to discover that the various tubes connected to my body made that impossible.

They don’t usually connect tubes to dead people. Not unless they’re preparing them for embalming, and this wasn’t a funeral home. It didn’t smell right for that. I blinked, abandoning my efforts to cover my face. The glare got a little more manageable as my eyes adjusted. Only a little, though. I blinked again, finally settling for squinting through my eyelashes as I tried to get a handle on where, exactly, I was—other than “not dead.”

The memory of being shot the first time, by Peter, was still very vivid and real. The memory of being shot the second time, by Margaret, was already fading like a bad dream. “Dammit, Sarah,” I muttered, and twisted in the bed enough to look around.

It was a small room, with walls painted a cheery shade of eggshell blue and trimmed in even cheerier yellow. Various machines beeped quietly to themselves, monitoring my vital signs. I followed one of the tubes in my arm up to an IV stand, where a bag of clear liquid was presumably responsible for keeping me hydrated. That also explained the weird pinching sensation at my groin; I’d been out for long enough that they’d needed to catheterize me to keep me from wetting the bed. Always the sort of thing a girl wants to wake up to.

On the plus side, nothing hurt. Maybe that meant that I was flying on morphine, but at the moment, I’d take it. It was better than the alternative. Better still would be having some vague idea of where I was. I started looking around for something that looked like a call button.

I was still looking when I heard footsteps. I turned to see Dominic standing in the room’s doorway, white as a sheet and holding onto the lintel for balance. “You are an insufferable woman,” he said, barely above a whisper. “You slept for three days, and then you simply had to wake up during the five minutes that I was out of the room, didn’t you?”

My heart leaped, even as my lungs gave up working to pull air into my body. “Hi,” I managed, forcing the word out despite my lack of oxygen. That was enough to get my lungs working again, at least. “You’re okay. Are you okay? You’re okay.” I was babbling. I didn’t care. Just seeing him, alive and standing on his own two feet, was more than enough. I half-remembered him dying, bleeding out on the warehouse floor, and—

—and—

—and that had never happened. The memory was shredding like a cobweb even as I tried to look at it. I shuddered all over, trying to wipe the false events out of my mind. “Whoa,” I said. My voice quavered. I hated it for that. “I thought I was protected by that anti-telepathy charm.”

“It turns out that when your cousin really, ah, ‘turns on the juice,’ she punches rather harder than any of us suspected she was capable of,” said Dominic, as he came to stand by the side of my bed. “Even Istas—who claims to possess a natural resistance to Sarah’s manipulations—got somewhat confused about what had actually happened, which could have been rather unpleasant, as it seems that she dislikes zombies. Strongly. And when she saw me up and moving about, despite having seen me ‘die,’ she was sure I was a zombie. I very nearly found myself put down as a menace to the public health.”

I laughed at that. I couldn’t help myself. It was a small, strained thing, but it still made Dominic smile.

“I didn’t think the irony would be lost on you,” he said. “The former cryptid hunter, killed by a cryptid, as a cryptid. You would doubtless have been disappointed that you’d missed it.”

My laughter died. “No, I wouldn’t have been disappointed,” I said. “I already saw you die once today.”

“Ah, yes. I was spared the strain of seeing you shot down; I fell first, after all.” Dominic walked over to the bed, where he sat down gingerly on the very edge of the mattress. “Your Uncle Mike informs me that Sarah put together a thoroughly rational and believable scenario.”

“Peter?” I asked.

“According to the memories she gave them, I killed him myself, when I broke in looking for my false ‘Price girl.’ You were a cocktail waitress that I was cultivating to look like an enemy of the Covenant, so that I could rally the cryptids of Manhattan to my side.” He leaned over and pressed a kiss against my forehead. “Even when you’re not allowed to be a true representative of your family, you’re dangerous.”

“Yeah, well.” I sniffled. It was getting hard to keep from crying. “I guess some things never change.”

“No, I guess they don’t.”

“But why would you—?”

“Turn traitor? It’s happened before, Verity, and it will happen again. Bogeymen and dragons offering wealth and knowledge, succubi and Oceanids offering love . . . it happens. Most traitors simply die quickly. Few are as successful as your family at thwarting us.” He paused, grimacing. “Thwarting the Covenant. I suppose I need to adjust my thinking.”

There was nothing I could say to that. Leaving the only place he’d ever called his own was still a raw wound in his voice; any words of comfort would have just been salt rubbed into it.

Dominic sighed, and continued, “I killed Peter, and Margaret killed us both, while Robert took out our allies. As for the bodies, there was an unfortunate collision between a stray bullet and a gas pipe, and the warehouse was lost. All remains were destroyed.”

I closed my eyes. “That’s convenient.”

“True. But they both believe it with all their hearts.” I felt his fingers on my forehead, brushing back my hair. “They’ll return to England and give their report to the Covenant. By the time another team can be dispatched, the cryptids of the city will be ready to disappear as if they’d never existed.”

“The dragons can’t move.”

“The Covenant still believes dragons to be extinct, and dragon princesses are on the books as too difficult to tell from humans to be worth hunting. They’re to be killed if encountered, but a waste of resources to search for unless the coffers are getting low.” Dominic stroked my hair back again. “Manhattan will be safe. Margaret and Robert uncovered a conspiracy by one of their own. All the trainees and journeymen will be kept under closer attention for a while; I doubt they’ll be sending anyone any time soon.”

“Wait.” I opened my eyes, staring up at him. “They really believe you’re dead.”

“Yes. And as they were the target of your fair cousin’s ‘whammy,’ they’re going to keep believing it.” Dominic grimaced. “Remind me never to make her angry.”

“Smart man.” I looked around the room again. “Where am I?”

“In the recovery ward of St. Giles’ Hospital,” said a familiar, if unexpected, female voice. “Welcome back to the land of the living, Very-Very.”

“Grandma?” Eyes wide, I turned toward the voice. “Grandma!”

The black-haired, blue-eyed woman standing in the doorway smiled. “Hello, sweetheart. How are you feeling?”

“Surprisingly good, given the whole ‘shot in the gut and lost consciousness’ thing and— Grandma! What are you doing here?” I glanced to Dominic. “Have you met my grandmother?”

“Yes.” Dominic stood, offering a nod to my grandmother. “Ma’am.”

“Dominic,” she said.

He looked back to me. “I’m going to let Mike and Ryan know that you’re awake. Please. I know you’re a madwoman, but try to stay still and take it easy.” He pressed a kiss to my forehead before turning and leaving the room before I could react. Grandma Angela stepped aside to let him pass.

Once he was gone, she stepped fully into the room, pausing to close the door behind herself, and started walking toward my bed. “I’m glad you’re awake.”

“So am I.”

Angela Baker is my mother’s mother, and we’re not related by blood: Mom was adopted, since Grandma wasn’t willing to spend enough time with a member of her own species to have a biological child. She looks more like Sarah than anyone else in the family, with pale skin, black hair, and improbably blue eyes that sometimes go white around the edges. She’s old enough to be my mother’s mother by birth, not just adoption, but she looks like she’s barely Mom’s age. I have long since resigned myself to the fact that I won’t look nearly as good as either of my grandmothers when I’m their age, since Grandma Alice spends most of her time in dimensions where time runs differently, and Grandma Angela isn’t human.

She adopted Mom because cuckoos can only have children with other cuckoos, and—like all sane individuals—Grandma hates pretty much every cuckoo she’s ever met. She adopted Sarah because Sarah was just a little girl who needed a home, and she wanted to find out whether cuckoos were really innately sociopathic.

I looked at her face, so grim, so serious, and felt a chill run down my spine. Maybe she was here because we finally had the answer. “Grandma,” I said. “What are you doing here?”

“Mike called me once they managed to get you and Sarah both here and stabilized,” said Grandma. She pulled a chair from against the wall closer to the bed, sitting down in it. “It was pretty touch and go for the first twenty-four hours.

I bit my lip. “How bad?”

“Your doctor will tell you exactly what the bullet perforated that wasn’t supposed to be perforated, and all those other nasty things. All I know is that if you didn’t have a Caladrius working on you, you probably wouldn’t have lived. Please don’t get shot like that again. I don’t think my heart could take it.” She smiled weakly at her own joke. Cuckoos don’t have hearts. Their circulatory systems are entirely decentralized, controlled by micropulses of muscles throughout the body.

Cryptid humor is weird sometimes. “Why didn’t Uncle Mike call Mom and Dad?”

“He did, but I was the only family member who could get here before you were out of surgery . . . and given the circumstances, I was the only one for the job.”

The Bakers lived in Columbus, Ohio, the same city where my brother was doing his research project on basilisk breeding. I frowned. “Is Alex here?”

“No. I couldn’t reach him when the call first came, and I told him he didn’t need to come once we were sure that you were going to live.” Her smile was fleeting, and strained. “I didn’t see any point in filling this hospital with anxious relatives before we had to. Not when Mike and I are already filling that role, and your various cryptid friends are coming and going at all hours.”

She wasn’t mentioning Sarah. The chill intensified. “Grandma, what aren’t you telling me?”

She took a deep breath. When she let it out, she seemed smaller somehow, like she had deflated. “Verity, it’s important you understand that I am not angry with you. I’m not angry with any of you. You were in an impossible situation, and it was a choice between doing . . . what you did . . . and endangering the whole family. I might have done the same thing, if I were in your position. Sarah made her own choices.”

Alarm bells were ringing in my head. I sat up a little straighter. “Where’s Sarah?”

“She’s asleep.” Grandma’s lips thinned into a hard line. “She’s been asleep since I got here. I made her sleep, because it was the only way to make her stop screaming.”

“Oh, God,” I whispered, slumping against the pillows. “Is she going to be okay?”

“I’ll be honest with you, Verity: I don’t know. I don’t have any way of knowing. Cuckoo psychology is such a strange thing, and Sarah didn’t start out like me.”

I swallowed hard, looking at her as levelly as I could. “You mean Sarah didn’t start out knowing right from wrong.”

Grandma didn’t say anything.

By human standards, cuckoos are born sociopathic. They get it from their mothers. Literally: when a telepathic sociopath carries a baby for nine months, that baby is going to be born with a radically skewed moral compass. Grandma Angela was born “normal” by human standards, because she’s not a receptive telepath. So she didn’t get the in-utero conditioning to teach her that other people existed only to be pawns and playthings. Sarah, on the other hand . . . did. Grandma adopted her when she was seven years old, after her human foster parents died, and spent years after that carefully removing the deep conditioning Sarah had received from her biological mother.

Sarah is a sweet, thoughtful, empathic person. She didn’t start out that way. And there was no way of knowing whether Grandma had managed to get all the little mental land mines out of Sarah’s head. That was a large part of why Sarah always arranged to audit courses at schools near one of her cousins. If she ever went back to her cuckoo roots, she wanted one of us close enough to kill her before she did too much damage.

My mouth was suddenly dry. I swallowed several times before I managed to ask, “Is there anything I can do?”

“What she did . . .” Grandma shook her head. “I couldn’t do that if I wanted to. If you’d asked me, I would have told you it wasn’t possible. But she managed it, and now she won’t stop screaming. She hurt herself, Verity. She hurt herself very badly. Not in a physical way, although that would have been easier. Somewhere inside her mind.”

“Like pulling a muscle?” I ventured.

“Something like that.” Grandma sighed, very briefly looking every one of her years. She reached over and patted my hand. “I’m glad you’re all right. And I truly don’t blame any of you for what happened. But Sarah’s going back to Ohio with me, and I don’t know how long it’s going to take her to recover.”

Or if she was going to recover. Grandma didn’t say that part; she didn’t need to. It was written in the tension of her mouth and the defeated slant of her shoulders. “I’m sorry,” I whispered.

“Don’t be sorry. Just get better.” Grandma leaned forward and hugged me tight. “You had us all scared, Very-Very, and you know Sarah wouldn’t have done it if she didn’t love you more than anything.”

“I know,” I said, and returned the hug as best I could with the tubes sticking out of my arms. “If there’s anything I can do . . .”

“Just get better,” Grandma repeated, and let go, standing. “I don’t want to tire you out. You’re supposed to be still recovering.”

“Okay.” I sighed, sagging deeper into the mattress. “I love you, Grandma.”

“I love you, too, Very-Very.” She leaned in and tapped me gently on the forehead. “Now get some rest.”

Grandma wasn’t a receptive telepath, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t push. I was asleep almost before I felt myself getting tired, and I didn’t hear her leave the room.

I awoke to the sound of cheering.

“HAIL THE RESURRECTION OF THE ARBOREAL PRIESTESS!”

Normally, waking up to the mice will elicit a groan and maybe a flung pillow. This time, I just smiled and said, without opening my eyes, “Amen.”

The mice went nuts, shouting hosannas and praising the hospital room, the bed, the pillows, and everything else they could think of to high Heaven. One enterprising acolyte even began praising my bedhead, calling it “the tousled proof of our glorious Priestess’ trials.” I’d have to remember that one the next time there wasn’t enough mousse in the world.

Next to the bed, Uncle Mike snorted and said, “You know, they’re not going to shut up for like a week.”

“I’m looking forward to it.” I opened my eyes and turned to face him, a process that was greatly simplified by the fact that most of the tubes—and the catheter—had been removed while I was sleeping. “Hi, Uncle Mike.”

“Hi, Very-girl. You planning to stay awake for a little while this time?”

“That’s not fair,” I protested. “Grandma knocked me out before.”

“Because you needed it. If you’re awake, you don’t need it anymore. The doctor says you’re just about fully recovered at this point. I knew you were too stubborn to stay injured for long.” Now Uncle Mike smiled, relief underscoring the expression. “You scared the crap out of me, you know.”

“HAIL THE FAMILIAL TERROR!” exulted the mice.

“Hey, this is a hospital,” I said, sitting up to see the congregation gathered on my bed. There were only about a dozen of them present. It had sounded like more. “Keep it down.”

“Yes, Priestess,” said one of the mice, sounding abashed. The others cheered. Very softly.

“That’s better.” I looked back to Uncle Mike. “I didn’t exactly sign up to get kidnapped.”

“I know, I know.” Uncle Mike scowled. “When we got that anti-telepathy charm back, Kitty took it to some hidebehinds for a look-see. They said it had a homing compulsion on it. Once you picked it up, you had to return it to Margaret.”

“Well, that’s one bit of stupidity explained,” I said. “When you say ‘got it back,’ you mean . . .”

“That you had swallowed it, yes. And no, I’m not the one who had to do the actual retrieval.”

“Thank God for small favors,” I muttered, before asking, in a normal voice, “How did you find me?”

“Dominic. That boy’s crazy about you, you know. He’d better be. The Covenant will never take him back now.”

“Good thing I’m crazy about him, too.” I tried to say it lightly. I failed. “Uncle Mike, about Sarah . . .”

“She’s the one who made sure we kept looking for you, right up until Dominic showed up to help us out,” he said. “She’s the one who got the dragons looking for you, and it was the dragons who followed the Covenant back to their base and confirmed you were being held in that warehouse. She’s the one who transported the mice to the area to survey the ground floor and give us the all clear. Sarah knew what she was doing. I know it’s hard for you to believe right now, but she had her eyes wide open through this whole thing. None of it happened to her without her knowing it was a risk, just like you didn’t get shot without knowing it was a risk. Am I clear?”

“Crystal.” I sighed. “I still feel awful.”

“Good. You should feel awful.”

I blinked at him. “Way to pep talk, Uncle Mike.”

He looked at me implacably. “I’m serious. If a member of your family gets hurt, you feel bad. You figure out why it happened. You make sure it doesn’t happen again. Feeling awful is the first step. Everything after this is up to you.”

“Pep talk received,” I said.

“Good,” said a new voice from the doorway. I turned to see a man in scrubs and a lab coat, with broad white-feathered wings. He was looking at a clipboard. Then he looked up, and smiled. “I’d tell you that mice in a hospital were unhygienic, but as they’re Aeslin, I believe we can count them as family members and let this one slide. How are you feeling, Miss Price?”

“Totally better,” I said. “Can I get up?”

“Given that your injuries should be completely healed by this point, yes, you may get up whenever you like.” He lowered the clipboard. “I’m Dr. Morrow. I’ve been responsible for your care while you were here.”

Recognition sparked. “You’re the one who contacted me about the manananggal,” I said.

“Yes, and we very much appreciate you taking care of that for us. My mate and head nurse spoke very highly of your handling of that matter, which is why I was willing to take your case. We don’t treat many humans at St. Giles’.”

“Well, I really appreciate you taking the time to look after me.”

“The pleasure was all mine, Miss Price.” Dr. Morrow smiled. “I know how much you’ve done for this city. Thank you.”

“You’re welcome,” I said.

“I brought some clothes for you,” said Uncle Mike. “You want me to take the mice so you can get dressed?”

“Please.” It wasn’t like the mice hadn’t seen me naked before—that was sadly unavoidable, no matter how much I might try to avoid it—but I still had standards.

“Thought so.” Uncle Mike handed me a folded bundle before standing, making a sweeping motion with his hands. “Come on, you lot. There’s cheese and cake in the waiting room.”

Cheering and hailing his name, the mice scampered from my bed and streamed across the tiled floor, disappearing between Dr. Morrow’s bare, vaguely-taloned feet. He watched this with an air of vague discomfort, finally saying, “We don’t treat many human patients, but the ones we do treat rarely come with their own traveling biosphere.”

“My family is special,” I said, with a smile.

“I’m getting that idea. Please don’t leave without speaking to me, Miss Price.” With that, the doctor stepped out of my hospital room. Uncle Mike paused long enough to kiss my cheek, and then he was gone as well, shutting the door behind himself.

I waited a few minutes to be sure that no one was going to come barging in before I stretched slowly and folded back the covers, finally moving into a full sitting position. I was wearing one of those pale green hospital gowns. It was almost a relief to realize that those were just as much standard issue in cryptid hospitals as they were in human ones. I took a breath, steeling myself, and pulled the gown up to get a look at my stomach where Peter had shot me.

Dr. Morrow was telling the truth: the gunshot wound was gone, and while the skin there was slightly paler than the skin around it, there was no scar. I touched it lightly with the tips of my fingers, feeling the first tears wet my cheeks. I was going to be okay. I was going to be better than okay, in fact. And that meant that whatever came next, it was going to be something that I needed to deal with.

Uncle Mike had chosen well, where clothes were concerned: he brought jeans, a tank top, a flannel shirt, my loosest hip holster, and a brace of throwing knives for me to hide wherever it would make me most comfortable. For shoes, he had a pair of broken-in trainers and some thick wool socks. By the time I had the last of the knives secured inside my clothes, I felt almost like myself again.

I tried to hold onto that feeling as I walked to the door, opened it, and stepped out into the hall. Remembering the promise Uncle Mike had made to the mice, I paused for a moment to listen before making my way toward the sound of cheering.

When I reached the waiting room, there was a full-scale dance number going in the middle of the floor, with the mice literally waltzing around with their slices of cake and chunks of cheese. Uncle Mike was watching with detached amusement; Ryan and Istas with something approaching awe. Dominic wasn’t watching at all. He was staring fixedly at the hall, waiting for me to appear. He straightened as I came into view, and by the time I reached the doorway, he was standing, stepping around dancing mice as he made his way toward me.

Ryan turned to see where Dominic was going, and his face split in a wide smile. “Verity. You’re up and moving again.”

“I am,” I agreed. “Hey, Istas.”

“The mice are performing a dance of thanks,” she informed me, frowning. “You should observe the mice.”

“All right,” I said. I let Dominic gather me into his arms and leaned up against him, my shoulders to his chest, as we stood and observed the mice. Istas clapped her hands, happy as I’d ever seen her, while Ryan looked tolerantly on. Uncle Mike caught my eye and smiled. This was it, then. This was my life. Since it was going to continue, I might as well get used to it.

There are worse fates.