The Isis Collar

13

When the CMDC agent walked into the lab, he was wearing a hazardous-material white suit, complete with hood and air pack. That didn’t really help my emotional state. I tried to ignore him, to take my mind to a calmer place. I fixed my gaze on one particular tile in the ceiling. Tiny rust-colored blossoms, probably from a leak in the roof, were sprayed across the white acoustic tile in a random pattern. I’m pretty good at meditation and I’ve done yoga for years. But right then, with the night beating on my brain, with the urge to feed growing, it was hard to find inner peace. The part of me that was still human and thinking needed to warn the new man. “If you’re going to try to touch me, you need to feed me first. Get me some beef broth or at least a nutrition shake. And you’d better hurry because I can feel these restraints starting to give.”

My voice sounded strangely calm, as if it was separate from my body, which was thrashing around on the table, testing the limits of the titanium. I worried that I was going to destroy myself trying to get loose. But I couldn’t help it, couldn’t stop my body’s actions.

“Mage DeLuca had something delivered. Think you can drink or should I just pour it down your throat?”

My body stilled as I focused on the figure in white. I knew that voice. “Gaetano?” The medic, who’d shown up from time to time in the company of John Jones, couldn’t possibly be a member of the CMDC.

The man hesitated, then spoke slowly and cautiously. “Yesss. Have we met?”

Now that I was listening closer, I could tell that the voice wasn’t quite the same. “Christopher Gaetano?”

The muscles in his shoulders relaxed a bit. “No. I’m Thomas. Chris is my son. People say we sound alike.”

I nodded. “Pour it down my throat.” I leaned back and tried to relax. I trusted Chris Gaetano, and I was betting he learned his bedside manner from his dad. Chris had been the first person to ever take me to Disneyland. He had a joy of life that was infectious, and while we eventually decided that there was no romantic spark, I still considered him a friend. “Don’t get too close to my hands. I’m not really in control of them.” Thomas came forward, too fast. I felt my muscles tense, my fingers become claws that grabbed at his arm. The metal groaned from the sudden strain. “I’m serious, Doctor. I don’t want your son to be picking up pieces of you.” I raised my head and stared at him with glowing red eyes, letting him take a good look at my fangs. “Little tiny pieces.”

He was close enough that I could see his face, dimly, through the hazmat suit’s hood. He swallowed hard; the hand holding the tall Styrofoam cup trembled a bit. I couldn’t smell him through the plasticized suit, but I could see his pulse beating hard against the thin skin of his neck through the face shield. “Okay, Ms. Graves, we’re going to take this slow. If you start feeling the need to attack, raise your hand, or at least a finger, so I know to back up.”

That made sense, provided I retained enough control to do it. “What’s in the cup?”

“It’s meat broth from some barbeque restaurant. Actually, it smells pretty good. I’ll have to try that place.”

I knew the broth would work. It had before. A little while back, Dawna had gotten the staff of the barbeque place to start saving the drippings from under the massive steel smoker. The juice came from a variety of meats and tasted amazing. More important, it satisfied my hunger splendidly. With any luck, Bruno had called the same place. “Okay. Let’s do this. Can you pour through the quarantine circle?”

He shook his head. “No. That’s why it’s important to tell me if you’re getting stressed. Mage DeLuca is suiting up now and is going to lower the shield and keep an eye on you while you … feed.”

I shifted my gaze back to the ceiling, letting the scent of the meat fill me. If I concentrated on the meat broth, anticipating the taste, I wouldn’t focus on anything else.

Like pulsing veins.

“Cheer up, Doctor. Your son worked on me a couple of times. And he didn’t have titanium bands to hold me down.”

He actually chuckled. “Yes, but my son’s insanity is well known in our family.”

That made me laugh—and it pushed the vampire back enough to let me control my mind. I motioned to the quart-sized container. “Just get the bottom close enough to me that I can bite it. It’ll come out slow enough that I won’t choke while drinking it.”

He looked nervous and I knew why. Holding the container near my mouth would put him within reach of my hands, and if I got hold of him, no way he was getting loose. “Mage DeLuca should be ready in just a second. We’ll see what he suggests.”

Bruno walked in just then, wearing a similar suit to Dr. Gaetano’s. He’d left his gloves off. I raised my brows and looked at his bare fingers. He shrugged. Or at least I thought he did. Hard to tell under that all-white fabric. “Need my fingers to craft. So, are you going to be able to keep your hands to yourself, or do I need to cast a body binding on you?” He used a joking tone, but he was serious.

“I need to eat, Bruno. If I don’t, it’ll get ugly later. I don’t know how much of my head will be left by morning. My leg’s making me irritable and the restraints are making me crazy. Bad combination.”

He reached over and took the container from Gaetano Sr.’s hands. “I’ll do it, Doctor. I stand a better chance of getting it down her throat. You start cutting her pant leg off.”

I looked at him with shock. “You’re going to cut my pants? Bruno, I just bought these jeans. They’re designer originals.”

He shook his head in the typical guy way, having no clue how hard it was to find clothes that fit and look good at the same time. “I’m sure Dawna will be happy to go shopping with you for another pair. You’ll never even notice.” The hell I wouldn’t! “You’ll be too busy eating.” He took the lid off the container and the thoughts about my jeans faded behind the hunger. The scent, thin but clearly perceptible to my vampire senses before, now burst into the air and my mouth immediately started to water. He put two fingers into the liquid and drew them out again. My gaze followed his every move, every drip of the juice back into the plastic tub. “It’s warm, Celia. Right at body temperature.” His hand moved over my face, and after several precise movements of his fingers, I felt the pressure from the quarantine magic release so abruptly it made me dizzy. A few drops of broth dripped onto my lips and slid into my mouth.

I heard a growl erupt from my throat, a sound I didn’t realize I could make. Bruno lowered the container toward my face and I met him halfway, my teeth snapping so hard I was surprised my lips weren’t sliced. He was startled, but not enough to drop the cup. He let me grab the edge of the container with my teeth and slash at it as much I needed to. Because I did. I needed to.

I hated that.

But the moment the beef, pork, and chicken au jus hit my tongue, my self-consciousness disappeared.

Hunger. I needed.

I drank and let a shudder of pleasure overtake me. I wanted to grab the cup, but I couldn’t. So I was forced to drink only as quickly as Bruno poured—slow, just a trickle, so most of it went down my throat instead of down the side of my face.

It took a long time, but that allowed me to savor it all the more. When I finished the last gulp, I closed my eyes and paused to catch my breath. That’s when I realized that not only had Dr. Gaetano cut off my pant leg, he’d removed samples of my skin with a scalpel and used the room’s portable X-ray machine to snap pictures of my calf. My mind had recorded the feelings and sounds even while it had been completely focused on what I had been eating.

He was done and putting petri dishes in a padded case with dry ice frothing mist into the air before I managed to gather my senses enough to talk. But as my stomach settled, I started to be able to think clearly. With that came worry that I didn’t want to show. But Bruno knew better; I could see it in his eyes through the faceplate of his hood. He looked at me steadily. “So what’s the verdict? Any ideas?” I was surprised at how normal my voice sounded.

The doctor released several latches and lifted his hood over his head. The almost casual gesture made me feel a lot better. Now that I could see him clearly, I could tell that he really did look like an older version of Chris, heavily muscled and dark haired, with twinkling eyes bordered by laugh lines. His hazel eyes showed intelligence and strength of purpose, but also a healthy dose of humor. “Not only an idea, but a diagnosis and a cure.”

Wow. “Um … that’s great. So what’s wrong with me? It’s not serious, right?”

Apparently that caught him by surprise, because he sputtered and started coughing. His mouth worked for a few seconds without sound. “No, Ms. Graves. Pardon the expression, but hell no. Just because I know what it is and there’s a cure doesn’t mean you’re not still in danger. If you were an ordinary human, we’d be discussing amputation right now. You have a serious illness and the only reason you’re not dead is because you already are … at least partly. Your body has amazing healing properties. Even as damaged as the tissue was, it was trying to heal as I was shaving skin with the scalpel.”

Bruno had also removed his hood and was watching my leg with worry. “So is it what I thought? M. Necrose?”

Dr. Gaetano reached into his bag and pulled out a fat syringe filled with a clear, almost greenish fluid. “On the money. I didn’t believe it when you first called. It’s so rare that there have only been a dozen reported cases in his country since buffalo roamed. But the symptoms you described were so accurate that I took the precaution of stopping by the pharmaceutical research lab they have here on campus to see if they had a few doses of the specific antibiotic in cold storage for teaching purposes. You’re very lucky they did. If we’re going to be dealing with other cases of M. necrose we may have a very serious problem.”

It was hard to see my leg from my position, but I managed to shift around enough to get a look at what appeared to be a large bruise on my calf. It was spreading, visibly growing as I watched. The pain was growing as well.

Crap.

Gaetano was talking to Bruno, holding the tantalizing cure just out of reach. “You should really consider getting your M.D., Mage DeLuca. A lot of people wouldn’t have thought of something so obscure as a possible cause. We could use someone with your skills at the center.”

Bruno let out a nervous chuckle. “Please, call me Bruno. I had a hard enough time with my magic studies without adding medical training.”

“Um, not to interrupt or anything, but is there any chance we could get that drug into me? It’s getting worse. Really fast.” The bruise that had been the diameter of a baseball moments earlier was now halfway around my leg.

Dr. Gaetano turned and his eyes got wide. “It’s accelerating. That’s not right. This is normally a very slow-moving illness.”

“Could you maybe enlighten me while you’re giving me the injection? It feels like someone is stabbing me with knives all the way up to my thigh.”

He tapped the side of the syringe and took off the protective cover over the needle. “Mycobacterium necrose is similar to the bacteria that causes leprosy, also called Hansen’s disease. Instead of coating the cells in your body with a waxy cover, it coats them with magic that interrupts the nervous system and stops the flow of blood to your tissue.” Like a nurse, Bruno ripped open a foil square and removed a pad that smelled strongly of alcohol. Dr. Gaetano used it to clean a spot on my arm, then dropped the used pad into the waste can next to the table, where the alcohol continued to assault my sensitive nose. Thankfully, the vampire inside me was snoozing, so the smell didn’t make me nauseous. I was me for the moment and worried sick because the pain was getting worse with each second. I winced and that made Bruno frown, because I hardly ever react when something hurts.

“Which is how it kills the skin?”

Thomas Gaetano shook his head and lowered the needle. “It kills more than skin. It kills all tissue, including bone and marrow. The unique thing about M. Necrose, though, is what happens afterward.”

“Afterward?” That made me furrow my brows, because what could possibly happen after the body was dead?

He nodded. “What’s unique about this contagion is that in a significant percentage of cases, even with the tissue dead, the body continues to function. Legs walk, arms move. The eyes, ears, and brain function—but the person is gone. The body has a new function—seeking to reproduce the bacteria. And, like all bacteria, it knows its own transmission vector. The best way to infect a new host is to introduce saliva into wounds. Usually, the victim becomes aggressive, biting and scratching. The teeth are always the last to die.”

“So, zombies.”

“Yes, and no.” His eyes locked with mine, his expression grim. “Zombies can be controlled by someone with enough necromantic abilities. Nothing controls a bacteria colony, and the only way to destroy them permanently is with fire.”

I swallowed bile. I’d seen what uncontrolled zombies do to anything capable of movement. I’d had the memories magically blunted to keep me sane, but they were still there. And the flashback on the table had brought them so much closer to the surface. Ivy had been a necromancer.

Gaetano opened another alcohol pad, this time rubbing it against my purple calf. “It’s moving too fast. We need to strike closer to the source.” His eyes flicked sideways to meet mine. “This is going to hurt. It’s thick and doesn’t go through a small-gauge needle well. Try to stay calm.”

The bruise was spreading over my knee. Calm wasn’t really an option, but I could stay still while he worked. I nodded with grim determination. “It would help to hear more about this disease. That will take my mind off the pain.”

At first, he ignored the question. He looked up at Bruno. “I need to have these antibodies split faster than normal. Can you do that without a casting circle and while it’s still in the syringe?”

Bruno frowned, which made me think that what the doctor was asking for was unconventional at best. Then Bruno looked down at me, asking with a glance for permission. Some things don’t really require words when there’s trust. I nodded. “Go ahead. Do what you think is right. What’s happening to me isn’t normal.”

One look at my leg, where the bruise was creeping toward my sock, and Bruno let out a slow breath. He raised one hand and it started to glow amber. By the time he’d covered the doctor’s hand—and the syringe—with his own, the magic had coalesced to a brilliant iridescent rainbow. The northern lights on a tiny scale. “Haste.” He whispered the word, a bare movement of lips and air, but the effect was startling.

The liquid in the syringe started to froth, like it was boiling. Dr. Gaetano held up his hand. “That’s enough. Too much more and the syringe will explode.” Without another word, he slid the needle into the purple skin and slowly injected the drug. Maybe the drug had actually been boiling, because that’s sure what it felt like going in. The searing heat made me gasp for breath and Bruno grabbed my hand. I think I returned his squeeze too hard, because he tensed and his face changed. But he bore the pain and I appreciated it. I did try to ease my grasp, but it was hard to do so because the doctor had moved the needle to a new spot and stuck me again.

He injected the drug in four places in my calf and a final time into my arm. Finally, he spoke again. “We call it Living Dead because that’s what the victims become. It’s what all the cheesy zombie horror movies are based on, but it’s very real. And much more horrifying. Thankfully, there’s a cure and the disease has always been slow to develop and easy to spot by trained mage healers and witch doctors. The only time it gets out of control is in remote villages in third-world countries where the nearest witch doctor is miles away.”

The stinging and searing was washing over me. “Okay. So I’m injected. Now what?” My voice was breathy and my heart was beating so fast I felt it might launch right out of my chest.

Dr. Gaetano was watching my leg with the same fierce intensity I’d seen before, on his son’s face. “Now, we wait.”