Chapter Fourteen
Several of the Sisters crowded into the foyer. A woman leaned on Lavinia’s shoulder, covered in blood. Red liquid seeped into the carpet, and crimson handprints covered the front door.
“What the hell happened?” Lucretia barked, marching into the fray.
“Found a lair of rogues,” the wounded woman panted, ineffectively stemming the flow of blood gushing from a head wound with her hand.
Another lay on the carpet, unrecognisable under a mask of gore.
“Eight of the fuckers. Two of them got Pina good, I had to carry her from the car. She passed out about ten minutes ago.”
A low rumble filled the room even through the din of several people trying to help all at once. It seemed to be coming from Lucretia. “Should have waited for backup,” she said, with a voice that raised the small hairs on the back of Michelle’s neck.
The woman, blood pouring down the side of her face, down into the neckline of her shirt, snapped back, “We were ambushed. Seemed like some of them were on guard.”
Brigh bent over the unconscious vampire, who must be Proserpina underneath the pallor of blood loss and gore. Without speaking, she slid her hands under Pina’s shoulders to lift her. The crowd around Proserpina shifted, revealing a shaft of wood sticking straight out of her chest.
“Wait,” Michelle called, taking the steps as fast as she could.
“Don’t jostle it.” The vampires didn’t listen, no one turning her way.
She pushed past Quintia and held out her hand to stop Brigh from lifting Proserpina.
Quickly, she sized up the positioning of the shaft.
There was no way of knowing how deeply it had been buried into Pina’s chest. It had missed the heart but could have punctured her lung.
Her breathing was shallow and fast, sweat from her pale skin mingling with the blood.
“She needs a doctor,” Michelle said, glancing at Lavinia. Michelle could stabilise her somewhat, but she needed to be in a hospital.
“None around here for miles,” Quintia grunted.
“It would take at least another half hour to take her there, or for him to get here,” Lavinia added.
Her green eyes glowed fiercely in the afternoon light.
There was a sharpness to her movements, an almost feline grace.
Quintia, too, exuded a barely suppressed power.
For the first time, Michelle truly felt like she was surrounded by predators.
“Why do you run around with swords but don’t keep a doctor around?” Michelle muttered to herself. Lavinia heard her.
“We used to, but he left last month.”
“Couldn’t stand living with us,” Quintia added.
“Can’t blame him,” Michelle said under her breath. Despite it all, Quintia chuckled.
No doctor around. A woman bleeding out on the carpet in front of her. No sterile equipment, no diagnostic tools. It was a fool’s errand, but there was nothing to be done.
She slid her hand underneath Proserpina’s back, feeling for a possible exit wound.
There was none. That was good news, at least. The stake hadn’t gone completely through.
A blood-soaked towel lay on Pina’s stomach, and Michelle pressed it back around the wound, stabilising the stake and stemming the flow of blood.
She looked up from her patient, looking into Lavinia’s steady green eyes. “Get the doctor anyway. We need something hard to move her, she can’t stay here in the doorway with everyone milling around. Do you have a board or something?”
Unquestioning, Lavinia turned around to Brigh, and said, “Call the doc, quickly.” Quintia pushed past Lucretia and the vampire with the head wound, grabbed the kitchen door, and with one strong jerk, pulled it clean off its hinges.
She turned and held the massive slab of wood up for Michelle’s inspection. “This work?”
“S-sure.”
Barely showing any strain from the door’s weight, Quintia easily laid it beside Proserpina.
Michelle blinked a few times, then refocused. “Okay. We need to put her on the door but try to jostle her as little as possible.”
Lucretia barked, “Hands!” and within moments, five vampires surrounded the patient, grasping her in their strong hands.
“We can slide it underneath her,” Michelle explained.
“Lift!” Luce said, and Pina rose a couple of inches, her head barely even moving. Michelle kept her eye trained on her chest, willing the stake not to pierce the aorta or anything else vital.
“Slide!” The command followed, and within a second Proserpina lay securely on the door.
“Take her to the dining room,” Luce said, and the vampires lifted the door between them.
“Be careful,” Michelle warned, but it was unnecessary. Between them, they carried the wounded woman smoothly through the parlour and slid her, door and all, onto the dining room table as if she weighed nothing. Then, five pairs of eyes turned towards Michelle.
“Now what?” Quintia said.
The weight of expectation bore down on her. The vampires loomed over her shoulder as she looked at Proserpina’s injury.
“Can I have some scissors?” Michelle asked and, within a heartbeat, a pair of scissors appeared at her elbow.
Careful not to nudge the stake, she cut through the cotton of Proserpina’s shirt.
The clothing stuck to her skin, thick with blood, but Michelle peeled it away to look at the wound more closely.
From up close, she could see that the sides of the wood had been smoothed down and polished.
Proserpina’s breathing was shallow but even.
Michelle leaned closer to the wound, and listened.
Five vampires leaned closer around her.
Michelle ignored them. No wheezing, and no bubbles appeared in the blood alongside the stake.
Her lung might be punctured, but if it was, the stake was obstructing the hole, at least for now.
If she removed it, the lung might collapse.
It would have to be removed at some point, but the situation seemed stable enough for now.
There was no immediate sign of head trauma, nor of any other significant wounds.
The knuckles of her right hand were scratched, but they were only surface-level abrasions.
She had significant bruising along her arms, possibly having warded off blows, but Michelle didn’t see anything that was particularly worrying besides the impalement.
The blood around the stake was slowing, oozing and clotting around the wood.
“A light?” she asked. Lavinia pulled her phone from her pocket and turned on the light before handing it over.
Drawing up Proserpina’s eyelids one by one, Michelle checked the pupil reflex. They contracted normally under the light. She looked pale and clammy, having lost a significant amount of blood.
“She’s going to need a blood transfusion,” Michelle said. “Is that something vampires can do?”
Lucretia bent to Quintia. “Get Zachary. Tell him we need some blood.”
She showed Lavinia how to press the towel against Proserpina’s chest wound. Michelle turned to the other vampire. She was leaning against the wall, looking like a character from a horror movie with the blood streaming down the side of her face.
Michelle beckoned her over and slid out a chair for her at the table. “Here, have a seat.”
The blood poured from a cut that slashed diagonally from her forehead to her temple. Like all head wounds, it bled profusely, but at least it didn’t seem particularly deep. It might need stitches—but then again, she’d seen how fast Lavinia’s wound had healed. She might not need stitches at all.
There was no debris in it; it was a clean slash, as if made by a knife. One of the vampires had put a first aid kit on the table, and Michelle gratefully helped herself to some wipes, cleaning the skin around the wound.
“Can you tell me what happened?” Michelle asked, trying to remove the sticky blood from the woman’s dark skin. It had soaked into her hair as well, leaving the bright blue splattered with brown, matted patches.
“Rogue caught me with a knife. I didn’t quite get out of the way quickly enough.”
“Did you hit your head in any way?” The box also contained a pile of sterile bandages. She tore one from its plastic, placed some gauze on the cut, and put some pressure on the wound.
“Nah,” the woman said.
“Any dizziness? Blurred vision? Ringing in your ears?”
“Bit lightheaded,” the vampire admitted.
Michelle checked the vampire’s pupil reflex—normal—and asked her to perform some simple memory and coordination checks.
“I don’t think you have a concussion, so the dizziness might just be from the blood loss,” Michelle said.
“But to be honest, I don’t know much about vampire physiology.
” They looked human enough; their blood looked normal, if slightly stickier than human blood.
But that didn’t mean they were the same beyond what she could see.
There had to be differences, or vampires wouldn’t be as strong or as fast as they were.
“It’s best to drink plenty of fluids. You may want to take it easy until the dizziness passes. ”
The vampire nodded and stayed in her seat.
Michelle always liked a good patient who followed advice.
She patted the woman’s shoulder and, at that moment, Quintia came back into the room with Zachary in tow.
Strangely, they weren’t carrying anything.
Did they fetch Zachary to instruct him to drive somewhere to retrieve vampire blood? Would they need a specific kind?
However, no one spoke, and the man slid out of his jacket and rolled up one sleeve.
“What are you—” Michelle said, when Zachary leaned over Proserpina, extending his bare arm. The woman still lay unconscious, unaware of the man leaning over her.
“Got to get her going,” Lucretia muttered, and Zachary turned, showing her his arm. Casually, Lucretia bent over, opened her mouth, and bit.
Blood welled up from the wound, and Zachary went back to his previous position.
Cupping Proserpina’s chin, Quintia gently opened her mouth.
A drop of blood trickled onto her tongue.
Another. Michelle stared at the scene unfolding in front of her.
Nothing happened for a moment. Then, Proserpina rose an inch off the table, latching onto the arm, teeth sinking into flesh.
Her throat worked, swallowing, swallowing, but her eyes stayed closed.
A brief flash of pain spread across Zachary’s face.
Then, a deep tranquillity followed. The moment felt strangely intimate, like Michelle was intruding on something private.
After a minute, Proserpina unlatched, her head bobbing back onto the board, her mouth open. Her breathing deepened, closer to a natural sleep. A faint blush had crept across her cheeks.
Now it was Michelle’s turn to feel dizzy.
She dropped down heavily onto one of the chairs.
It was one thing to understand intellectually that these women were vampires.
That they looked like humans, but were somehow other.
That they had their own habits and customs, even rules, and lived in a world separate from the one she knew.
Still, it was a whole other thing to watch one of them suck blood from their driver.