Chapter 6
Chapter Six
FLORENCE
I’m just pulling off my gloves after dealing with another difficult patient when I feel a hand cup my elbow.
Cam’s, I identify, from the temperature and strength of those fingers.
Before I have time to say anything to him, he hauls me across the room and thrusts us both into one of the unisex toilets just off the corridor from waiting area A, locking the door shut behind us.
‘Cam, what the hell?’ I snap, spinning around to take him in. He’s on edge for some reason – filled with some kind of energy I can’t decipher. He could be ecstatic or spitting with rage. I actually think the two emotions would look the same on him.
‘It’s important,’ he says, which offers me no further clues as to what the hell is going on. ‘I need to talk to you.’
‘In a toilet?’ I huff, my hands finding my hips. I was annoyed by the manhandling anyway, but the aggressive drone of the extractor fan on top isn’t helping at all.
He scans the room quickly, like he hadn’t really thought about it. ‘I needed somewhere we can’t be overheard.’
‘Well, great,’ I snap. ‘Now half our patients and all our colleagues will think we’re having sex in here.’
‘Florence,’ he whisper-shouts. ‘Focus. This is important.’
I relent. ‘Fine. What’s going on?’
He meets my gaze for a moment before he starts to pace. I’m honestly not sure how he’s managing it in such a small space, but that’s winding me up, too.
‘George just messaged me,’ he says after a beat. ‘About Quinn’s follow-up tests.’
My stupid, dead heart kicks out a single beat at the mention of Quinn’s name that’s so hard it makes me flinch.
And it doesn’t help that Cam’s tone doesn’t clear anything up.
All I know is that it’s something big. But I’ve worked with Cam long enough to know that ‘big’ in his eyes is bad as often as it is good.
‘Go on,’ I say tentatively. I go to sit on the closed lid of the toilet before remembering we’re in a patient bathroom and thinking better of it. It’s not like the germs could make me ill, but still. No thanks.
‘So, as you know, on the first sample George was concerned by the behaviour of the red blood cells,’ he says, finally slowing to a stop.
I hum in agreement. ‘We thought maybe some rare manifestation of anaemia.’
‘Right,’ he says with a nod. ‘Only it’s not anaemia. It’s vampirism.’
Every thought in my head comes to a crashing stop. ‘What?’ I hiss, hopefully not loud enough to be overheard. ‘Quinn’s a vampire?’
‘Well, no.’ Cam’s hand goes to his head, scratching at his temple the way he does when he’s puzzling something out. ‘Not exactly.’
‘I’m not following.’
Cam’s eyes dart back to mine and I finally recognise the emotion behind them. He’s intrigued by this. There’s not much Cam loves more than a medical mystery.
‘That’s the thing,’ he says, lowering his voice to a whisper as we hear footsteps pass outside.
‘George said that his red blood cells were behaving in the same way as is expected very early on in someone’s change.
And that would account for the symptoms he was having – the fatigue, the palpitations, a rash with sun exposure.
’ He takes a step towards me. ‘But that’s the puzzling thing, you see.
The state didn’t change at all in the time between the tests.
And, even more strangely, he doesn’t have any other markers of vampirism.
Not a single one. Every other cell in his body remains entirely human. ’
I frown. ‘How could this happen?’
‘George suspects that he’s had intimate contact with one of us, some level of blood-to-blood transfer, but that it wasn’t quite enough to turn him.
Like he’s stuck in limbo.’ Cam shrugs. ‘They’ve known something similar happen a couple of times before, but no one knows what happened to those people.
That was decades ago, at least. There wasn’t the level of testing and record-keeping we have today. ’
‘So what does that mean?’
He sighs so heavily that I’m sure people will be able to hear it from the waiting area. ‘Florence, you know the toll our condition takes on the body. We have the benefit of immortality so we can resist it. But we don’t know if Quinn has that. So…’
‘So,’ I finish for him. ‘Either he’s immortal already, or there’s a good chance this is going to kill him.’
Cam nods, his expression sombre. ‘Pretty much.’
My stomach falls to my feet. ‘Any idea what kind of timescale we’re looking at?’ I ask, but I’m not sure I’m ready to hear the answer.
‘It’s hard to say.’ Cam’s hand scrubs the stubble on his jaw. ‘With the number of symptoms he’s getting, it might be sooner rather than later. Months? Maybe weeks?’
‘Fuck.’
‘Yeah.’
My head feels like it’s spinning. ‘What can we do?’ I ask aimlessly. ‘What if we turned him? Would that help? You know, sent him all the way?’
Cam shrugs. ‘There’s no way to know. Maybe? Or maybe—’
‘That could kill him, too,’ I say, before he has time to. His answering nod hits like a punch.
‘There’s no way to know. In a standard transition, the host would only take on cells from a single vampire, so if another was introduced there’s no telling what would happen.
There could be a fight to the death, which usually isn’t a problem because by that time, the host has acquired their immortality.
But there’s no defining timeline on when immortality kicks in. It would be a gamble.’
‘Ok,’ I say, and there’s obviously something about the way I say it that concerns Cam because his face falls unusually serious.
‘Florence,’ he says, his voice low, ‘you understand that anything like that would have to be his choice.’
I’m offended he would even consider that I’d think otherwise.
‘What do you take me for?’ I hiss, half under my breath, and it makes him relax slightly, like he’s not fully convinced.
‘I know you like him.’
I scoff a half-laugh. ‘I’ve seen him twice ever. I barely know him.’
This is true, but it does nothing to dissuade Cam. He’s still studying me closely, his soft hazel eyes fixed on me like he can read my mind. Which I’m pretty sure he can’t.
Ok, I’m fairly sure he can’t.
‘It’s more than that, though, isn’t it?’ he says, after a beat. ‘With his link to Josiah – the way he looks just the same…’
Is that what it is? Is that the reason my chest feels like it’s being crushed slowly in a vice? Just my grief coming back out to play after decades of me being able to contain it.
‘He’s not Josiah,’ I say with as much conviction as I can muster.
I almost believe it.
There’s a sharp knock on the door then a mumbled, ‘Whatthehellyoudoinginthere?’ which makes us both jump, suddenly aware that we’re on shift.
‘Shit,’ Cam says, trying fruitlessly to smooth his curls. ‘We’d better get out of here.’
He goes for the lock, but I stop him with a hand on his arm. ‘Just one thing,’ I say. ‘Let me tell him.’
Cam takes a deep breath then blows it out all at once. ‘Ok,’ he relents, but he doesn’t hide the warning in his voice. ‘Just don’t do anything stupid.’
And that’s the plan we leave with: tell him, and don’t do anything stupid.
I think I can handle that.
* * *
It’s sometime after midnight when the idea comes to me.
I’m sitting in the window of the upstairs room I’m renting on East Terrace, looking out over the town.
I can see the Whalebone Arch over to the left of me, the ruins of the abbey across in the near distance.
Somewhere in between them lies Flowergate, and, presumably, Quinn.
I can’t actually see the bar from where I am, but I’d take any bet that I could point right to it.
I know this town like the back of my hand.
Over a hundred years has passed since I walked these streets with my mother, visiting people in almost every house, and surprisingly little has changed here since then. Not the bones of it, anyway.
I was a child when I first set foot in the building where Bitten is now.
It was a police station, in those days, and later it was a solicitor’s office.
The flat where Quinn lives wasn’t part of the building then, but I helped deliver every child the Whittaker family had in the tiny house that used to stand on that same spot.
The memories woven into every street of this town have never lessened, no matter how many years have passed, and it’s those memories that spur me into movement now, urging me to pull on my trainers and grab my coat from its peg by the door.
I close the flat door as quietly as I can and then creep down the back stairs and out into the cool night air.
It’s been warm these past few days, but as it’s still only May, the temperature drops at night and the sea breeze nips at my cheeks as it hits me.
The clifftop is deserted, but I pass a couple of people as I head down the steps past Bram Stoker’s bench and along the road that runs parallel to the shore.
One of them, an elderly man out walking his even more elderly dog, looks at me with concern as I make brief, accidental eye contact with him.
It’s a look I’m very familiar with. I’ve looked twenty-six for the last 150 years of my life, so I’ve seen that expression of gentle worry more times than I can begin to count.
He probably has a granddaughter around my forever age, and he’s well-versed in imagining all the ways in which she – and by extension, I – could come to harm.
Maybe he’ll hear a story about a lone woman attacked in a few days’ time and wonder if it was me.
Don’t get me wrong, men do try it sometimes.
I mean, I’ve looked like a young woman for a century and a half, so I’ve encountered my fair share of predators and creeps.
But they get a little more than they bargained for these days.
A few broken fingers usually does the trick.
I haven’t had to bite anyone for decades.
But mercifully there are no malicious characters out tonight. A couple of drunk men wave at me as I turn onto Flowergate, but they’re content with a wave back. Before I know it, I’m in front of a very dark, closed-looking Bitten.
It’s ok, though. I have a plan B.
I duck through the alley that sits to the right of the bar and wind my way through the narrow passageway until I emerge in a small yard. If I’m right, the flat is the building straight ahead of me, which would make the first-floor window his bedroom.
Something clenches tight in the pit of my stomach. I can’t quite identify this feeling. It’s something between anxiety and excitement, but not exactly either. Whatever it is, it’s making my hands shake, just a little. I take a deep breath and burrow them into my coat pockets.
When my fingers close around smooth stone, I steel myself, looking up at the dark window. I need to do this now, before I can talk myself out of it.