8. Crosses
CROSSES
Alex
As Miss Harlowe had a seizure, I held her head and opened her mouth to check her throat wasn’t clogged. “I’m here. For what it’s worth.”
A gaggle of boys snickered and pulled faces at Miss Harlowe’s seizure.
One of them opened his mouth.
“Shut up.” I scowled. “All of you just shut the hell up.”
They hurried away amid mutters and words they believed were insults. I hadn’t been offended by the word scoundrel since I was twelve.
When Miss Harlowe stopped kicking and twitching, I brushed her hair from her pale, soft cheeks.
“I’m sorry,” she croaked, holding the handkerchief with a trembling hand.
“You don’t have to apologise for something you can’t control.” I helped her onto the bench.
She avoided my gaze and half hid her face in the handkerchief. “Some company I am.”
“I’m not great company myself.” I scratched my neck. My skin seemed on fire.
“I’m afraid I can’t accompany you inside.”
“I don’t mind going alone. I’m often alone.” I wasn’t sure why I’d added the last, pathetic words.
“Don’t you have friends?”
“One. Darius. He’s almost respectable.”
She chuckled. “I am really sorry for not being able to help you more.”
“I’ll live.” Poor choice of words, considering I might be dying.
I’d seen my share of diseases, odd people, and the aftermath of opium or too much alcohol, but never a young woman who couldn’t stand a crowd. She looked miserable.
“Go home.” I lifted a shoulder. “It’ll take a while before a doctor sees me.”
She swallowed a few times. “I don’t want to abandon you.”
“The hall is crammed with people.”
She opened and closed her fist, revealing a gold cross glinting in the sunlight. Its glare hurt my eyes. The urge to toss it away overwhelmed me, which didn’t make any sense.
She closed her hand around the cross, and oddly enough, relief washed over me. “You think I’m a freak.”
“Why would I?” Especially considering the odd thoughts my mind had conjured up lately. “I swear on my honour… No, wait. I swear on…” I chewed my bottom lip, thinking. “There must be something. What do people swear on these days?”
She laughed. “You don’t have to swear on anything.”
“Then tell me everything. I won’t laugh, make fun of you, or gossip about you.” I liked the sound of her laughter. It was like a cuddle.
“I can detect people’s feelings,” she whispered.
I leant closer. “Say what?”
She slouched. “It’s an extra sense I have. Sometimes, I have little control over the emotions reaching me. They flood me. That’s why crowds make me sick. Too many emotions all at once overwhelm me if I don’t have space.”
“What do I feel now?”
She gave me a seriously? look. “That would be too easy and wouldn’t prove I can sense your emotions. You’re in pain, tired, and…” She straightened, her gaze becoming distant. “Anger. So much anger. And do you have a craving?”
“Bloody hell.” She knew me better than I did.
“I hate it.” She drew her eyebrows together. “I can never be alone with my own emotions. It’s a constant invasion of foreign feelings. It’s exhausting.”
“I bet.” Hopefully, she wasn’t aware of what I craved.
She tilted her head towards me. “Now you pity me.”
“No.”
“You can’t lie to me.”
“Fine. I pity you a little. You were brave to come here with me today.”
“Mama had the same ability. Sadness poisoned her mind and weakened her. When the flu came, she died immediately.”
“I’m sorry.” Should I pat her shoulder or keep talking? “It’s a rotten world.” Great. How profound. Exactly the right thing to say. I rubbed the wounds.
“Stop it.” She took my hand and lowered it.
The contact with her soft, warm skin sent a jolt through me.
Her touch was delicate but strong enough to distract me from the pain.
The wish to hold her and make her feel safe came out of nowhere.
If my life weren’t such a struggle, if I weren’t a criminal, I might buy her flowers and ask her to take a walk in the park with me so I could hear her laughing.
She fiddled with her cross, and I had to gaze away, my stomach churning.
She made a sound like a strangled sob. “You’re disgusted with me.”
“Hell, no.” She’d misunderstood the reason for my disgust. On impulse, I held her lovely hand and noticed the pulse in her wrist, slow and steady. “It’s not you.”
“But I sensed it. You were disgusted.” Tears welled in her eyes.
“It wasn’t you.”
She narrowed her gaze. “You’re honest. Then what?”
Bugger. “You don’t like crowds. I don’t like crosses.”
“This?” She opened her hand, and the cross shone as if on fire.
“Yes.” I released her hand.
“I can’t judge anyone.” She uncoiled the chain around her wrist and put the cross in her pocket.
Anger was rising, and I didn’t want her to feel it. “I should get back inside,” I said in a more brusque tone than I intended.
For a moment, my gaze lingered on her neck where a vein ticked.
I hurried to get far from her and waited in a corner of the hall.
She could sense people’s feelings. I didn’t know whether I should pity or envy her. She wouldn’t envy my recent obsession with pulses and veins.
“Mr. Hart?” A nurse pulled me out of my dark thoughts.
Before following her to the doctor’s room, I glanced behind me, but the bench wasn’t visible.
It was the first time I’d felt truly responsible for someone.
Another odd thing. Darius could take care of himself despite his insatiable appetite, but Miss Harlowe was struggling, and she was here because of me.
A doctor in a white coat smeared with dubious substances let me into a white room with bars on the windows.
I hoped the bars were meant to keep people out.
“Come here.” The doctor waved me closer.
I entered cautiously, eyeing the shiny tools on the table and the glass bottles filled with coloured liquids. A pungent smell tickled my nose and made me blink.
“Sit.” He scribbled in a notebook and pointed at the table covered with a white sheet; it was so starched that it rustled when I perched on the table.
“Move your head to the left.” The doctor prodded the wounds, making me groan in pain. He muttered, getting closer. “Do you sleep with rats?”
“Sometimes.”
“These seem like rat bites, very infected rat bites.”
“It wasn’t a rat but a tool in the garden shed.
” I rubbed my forehead. Every time I focused on what had happened that evening, a headache pounded.
“I don’t recall the details.” A vision of sharp teeth flashed across my mind, but it was gone so quickly I couldn’t grasp it.
“I would have noticed a rat crawling up on me and biting me hard.”
The doctor scrunched up his face, writing in the notebook. “I’m merely telling you what I see. The margins of the wounds are jagged and torn, like an animal bite. A tool would have left a clean cut with less risk of infection. Wounds caused by a sharp tool are deeper than they’re wide.”
Another odd thing. I’d slept next to rats for years, and no rat had ever bitten me. All of a sudden, I got rat bites.
Whatever. No point in arguing. “It isn’t some type of pox, right?”
“No, it’s nothing contagious, but you need to take it seriously.” He ripped a page from the notebook and handed it to me. “Disinfect the wounds with diluted carbolic acid or tincture of iodine. You’ll need some salicin crystals dissolved in water as well.”
“To wash the wounds?”
He exhaled. “To drink.”
Those drugs would cost a fortune.
“If the wounds get worse, come here. I might have to incise them to purge them of the pus.”
The words incise and purge didn’t make me want to return here.
He opened the door. “Who’s next?”
And that was all.
As I hopped off the table, the wounds throbbed as if outraged after the examination.
Miss Harlowe was still on the bench, less green.
“All done?” She stood up.
“The doctor insisted the wounds were from an animal bite. He gave me quite a long explanation.” I rubbed the aching spots on my neck. “At least I’m not contagious. He prescribed me a few drugs.”
She held my hand, and I froze. Not because I was shocked, but because the contact was too nice. I couldn’t remember the last time someone had held my hand.
She withdrew her hand slowly, leaving a trail of sweetness behind. “Sorry.”
I averted my gaze from her pretty face, not to show how much I’d liked her touch. Oh, right. She must have sensed that.
I cleared my throat. “We’d better take the omnibus.”
“Actually, you take it. I’ll walk.” She handed me the ticket fare. “I don’t want to spend more time in a crowded, narrow place.”
On any other occasion, I would snatch the money and leave, but I couldn’t.
“I’ll walk with you.” The proposition came without warning.
“You aren’t well. And you need to buy those drugs. I’ll be fine.” She offered me the money again.
And again, I didn’t take it. Something was very wrong with me.
“I can stop at the chemist along the way.”
She put the money back in her bag. “All right.”
We walked towards Mayfair in silence at first. She stayed tense and skittish and winced when groups of people brushed past her. I wasn’t faring better. Walking drained me. My neck was burning, and I was tired and thirsty. My mouth was parched. Each inhale hurt my throat. The world tilted.
I stopped at a corner and doubled over, breathing hard.
“Take the omnibus.” She dipped her head to catch my gaze. “There’s a stop over there. You’re exhausting yourself.”
“I need to drink.” I straightened and closed a hand around my throat.
“What did you say?” She touched my shoulder.
Her scent, a combination of jasmine and orange blossom, worsened the thirst. There was another scent, something I didn’t fully catch, but that drove me mad. It was rich, coppery, and flowery at the same time. Completely mouthwatering.
I stared at a pulsating vein in her neck and the way the skin lifted with each beat.
She said something, but her voice seemed to come from a distance. I couldn’t avert my gaze from her supple neck, thinking about quenching the thirst with one bite. I wanted to sink my teeth into her flesh…
A raspy noise, halfway between a growl and a shout, tore out of me. I should be disgusted at the thought of drinking her blood, but I wasn’t. The more I thought about biting her neck and puncturing her thick vein, the more my gums hurt.
“Alex?” Her face came into focus, and her voice sounded clear. “I don’t understand what is happening to you.”
That made two of us.
“You’re angry and in pain.” She breathed hard, too.
My pain was affecting her. She was about to throw up.
The urge to bite her neck was so strong I barely contained it.
“Alex.”
I was a breath away from biting her. Her gold cross appeared from her pocket when she moved. Sunlight glinted off it and slapped my face as if to ward me off. I squeezed my eyes shut. I didn’t want to bite Miss Harlowe or drink her blood. I was many things but not a monster.
She reached out, and if she touched me, I wouldn’t be able to control myself. I would bite her.
I ran as fast as my quivering legs allowed.
Whatever sickness was hurting me, I doubted the salicin crystals would fix it.