BlackWind: Viraiden and Bronwyn (12 page)

“Realizing just who you are is one step closer to accepting who you are. And that’s one step closer to being comfortable with who you are.”

“That doesn’t help me feel any better.”

“No, but eventually you’ll forgive yourself. You won’t forget what has happened, but you
will
forgive.”

“I can’t stand the thought of another man touching her.”

“I know, but what choice do you have? You can’t let her know who you are. How would you explain why you never contacted her? Why you weren’t there for her?”

Brian sighed. “Why you are alive when she was there when you died?”

“I don’t feel good,” Cree answered, turning to his side.

Brian spied a wastebasket and went to fetch it. He placed it on the floor in front of Cree.

“What’s that for?”

“The nice hangover you’re going to wake up with in the morning.” Brian pulled down the afghan hanging on the back of the sofa and spread it over Cree’s legs. “I’ll get you a bottle of water and put it here on the end table.”

“Sustenance?” Cree asked, yawning.

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“I don’t think you’ll be wanting or needing any tonight. Let the booze take you, lad.

I’ll be back in the morning with your shot. Until then, just rest.” He glanced around.

“Where’s the dog?”

“Bedroom, I guess,” Cree mumbled.

Ralph appeared in the kitchen door. “Humphf?”

“Take care of him, Ralphie,” Brian advised then let himself out. “He’s not going to be a happy camper come morning.”

Cree reached up to adjust the sofa pillow under this cheek. “I’m not a happy camper now,” he said as he heard the door close.

Running his hand inside his shirt, he pulled out the silver chain he always wore around his neck. Hanging from the chain was a one-of-a-kind Claddagh. He brought it to his lips, kissed it lovingly then stuffed it back inside his shirt. Then, just as he had done for many years, he whispered “Good night, milady,” then slipped restlessly into the arms of Morpheus.

* * * * *

When Cree woke the next morning, he lay there for a moment, wondering why he felt so bad. He ran his tongue over his teeth and swore the enamel had grown a coat of fur. There was an evil taste in his mouth and when he swallowed, his spittle rushed back up his throat, along with something so foul, so disgusting, he barely had time to twist his body.

Ralph cocked his head to one side as his master regurgitated a massive quantity of bad-smelling liquid into the wastebasket. The horrid sounds coming from the sick man lifted the dog’s brows. He watched as the Reaper gripped the edge of the sofa and continued to relieve himself. When Cree plopped back on the cushions, his arm flung over his pale face, Ralph trotted into the kitchen.

It was the Bugul Noz who opened the refrigerator, rummaged around inside and took out the bottle of cold water. He sighed, shut the refrigerator door then reverted to his canine shape, the bottle of water clutched in his massive jaws. He padded back to the living room and nudged Cree’s arm with the bottle.

Reaching to grab the arm of the sofa to keep from sliding off it, Cree pried open his aching eyes and looked at his arm.

“Humphf,” Ralph grunted.

“I was wrong,” Cree whispered, wincing at the sound of his overly loud voice.

“Humphf?”

“I
can
die. I’m dying right now,” he declared in a voice just above a breath.

“Humphf.” Ralph dropped the bottle to the sofa cushion. He grunted when his master fumbled for the bottle then managed to get a grip on it.

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It took more energy and wit than Cree would have thought possible to twist off the cap and bring the bottle to his mouth. He didn’t flinch as the cold water streamed down his chin, across his neck and behind his head, for he managed to get some in his mouth.

He swished it around, struggled to lift himself far enough off the sofa to spit it in the wastebasket. Afterward, he collapsed on the cushion.

“Humphf,” Ralph admonished with a yawn.

“No, I won’t do it again and I’m going to kill Brian.” Cree swigged another sip of water and this time let the coldness trickle down his parched throat.

Ralph cast a disapproving eye at the offensive wastebasket and trotted to the other side of the room, away from the putrid smell. He lay on his back and began to twist his body, scratching his haunches against the carpet. When he was finished, he cast a quick look at the sofa and saw the Reaper was sleeping again, the empty bottle clutched to his chest.

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Bronwyn’s first full day at work proved to be a handful. The caseload Dr. Hesar assigned her was more than she had expected and it took her all morning just to get through the first two files. After taking copious notes on the serial killer and pedophile she would begin working with the following day, she was tired and had the beginning of a nasty headache by the time she broke for lunch.

“I’m going to the cafeteria,” she told Mari Beth Grimes, the secretary she would be sharing with Koenen Brell, a man she had yet to meet. Koenen was Rory’s son, Sage had informed her.

“Take your pager,” Mari Beth reminded her.

“Got it.”

The cafeteria was on the lower level, near the front entrance to Baybridge. It was fairly crowded by the time Bronwyn arrived, but the smells coming from the steam tables drew her eyes from the fast-food kiosks.

“You gotta try their chicken and dressing,” Sage said, joining her. His lab coat bore a dark rust-colored stain.

“Is that blood?” Bronwyn asked.

Sage dusted the front of the lab coat. “Afraid so. One of my patients decided to open his veins with a strip of hard rubber he pulled from the shoe molding in his room.

Must have taken him half an hour to scrape the rubber through his flesh.”

“It’s amazing what they can come up with, isn’t it?”

“I sent him down to the loony room for a few days.”

“Loony room?”

“There are a couple of rooms on Five North that are like the old rubber rooms from days gone by. We strip the offenders, put ‘em in a specially constructed straightjacket and lock them up for a day or two. There is no furniture, only padded walls and floor with a hole in one corner for ye olde body wastes. The room can be hosed down when the patient leaves because, nine times out of ten, the bastards have crapped and pissed from one side of the room to the other, wiping their butts on the floor like dogs.”

Bronwyn winced at the description as they reached the line that was snaking in front of the steam tables. Up close, the food smelled even better and looked delicious.

“One thing I’ll say about Baybridge,” Sage said. “The food is excellent and they give you enough of it. You want seconds, just ask.”

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Bronwyn took his advice, and ordered the chicken and dressing, jellied cranberry sauce, sweet potato soufflé and Waldorf salad. She was amazed to find the cafeteria offered real sweetened tea, Southern style.

“We have a heap of folks from Georgia and Alabama,” the cashier said when Bronwyn handed her a meal card. “They got to have that sugar water with their meals.”

“You can’t have a decent meal without sweetened tea,” Sage pointed out. “It wouldn’t be right, Jonelle.”

The black woman chuckled as she took his meal card and ran it through a machine.

“Save some room for egg pie, Miss,” she told Bronwyn. “They ain’t brought it out yet, but it don’t stay long on the table when they do.”

“Egg pie?” Bronwyn gasped, looking at Sage.

He nodded. “We’re talking cholesterol city with no less than one dozen eggs in the custard.” He told Jonelle to ring up two slices and to page him when the pie appeared.

“I think I’ve died and gone to heaven,” Bronwyn said as they took a seat not far from the cashier.

“Today was Southern Harmony Day. Tomorrow will be German Umpah-pah Day,”

Sage said, unwrapping the plastic wrap from his tossed salad. “They’ll be serving black pumpernickel, German potato salad, hasenpfeffer and whatever else might strike the Teutonic taste buds. Next to Southern day, it’s my fav.”

“I assume there are Spanish, Italian and Chinese days, too?” Bronwyn asked as she salted her dressing.

“Along with Irish and French. Occasionally, we have a Mixed-Up day where we have Middle Eastern, African and a few other nationalities. It’s great.” He started to say something else but his pager went off and he looked around at the cashier. She nodded.

“That’s our dessert,” he said, and hopped up.

Bronwyn cut a forkful of jellied cranberry and was just putting it into her mouth when she saw Viraidan Cree enter the cafeteria. He glanced at her then headed into the kitchen.

Sage placed a huge slice of pale yellow pie, piled high with meringue before her.

“He can’t eat normal food like the rest of us.”

“Does he get something special?” she asked, keeping watch on the door.

“I guess,” he snapped. “I don’t know what they give him, but he comes in and gets a big sack of it every day.” He sat and pulled his chair up to the table. “Doesn’t deign to eat with us lowly doctor types.”

“Where does he eat? In his apartment?”

Sage shrugged as he sprinkled pepper on his salad. “I guess if the weather’s bad, but most of the time I’ve seen him sitting up on the hill overlooking the lake.”

Bronwyn chewed thoughtfully as the kitchen door opened and Cree marched out, a brown paper bag in his hand. “Must be a sack lunch, huh?” she inquired.

“With him, it could be raw chicken gizzards and hog entrails.”

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Bronwyn grimaced and took a sip of tea.

“I heard Brian O’Shea came to see you,” Sage said before shoveling lettuce into his mouth.

Bronwyn wiped her lips with her napkin. “Um-hmm.”

“Did he tell you about our Reaper?”

Bronwyn stared at him. “Excuse me?”

“I know what he is.” Sage speared a chunk of tender chicken. “Brian warned me if I told anyone about what I’d seen, he’d pull off my ears and if he didn’t, Cree would.”

“Then should you be telling me?”

“I know he had to have told you because you turned three shades of green when I mentioned hog entrails.” Sage grinned.

“Well, that’s not exactly conducive to pleasant dining conversation, do you think?”

“He told you. I’d bet my ears on it.”

Bronwyn picked up her knife to cut a piece of her chicken. “Let’s say he did. Tell me how you know about Cree.”

“I followed them.”

Bronwyn dug her fork into the chicken then dragged it through some gravy that had been poured over the dressing. “Followed them where?”

“To the level where the containment cells are located.”

She looked up. “You’ve seen them?”

“No, but it hasn’t been from a lack of trying,” Sage confessed. “Once I found out they were there, it’s been like an itch on my back I can’t reach to scratch. One of these days, I am going to get a look at those things.”

“If you didn’t know about the cells when you followed Brian and Cree, why were you following them?”

“This was about two months after good old O-negative came to work here. He was acting weirder than normal and I knew something was up. They passed me in the hall and Cree literally growled at me. His eyes were wild and he was sweating bullets, let me tell you! Brian had him by the arm and was leading him as though Cree would try to break away and trip out into the wind.”

“He was going into Transition.”

“I didn’t know what was wrong but I was sure going to find out. I watched the elevator go down to the third subbasement and stop. I thought that was strictly power-grid land, you know? There isn’t supposed to be anything down there but mechanical stuff. So when the elevator came back up, I went down to that level but the door wouldn’t open because I didn’t have the key. It’s like those penthouse suites at fancy hotels, you know? They require—”

“I know what you mean,” Bronwyn interrupted. “If you didn’t get in, how did you find out about the cells?”

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“Brian opened the elevator, and there I was,” Sage replied. “God, I thought the man was going to rip me a new one, but all he did was slam me up against the cage wall and tell me if I knew what was good for me, I’d keep my mouth shut.”

“What happened then?”

“On the way up in the elevator, Brian told me about the containment cells. I was surprised as hell to learn there were things like that at Baybridge. But I nearly dropped my drawers when I learned Brian had been using them for himself.”

“What?” Bronwyn yelped, drawing everyone’s eyes.

“Keep the shrieking to a bare minimum, huh?”

“Are you…?” she began, but at Sage’s shushing, she lowered her voice. “Are you telling me Brian is like Cree?”

“That I am.”

“Brian is a Reaper,” she said in a toneless voice.

“Not as powerful as O-Neg, but able to leap tall file cabinets in a single bound when the moon is full.” Sage took a sip of tea then wiped his mouth on the back of his hand.

“I knew about Brian before I knew about Cree.”

“How?”

“You know about the tenerse?”

Bronwyn nodded. “Yes, although I don’t know where it came from. It’s not from this Earth, is it?”

“Well, sorta. The queen gave Dunne instructions on how to make it from a parasite that grows on rye wheat. It’s really the only way to control a Reaper and keep him calm.”

“So Dunne made up the tenerse and gave it to the Reapers to inject themselves?”

Sage scooped up a large forkful of potato salad, plopped it into his mouth and talked around it. “They don’t give it to themselves. It has to go into the jugular and into the jugular only for it to be effective. The parasite doesn’t like them to inject themselves I guess for fear they’ll abuse the stuff. Brian needed someone here to do the dastardly deed for him. Brian chose me for whatever reason and I’m the one who pops him with the stuff.” He grinned. “Hurts like hell, if his expression is any indication.”