Autumn Whispers (An Otherworld Novel) (10 page)

Encased by what was—for all intents and purposes—a plastic bubble, Chrysandra looked like she’d been spitted and roasted over a bonfire. Any resemblance to who she had been was gone, the skin largely burned away to reveal raw muscle and sinew covered in blisters and remnants of blackened skin. Her hair was gone. She was on a ventilator and a host of tubes were feeding meds and liquids into her. But what struck me as most horrific was that her eyelids and lips had been incinerated. She was so still, I thought she must have passed out.

I stared, unable to look away, then hung my head, the pain in my hand receding as I focused on my feet. I wanted to cry but the tears wouldn’t come. I wanted to help but there wasn’t anything I could do.

Camille placed her hand on my shoulder and I glanced at her. She silently shook her head and I turned back to look at Chrysandra. There was no way in hell she could make it back from this. A moment later, she woke and began to scream, but her voice was so strained that only a rough croaking came out.

“Can’t they stop the pain?”

Camille shook her head. “They’ve given her what they can. She’s too fragile to be transported right now, and even if she was at a burn center, all they could do is prolong her life for a few more hours. Maybe a day.”

“Then why can’t they help her die? Put her out of her pain?”

“She’s human, Kitten. The FBHs have a problem with that concept. If she was conscious enough to tell them to stop . . . but she’s not. She’s caught in the pain, that’s all that exists for her right now. She’s dying and she’s not going easy.” Her words were whispered, but as she spoke, Menolly turned around, bloody tears slicing a trail down her cheeks.

“I want her to die. I want her to get out of that body, to be free from it. If you’re worried that I might turn her, don’t for a moment think I’d sentence her to eternity in a body so disfigured. But I can kill her, if they’d let me. I can take her out, give her release. All I need is a moment.”

At that moment, the healer who was casting the spell stopped. “I can hear you.”

Menolly faced him, defiant. “And you have a problem with what I said? Some fuckhead set fire to my bar—I know it was no accident. A murderer is responsible for Chrysandra lying here, dying. And there’s nothing we can do to stop it, so I want her to go, to be free from this pain. And then, I will track down the motherfucking cocksucker who did this and I will make him pay—I will make him pay and pay with an excruciating and painful death.”

“If I answered your question, I would be suspect.” He stared at her for a moment. “She’s going to go on in pain for too long. I can’t remove the ventilator without permission from her family and we can’t find any of them.”

“That’s because she left them behind. I’ve known her for years now and I have never heard her mention a single member of her family.” Menolly held his gaze, and I could feel her glamour reaching out, trying to ensnare him.

But he was Fae, and he merely smiled, cool and aloof. “You know, I think I need to consult with the others. And for that, we need privacy. Excuse us for a few moments, please.” He said everything he could not say aloud in one dark, deliberate look.

As he motioned for his colleagues to follow him, Camille whispered to me. “Guard the door.” As I moved to keep watch through the windows, she pulled back the plastic for Menolly. I didn’t want to look, didn’t want to see what she did. She couldn’t very well break Chrysandra’s neck—that would be too obvious, so she’d have to drink her down and I couldn’t bear to watch her sink her fangs into the burned flesh of the woman we called our friend.

But Camille swallowed and fastened her gaze on the bed. And even though I didn’t
want
to see, I had to. Menolly was about to play the angel of death. And Camille and I . . . the least we could do was to stand witness.

The sterility of the ward, its pale cream walls and stark stainless counters faded into the background. The rise and fall of Chrysandra’s chest, powered by the soft hiss of the ventilator, was the only noise as Menolly approached her side. This woman we had partied with. Watched movies with and shared appetizers. This woman, our friend, was here in front of us, but she was nowhere in sight. All that remained of her was a charbroiled living steak. The blood of her burns stained the sheets, flowers on snow, spreading their fatal blooms.

Menolly stood over her for a moment, then leaned down and whispered in her ear. Chrysandra began to breathe quickly, and with one last look, my sister bared her fangs and sank them through the crisped, flaking skin, searching for the jugular as she pressed her lips to Chrysandra’s neck in one final kiss. Pressing her eyes shut, Menolly’s tears raced down her face, their crimson drops falling to spread across Chrysandra’s featureless cheeks and brow. The sound of life transferring from one body to another, the hush of pained breath moving to shallow pants to a faint, faint whisper and then . . . silence.

My shoulders began to shake as I watched Menolly slowly withdraw, her chin covered with burned flesh that had stuck to her skin, her mouth stained with the red of Chrysandra’s life. She looked from Camille to me, turned and crossed to the sink where she washed her face, wiping her mouth softly with a paper towel. A moment later, the three of us were standing by Chrysandra’s bed as the monitor shrieked out the lack of a pulse, the lack of a heartbeat.

The healer came running in. He pushed through the plastic without giving us a second look, and checked Chrysandra for a pulse. Then he listened for her heart, and lastly, he lay a gentle hand on her forehead, and I could tell he wanted to close her eyes but couldn’t—the lids had been burned away.

He noted the time in her chart as his colleagues joined him. A few whispers later, they exited the plastic curtains and he stopped by Menolly’s side.

“I’m sorry to tell you that your friend didn’t make it. She died. Her burns were too extensive.” He caught her gaze again, and compassion flickered across his face.

Menolly nodded. “If no one claims her body, I will. I honestly don’t know where her family is.”

Nodding, he turned away. “I’ll make a note of that. Six others also died in the fire.”

Menolly crouched down into a squat as she wrapped her arms around herself and began to rock. “No . . . no . . . no . . . what the fuck happened? Who did this and why?”

Camille stepped between her and the healer, pushing him back. “Keep us informed,” she said brusquely. She took Menolly by the shoulders and drew her to her feet, moving her toward the door. Menolly allowed herself to be guided along. She did not resist, did not speak, a horrified expression branded on her face. And then we were in the hall and Aswala was there, looking ready to scold me.

I shook her off. “We need to leave.”

“I have to see them. I have to know who died.” Menolly’s stammers were barely above a whisper, but they echoed through the still hall.

“You aren’t in any shape—” Camille started, but let her words drift off. “All right. Delilah, go get dressed. You’ll still be on bed rest till tomorrow when we get home.”

Pain flared in my hand, digging deep, sending me leaning against the wall moaning. The image of a scalded Chrysandra came to mind. I couldn’t fathom the pain she’d been in—it must have been excruciating beyond any scope of the imagination. I straightened my back as I headed back to my room. By the time I got there, I’d broken into a sweat, but I downed a glass of water, then another, and my stomach slowly began to settle.

Aswala followed me in, and silently handed me my clothes. She removed the IV from my arm and stood back, watching me.

“Your sister. She’s going to need some counseling over this.”

“Riiiggghhht. . . .” Menolly was about as likely to agree to counseling as I was to agree to a boob job. “That’s not going to happen.”

“It was her bar. She feels responsible. I could see it in her eyes. Until they find the reason for the fire—and let’s hope the reason is beyond her control—she’s going to imagine the worst possible scenario.”

“Oh, we’re pretty sure this was arson. We have full reason to believe it.”

“Regardless of that possibility, your sister is still going to blame herself. Trust me, I’ve seen this sort of situation far too often.” Aswala opened my chart and scribbled something in it. “I’m releasing you, because otherwise I have a feeling you’ll just sneak out. But get your butt home and in bed. You hear me?”

I nodded. “Yeah, I do. I just . . . we need to be home right now.”

“I understand. Get dressed. And I want you to drink a lot of water over the next few days. It will help dilute what toxin still runs in your veins. The antivenin is helpful but it can’t negate all of the poison.”

I accepted the bottle of water she pressed in my hand and began to dress. All the quietude of the past couple of months had vanished in a snap of the fingers, in a quick gust of wind.

Aswala handed me a kit containing the healing salve to put on my wound, as well as a week’s worth of bandages. Then, feeling I should say something, I caught her gaze.

“I promise to go home and rest. But our lives . . . there is seldom down time. We’re . . .” And then I stopped. I couldn’t tell her about Shadow Wing. I couldn’t tell her about the war back in Otherworld. All I could do was shrug and give her a faint smile.

She held my coat for me. “I understand. Perhaps more than you know.”

I headed out of the room, bracing my arm from time to time against the wall to steady myself. “Where are Camille and Menolly?”

“I imagine the morgue. It’s—”

“I know where it’s at.” I waved her off. “Go do what you need to do.”

I found the elevator and punched the button for the third floor down and held on as the car descended to the underground levels. The Faerie-Human Crime Scene Investigation unit had the main floor, then three stories below ground. There was rumored to be another floor, lower still, but no one had ever confirmed it. Not even when I was dating Chase.

Riding in the quiet elevator, I stared at the nicely polished mirrors in the corner. I knew they housed hidden cameras and I realized just how pale I must have looked. Too fucking bad. There wasn’t anything I could do about it right now except take it as easy as I could.

The doors opened with a soft whoosh and I stepped out. The morgue was straight ahead and I pushed through the double doors with a muted thud.

Here, the dead came to rest, limbo before their final consignment. Here, memories were severed. Blood and bone were mere leftovers of lives once lived and now lost. Death played no favorites, claiming the young and the old, the sick and the well. There was no get-out-of-jail-free card. And then my gaze fell on Menolly. She was standing in the middle of six tables covered with the snow white blankets of the dead. Sheets so pristine they made me shiver.

There
were
ways to cheat death . . . but at a high cost. Menolly had found out the hard way. Though eternity had not been her choice, she made the best of what she had. I wondered—could
I
do it? Could I face an unchanging existence, caught in my body, my soul trapped until either fire claimed me, the sun took me, or a stake plunged through the heart? Mortal thoughts, these, and not easy ones.

Camille had her phone out and was writing down the names of the dead as Menolly turned from table to table, the expression on her face fading from horror to disbelief. She was losing her ability to take it in—I could see it in her eyes. She’d reached overload and, for the first time in many years, fear flickered in her eyes. She began to back away toward the wall, whimpering.

“Camille!” I nodded toward Menolly and Camille dropped her pad and pen, softly moving forward. Menolly was crouching again, leaning against the wall, and the predator was coming to the surface. She looked cornered, like a mountain lion trapped against a cliff face.

“Be careful.” I kept my voice low.

“Yes, I see.” Camille didn’t look back at me—she was close enough that she didn’t dare take her eyes off our sister. When Menolly was in the grips of this sort of stress, her vampiric nature rose up, and it would be all too easy for her to attack those trying to help her.

“Call Nerissa. Get her on the phone. See if she’s here. Chase may have dragged her in to talk to some of the customers at the fire—that’s what she does.”

I punched in Nerissa’s number and she answered almost immediately. As Camille speculated, she was in the building—a boon for us—and I quickly explained what was going on. She hung up, on her way down before I finished.

And then, Camille was kneeling just out of arm’s reach. Not far enough to save herself, but enough to give Menolly a second to clear her thoughts, should she attack. Camille held out her hands in an imploring gesture.

“Menolly . . . can you hear me? Menolly, honey, it’s Camille. Your big sister. Remember me?”

The frightened, trapped look in Menolly’s eyes flickered. She pressed against the wall, shaking her head. “Get out of here.”

“No. We can’t leave without you. You need to let us help you. Listen to my voice.” And as she spoke, Camille’s voice grew stronger. She didn’t have the command voice down pat, but she could force a reasonable facsimile when necessary. “Menolly, I want you to listen to me. Do you hear me?”

“Leave me alone . . . just . . . leave . . .” Menolly stammered and fell silent. “Don’t make me walk past their bodies again. What have I done?”