Frequency (The Frenzy Series Book 3) (7 page)

Clanging came from down the hallway, like something hard being raked across the bars of the door. Back and forth. Clack. Clack. Clack. Clack. Clink. Clink. Clink. Clink. And again.
I know him. I smell him. Where is Mercedes? Where is Porschia? If he’s here, she’s with him.
Holy shit! Porschia’s mom was in this place.

Pierce answered matter-of-factly,
We tried to let her stay with the general populace, but she’s crazy as hell. She attacked someone with a knife. It didn’t kill them, but her mental state makes her unstable and she’s a threat. So she has to stay in here.

What do you mean I didn’t kill him? Why didn’t he die? They all die. We’re all dying. Is Porschia dead yet? He said he was going to kill her. He said belladonna and infection was all it would take. He was going to poison her. Did it work? Is she dead? Where is Mercedes? I haven’t seen her in days, weeks. Where is she?
Miranda Grant was worse now than when the Elders first banished her from Blackwater.

Pierce stepped up to her door and slid two leaves through the hole
. Thank you,
she cooed.
This always makes me feel better.

What is that? What did you give her?

The same thing she told you about – belladonna. It’s poisonous, but better than that, it can cause hallucinations. Everyone in this building would rather be anywhere but here. This gives them that option.
He strode to the next door and ordered the occupant to move.

Why did you give it to Porschia?

Pierce shrugged.
Just an experiment. It didn’t seem to hurt the vampire who waltzed into town and took Mercedes away. I wonder how Porschia fared.

I swallowed. What if it hurt her?

Ancients said it could kill a vampire with a large enough dose. I know Porschia looked like a porcupine with all of the darts she took that night. And we both know she isn’t entirely a night-walker, don’t we?

Bastard.
Why would you say that?

Because I’ve been watching her.
He unlocked the door and the sight of the next Infected made me vomit across the hallway floor, splattering onto the tile and Pierce’s shoe. He looked up at me in anger, but then turned to the woman inside. Her lower jaw bone was sticking out of her mouth and she was somehow chewing on it with her upper teeth. Her skin was peeling away from the muscle beneath it, but instead of being a bloody mess, she was dry, like her body had no water. Flakes of skin peeled up from her scalp. She stood and stared blankly in our direction. Nothing came from her mind. Was it gone entirely?

She isn’t there anymore. She hasn’t spoken in months.
He shook his head.
This one used to be beautiful. Such a pity. I tried to help her, but nothing I did stopped the decay.
He locked the door, enshrouding her in darkness once again.

What did you do to try to stop it? Did it make it worse?
Passing another door, Pierce’s light beam shone on a door and I jumped back at the sight. A man with thick pus running out of his eye socket, the eye shriveled and hanging like an over-sized limp raisin on his cheek, was groaning. His scalp was a patchwork of hair and bloody, seeping squares where hair had once been. Pierce urged me along.

Roman helped for a while, but then Porschia caught his eye,
he began
. She distracted him. Now he refuses to help me. It was his idea, you know. Mercedes? He gave her to me. He was on watch that night. He wanted Porschia to be left all alone so she would come to him willingly. He knew of her family history with her mother, of course. It seems Porschia fancied a human boy, so Roman decided to turn her. If she was a vampire, she couldn’t very well be with the human. But then her Mother got in the way again and Mercedes bit her, infecting Porschia just before she turned. Sure, she has fangs, but she can’t stomach blood and she can’t feed the normal way. She likes raw meat; craves it. She isn’t one creature or the other, she’s both. And if it takes killing her to get my brother back, I’ll do it. I need him to help me here. Nothing else is more important than finding a cure!

Stunned by the revelation, I countered,
What gives you the right to test your ‘theories’ on another person?
These are still people, as cursed as they are.

Sacrifices must be made, and most of the ones in here aren’t people anymore. They don’t think. They barely move. They tear their own bodies apart. Hell, some of them eat themselves. Why NOT test on them?
And with that simple statement, he turned and walked out the door. Men’s voices shouted in my head.
Let me out! Is there food?
Women’s shrieks and banging on the doors echoed down the hall and followed me outside onto the sidewalk.

Porschia’s breath was erratic and she made a high-pitched squeal, thrashing back and forth on her bed in a panic. I tried to ease closer to her, but the chain attached to my arm held me back. Salty, uneven lines stood out on the dark fabric beneath her. Was she ill? She cried out, “Help me! NO! Mother, don’t go into the water!”

Opening my mouth, I tried to call out to her, to calm her, but it was no use and the sounds I made just sent Porschia into a deeper spiral. She panted, twisting the blankets around her. I stood up and banged on the bars until Tage ran down the steps. Pointing at Porschia, I waited as he searched his pocket for the cell key. Where was Roman? It wasn’t like I wanted him down here, but he was the leader of the night-walkers and might know how to help. Tage unlocked the bars and eased toward Porschia.

“Easy, Porsch,” he said softly, sitting on the cot beside her. He brushed her hair out of her face and she came to, sitting up straight and staring at him. “Help me! Mother is going to get bitten! Mercedes is over there,” she pleaded earnestly, her eyes searching his. Her fingers dug into his biceps. “We have to help her.” She looked to the left, her eyes widening. “Ford! NO!” Tage approached her with his hands outstretched, but she looked beyond his shoulder as if the scene was playing out in front of her all over again. Her face was tight, her eyes wide and frightened. “No!”

She lurched forward, her shackle stopping her from moving far. “Help them, Tage. Please, help them!” Porschia pointed toward the wall only a few feet away where only cinder block was stacked tall, but where her mind told her the river bed was – just out of reach.

“I will,” he said, pulling her back. “You’re burning up, Porsch. Jesus.” Tage looked over at me. “I let you rest, so now why don’t you tell me what in the hell is doing this to her. Now! What was on the fucking darts?”

The darts were what caused this? I stood up and gestured as though I was writing. He sped away upstairs and was back down in a flash with a pad of paper and a pencil, shoving them at me. My fingers shook as I spelled the words:
Belladonna, also called Nightshade. And Pierce’s blood.

Tage’s brows pinched together. “Why?”

I shook my head and wrote:
She’s getting in his way, stealing Roman from him
.

“How so?”

Tears filled my eyes. I was dead for telling him this, but it was my sister:
Pierce is looking for a cure. Roman was helping him before Porschia came into the picture. Not directly helping, but he was giving him things to help his testing.

“Pierce is jealous?”

Scribbling fast, I answered:
Yes. He’s jealous. Roman and Pierce had a falling out. Roman isn’t helping him anymore. Pierce was using Roman’s blood to see if it might cure the disease. He was also harvesting natural things from deep in the forest. Pierce is too atrophied to walk there now. Roman won’t give him anymore, so he’s trying to hurt Porschia so Roman will come to him for help.

With a final word, I wrote:
Desperate
. I underlined it twice.

Tage growled and slapped the paper out of my hand. “Doesn’t he get it? There
is
no cure!”

I shook my head. Pierce
didn’t
get it, and he would never give up. Even if it meant killing Porschia. He’d done much worse to other Infected persons. The things he’d tried were unfathomable: drilling into the brain, leeches, bleeding them out, feeding them various herbs, feeding them other Infected, letting snakes bite them… My God, who knew what else he’d done? Killing Porschia using a few darts was actually pretty low on his long list of atrocities. Pierce was stark-raving mad. He just concealed it with a handsome smile.

That was the ugly truth about the Infection and what Pierce felt gave him the right to experiment in the first place. The Infection eventually ate the brain of its victim, as much as it made them want to eat anything raw, brains included. It ruined them – body, mind, and soul – in that order.

That was where I was headed, where all of those who’d succumbed to the virus were headed. And the fact that Pierce thought Porschia’s blood might be a better option than Roman’s was a secret I would keep close to the chest. If they knew I was originally sent to retrieve her, they would never leave me alone with her.

Tage paced the cell. “What can help her?” His eyes roiled in anger, anger that was being turned on me.

I shook my head. I didn’t know if there was anything that could reverse the effects of the toxic flower. It was just one of Pierce’s theories. He’d heard that belladonna was poisonous to night-walkers, and he knew it was poisonous to humans and to Infected. That was why we shot darts at everyone. It was another of his sick tests. Porschia just happened to be hit with more of them. The fact that she wasn’t entirely a night-walker doomed her.
I
had doomed her with one bite. What no one understood was that when a human was Infected, it set off a Frenzy of its own. We wanted to eat. After the initial sickness wore off, there was an insatiable hunger that only raw meat could provide. We didn’t have to eat often, but we did have to eat when the pangs arrived.

The day Porschia turned, when she crossed the river, I was starving. My instincts and hers kicked in. She lost, but there were no winners in that game.

Someone knocked at the front door, and Tage cursed and marched up the stairs. “Look, it’s really not a good time.”

“I know what I saw. I want to see her again.” Ford?

“Not now, kid.”

Ford screamed. “I’m not a kid! I want to see both of my sisters!” There were sounds of a scuffle and I looked to Porschia, who sat up stock straight and turned her ear to the commotion.

“Ford?” she called out.

“It’s me, Porschia! He won’t let me in!”

Muttering over and over, she repeated, “Who? Who won’t let him in? Who won’t let him in? Who won’t let him in?”

So I answered her.
Tage is blocking him.

She opened her mouth, baring her fangs at me. They weren’t nearly as large as Roman’s or Tage’s. “Tage! Let my brother down here now!”

How in the hell was she lucid now? I thought she’d fallen asleep. Or did she?

“Fuck,” Tage groaned. “Five minutes, Ford. That’s it. You see them, you leave. Got it?”

Two sets of boots clomped down the steps.
Ford
. I’d only seen him for a fraction of a second when he left Roman’s earlier. Tage had thrown me up against some bushes and warned me not to screech a word as Ford jogged toward home, never glancing in our direction. Seeing him was more joyous than I could have imagined. He was so tall, taller than I remembered just a few months ago. And he was much more mature. Life had a tendency to do that; rob the young of magic and childhood.