Twilight Fulfilled (19 page)

Brigit felt as if her head was swimming. She was actually dizzy, and her eyes were watering with tears at the enormity of what he was telling her.

“Try,” he said. “Prove to yourself it is so. But…quietly, if you can.”

Blinking, still stunned, she was determined to put Utana's revelation to the test, though nearly certain it would fail. “What if they're watching? Listening?”

“Already I have determined there are no such devices in this room, as there were in my former bedchamber,” he said. “Go ahead, try it. Direct the healing beam out through your eyes, instead of your hands. Keep the beam narrow and tight, and only emit a little, lest you alert them.”

Nodding, nervous, Brigit held her wrists up in front of her and focused her eyes on the clasp that locked the iron manacles around them. She opened her channels, as she had before. The energy flooded into her, both from above and from below. It met and melded in her center, and then she mentally guided it upward, to her eyes. The beam shot from her killer gaze just as it had before—but milder. It emerged soft and yellow-gold, then turned orange and then red as she poured more force into it. And still she kept it tight and thin, controlling the stream
in a way she had never been able to do before. Sparks rained from the iron bracelets, and then they fell to the floor at her feet.

She was breathing heavily, rapidly, staring at her bared wrists and the iron on the floor at her feet. “This isn't possible.”

“It's more than possible. It's true.”

“But…but this changes everything.” He nodded at her as she shifted her gaze back to his eyes again. “It changes my entire life. Everything I ever thought I was is…it's different now.”

“I am sorry I did not tell you sooner. I only realized in the mansion after I was injured, when you asked for your brother's power instead of your own, that you did not know they were one and the same. And to tell you then would have allowed you to kill me.”

Tears were brimming in her eyes now, hot and acidic. She quickly divested herself of her leg irons, burning her foot a little in the process, and then she flung herself against Utana, wrapped her arms around his neck and kissed his face. “Thank you. You can't know what this means to me.”

He smiled into her eyes. “Finally I have given you something besides grief and anger.”

“More than you know.” She let go of him, then stepped back and aimed her deadly stare at the chains that held him. “Wait, Brigit!”

He barked the warning so suddenly that it made her jump. She shot him a questioning look.

“Nashmun told me there were…sen-sores within my chains. He said he would know if I broke them free.”

“Who cares if he knows? We'll be long gone by then. I'll blast them, and we'll get the hell out of here.”

“And then what will we have gained? He will still have the Chosens to torture, to use as a lure for the vahmpeers. No. We must not alert him. We must let him believe we are contained here. I will stay, to keep that illusion intact. Perhaps he will not return to this room until he is ready to use me—in case the…inject-shun has worn off and my powers have returned. You must go.”

“Go…where?”

“Up,” he said. He nodded toward the tanks, and she looked farther this time, seeing the furnace and the wide ductwork leading up to the hospital above. “You must go up into the higher levels of this tower. Up to where the Chosens are held. And you must remove them. Return for me only when they are safe.”

“But what if—”

“Perhaps you will not even need to return for me. Perhaps this…drug will wear away as you have predicted and my strength will return. Either way,
we must not alert Nashmun that you are free until the Chosens are safe.”

“Utana, I don't want to leave you here!”

“I know.” He smiled, lowering his head and kissing the top of hers. “I know, but your people must be saved. Please, do as I say, Brigit. It is my way of making amends to those I have wronged. Please?”

She lifted her eyes to his, tears streaming now. “If anything happens to you, Utana, I don't think I can—”

“I feel…love for you, my Brigit. A love more powerful than armies or kingdoms or the gods themselves. Know that. Know it well.”

Tears streaming, she pressed her face against his. “I love you, too, Utana. Never thought I'd be saying that at all, much less to you, but it's true. I love you.”

He kissed her. She tasted the salt of her tears on his lips—perhaps mingled with some of his own. For a long, long time he kissed her, and when he lifted his head at last, she saw him blinking quickly to dry his eyes. No doubt in his time kings didn't cry.

“Now,” he said softly, his voice thick and hoarse, “I will tell you all I observed when I walked among the Chosens.”

A
s quietly as she could, Brigit made her way up through the air-conditioning ducts of the hospital. According to Utana, the Chosen were being housed on the fourth floor. Nash's headquarters seemed to be located on the first. There were “nurses” staffing the fourth level, but Utana had observed that they were deceptive, dressed in clothing that indicated they were something they were not. He had not entirely understood this, but Brigit did. Whatever else they were, they were first and foremost DPI operatives. Guards. And yes, some of them were probably nurses, too, just as that bitch Lillian was both an M.D. and DPI. But their job was to keep the Chosen from escaping. They might be going out of their way to make their captives feel more like guests, to keep them complacent and compliant. To make them want to stay where they were until they were no longer of any use. But Brigit knew
the DPI, knew how they operated. And she didn't doubt that if anyone tried to leave this place, those Florence Nightingale pretenders would show their true colors. Figuratively speaking, they had claws and fangs that made vampires look like pussycats.

And once they had no more use for the Chosen—well, she didn't even want to speculate on what Nash Gravenham-Bail and his ilk had planned for them then.

Utana had given Brigit a thorough briefing on the layout of the place, and she also remembered it pretty well from what she'd seen on the blueprints she'd studied with her family. There was, as they'd observed when they drove past, a fire escape at the back of the building, its lowest level still some ten feet above the ground, like a catwalk just above those sloping skylights that provided the ceiling over Utana's current prison.

The catwalk extended the length of the hospital, and there was a retractable ladder attached to one end of it—the end nearest the parking lot.

The fire escape, she had decided, would be the means of exit for the Chosen. The only access point from the fourth floor would be through the windows at the back of the cafeteria, Utana told her.

He added, too, that there was a nurses' desk only a few yards from the elevators, situated in the center of a wide hallway that extended to both right and left behind it. Patient rooms lined that hallway in
both directions. There was one room at the very end of the right-hand extension that he had disliked, though he hadn't known why. He'd felt, he said, “bad energy” that seemed to come from it.

Brigit had no doubt that the staff on the fourth floor had a quick and easy means of alerting Scar-face if something seemed suspicious. She was going to be extremely careful. And she was going to have one hell of a time making her way up four stories by way of the ductwork. Much less doing so in relative silence.

And yet she did it.

It took a long time, crab-walking up the vertical sections. At each floor she encountered a four-way junction, where horizontal pipes shot off, while the main shaft kept going up, higher and higher. At the fourth such junction she was, she reckoned, at the fourth floor, and she took the left-hand turn, crawling on hands and knees, wincing every time the large ducts bent noisily under her weight.

She lay on her belly, hoping to eliminate or at least minimize the sound, and slid onward. It worked pretty well. Eventually she came to a register grate that looked down on the floor below.

A corridor. Not much to see there. A few people walking this way and that. Nurses. Even patients. No one looked sinister or particularly frightened. Silently, she slid over the grate, imagining herself as a giant python, and kept going, following the
hallways. She took the first Y that veered off to the side, hoping to get a look into the rooms themselves. And the next time she paused over a grate she was indeed looking down into one of the patient rooms. She sighed in relief. She'd found her way. And apparently she'd done so undetected. So far, so good.

The room below her seemed empty.

She jiggled the grate loose and, moments later, lowered herself through the opening, dangled from her hands and then dropped to the floor, landing in a low crouch. Silence. No one near. She rose slowly, taking her first eye-level look around—and seeing a little girl with blond hair and blue, blue eyes staring right at her.

The girl didn't look surprised to see a stranger come dropping out of her ceiling. She didn't look alarmed, either. She looked…knowing.

And then she looked pointedly up toward the corner where ceiling met wall, to the right of the door.

Brigit followed her gaze and spotted the camera there, then quickly moved farther out of range and met the little girl's eyes.

“Can they hear us, too?” she asked in a whisper.

The child moved to the small round table, reaching for a remote control among all the coloring books, crayons, plastic teacups. She aimed the device, and the television came on, the volume loud. Then she set the remote down.

“Now they can't,” she said. “Did you come to get us out of here?”

“Yes, I did. But you need to be very quiet and not tell anyone until I say. All right?”

The girl nodded. “I knew you would come. That big man who came before—you know him, don't you?”

“Yes, I do. How do you know that?”

The girl shrugged. “I saw you in his head. He told me he was going to help us—you know,
with his quiet voice
.” She whispered the final four words.

“Did he, now?”

“Uh-huh.”

“I'm going to need some help. Can you help me?”

“Yes, and my mommy can, too. Do you want me to go get her?”

“Where is she?” Brigit asked.

“She just went down to the cafeteria to get us some lunch. She'll be right back.”

“Then why don't we wait for her, okay?”

“Okay.” The little girl sat down at the table and tapped her foot expectantly. She was surrounded by coloring books and crayons, most of which were worn down to the halfway point. She must be terribly sick of coloring.

“Oh, I am,” she said softly. “If I have to color one more picture, I think I'll go nutso!”

Brigit frowned. “You just heard what I was thinking, didn't you?”

“You mean your quiet voice? Yes, I heard it. I hear lots of people's quiet voices. Mommy says not to tell people about that, but I trust you.”

The door opened and a woman came in, then paused to stare at Brigit. Her eyes registered both surprise and alarm, which was much more the reaction Brigit would have expected from her child. Putting a finger to her lips seemed to do the trick. The woman hesitated in the doorway, then stepped the rest of the way inside, closing the door behind her.

“I'm here to get you out,” Brigit told her, keeping her voice very low.

“Thank God,” the woman said. “They're planning something—something bad.”

“How do you know? Have you heard something?” Brigit was eager to get any information this woman might have gleaned.

“Mommy doesn't know. But I do. They're going to make us cry,” the little girl filled in. “I heard their quiet voices talking about it. Some of them don't want to, but they have to. To get the vampires, they said.”

“Well, no one's going to make you cry now, I guarantee you that.” She turned to the mother. “Do you know a woman by the name of Roxy?”

The fear and trepidation in the mother's eyes evaporated beneath a quick smile. “Everyone knows Roxy. She's a nurse here.”

The woman knew Roxy was on her side; Brigit read it in her face. No words were needed, and that was good, because the more they said aloud, the more chance they would be overheard.

The little girl was tugging on Brigit's blouse. “What, honey?”

“Roxy's not really a nurse,” she whispered.

Brigit lifted her brows and shot the mother a look. “This is one gifted little girl you've got here.”

“She's special. In a great many ways, although that's something we've been keeping to ourselves around here. Anyone different seems to attract a lot of…attention. I just want to get her the hell out of here. Now.”

“Don't I know it.” Brigit thinned her lips. “And I understand, believe me. I'm pretty different myself. You're doing right to keep her abilities to yourself.”

“That's what Roxy said.”

Brigit nodded. “Can you get her for me? Get her in here without raising any suspicion? If you do, I promise, you'll be the first two out of here.”

“When?” the woman asked.

“Tonight. It has to be tonight.”

The woman nodded, stretching out a hand for the little girl.

“Uh-uh,” Brigit told her. “She stays with me.”

It earned her a furious glare from the protective and obviously devoted mother, but she couldn't give in on this. “I'm sorry. But I don't know you, and I
can't afford to risk that you might blow my cover. Too many lives depend on us succeeding. I promise, I'll keep her safe. You go get Roxy.”

Sighing, the woman looked at her daughter. “You'll be okay for a few minutes, Melinda?”

She was asking more than the words said; Brigit knew it by the intensity in the woman's eyes.

The little girl seemed to understand that, too. “It's okay, Mommy. She's not one of the bad ones. She only thinks she is.”

Her mother frowned, shooting Brigit a concerned look.

“I used to think I was bad. But someone very wise has made me think maybe I'm good after all.”

“Oh, you are!” Melinda said. And then, to her still worried mother, “She's friends with the big guy.”

“Oh.” And briefly, a look of sadness came over her face. She nodded, searching Brigit's eyes and extending a hand. “I'm Jane, by the way.”

“Brigit,” she replied, accepting the woman's hand.

Nodding again, Jane hurried away. Brigit didn't like the little chill that rushed up her spine, though, at the look the woman had worn at the mention of Utana. What the hell was that about?

Five minutes later a flaming redhead whose personality matched her hair accompanied Jane back into the room.

The oldest living member of the Chosen caste was not what Brigit had expected. Guessing her age would have been impossible, but she was, by appearances, far from old. And far from ordinary, even among the Chosen. She wore white scrubs, like the rest of the DPI drones staffing this place. But she also had on rainbow-patterned Crocs over a pair of hot-pink socks. Her orange-red locks were fighting their way out of the bun that tried to hold them up in back, a few tendrils springing free, as lively as if they belonged to Medusa. She even wore an old-fashioned nurse's cap perched on top of that wild hair. Her eyes, heavily lined and smoky, were full of hell. She couldn't hide it and didn't try.

How she hadn't been found out by now was beyond Brigit's comprehension. But she liked the woman on sight.

The scent of the Belladonna Antigen, the zinging energy of it, snapped and crackled from her in a way that Brigit could not mistake, and in a far stronger, more vivacious way than from anyone else in this place. Indeed, it was different from the essence of any other member of the Chosen Brigit had ever met in her life, and she'd met many of them.

Roxy met Brigit's eyes and lifted her brows, alarmed at seeing a stranger. “And you are…?” she asked.

“Brigit Poe.” She extended a hand.

Roxy gasped, a hand flying to her mouth to
cover her surprise, even as she shot a look behind her toward the closed door. Turning back to Brigit again, she whispered, “You're one of the twins.”

“Yes.”

The other woman clasped her hand at once but didn't shake it. Instead she closed both her hands around Brigit's and just held them there. “Hot damn and hallelujah. You don't even know how glad I am to see you here. I'm Roxy.”

“I know. But I'm curious. Why are you staff here, rather than a patient?”

“I couldn't show up as one of the Chosen. At my comparatively advanced age, they'd have singled me out for special study. Removed me from the general population and stuck me in a lab somewhere to play guinea pig to their mad scientist. You know, much like they'll try to do to you if they catch on to who you really are. One of a kind. The DPI loves studying gems like us. And what good would I have been to the cause locked away in some lab?” She rolled her eyes expressively. “So just tell me what to do and let's get shut of this place. I've had chills chasing each other up and down my spine every second I've spent here. I think the bastards even followed me home last night.”

“I need to know how many nurses are on duty at a time, and how often anyone checks in from other floors. When the shifts change, and how that
goes down. Anything else you can think of that will help.”

Smiling slowly, Roxy nodded. “You need to know the best time to start moving the so-called patients out of here.”

“Yes.”

“When are you doing it?”

“Tonight,” Brigit said.

Roxy nodded. “It's about freakin' time. All right, here's the gist. Every two hours, they send up some of their goons to do a sweep of the floor. They check everywhere, believe you me. Under beds, in the closets and restrooms. On the hour in between those sweeps, the head nurse has to phone downstairs to report in. If it's not her voice on the phone, or if she fails to give them the correct password, they know something's wrong. And the password changes every day.”

“We're going to need that password.”

“I already know it. I listen in to that old crone every day, just in case. Today's is ‘Run, Rabbit, Run.' But if it's not her voice on the phone, it won't matter. The routine is taking a dramatic change this evening, though.”

“That doesn't bode well,” Brigit said. “Tell me as much as you know, Roxy.”

“First,” Roxy said, “the guards will do their usual sweep of the floor. Then the routine changes. The entire fourth floor staff are all supposed to do a
head count, ensure that every patient is in his or her own room, lock their doors and then head below to meet on the first floor. The doors to this floor will be sealed.”