AfterAge (23 page)

"Louise," someone said. "Wake up. It's only a nightmare."

"What!" Louise came up fighting and gasping for air; for an instant she'd had the insane thought that she'd been sleeping underwater. "Dream!"

"Yes," Jo said soothingly. "Just a dream." Jo's face, lit by the glow of a fresh candle, swam into focus. She felt Jo's touch on her forehead, cool and calming, and the tripping movements of her heart and lungs regulated; at last she could breathe almost normally. But Jesus, she was hot! "How do you feel?" Jo's voice echoed strangely in Louise's ears. Beau's little body was too warm and Louise pushed him away and decided tiredly that it must be the vastness of the church causing the voice distortion, all those empty pews. . . .

"Okay." A robotic answer, conditioned by years of polite response. But how did she
really
feel?

She felt . . .
red
.

"What time is it?" she finally managed. The always-unspoken question:
How long until sunrise?

"It won't be light for some time." Jo studied her. "How about something to eat? To keep up your strength."

Louise shook her head. "I don't think I could keep it down," she admitted.

"Then you fibbed. You really
don't
feel well." Her hand was on Louise's forehead again, the touch comforting. "You've got a terrible fever, you know." She clucked. "We have to unwrap your hands, Louise. They're probably infected."

Louise's stomach wrenched and she looked at Jo pleadingly. "Maybe I've just got a cold."

"Sure," Jo said amiably. "But they need clean bandages anyway, don't you think?"

Louise thought about her dream, the red world and the sight of her fingers, stripped of their miraculous sheet of skin and bleeding dark pus and the poison of infection. Just a
dream
, that's all. Yet . . .

What would she do if they pulled away the bandages and that's what she found?

She bent her head and examined her hands, appalled to see the once-white wrappings soaked with a score of nasty-colored stains.

"We
have
to." Jo's voice was insistent and Beau whined nervously. Louise wanted to refuse; instead she reluctantly held out her hands.

The pain mounted with each featherlike tug Jo gave the material, as if it were no longer blood that pulsed through the veins and capillaries but a congealed mass of rotting liquid forcing its way through her body and spreading as each finger was released, pushing disaster further into her vulnerable flesh. When the last strip was peeled away, Louise was again teetering on the edge of that raw, scarlet world, as though pain and fantasy had melded at the altar of St. Peter's. Kneeling in front of her, even Jo was at a loss for words when Louise's swollen hands were fully bared.

Beau's nose twitched at the odd and unpleasant smell coming from his mistress and he sniffed along the pew until he found her leg. As Jo dropped the last bandage, he tried to scramble clumsily onto Louise's lap to investigate. When he lost his balance, Louise gabbed for him reflexively; struggling for footing, Beau scraped his claws across the ravaged hands that reached to cradle him.

The red world burst into a special, angry shade of crimson and slammed Louise in the face.

~ * ~

Louise woke to find her spasming hands clutched in Jo's grip, pulled so firmly against the younger woman's thin chest that she could feel Jo's lungs heaving beneath her frail ribs. She tried to pull away and tell Jo that she was much better—her hands weren’t paining her anymore and she didn't feel so feverish or dizzy. Then she saw Jo's face and froze.

At first Louise thought Jo's eyes had turned as white as her hip-length hair, then she realized that they'd rolled so far back in Jo's skull that her gray irises had disappeared beneath the virtually translucent covering of her eyelids.

“
Jo?
" Louise tried frantically to disengage her fingers but it was no use. She wanted to see her hands, but Jo held them so desperately against her body that Louise was afraid the girl would suddenly grab her shoulders and pull her into some terrifying, inexplicable embrace. Five seconds, then ten, stretching to twenty; still Jo hung on. All at once the pain returned with startling intensity and Louise wheezed, then nearly screamed when she saw that Jo's hands were glowing, the light spreading through their entangled fingers until it climbed onto Louise's knuckles, the backs of her hands, then her wrists. "Stop it!" Louise yelled. "Let me go!"

She panicked and backpedaled, trying to swing her arms from side to side like a dog fighting a too-tight leash, but the smaller girl's grip was impossible to break. Blood was rushing through her temples so fast and hard her arteries would surely burst—maybe she was having a stroke and this whole thing, even Beau's frenzied barking in the background, was only the prelude to an eternity of visions signaling her death.

Then her hands
did
explode, and the agony made the red world flare in front of her vision again, expanding a thousandfold into a noxious black cloud that spun wildly until it was nothing more than a fading black dot.

~ * ~

Louise sighed and groped for the blanket. If she could find the covers, she'd be comfortable enough to catch another half hour of shut-eye. Behind her, Beau was making annoying little cries and she turned over and tried to squeeze her eyes shut tighter. The roll brought the unprotected skin of her cheek against the cold, dirty floor of the church and her eyes flew open.

She scrambled to her feet. "Jo?"

Louise spotted her underneath the front pew where Beau was nuzzling her shadowed face. Louise hurried toward her, then hesitated as she remembered what had happened . . . how long ago? A glance at the stained glass windows told her it was still dark and she had no way of knowing how much time had elapsed since she—and presumably Jo—had passed out, although it must have been a while since the candle had almost melted on its saucer. Jo was curled beneath her spill of silky white hair and Louise's heart missed a beat; what if Jo was seriously hurt? She reached to push the hair from Jo's face and her pulse lurched again.

Her hands were healed
.

She turned them over frantically. Nothing marred the skin surface, not even a hangnail; no cuts, no blood, no pus. Neither looked as though she'd ever taken a fall or been ravaged by an out-of-control infection, or even done work, for God's sake. She swallowed and turned back to Jo. There would be time to marvel later; right now Jo needed her help. This time she didn't hesitate to brush aside the mass of hair. "Jo?" Louise touched one thin shoulder. "Can you hear me?" The blonde girl moaned and moved slightly, trying to pull herself into a tighter ball, her arms wedged between her knees and her chest.

"Come on," Louise said. She slid her arms between Jo and the floor and flinched at the girl's body temperature. "You're freezing. Let's get you off the floor." She felt strong and healthy and it was no effort to lift Jo to the blanketed pew while Beau twisted underfoot; the teen's head lolled against her shoulder then disappeared beneath the tangled hair as Louise eased her along the length of the blankets. When one of Jo's arms slid to rest palm-up on the floor, Louise gave a small yelp. The hand—and its mate—were split and battered and obviously filled with a virulent infection.

Black dots of shock twinkled around Louise's vision but she resisted; there was no time to freak out. Instead she rapidly tore clean strips from the bottom of Jo's dress to use as bandages, telling herself that a lot of things were different now, and if people who had been drained of blood and died could rise and do the same to others, who was to say that a strange, angelic teenager couldn't have the power to heal? If she wanted reality there was always Beau, crying plaintively and gazing blindly off into space. She washed Jo's hands carefully, wincing each time the younger girl groaned and shuddered, then carefully wrapped each one as Jo had done for her, chewing her lip helplessly when she saw that foul yellow fluid and sticky blood already spotted the wrappings. The stains and mess on the front of her companion's dress would have to wait, and Louise finally covered Jo with two more blankets, then wrapped another around herself and sat next to her, easing Jo's head onto her lap to keep it off the cold wood. Jo's breathing smoothed, and as Louise felt her own head drooping she realized she was still recovering from the last remnants of her own infection. After a time, she slept.

~ * ~

The first thing Louise saw when she opened her eyes was her own breath fogging in front of her face, an amazing thing because she was so warm. The oppressive weight across her shoulders turned out to be too many blankets and she felt movement across her thighs; her hands felt beneath the blankets and found Beau curled on her lap. She disengaged herself and left Beau snoozing amidst the covers as she searched the dim church anxiously, but Jo was nowhere to be found. Back where she started, Louise noticed a small pile on the floor next to the altar; she poked at it curiously and discovered the dress Jo had been wearing and a smaller jumble, the remains of the ragged strips that had covered Jo's mutilated hands. At last Louise spread everything on the floor and settled down Indian-fashion to stare at it in wonder.

The petite dress, the hem torn into uneven fragments, and the equally ragged bandages were a pristine, nearly painful white.

Louise flexed her wrists and fingers, felt the play of muscles and tendons and the warmth of unimpaired circulation as she wondered idly what had happened to the bloodstains on the material.

At length, she supposed it really didn't matter.

REVELATION 11:18

And thy wrath is come, and the time of the dead,

them which destroy the earth.

~ * ~

"Explain what's going on between you two."

It was a demand which, fearing her own temper, Anyelet had waited several hours to make. Although her face was expressionless, she was seething with repressed rage, and these fools were walking a tightrope of destruction.

Both Rita and Gregory started talking and Anyelet felt the old impatience rise, the same impotent frustration of a year ago when her army had started disintegrating. What was left? A handful of soldiers and that pathetic excuse for a human upstairs. So few, yet they still fought among themselves.
Enough
; there was no more time for petty in-fighting. She still admired the Celts of millennia ago and their passionate battles over the best treasures and the most beautiful women, but stupid luxuries such as those were unaffordable in this new age. And here were these two, still yammering at each other and her, neither saying much of anything.

"
Shut UP!
"

Rita and Gregory jumped, their voices ceasing abruptly. Anyelet brought a hand to her forehead and tried to block the fury building within her, that dark indignation born of loneliness and isolation and nurtured by those who would have hunted her in past centuries. Now she was the hunter instead of the hunted, but for how long? She gnashed her teeth. Like it or not, Gregory's theory of gluttony had left an insidious impression and Anyelet raised her black gaze to a finally silent Rita and Gregory. "You are both worthless!" She spat the words as though they were something foul. "You fight like territorial dogs despite the warmth, food, and safety I've provided. Perhaps you would prefer to take your argument out there." She stabbed a finger at the huge windows that lined the lobby. "Each night Ron and Jasper kill at least two of our 'brothers,' but more creep from the undergrounds like snakes. Is that what you want?"

Both of their faces showed surprise, then shock. "Consider," Anyelet continued, "how it must be to hide belowground and tear at each other for rats, with only enough strength to try again the next night." Her voice dropped to a malevolent whisper. "Would you like to experience the
true
intensity of The Hunger?" Rita met her gaze unflinchingly, convinced Anyelet would never do such a thing—it showed all over her lovely, arrogant face and infuriated Anyelet even more. "Do not fool yourself, Rita," Anyelet said icily. "I will not hesitate to eliminate someone unable to coexist with the rest of my forces."

Rita's face crumbled and Anyelet allowed herself a small, satisfied smile. Rita's days as the favored concubine were ended—so too was her disrespect.

Gregory was looking at both Anyelet and Rita now, terror pulling his lips into an elongated grimace. He permitted himself a reptilian glance at Rita, then returned his gaze to Anyelet. "I can get along," he assured her. His voice was disgustingly close to begging. "It was just a minor disagreement." His eyes flicked again to Rita. "Right?"

Anyelet's former lover nodded grimly. "Sure, we'll get along just fine." Rita's eyes were hooded and darker than normal, and Anyelet studied her suspiciously but let a warm, sincere smile spread across her face. "Well, then," she said heartily, "shall we go on with the plans for tonight?"

“The Art Institute?" Gregory looked relieved.

“Yes." Anyelet motioned to Vic and he moved to her side instantly. "Find Gabriel. I want him to come with us." Vic inclined his head and glided away.

When he and Gabriel had returned, Anyelet addressed the group again. "Is anyone familiar with this building?"

Everyone shook their heads except the teenage Gabriel, who shrugged and made a chewing motion as if he had an invisible wad of gum between his teeth. "I was there a couple of times. Big place."