Blood Day (33 page)

“Dr. White,” said a voice next to Viv, as the clapping died down. Sia took off her mask and met her eyes, face flushed and pink. Viv tore her eyes away to look at the speaker.

Margaret Watts stood smiling at her.
 

“Ms. Watts,” said Viv.

“Are you enjoying the show, Dr. White?” said Watts.

“I just…” Viv looked up at the stage. Sia was being ushered down by a Rev on either side. One of them took the violin away from her. “I’ve never heard music like that before.”

“She is very special, isn’t she?” said Watts. “She’s going to change everything.”

“How do you mean?” said Viv.

Watts looked at her and smiled a tight smile. “You are here for a reason, Dr. White. I suggest you do your duty. Just roll the cart over to the refreshment table. You will be required to help attach the bags to some of our guests. They’re used to someone doing it for them.”

“You want me to wait on these old-timey white people?” said Viv with a raised eyebrow.

“Not all Revs are white, doctor.” Watts pointed out three dancers and a woman leaning against the wall fanning herself. “May I remind you that this is your job, Dr. White.”

Viv smiled. “Of course,” she said. “I’ll just go do my duty then.”

“Fine,” said Watts. Viv watched her cross the room and take one of the Revs by the arm and point to her. Ambrose Conrad. Viv could feel their eyes on her as she pushed the cart to the place Margaret had specified.
 

“Ladies and Gentlemen,” said a Rev on the stage. Viv saw that they had replaced Sia with a group of Revs with instruments. “Please make your way to the refreshment table for something new. Genevieve White, our new administrator, will be dispersing blood fresh from our new purification system, right here in the hospital!”

Polite clapping followed and Viv saw them all start to gravitate toward her.

“What am I doing?” she said under her breath, watching a crowd of smiling monsters descend on her.
 

“Remember to smile,” said Conrad, as he stepped in front of her. “Let's make our guests feel very welcome. ”

Viv smiled at the president. “Can I help you with your blood, sir?”

“If you would be so kind,” he said.

Viv felt her smile growing genuine.

“It would be my pleasure,” she said.
 

Viv’s hands started shaking halfway through the blood supply. When she attached the very last blood bag, she found it hard to breathe. She looked around for Sia, but didn’t see the girl anywhere. There was a chatter of activity against one red silk-covered wall, but Viv couldn’t see Sia’s white dress. She looked to the massive round window that looked out at the courtyard. The snow was so deep, the drifts had risen up and blanketed a good quarter of the window. She had to get Sia out before the snow made it impossible. The snow was still coming down hard, making the night sparkling and magical. But Viv didn’t believe in magic.

She left the cart, watching the Revs for signs of illness. She was still woozy from the blood loss, but the Revs kept up their laughing, whispering to each other, dancing to the music that, after Sia, seemed empty and without purpose.
 

“Looking for someone?” said Conrad, suddenly at her elbow. How did he always manage to sneak up on her? She looked at his bright white teeth, hanging down over his jaw, and suppressed a shudder.

“I just wanted to thank the girl who played the violin,” she said. “It was beautiful, what she played. Have you seen her?”

“Oh yes,” he said. “I most certainly have.” He took Viv’s arm in his long fingers, his grip so tight that Viv flinched. It felt as though her heart was in her stomach. She had failed. The Revs weren’t sick, they weren’t even wavering. She had failed and now she was going to die.

“Now you’ll see her, too,” said Conrad, steering her around by the arm and leading her towards the wall where the others had converged. A half dozen Revs, four men and two women, were talking excitedly. One man was standing in the corner, his hand on the wall. He nodded at Conrad. The president turned toward the rest of the room.

“May I have your attention!” he called. The music died, the dancers turned, along with everyone else. They all still had blood bags in their hands, attached to their arms by an IV tube. Viv bit her lip hard so she wouldn’t scream. She had to get Sia out. Even if the blood hadn’t worked, they might find out what she had done. And there was the matter of the man in the hall. Dez, Mike’s friend. If she didn’t go out in the next forty minutes, he might die trying to come in. Conrad let go of her arm to address the others and Viv took a step back, but another put an arm around her waist. Viv felt bile rise in her throat as she looked at the profile of Margaret Watts, her stringy arm firmly holding her close. She was looking at Conrad with something like rapture.

“Relax, Doctor, ” said Watts. “No one is going to hurt you. And you’re about to witness a momentous occasion. The science of your people in the hands of the Revs will blossom into something beautiful tonight. Something that has never been seen before.”

“What’s happening?” said Viv.

“Watch,” said Watts. “And learn.”

Conrad was motioning the crowd closer. With a booming voice, he addressed them.

“For centuries, we dwelt in the shadows, my friends. In the dark places, the underground places, the cold places. And then we rose to the surface and stepped into the light.”

A murmur of agreement shivered through the crowd.

“And now, on this night,” Conrad continued, “we not only stand in the sun, my brethren. We touch the very heavens themselves. We have become as gods, forming the world as we wish it to be, making ourselves into not the monsters who we always thought we were, but angels so gentle that we fight our very natures to spread our generosity. The humans were shattering the world. Breaking it slowly, small cracks at first, and the cracks became larger and larger until it seemed that it was impossible to put it back together again. And yet,” Conrad raised his hand containing the blood bag, “we no longer take their lives, even though we have that power. We have healed them, first with our medicine — the Slack as they most charmingly call it — and later by taking their ability to hurt themselves. To hurt the world. Our world. For this is, indeed, our world now. We no longer stand in the sun, my friends. We are the sun and the stars and moon in the sky. We are gods and we are victorious.”

Applause shook the room. Margaret Watts held Viv tighter. She watched as the president’s secretary began to cry, nodding in agreement with Conrad. Viv still couldn’t see Sia. Had she run on her own? Would Dez find her if she did? The Revs still weren’t sick, the blood bags halfway gone now. Panic had long ago seized Viv, and she was trying to force herself to breathe without anyone noticing. Her chest felt as though it was growing smaller, her eyes wider.

“Tonight in this room, you will witness history being made,” Conrad said, when the applause finally quieted. “In times of old, we were able to breed in a way. To make more of our own kind, more of the beautiful beast who was the Revenant. Do you remember?”

There were sighs and nods of agreement. Conrad nodded, too.

“Yes, indeed it was almost a religious experience. Brothers and sisters made from the heart’s blood of our clans. The ceremony often lasted for days; My own ceremony lasted for nearly a week. But with our ascension, with our new role as protectors, we have lost the ability to replicate. And we have suffered, have we not? We have tried time and again to make more of our kind. And the rebel Joshua Flynn has made it his mission to keep us from this goal.”

More murmuring, this time derisively. Viv forced herself to breathe, followed all the advice she would give to a patient. She had to find Sia, and if she was panicking, she couldn’t help anyone. She fought the urge to collapse and stood straighter.
 

“Joshua Flynn has been killing us, one by one, leaving our remains out in the cold. He is our enemy, make no mistake. He is against progress, against becoming something new, something more. He, my friends, will never join us as gods in this fantastic new world. A world that dwells in the light. He will always stay in the dark, dank places of the world. He will never know what it is to be anything more than a monster.

“But here, we defy the outlaw, the lover of death. Tonight, we will succeed in our quest. We will replicate our heavenly host. We will make a star tonight. We will use science to be more than gods, my friends. We will be the very galaxy holding the stars.”

He raised his hand with a flourish and the Rev holding the wall, pushed and the wall opened up. He ran along it, and it folded like an accordion, attaching to the other side with the flip of a latch. On the other side of the wall was a room that looked very much like an operating room. And on top of the table was Sia.

“Oh, isn’t it exciting?” said Margaret Watts, squeezing Viv's arm tightly.

Thirty-One

As Sia played, her mind screamed for Joshua. She fed every fear, every desire into each note. She poured into her music her hunger to find her daughter, her love for a man who was something more than human, her desire to plunge a stake into each and every one of the creatures dancing. And when they ushered her away, she looked around the room hopefully. Looking for a figure dressed in black, a man who moved so fast that you weren’t sure you’d seen him until he was right in front of you.
 

But Joshua wasn’t there.

Sia pushed down the fear. Mathilde said they needed her. They weren’t going to hurt her, not really. The Revs wanted her to kill Joshua. But then Conrad said they had Ana. The world had gone askew and nothing seemed right. Sia tried to reach into her sleeve, to touch the stake lodged into her corset, but the Revs leading her down the stairs were holding her arms. She told herself it was so she didn’t lose her balance in the heels they gave her, but when they got to the floor, the Revs didn’t let go.
 

The needle came as a surprise. It shouldn’t have, but it did. As Sia lost the feeling in her legs, as she slumped forward, the Revs dragging her feet along the floor, she couldn’t help but cry out.
 

“Joshua, please.”

Sia didn’t want to open her eyes. She could hear the applause outside of her, and the darkness was so good. Sleep. She hadn’t slept like this since before the whole world went upside-down. She hadn’t slept like this since the nights with Joshua and music and lovemaking and wine mixed with blood. Sia smiled to think of it. She reached out to touch him, but there was something cold holding her wrist. Both of her wrists. She couldn’t move her head or her legs or her torso.

Sia forced her eyes open and gasped at the brightness. A spotlight shining down on her, gleamed on the metal cuffs that bolted her wrists to a metal table. From the feel of it there were others at her waist and ankles, and around her forehead.

“What are you doing?” Sia said, meaning to scream the words, but only managing to slur the words in the quietest of voices. She struggled against the metal bands, but she was held tight. Figures busied themselves around her beyond the light. One of them reached up and moved the light away from her face, and she thought she was hallucinating.

The Revs wore surgical masks and gloves, their white coats gleaming almost as brightly as the metal. The one closest to her held a scalpel. Beyond them, she could see the party, the dancers and revelers standing in a crowd, watching. Some of them were clapping and smiling. Two in the front row were humans, Sia saw, narrowing her eyes. The president’s secretary was standing with the woman who had visited her in the hospital. The sad-eyed woman who used to be a doctor. She had brought the blood in on a little silver cart. Then she remembered: The blood was supposed to be tainted. That’s what Mike Novak said in the courtyard.
 

The Revs in her lessons, the ones who drank tainted blood, were the worst. They went crazy and sick and wrong all at once. Their bodies transformed into something gnarled and twisted, and their eyes went all empty and mad and angry. Sia hated looking at them because she felt sorry for them. But at this moment, she hoped every last one of them turned into a slobbering mad thing that flailed at its own body until it broke its own teeth away. She would look at them and laugh before she killed them.
 

“Stop it,” Sia said, her voice growing louder, her fear filling her up. “Don’t!” She looked at the woman. What was her name? Sia couldn’t remember. “Make them stop!” she shouted at her. But the woman only shook her head. Tears rolled down her face and Sia saw that the secretary had one arm firmly around the woman’s waist, the other around her wrist. She was as much a prisoner as Sia.

The Rev with the scalpel was looking down at her, tilting his head this way and that. The other Revs in surgical masks circled the table, looking down at her. Sia glared up at them. She wasn’t going to scream. She wouldn’t give them the satisfaction.

The scalpel came down toward her and she jumped. The Rev sliced down and she felt cold air against her skin, the slippery silk of her dress falling away. Sia gritted her teeth as he slipped the scalpel between the laces in the front of the corset and, one by one, sliced them away. The tightness of the corset fell away then, too, and she heard the sound of the stakes falling to the floor. One, two, three. But not the fourth. She could feel the fourth underneath her. The Revs didn’t notice, just kicked whatever had fallen out from under their feet. Sia could hear them hit the metal table underneath her.
 

Sia locked eyes with the Rev holding the scalpel.
 

“You’re going to regret this,” she said.

“Try to relax,” the Rev said. Then over his shoulder he said, “Prepare the donor.”

Sia watched as a figure emerged from behind a curtain, a figure scarred with pieces of herself cut away. She didn’t have her veil, but that face was burned into Sia's memory. A set of red lips trembled and a pair of dark eyes watched her, full of grief.

“We have to stop,” said Mathilde. “I’ve changed my mind.”