Generation V (32 page)

I was in my bedroom at Madeline’s mansion, tucked into my old bed and propped partially up with a few pillows. Light was streaming in through the open windows, illuminating the movie posters that I’d covered my old walls with.
Jurassic Park
,
Independence Day
,
The Matrix
…my taste in movies had been pretty typical for a teenager. It wasn’t until a freshman film class that I realized that the value of a movie wasn’t entirely conditional on the number of explosions it contained. I hadn’t been up here in a few years, and I would’ve expected the posters
to have been cleared out, but they were all still up, and still attached with strips of masking tape.

Bhumika was beside the bed, reading quietly in her wheelchair. Today she was wearing a bright yellow sundress topped off with an oversize white T-shirt that was decorated with googly-eyed cartoon lobsters. She was about halfway through
Guns, Germs, and Steel
. Her taste usually ran more toward Charlaine Harris and Jodi Picoult, but every now and then I’d seen her pick up something from Chivalry’s pile of books and read through it. I watched her for a long minute, seeing the way she occasionally frowned at whatever she was reading, the way that she’d unconsciously lick one finger before turning each page. The book was a large hardcover, and she held it partially propped against the arm of her wheelchair, as if it was too heavy for her to hold upright.

Eventually she glanced up at me, and saw that I was awake. “Fortitude!” she said, a wide smile creasing across her face. She dropped the book down onto her lap, not bothering to mark her place, and reached out to take my hand. “How are you feeling?”

I tried to talk, but at first nothing came out of my throat, which felt like it had been thoroughly buffed with sandpaper. I coughed, trying to clear it, and when Bhumika passed me a cup of water with a straw in it I sipped at it gratefully. I tried to talk again, barely rasping out a single word, and Bhumika squeezed my hand gently.

“Don’t try so hard, honey,” she said. “You’ve been out for three days.”

I looked around, taking in a little more of my surroundings. In addition to the plaster cast on my right
forearm, there was an IV taped to my left wrist. It led to a bag of what looked like regular saline just behind the head of the bed. Among my many bruises and aches, there was a particular throb coming from my groin, and Bhumika seemed to understand the nervous glance I tried to sneak under the sheet, because she patted my hand and said, “The catheter just came out this morning.”

There weren’t too many happy thoughts about that one, and whatever look I gave her made her smile a little. “Don’t worry, everything is okay. You’ve got a few broken ribs, but the arm bone isn’t broken, just stressed enough that the doctor thought that the cast was a good idea to help it heal so that you wouldn’t risk it ending up weak. Your left knee was partially dislocated, but as long as you keep it wrapped up and go easy on it for a while, it will be okay. Lots of cuts and bruises, but everything is looking a lot better after three days of sleep.”

“Why was I out so long?” I finally managed to croak. I felt like a herd of cows had run across me, but nothing she was describing should’ve put me out for so long.

“Your mother asked the doctor to keep you asleep. She says that you pushed yourself too far, and needed to rest.”

There was a hard, icy fear at that, and I wondered if there was another reason that Madeline had wanted me unconscious for a while. I forced myself to ask the question. “Amy Grann?”

Bhumika pulled a folded newspaper out from where she’d stuffed it between her hip and the side of her wheelchair, and handed it to me without a word. I opened it slowly and read.

Amy’s homecoming had been front-page news, and was being hailed as a miracle. A fire had broken out in the house where she’d been held captive, and the man who’d murdered the rest of her family hadn’t gotten out. Some remains the fire marshal found inside what was left of the house were presumed to be his. Amy had been sitting in the backyard when the fire department arrived, and was with her grandparents, and the police had declared the case closed.

“Will she be okay?” I asked Bhumika. She’d lived in this house a long time, and she didn’t pretend to misunderstand me.

“Chivalry talked with your mother,” Bhumika said quietly. “She agreed that even if the little girl talks, all the events were so traumatizing that the police and all the people around her will think that it was just a broken child making up rationalizations for what she’d been through. No one will listen if she says the word
vampire
, and by the time she’s old enough that anyone might listen, she’ll have been through at least a decade of intense therapy, and probably will think that what she remembers is just a child’s fantasy.”

“So she’s safe.” Relief bubbled through me. I’d been terrified that after everything she’d gone through, Amy’s life might’ve been ended to cover up the last of Luca’s crimes.

Bhumika nodded. “Safe for her whole life,” she said, squeezing my hand again. I squeezed back, and relaxed against the pillows.

We were both quiet, just sitting there and listening to the sounds of the birds chattering outside, and beyond that the steady crashing of the ocean waves. I was tired,
but not quite ready to go back to sleep, and in that odd little moment I asked Bhumika the question that I’d always wondered but never really dared to ask.

“Why are you with Chivalry?” I asked. She stiffened, and I knew she didn’t want me to ask this, but I pushed ahead anyway. “When did you know that it would kill you?”

Bhumika dropped my hand and leaned back in her wheelchair. She looked away from me, staring out the window. “I always knew,” she said.

I gaped at her, shocked, as she continued. “I met Chivalry when he was still married to Linda, when she was at the end of her life. I saw how he was with her, how much she was the center of his whole world, even at the end, even when things were at their worst. And I fell in love with him then.”

“You—you mean, the two of you…,” I sputtered.

“Of course not,” she snapped, more harshly than I’d ever heard her talk before. “He
loved
Linda. I was just a friend to him. But…” She paused a long time, thinking, probably imagining the person she’d been before. “Everyone could see that Linda was dying. I became friends with her, would come over to visit, would take her out on days when she was feeling well enough.” Bhumika bit her lip, and I could see the guilt in her eyes.

“Did she know?” I asked.

“I didn’t think so then. I was sure she didn’t. I was so smug, thinking about what a nice person I was being, how selfless. But now…I know that she knew. She knew that I was in love with her husband and was just waiting for her to die and be out of the way so that I could have him.”

“What happened?”

“Linda died, of course. Chivalry mourned her. And I made so sure that I was the one who was comforting him, who kept him company, who was available at the drop of a hat every time he called.” A tear streaked down Bhumika’s cheek, but she didn’t wipe it away, didn’t even seem aware of it as she looked back at the past. “She’d been dead three weeks when we slept together the first time, and that was the night that he showed me what he was.” A hard, self-mocking smile twisted her mouth. “I was so in love with him. I thought it was
romantic
when he fed from me the first time, when he promised that he’d be true to me for the rest of my life, never feed from anyone else, never
love
anyone else.”

“He didn’t tell you that it would kill you?”

“Of course he did!” Bhumika gave a strangled laugh. “Don’t you know your own brother? He never hid anything, never lied, never blunted the truth. But it felt so good to be with him, and the first few times he drank from me and then gave me a drop of his own blood, I felt stronger and healthier than I ever had in my life. He warned me that it was only temporary, but I didn’t want to believe him.” Her voice dropped, and the tears stopped. “I told myself that Linda had been weak, and that I was stronger. That it wouldn’t affect me the way that it had affected her. And for the first few years, everything was perfect. When I felt the start of it, the disease that he’d warned me was coming, I lied to myself and said it was just a summer cold. And when I finally couldn’t lie to myself anymore, I was already creeping toward the end.” She was quiet; then her face slowly
cleared, the bitterness sweeping away as if it had never even been there, and a little contented smile formed. “But Chivalry is still with me. He loves me. And he’ll love me every day of my life.”

“Would you still do it?” I asked. “If you knew then what you do now, would you still do it?”

She sighed and leaned forward in her chair, giving me an almost pitying look as one thin, wasted hand stroked over my forehead. “Silly Fort, haven’t you been listening? I’d watched Linda die day by day, and Chivalry had told me to my face that the same thing would happen to me. I wanted him so much that I ignored every warning, every truth, because I thought that my love would somehow overcome everything. Nothing would have stopped me.” She kept stroking my forehead and whispered, “Now go to sleep.”

And I did.

I napped on and off for the rest of the afternoon. Bhumika kept me company for most of it, but when she got tired I told her that I was perfectly capable of sleeping without an audience, and her nurse took her back to her own room. As soon as the door closed behind her, I pulled out the IV needle and started making my way to the bathroom. Sitting up almost made me pass out again, but after one bad moment my brain apparently remembered that this was something we used to do all the time, and I was okay. The clothes I’d been wearing the day of the fight were gone, and if my memory of their final condition was accurate, Madeline had probably had them burned. Someone had dressed me in an old-fashioned nightshirt, possibly a confluence of its similarity to a modern hospital gown and Chivalry’s habit of storing all
his old clothes in the vain wish that someday white lawn suits and bowler hats would come back into style, and I felt like I was on the run from a company performance of
Peter Pan
. My left knee wobbled a lot, and crossing the room involved a lot of hobbling and a bit of cursing, but I finally made it to the bathroom attached to my bedroom and was able to empty my bladder.

That had been a better idea before I’d realized what it would feel like to pee after having been very recently catheterized, and I cursed a blue streak.

Finished and feeling a bit worse for it, I made my way back to the bed, collapsed on top of it, and was just trying to figure out what I should do next when I conked out again, my still-tender brain apparently deciding that having accomplished the task of peeing, it deserved another nap.

It was dark the next time I woke up, and the breezes coming in from the window were very cool. I felt a lot better than last time, better enough that my stomach was working to make its presence known. I sat up cautiously, but had no problems at all.

There was a brisk rap at the door, and it opened before I could say anything. Chivalry stood in the doorway frowning at me, some plastic bags and one brown paper sack of takeout in his hands.

“You’re supposed to let doctors decide when to take those things out,” he said, nodding at the IV drip that still hung behind my bed.

I shrugged a little. “I felt better.”

“I figured you’d do that,” he said, sighing as he reached into the takeout bag and withdrew a tall drink container, striped with red and white, and handed it to me.

I laughed when I took it from him and saw what was written on it. “You got me an Awful Awful?” I asked, delighted. Awful Awfuls were milkshakes made at the Newport Creamery, a small local chain of greasy spoon diners. Awful Awfuls were made with iced milk instead of ice cream, and were marketed as being “Awful Big, Awful Good,” which was probably one of the only times in marketing history that all statements about a product were true. I took a big sip and felt the chocolaty concoction soothe the last of my sore throat. “Thank you,” I said.

Chivalry shrugged it off. “If you’re feeling better, Mother wants you downstairs for dinner. I figured that might take the edge off. Here.” And he handed me the plastic bags. “I got you some clothes. We trashed the ones you were wearing, and none of the clothes you still have here would fit you anymore. And I’m guessing you’re not interested in wearing a nightshirt downstairs.”

I opened the bags cautiously. From the names on them, Chivalry had been shopping at his kind of store, and I knew from experience that Chivalry’s ideas of what I should wear tended to diverge pretty dramatically from my own. But to my surprise I pulled out a pair of jeans and a gray T-shirt. Just the kind of thing I would’ve wanted, though given where Chivalry had shopped he’d probably paid five times what he could have at a mall. Eyes wide, I stared up at Chivalry.

“Sneakers are in there too,” he said. For a guy who usually carried himself with impeccable grace, there was almost a look of discomfort on his face. “I was able to save the boots you were wearing, but they were pretty worn out and I dropped them off at the cobbler. And
when I saw your other sneakers last week, they looked ready for the trash, so I figured that you could use another pair. Hope you like them.”

Chivalry was actually babbling. I stared up at him. “You didn’t have to do this,” I said.

He looked at me, and there was an intensity in his face that surprised me. He dropped one hand onto my shoulder and gave it a brief squeeze, then looked away. “Yes, I did.” He paused, then took a deep breath. “I’m very proud of you, little brother.”

“For saving Amy Grann?” I asked, confused. “But I thought…”

“For doing what you thought was right,” Chivalry said. He looked back at me, his dark eyes sad. “I wouldn’t have gone after that girl. I tried to take Maria from Luca because you wanted me to and she was in front of me, but I wouldn’t have hunted that other girl down like you did. I can’t feel like you do, but I am very proud of you, and I’m sorry that you weren’t able to ask me for help.”