Vigil (32 page)

back into the sea.”

“Thanks for that,” his father said. “It’s what I wanted.”

“Would you do anything differently?” Adin asked. “If you knew?”

“Maybe.” Keene shrugged. “I might have waited twenty years before I

bought the boat.”

Adin nodded. “I thought you’d say something like that.”

“What about you?”

“What do you mean?”

“You heard me, what would you do? Differently, I mean. If you had a

second chance?”

Adin gasped and reached out blindly, striking his broken arm

against the metal frame of the bed. He braced himself for the

intense physical pain he knew would follow, but it never came.

His arm should have hurt a lot. It should have hurt like
hell
. He

opened his eyes and found Tuan sitting in the chair beside his

bed. He wore a worried expression on his face, even as he got up

and said, “Shh, Adin. Everything’s going to be all right.”

“What’s going on?”

“I don’t know if—”

“Was what Bran said true? Am I…?”

Tuan’s expression tightened. “Yes.”

Adin closed his eyes. “Who?”

“Adin—”

“I asked you who did this to me.” Adin ground his teeth

together against a wave of nausea.

Tuan lifted his hands, palms up. “We don’t know for certain.

Vigil
219

We’re still trying to get answers…”

“
Tuan
.”

“All right.
Yes
. Based on the information we have so far, and

given that none but a handful of people know you’re here? We

have to assume Donte did it.”

Adin shut his eyes, unable to think. How did he feel about

that? How was he supposed to feel about that? His entire body

felt cold suddenly—as if he’d been bathed in ice—and he began

to tremble. Shaking like he was in shock. Maybe he was.

“Tuan?”

“Don’t panic, Adin. This is…” He stood and gripped Adin’s

hand. “This is just the beginning. But you have to know we’ll do

everything we can. Everything we know how to do to help you

through this.”

“Can you stop it?” Adin said through clenched teeth.

Tuan shook his head.

“
So cold
.” Adin shivered as he looked around. “Where’s

Edward?”

“He’s with Bran.”

“
Fuck
.” Adin held his body rigid, trying to keep it from shaking

apart but it was no use. “Bran. Wh-what ab-bout B-bran?”

“Edward will take care of him. You’ll be here for a while,

Adin. I’m not going to lie to you. This isn’t going to be easy, and

it’s not always successful. There’s a chance you won’t survive it.”

Adin considered this. “W-where is D-d-donte?”

Tuan shook his head sadly. “I’m sorry. I don’t know.”

The days and nights that followed took on a dizzying,

disorienting sameness for Adin. His dreams, which were already

vivid and unpredictable since he’d met Bran, took on a nightmare

quality as he changed, imbuing him with new senses, dark cravings

and a dreadful and utterly insistent set of phobias. The most

potent was a terror of the sun that caused such vividly realistic

220 Z.A. Maxfield

panic attacks—all unnecessary because he’d been locked away

early on in a room that had no windows, deep in the basement

where they handled cases like his—that he struggled against the

restraints until his flesh burned and his screams could be heard

throughout the hospital’s long corridors. Ultimately, someone

would then come to subdue and sedate him leaving him weak

and powerless, until the next time it happened.

He had no way to gage the passage of time. It was dark and

quiet, sealed off from the outside world to prevent the stimulation

of his new and possibly uncontrollable vampire behavior. He

could hear nothing from the outside, see nothing, and sense

nothing unless someone opened the sliding door and entered his

room. Bran’s calming presence no longer found its way into his

dreams. Consequently, he faced them alone, unprepared for the

sinister new longings he felt.

The hospital staff made their way into and out of his room

in the faint glow of the poorest light, meeting his needs for the

most part, offering palliative care, as if he were a hospice patient,

waiting for the inevitable. He wanted, in his lucid moments, to be

cured, to be with family or friends, to be free of the room and

the dark IV and all its implications. He wanted to be Dr. Adin

Tredeger again.

When anyone entered, Adin watched them constantly,

breathing in the richness of the blood that rushed through their

veins. Even though he needed no sustenance, his eyes tracked

their slightest movements. He watched the barely perceptible

throbbing of the pulse in their necks, imagining the taste of their

flesh.

As men and women worked around him, he discovered new

talents. A simple push of his thoughts could cause hearts to race.

The monster that was growing inside Adin triumphed to hear

it. He could sense the release of sweet adrenaline as breathing

quickened as the objects of his experimentation fought the urge

to flee.

Rationally, they had to be aware that he was harmless. He was

restrained, sedated, and helpless. But a gentle press of thought

Vigil
221

made fear grip them all over again, it was instinct too old to

identify, too palpable—too visceral—to ignore. He could feel the

terror that infused them. He could taste it on the air around him.

The new thing inside him, cruel and predatory, caused saliva to

run in his mouth as his canines ripped through his tender gums

pressing aside his incisors, elongating, throbbing and ready to

sink into human flesh until everyone left him once again, alone

in the dark.

In those quickening heartbeats, there was only the hunt, the

desire, the need for a clean kill and—above all—the urge to

appease his new, insatiable appetite for blood.

There were moments, too, when he was Adin Tredeger

again, aware, appalled, and fully conscious of the thing he could

become. When despair and revulsion vied for the top spot on

his emotional hit parade, and he cried out for Donte, who never

came.

Yet Adin
sensed
him. Donte’s presence—while not physical—

seemed to color the atmosphere around Adin, hanging there

sweetly like the vague scent of a subtle perfume. Every now and

again, when Adin woke, he’d find a gift. Something new and

different, placed on the table next to his bed or even clutched

in his hand. Something simple that gave him pleasure, a faceted

crystal orb with a tea light in it that threw rainbows across

the sheet covering his nakedness. A perfect conch shell, sleek

and smooth on the inside, ridged and tactile on the outside. It

smelled like salt and wind and sun to Adin, as though it had been

dipped into the ocean then allowed to dry outdoors. Blue glass

and an ostrich feather. A golden lump of resin Adin knew to

be Frankincense, released its heady aroma into the room. The

symbol, sometimes used to signify transition, new spiritual life,

wasn’t lost on him during what he’d begun to think of as his “Adin

moments”. The animal within him, the newly awakened beast

was content to breathe in its sweet earthy scent. All of Donte’s

gifts, thoughtfully procured, slyly offered, held the perfect appeal

for each facet of the man who was once Adin Tredeger.

Sometimes they made him smile.

222 Z.A. Maxfield

Sometimes they made him cry.

“Adin.” Tuan’s voice.

The predator leaped within him, angry at its captors. Especially

Tuan, because Adin wasn’t fooled by the patient accountant

anymore. He sensed…something feral and predatory under

Tuan’s skin. “It’s about fucking time someone showed their face.

Come here and release me before I rip myself apart and come

after you.”

“I understand your frustration.” Tuan moved to the wall and

toggled a switch that caused light to flare in the small room. Tuan

and Christobel Santos stood inside his room, side by side, solemn

and wary. “The process is painful and frightening. We attempt to

make it easier to bear with sedation and environmental control,

but there’s no cure and no guarantee that anything we can do will

help.”

Adin tried to get control over his roiling thoughts. “I

sometimes think I must be imagining everything, but then the

hunger comes…”

Santos’s dark eyes regarded Adin with pity. “Eventually you

will learn to control that, but it will never go away.”

“Did you do this?” Adin asked Santos directly.

“I did
not
.” Santos stepped forward. Adin watched his face

carefully for clues that he might be lying, but found none.

“I need to get out of here.”

“It’s not safe unless you have someone to mentor you,” Tuan

told him quietly.

“Donte—”

“No one knows where Donte is.” Tuan’s face tightened in

what Adin assumed was contempt, “He sends you little gifts

when he should be—”

Santos spoke. “Since Fedeltà has chosen to abdicate his

responsibility, I volunteered.”

Vigil
223

Adin laughed weakly. “How you must be enjoying this.”

“The chance to take Donte’s prize? Yes. But unfortunately

I find I am unwilling to take pleasure in your suffering. Even at

Donte’s expense.”

“Have you suddenly found scruples?”

Santos picked a minuscule piece of lint off the sleeve of his

immaculate suit coat and growled, “Sadly, it seems I have.”

“Take heart, they probably won’t last.” Adin tugged at the

restraints that bound him. Impatient. Angry. The monster inside

him was ready to feed. “Who do I have to fuck to leave this

dump?”

Out of nowhere, Adin heard Edward’s voice. “There’s

someone here to see you.”

For a brief and awful moment Adin thought it might be his

sister Deana. It was far, far too soon to face his only remaining

family member with the sordid truth of his new existence...

“
Adin
.” Bran’s voice.

“Hello, Bran. It seems you were right. I’m afraid I didn’t

dream—”

“It’s going to be all right, Adin.” Bran tried to console him

and it made his heart feel like lead in his chest.
He
should have

been taking care of Bran. Not the other way around.

“Bran, I’m so sorry I let you down.”

“You never let me down. It’s just…I don’t know. It’s the way

of the world...”

“Where are you?” For the first time, Adin was aware of a

fixture in the ceiling that resembled half of a Victorian gazing

ball.
Camera
. Shit. Had someone been monitoring him this whole

time?

“We can see you, and there’s an intercom,” Edward told him.

“We haven’t been allowed in until now.”

“How long has it been?”

“Nearly four weeks.” Edward’s voice wavered. “Bran started

224 Z.A. Maxfield

school.”

Adin closed his eyes.
Four weeks
.

Santos spoke. “If it makes you feel any better, when I was

turned it was nearly two years before I could be around anyone.

I spent that time in an iron cage like an animal, tearing my flesh

from my bones in my rage, only to have it repair itself while I

slept. Things have changed since the sixteenth century.”

Adin met Santos’s dark eyes. “Next you’re going to tell me

that in order to kill someone you had to walk uphill both ways in

the snow.”

Santos stepped forward and flicked a finger painfully at Adin’s

forehead. “You’re a pain in the ass, Adin. There will be no end to

the satisfaction of the man who will eventually beat that out of

you. Thank heavens I have only to teach you how to survive your

new existence, and the best way to feed,
without
killing.”

Adin noticed he no longer had a cast on his arm when Tuan

stepped forward to remove Adin’s restraints. Santos stepped

around the hospital bed and worked on his other side. Together,

they lifted Adin’s naked body from the bed and helped him clothe

himself. He was not physically weak, far from it. He simply found

himself unable to coordinate the movement of his limbs into

some semblance of normal activity, as if his mind and his body

no longer communicated.

“What the hell?” He balked at sitting in the wheelchair that

Tuan provided.

“You’ll be relearning balance and coordination, but for now

it’s best if you take it slow.”

Adin scrubbed at his face with the heels of his hands. “Just

get me the fuck out of here.” He eyed Tuan and Santos until they

opened that sliding door and wheeled him out. In the hallway,

Boaz waited.

“I’ll be packing the things from your room, Dr. Tredeger.”

Adin glanced behind him, thinking about the trinkets Donte

left for him. It didn’t matter how he’d gotten them in there,