The Thief (Black Dagger Brotherhood #16)(96)

“What is a rosary?” the guy asked even as he started for the cellar door.

“A necklace of beads with a cross. You’ll see it there.”

She refocused on her grandmother. The nurse was flashing a penlight into first the right then the left eye.

“What do you think is going on?” Sola asked. “Can you tell me anything?”

“Dr. Manello is on his way. I’m just triaging at this point—her pulse is weak, her pressure is low, and I think we’re going to want to do some blood work. He’s better with humans than I am.”

Sola shook her head at that last one. “So you don’t know what’s caused this?”

“We need more information.” Ehlena smiled at her patient. “But you’re awake, and that’s a really good sign. Does anything hurt, Mrs. Carvalho? Do you have a headache? Any pains in your calves?”

The shake of the head for “no” was slow in coming, but it was firm.

“Can you squeeze my fingers?” the nurse said as she put two against one palm. “You can? Good. How about on this side? Good. How many fingers am I holding up. Three? Perfect. You’re passing all my tests, Mrs. Carvalho.”

“Here is the rotisserie.”

As Evale held out the chain with its well-worn beads, Sola didn’t bother to correct him. “Thank you. Thank you so much—”

An alarm sounded, shrill and painful to the ear, and everybody jumped.

“The stove—damn it!” Assail ran across and turned off something that had started to burn on the cooktop. “Ehric—open the door. We have to get the heat and smoke out.”

From the corner of her eye, Sola watched the men get dishtowels and wave them under the alarm, and the silence, when it came, was a relief, but not an improvement on the real situation.

That was only happening if her grandmother sat up, got herself to her feet, and started yelling at people for leaving those potatoes on way too long.

Ehlena got to her feet. “I’m just going to call Dr. Manello—he’s coming as fast as he can. Will you excuse me?”

Sola nodded at the nurse, who went over in the corner, put a cell phone to her ear, and spoke quietly.

Leaning down to her grandmother, Sola put the rosary in her vovó’s hand and spoke in Spanish. “Do not leave me.”

“You marry that man,” her vovó said in a weak voice. “You marry him.”

“Okay, Vovó. I will.”

“Promise me?”

“You’re not dying.”

“That is God’s will, not mine. I am happy to go home to Him now that I know you have someone to love you.”

Sola swiped her eyes. “You’re not going anywhere, Grandmother.”

“You are safe with him. He stares at you…like you are his whole world. This makes me happy—I can die now happy.”

“Stop talking like that. Right now.”

“Child…” Her grandmother seemed to struggle to focus. But then she reached up and touched Sola’s face. “I am old. It is my time—I can’t live forever. But now…I don’t have to worry. He will take care of you. I am…at peace as long as you swear to me now…you will marry him.”

Sola had to wipe her eyes again. This wasn’t happening, she told herself. This couldn’t possibly be happening. She did not bring her grandmother all this way back north just to have her die.

Oh, God, I’ve killed her, she thought.

“Marisol, swear to me.” The voice was weak; the demand was not. “Or I cannot be at peace.”

“I swear to you…I will marry him.”





FORTY-FOUR


The hardest part of any doctor’s job was talking to the families of patients who had died. To look a grieving spouse, child, father, mother, brother, sister, in the eye and have to tell them that, in spite of everything you had learned and all that was at your disposal, you had not been able to keep their loved one alive…was a nightmare.

But what the hell did you say about something like this? Jane thought as she stared at the mobile surgical unit’s empty exam table.

As the RV slowed and made a fat turn, she sat back down beside Vishous and tried to put the series of events into perspective. Into a rational framework. Into something that could be explained without the use of the word “zombie.”

God in heaven above, she thought. Not for the first time.

They didn’t even have a body anymore.

“Almost there,” Qhuinn said from up front.

Leaning around V, Jane looked down the surgical unit’s interior and through the front windshield. She couldn’t see much but evergreens and skeleton trees all covered in snow—no, wait, there was the farmhouse.

Havers’s underground medical facility was located on the far side of the Hudson, deep in a forest, and it was accessible through various entry points, all separated by plenty of distance. The one they were going to use was the faker homestead with the barn out back, the one that appeared to be where peaceable humans resided, the ruse to hide the rest.

This was where deliveries came in, and also, when sadly applicable, bodies.

After Qhuinn turned them around in the drive and parked them butt-in to the barn, Jane got out of the RV and took a series of deep breaths. She still had no idea what she was going to say to the civilian’s next of kin. Cause of death: cardiac failure due to traumatic injury. Cause of reanimation: no clue. Secondary cause of death: incineration by my mate’s hand.