DN -- The Hunt III: The Hollow
Title: The Hunt
Chapter: 3. The Hollow
Fandom: Death Note
Pairing: Matt/Mello/Near, Light/L
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 3,081
Warnings: language, violence, implied sketchiness, (non-sparkly) vampires
Summary: Discovering a new coven is never a good thing, but there's something strange about this one - and that's even worse. The vampires are closing in. The Hunt is on.
Author's Note: Does anybody remember what was going on in Chapter II? No? Me neither.
CHAPTER III. THE HOLLOW
L stared down the orange bottle on the nightstand.
The heavy velvet curtains, a whole world of allergens encapsulated in their musty folds, were drawn over the windowpane, a few thin lines of sunlight escaping them to cut across the room. L felt the light at his back, felt its fingers, felt the tickling, and in the creaking of the walls, he heard it snicker. His heart shoved at his ribcage, and his focus was drifting like a pale balloon, the ribbon slipping from his grasp.
It figured that his metaphors were disintegrating, too.
He picked at the pillowcase, drawing his knees a little closer to his chest, and memorized the jaundiced, peeling label clinging to orange plastic by a few last threads of glue. He breathed, once, twice, three times, four, and counted the pulse beating in his wrist, just detectable against the sheet. He reached out, picked up the bottle, and turned it one way, then the other, listening to the pills rattle back and forth. This bottle-this half-bottle-was the last of them, the last he had.
It seemed there was a shortage of everything these days. Soporifics had not been spared; therefore, neither had L.
He uncapped the bottle, shook a single sleeping pill into his palm, and popped it into his mouth. He swallowed; its bulk stuck in his throat but then slid down before he could panic or choke. He snapped the top back on and returned the bottle to its place on the table, settling his head on the pillow again.
He’d stopped taking the full dosage a long time ago, but his body hadn’t properly adjusted to the chemical deprivation. He’d acclimated to the lower dose, and efficacy had come to require more. He was desensitized to the drug-as he was to everything.
“L, you have to! You’ve got to; it’s better for him! L, come on! L, please!”
He shut his eyes.
“I can’t,” he muttered to the phantoms, streaks of color beginning to merge on the black canvas of his eyelids.
Odd’s eyes were wide, were pleading, were welling and wet.
“You have to.” The boy’s voice cracked; a tear beaded, spilled, and raced down his cheek. “You have to.”
L rolled onto his back and pressed both hands over his ears, squeezing his eyes so tightly shut that stars blinked and wavered in the dark. Leave me alone; leave me alone; give me two hours’ peace-
They’d been on an innocuous mission-nothing more or less than exploration; just a jaunt around the foothills, and they’d go home. It was a different set of scattered cities; a different woods-L scrabbled for the curtains, for the comforter, for the unused name on the bottle of pills, but all of them, all of it, fell away, and the past claimed him yet again.
They’d been north-far north. They’d been hemmed in on both sides by sheer mountain walls as they followed a narrow ravine, granite arms extending in supplication to the sky, rock and scraggy brush all around them. He’d been antsy; he’d been itching-some part of him had known. It was a whisper on the wind that tore across the peaks, hissed between the scrub plants’ leaves, breathed through every layer of his clothes to kiss the hair at the back of his neck.
But they’d pushed on. Night was falling; it was just two miles to the village where they would take refuge, where they could hide until the morning, where they could curl up beneath the cross until they’d plotted out a new approach. They had that over the vampires-strategy. Intelligence. Vampires weren’t stupid, but the virus didn’t bolster their brainpower with their strength, and L could beat them that way every night.
But they were stronger. And red eyes saw so much further in the dark.
They’d tried. They’d hoped. They’d forged forward; they’d raced the sunset, but evening overtook them, and their flashlight beams were toothpick swords against the enemy.
Ten minutes after darkness fell, one mile from the town, the shadows took shape.
They snapped into formation-backs to the center, a defensive ring. Simple and effective. Blast through a portion of the vampires closing in on them and run. Easy.
Flashlight above his gun barrel, tongue between his teeth, L had put bullets in three snarling, tattooed faces before he heard the click, the curse, and the scream.
Alpha’s gun had jammed.
He went down under a tall, vicious leech who seized the opportunity, and ivory fangs gleamed in the flashlights’ glow.
L was on top of them in seconds, Mello so close on his right that they were in danger of clipping one another; he emptied the rest of the round into the vampire’s back, ragged holes gouged among the ribs, before he dared to take a breath, noticing only vaguely that the other vampires broke ranks and ran.
Four seconds.
Too late.
Alpha was still sobbing when L hauled the body off of him, still gasping when Near drove the stake home, still whimpering when his attacker decomposed at a grotesquely accelerated rate. He was still conscious when Odyssey knelt beside him, gingerly cradling his head, careful fingers skirting the twin puncture wounds staining the collar of his coat.
Alpha had pale blue eyes and straight blond hair that was always a bit too long-it brushed at his eyebrows and lay awkwardly over the tops of his ears. His breath was hitching now, wetly, and a weak cough rocked his chest, bringing up a spatter of blood. His eyes were darting madly back and forth-as if he was watching something they couldn’t see, as if the answer was right before him, and they just couldn’t reach it. One tear gathered along his bottom eyelid, and the touch of his lashes set it rolling towards his ear.
“I’m scared,” he fought out. “I’m so scared, I just-please-oh, God-”
His throat closed, and his eyes snapped shut against the light. The tremors began, jerking his body in earthquake waves, building to the convulsions they knew would come.
L couldn’t move.
Odyssey set Alpha gently down and stood, clenching his fists.
“L,” he said, “did he check the box?”
L wished desolately that he could say he didn’t know.
He swallowed, and the empty words spilled from behind his lips. “Yes. He did.”
There was a line at the bottom of the House contract-set apart. You didn’t have to give your real name; you didn’t have to reveal your age; but that section of the page demanded the truth.
It read: If I’m Turned, my team leader is to kill me before I become one of Them.
Everyone checked the box.
Alpha’s back arched off the gravel, and blood dribbled from the corner of his mouth. Mello and Near were clinging to each other, knuckles white, eyes immense.
Odyssey’s eyes were like spotlights.
“L,” he said, voice quaking, “you have to. You’ve got to. L, come on-please!”
Alpha liked collecting things. There was a shoebox of seashells in his bedroom, one of the few things he always took with them when they relocated, and he had coins from fifteen countries-trinkets he’d picked up everywhere. He’d shown them all to L once, explaining penny by penny where they’d started out and how he’d come to have them. He’d spoken softly, and he’d held up a shy little smile, as if he wasn’t quite sure what he was so happy about.
Odyssey swiped a hand impatiently across his face, smearing dirt into the tear trails cutting down his cheeks.
“L,” he repeated, on the verge of a quavering shout, “you have to!”
I can’t; I can’t; I can’t-
L couldn’t feel his fingertips.
He put his hand into his pocket and selected a single bullet. He pushed it into the chamber, racked the barrel, and stepped up to the boy bleeding onto the rocky ground. He forced himself to breathe.
His hand was steady as he raised the gun, lined up his sights, and slid his finger up and down the trigger’s gentle curve.
I’m so sorry I’m so sorry I had to you know that I had to forgive me please-
He fired one shot.
A lay still. Uncorrupted blood spread slowly across his chest.
L went to his pack, found a black sheet, and wrapped it around the limp, heavy form. He shouldered his pack again, lifted Alpha’s corpse in both arms, and turned to the broken remnants of his team.
“It’s another mile to the church,” he said.
Odyssey heaved himself to his feet, scrubbing hopelessly at his eyes, flung his bag over one shoulder, and started down the path.
L could feel the weight in his arms even now-the weight of the dead boy faceless under the sheet; the weight of losing him. The weight of what was possible every minute of the night.
He buried his face in the pillow, focusing on the sound of his breath, trying to reclaim this moment from its billion predecessors, trying to own today.
The vampire-the brown-haired vampire, hours before. His eyes burned like a beacon on the backs of L’s eyelids, such a vibrant, flaring red. They’d been so brilliant, those eyes-sharp, clever, keen. This one wasn’t just a hungry thing; there was more. There had been a weariness there, L had seen it; a desperation and a… fear. Not fear of the light; not the animal fear of the sparking flare in L’s right hand; a deeper feeling. A dread.
L pushed the thought away. He’d have to kill that creature tonight, or as soon as he could manage. He’d have to watch the red eyes glaze. That was what the House did. It was what they were.
The Hunt was on.
-
Matt’s arm reached after him, fingers wriggling, as Mello slid out of the bed.
“I’m getting breakfast,” Mello announced. “You can sleep until we’re on-duty, for all I care.”
“Will,” Matt promised into the pillow.
“It’s past noon,” Near pointed out, nestling closer to Matt’s chest. “It’s more like lunch at this point.”
Mello gave him the finger, and even though Near’s eyes were closed, he grinned smugly.
Mello bit his lip so that he wouldn’t mutter, put Matt’s pants on, gathered some sort-of-clean clothes, and went to see if there was any hot water left in the clanking pipes.
As it turned out, there was just enough for him to lather up his hair before the shower stream went cold.
Typical.
Sourly, rubbing his thumb back and forth along the contours of his crucifix, he headed down the stairs. If there was nothing but watery leftover oatmeal for lunch, he was going to stake a ho.
“Good timing,” Roger told him, smiling, as he burst into the old conference room they’d turned into a dining hall. “We just got that shipment of chocolate we ordered-two weeks late, but at least it’s here.”
Mello’s chest seized up with joy-he almost couldn’t breathe, and speaking was right out. Stakeable hos could rest easily for now.
Roger got up from the table-from a plate of bread with peanut butter, with what looked like turkey on the side; Mello was overwhelmed, and his mouth was watering fit to make him dehydrated-and led the way to the kitchen. Mello smelled the luscious luxury before he saw the box, and Roger barely had time to get out of the way before he was upon it, taking careful stock.
“Save a little for the girls,” Roger said.
“They can split a bar,” Mello replied.
“I’m sure the fifteen of them will let you get away with that,” Roger noted drily as Mello sifted through the mismatched wrappers. “At least have a little real food first to make sure your stomach’s settled; you can’t afford to get sick before-”
The old-fashioned phone on the counter rang, a bell-like sound that hearkened to a fading world of things that had been normal. Daniel was busy with the turkey-Jesus, that looked good-and shot them a pleading look, so Mello picked up.
“Leech-Killers Incorporated; how may I direct your call?”
“Is Roger there?” It was Wammy, and his voice was tight. “We’ve got what looks like a pair of refugees, and one’s in pretty bad shape.”
Roger had heard, and by the time Mello lowered the receiver, the white-haired man was halfway out the door. Mello followed in case “pretty bad” meant they’d need more hands to stanch the blood. It wouldn’t be the first time he’d done that.
They strode through the once-a-lobby, Gina nodding as they passed, and pushed through the fortified double doors to the rickety tunnel that led to the church. It wasn’t long, and it wasn’t much, but it was infinitely better than leaving their passage open to the night.
At present, of course, the sun peeked through the countless cracks and gaps between the boards, strips of yellow making tiger’s stripes on the frayed fabric of Roger’s sweater. Roger always had his emergency-oriented suitcase at hand, because, as a rule, he hoped for the best and expected the absolute worst.
An oak stake they never took for Hunting lay at the bottom of that case.
You never knew.
They reached the church just as Wammy and Odd were letting two people inside-both were dark-haired and pale-faced, and Mello could see immediately why Roger had been summoned to help. The woman looked all right-there was a nasty gash on her right arm, but it wasn’t festering, and her eyes were sharp and clear-but the man whose weight Wammy was carefully taking from her was bleeding heavily from the deep wound in his side.
With Odd’s help, they laid him down on one of the pews, wincing sympathetically as he cried out, curled up, and reached blindly for the woman’s hand, which she immediately gave him, kneeling close by. Roger joined her, opening the case, and withdrew a series of half-filled jars and clean rags-medical sterility was hard to come by, and, as always, all they could manage was something close. The patient was too preoccupied to protest.
He was gasping, like a man underwater, like it was breath he’d lost instead of blood, and he clutched at the woman’s hand. She gripped his, jaw set, eyes guarded, and looked up at Roger as if to promise that she could take whatever was coming next.
Roger didn’t waste time with an answer, which basically served as one.
It was just water, first, to mop off the worst of the blood, and then there was the usual disinfectant-two parts alcohol, one part holy water.
The man writhed when the ethanol hit the open wound, and the motion summoned still more vibrant fluid from the too-red, too-raw flesh unveiled by the injury. Roger gritted his teeth and threaded a needle with delicate wire.
“Mello,” he said, “are your hands clean?”
The only things he’d really touched since taking a shower were the chocolate bars, the telephone, and his crucifix. Having the residue of the latter might actually help.
“Clean enough,” he decided.
“Good,” Roger noted. He set a finger on either side of the oozing wound to demonstrate. “Hold here-tightly.”
Mello obliged, struggling to disconnect his mind and leave it on a nearby pew-this was just a task, just a favor, just something Roger needed for a minute, not a matter of a man’s life.
Denial was an extraordinarily ineffective strategy when it came to these things.
He pushed the wound shut as best he could, pressing the two ridges of skin together over the space, and tried to duck out of Roger’s light. There was more alcohol, pungent and softly burning in Mello’s nose, and an accompanying hiss from the man, then the needle swooped down once, dove through, swung, and glided through again.
One stitch.
The man gritted his teeth and wrung the woman’s hand. Mello kind of wanted to apologize for the shortage of anesthetic-they saved it for major dental procedures and minor surgeries-but he thought mentioning the prospect might just emphasize the lack.
“Stay calm,” Roger urged the man. “Try to breathe as slowly and as regularly as you can.”
Apparently, that wasn’t very slowly and regularly at all. There was blood smeared all over Mello’s fingertips, and he kept slipping. Roger clenched his jaw and waited, refraining from reprimanding him, and Mello swallowed hard, wiped his hands on the nearest rag, and worked harder to keep the wound closed and steady. The needle rose and descended like a bird, like a sharp-nosed fish leaping, and little stitches slowly pulled the wide laceration shut.
“Thank you, Mello,” Roger murmured when a single firm knot had tied off the wire, and a gleam of clippers had freed the excess. Mello scrambled out of the way, joining Odd at the periphery of the scene. Odd handed him a new rag to clean his hands as Roger bent to treat the smaller scrapes and scratches up and down the man’s ribs, carefully cutting stiff, bloodstained fabric out of the way.
The woman kissed the back of the man’s hand and cradled it in both of hers, clearing her throat.
“This is Raye,” she announced. “I’m Naomi. We’re from Driskin.”
Everyone but Roger went very still.
Driskin was just three miles away, and they’d thought it was safe-their influence extended two miles beyond it, and patrols ranged past it all the time.
“What happened?” Wammy asked, eyes unfathomable, arms folded across his chest.
“They just-came,” the woman answered, pushing her long hair back from her face. “In the middle of the night; no warning, no preparation, nothing. They didn’t-they didn’t hurt anybody who didn’t resist, and they were… methodical. They were incredibly methodical; they were systematic. They were really smart. The leader especially-he had brown hair, and he was very tall. We fought back and refused to let them shepherd us out of our home, but-everybody else, they just searched their houses, rummaged through the basements, slaughtered a few livestock, and then they were gone. They were-” She swallowed, hesitating, and then she mustered her voice again. “They were looking for something.”
[Chapter II] [Chapter IV]
Chapter: 3. The Hollow
Fandom: Death Note
Pairing: Matt/Mello/Near, Light/L
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 3,081
Warnings: language, violence, implied sketchiness, (non-sparkly) vampires
Summary: Discovering a new coven is never a good thing, but there's something strange about this one - and that's even worse. The vampires are closing in. The Hunt is on.
Author's Note: Does anybody remember what was going on in Chapter II? No? Me neither.
CHAPTER III. THE HOLLOW
L stared down the orange bottle on the nightstand.
The heavy velvet curtains, a whole world of allergens encapsulated in their musty folds, were drawn over the windowpane, a few thin lines of sunlight escaping them to cut across the room. L felt the light at his back, felt its fingers, felt the tickling, and in the creaking of the walls, he heard it snicker. His heart shoved at his ribcage, and his focus was drifting like a pale balloon, the ribbon slipping from his grasp.
It figured that his metaphors were disintegrating, too.
He picked at the pillowcase, drawing his knees a little closer to his chest, and memorized the jaundiced, peeling label clinging to orange plastic by a few last threads of glue. He breathed, once, twice, three times, four, and counted the pulse beating in his wrist, just detectable against the sheet. He reached out, picked up the bottle, and turned it one way, then the other, listening to the pills rattle back and forth. This bottle-this half-bottle-was the last of them, the last he had.
It seemed there was a shortage of everything these days. Soporifics had not been spared; therefore, neither had L.
He uncapped the bottle, shook a single sleeping pill into his palm, and popped it into his mouth. He swallowed; its bulk stuck in his throat but then slid down before he could panic or choke. He snapped the top back on and returned the bottle to its place on the table, settling his head on the pillow again.
He’d stopped taking the full dosage a long time ago, but his body hadn’t properly adjusted to the chemical deprivation. He’d acclimated to the lower dose, and efficacy had come to require more. He was desensitized to the drug-as he was to everything.
“L, you have to! You’ve got to; it’s better for him! L, come on! L, please!”
He shut his eyes.
“I can’t,” he muttered to the phantoms, streaks of color beginning to merge on the black canvas of his eyelids.
Odd’s eyes were wide, were pleading, were welling and wet.
“You have to.” The boy’s voice cracked; a tear beaded, spilled, and raced down his cheek. “You have to.”
L rolled onto his back and pressed both hands over his ears, squeezing his eyes so tightly shut that stars blinked and wavered in the dark. Leave me alone; leave me alone; give me two hours’ peace-
They’d been on an innocuous mission-nothing more or less than exploration; just a jaunt around the foothills, and they’d go home. It was a different set of scattered cities; a different woods-L scrabbled for the curtains, for the comforter, for the unused name on the bottle of pills, but all of them, all of it, fell away, and the past claimed him yet again.
They’d been north-far north. They’d been hemmed in on both sides by sheer mountain walls as they followed a narrow ravine, granite arms extending in supplication to the sky, rock and scraggy brush all around them. He’d been antsy; he’d been itching-some part of him had known. It was a whisper on the wind that tore across the peaks, hissed between the scrub plants’ leaves, breathed through every layer of his clothes to kiss the hair at the back of his neck.
But they’d pushed on. Night was falling; it was just two miles to the village where they would take refuge, where they could hide until the morning, where they could curl up beneath the cross until they’d plotted out a new approach. They had that over the vampires-strategy. Intelligence. Vampires weren’t stupid, but the virus didn’t bolster their brainpower with their strength, and L could beat them that way every night.
But they were stronger. And red eyes saw so much further in the dark.
They’d tried. They’d hoped. They’d forged forward; they’d raced the sunset, but evening overtook them, and their flashlight beams were toothpick swords against the enemy.
Ten minutes after darkness fell, one mile from the town, the shadows took shape.
They snapped into formation-backs to the center, a defensive ring. Simple and effective. Blast through a portion of the vampires closing in on them and run. Easy.
Flashlight above his gun barrel, tongue between his teeth, L had put bullets in three snarling, tattooed faces before he heard the click, the curse, and the scream.
Alpha’s gun had jammed.
He went down under a tall, vicious leech who seized the opportunity, and ivory fangs gleamed in the flashlights’ glow.
L was on top of them in seconds, Mello so close on his right that they were in danger of clipping one another; he emptied the rest of the round into the vampire’s back, ragged holes gouged among the ribs, before he dared to take a breath, noticing only vaguely that the other vampires broke ranks and ran.
Four seconds.
Too late.
Alpha was still sobbing when L hauled the body off of him, still gasping when Near drove the stake home, still whimpering when his attacker decomposed at a grotesquely accelerated rate. He was still conscious when Odyssey knelt beside him, gingerly cradling his head, careful fingers skirting the twin puncture wounds staining the collar of his coat.
Alpha had pale blue eyes and straight blond hair that was always a bit too long-it brushed at his eyebrows and lay awkwardly over the tops of his ears. His breath was hitching now, wetly, and a weak cough rocked his chest, bringing up a spatter of blood. His eyes were darting madly back and forth-as if he was watching something they couldn’t see, as if the answer was right before him, and they just couldn’t reach it. One tear gathered along his bottom eyelid, and the touch of his lashes set it rolling towards his ear.
“I’m scared,” he fought out. “I’m so scared, I just-please-oh, God-”
His throat closed, and his eyes snapped shut against the light. The tremors began, jerking his body in earthquake waves, building to the convulsions they knew would come.
L couldn’t move.
Odyssey set Alpha gently down and stood, clenching his fists.
“L,” he said, “did he check the box?”
L wished desolately that he could say he didn’t know.
He swallowed, and the empty words spilled from behind his lips. “Yes. He did.”
There was a line at the bottom of the House contract-set apart. You didn’t have to give your real name; you didn’t have to reveal your age; but that section of the page demanded the truth.
It read: If I’m Turned, my team leader is to kill me before I become one of Them.
Everyone checked the box.
Alpha’s back arched off the gravel, and blood dribbled from the corner of his mouth. Mello and Near were clinging to each other, knuckles white, eyes immense.
Odyssey’s eyes were like spotlights.
“L,” he said, voice quaking, “you have to. You’ve got to. L, come on-please!”
Alpha liked collecting things. There was a shoebox of seashells in his bedroom, one of the few things he always took with them when they relocated, and he had coins from fifteen countries-trinkets he’d picked up everywhere. He’d shown them all to L once, explaining penny by penny where they’d started out and how he’d come to have them. He’d spoken softly, and he’d held up a shy little smile, as if he wasn’t quite sure what he was so happy about.
Odyssey swiped a hand impatiently across his face, smearing dirt into the tear trails cutting down his cheeks.
“L,” he repeated, on the verge of a quavering shout, “you have to!”
I can’t; I can’t; I can’t-
L couldn’t feel his fingertips.
He put his hand into his pocket and selected a single bullet. He pushed it into the chamber, racked the barrel, and stepped up to the boy bleeding onto the rocky ground. He forced himself to breathe.
His hand was steady as he raised the gun, lined up his sights, and slid his finger up and down the trigger’s gentle curve.
I’m so sorry I’m so sorry I had to you know that I had to forgive me please-
He fired one shot.
A lay still. Uncorrupted blood spread slowly across his chest.
L went to his pack, found a black sheet, and wrapped it around the limp, heavy form. He shouldered his pack again, lifted Alpha’s corpse in both arms, and turned to the broken remnants of his team.
“It’s another mile to the church,” he said.
Odyssey heaved himself to his feet, scrubbing hopelessly at his eyes, flung his bag over one shoulder, and started down the path.
L could feel the weight in his arms even now-the weight of the dead boy faceless under the sheet; the weight of losing him. The weight of what was possible every minute of the night.
He buried his face in the pillow, focusing on the sound of his breath, trying to reclaim this moment from its billion predecessors, trying to own today.
The vampire-the brown-haired vampire, hours before. His eyes burned like a beacon on the backs of L’s eyelids, such a vibrant, flaring red. They’d been so brilliant, those eyes-sharp, clever, keen. This one wasn’t just a hungry thing; there was more. There had been a weariness there, L had seen it; a desperation and a… fear. Not fear of the light; not the animal fear of the sparking flare in L’s right hand; a deeper feeling. A dread.
L pushed the thought away. He’d have to kill that creature tonight, or as soon as he could manage. He’d have to watch the red eyes glaze. That was what the House did. It was what they were.
The Hunt was on.
-
Matt’s arm reached after him, fingers wriggling, as Mello slid out of the bed.
“I’m getting breakfast,” Mello announced. “You can sleep until we’re on-duty, for all I care.”
“Will,” Matt promised into the pillow.
“It’s past noon,” Near pointed out, nestling closer to Matt’s chest. “It’s more like lunch at this point.”
Mello gave him the finger, and even though Near’s eyes were closed, he grinned smugly.
Mello bit his lip so that he wouldn’t mutter, put Matt’s pants on, gathered some sort-of-clean clothes, and went to see if there was any hot water left in the clanking pipes.
As it turned out, there was just enough for him to lather up his hair before the shower stream went cold.
Typical.
Sourly, rubbing his thumb back and forth along the contours of his crucifix, he headed down the stairs. If there was nothing but watery leftover oatmeal for lunch, he was going to stake a ho.
“Good timing,” Roger told him, smiling, as he burst into the old conference room they’d turned into a dining hall. “We just got that shipment of chocolate we ordered-two weeks late, but at least it’s here.”
Mello’s chest seized up with joy-he almost couldn’t breathe, and speaking was right out. Stakeable hos could rest easily for now.
Roger got up from the table-from a plate of bread with peanut butter, with what looked like turkey on the side; Mello was overwhelmed, and his mouth was watering fit to make him dehydrated-and led the way to the kitchen. Mello smelled the luscious luxury before he saw the box, and Roger barely had time to get out of the way before he was upon it, taking careful stock.
“Save a little for the girls,” Roger said.
“They can split a bar,” Mello replied.
“I’m sure the fifteen of them will let you get away with that,” Roger noted drily as Mello sifted through the mismatched wrappers. “At least have a little real food first to make sure your stomach’s settled; you can’t afford to get sick before-”
The old-fashioned phone on the counter rang, a bell-like sound that hearkened to a fading world of things that had been normal. Daniel was busy with the turkey-Jesus, that looked good-and shot them a pleading look, so Mello picked up.
“Leech-Killers Incorporated; how may I direct your call?”
“Is Roger there?” It was Wammy, and his voice was tight. “We’ve got what looks like a pair of refugees, and one’s in pretty bad shape.”
Roger had heard, and by the time Mello lowered the receiver, the white-haired man was halfway out the door. Mello followed in case “pretty bad” meant they’d need more hands to stanch the blood. It wouldn’t be the first time he’d done that.
They strode through the once-a-lobby, Gina nodding as they passed, and pushed through the fortified double doors to the rickety tunnel that led to the church. It wasn’t long, and it wasn’t much, but it was infinitely better than leaving their passage open to the night.
At present, of course, the sun peeked through the countless cracks and gaps between the boards, strips of yellow making tiger’s stripes on the frayed fabric of Roger’s sweater. Roger always had his emergency-oriented suitcase at hand, because, as a rule, he hoped for the best and expected the absolute worst.
An oak stake they never took for Hunting lay at the bottom of that case.
You never knew.
They reached the church just as Wammy and Odd were letting two people inside-both were dark-haired and pale-faced, and Mello could see immediately why Roger had been summoned to help. The woman looked all right-there was a nasty gash on her right arm, but it wasn’t festering, and her eyes were sharp and clear-but the man whose weight Wammy was carefully taking from her was bleeding heavily from the deep wound in his side.
With Odd’s help, they laid him down on one of the pews, wincing sympathetically as he cried out, curled up, and reached blindly for the woman’s hand, which she immediately gave him, kneeling close by. Roger joined her, opening the case, and withdrew a series of half-filled jars and clean rags-medical sterility was hard to come by, and, as always, all they could manage was something close. The patient was too preoccupied to protest.
He was gasping, like a man underwater, like it was breath he’d lost instead of blood, and he clutched at the woman’s hand. She gripped his, jaw set, eyes guarded, and looked up at Roger as if to promise that she could take whatever was coming next.
Roger didn’t waste time with an answer, which basically served as one.
It was just water, first, to mop off the worst of the blood, and then there was the usual disinfectant-two parts alcohol, one part holy water.
The man writhed when the ethanol hit the open wound, and the motion summoned still more vibrant fluid from the too-red, too-raw flesh unveiled by the injury. Roger gritted his teeth and threaded a needle with delicate wire.
“Mello,” he said, “are your hands clean?”
The only things he’d really touched since taking a shower were the chocolate bars, the telephone, and his crucifix. Having the residue of the latter might actually help.
“Clean enough,” he decided.
“Good,” Roger noted. He set a finger on either side of the oozing wound to demonstrate. “Hold here-tightly.”
Mello obliged, struggling to disconnect his mind and leave it on a nearby pew-this was just a task, just a favor, just something Roger needed for a minute, not a matter of a man’s life.
Denial was an extraordinarily ineffective strategy when it came to these things.
He pushed the wound shut as best he could, pressing the two ridges of skin together over the space, and tried to duck out of Roger’s light. There was more alcohol, pungent and softly burning in Mello’s nose, and an accompanying hiss from the man, then the needle swooped down once, dove through, swung, and glided through again.
One stitch.
The man gritted his teeth and wrung the woman’s hand. Mello kind of wanted to apologize for the shortage of anesthetic-they saved it for major dental procedures and minor surgeries-but he thought mentioning the prospect might just emphasize the lack.
“Stay calm,” Roger urged the man. “Try to breathe as slowly and as regularly as you can.”
Apparently, that wasn’t very slowly and regularly at all. There was blood smeared all over Mello’s fingertips, and he kept slipping. Roger clenched his jaw and waited, refraining from reprimanding him, and Mello swallowed hard, wiped his hands on the nearest rag, and worked harder to keep the wound closed and steady. The needle rose and descended like a bird, like a sharp-nosed fish leaping, and little stitches slowly pulled the wide laceration shut.
“Thank you, Mello,” Roger murmured when a single firm knot had tied off the wire, and a gleam of clippers had freed the excess. Mello scrambled out of the way, joining Odd at the periphery of the scene. Odd handed him a new rag to clean his hands as Roger bent to treat the smaller scrapes and scratches up and down the man’s ribs, carefully cutting stiff, bloodstained fabric out of the way.
The woman kissed the back of the man’s hand and cradled it in both of hers, clearing her throat.
“This is Raye,” she announced. “I’m Naomi. We’re from Driskin.”
Everyone but Roger went very still.
Driskin was just three miles away, and they’d thought it was safe-their influence extended two miles beyond it, and patrols ranged past it all the time.
“What happened?” Wammy asked, eyes unfathomable, arms folded across his chest.
“They just-came,” the woman answered, pushing her long hair back from her face. “In the middle of the night; no warning, no preparation, nothing. They didn’t-they didn’t hurt anybody who didn’t resist, and they were… methodical. They were incredibly methodical; they were systematic. They were really smart. The leader especially-he had brown hair, and he was very tall. We fought back and refused to let them shepherd us out of our home, but-everybody else, they just searched their houses, rummaged through the basements, slaughtered a few livestock, and then they were gone. They were-” She swallowed, hesitating, and then she mustered her voice again. “They were looking for something.”
[Chapter II] [Chapter IV]