The Viper, page 32
“Is there anyone else injured,” he said as he took out his phone. “Never mind, I’ll just take that as a yes.”
“There are a lot of sick prisoners somewhere,” the Jackal said. “By the way, this is Mayhem. Over there are Apex and Callum.”
“I can take you to the prisoners,” the guy named Mayhem murmured. “I’ll show you where they are. I’d ask that you prioritize them over going after the guards.”
Nodding, V texted his mate as well as Manny and the Brotherhood’s own nurse, Ehlena. “You mean those males I saw running off?”
“Yeah. There have to be some of them left around somewhere.”
“Not a problem. Prisoners first. I’m getting medical help right now and the Brotherhood is securing the perimeter. You’re safe, all of you.”
“I couldn’t wait until tomorrow,” the Jackal said. “Sorry.”
V glanced up from his phone. “I’m glad you didn’t. Can you guard these two while your boy takes me to the incarcerated?”
“Yes. I’ll stay here.”
V followed the other prisoner out of a door that appeared to have been—“Did you blow that in?”
“Yeah? I always like to keep some plastics handy. You know, for special occasions.”
“Oh, my God, me too.” He took out a hand-rolled. “Cigarette?”
“You know, I don’t mind if I do.”
As he turned to give the guy the coffin nail, he did a double take. The wall they had stepped out of was set with pairs of pegs, between which brown stains made their purpose self-defining.
“That’s where they were punished,” V said.
“Yes, at this location.” The male—Mayhem? Yeah, that was the name—took what was offered and put it right between his front teeth. Talking around the hand-rolled, he said, “Back at the old camp, there was another setup where we were tortured.”
“Fucking hell.” V Bic’d up and extended the little flame. “Well, that shit’s over now.”
“We need to stay here,” the male said as he lit the hand-rolled and exhaled. “This facility has beds and a kitchen, has a clinic. Don’t move us, please. A lot of the prisoners didn’t survive the trip here in the first place.”
V glanced around. The long hallway had doors opening off of it, and he could smell the cocaine and the heroin.
“Show me everything.” He started walking forward. “I want to see it all.”
Unsurprisingly, the rest of the place was grim. The workrooms where the drugs were packaged were forced labor lockups, the very definition of a toxic environment, and the kitchen was a repurpose of a nineteen seventies facility that was filthy. But the worst was the sleeping quarters. As the male led him down a set of stairs, he could smell the corporeal decay and old sweat and infection already. Then he discovered that prisoners were relegated to sleeping pods that were barely big enough for dogs, the males and females slotted into the cramped spaces, most of them lacking the energy to care when V walked down a room as long as a soccer field.
At the far end, he turned around and couldn’t believe what he was looking at. But what the fuck did he think it was going to be like?
“We’re going to need even more medical help,” he said to himself as he put his hand-rolled out on the bottom of his shitkicker.
“I know someone,” Mayhem said, “who’s going to be invaluable to us. She’s the best of the best, and the prisoners already know and trust her.”
* * *
As Nadya re-formed in the back of the prison camp, she was escorted into the facility by the biggest, most beautiful blond male vampire she had ever seen—who introduced himself as the Black Dagger Brother Rhage. And when she entered the private quarters of the head of the guards, she stopped at a puddle that was…
“Yeeeeeeah,” the Brother said, “whoever that was had a bad night.”
Something in the scent of the remains drew her down to her haunches, and that was when she recognized the tool belt, the uniform, the boots.
“It’s the head of the guards,” she murmured as she stood back up. “The female who… well. I’m going to sleep better during the day, at any rate. She wasn’t too fond of me.”
“Something tells me that’s a compliment.”
Nadya looked across the room to a bedding platform—and her breath caught in her throat.
A female she didn’t recognize, who was wearing the white coat of a human physician or nurse, was taking care of Callum, the wolven, while Apex sat aside, watching with an intensity that she’d seen before. It reminded her of the way he’d been with Kane…
And oh, no. Apex had a head wound that was still bleeding. From time to time, he wiped at it with a hand towel in annoyance. No doubt he had refused to be treated until Callum was.
Underneath his hard exterior, he was a male of worth, loyal and true. And, oh, God, what had happened to the wolven? He looked like he was in some kind of coma.
“Are you the nurse here?”
She glanced over her shoulder. Another member of the Black Dagger Brotherhood was striding into the chamber. With a goatee and tattoos at his temple, and those telltale black daggers strapped, handles down, under his leather jacket, he was intense, and that was before she met his icy eyes.
“Yes,” she said to him. Then she cleared her throat, the sense that her life had been leading up to just this moment hitting her with a rush of purpose. “I am the nurse here. I’ve come because… well, it’s a long story.”
“You don’t have to explain, but we got patients for you.”
Okay, Nadya, she told herself as she took a deep breath. It’s time.
“If we’re dealing with the prison populace,” she said with authority, “it’ll be wiser to take the drugs and supplies from my clinic up to the sleeping quarters. We’ll be looking at skin, bladder, and respiratory infections, but also tooth abscesses and malnutrition. I have a stock of antibiotics and painkillers, and there are enough opiates down the hall to treat half the continental United States. No, there are no records of identities that I’ve ever found, verbal accounts are going to have to suffice to establish a census and start to create files. It goes without saying that I am happy to take orders from anybody. I just want to finally be able to treat my patients the way they deserve.”
The male with the goatee stared at her. Then he inclined his head with a sly smile. “I think you’re going to be giving the orders, ma’am. Let me introduce you to our docs.”
“Thank you,” she murmured as she bowed. “I’m eager to meet them.”
The rest of the night passed in a blur. She and the other medical professionals, who were great, worked together in the sleeping quarters, triaging the prisoners, providing food, starting to develop a list of names and conditions. Meanwhile, the Brotherhood continued to secure the premises, changing locks, confiscating keys to the vehicles out back, establishing a safe zone.
Mayhem and the Jackal were a great help, hauling supplies up from the clinic and helping to establish the triage and treatment area, and Lucan and Rio arrived to aid the effort just as dawn was arising.
When the sun came up, everything was locked tight and the work continued.
Except Kane was nowhere to be found.
CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
Aweek later, Nadya had things running smoothly in her new clinic location. The Black Dagger Brotherhood had proven to be invaluable, bringing food and more medical supplies, but never asking for anything in return, a regular rotation of fighters showing up and pulling shifts at the former prison. And the same was true for the medical staff that came with them.
They weren’t the only ones who helped. The Jackal, as well as his son, his female, and his female’s sister moved in, as did Rio and Lucan. There was just so much to do, like food to make, clothes to hand out—and oral histories to record.
If there were any prisoners who had committed petty crimes, their sentences were hundreds of years too long for the property infractions or social insults they’d committed. And the violent prisoners had already been weeded out, as the Executioner had killed any of the ones prone to physical attacks. And what was left after those two groups were those who had been thrown into the camp for nefarious reasons such as personal or familial slights, or other things that were unconscionable.
So they were making progress righting wrongs, for the most part.
But not in all areas. Apex was still just sitting beside his wolven, who remained mostly unresponsive. Because of the trauma Callum had endured, the two of them continued to stay in those private quarters, and Nadya was the one who brought them meals and kept assessing the comatose male’s condition.
Apex only left the male for twenty minutes a night, allowing Nadya to sit with Callum as he disappeared to wherever he went. The only thing she knew was that every time he came back, it was with another white flower. The bed in the room was now surrounded by white blooms in various kinds of vases. She had a feeling the vampire was breaking into a florist’s somewhere, the fragrance of his floral thieving the kind of perfume she looked forward to smelling and which he clearly hoped would rouse the male.
So far, he was still waiting.
And in her own way so was Nadya. For someone else.
Kane… remained nowhere to be found.
By the fourth night when he hadn’t appeared or been discovered wounded, she had resigned herself to the conclusion she had been fighting.
He must have been killed during the infiltration.
The knowledge was horrifying enough, but when she thought about the way they’d left things, her heart ached to the point where she couldn’t catch her breath. She’d had her reasons for what she’d done, though.
And she tried to remind herself that they hadn’t spent all that much time together anyway—although that didn’t hold water. They had had a lifetime in a matter of nights—and those memories of being with him were going to have to last her until she went unto the Fade.
Time to focus on her job, she thought sadly as she went to the first of the sleeping berths in the row on the right.
“You’re looking much better,” she said to an elderly female who’d had pneumonia. Then she made a note on her med chart. “The penicillin is doing its job, and I’ll be back before dawn to give you another dose.”
As she went to move away from the pod, a frail arm reached out and myopic eyes tried to focus on her. “Thank you.”
Two words. Two syllables. And yet a wealth of meaning that even the glymera couldn’t match with all their money and possessions.
What was left of the glymera, that was.
“You’re welcome,” Nadya murmured. “You just rest. I’ll be back.”
It took her a good hour to work her way around all the patients’ check-ins. When she was finished, she returned to the desk Mayhem had set up for her at the far end, from which she logged doses and kept track of symptoms and vitals. As she sat down, Nadya frowned.
Another pebble was on her master ledger.
It was small and round, and of a pink tone this time. As she put it in her palm and rolled it around, she loved the smooth surface. The veining. The fact that it clearly had been chosen with care.
Then she looked to the little dish by her lineup of antibiotic bottles. There were five other little stones, of different sizes and colors, like flowers that had been picked from a riverbed.
She had no idea who had been leaving them, but when she was at her most pathetic, she fantasized that it was—
“Hi.”
* * *
As Kane spoke up, he wasn’t sure what the reaction from Nadya was going to be. And as she looked up at him with a gasp, he told himself he should have given her more time. She had been working so hard, saving lives, easing pain, doing what she had been born to do, that she no doubt hadn’t had a moment to reflect on the way they had left things.
Then again, how arrogant of him to assume he was even on her mind.
When this purpose of hers was so important.
Dearest Virgin Scribe, she was so beautiful, her brown hair pulled back to the base of her neck, her simple tunic and loose pants in green a ball gown to his eyes. She was glowing with health, her eyes sparkling—and yet warily on him, although whether that was because she couldn’t believe he was in the flesh or something else, he didn’t know.
“You’re alive,” she whispered. “I thought you were…”
“I’ve been around.”
“No one has seen you. I’ve asked… where you were.” She cleared her throat. “But I guess you’ve had things to do—”
“I had some work I had to do on myself.”
“Oh.”
He wanted to explain to her that, after his viper side had come out as it had when they’d come to save Callum and Apex, he’d known he had to understand better, and make peace with, his other half. He had to learn how it worked, and who was in charge—so he was sure that people he cared about were safe.
Given the power of that bite, he had to protect those around him who mattered.
Especially… her.
“And how did the work go,” she asked.
“Good. Very good.” He thought back to Callum telling him he didn’t need a weapon. The male had been so very right. “I’m really good.”
“Well. I’m glad.”
“You’ve been working hard, too.” He glanced around at the prisoners’ berths. “You’re… doing what you’re made to do.”
“I think so.”
There was a long silence, and then he rushed the story out, talking faster and faster, as if she wouldn’t listen to him for longer than a minute or two: “Cordelhia was in on the plot to frame me. I just want you to know that. She knew what her brother planned and it was to get rid of her twin who was, in their eyes, a disgrace to their bloodline. They solved a problem that was no fault of that sister’s by killing her and sending me to prison for two centuries. I’m telling you this not so you feel sorry for me, but so you know that there is no way I’m ever going back to Cordelhia. Ever. I was in love with an illusion set up and reinforced by the class I was in. I excused her behavior, which was about tolerating me, rather than wanting to be with me, at the altar of the modesty a female of worth was supposed to have. I do not love Cordelhia, I never truly did, and I never, ever will forgive her.”
Nadya’s eyes seemed to get wider and wider as he went along, and then as he paused for a breath, his name came out of her in a way that could have meant anything.
“Kane…?” As if she couldn’t believe it, and not because she didn’t believe the story.
“You don’t have to be with me,” he said. “But what I can’t bear is the idea you think I ever betrayed you or used you. What we had was precious and important, and it was every bit the resurrection I needed. You were never an illusion to me. You were always real. And it has nothing to do with how I started as your patient, and everything to do with who you are as a female, as a healer, as… the one that I love with all my heart.”
Tears filled her eyes and she clasped the little pebble he’d left her tonight to her chest. “Kane.”
He put his palms out to reassure her. “I’m not asking for anything. I just needed you to know how I f—”
Nadya burst up from her seat and all but jumped over the table she worked at. The next thing he knew, she was in his arms and kissing him.
“I’m sorry,” she said against his mouth. “I didn’t know—”
“Neither did I—”
“—about what had happened—”
“Don’t apologize, I understand how you felt—”
“And I love you, too.”
That stopped everything. But only for a moment. “You do…?”
“Yes,” she breathed. “I love you, I love you, I love you, do you want me to say it some more? And I’m sorry I doubted you. I had my own things to deal with from my past and—”
“Shh,” he said as he dropped his mouth back down to hers. “All is forgiven. I understand completely.”
They were kissing again now, holding each other, reconnecting. And it was a long time before they came up for air.
As he brushed her hair back, he saw her as she had been. Saw her as she was. Was looking forward to seeing her as she would become—
A spontaneous burst of applause exploded in the long, thin room, so unexpected and shocking that the two of them turned and faced the sleeping quarters. Every single one of the patients that Nadya had treated with such care had poked their heads out of their berths and were clapping their hands, supportive eyes and wide smiles a blessing that felt like destiny’s approval that the pair of them had finally figured everything out.
And that all was as it should be.
Within the sound of so many hands being brought together, Kane tucked his female at his side, noting that she fit him perfectly. Then he stared down at her with love as she brushed shaking hands under her eyes to clear happy tears. When she was done with that, she looked up at him.
“Hi,” his female breathed.
Kane smiled down at his one true love and gave her a kiss. “Hi.”
EPILOGUE
It was the scent that brought it all back. Wasn’t that always true, though, the nose like an amplifier for long-term memories, sharpening the focus, the accuracy, the emotions, of them.
As Kane strode up the mountain trail, his footfalls cushioned by the layers of pine needles, a cool breeze against his face, he looked up through the entwined boughs above. The moon was full overhead and its radiant blue light pierced the canopy of pines, fracturing into cleaves of illumination that reminded him of the crystal chandeliers he had once lived with.
