What Blood Leaves Behind (The Poison Rose) (29 page)

Stace pokes her head up, heavy with sleep, clearly exhausted. The sight of me snaps her to attention and she shoves herself to her feet. She hesitantly takes my right hand, turns my palm to her and stares at the wound.

“I’m all right,” I say. “Just tired.”

She starts talking a mile a minute. “But you look awful. I’m sorry but I mean you look like someone really beat you up. Rolled you in the mud. What happened? I was so worried you wouldn’t come back. I wanted to go out after you. It was hard to stay here. I was so scared something would happen, that one of them would find us.”

I put my arm around her. “How is he?” I finally ask.

“He just sleeps,” she says softly. “Sleeps.” She looks away, her face reddening, her eyes welling up. “I want to but I can’t help him. I was so afraid that he would—”

“I know you were,” I say, interrupting her, pulling her close. “So was I.”

From that back
office on the Orphanage’s first floor, I hear the motorcycle.

A single motorcycle stuttering to a stop at the rear of the school.

It grows quiet for a few seconds but then it seems the bike’s rider wants to draw maximum attention to his or her arrival—jamming the throttle down, peeling out, circling the play area a few times, then choking off the engine with a spluttering cough.

I’m sure that it’s Moira. On the verge of a grand entrance.

But Moira here, alone? I listen for the sound of other bikes accompanying her, catching up to her, a tribe of Riders pulling into the school grounds but I hear nothing else. Silence outside the room again—save for the creaks and moans of the old building. The howl of a wild dog in the distance.

I’ve remained fixed at Aiden’s side. Hours ago I sent Stace and the younger children away. I’m sure Stace is sound asleep by now. Curled up near the two boys in her squeaky little cot in their corner of the dormitory on the second floor.

I envy her
so much
. Merely imagining her as she sleeps makes my head ache worse—the tension erased from her face, maybe dreaming of some happy time with her flesh and blood family in the little town where she went to school so many years ago. Or dreaming of us, her adoptive family—Larkin, me, all of us in Oxbow that happy summer—what I would dream of if I could choose. My head feels bowling ball heavy, my neck like a twig bobbing up and down in a losing battle to keep my forehead from slumping to the edge of the bed.

I wonder why I haven’t fallen asleep.

Then I look at Aiden’s pale face and know it must be because of him.

It’s the pressure, unbearable pressure keeping me alert—listening to those shallow breaths, the endless repetition, the slow intake of air, that slight rasp as he exhales. Waiting to see if he draws another breath or if the one just taken is his last.

Pressure that screams at me to do something to help.

And there’s nothing I can do.

A part of me, one tiny, shameful segment of my being, a fragment of my psyche I’m horrified to admit even exists, wants those breaths to stop. I need to sleep,
have to
, desperately, but I can’t stop watching over him, listening. I need to scoop up the remains of my family and get away, get far away from this place.

But I can’t. Eyes drift shut and I start sinking into merciful unconsciousness but then hear that rasp or the small whistling gasp as he takes in air and my eyes snap open. I’m forced to hover, to listen, watching to see if he’s still alive.

It’s too much. Far too much. I want to plead with him—

Just get it over with, die already and let me be. Let me be unburdened by you so I can try to escape, try to fight back, try to do anything else but this.

But I’m locked into the rhythm of his breathing. Caught by every rise and fall of his chest. Unable to pull away from that wounded, fragile face.

My mind is working so slowly, it takes me a little time before I remember—

The motorcycle, another Rider, here at the school.

Must push myself to my feet. Stand straight, think clearly. Force fully-formed, practical thoughts into my head, come up with an idea, a single idea about what to do.

Should I remain where I am? Should I try to keep Aiden concealed by meeting the intruder outside, in the hallway, in the outer offices?

But I have no real weapon. Not like the rifle that protected me for so long. I fumble below the bottom end of the mattress for a knife I brought back from the kitchen the day before and hid there. A knife with a long, serrated blade, not especially sharp except at its tip. A tip that can puncture flesh, might buy a few moments of hesitation from whichever of the Riders is here.

Meeting that intruder outside the door seems a better option than staying where I am but I can’t pull myself away from Aiden. I feel like if I leave him for a second, that might be his last moment on earth and I will miss it. Somehow I have to stay with him until the end.

I duck behind the door, hidden by the shadows but with enough room to raise the knife and strike. I wait for footsteps, for some sign of the approach of whatever is out there—but I hear nothing.

I don’t know that he’s there until I feel him standing right beside me.

Needle. In the flickering candle-glow I can tell that Needle is only inches from me.

There’s a presence at first, a sense of him, that slight coppery smell, those dangling thin fingers, naked and pale in the dim light. My skin tingles as if there’s a current spreading from him to me. I recall biting into Moira’s flesh, how the shock of it exploded my senses. Being this close to Needle reminds me of it, clouds my mind, makes it hard to think.

He starts to speak, voice soft and low as if trying not to wake the sleeping patient but there’s a hollowness to it, a distance in it, as if he’s whispering in a cavern deep underground. “I see what you have in your hand. You can stab me if you want. I don’t think it will do you any good.”

He raises a hand, waves it theatrically across the room, those long, tapered fingers wiggling. The candles I’ve set out flutter high like a breeze has blown in, then wink away into black. In the few seconds of light left me I see Needle cross the room to Aiden’s side. It looks like he’s floating.

“I saw you coming, of course,” he continues in the dark, his voice still soft but off-center somehow, like it’s coming from a short distance away, as if from a radio turned low in the next room. “To my special medicine room. But Aisa beat me to it. Then Moira. And I’m not going to get in the middle of their squabbles.”

He seems less threatening than either Aisa or Moira, as unthreatening as a Rider can be. Almost like a doctor making a house call. And he’s not full of bluster, lording his strange, otherworldly presence over me, making no move to assault or intimidate me. I let the knife drop to my side, the fingers of my right hand, the hand with the torn palm, still wrapped tight around the hilt of it.

I find my voice. I have the feeling that I can ask him questions and he will actually answer them. “How did you know? Did William or Tetch tell you beforehand we were going…?”

“We knew. Leave it at that. But I’m glad you’re trying to save him. He’s our hunter, you know. He’s as good a shot as you are. The only one we allow to carry a gun.”

“Then why did they…?”

“I don’t think they intended to hurt him so badly. They just got…carried away.”

In the dark, the smell of him intensifies, becomes my overriding sense of him—a mix of singed electric wiring underlain with something cloying, sweetly rotten. It’s strong but not enough to make me gag, off-putting but not enough to drive me from the room.

He stops speaking and it grows very quiet. I start to wonder what he’s doing. Is he doing something to Aiden, trying to ascertain how bad off he is? How savable he is? I’m convinced he’s not going to hurt him. It’s what he just said—
But I’m glad you’re trying to save him
.

But standing in this room with Needle in the dark, it gets to me. My skin starts to itch, I feel colder than I did before. I’m wearing a sweater I stole from Tetch’s stockpile and I hug the thick wool of it tighter to me.

There’s only the faintest light coming from the rooms beyond this one and I can’t see the bed or anything else that’s inside. Can he see? Is he working by touch, with those long sensitive fingers? What
is
he doing with Aiden? Is he treating him with something, some sort of medicine?

But he might not be beside Aiden—he might be right beside
me
. He could be anywhere—reaching toward me ever so softly with those freakish fingers. The smell of him is stronger, his presence is stronger. I’m breathing faster, a hollow feeling at the pit of my stomach. I feel ready to run from the room.

I force myself to say something, my voice small, shaky. “Are you giving him medicine? Can you help him?”

“I didn’t bring any medicine with me,” he says.

“But why? I thought that’s—”

He raises his voice. His voice sounds both close to my ear and far from me. “I have medicine. Plenty of medicine stashed all around this city. But whether I give
him
any is entirely up to you.”

“Me?”

Unconsciously, I’ve raised the knife again, still gripping its hilt tight, the part of my hand that was torn by glass numb from the pressure with a numbness that’s spreading to my fingers. It’s unbearable to be in this inky room with him any longer. How close is he to me? It’s like I can feel his skin brushing against mine. But that can’t be—he couldn’t
bear
to touch me, could he?

He knows perfectly well how I feel because he says, “You can’t stand being in this room with me any longer. Being with me in the dark is killing you.” He laughs, a small, bitter laugh. “Maybe I wanted to show you how much distance there is between your kind…and mine.” Then he snaps his fingers and I flinch like it’s a gunshot.

And there’s light. He’s lit a match.

And he
is
right beside me.

The sunglasses are off. There’s the murky ash-white of his skin, papery dry, the black, boot polish stiffness of long, stringy hair.

And his eyes.

The pale horror of Needle’s eyes. Not eyes. Cloudy, pearly-plum pools of some glinting substance quivering hypnotically by the light of the match’s flare. His eyes are like exposed organs that should be buried deep in his body but have somehow been pushed out through the surface of his skin. They fascinate me. I can feel them sucking me in, refusing to let me go.

But I shake my head and look down past the hand that holds the knife to see that his fingers
are
at the sleeve of my sweater. They remind me of worms crawling through wet grass or something slimy oozing from the sea, thin nails filed to points, white and seeking, touching, exploring.

I jerk away and he lets the match fall, flickering out into black.

Unable to control the urge to do it any longer, I slash with the knife in his direction, hoping to feel it slide deep into that papery skin beyond the black coat he wears, to push it into his body as far as I can, perhaps pierce his heart or a lung, grind the blade against the bones of his spine.

I’ve never had urges so murderous before, so filled with hate and fear.

But he’s read my mind again and simply isn’t where I thought he was. The hand with the knife flies through empty space until the edge of my wrist smacks against the stem of an old coat rack in the corner.

The shock of the impact, the pain, rouses me from how completely I’m locked into this confrontation with Needle. I drop the knife and sprint from the room.

I run from the offices, the administrative area of the school, out into the long first floor corridor, up to the bank of windows.

Staring out through the cracked and broken panes of glass, I try to steady myself, force myself to breathe. Not Aisa, not Moira, but the one Rider who might help me—it’s him that I’ve tried to kill, that I’ve taken a weapon to.

And I’ve left Aiden. I’ve left Aiden alone with him.

There’s a haze of clouds and starlight filling the horizon. The sight of the night sky is cleansing somehow, even with the scant amount of light that it allows. Just the openness, the sense of potential freedom I feel—

But Needle. He could be right behind me.

I spin around and he
is
there, the murky shape of him silhouetted in the doorway that leads to the waiting room and the desks where school secretaries sat. Tall, thin, spectral.

“Don’t worry,” he says. “I’ll stay where I am. It was just an experiment—to see how close I could get to you.”

“Close to me?” I murmur.

I can see him smile just a little, the corners of his mouth twitching.

“I’ve thought a lot about this.” He takes a deep breath. “God, I feel like I’m back in school, passing notes or something. You know, the kind a kid draws two boxes on so the girl they’re interested in can check one for
like
and one for
don’t like
.”

The weird hollowness of his voice, thin and sepulchral, like it’s filtering up from a cavernous chamber right under my feet, makes what he’s saying sound even stranger, like he’s a dead boy who’s been resurrected and is working up the courage to ask me out. My mind screams,
What does he want from me?
He’s already proven that we can’t be in the same room together.

“You see how I am,” he says. “I’m a loner. I’ve always been like this. When Gideon was up and about, I was under his thumb. But now that you’ve shaken everything up, a whole legion of possibilities has opened for me. Moira and Aisa will destroy each other and I can do what I want. And I want you with me. When you change.”

He lets the words sink in. “Anything to say to me?” he finally says. “Any hint of excitement at the prospect?” And there’s another scratchy, tight, bitter little laugh.

He holds up a hand, his fingers waving in my direction like undulating jellyfish tendrils. “Don’t say anything. Don’t decide. Think about it. But know this—while you’re still….like you are now, I will do everything to protect you that I can. But as long as the others are running wild, there’s only so much I can do.”