What Blood Leaves Behind (The Poison Rose) (30 page)

“But why? Why me?”

“You’re more valuable than any of them. More powerful. More
alive
.” There’s almost a pleading tone to his voice as he tries to convince me. “You think. You reason.”

He pauses, wants his words to impress me. Then he slaps the palm of his hand on the door jamb. He lets his hand drop to his side and shakes his head sadly. He coughs and says in a deeper, darker tone of voice something that I can tell is much more a demand than a proposition. “I don’t want to wait for you to decide. There is no time. If you help me, I will help him.” He waves back to the suite of rooms behind him. “If not, he dies. And those others you love die, too. There are plenty of nasty things that can happen around here.”

The shock of his interest in me has been hard to absorb. Needle
wants
me. I could spend eternity with Needle if I play my cards right.

I would rather be dead. Officially, throw me in the ground and let my bones rot away dead than spend another minute with this loathsome creature but I hear myself saying, “All right. I will be with you. After I change.”

The hint of a smile twitches at the corners of his mouth again. His face is struck by starlight, softened and sallow. The light glints from the dark glasses he’s put back on.

“Well, let’s go then,” he says.

“Go where?”

“To where the drugs are, my dear. Cephalexin and amoxicillin pills I can give you. And antibiotic lotion and morphine maybe. Bandages, aspirin—a grab bag of what I have. But you’ll have to ride with me. Don’t worry, it’s not far.”

Ride with him.
It takes a moment to sink in. The thought repulses and terrifies me.

Needle moves with astonishing swiftness out into the hall, straight toward me for a moment. I recoil, pressing back against the tattered windows, jagged glass pricking my shoulder blades but he shifts direction, seems to glide without deliberate movement to the end of the corridor. He slams back the door to the stairwell, stops at the threshold and looks back at me.

“Well? Are you coming?” His voice isn’t loud but it carries. Oozes into my ears like drops of ointment.

I want the medicine. I want the medicine
so bad
. But I don’t know if I can go with him.
Physically
ride with him. And where will he take me? Will he bring me back?

“But what about—” I point to the doorway where he was just standing that leads to the back offices. “I can’t just leave him.”

“Oh—” He stamps a food impatiently on the hard tile. The first sound I’ve heard his feet make. “Whether you’re here or not really has no effect on his survival at this point. And you must know you’re wasting time. Every second counts.”

Then he holds up a finger—thin, long, as pale as an uncolored candle—holds it up like someone does when checking to see which way the breeze is blowing. “Can’t you hear them?” he says.

I push myself away from the windows, spin back to face them, stare outside. Listen hard. I see nothing, hear nothing but wind snapping at torn trash bags used to cover broken panes.

“What is it?” I’m whispering.

“They’re coming. You have only a few seconds left.”

I have to do this. Go with him no matter what it costs, how dangerous it is. If I don’t, Aiden will die. I’m convinced of it.

I call to Needle. “I need—” but he’s already disappeared down the stairwell, the door banging shut behind him.

Sprint across the hall, Gill, hurry—back to the room where Aiden lies.

It’s darker the farther back I go but I’m so familiar with this space I can walk through it blind. I can’t leave without my coat. It’s too cold for that.

Use one of those precious seconds to stop and listen—

But the thumping of my heart and the quick, panicky breaths I take smother the sounds of Aiden’s own lungs drawing in air—
but you can’t wait any longer to make sure he’s still alive
—so I fumble for the parka hanging on the back of my chair, that same bloody, dirty parka I wore all the previous night and day and dash out again.

Why didn’t you try to find gloves, a stocking cap
—but it’s too late. The temperature has been dropping. The sky has darkened, clouds drawing in.

I’m running down the hallway, stuffing my arms into the parka’s sleeves, almost reach the stairwell door when a motorcycle cracks into life. I jump back, it’s so loud, so sudden. But it’s one engine, one bike. I pray it’s still only Needle waiting for me outside.

I’m hidden under
floorboards.

Wedged into a narrow cranny barely wide enough to hold my body. Shoulders squeezed by thick timber joists to either side of me.

There’s a sharp tang of ancient, compacted soil. The drip of a pipe just beyond the top of my head keeps the soil moist.

I’ve let Needle lower me down into this space. Let him replace the floorboards above my head.

I’ve let him do this to me despite every instinct in my being howling at me not to.

I’ve let him because he gave me the medicine. Because we heard motorcycles tearing up and down the streets of this neighborhood, coming closer and closer.

There was the rumble of them approaching the Orphanage when I ran out into the play area in back, ran to Needle’s motorcycle and hoisted myself onto the seat in back of him. Like I had once climbed on behind my father.

Don’t think. Don’t think about how awful it is to be this close to him. Act without thought.

Even now I cringe remembering how I forced my arms to loop around the middle of his emaciated body, clutching it tight enough to hold myself in place, keep myself from tumbling off the bike.

Lean back as far as you can from his hunched shoulders. Look away. Try keeping track of the streets you pass through so you can make your way back.

Maybe it was the speed of the bike. Maybe the chill wind whipping my hair, scouring my face but the smell of him, the feel of him as we rode was submerged enough for me to stand it. Only the ends of his stiff, stringy hair batting at my cheeks kept me from pretending it wasn’t Needle I was perched behind.

He wove through the streets of the neighborhood, past a blur of houses and small shops with expert skill, as if he had every pile of debris, every abandoned vehicle memorized. Seldom slowing, never hesitating. I finally bowed my head, unable to look, staring at the heels of his black boots hovering over the dark pavement.

The ride ended with a sudden squeal. And I slid straight into him.

A moment of impact with that gaunt, rigid body—a framework of bones lightly fleshed.

We reeled back from each other. I sprang from the bike like a cat from a tub of water, unaware I had done so until I felt both feet hit the ground.

Needle had gone even farther. I looked around and saw him standing halfway up the steps to an old, rambling house. He faced toward it, not looking at the bike or me. I wondered if he was trying to compose himself, if he felt the same shock, the same brain-fogging stupefaction from that moment of contact that I did.

Still not glancing back at me, he crossed a wide wooden porch and went into the house. I took a deep breath, forced myself to follow. A two-story house, maybe a hundred years old or more, on the corner of a quiet neighborhood street. The dim interior was pungent with dried herbs and tea leaves. I tripped over half-filled canisters and glass jars fallen from crowded shelves. There was a lush carpet of crumbled tea leaves strewn across the creaky floor.

And bones. The heel of my boot crunching on animal bones.

Not to a pharmacy or a hospital—this is where he brought me.

A tea shop. An herbarium.

A little light seeping through shattered windowpanes allowed me to watch him take a screwdriver from his pocket and pry up a floorboard. From under it he drew forth a white paper bag with the medicine inside. He took out a flashlight from a pocket of his long black coat, clicked it on and let me inspect the bag. Long, pharmaceutical names to try to decipher. If I ever knew what they meant, I had forgotten.

I’ve got stashes like this all over town. Hidey-holes. Pull up the floorboards, move aside a ceiling panel, who knows what you’ll find.

His voice—flat, impassive. Sepulchral in the gloom.

I’ve watched you, you know. Ministering to that boy, washing him.

This surprised me.

How could you have seen—?

You think you’re hidden but you’re not. We—I see everything. There are spies all over, little birdies who tell us things. But I wanted to tell you that I was impressed by the intimacy of it. How you cared for him. That’s why—You—

He fell silent. Voice still flat but haunted by an underlying emotion impossible for him to express.

After a long pause he said, words coming slowly as if he was letting slip a secret despite his best intentions,
I’d forgotten about the power of touch. Touch. I think all you really need to heal that boy are your hands.

He left behind the flashlight, pen-sized, one miraculously still working after all these years although its beam is just a tiny pinprick of white light.

I know what being locked in a tiny space in the dark can do to a person
, he said. He tapped his head.

The flashlight’s pinprick beam lets me study the underside of the boards only inches above the tip of my nose—water stained, muck encrusted. Warped, splintered.

The back of my head rests on a tarp Needle spread out for me. But I feel like my hair is clotted with clammy-cold soil, with worm casings and insect shells even so. Tucked on my right side is the paper bag with the medicine.

And he told me to wait. That I couldn’t go back to the Orphanage until daylight.

How will I know when it’s light out? How will I know how much time’s passed?

This.
He handed me a silver wristwatch with a cracked face. An old-fashioned wind-up watch.
Assume it’s midnight. Wait six hours and you’ll be safe.

Six hours.

Can’t I hide somewhere else? Upstairs? They won’t know I’m here. No one followed us, did they?

He sighed. I knew he was trying to be patient. More patient than the other Riders have ever been with me.

They know. They can find you.

Then why bother hiding?

He didn’t answer but pulled up more floorboards, finished laying out the tarp and motioned me to lie down.

And I had to decide—could I trust him? I thought to myself,
You’ve given me the medicine. And I’m sure you’re right—I can’t go back to the Orphanage while it’s still dark out. I can hear the motorcycles out there in the distance.

But this. Under the floor.

I imagine Needle enjoyed it. I’m sure he could have found some other place to hide me but he wanted me
here
. In a space like the interior of a coffin. Maybe it’s punishment for my being so plainly repulsed by him. But he had everything carefully planned out before his visit to the Orphanage.

And I laid down. With the watch and the flashlight. Let him replace the boards above me and tap them into place.

And now I lie here waiting.
Waiting.

I tell myself not to, argue with myself, urge myself to wait but end up switching the flashlight on again.

Its beam keeps growing dimmer. And it’s a struggle moving the flashlight from hip-level where it’s clutched in my right hand across the surface of my body and close enough to my face so I can use it to see. With my left hand I bring up the wristwatch and look at the time. 2:45. The second hand twitches. The ticking of the watch is the loudest sound I can hear.

The last time I looked it was 2:27.

I can’t take this—it
is
messing with my head. The medicine is mine now. Nothing can stop me from pushing up the floorboards and escaping.

But what if I can’t push up the floorboards?

What if, while tapping them into place, Needle somehow wedged them in securely so that the strength of my arms, of my knees, won’t be enough to raise them.

I lift my knees so that they’re touching the wood above me and press the palms of my hands against the boards right above my face. I start to push—

But then I hear the motorcycles. Quite clearly. Not far away.

More than one—how many I can’t tell. Even from under the floor the sound carries. And I can feel vibrations. A rattling, a throbbing in my ear.

Close—very close.

This time they’re making their presence known. Or they don’t care enough to stay silent. The engines die and I can hear boots on the sidewalk outside. Voices but no distinct words.

I’m not sure how close they are until the door of the old tea shop screeches open. Floorboards creak. A canister of tea is kicked against the wall with a hollow bang.

“Do you think this is the place?” I hear a male voice say. It’s not a whisper but it’s soft, not wanting to announce itself too intently.

“This looks like a Needle kind of place.”

More steps. The weight of a footstep presses down the board above my face. “Where do you think he’d hide her, Doon?”

“Obviously, in a place like this.”

It’s Moira’s crew.

Are they taunting me? Do they know exactly where I am and are pretending that they don’t?

But I hear one of them make his way up a flight of stairs and the other, the one standing right above me, moves off to the side, begins rooting around on the ground floor. A jar smashes to the floor. There is swearing. Doors are slammed.

Then I hear nothing.
Nothing at all.

The waiting is killing me. For a second time my knees are pressing against the underside of the floor, my hands ready to shove up against it with all my might.

But the voices, the steps of the intruders are back on the street. I didn’t hear them leave but they must have. I didn’t hear their footsteps rattling the house but now they are undeniably outside.

Steps on the sidewalk. An engine thrumming to life.