Blood Work (39 page)

Just like
earlier, thinking wasn’t making me feel much better about myself.
And come on, neither was the pathetic denial of pain relief. If I
sent myself insane with pain, I would have no chance of making up
for last night’s complete failure to anyone.

I was propped
against the toilet, needle against the skin over a vein when the
phone rang. Thankfully, the mobile was still in the pocket of the
pants I’d discarded before climbing into the shower. I rescued it
and answered with a wordless grunt.

“Hawkins?”

There was
silence on the other end of the phone. Erin checked the card again,
making sure she’d called the right number.

“Hello?” she
tried again.

“Yeah, I’m
here.”

Now it was her
turn to go quiet. She didn’t know what she wanted to say to him.
Didn’t know why, when the card had been handed over by a curious
nurse, she’d asked for a phone. She held the phone awkwardly. Her
left arm was bandaged from elbow to wrist, her right invaded by a
huge cannula feeding her a second bag of packed red cells. The
doctor had told her there was a third one waiting to be hung as
well. Three bags of blood to replace what had been lost through a
relatively minor wound in her arm. He was baffled and had ordered a
ream of blood work to test her clotting factors. And when the blood
was all finished, they’d start with the antibiotics.

“Erin?”

He sounded
concerned. Or strained. Or maybe disinterested. She didn’t know him
well enough to even guess. She’d begun to believe he was a decent
guy. Not just anyone would throw themselves into the path of that
much danger. That had to mean something, didn’t it? Perhaps it only
meant that he was some sort of adrenaline junky, and instead of
base jumping he hunted extreme prey. Maybe he got off on the
danger, on the violence—on the pain.

“Jesus, Erin,
I’m really sorry. It was wrong. I should never have done it.
But…”

“Is she okay?”
Erin didn’t know where the question came from. It could have been
concern for another living creature, but were vampires alive? Or it
could have been a morbid desire to know if it had been worth
it.

“She’s…
healing.” His voice cracked on the two words. “It’s going to be
tough for her to recover.”

What did that
mean to Erin? This girl, this creature, had saved her life several
times. Only because it had been endangered by Hawkins in the first
place. Though, in his defence, it was mostly because of Veilchen
and the mysterious stolen property. Was it Mercy? She wasn’t so
sure now. Mercy was definitely no longer part of the known and
understood world. She was something else, something vastly outside
of Erin’s realm of perception. Did Veilchen know what Mercy was? Or
was she just looking for Susan Grayson? The link of pale skin
seemed so tenuous now. Hawkins had slapped down her mad thoughts of
Veilchen also being a vampire. Veilchen was very active throughout
the day and apparently vampires weren’t.

“I think,”
Hawkins continued, tone soft and strained, “she would have died
without you, Erin. It doesn’t excuse what I did though. I was not
in my right mind. I’m very sorry.”

Erin moved her
arm to look at the bandages around the wound. The medical experts
assured her that, for a dog bite, it was very clean and neat. She
was certain that at least one of the nurses in the emergency
department believed it wasn’t a dog bite. Two holes, precise and
deep, a curving arc between them of other impressions in her skin
where something had pressed down but not broken the skin, bruising
only. It looked nothing like a dog bite. It looked like a human
bite with extras.

“They don’t
believe me,” she said into the silence.

“About?”

“The dog. I
told them what you said to say, and they pretended to accept it,
but they don’t. And I don’t blame them.”

He breathed
out a soft, resigned laugh that was more bitter than anything else.
“I figured that. I don’t blame them either. But if there’s one
thing I’ve discovered, it’s that human beings have an amazing skill
for self-delusion. They won’t believe you at first, but when they
start looking into the situation, when they start to gather the
facts and find that they don’t slot happily into a preconceived
idea of what should have happened, they’ll start to wonder. What’s
before their eyes doesn’t follow the rules, but maybe this is the
exception that proves it. Sometimes, Occam cuts himself with a
blunt razor and that’s just the way the shit falls. It’ll become so
strange to them that it simply reinforces their belief in all
things good and normal and this incident will just become a
puzzling memory.”

Not so long
ago, two days to be precise, Erin would have been one of those
people, and happy to be so. This knowledge, these things she’d seen
and felt, were a weight she didn’t want. There was too much shit in
her life already, too many ‘why me?’ questions, too many ‘it isn’t
fair’ wails. She wouldn’t let this invade her life as well.

“What sort of
gun did you have last night?” she asked.

There was a
speculative pause, then he said, “Barretta Cougar, nine mil.”

“I’ll tell the
police I lost it. They’re bound to find it at the park. I’ll get
some slack for having an unregistered weapon but I know how to get
around the rest. There’ll be a fine and I’ll pass it and the gun
along to you when I get it back. Until then, and after then, I
don’t want to see or speak to you again. The case is dropped.”

“What about
your client?”

“I won’t tell
her about you. I won’t give her your number. She can do whatever
the fuck she pleases, otherwise. If she finds you on her own, good
luck.”

“Erin,” he
said quickly, desperate in case she hung up.

“What?”

Another long
silence. She could hear him breathing on the far end of the line.
It sounded harsh, fast.

“Matthew? Are
you okay?”

“Heh. Ah, sort
of.” He pulled in a long gulp of air and eased his rapid breathing.
“Got a little damaged last night. I’ll be fine, though.”

“Your
knee?”

There was a
touch of something lighter in his tone when he answered, something
closer to how he’d been when they first met. “You know too much
about me, ma’am. Yeah, the knee. I’ll get over it.”

Erin clamped
her mouth shut on the questions she wanted to ask. It would sound
too much like concern, and she didn’t want to feel that for him.
She just wanted him out of her life.

“Was there
something else?” Her voice was terse, not how she’d intended
it.

“I… I just
wanted to let you know, in case you were worried, that nothing more
will happen with the… bite. You won’t, you know, change. It was
just a bite, nothing else.”

Her stomach
clenched for a moment. She hadn’t even considered it. “Thank you,”
she whispered. “Goodbye.”

She hung up
before he could say anything more.

It was a
relief. The case was over. She hadn’t wanted it in the first place
and now it was done. Veilchen could swear and curse all she wanted,
she could go running to Sol with a sob story and Sol could fire
her. Right now, she didn’t care. Though she knew that when she got
past this scared numbness, she would panic about losing her job.
How would she support William then?

She was
dialling home before she thought about it.

“Hello?”

“Kate?”

“Erin! Oh my
God, we saw the news this morning. That was you, wasn’t it? Oh
dear, are you okay? They said you’d been taken to hospital.”

Erin didn’t
want this. She didn’t want them to know. The less who did would
make it easier for her to forget.

“Did William
see it?” she asked, dreading the answer.

“No. He had
some trouble this morning, very early.”

Heart
stuttering in fear, Erin demanded, “What happened? Is he okay?”

“He’s fine,
Erin. It’s all right. He’s fine now. It was just a little fall on
the way to the bathroom. He took some of his painkillers and he’s
asleep now. It’s all good.”

She nearly
dropped the phone in relief. “Oh, God. Thank you, Kate, for being
there.”

“Honey, it’s
okay. We don’t mind. You know we’d do anything we could for you and
Bill. Now, how are you? Are you okay?”

Sniffing back
a few tears, Erin said, “Yeah, I’m fine. I will be. I don’t know
how long the doctors will want to keep me in here. Hopefully not
overnight. But either way, you and Gavin won’t have to stay with
William for much longer. The case I was on that was keeping me away
is over now. I’ll be coming home.”

Kate’s voice
hitched. “That’s great. Bill’s missed you so much.”

Erin bit her
lips to keep from blurting out something completely embarrassing.
“Thank you,” was all she managed.

There was a
knock at the door. A huge bunch of native flowers stood in the
doorway on a pair of legs that looked familiar. A little laugh
escaped Erin.

“Kate,
someone’s here. I have to go. Tell William I’ll be home soon.”

“I will. Gavin
will come pick you up if you need.”

“I should be
fine. I’ll let you know. Bye.” She hung up. “Come in, Ivan.”

He came in
cautiously, peering around the flowers, face creased by a worried
frown. “How you feeling?”

“Better
now.”

Ivan cleared a
spot on the table and set the flowers down. Erin was surprised the
table supported the weight. There had to be just about every known
native flower in the bunch. Bright petals and mellow scent exploded
out of it in a stunning array of colour.

“How many
first born kids did you ransom to afford that?” she asked Ivan.

He stood back,
looking at the flowers with a bit of embarrassment. His foot
actually scuffed the floor. “Yeah, it is a bit OTT, isn’t it?”

“But lovely.
Thank you.”

After a moment
of shrugging and nodding, he gave in and hugged her tightly. Erin
couldn’t return it without upsetting cannulas and bandages, so she
rested her head against his shoulder, simply grateful for the kind,
human touch.

“You keep
doing this to me lately,” Ivan muttered when he let her go.
“Scaring the life out of me.”

Erin smiled,
sadly. “How long were you at the door?”

“Long enough.
The case is over?”

“Dropped, but
not complete.”

Ivan pulled up
a chair and sat down. “I’m glad to hear that, but what will Sol
say?”

“Probably
‘you’re fired’. To me, not you,” she added when his face collapsed.
It didn’t help, though.

“But I don’t
want you to get fired. I don’t want to work with anyone else.”

“Maybe he
won’t. There’s a million to one chance he might understand the
circumstances and let this one slide.”

“Heh, yeah.
Maybe.” Ivan looked over her wrapped up arm. “So, you took down a
big, bad dog, huh? That’s what all that werewolves stuff was
about?”

“Yeah.” When
his eyes widened, Erin decided he didn’t need to know the truth.
“Well, the kid thought ‘werewolf’ but it wasn’t that. They don’t
exist, of course. Just a… bad dog. Or sick. Who knows.”

Ivan chewed
that over, nodding slowly. “And our mysterious Hawkins didn’t show
up?”

This was a
little trickier. Erin considered denying it, but that would present
more problems later, and Ivan was good at keeping things
confidential.

“He was
there,” she said softly. “But we don’t want the authorities to
know, okay.”

“Why not? Did
he do something illegal?” Unspoken was the further question ‘Did
you?’

“No, but it
will be easier for him if he’s not dragged into this. It will be a
sensational story and he and Mercy don’t need the exposure.”

Ivan cocked an
eyebrow. “Sensational? A dog going crazy?”

“Ivan, don’t
tell anyone this yet. The police are keeping it quiet until the
family are informed. But the dog killed its owner last night.”

“Oh. Oh
shit.”

“Yeah, so it’s
going to get bigger.”

“And you’re
protecting Hawkins and Mercy. So they are working together?”

She nodded.
“They’re not doing anything wrong, really. But they want to stay
hidden, so we’re not going to reveal them.”

“Not even to
Mrs Veilchen?”

“Not even to
Mrs Veilchen.”

Ivan sat back,
contemplating that. “We’re so getting fired.”

“Maybe we
could start our own agency.”

He smiled.
“That would be fun.”

They chatted
for a while longer. Ivan tried to pry more information about what
had happened from her, but she wasn’t ready to say much more than
she already had. Trying to figure out what she could safely reveal
and not let him suspect there had been anything supernatural going
on would be difficult. Dealing with the police had been bad enough
and she’d had the excuse of being tired and bleeding. She didn’t
look forward to the follow up interview the detective had
threatened her with.

At last, her
bag of blood dripped dry and the nurse came in to change it with a
fresh one. Ivan went a little pale, kissed Erin’s cheek and left.
She called out to him to go to the office and shut down the files
on the case. He said he would then fled.

Her next
visitor was the police, again, and she went through the events as
best she could while omitting the presence of anyone else. She told
them about the second gun, admitted it was her backup piece she
hadn’t yet registered, suffered through the recriminations of
‘should have known better’ and accepted the fine.

Thankfully,
her doctor came in and ordered them out. Then he insisted she rest
while the last of the blood ran through. Not able to hold up a book
with any sort of comfort, even if she’d had a book, Erin settled
for watching TV. There was very little on of interest, being Sunday
morning. They wouldn’t let her sleep while the blood was being
transfused, something about adverse reactions they wouldn’t be able
to detect if she wasn’t aware of them.