Moonlight Medicine: Inoculation (2 page)

“Zachary doesn’t want to see you until the morning, but Councilman Rivest is on his way, so don’t go to sleep yet.”

She then turned and stalked off into one of the bedrooms and firmly shut the door. Evelyn felt trapped even though the room was spacious. She avoided looking at David and Kim and seated herself in a chair off to one side. Kim took a place on the couch and David busied himself with turning on the fireplace. At first no one spoke, but once the fire was going, David broke the silence.

“We should eat.”

Evelyn couldn’t even contemplate eating, even though the last meal she’d had was sad fast-food nearly twelve hours ago, but she made a noncommittal noise in the back of her throat. David ferreted around and found the room service menu which he handed straight to Kim.

“Pick something. I’ll call it down.”

Kim chose a cheeseburger and Evelyn pointed to the Caesar salad to avoid an argument with David. He called room service and added a club sandwich and some Cokes to the order before hanging up the receiver. Kim picked up one of the magazines from the coffee table and thumbed through it without interest. David went over to where Evelyn sat staring at nothing and knelt down in front of her chair.

“Evie, it wasn’t—“

“No. Let’s just wait for Rivest.”

“But—“

“Please, David.”

Evelyn turned away from him as much as she could in the chair, but he wouldn’t leave her side. After enduring as much of his smothering proximity as she could take, she abruptly got up. “You can wake me when he gets here.” She bustled into the second bedroom and shut the door.

*

“I’ll come get you when the food gets here,” David called after Evelyn as the door of the second bedroom swung closed.

He got up slowly and went over to the couch to join Kim. She set the magazine back down neatly on the table, lining up its edges with the one in front of it.

“Do you think she’s going to be alright?”

David glanced up at the closed bedroom door. “I don’t know.” He looked back at Kim. “She’s really hard on herself, and this…she thought that she was doing the right thing. We all did.”

“I think that Caroline’s wrong to blame her. We have no way of knowing who we could trust. The information could have leaked some other way and then the other packs wouldn’t have known that the Vulke knew that the other packs knew what they were planning, and that could’ve been worse, right?”

Kim said the convoluted phrase with such seriousness that, as morose and guilty as David was feeling, he couldn’t help but chuckling a little. Kim blushed and smiled.

“Well, you know what I mean, right? At least the battle lines are clear now and we don’t have to sneak around and pretend we don’t know what’s going on.”

“That’s true.” David rubbed his chin. “We don’t know how things would have played out, but you’re right, we could’ve been in real trouble if the Vulke knew that we were mounting an offensive against them, but we didn’t know that they knew. We could’ve been taken completely unaware. You should tell Evie that.”

“Why me? Shouldn’t you tell her?”

David shook his head. “I don’t think that she’ll listen to a word I have to say right now, to be honest with you.”

There was a knock at the door then, and David rose to answer it. He peered through the peephole and saw that it was a man in a room service uniform with a wheeled tray laden with covered plates. He moved to unlock the door, but then hesitated, thinking that it could be another assassination attempt. As his stomach growled loudly, he figured that if they weren’t safe in the heart of the Wahya stronghold, then they wouldn’t be safe anywhere, so he opened the door to let the man in. The man trundled the cart over to a table with chairs in the corner and unloaded the contents onto the table, removing the lids and showing them each entrée in turn.

“If you need anything else, please don’t hesitate to call down. My name is Jim,” the server said as he handed David the substantial bill.

David was a bit put off by the cost of everything until he realized that he could just charge everything to the room, and then he added an exorbitant tip for the man before signing. It was an entirely childish thing to do and David reveled in the small amount of pleasure that it gave him. After the man had gone, David went to the bedroom to wake Evelyn while Kim sat down at the table and put ketchup on her cheeseburger. He opened the door slowly and found that Evelyn hadn’t bothered to even take off her shoes or get under the blanket, but lay curled on top of one of the queen-sized beds.

“Evie, the food is here.”

She didn’t stir, but her face was wet as though she’d been crying moments before he entered the room. He paced over to the bed and shook her shoulder gently. “Evie, come on you need to eat something.”

She rolled away from him and continued to pretend to sleep. David sighed, defeated. “Fine, but you are going to have to get up when Rivest gets here.” David went back out into the living-room and shut the door. Kim looked up expectantly, her cheeks full of burger and a dollop of ketchup on the side of her mouth.

“I decided to let her sleep until Rivest gets here.”

Kim nodded and wiped her mouth with the maroon, cloth napkin. They ate a while in silence and were just finishing up their respective plates when there was another knock at the door, this time much more forceful and demanding. David wiped his mouth and jumped up to answer. “That must be him.”

He peered again through the peephole and recognized the peppered brown hair, the flowing cloak, the burn, and the aura of authority. Rivest was accompanied by two other men who had the air of bodyguards and were scanning the hallway while they waited. David had no idea how the meeting was going to go, but he unlocked the deadbolt, flipped back the security bar, and opened the door wide. “Councilman Rivest, please come in,” David said, motioning with his free hand.

The Councilman gave David a toothy smile. “Thank you.”

He stepped through the door with the two bodyguards, and David closed and latched it behind them as Rivest motioned to the two bodyguards. The men nodded and then one began to frisk David while the other went over to the table and did the same to Kim. Rivest then faced each of them in turn. “Caroline assures me that this building is secure, but you’ll forgive me if I’m a bit paranoid having had my last secure building blown into rubble. And please, call me Roberto. I think that since the Wolfkin Council is no more, the formalities can be dropped.”

“Clean,” said the bodyguard patting down David. He was echoed shortly afterwards by the man checking Kim.

David was annoyed, but he tried to force down his ire. He had to admit that with everything that had happened in the past few days no one could be too careful. Roberto regarded the whole of the room as the bodyguards moved to secure the rest of the suite.

“And where are Caroline and our dear doctor?”

 “They’re both sleeping. Caroline is in the master bedroom there, and Evie’s in the other.”

The bodyguards began descending on the bedrooms, and David rushed over to intercept the one heading towards Evelyn’s room. “Before you go and wake them up, I should tell you that Evelyn is very frail right now.” He spoke to Roberto who halted the bodyguards with a flick of his wrist.

“Frail? What do you mean frail?”

“I mean, well she feels responsible for Sara’s death, and Caroline told her that she was responsible for getting a lot of people killed now that the Vulke know that we’re joining against them. She’s pretty torn up, so please be respectful of that.”

“I see. Of course.” Roberto followed the bodyguard headed into Evelyn’s room and, once the room was cleared, he went over to the edge of the bed where Evelyn lay. David shadowed Roberto into the room and Kim lingered just outside. Roberto leaned down over Evelyn. “Dr. Eisenhart?”

Evelyn didn’t stir.

“Dr. Eisenhart, it is very important that we speak right now.”

Evelyn still did not stir. David took a step towards the man.

“Maybe this can wait until the morning, Roberto?”

Roberto seemed to consider David’s words, then without warning, he ruthlessly slapped Evelyn’s face.

3

Evelyn cried out and cringed away from Roberto as David launched himself at the older man, but was promptly seized by the bodyguards before he reached his target.

“What the hell are you doing!”

Roberto ignored David and stared at a wide-eyed Evelyn. “This is no time for selfish self-pity, Doctor. People are going to die. I don’t care what that woman told you. If it wasn’t for you, we would have no hope of winning this war, none. But we need you, and we need you confident and capable, not some whimpering child.”

Evelyn stared, stunned, at Roberto as an angry, red mark surfaced on her cheek. Kim hovered in the doorway, her eyes blazing and weight shifting restlessly from one foot to the other.

“Get your hands off me! Rivest, I’m gonna take your head off!”

Evelyn brought her hand up to the side of her face, blinked and then looked to David. “No, David, he’s right. Regardless of what the…situation is, I’m not helping like this.”

David stopped struggling, but his jaw remained tight and his fists clenched. “That doesn’t give him the right—“

Evelyn turned her attention back to Rivest. “I’m going to need a new lab and access to the files I sent you.”

“Since I now have free access to a number of secret offshore accounts, that should not be a problem.” Roberto turned to David. “Now if you are quite through being an overprotective ass, shall we go outside and discuss some of the finer points of this war we’re about to wage?”

David took several deep breaths and set his jaw, but nodded, unclenching his fists. Shaking off the bodyguards’ loosened grips he motioned for Roberto to leave the room ahead of him. Kim hastily sidestepped out of Roberto’s way as he strode out into the living-room with the bodyguards trailing behind him. David then ran to the edge of the bed.

“Evie are you really okay? Because I would be happy to punch Rivest right in his smug face.”

Evelyn managed a small smile. “No, but I’m better. I think that was actually just what I needed right now…Is my salad still out there?”

David nodded and Evelyn scooted off the bed. Her suit was beyond rumpled and David noticed little flecks of blood on her white blouse. Wincing, she stretched out her neck and arms.

“Listen, I’m sorry for flaking out. I…it was just a lot and Caroline…” Evelyn’s teeth clenched and she swallowed hard. “That was just a lousy thing for her to say right then, even if it’s true.”

David put his hands on her shoulders and leaned in until his nose was almost touching hers. “No, you listen to me. Caroline might have thought that this thing could’ve been handled all hush-hush, but I don’t believe that for a second. The Vulke wouldn’t have let that happen. They’ve been planning something big from the start. Now we were probably naïve to think that they wouldn’t find out about this meeting, but neither of us has ever been through something like this before, and if Caroline thought that we weren’t handling things the right way, she could have said so or refused to continue the phone chain. Also, Kim had a really good point about something earlier. What if we thought that we had kept the meeting secret, but the Vulke really did know about it? We might’ve done things thinking that we were being sneaky that could’ve turned out disastrous because the Vulke were wise to us.”

Evelyn nodded. “I just wish…”

“We all do, Evie.” David put his arms around her.

“Sara told me that we had to ‘kick their asses’.”

“We will.” David released her. “Now, let’s get some food in you and…and figure out how we’re going to make the Vulke pay.”

Evelyn nodded forcefully and they went together out into the living room. Roberto was standing in front of the fireplace staring into the fire, Kim was perched uneasily on the edge of one of the chairs, and the two bodyguards had taken up strategic positions at opposite ends of the room, one by the door and one by the windows. Roberto looked up impatiently when they entered the room and waited for David to sit on another chair before making his way over to the couch. Evelyn nodded to him in passing as she spied the salad on the table and went over to finally appease her neglected stomach.

David’s eyes trailed Evelyn to the table, then he turned to Roberto. “As much as I don’t want to see her condescending face right now, shouldn’t Caroline be a part of this discussion too?”

“Perhaps,” Roberto admitted, “but for now I’d like to speak to just you and Dr. Eisenhart and make my conclusions before hearing the…thoughts of others.” He glanced over at Kim. “I’m sorry, miss, I’m not sure that I’ve had the pleasure of being formally introduced to you.”

Kim looked like a deer in the headlights under Roberto’s scrutiny. “I…um…I’m Kim, Kim Panders. I…er…I guess I’m one of the Vulke’s strays. I wasn’t bitten or injected with anything that I know of, but I’m…I’m a werewolf, like Evie and David.”

“And how did you end up with Dr. Eisenhart and David instead of with the Vulke?”

“I’m not sure. I know that the Vulke were watching me, but I ended up in the woods in Tennessee and Evelyn and David found me. They saved my life, twice actually. The Vulke came after me, but David and I got away from them.”

“She’s been through a lot with us, Roberto,” David interjected. “You can trust her.”

Roberto turned to face David. “I think that I will have to make that judgement for myself, but thank you for your input.”

David scowled but didn’t offer a retort.

“I take it something happened to the original lab for Dr. Eisenhart to request another?”

“If we can call you Roberto, then you can call me Evelyn,” Evelyn said through a mouthful of salad. “And yes, the Vulke found us and destroyed it just before the meeting.”

“We barely escaped with our lives,” added David. “We think they traced our cell phone.”

“Do you think that they gleaned anything useful?”

“Probably, it isn’t as if we had a chance to destroy any files or anything before we left. We didn’t build in a self-destruct mechanism. Next time I guess.” David smiled ruefully.