Chapter Fifteen: It’s Not Kidnapping if He’s Already Dead
Lisa had finished all of Quentin’s books. There weren’t many and the picture books hadn’t taken more than half an hour in total. She wanted to go home, see what was happening in the nursery without her, what plants needed tending. Would anyone have watered them since she’d been arrested?
Tyres squealed out the front; Lisa rose. She could be out the back door in seconds, but what was the point? If this was the Team, she might as well face her fate. She’d never outrun them.
“Lisa?” Jim called.
“Yes?” she said. Was he being followed? Why hadn’t they established some kind of signal in case Mitchell forced her location out of him? His pleas of loyalty were all well and good, but how would they fare against torture?
Jim burst into the living room. He was wearing his coat again, but hadn’t washed it. Her blood still stained the left sleeve. What was he trying to say? That he’d conquered the werewolf? Or that it was safe to touch; that he needn’t fear her?
Before she could ask him, Jim grabbed her arms – hard – and Lisa shoved him away. “Damn it, Jim!” Fresh blood soaked through her bandage.
Why didn’t he ever think before acting? Lisa stormed to the bathroom and began unwinding the bandage as Jim fussed in the cabinet and found her a fresh one.
“What’s so important?” she asked.
“I need your help,” he said.
“With what?” Lisa dropped the old bandage in the bin and examined her wound over the sink. The bullet had chipped a piece off the outside of her wrist bone and taken with it a finger’s width of skin. It would be nice when the Team were gone and she could get it looked at by a doctor.
“What can you tell me about devil’s trumpet?” Jim started pacing.
“Common name of Datura Stramonium, a weed in the nightshade family.”
“What does it do?”
“Grows… produces flowers.” What was he looking for?
“What are its effects on people?”
Grimacing, Lisa placed an antibacterial gauze pad on the divot and wrapped the bandage around it, wondering whether to ask him what this was about. She could ask, but he wouldn’t tell her until he was ready anyway. It was easier to just go along, for now.
“In small doses, visual or auditory hallucinations; in larger ones it will completely disconnect you from reality. Also rapid heartbeat, hypertension, choreoathetosis—”
“What?” Jim asked. He was still pacing.
“Involuntary movements,” she said. “And hyperthermia, seizures, coma; even death.” Lisa stopped. Oh gods. “You haven’t taken it, have you?” she asked.
“No. Why would you think that?”
“Because you’re all jittery.”
“Sorry.” Jim left the bathroom to pace the living room instead. Lisa followed.
“What’s going on?”
“Could it…” He hesitated. “Could it make someone a zombie?”
Lisa laughed, then noticed he wasn’t laughing and put on a mock-serious face. “No Jim,” she said. “Only meteorites or voodoo can do that.”
His particularly blank expression reminded Lisa about Duke Andraste’s strict horror censorship. Archi TV was all bunnies and sunshine. No horror stories.
“Why should devil’s trumpet make someone a zombie?” she asked.
Jim spoke, but not to her. “If you were just past the brink of death – cold, lifeless, heart stopped but not yet brain-dead – your body might still respond to stimuli. Something touching the skin might send messages for the body to raise its temperature again, for the heart to beat faster – or beat again – the mind to dream… It explains the staggering gait, the mental impairment…”
“But only on a living creature,” Lisa said. “Zombies are dead. That’s part of the definition. Most of it, actually.” Then, because this conversation seemed to be lacking common sense, she added, “Also it’s impossible.”
“Yesterday morning you had a tail, Lisa,” Jim said, staring into space.
There wasn’t much she could say to that. It was an impossible world lately, but at least Jim seemed to have a map. Or he was drawing one as he went.
“What’s this all about?” she asked.
“A new theory,” Jim said. His eyes scanned the floor as if reading. Was this glimmer of hope for her, or did it have nothing to do with her? “How well do you remember the morality tales?”
“I…” That was another question from nowhere. She supposed it made sense to him. Hopefully. “Fine I suppose, but you were always top of theology class.”
Jim nodded. “What are the three vital fluids?”
Vital fluids… she didn’t remember the phrase, but all the morality tales contained fluids. “You mean like when Zenobia kept Bion from dying of cold in the deep winter using her… unconventional heat preservation method?”
Jim nodded again.
“I remember everyone giggling at it,” Lisa said. She suspected the teachers would have left that particular story out of the syllabus if they could have, not that kids hadn’t heard it years before they studied it. “Or when Beathan shared his eternal life with Enid by mixing their bloods?”
One of Jim’s hands had drifted over his mouth and he nodded for her to finish.
“Or when the Water of Life ran dry, so Morrigan quenched the thirst of Phocas by spitting into her cup and having her drink?”
Jim winced. “I never liked that one.”
“That’s because they always cast you as Phocas.”
It had been quite funny, really. The yearly drama productions always concluded with Jim, wearing a dress and wig, dragging his feet across the stage and drinking a cup of spit. Apparently his classmates had volunteered him every year, saying it had become tradition. Every year he’d smiled a little less when Lisa had asked him about it.
Since she still had no idea, Lisa asked, “What’s going on?”
“Oh, I forgot!” he said. “I worked out why you didn’t like the Andrastes. They’re vampires.”
Lisa wished Jim could keep his crazy ideas to one per conversation. “That’s nice. And why do you think that, Jim?”
“They have the basic physiology of a cat including the preference for attacking at night, I’d guess, since I haven’t been torn limb from limb yet.”
“Jim, don’t say that!” she yelled. Images of a cow and a sheep fleeing for their lives flashed through her mind. Blood and bones and guts. Tastes.
For once, Jim realised that what he’d said was offensive. “Sorry,” he said. He ran his hands through his hair and sat down, but he couldn’t keep still. “You’re right, cats don’t tear limb from limb. They attack the jugular – which may have been where the vampire neck-biting image came from…” He spotted the disgusted look on her face and stopped again. “Sorry.”
“Why would the duke want you dead at all?”
“Last night I sort of… drugged and robbed him.”
Lisa stared. Was he serious? “You?”
Jim swallowed and flicked his head to the side in a little shrug. “Right. Thanks for that uplifting assessment of my abilities.”
Lisa smiled. “Well… last time you were all ‘Yes sir, no sir, three bags full sir.’”
“That was before,” Jim said, jaw set and eyes steady. He’d stopped fidgeting now and was, instead, completely still.
Lisa stopped smiling. You didn’t smile at that expression: it was danger and fury and righteousness. Lisa was glad it was on her side.
“How goes the search for a cure?” she asked.
The determined jaw wavered. “Ah, yes,” Jim said. “There was a slight hiccup when I realised Adonis was probably lying through his pointed teeth about it all.”
So, there was no cure for what she was? Where did that leave her? Hunted, still. At best she might escape to the Mainland, but once someone saw her bullet wound there’d be police interviews which would lead back to the Team.
Wherever she turned, M
itchell found her.
“What’s this about?” Why couldn’t they go back to talking about their school days? So much nicer than contemplating her demise or recalling the taste of sheep. “The stories, I mean, not the vampires.”
“I think I’ve worked something out.” Again he was on his feet, barely able to contain his excitement. “I have to go, I’m sorry,” he said.
Lisa nodded. Where did this leave them? She still wasn’t sure she could trust him, but she was sure he wouldn’t betray her again; how did that work? Jim saved her from deciding whether to kiss him farewell by ducking into the bathroom.
“When you said you had to go,” she told the door, “that isn’t what I thought you meant.”