He climbed in the back seat. And almost choked. Their blood scent flooded the car. He opened the window the full third it rolled down and sat hard up against the door.
“Thanks,” Serruto told the officer, then as the car left the parking lot, he turned around on the seat to face Garreth. “Hunting you monopolized a lot of manpower, Mikaelian. We thought we’d find you collapsed somewhere, really dead this time.”
Garreth slunk down in the seat, flushing guiltily. “I’m sorry.”
Serruto shook his head. “I don’t know how anyone practically dead three days ago manages to overpower a husky orderly but I’m more interested in why you did it. What’s going on here?”
What could he say? What would a normal man say? “I — some kind of panic attack? Once they moved me out of ICU I couldn’t eat; I couldn’t sleep. I had to get out of there.”
Serruto eyed him for several moments…then sighed. “Look…having your throat torn out by a psycho, waking up in the morgue…that’s a hell of an experience. Of course you’re screwed up. That’s why the hospital is where you need to be, so we can sort this out.”
Oh, right…discover what Lane turned him into! No. “But I feel better since I left.” Inwardly he winced, saying it. God, how lame that sounded.
To Serruto, too. His eyes narrowed.
Harry said, “Come on, Garreth. Lien called me and said you were virtually comatose all day at our house. That doesn’t sound like better to me.”
“You don’t have a choice here,” Serruto said.
About which time Garreth realized they were pulling into General’s parking lot. Now he did feel a panic attack. Short of overpowering them, how did he avoid being forced inside?
His racing mind spun back to Lane forcing him into the alley. Could he hypnotize with a look, too? Two men? Maybe not that…but Serruto made the decisions. Could he handle this in a way that compelled Serruto and convinced Harry?
He looked Serruto hard in the eyes, trying to remember how Lane stared into him. “I do feel better. If a doctor checks me over and okays me, let…me…take…my…sick…leave…at…home.”
Serruto’s eyes and expression fixed. His voice flattened. “All right.”
Garreth grinned to himself. It worked!
Harry started. “What! Sir…”
Okay…he needed more for Harry. If he shifted from Serruto, though, he might lose control over the lieutenant. He continued focusing on Serruto. “What if I stay at your place, Harry?” He needed the freedom of solitude but…deal with that later. “Lieutenant, if the doctor okays me, can I stay with Harry?”
“All right.”
5
Of course the doctor checking his heart, blood pressure, and reflexes okayed him…“persuaded” into recording normal values, as he was persuaded into performing the examination without Harry and Serruto present.
Freed from control, Serruto looked baffled by how he agreed to the arrangement Garreth suggested. Garreth worried about him reneging, but the…suggestion held. To a point. Frowning when the doctor pronounced Garreth “miraculously fit,” he said, “I don’t believe it. This coming week you’re going to have a real medical exam…along with the psych evaluation the department wants.”
“Dr. Leonard?” Garreth protested. “I don’t — ”
“Do you want your badge back?” Serruto snapped.
“Yes!” Of course he did.
“After this hospital stunt on top of what you’ve been through, the department’s never going to okay you for duty without the shrink’s okay. Understand?”
Something else to deal. Later. For now, no longer threatened with hospital confinement, he nodded meekly. “Yes, sir.”
“After we let you pick up clothes and stuff at your place, go home with Takananda and rest.”
So he did…more or less. Not in the guest room where he stayed until Harry and Lien went to bed, but out under their tree…reminded of the times he camped as a Boy Scout. Except now he luxuriated in the cool comfort of the ground instead of wanting an air mattress between him and it. While he rested, he considered solutions for the sleeping situation. A coffin was ridiculous, but he did need some kind of container for a layer of earth. Any kind of earth, it appeared, not that native soil nonsense.
He sat up, thinking again of the Boy Scouts. An air mattress might work. As soon as possible, he would leave here and try it out.
In the morning he played with the eggs and toast Lien fixed for him, managing to look like he ate without actually doing so. He also palmed the vitamins she forced on him and drank only tea.
“Since Harry is on duty today,” she said, “will you come to church with me?”
His stomach knotted. Church! Could he go? He shuddered at the possibility of making Lien witness him being struck down…maybe going up in flame? Then again, nothing happened at the foot of the Mount Davidson cross, and he needed to explore the limits of his existence. “Okay, sure.”
Reaching Our Lady of Grace, however, crushed by daylight and taut with apprehension, he followed Lien in gingerly, feeling he violated the place. If he were wrong about churches…
But nothing punitive happened as they entered the sanctuary. Still, he forced himself not to cringe when Lien touched him with Holy Water…and sucked in a breath of relief when that brought no Divine retribution, either. Sitting in a pew with her, he even felt a kind of peace. Even with blood scents washing around him from all sides. While St. Paul’s in Davis was Episcopalian, Our Lady had the same light coming through the stained-glass windows, the same rhythm of standing, sitting, kneeling. It took him back to sitting sandwiched with Shane between his mother and Grandma Doyle, where they could be thumped on the head with a grandmotherly knuckle if they wiggled too much.
If Our Lady’s tall priest had looked more like Father Michaels — a round, jovial man who smelled pleasantly of pipe tobacco and endlessly relit that pipe at the coffee period following Morning Prayer — Garreth thought he might have been tempted to confess his vampirism and ask for absolution. Or was that cure for his condition myth?
Leaving afterward, Lien said, “Shall we eat lunch out somewhere?”
His teeth rubbed against the inside of his upper lip, so loose they felt ready to fall out. No doubt they soon would, and be replaced by new, sharp canines. Need to be alone overwhelmed him.
“Another time, please? I think I’d like to go home and sleep.” If she argued, he was ready to persuade her…as much of a jerk as it made him feel to contemplate doing that to her, of all people.
After for one concerned glance across the top of the car, not long enough to trap her gaze, she slid in under the wheel without looking at him. “Home to our place, I hope you meant. You know the agreement with your lieutenant.”
Nor did she look directly at him at the house. Did some mystic Chinese sense warn her of the danger? Might she even suspect the kind of change in him? Was that why she touched him with the Holy Water? The questions left him in turmoil.
More pressing, though, was the problem of escaping his imprisonment without anyone’s knowledge. At least temporarily. Only one way he knew. It was not going to hurt her, he argued, and he really had get out.
He followed her into the kitchen. “Lien.”
She turned to look at him. Finally.
He trapped her gaze. “I’m going upstairs to lie down. If Harry calls or comes home, tell him you’ve checked on me and I’m sleeping. You won’t notice me leaving or coming back.” He paused. “Where am I?”
“You’re sleeping.”
Okay…now what. Much as he wanted transportation, he decided against taking her car…not and risk having it gone if Harry came home. He called a cab, arranging to meet it at the corner. Rather than stand conspicuously in the open, he waited outside the front door, gritting his teeth against daylight’s weight and fear of being caught.