Maddy handed the phone back to Gregor, and Felix slapped the mask back on her face. She pulled a couple of deep huffs of O2 into her starved lungs, enough so that she could say, “Man, she’s going to be so mad. If I’m not dead the next time I see her, she’ll kill me. I better come out of this with full vampire powers.” The ambulance slowed and stopped. The driver spoke to someone, and Maddy heard the rattle of gates.
“Where are we?”
“Red Hook,” said Felix. “Welcome to Vamp General.”
The ambulance drove into the delivery bay of the warehouse, and the steel doors rolled shut behind them. Gregor jumped out and helped unload Maddy.
Alex, Mikhail and his parents came out of the waiting area to meet them. They surrounded the gurney, each of them laying a hand on Maddy first thing. Gregor bristled a little—laying hands on her was rude, but expedient. They each needed to know a little about the woman they were going to give themselves to, and this was the fastest way to do it.
Maddy’s eyes went wide and liquid over the top of her oxygen mask. It could not be easy to be touched by four such powerful vamps at once. She sought him for reassurance, and he laid his hands on her shoulders, hoping his touch would override them all. “This is my family, Maddy.”
Her eyes remained wide, darting around, taking in their faces, the high, beamed ceiling of the loading bay, everything. They started to move, and his family fell in beside the gurney like an honor guard. This is my wife. The thought was new, unfamiliar, but absolutely compelling. She was almost a stranger, small and sick under her blanket, but he’d jump into fire for her.
He caught his folks exchanging a look. His father was always the pragmatist, and now his expression said, “this is never going to work”, because he, like all of them, knew the scent of impending death. But his mother said aloud, “The will is everything.”
Vamp General was indeed a retrofitted warehouse. It had only ten rooms for patients, more than were ever needed, but it had a well-equipped surgery, one which had received an influx of special equipment over the last two nights.
The staff gathered along the hall to surgery to greet them.
Maddy whispered, “Why are they bowing?” He just heard her question beneath the squeak of the gurney’s wheels and the clicking of his mother’s heels.
Gregor hadn’t even registered the bows. He bent close to say, “They’re acknowledging my father.”
Well, maybe all of the family, really. It wasn’t too often that they were all out in public together, for security reasons. Mikhail had been working on locking down the hospital for this occasion, because they were all going to be vulnerable during the transfusion.
A snuffling noise came from her mask, then she said, “Don’t tell me you’re royalty.”
That made him laugh. “Royalty? No, we’re more like mafia.”
“Better and better,” Maddy said, her eyes drifting shut.
At the doors of the OR, Felix took command. Maddy went one way for prep, Gregor and his family another way to change into scrubs, and to wash up. Ordinarily, Felix was a pretty mellow guy, but in surgeon mode he was an imperious prick, and Gregor was glad to see it.
“That is not sterile. That is not even close to sterile,” he berated the nurses, who were scrubbing to their elbows. Sterility was not something they had to worry about much under normal circumstances, since vamps didn’t get infections. Maddy would be full of vamp blood soon, but they were not sure exactly how long it would be until the blood granted her immunity, so they erred on the side of caution.
When all the Faustins were in baby blue clown suits, funny hats and purple nitrate gloves, and all the OR team sufficiently clean and harangued, Felix let Gregor go to Maddy. He’d worried about her the whole time they were separated; he didn’t like her being alone with strangers.
They had her laid out on the table, tubes and wires encrusting her like coral. A whole array of very serious looking machines was gathered in a semi-circle to one side of her. Two empty gurneys stood nearby, ready to accommodate the blood donors. Three technicians stood by one of the bigger machines, fiddling with buttons and arguing about something.
This was exactly how he’d always imagined he would take a bride.
Maddy rolled her head toward him, like she knew he was coming. She looked terrified. He’d never seen her scared.
“Hey, babe,” he said, fingering the edge of the sheet that covered her chest. For now. “You naked under this?”
She couldn’t see his wolfish smile under his mask, and that ruined the joke. Worse, tears started welling in her eyes.
“Gregor, I hate this.” Her voice was high and thin under her mask. “They treat you like meat, like a problem, like you don’t know what’s going on. I hate going under. I don’t want to be cracked open again. I hate the drugs. I hate the dreams. I hate the pain—”
“Shh.” He stroked the little bit of cheek that was available outside her mask. “It’s going to be okay. I’m with you now.”
“What if I don’t wake up?”
“You will wake up.” He threw compulsion into this statement, all he had, without guilt. “There is no doubt about that.”
Felix and Alex came up to them. Alex had volunteered to donate first.
“The first blood you taste should be Gregor’s.” Alex told Maddy, resting his hand on her shoulder. Gregor watched Maddy forget her own fears as she listened to his brother. All that inherent charm of his found its highest use in that moment. “But I hope mine will help. For what it’s worth, I’ve never given my blood to anyone else. This is an honor for me.”
“Blood brother.” Maddy’s voice was barely audible.
“Forever,” Alex said, and then Felix told him to go get on the donor table. A nurse started to fit him with an IV.
“Okay, you two.” Felix clapped his hands together. “It’s time to do this. Madelena, Gregor is going to draw your blood, taking as much as he can. He can sense where to stop, but we’ll be watching your vitals, and will be advising him. Your job is to hold firm. You might want to just let go, but what you need to do is fight him when you hit bottom. When you are as low as we can take you, we’ll start a live transfusion of Alex’s blood, then Mikhail’s, and then Gregor’s. If you need more blood, Mr. and Mrs. Faustin are standing by for you. Or they will give blood to you during surgery. We are trying to keep your transfusions in the family as much as possible.”
“So you’ll be a Faustin,” Gregor said.
“That’s right. You could not have better donors, Madelena. The blood you’re getting, it’s the real stuff. A-1 quality, you know? It will make you strong.”
Maddy nodded, a furrow between her brows.
“After we’ve got as much vamp blood in you as we can, we’ll start the anesthesia, and you’ll go to sleep for a while. You’ll go on the bypass machine, we’ll chill your heart with cold saline to keep it fresh, I’ll pop in the Jarvik, and next thing you know, you’ll be in the recovery room.”
Maddy said nothing, only cast an imploring look toward Gregor. Let’s get it over with.
“I think we’re ready to start, Felix. Can I lift her?”
“Yes, just be careful. No biting below the neck. I want to keep her as clean as possible. And don’t take off her mask, not even for a second. She’s going to need all the O2 she can get.”
Then Felix stepped away, and his team circled around him. Alex was on his back a few feet away, ready to bleed. The rest of the family was watching through the observation window. Mikhail would come out soon, and take his place on the second table. He and Maddy had no privacy whatsoever. Gregor lowered his mask and kissed her brow.