Someone had notified Hector Nightwine that Quicksilver and I were necessary guests for now. A messenger had brought over Quicksilver's dishes and food and my laptop. There was a suitcase of comfortable clothes that even matched. I suspected Godfrey's fine CinSim hand had supervised the Enchanted Cottage staff for this task and felt strangely comforted by this care package from "home."
Quicksilver stayed by my side, by Ric's imported hospital bed. He'd lay his long nose on the hospital blanket near the foot for hours, and whine occasionally. He sensed my weariness, my despair at Ric's ordeal.
Those pale blue eyes would turn my way, a sickle of white along each pupil like a waning moon, under a worry-wrinkled sky of silver fur. Dog-loyal. Keeping watch with me.
I knew his problem. The constant coming-and-going of medical personnel kept Quick from using his healing lick therapy.
I was determined to spare Ric more scars to remind him of being helpless and tormented. When the nurses took a break or changed shifts, I pulled back the covers to let Quick swipe a lick or two over Ric's arms.
The myriad puffy red sores from the vampire tsetse fly bites were scabbing over, so this hit-and-run licking kept the nurses murmuring satisfaction that Ric "was healing nicely," without alerting them to the outside help.
The doctor had been relieved that Ric didn't test positive for being "infected" by "sleeping sickness" from the fly bites, unaware that these vampire tsetse flies didn't carry any parasites to infect his system.
Ric murmured awareness when Quicksilver braced his huge paws on the mattress edge to lave his face with warm, wet swipes. Quick's big tongue made an ideal canine washcloth.
Finally, one quiet hour when we were alone, I pulled the sheets down to Ric's hips and the usual green hospital gown up to his neck. Quicksilver immediately braced his paws on the mattress again to thoroughly lave the almost solid carapace of scabs forming on Ric's abdomen.
The leech marks on his groin and legs had already faded. I was relieved. I doubt Ric would have appreciated a crotch bath from Quicksilver, conscious or not.
Ric's neck was another matter and no job for Quick. The gauze bandage awkwardly taped to the spot leached Rorschach blots of blood and required changing hourly. The nurses wouldn't let me touch the dressing, nor Ric, who was drugged into a twilight state.
I watched each clean bandage slowly darken with leaking blood and studied the resulting blot like Caressa Teagarden reading tea leaves. Once the image reminded me of the African continent. Once it looked like the profile of John Barrymore, no, Johnny Depp. Another time like a teapot. Another like a starfish. Then the wad of gauze would be changed and a fresh canvas was taped to his neck without my glimpsing the wound beneath.
Seeing it once had been enough. I'd eyed a huge, bloody hole, not a mere double-fang gash, but a gouge. I hated to think how many vampires had supped there.
I held my own hands as I leaned forward in the bedside chair after the nurse left, wringing them in an agony of guilt. Had the small sensual ritual of our love affair opened a road to an empire of vampires?
Had I, playing mock-vampire at that easily excited site, somehow extended an invitation to the unhuman? The ancient Egyptian vampires had used that small bruise, used the blood beneath the skin as a highway to Hell, playing on Ric's sleeping innocence, plundering his lifeblood bit by bit as torture, draining him to the brink of death. If I hadn't, if we hadn't, maybe…
"Let him sleep and your conscience as well. You both need a long rest."
For a moment I thought it was Irma, back from going underground during the battle with the undead. I appreciated the lack of distraction.
No such luck. I turned to see Grizelle looming behind me in her imposing human form.
"What are you doing here?"
"I've returned from taking your dog out. He refuses to relieve himself here and spirit cannot conquer body forever."
I'd been so hypnotized watching Ric that I'd never noticed any comings and goings except as remote irritations.
"He is a valiant warrior," she went on matter-of-factly, "but even great warriors must piss."
"A valiant warrior?" I wasn't surprised because I'd seen Quicksilver at the attack, but I was amazed the great Grizelle would bestow any praise on me and mine.
"For a canine," she added with a wave of her ebony hand. The long lacquered fingernails for an instant seemed to lengthen into actual, awesome claws.
I glanced at Quick, worried. He was giving Grizelle that mischievous canine grin that said he reveled in her grudging respect.
I was so worried about everyone and every thing I loved now, maybe because I loved only two-and one lay like a sleeping prince in a forest of metal stands and snaking plastic tubing.
"I carried him naked from that dungeon," Grizelle continued a low whisper.
"I know. Thank you," I whispered back with that same sickroom intensity.
"I don't need your thanks. You need to understand what I know."
"What you know?"
"His wounds, except for the throat tear, were superficial, but his back is a maze of whip welt scars."
I tensed to realize that what Ric had fought to keep secret from me was casual knowledge to this bizarre unhuman shapeshifter and Snow flunky.
"I know, but he can't know that."
"Those are old, outer scars," she went on, "but they still sear his mind. He now has new, inner scars, and they have seared his soul. You have only revived him to feel them fully."
"So he should be dead, unfeeling, or undead, with no soul to feel anything instead?"
"You've no idea what you've done, have you?"
"I saved him, I hope, maybe at the cost of my own soul. I don't know yet what that demonic Brimstone Kiss did to me, and I don't care. I'll deal."
"I meant, what you've done to my master."
I embraced myself to contain a shiver. I didn't know which scared me more: this intimidating goddess of a woman-cat calling Snow her "master," or her hints and allegations about the state of Ric's and my mere human souls.
"What I've done to him! Your 'master' has forced me to taint everything I hold most dear just to slake his own ego."
Grizelle was silent for a long while. When she spoke, it was closer to a growl than a whisper.
"If you're strong enough to wrest this man back from the Land of the Wandering Dead, you're strong enough to undo the damage you've done. If you live long enough yourself."
I guess she meant that as a pep talk.
I had plenty of time to think, sitting there beside Ric's hospital-style bed. My discovery of the hidden vampire empire at the Karnak and its interest in raising truly "ancient" vamps would shake the city to its supernatural foundations.