chapter 13
Visiting Steven at Secheron Hospital on Wednesday was a nuisance that none of them had time for, but they did it anyway. The second Pumpkin Show was that night and the ball—just two days away—was occupying the girls’ every thought. (Alex had yet to ask Sid how the first rehearsal went.) Alex had almost begged off from the hospital visit except that Minhi had insisted that it would mean a lot to Vienna and somehow that was that. Alex felt overwhelmed by demand.
Everything not destroyed in the fire had been moved to LaLaurie, and Alex rode the spare bicycle he habitually borrowed from Sid—he kept forgetting that he needed to ask his parents to ship him one. They pedaled all the way into town.
Going into town required a bike or a bus. It was nicer by bike, Paul had told him, and this was still true even now that they had about twice as far to go, around the lake and into Secheron Village. As they rode, Alex was watching the trees, half expecting Elle to appear.
They clustered near one another on the road, and Minhi asked something that Alex had a hard time keeping straight himself. “Sid, how does someone become a vampire, anyway?”
“There are a lot of different stories,” said Sid. “But the one that seems to be true is that it’s a curse and a poison both. You get the poison and it can kill you. If you die from it and you haven’t been embalmed or cremated already, you rise again. But there are lots of halfway points. You can be a thrall.”
“A what?”
“A thrall, you know, a servant. Sometimes those are just people who really love vampires,” Sid explained. “And sometimes they’re people who have been bitten, who already are poisoned, who are on the way themselves.”
“I’m glad you’re finally finding a use for all this info,” Minhi said.
“Tell you what I wish,” Alex said. “Sometimes I wish I could just download your brain into mine.”
Alex was relieved to put away thoughts of vampires when they locked their bikes at the hospital and headed in to visit Steven Merrill.
Unlike the tony, new feel of the village library and marina, the hospital was bland and utilitarian and looked as though it had been built in the mid-sixties, with sweeping, ugly arcs and thin modern columns. Awful architecture was a mainstay the world over.
As Vienna signed the papers at the front desk Alex looked at Paul and Sid.
“Can you believe we’re doing this?” he muttered.
Paul shrugged. “Seems like the right thing to do.”
Minhi had been asking directions from the nurse behind the desk and now returned to them. “Elevator’s out,” she said. “Third floor.”
They were used to stairs. Alex shivered at the colossal dreariness of the place. A flash of color caught his eye as they neared the stairs, reflections of gold paper. He peered in the trash can with curiosity as he passed. It was a box of chocolates, crushed and dumped, next to the plainer paper it had been shipped in. The label said MERRILL. Alex filed it away—Bill was in a bad mood, so trashing a care package was within the realm of irrational things he might do.
As they walked up the white plaster stairwell—Alex could never understand why anyone painted stairs white when it made them look dingier than they could possibly actually be—Alex turned to Sid and Vienna. “I didn’t even ask how rehearsal went Monday night.”
Sid shook his head. “I think I’m no Steven Merrill.”
“Sid did very well,” Vienna said. They reached the third floor. “I think after a few more times he would be perfect.”
Alex was cursing himself slightly. Rehearsing for the ball certainly would have been better than the train ordeal. Plus he was now well on the way to putting Sid next to Vienna for the rest of the week. Because this clever strategy of putting his friends close to any girl he found remotely interesting was working out so well already.
Vienna pushed through the door and Sid turned to him. “Dude, you gotta take my place.”
“Really?” Alex said.
“Yes, really,” Paul whispered. “Sid nearly fell down the stairs.”
“I thought the debutantes come down the stairs—”
“Seriously, you gotta take my place,” Sid said, his face crinkled.
Vienna held the door open and said, “You know I’m standing right here, right?” She looked at Minhi as they all stepped into the third-floor hall.
Alex paused for a beat. Okay, sure. “So . . . would you mind terribly if I took Sid’s place?”
“I think we can make that work,” Vienna said, with only a Mona Lisa smile in evidence.
Abruptly Vienna stopped, and Alex felt the smile drain from his own face as he looked down the hallway. This was not a huge hospital—one central hallway traveled down the floor—and on a weekday afternoon there should have been a flurry of activity. But all was silent. The only visible soul was Bill Merrill, who was leaning with his hands thrust into his sport coat against the wall next to a hospital room door.
Vienna spoke first. “Bill?”
Bill seemed to come awake, heaving himself off the wall as he looked up toward them. Alex saw what seemed to be wistfulness dry up and dissolve into something angrier. “What are you doing here?” Bill demanded. As he came closer, he pointed at Alex. “What is he doing here?”
Bill was not at all himself. The Bill that Alex knew would immediately attack him—naturally—but he would have smiled while doing it or seemed bored and halfhearted. Bill now was agitated and forceful, and intent on pushing them back without saying it; his hands were up and faced toward them as though he were blocking access to the VIP section of a nice restaurant.
“He’s here because he wanted to see how Steven is doing,” Vienna said softly, as though talking to a child.
“We came to visit,” said Alex.
“Shut up,” Bill said as soon as Alex opened his mouth. “Shut up!”
“Why aren’t you in the room?” Vienna asked.
Minhi started moving down the hall and the other four followed, pushing past Bill without touching him, and Bill started backing up.
“Wait—” Bill said. Alex’s head filled with static. Alex looked sideways at Paul who held up his hands, as if agreeing with Bill. Alex headed for the door. Bill stepped in his way.
“What’s going on, Bill?” Alex said, and he felt his voice betraying the alarm going off in his head.
“Now’s a bad time,” Bill said. “Even you can understand that. Go back. Vienna, it’s a bad time. Get out.” Bill pointed at each of them, Alex, Sid, Paul, and Minhi. “Take him back, take him back, take him back, and take her back and GET THE HELL OUT.”
Alex watched Bill’s eyes—then ran for the room. He stopped in the doorway, looking through to see a doctor with his back to him, brown hair and a sterile blue cap on his head, blue scrubs at the shoulders. Then the doctor stepped away.
Alex now saw a room of four people dressed in scrubs and moving around the bed. Steven’s legs were covered in blankets. Two of the doctors were setting up a gurney next to the bed.
Behind them, crumpled in the corner, lay a man in blue scrubs with a stream of red flowing liberally down from his throat.
Alex started to turn when Bill grabbed him by the shoulder, spinning him around and then socking him in the face. Alex’s vision went thoroughly gaga for a second until he snapped back as Bill slammed him against the wall, his fingers around his collar.
“What are you doing?” Alex whispered to Bill, stunned. “Don’t you know what they are?”
Alex twisted away and ran for Steven’s door.
Bill grabbed him and dragged him. “Get out, get out, haven’t you done enough?” he shrieked.
Out of nowhere, Minhi stepped between them with her fists linked together, slamming her forearms down on Bill’s arm. Bill dropped Alex.
Two people in scrubs came out guiding a gurney with a white sheet over the form in it, followed by two more people. Alex could see Steven’s face at one end of the gurney, pale and waxy—but dead? It was impossible to tell. “They’re taking him!” Alex shouted.
Paul and Sid came running alongside Alex. One of the doctors with a blue cap over her head looked back, and Alex recognized Elle’s eyes in an instant. She started running with the gurney toward the elevator while the other three “doctors” squared off, blocking the boys’ path.
Alex, Sid, and Paul stopped as Minhi came up next to them, halting as well. The three vampires stood perfectly still. They folded their arms, three blue guards.
Alex spoke over his shoulder to Bill, who was behind him, near Vienna. “You can’t do this, Bill, you can’t let them take him. You have no idea what you’re getting into.”
“They’re not taking him,” Bill said, coming up and passing Alex, stepping through the line of doctors. The elevator chimed—hmm, so it wasn’t busted after all—and Elle pushed the gurney on. Bill got on the elevator as well. “They’re taking us.”
Alex said urgently, “Bill, they’ll kill him.”
Bill shook his head, and Alex wasn’t sure if Bill meant to say that Alex was wrong, or that Steven was dead already.
“Bill, stop!” Vienna cried, running now down the hallway toward Bill.
“I can’t believe you would bring him here,” Bill said to her, referring to Alex with scorn. “I thought you were our friend.”
One of the doctor-vampires grabbed Vienna, stopping her progress. Minhi sprang into action. Hung Gar kung fu always delivered powerful blows that could, in Sangster’s terms, “take your head off.”
Minhi jumped, bringing her leg up and down, coiling and uncoiling straight into the knee of the vampire on the right, who had grabbed Vienna. The knee folded back with a solid crunch and the vampire howled in anger, dropping Vienna and turning his attention to Minhi.
Alex reached for the stake hidden in his jacket and raised it, plunging it into the chest of the wounded vampire. An explosion of dust hit the air. The doors of the elevator closed.
Now the other two vampires broke off their guard duty, hurtling through the door into Steven’s room.
Alex heard a burst of reinforced glass and they looked to see Steven’s window busted out, cheap aluminum blinds swinging in the wind.
“Come on,” Alex said. They raced for the stairs.
Less than a minute to reach the lobby, and another few seconds to the front entrance.
But they were too late. In the front bay, an ambulance was already pulling away, a plain white van that roared and sped into the distance. In its back window Alex saw Bill, staring.
“Just get back here” was all Sangster had to say on the phone as they pedaled furiously from the village. Alex could barely look at the others, until finally he burst out with, “Is this my fault?”
“What?” Minhi asked, next to him.
“I can’t—Steven was injured because of me—Minhi, the Scholomance just took the Merrill brothers. Not just Steven but both of them.”
“That was not the same as when Paul and I were taken,” Minhi said. He looked at her face and saw that she wasn’t trying to go easy on him. She shook her head defiantly. “You saw Bill. He was helping them.”
“Why would he do that?”
“Because,” Sid said darkly, “he was headed that way. Don’t you think?”
“You think just because he was a jerk he was waiting for the right moment to become a vampire?” Alex spat out the words, distraught. “It can’t work that way. We all know jerks, Sid. I know how to deal with the Merrills; I have a sister just like them back home. A twin.”
Sid had no response to that.
Vienna pulled ahead of them. “All of you, stop. You don’t know them.”
“You tell us, then,” Alex said. “From what we know of the vampires, they offer a—it’s a powerful life, or afterlife. But it lacks all the things that make us what we are. Elle told us the process, whatever it is, burns out whatever empathy, whatever love you have left. So you tell us: Do you think that’s something the Merrills would sign up for?”
“Years ago I would have said no,” said Vienna. “But they’ve changed.”
Alex swore inwardly. So much to clean up; there was a dead doctor back there and they were racing away without talking to a soul.
When they reached LaLaurie, it was getting dark. Alex saw Sangster waiting on the front steps as they chained up their bikes and he immediately broke ahead of his friends. “You’ve got to do whatever you can,” he said to Sangster, approaching the steps at a trot.
“Alex—”
“We found our way into the Scholomance once before, we can step it up again,” Alex said. “There’s no way they know what they’re getting into. We can do it tonight.”
“Alex!” Sangster said again.
“What?” Alex shot back, and then he heard a second voice.
“Alex.”
Alex turned around. Waiting patiently in the foyer next to a framed LaLaurie crest were two Americans: the woman blond and trim in a cashmere wrap, the man goateed, with dark wavy hair and a midnight blue topcoat.
“Mom? Dad?”