The man speaking had dark hair going gray at both temples and a medium complexion. His thin lips curled around each rough syllable, and the other people in the room repeated him at intervals. They all knew the routine—it felt like a call and response. Since this wasn’t a political rally, I figured they must be at prayer. Who would a vampire pray to, though?

Meaty and Charles now stood by the head of the bed. The patient began writhing like he was demon-possessed. His eyes rolled back, flashing white under his lids, and he started frothing pink. Either he’d bit his own tongue while seizing, or he was having some sort of sudden left-sided heart failure. I looked over to Charles for guidance, who firmly shook his head.

The prayers rose to a fevered pitch as the blood drained in. I’d never seen blood given so fast—usually you had to watch for reactions, rejection, clotting issues. He definitely was reacting, his whole body thrashing, threatening to tip the whole bed frame over, but I had no clue what it meant. The bags emptied one by one, their pumps hissing to a stop before beeping complaints as the prayers rose in volume and were almost shouted, then—

Silence. Complete. Eerie. The only sound was the ragged breathing of the man on the bed. He spasmed again, sending the bed frame skittering sideways on the floor, locked wheels and all, before coming to a rest. Then the prayer leader drew a knife out from his breast pocket.

“What the—” I gasped and took a step forward. Charles shook his head violently, from side to side. But—I mouthed over to him, wordlessly. His head continued to shake.

The prayer leader walked forward and made a fast slice down the patient’s right arm, cutting through wrist and restraint alike. He walked over to the left side of the bed, and cut it too in the exact same way. Then Charles and Meaty kicked tan plastic tubs we used for bed baths out from under the bed. Blood spattered down from the wounds into these, sounding like an old man’s sputtering stream.

Was this vampire dying? A sacrifice? A ritual? It didn’t matter what Charles said, or what Meaty allowed—this was insane. The blue line on the monitor for oxygen saturation went to zero. I’d already taken a step forward when I saw the patient smile.

The vampires surrounding the bed, who’d been so wordy before, were now quiet, one and all. I would say they sighed with relief, but that’d be showing too much emotion for them. They seemed … content. The wrist wounds began to heal themselves up, like they were going back in time—I halfway expected the restraints to float up and reseal around him. As the exiting blood began to ebb, their leader picked up the nearest basin and held it to his mouth. It was awkward, the tubs weren’t meant to drink from—blood sloshed on either side of his mouth and made a double trail down his chin onto his collar, leaving dark stains down his shirt. When he was done he passed it along to the next vampire in line, who also drank with casual disregard. I stood still, stunned—and then Meaty and Charles rushed forward and put new restraints on the man.

“Edie—there’s two pints left in the fridge. Go get them, will you?” Meaty asked, and began to unwrap a feeding tube. Charles was putting a second set of cuffs on the patient, on all limbs. “Edie?”

“On it!” I ran outside in my gown, unlocked the fridge, and yanked out two bags of blood. By the time I got back, the patient was seizing again. Meaty was shoving the feeding tube into the patient’s nose as fast as possible, from an arm’s length away. Charles took the blood from me and strung it up, then connected it to the end of the feeding tube’s line.

Teeth erupted out of the patient’s mouth, and he shrieked aloud, a sound like a locomotive in heat. I stepped back. “Jesus—” The visitors nearest me turned to glare. The level of blood in the hung bag visibly lowered, as the power of gravity and an ethereal hunger drew it into the patient’s stomach. His teeth retracted, and he lay back again, quiescent.

The leader of the visiting group nodded at this. “The ceremony has been performed to our satisfaction.” He turned toward Meaty. “As always, the Rose Throne appreciates your cooperation.”

Meaty took a step away from the patient. “Thanks. We’ll bill you later.”

The leader snorted lightly. “We will retrieve him in three nights.”

Meaty nodded, and the gore-stained country club exited the room, one by one. I waved at Gaius through the window. He tilted his head at me, my badge glowed again, and then he waved stiffly back.

Charles stood beside the bed, arms crossed, second pint at the ready.

“So what the hell was that?”

He grinned, but he didn’t take his eyes off the draining original bag. “Your first vampire baby shower.”

I felt my eyebrows reach an improbable height on my forehead. “Could you define that? The baby or the shower part?”

“It’s like an angel earning its wings, only with more blood. Someone decided he was important enough to keep around. Forever. Lord and silver willing,” Charles said, making a cross over his chest. “Get the tranquilizer gun, will you? I’ve put it behind the door.”

I nodded, and closed the door. Sure enough, it was balanced in the corner, stock down. I picked it up and put the butt against my shoulder. The safety was off—down here, the safeties were never, ever on.

“Remember: him, not me,” Charles said, gingerly taking a step forward.

I took a step closer, trying to compensate for poor aim by sheer nearness. I kept the gun trained on the vampire patient’s chest.

“So all of those”—I glanced up at the ghosts of packed red blood cells above us, empty plastic bags tinged pink with the dregs of blood inside—“were vampire blood? Full vampire blood?”

“Mixed with Haldol, yeah.” Charles laced up the next pint of blood. The resting patient snarled when Charles came near, but didn’t otherwise react. “This guy’s been a loyal daytimer for the Rose Throne for who knows how long. Somehow, doing something, he earned a full blood transfusion. We presedated, perisedated, and are postsedating him, but—” He pointed at me and indicated the gun.

“Sure.” Who had a job that required mandatory time practicing at a gun range? I did. At least the County paid for ammo. I’d only been to the range twice so far. I moved to have a better view of the patient’s chest. At point-blank range like this, I hoped I couldn’t miss. The darts here were packed full of suxamethonium chloride and propofol—“sux” and Diprivan—two of the most powerful, fast-acting sedatives known to man. And also, apparently, vampires. I frowned. “You sure meds still work on him?”

“For now they will. By the time they don’t, he’ll be fully transformed back home in a coffin at the vampire ranch.”

I resisted the urge to roll my eyes. “So he’s not a full vampire yet?”

“No. But he will be, once everything assimilates. It’s half genetics, half brute strength. In some ways, vampirism is like a progressive disease, and in doing this, we force its hand. On his own, it could have taken decades to drink as much elder blood as we gave him, assuming there were that many willing local old ones. We bank blood for them now, for just these sorts of occasions. It’s why they come here. The Shadows protect the communal supply, for the Thrones that choose to participate, and those Thrones create the demand.”

“Who decides which and when?”

“The Thrones write up requisitions, they give them to our social workers, and then our doctors write orders and give them to us.”

“So why this?” I asked, gesturing to the blood going into the feeding tube with the end of the gun. Holding this stance, my arms were starting to get tired.

“They wake up hungry and strong.” Charles circled around the perimeter of the room. “Assuming they survive. They don’t always. Sometimes we get this far, and they just can’t make the jump. That’s the genetic part.”

“And if they don’t?”

“Then they go into shock and the vampires put them down.”

My lips parted, in either fascination or disgust, I wasn’t sure. “How?”

Charles made a V with two fingers and pointed at his own mouth, where he was missing fangs. “Waste not, want not.”

“Well. Wow.” I was glad I hadn’t seen that. I wondered what my reaction would have been if I’d walked into a room where Charles and Meaty were watching vampire guests feast on a restrained patient. I shuddered. Blood in chilled bags and capped vials was one thing—seeing it spilled out was another, and seeing other people drink it was yet a third. I remembered Anna sucking on my hand, and hoped I’d never see anything like that again. I wondered if that’s why I’d seen her in my dreams, on a boat. Metaphorically, she was like a shark that’d bitten me. No wonder my subconscious was afraid of her.

“Anyhow, the rest of tonight should be easy,” Charles said, pulling a full syringe out of his pocket to show me. “I’ve got orders on Ativan like you wouldn’t believe.”

I laughed, and handed him the stock of the gun. “Happy hunting.”

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

When I emerged onto the floor, Meaty was looking around the nursing station. All the shift’s paperwork had been done and filed, courtesy of me, Extra Help Edie.

“Good job, Spence,” Meaty said. “Go on break.”

I saluted, pleased with myself, and set off.

I badged myself into our locker room/bathroom combo area. I didn’t have to go to the bathroom, but anyone who didn’t wash their hands before eating in a hospital was a fool. I turned on the faucet to wash my hands and face.

The sound of the water—I knew that sound. I saw it running in front of me, hot steam wafting up, but in my mind my vision of the bathroom blurred, and I saw freezing snow melt trickling down cement. I was cold, and there was no way I could get warm. Stagnation surrounded me, other things that’d washed into the gutter, rotting in the dark.

I wanted to throw up. My stomach lurched and broke the spell. I slammed the faucet off and clutched the edge of the sink. I had that sense of lostness, looking out at the ocean again, trapped by the endless nothing around me, immobilized by a fear … that I didn’t feel was quite my own.