For the Dead Travel Fast
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She wasn't a fan of Dr Harris. She wanted to be, but she wasn't naturally a trusting soul, as Castle often said, and, of course, Harris kept knocking Castle out cold. The only redeeming factor was that the Doc had darted in and caught Castle's head before it could hit the floor, then lowered him rather gently.
Dr Harris was far faster, far stronger than Kate had guessed. She remembered Royce warning her about the so-called enhancements, how she'd have to learn to control herself to the nth degree, but Kate had never achieved even half of what she'd witnessed in Dr Harris.
The vampire doc pushed her braids back from her shoulders and stood. "Glad I made it. Saw the spikes in his hemodesiderium hormones—and his ESR and CRP were through the roof—and I knew he'd be blood-thirsty charmer, if not outright violent."
"He wouldn't have hurt me," she rasped, staring down at Castle.
"Yes, he would. Maybe you'd have been in the throes of ecstasy, sure. But with those levels of inflammation in his system during an acute phase reaction, it would have overwhelmed your fragile algaic state. Look, you don't know what that feels like. It's a fire burning in your—"
"I do know what that feels like, but Castle has never done that to me," she hissed. "Castle has stopped every time I've—"
"I'm sure you think your husband doesn't have it in him, but let me explain to you the differences between his system and yours. He has a hormone imbalance to rival any horny teenager out there. Plus, in this phase, he's coming into amino acids that rework his muscle striation, and he's going to be burning through heme iron like nobody's business—which equals scary strength and very little inhibition. But you? Naw. You have a raggedy, limping system that can't decide whether it wants to eat you alive or settle in and help you out. He'd bring you down like a clueless bunny and not even know he was doing it."
Kate blinked. Took a slow, measured breath. "Well. You can't leave him down there," she said. "Passed out on the floor."
"Mm-hm," Harris muttered. "I certainly can." She unthreaded the velcro from the base of the hospital bed. "And I can soft restrain him in case he wakes angry."
"This isn't right," Kate muttered, but she could do nothing as Harris put both his wrists and ankles in soft restraints. She'd been working at the lap band across her hips while creating the timeline of events on the white board, wanting the element of surprise when it came time to escape, but she couldn't go anywhere with Castle down half the time. "Why do you knock him out when he's in phase?"
"Because he ought to be unconscious during the worst of these phases. The siderophore biosynthesis capability that enables high-affinity iron acquisition is also damn painful as it gets going, pulsing bloodlust through his veins until—well, he would feel out of his mind. And when the phase was through, he'd have all this knowledge of what he'd done, what he'd said—"
"It sounds like you're trying to guilt trip me, make me think he'll be so sad about what he's done while in phase that I dare not dream of going against your medical advice. But I don't know you. I know him. And Castle would never—"
"What do you remember of your transition?" Harris said abruptly, straightening with a huff. "I got the impression your ex-lover was unable to control himself and persistently drained you rather than giving you the key nutrients you needed to transition successfully. Is what what you want for your husband?"
"No!" Kate flinched as her outburst made the wound in her torso flare with aggravation. "No. I would never do that to him."
"But you don't know enough to not do that to him," Dr Harris said. "You don't have the knowledge. Your parents weren't vampires, your ex-lover apparently never gave you the time of day after transition—"
"It was my training officer," she hissed. "We weren't lovers. He was my mentor, on the police force He had a secret that I figured out, and I badgered him until he agreed to show it to me, and turn me into one of his kind."
"Because he was a lecherous old man, Kate." Dr Harris huffed and rolled her eyes. "You're always making excuses for the men in your life, it seems. Oh, he'll never hurt me or I was the one who asked for it. I'm telling you, your so-called mentor? He abused you. What he did is illegal in many different ways, not to mention in the Horde community. A peacemaker he surely was not."
"I didn't say I asked for…" But she had. She literally had asked. And begged. And blackmailed. And forced his hand. And tricked him into taking that first bite just above her breast where her heart had pounded in disbelief until that first burning had spiked through her veins.
She didn't want that for Castle. At all.
"Fine," Harris said flatly. "You can ignore what I say. You can treat me like an interfering harpy or a vamp trying to take your man, or whatever other bullshit you gotta tell yourself to protect this whole… image you got going. But you are a vampire, Kate Beckett. And you have transitioned your husband into this life as well. Just because you want it to be your way, doesn't mean it goes your way. You need my help." A snarl as she shook her head. "You came to me, remember?"
"I'm sorry," Kate subsided, a tumult in her head. "I don't do well with…" Kate shifted in the bed, knew she had to mend fences here, because they did need Harris. "I had a therapist. A woman who came to me." She curved her arm across her torso and knew it looked like she was holding herself together. Maybe she was. "We were lovers for about six months. She helped me let go of a lot of my anger about the way Royce treated me. But she was cagey about… everything else in the Horde. She told me a lot of things about regular life for vampires that I internalized. I believed her. And I was wrong. She was fatally wounded by one of her own victims, from WW2, who had hunted her down—"
"Was this bitch German? Blonde?"
Kate jerked back.
Harris's lip curled in disgust. "Yeah, we knew about her. Eva? We were glad to hear the bitch had been found." She gave Kate a long, judgmental look. "I'm surprised you didn't know her at first sight. Considering who she was."
"Who she—Why would I?" Kate mumbled, wincing around the ache in her guts where the tender edges of the wound had pulled. She pressed her lips together to breathe through the sharp spike, hoping she hadn't torn something.
There was a weird pause.
"No, I guess you wouldn't," Harris said, something softening her face as she looked at Kate. "You're just a kid. The rest of us forget, I think, what it is to be so fresh and confused as a newbie. To have only a couple decades at most under the belt."
Kate closed her fist in a fresh wave of trepidation. "I'm not so naive as all that."
"No, you wouldn't think so." Harris glanced down to Castle on the floor and then lifted her eyes to Kate. "I could tell you so many things… but all you really need to know is how to survive his transition and how to keep yourselves in balance for the rest of your, hopefully, naturally long lives. Are you willing to work with me on that?"
Kate fingered the frayed place at the lap belt. She'd had to press the scalpel under her thigh when Harris had made her sudden appearance, and Kate hadn't managed to cut all the way through the belt.
She had to bide her time. What could it hurt to learn as much as possible from the good doctor until then?
"Of course," she answered then. "That's all I want as well. And look, we just had a break in the case when you unceremoniously dropped him unconscious with that needle."
Harris's eyebrow lifted.
Kate flushed as she realized she'd called it a case, but she tapped the white board in her lap. "This. When I transitioned Castle, I was too wiped out to do much more than crawl over to the guy who'd shot us and drain—"
"Was he a vampire?" Harris's eyes were wide.
"Was he—no? No. I don't think so. How could… no."
"How much did you take of an unknown blood type?"
Kate flushed, not appreciating the way the woman made her feel stupid. "I… took it all."
"Everything?"
"He was already dead," she muttered.
"Are you kidding me? You drained the full ten units of blood—one and a half gallons of blood—from a person whose medical history you do not know?"
Kate scowled. "Other than what he'd bled out. Yes."
Harris lifted a hand to her forehead, as if she was pained. "I cannot believe one woman could be so stupid."
"Don't call my wife stupid," Kate heard, croaked from the floor. She tilted over the side and saw Castle's eyes were closed, his mouth open, cheeks flushed, but obviously awake. Sweat had stained his shirt at the pits, down his sternum, a dark ring around his collar.
It scared her.
Castle groaned and sat up, slowly opened his eyes. "I feel like death. I'm parched. It's so hot in here. Why can't you turn on the air?"
"Nice to have you with us again, Mr Castle. The air is on," Dr Harris said cheerfully. "And if your wife cooperates nicely, we can get you something for that raging thirst."
"Wait. What does it have to do with me?" Kate said suspiciously.
"Please, Kate?" her husband begged. Both hands under his chin, still tied together by the soft restraints, his legs sprawled before him and also similarly shackled. His eyes were nearly white as he whimpered up at her. "Please? Please?"
"Castle," she hissed.
"He's sweet now," Dr Harris said. "But wait until you tell him no."
"Why would I tell him no?"
"Because now you need to drink from him."
—-xxx—-