Chapter 11: Recovery Period

There was hardly any light on the street.

Ruthven and Varney had applied quick first aid to Hogan and then picked him up. The Duchess led them out to the car. Yanking open the back door, she flattened the backseat. Tiger and Hogan's men followed behind and the Count took up the rear, scattering petrol as he went. Though they passed corpse after corpse, no one paid them any mind.

Hogan was put on the flattened backseat. Tiger and his men climbed in after him.

'Keep him immobilised,' the Count said as he took the keys from the Duchess and climbed into the driver's seat. 'He's still got a rib poking into his lung.'

Careful of his injuries, all five leaned over to hold him down.

The Count drove away from the warehouse as the other three dhampirs burned the building down.

HH

'Okay, give me the pins.'

Kinch sat with the other men and Tiger as they watched four people (who really shouldn't exist) work on the Colonel. Kinch wasn't sure what was scarier: the fact that vampires were real, or the fact that the damned Kraut had wanted to turn Col. Hogan into one. He'd heard the process as well as the others.

And he knew perfectly well that it would've been Tiger's blood forced down the colonel's throat if the dhampirs hadn't intervened.

'Okay, sutures.'

Kinch supposed he ought to be thankful. They had no x-rays, and were working purely under bright lights. If what he'd heard about vampires were true, those four were finding all the damage by sense of smell. They weren't likely to miss anything like that. Kinch was just glad that he'd been able to shoot the bastard responsible for this.

'These are the sutures that dissolve, aren't they?' Varney asked.

'Yeah,' the Duchess said. 'Tata had them developed when mamma expressed concern about having to open someone back up to remove the stitches from internal organs. They dissolve as the body heals.'

'I guess that explains why there were sutures in that room I could use for Renfield,' Varney remarked.

'Was Renfield harder or easier than this?' the Duchess asked.

'Easier,' Varney told her. 'Renfield was just stabbed with a long knife. I didn't actually have to cut him open to get to the damage. And I knew it would earn me points with your father.'

The Duchess snorted. 'Like that was the only reason you did it.'

'No, but Helsing bought it.'

The Duchess snorted. 'Helsing was shocked to see a girl beating the snot out of a roomful of men.'

'To be fair to him,' Ruthven said, 'that's not exactly something anybody would expect to see.'

'All right,' the Count said. 'Let's drain out the excess blood and close him up.'

HH

Newkirk looked around the place.

Tiger was tending to Col. Hogan until he woke up and Carter had taken the first shift guarding the door. There was a telegram machine in the room, allowing Tiger to contact the Underground. And Kinch had used one in another part of the castle they'd camped in to contact London. He didn't give all the details, of course, just that the colonel was out of commission for a while.

LeBeau had gone to look for the kitchens.

Carter, like Newkirk, was exploring the place.

The sound of piano music drew Newkirk into a sitting room. Varney was sitting at a grand piano, playing something or other. The Duchess was sitting at a writing desk, writing a letter. She glanced up as he came in, and then Varney did. The other Englishman never stopped playing even as Newkirk wandered in.

'It ain't uh…' Newkirk hesitated, but decided to just rip the bandaid off, as it were. 'It ain't just a penny dreadful, is it?'

Varney knew what he was talking about. 'No. Sir Francis Varney, or Varney the Vampire, really did exist. He was a victim of the same thing that almost happened to Col. Hogan tonight.'

'We call it the Forbidden Curse,' the Duchess said. 'Because it's people literally playing God with someone else's Soul.'

'You seem to know a lot about it,' Newkirk remarked.

'Of course,' Varney said. 'Rightfully, we should all be long-since dead and buried. But, because of the Forbidden Curse, we are not.'

'Could you explain that?' Newkirk asked.

'When Hogan wakes up,' the Duchess said. 'We'd rather only explain it once.'

'Fair enough.' Newkirk nodded. 'What about Klink then? He's gonna notice our absence if we have to wait for the colonel to recover sufficiently.'

'Taken care of it,' the Duchess said. 'I told him I was using you five for a job I had in town, and I'd take Shultz to guard you.'

Varney chuckled. 'Then she told Shultz just enough to scare him, and proceeded to bribe him with a block of chocolate to go away for a few days.'

Newkirk chuckled himself. 'That ought to do it.'

'A few days should be more than enough,' the Duchess said. 'The worst thing will be the punctured lung. The few days here should be enough bed rest for that one.'

'And Wilson will know what to do with the rest,' Varney pointed out. 'And…if worse comes to worse and Klink doesn't want to let him take it easy, we can just fake sick for him. Say he has a respiratory tract infection. Too much work while he's healing will make him breathless enough for us to sell that.'

Newkirk smirked. 'Don't take much to swindle Klink.'

Varney grinned. 'We noticed that, yes.' He stopped playing and glanced at his watch. 'Oh, I better move. I want to be there in time for roll call.'

That said, Varney ran out of the room. All Newkirk saw was a streak of colour and certain things lifting as he blew past them. The Duchess had put her pen aside and lifted her writing paper right before the blighter had run off. Then she calmly put her paper back down and picked up the pen again.

Hm, Newkirk mused. They ain't so bad.

HH

Tiger sat on the edge of Hogan's bed.

He was propped up on several pillows. Kinch had radioed Wilson, who'd confirmed that someone suffering from a punctured lung was better to sleep propped up for the first few days of recovery. Apparently, he wanted a look at Hogan himself, but he'd have to wait for that. Now the man slept peacefully.

The wheeze was gone from his breathing.

Tiger had already sent a telegram to the Underground. It seemed they'd already found their mole. Only a core group of Underground agents had known she was on the mission she'd been sent on. Each of them was watched and they'd caught the mole red-handed. He'd then been turned over to the allies as a spy.

At least she wouldn't have to worry about him again.

Tiger laid her hand over Hogan's and gently squeezed. It seemed wrong, him lying prone like this. She knew he'd been seriously injured, of course. And she knew that he was improving now. At the same time, she'd seen him sleep. He slept on his belly. This was the complete opposite and it worried her.

Reaching over, Tiger checked the bandages around torso again.

As she did, she wasn't expecting one of his hands to lift and lay over hers. She looked up and saw his eyes peeked open.

'Tiger?' he murmured. 'You all right?'

'I'm fine,' she told him. 'What about you? You're the one who ended up with a punctured lung.'

'It's fine.' Hogan went to push himself up. Frowning, Tiger pushed him back down. Hogan groaned. 'Tiger, please. I need to check on my men.'

'They're fine,' she told him. 'Kinch was even the one who shot Kaufman. You, on the other hand, have to stay on bed rest.'

Hogan looked at her. Now, his eyes were sharp. Tiger wondered if they'd even had aesthetic to give him. That would explain why he was lucid so quickly. His brown eyes took her in. Then, slowly, he laid back. 'All right, all right.' He held an arm out. 'Come here.'

'Why?' she asked.

'Because you look like you haven't had a decent sleep in ages,' he said. 'I'll stay still if you sleep.'

Tiger smiled and laid down on his uninjured side. His arm wrapped around her. Smiling and closing her eyes, Tiger wrapped an arm around him. She was mindful of his still-healing wounds. She hadn't realised how tired she really was. 'You're just not capable of doing anything for yourself, are you?'

'No.' He kissed the crown of her head.