For the Dead Travel Fast
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The dead man who had tried to kill them tasted like a fungus. A growth in a deep dark cavern. She gagged, she tried not to think about it, but she had to drain him in order to survive.
As such, she was forced to make plans quickly, and with that dank taste in the back of her throat. Before she left with him for a place to fully transition, she needed a temporary spot to hide him away so she could venture out, collect supplies, and establish a chain of evidence for those who would follow. The urgency of the moment had eased, and with the slackening of he's going to die, she was able to assess the situation.
A sweep of the apartment with her gun and her hand trembling as her police training finally kicked in. A catalog of the damage. Herself. Him.
Caleb Brown was colorless on the kitchen floor, there were contaminated smears of blood from the hall to the fridge; it was a horror scene. (It was going to make Alexis lose it, and his mother—she couldn't think about that, because she could not change what this was. She had saved his life; they would be grateful for that… eventually.)
She scavenged their drawers and nooks and hidden places, unearthed three hundred dollars in twenties, a first aid kit, and a duffel bag where she dumped necessities: rope, gun and a clip, changes of clothing, IDs, the phones they had bought just today, car key, toiletries, her Little Black Book of Death. She brought it all back to the kitchen where Castle lay, still, lifeless, cold as the tomb.
She feathered her fingers over his brow, heart twisting painfully, but she had to trust the transition.
She bandaged him first, not only the gunshot's entrance wound which she had been forced to tear open to save him, but also the exit wound, which already had shriveled, the flesh an unsightly grey-green-purple which looked wrong on him. Looked wrong period. She skimmed her fingers over the two neat puncture marks at his heart which, she knew from experience, would darken and stain, like two birthmarks, just beside the wound. He would scar, they weren't immortal, but he was alive.
Well. He would be.
She stood, her fingers grimy with his blood, touched her tongue to the taste of him on her skin, hoping to override the taste of the dead man on her floor. That fungal mustiness was briefly overwhelmed by the rich flavor of love.
She was not crying.
Beckett stepped over Brown's shriveled legs and found the fresh garlic she had bought just a few weeks ago intending to make spaghetti. Unwrapping it from the mesh, she scalded the tips of her fingers because she was handling it carelessly. She couldn't be bothered to care, not now, not about herself. She was alive, mostly healing, she had not let the craving take over; he was going to live. She couldn't care past that.
With a knife, she sliced the garlic into slivers as thin as possible, thin enough not to burn her, thin enough to be used. The leftover big white bandage in the first aid kit was pried open and lined with the slivers, and then she lifted her shirt and dressed the smallest entry point, the one which would not surely kill her should it remain open.
Still might, of course, if she messed this up, didn't pay attention. She'd seen gangrene take down others like her, she'd heard horror stories about the rot they would get.
She slapped the garlic-laced bandage against her wound and hissed at the recoil, arching as the pain licked through her nerves. Okay, so it could still scald her. Damn it.
She washed her hands in the sink, realized she was sliding towards shock, that the sleeves of her black leather jacket were soaked in blood which might be her own, but also could be his. Anyone's.
No.
There was not time to collapse. Keep moving.
With the taste of sulphuric truffles at the back of her throat, she hauled the cold as death body of her husband into their penthouse elevator and rode down to the parking garage with him. There, she propped him next to the garage door that led to the parking spaces, and she dashed for their SUV, the keys sweat-slicked in her trembling hand.
She maybe should have done this in a different order. Too late.
She drove up as close to the door as she dared, gambling against morning commuters who might be leaving for work. For the last year and a half, Castle, on the board of the co-op, had been lobbying for an upgrade to the cameras down here; she was glad he had been defeated both times, because it was a matter of reaching up and knocking the camera away before she could haul him into the backseat. Thank God there were some perks of this condition.
She laid him out, strapped in, and zipped out of their apartment complex. She only got a few blocks before the sick edge of panic filled her mouth and made her look around for shelter. She took him straight to the modest single room she had rented while they were separated. Just blocks down Broome Street, and the moment she parked and had to hop out, she heard the hissing in his throat that signaled his heart had finally ceased all activity and his lungs no longer took in air.
All as it was supposed to. But it still made her frantic.
Kate hoisted him over her shoulder, staggering under his weight, her strength not what it should be even after juicing Caleb Brown. Her wound fresh, unable to fully heal because of the garlic, also hampered her attempts to move forward.
In the end, she had to call for the help of the front desk clerk, who seemed both terrified and also unwilling to get involved. She paid for the room with Rick's credit card, handed the clerk a couple twenties, and they wrestled Rick into the elevator, deadweight. Another elevator ride, this time going up, and she was on the same floor she'd rented, dragging her husband to the closest room she could book to the bank of elevators.
Inside, she didn't bother to do much more than assess the threat level, her heart pounding madly in her head, a deep fatigue trying to steal her away. She pulled Castle's stiffening body onto the bed and worked his arms over his head, tying his wrists to the headboard, then doing the same with his ankles to the knobs of the footboard.
She was slicked with sweat and running fever by the time she finished, but she had to go back down, park the car legally, and do what needed to be done. For them. Both of them. For secrecy's sake.
She kissed his cold forehead, whispered her love against his temple. She didn't want to go. But she shoved his wallet into her jacket pocket, then her own, then the gun in her holster. The two phones in her back pockets. Her fingers felt numb, cool, despite the fever racing through her desperate-to-heal body.
He would be fine. He wasn't due for phase two for at least a couple hours. She could leave him here, locked away, and trust that he was safe. He was safe, he would be safe, no one would come take him away from her.
She tucked the Little Black Book of Death under his pillow because maybe she was superstitious after all, or maybe because she thought if someone did find him, and thought him really dead, they might call one of the numbers in the front of the book for help rather than 911.
No. Not likely, but she left the book there anyway. As a guard over his transitioning.
She swiped tears from her cheeks and rode the elevator down.
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