For the Dead Travel Fast
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Kate ground her teeth together and pushed her head back against the seat as Castle cleaned the wound.
"I'm hurting you," he said quietly.
"Everything hurts sometime or another," she said.
Dave pointed out the center of the wound where her flesh was mealy-looking, unclean. "You're going to have to use the saline water to irrigate that."
She had to bite back the urge to say what the hell do you think he's doing? The deputy was trying to be helpful; he was helpful. She couldn't ruin that just because the Progenitor in her wanted to jerk Castle behind her body and bare her fangs at Dave.
"You see this? It's out of balance. You can tell because of the watery color of her blood, how weak it looks. Not enough iron."
"I've been chewing iron gummies," she gritted out.
"Yeah, that doesn't work," he said. "Doc says."
Fuck the 'doc.' But she just managed not to say that either.
Dave turned back to Castle, as if he was imparting fatherly advice. "The bullet, your bungled attempts to heal her up, it's gotten her all out of balance."
"Out of balance?" Castle asked, but he squirted the bottle of saline and she hissed with pain, her heart fluttering rapidly in her chest.
"Vampirism is a delicate symbiosis."
"Symbiosis?" she yelped. Pain. The information. Either had shocked her. "You mean vampirism is a parasite?"
Dave radiated waves of calm; contrarily, that made her damn nervous. She wondered if it was a scent-thing, if he was putting the whammy on them.
"Hey, I'm not the Doc," Dave said, holding up both hands. "I don't think a parasite, but it is an infection. And you can't let it get too out of hand, but you also have to feed it."
"Infection, huh. A virus or a bacteria?" Castle asked, sopping blood and water from the hole in her damn torso. Her skin was on fire, sweat rolling down her back, between her breasts, discomfort so extreme she struggled with comprehension. "Dave? A virus or—"
"Well, I don't actually know." Dave gave an aw-shucks chuckle. "What I do know is that the Horde literature talks about the balance. You have to keep in balance. Like diabetes, when your blood sugar has to be regulated and sometimes you take insulin, sometimes you eat a Snickers? Well, with VL—"
"VL?" Castle asked. The way he doctored the wound, so gingerly, made her want to sink her teeth into his wrist. And she knew that was completely unreasonable. And yet she still wanted to do it.
"What's VL stand for?" she insisted, to distract herself.
"Huh. Vampire... something. It's what the Doc calls it. VL."
"Sounds like VD," she muttered.
"It kinda is," Dave cracked, elbowing Castle. "You certainly are, aren't you? Raring to go like a teenager again."
Castle's ears went red like he was blushing. Like she wasn't already his wife.
"With VL, you need iron to maintain your balance, but you also need folate, B12, and a thing the kidneys produce—which is what I gave her in those resuscitation shots—called EPO. EPO-pen, that's what we call those. All the Peacemakers keep 'em on hand."
"Peacemaker?" she said sharply.
"Yes, ma'am, the Horde has a Peacemaker system of law. We're here to mediate, keep the peace, between vampires. Haven't been called on for centuries, really, not since the French Revolution."
She and Castle both stared at him.
"Oh no, I wasn't there. You do know the legend is wrong—we're not immortal?" He gave her a sharp look. "You didn't think you'd be getting immortality, did you? Cheat a bit on the job?"
"No," she said icily. But it was ruined by the flare of agony that jack-knifed up her torso.
"Sorry," Castle whispered. "Is it bad? The garlic."
"Bad enough," she rasped.
"So garlic is part of the legend," Castle asked Dave, "but immortality is too. Why does the garlic work?"
"Well, no, putting garlic around your house won't 'ward off' vampires. But there are anti-coagulant properties in the garlic, thins the platelets, I think. Again, I'm not the Doc. I can't answer the technical questions."
"You can't answer the technical questions but you're going to transition your teenagers?" she growled.
Dave shook his head. "I'm holding off until they've gone on their rumspringa."
"You're Amish?" Castle squeaked.
"Ah, no, I'm not sure if that's a vampire tradition or a Ohio Amish tradition, though they could be interrelated, to be fair. Anyway, the wife and I want them to have a year away from all things vampire, see if this life is really the one they want. They're twins. Not sure if they even know what it means to be a Normie."
"Normie," Castle chuckled. He was full of questions, but okay, okay, it wasn't like she had answers. He deserved the chance to ask. Even if the sting of the open wound was like breathing fire. Even if every time he spoke she wanted to bite his lips off.
Oh God, she was losing her mind.
"Ah, it's kind of a derogatory term, Normies. You get into a kind of shorthand. Name we made up, for the kids, when we were explaining things."
"Ah, and the sun?" Castle asked. "Damn kills my eyes. I'm wearing these sunglasses all the time. But Kate—"
"Just when you're new," Kate whispered, her head back against the seat. She felt the strength draining out of her even as Dave corrected Castle.
"Just until you've been through all thirteen phases."
Thirteen?
"I don't even know how many phases I've had," Castle said mournfully. "But it can't be more than two or three."
"Which is why we gotta get you back on the road," Dave said, patting Castle on the shoulder. "I'm going to give you the exit number, just west of Chicago, for the Doc—"
"What?" she hissed, struggling to lift her head. How had she missed that this was the plan? "No. No, you said yourself, we can't—he's a beacon. For miles and miles. They'll kill him, drain him dry."
"The Doc is one of the Horde," Dave said. His serenity was eerie, made goose bumps crawl up her arms to her neck. "You need an IV, put back what you've lost, restore the balance. And you need to get that bullet out of you before you bleed to death."
"You don't understand what they'll do to him," she rasped. "I just need a stopgap until the bullet works its way out."
"No. You need a doctor," Castle said intently. He looked haunted. She'd done that to him. "We're not waiting for it to work its way out. It's not just the bullet, it's your shoulder too, Kate. The whole drive out here, it's just been guessing. You need a damn doctor who gets it, who understands, has the whole damn playbook and not some notebook filled with red ink."
Dave looked slowly between them. "It concerns me how little you two know about the volk."
She blinked. Castle sat up, mouthed volk at her. She shook her head. 'Horde' was the only word Royce had ever used.
Dave backed up a bit, like he was making room for a clean escape. "Listen, you need more help than I can give you here. This is emergency medicine. Some saline wash and garlic-laced bandages won't keep you alive. And if you want to protect him—and you're right, they'll be after him, the diseased but also regular good vampire volk—"
"Volk?" she husked. Her heart was thundering painfully against her ribs. Sweat pooled.
"Our kind, the good ones who take care of each other and have babies and dreams for a future."
"Babies?" Castle whispered.
Her heart twisted. It had been something she had wanted once, and then hadn't known what she wanted, and then... she had just not wanted to know if she couldn't.
She had just not wanted to know. She had closed her eyes and pretended it wasn't part of her.
"You were both shot. By who, or when it happened, or how, that's not what the Peacemaker does. I clean you up, I get you back on the road, I keep the peace. I'm chosen because I can resist the newbies like yourself. It's work, don't get me wrong, but I have a mate of my own, and I'm true at heart. But not everyone is going to be like me."
He sounded... quaint. And she hadn't realized just how badly she wanted quaint until she'd heard him speak. Something with tradition, with security. A place where she knew the answers.
Dave pointed to Castle. "And while I don't mind getting you two back on your feet, this isn't the time to stop and settle down. His kind—new and attractive and rabidly sexual—that's going to upset my community here, and frankly, I don't want it. I got two teenagers who want transition, and they can scent just enough to get hot for your man here. I want peace here, I want you gone."
"We want to be gone," she hissed, a weird sense of betrayal pulsing in her. "That's all we want. We didn't ask you to stop—"
"You didn't, but it's my job. So listen to me. Maybe I don't know where you're running from, but I know where you're running to, if you're smart," Dave interrupted. "Great Salt Lake."
She gaped at him.
"How'd you know that?" Castle growled.
Kate had driven for the largest inland body, no real reason, nothing to guide her but half-manifested instinct. But Castle had known. Something in him had known more than she had, more than her arrested development could put words to. She'd restlessly yearned for a big body of water, but she hadn't been able to complete the thought. Castle had known it, Castle who always had words where she only had gut feelings.
Dave was sketching a map in the air with his hands. "We have a pipeline, the Horde volk, an Underground Railroad of sorts. I can get you to the next stop, and they can get you to the next. All the way to the Great Salt Lake, where you will be unrecognizable."
"You know us?" Castle said, mouth dropping open.
"By smell, I mean," Dave said, grinning. "The doc is just outside Chicago. She'll be able to tell you, parasite, bacteria, virus, whatever VL stands for. She'll also be able to explain the balance in better detail." He bent down and unzipped his EMS bag, and the back end came away entirely. She saw the hiss of cool air as the refrigerated section met the May humidity outside their car. "But I do know one thing." He pulled out what looked like two suckers, with a dark brown-black ball on top. "Liver pops. It's clean waterfowl, hunted 'em myself. My family has eaten from it, so we know they're safe."
"Liver pops?" Castle said, the awe in his voice outweighing her hesitancy. "What's that for?"
"You two. Your body is burning through your fat stores right now, and you'll need it to cut the urge. You can't drink from her when she's out of balance. And you." He gave Kate a hard look. "You're too skinny to start. You need what's in the liver, and the waterfowl is the best. Here." He handed them across and Castle took them, hovering so close to her now, folded into the backseat, that she could smell the liver pops even through the ice.
Her mouth began to water.
Castle offered, and she didn't even have time to refuse. She had bent forward and closed her mouth around the sucker like it was the head of his—
"Christ," he rasped. She saw where he strained his pants.
"Alright you two," Dave chuckled. "I'd say get a room, but it's natural. Now you see why, don't you? Why you can't stay here. You're about to maul each other and you both know better. You have to get to the Lake, where it will dull the urge. You can't stay here."
No. No, they couldn't stay here.
Her urges were all but taking her over.
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