For the Dead Travel Fast
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She didn't mind his fingers threading through her loose clasp, taking a more possessive grip on her hand. She knew he needed it.
They followed Tessa, the recovery nurse, and Walt, her father-in-law and their 'guide' while in Transitions, down the soft-carpeted hallway towards the elevator.
Now that they both smelled more of ginger than pheromone, they'd been okayed to take a tour of the facility. Striding down the hall beside her husband, Kate couldn't help but see just how bony Castle had gotten, how the wide blades of his cheekbones now highlighted the paleness of his eyes, how his wrist bones, his thumbs, his knuckles bones were so large—the bear-like paw of his hands were now just over-sized compared to her own hands.
She pressed in against his side a moment, studied him intently enough that he glanced at her, and then with concern. "You okay?" he said, his fingers tightening around hers.
"You look hungry," she said stupidly. The heat of his body was still abnormal, and she felt the sweat of him against her forearm where she pressed in. "Are you okay?"
"I could eat," he shrugged. "But after a phase like that, I mostly just feel tired."
"Through here," Tessa said from up ahead, "is our retreat center. It's three floors, with separate entries from the rehab side and the transition side. This is the door you'll come through when you have an appointment—which Walt made for you, so don't worry—and here is the receptionist's desk. Hey, Sharon."
Sharon was another dark-haired nurse who manned the desk at the retreat center. They'd seen the cafeteria where they could now take their meals, met the vampire RA for their floor (a beanpole of a man whose wife had a baby on her hip when they'd come to the door; Transitions was very much a family affair), and they had been given a quick run through of the gym with its treadmills, weight benches, and the running track in a big loop. Sharon handed over clipboards with a smile, though her eyes flicked between them, as if she didn't know which of them was the one in transition, since now they smelled so similar, apparently.
Tessa tapped Kate's clipboard. "Fill this out; the usual medical release for massage, the hot stones, spa, whirlpool—what else, Sharon?"
"We do acupuncture and we have a chiropractor on staff too. This is for all of it, so you come see me when you need anything, make your appointment—if something happens and you're in phase, totally fine if you miss it, we're flexible—everything is handled here at the desk. Here's our pamphlet." She handed over two of the trifold brochures with a cautious smile, as if she were shy. Or hesitant to touch them. "Are you liking it so far?"
Kate found herself wordless, but Castle took over the social niceties, offering his praise of the facility and the work they were doing, a little joke about spa amenities for bloodsuckers, and Sharon was put at ease. They finished filling out paperwork while they got a rundown of the retreat side, and then they handed it over, only a few missing medical facts, already set up for appointments in the sauna. Kate rubbed her thumb along the side of Castle's palm, a little thank you for how he handled things, for how they partnered each other.
Tessa led them back through the big double doors, the kind of chrome accents one would expect from an upscale doctor's office or concierge clinic. Walt was their ambling caboose, saying hello to people he knew in that soft undertone, while Tessa showed them the steam rooms, the chiropractor's exam rooms, the massage therapy tables, the ultrasound machines, and the float tanks. Up and down the floors, using the stairs because the elevators were often busy, until Kate was beginning to feel winded.
A man with a bleary set to his eyes pushed past them into the room with the float tanks, scowling. Kate rocked on her feet and Castle growled after him in warning.
"We're mixed company," Tessa said. The operator of the tank the man was set on gave him a staying hand and pointed him back in the direction of the reception desk, and with their nosy crowd at the door watching him as well, he backed off and went to make an appointment.
"So you have those in rehab in here too, at the same time," Castle started, his eyes following the man. Kate wondered if it was protectiveness, the vampire side, or the curiosity of his writer heart observing the man's indignity as he tried to walk away as if no one were watching.
She hated to think of her father in a place like this.
"We do, and they're told the other side is rehab as well, and honestly it is," Tessa smiled. "If you're in here, this facility, it's because you're in transition—you're not welcome at your own home, or it's not safe for you, and you needed a place to go through your stages in safety and support."
"Alright," Castle agreed. "I see what you mean. But it must be difficult, to have the shadow side mingling in with the… what would you call it, the facade?"
"A bit insulting, to either side," Kate nudged, trying to make nice. These people still held such power over them, no matter how generous and welcome they were being. "Either we're the dirty secret, or they're the beard for this operation."
"We work in harmony. There are no secrets," Tessa told them. "If the people in rehab can't believe, or choose to forget when they leave, that's fine. But as these are our people, our tribe, most of them have some idea of the children of Katoyis."
"Oh," Castle murmured, giving the space another sweep of his eyes. "I'm impressed. It says a lot for the running of the place, for the tribe, that there aren't any secrets. That I'm not having to hide how difficult it is for me just standing here."
"It's difficult?!" Kate drew around to get a good look at him. His eyes were hooded, sharp, his tongue darted out to his lip. "What's difficult, what is that you're—"
"Hey, it's okay," Tessa told her, a hand lightly on her arm. "We're in the exact right place for this. You're safe here. He's safe."
"I'm okay," Castle told her. His voice rumbled in his chest. "I just… I can sense them. All of them. The, uh, well, the vampires."
"You probably sense the primaries," Tessa told him. "Those are the ones who have large blood families with many secondaries under them. They're aware of you in the same way, but are stable enough to have more control over it."
"What are primaries?" Kate said, just as Castle said, "Secondaries?"
"It's the issue we have with the two of you—" Tessa said, gesturing between them. "No primary. You both scent like secondaries—"
"Which likely accounts for the difficulties of your travel," Walt said. "I've heard a family with no primary are easy pickings."
"You mean like a leader? Or a family patriarch. Or matriarch," he hastily added.
"In a manner of speaking. Usually it's the one who transitioned all the others, and built the family around them. Sometimes it's a string of sisters, and their husbands, or it's a band of brothers much like an army set-up, or it's a couple, with their so-called children, though Dr Harris really hates that term."
"Children?" Kate asked.
"Would you transition Rick and then call him your child, the amount of pheromone—"
"Oh, ew," Castle said. "That's gross. Incestuous."
"But… someone we met along the way, he said that his children were teenagers and he and his wife were waiting to transition them?"
"Oh, that's different, since they've likely got some kind of dormant strain of the lichen already. Their transition is more like a bad fever, a few months, maybe a year, of tiredness, and then they're fully transitioned."
"Oh," Kate murmured. "What about… adopted children, who wouldn't have some of it in their blood?"
"You mistake me," Tessa sighed. "I don't mean they have an inherited strand, I'm talking about infection, basically. Think of it like herpes simplex, cold sores? Your kids or husband, they're going to be exposed to it over time, if you have it. They drink after you, they kiss you, that kind of thing. Fever blisters are easy to catch, and well, so is the dormant strand of lichen. But you aren't passing it through genetics."
"Pregnancy," Castle said quietly. "That would pass it, wouldn't it?"
"Sometimes, I've heard of a dormant version passing, but it would be something like infection during birth," Tessa said carefully. She seemed to sense that Kate had one reason for asking and Castle had entirely another.
Kate was worried about Alexis, and what happened when they outlived her, while she knew Castle thought she was hesitating over having children of their own.
Okay, maybe she was. It was difficult to bring herself around to the idea that she was going to infect her kids. At the same time, she would never want to outlive them. It wasn't… easy to wrap her mind around poisoning them, though Castle's perspective seemed to think of it more like gift-giving.
"So blood families are formed around primaries," Castle was saying. "More than one?"
"Usually, yes. And while it's often found family, people you chose rather than people you're born to, there are also many bound up by both blood and genetics." Tessa was leading them through the locker rooms towards a door in the back. When she opened it, Kate realized they had come back around to the main entrance, where Dr Harris ruled over the facility from her expansive suite of offices.
The woman herself rose from behind a desk and came around to greet them, pushing her hands into her pockets. "How do we feel, so far? The rooms are comfortable, the amenities, the food?" She gave a sniff as they got closer. "The ginseng and ginger chews seem to be working. Do you have any on you right now?"
Kate reached into her pocket and pulled out the pack of gum. "Right here. And yeah, thank you, it's very welcoming. It's almost extravagant, compared to what we've been used to."
"Speak for yourself," Castle chuckled. "I'm very used to it."
"You think they need more gum?" Tessa asked. "I can't smell it at all, but we were just walking through the retreat center and no one bothered them."
"I detect only a faint trace," Dr Harris said. "Kate, Rick, indulge me and take a stick of gum, chew for a while?"
"Are we lusty?" Castle joked. He grabbed the stick of gum and pushed it into his mouth, and Kate was struck all over again by how painfully lean he looked, how his bones showed, how big his teeth were in a lantern jaw, the harsh rise of his nose—
Dr Harris seemed to be noticing it as well. "How much weight have you lost?" she said abruptly. And before Castle could answer, she swung her dark intense gaze to Kate. "What do you think?"
"Thirty or forty pounds," she admitted. A sharpness in her chest as she sucked in a breath. "Too much."
"Yes, I think so. You're going through phases at much too rapid a pace for your body to keep up. Your metabolism has increased a hundredfold. Okay, this is interesting—"
At interesting, Kate flinched, memories of the other Dr Harris crowding in close.
"Let's try a bone broth to start," Harris said. She was giving instructions to Tessa, who took them down on her phone. "Use the geese livers, oh, and try the pâté as well. After that, we can take his measure—Rick? Do you mind if we feed you up a bit, and then take some more blood to see how you're doing, nutritionally?"
"I don't mind," he said. A glance to Kate as if she would object. "I could eat."
Dr Harris nodded and then looked at Tessa. "Have you shown them the last of it?"
"Not yet." Tessa gestured to Walt. "I thought he could drive them out there to look, so long as they stay in the cab of his truck. But we can do that after he feeds."
"Wait, what? Drive us where?" Kate said sharply.
"Out to our manmade lake," Dr Harris said. "Where the last phase will be."
Kate and Castle exchanged uneasy looks. "A lake where the last phase will be?"
"Our very own Great Salt," Dr Harris smiled. "A damn sight safer than the real one, with all the deranged hanging about in packs, ready to pick the new ones off right as they come out."
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