For the Dead Travel Fast
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Over the course of the next few days, Castle gave blood whenever a phase began to make itself known—usually she could tell, and she would press the call button for the nurse, and Castle would joke until he was too insensible to joke while a nurse took samples of his blood. Dr Harris kept them informed of how it was progressing, and Kate herself allowed for more of her own blood to be drawn, and there was even a video conference call with the original sister in Chicago, who was just as excited as ever, and didn't say a thing against them for having escaped. The whole experience of transition was mapped and projected, and if Castle went more quickly than anyone ever before, he also stuck to a well-worn and timeless sequence of phases.
She didn't remember them all herself, or recognize the half, but he was receiving the best of care, and her own VL levels were stable. She felt good, for the first time since before she had been shot in the chest at Montgomery's funeral, the kind of good which came of correct brain chemistry and proper nutrition and things evidently out of balance for far too long. She was sleeping at night, restorative sleep, and she couldn't remember the last time that had happened.
When Castle was down for the count in phase, Kate read up on the condition, everything she could get her hands on: there were native peoples' legends in the library, as well as medical textbooks and journals published by other vampires, not to mention the research in bundles. There were apparently four or five schools of thought about where this lichen had originated, and just as many ideas about where it was going or how it could be used for all humanity. She soaked up nutritional information and dipped her toe in the waters of the physiology of the body's processes, though much of it was over her head.
When Castle was awake, she read him passages from articles and explained the ideas as she understood them, and they created theories of their own about what their life together in lichenhood might look like, what they might be able to do or accomplish, and what it meant both morally and spiritually for a being whose body was enhanced, for lack of a better word.
They met a representative from the Peacemakers, who were a kind of tribe themselves, and they invited Kate to join their number. She was given some pamphlets, funnily enough, and the numbers of a few people she could call to talk about the position, but basically the other Peacemakers in New York City kept law and order among the vampire population, created safe passage for newly transitioned vampires, settled whatever claims or disputes cropped up.
She didn't like the talk about culling the deranged, which they did regularly, even as she saw the need—had been attacked herself and knew what they were up against. What it came down to? She wasn't sure she liked hunting down vampires who were, in the first Dr Harris's terms, only sick.
Not everyone could agree that they were, in fact, sick. Harris seemed to be the only one working on the idea of a vampire prion disease which caused these individuals to lose their humanity.
Since Castle seemed willing to wait and see before making that kind of decision about their future, she told the Peacemakers she would think about it. And she would. Maybe later, she would feel a more pressing need, but for now, they were still finding their way.
They circled the secrecy of the thing, of being gatekeepers of knowledge. They couldn't see lying to the important people in their lives; they wanted to tell their family and loved ones what they were, what they could do, what this condition meant for their lives. They started with a very broad list of everyone they knew who they thought would care, and then they began to whittle it down to the absolute few: his mother, her father, Alexis, Esposito and Ryan and Lanie. He debated over Hayley or Gina, and she worried about Vikram, or her superiors at 1PP, the union, maybe her extended family, but they decided, in the end, that having this core six, and no one else, for now, might be the best way to go.
Castle thought Hayley had been sent to him by his father, and with his father MIA, he reserved the right to confess to her if it served a purpose. Kate trusted him, of course, and understood his need to come clean to those whom he asked for complete trust; it wasn't that she didn't think Hayley could keep her mouth shut, but that it was better to keep their circle small, and expand it only slowly.
They began to feel settled. At home in both the idea of vampirism, and also their life together in this new paradigm. At home in this comfortable suite of rooms which allowed them such safety and protection, like a womb, birthing something altogether new.
It was exciting, and it was frightening, and it was theirs. They could do this however they wanted.
All they lacked was the finish, the ultimate peak of transition—that last phase which would fully transition her husband.
Curled together on the couch, the television displaying a game show neither of them were watching, she felt Castle sliding back into phase once more. She touched his forehead, gauging the heat radiating from his skin.
He groaned and laid his head back. "Not again. I just woke up from a big one. It makes me so disoriented."
"You've done better each time," she soothed. "They know how to help here."
"The food is good," he sighed. He'd eaten three hamburgers—the last two made of something algae-based, she had learned, which had given him a wellspring of nutrients to carry him through these phases. "I guess I could eat another hamburger. Even a chocolate shake."
"They tailor-make them for you." She shifted to call the nurse but he curved his arm around her shoulders and bodily held her down—he was very strong now, though she herself had hardened in places she hadn't realized had been so vulnerable and weak. "I need to call it in, babe." She smoothed the hair on his forehead—it had grown long in a short amount of time. He had a haircut scheduled for tomorrow. Today they had swum laps in the pool when he'd woken, and if there hadn't been so many people around, she might have—
"Not yet," he sighed. "Stay right here a second more."
"You'll want to drink," she reminded him. "And they can give you something for that."
"You give me everything I need."
Her cheeks flushed, hot and yet she was touched by the sentiment. She kissed his jaw softly, and his ear, the tender lobe in her teeth as a reminder of what they got up to like this. She kissed his nape and then his neck, and she felt the heat on his skin and the sluggish throb of his pulse. " Maybe you won't. But I'll want to drink," she warned him. "You're delicious."
He rumbled, clutching her hip. "Maybe we should."
It was so very tempting. Abandon the diet plan and drink deep—
"Later," she promised. "We can once they've taken some blood and gotten you a milkshake or one of those—"
"What about now?" he whined. "Or at least a little petting, send me off right."
She laughed against his neck; he shivered and moaned. She didn't mind teasing, testing his limits—and her own. It was good to know just how out of her mind with him she could go and yet still bring it back to common sense practicality.
It was good to stroke her fingers over the bite marks on his chest from her transitioning wound, the clawing at him she'd done in her desperation to keep him alive. It was good to remind herself that he was alive and warm-blooded and she had not ruined him by making him like her.
She kissed, and he kissed her in return, found her mouth to suck on her tongue, to pull her bottom lip between his teeth and nibble (more perhaps than they ever used to). She pressed her hand under his shirt and his skin was hot, burning, and he tasted like love.
He broke them first, head rolling back to the couch, panting hard as his fingers dug into her hip bone. "Gotta stop or can't stop."
"Mm." She wanted nothing more than to crawl into his lap and grind.
"Call. Call the nurse. Gotta do it right."
She pressed her hands to her cheeks and sucked in a cleansing breath. It helped that the rabidly delicious scent of him was tainted with the pepper-bite of ginger. He chewed the gum constantly—they both did—and it kept things nominally in check.
She crawled over him to get to the phone, cleared her throat a few times as it rang. It was Michaela who answered this one, and marked the time no longer surprised at how fast Castle was speeding through the phases. "This is nearing the end for you both," Michaela remarked. "I think we can safely set you an appointment for Great Salt."
Kate hung up, fell back to the couch with a weight on her chest.
Castle, worked up enough not to notice her stillness, scrubbed his face and pressed the heels of his hands into his eyes. He moaned something about the erection she gave him, as if that were a continuing problem (okay, it might be), but Kate was stuck on the nurse's prediction.
They were nearing the end.
Soon, this would be over, and they would be forced from the nest, ripped from the cocoon, torn from—
"Hey, soon as she takes this blood, Kate, we are doing this. You understand me? On the damn couch, if that's how fast it takes me, because I have to have you—whoa, are you okay?"
She nodded quickly, swiped the weird fall of tears from her cheeks, and faced him with a smile. "A quickie before phase, got it."
—-xxx—-