Page 104 of By the Pint

34.

Dima

Casey’s body went still. The colour leeched from his ice-cold skin. It was the same temperature as mine. His mind emptied. Nothing in there besides the screaming of the turning.

Somebody pulled me off him. The male vampire, Vlad. “Sir, we need to get him strapped to the gurney. Once he goes, he’ll rip all our throats out.”

Right. Casey was turning. Becoming one of us. Just what he’d always wanted.

My stomach churned and my heart splintered into a thousand tiny shards.

“Use double straps,” Nina said. “Big guy. Too big. I want to be extra cautious here. He’s going to be stronger than any of us have ever seen.”

Rigor mortis set in unnaturally quickly, and Casey’s body froze into the foetal position. It was difficult to look at him. And even more difficult to look away.

“It shouldn’t be happening this fast,” Yelena said to no one in particular, or perhaps to everyone.

Nina answered. “In my one-hundred and eighty years working at this facility, I’ve never seen this before. Heard stories about it. But I’ve never seen it myself.”

“What’s happening?” said Killian, and I almost jumped out of my skin remembering he was there, crouched behind the other arm of the sofa, like a child watching a scary movie. Of course, he’d closed his mind off, so I couldn’t hear him the way I heard the doctors. He gave me a sheepish smile, which I pointedly ignored.

“Sir, sir,” Vlad said, nudging me farther away from Casey’s lifeless body.

“Mr Grey.” Nina pinched the bridge of her nose with one hand and the other, which was still holding the clipboard, she placed on her hip. She looked like she was the parent to find Killian sneaking out of his bed. “Your familiar is currently going through the chrysalis phase of the turn. Though, gods knows how. There are no puncture wounds on his neck. Or his wrists. So, you tell me. How did your familiar’s blood get drunk without leaving a mark? Hmm?” She looked at Killian, then me, her head bouncing from left to right as if to catch us lying.

“One of you”—she pointed to both of us in turn—“has some explaining to do. Turning someone outside of a turning facility is punishable by gaol or even termination. So, you two better work on your stories before we call the authorities.”

“I haven’t done anythi—” Killian started to say. I pulled the edge of the rug up behind him, making him trip forward onto his knees.

“Excuse me.” Yelena stepped right over Killian on the way to the couch. Vlad slid some kind of board under Casey, and the pair of them lifted him together.

“Should he be this heavy?” Vlad asked, his voice strained.

“Shit! He’s thawing already!” Yelena screamed.

And sure enough, Casey’s legs were slowly, in microscopic increments, uncurling.

Nina grabbed me and Killian by the arms, her clipboard abandoned on the carpet. “Fellas, I need you both out the room immediately.” She marched us to the door and pushed us into the entrance of a long, narrow corridor that ran parallel to Casey’s rooms. “You can watch from here. I’ll be with you as soon as …” But she never finished her sentence. She slammed the door shut, hit an emergency alarm button, and disappeared again into the suite.

A siren wailed overhead. The passageway was dark except for the red flashing light refracting through the two-way mirror at the end. Killian and I shuffled along until the full horror of what was happening came into view.

They had his body — now flat on his back on the gurney in the centre of the ‘bedroom’ — mostly strapped down. He was awake, but far from aware. His arms were free, swiping the air and trying to claw the doctors. I couldn’t see Casey’s face; Vlad was stood in the way, but I could tell his shoulders were off the mattress. I braced my hands against the reinforced glass.

More vampire doctors raced into the room, and between the five, six, no, seven of them, they managed to restrain each of Casey’s limbs.

“What did you do to him?!” I spat once it seemed the doctors were easing off of Casey.

Killian flinched. “What did I do? Bestie, I haven’t even touched him. You were the one railing him in the back of a taxi.”

Of course he went into Casey’s head and helped himself to all his memories.

“And before you can accuse me of going inside his mind and helping myself to all his memories” —I affected an indignant snort—“know that I didn’t. Casey shared them with me. Askedme to watch them and store them somewhere safe, so that one day I might be able to transfer them back to him.”

That brought me up short.

“I don’t even think it works like that, but he was desperate and … well, it’s worth a try.”

We paused for a moment, both staring through into the darkened room. The red overhead beacon stopped pulsating. The angry siren stopped blasting its wingball-goal-adjacent howl. Silence rang out everywhere like a gong. Casey became stiller. His arms and legs only twitching rather than thrashing. The vampire doctors stepped back from him, revealing his face.

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