Page 58 of Even Vampires Bleed
Blessedly, they are the only other creatures inside the tanks. The rest of the tanks seem to be housing body parts in various states of shifting, but they’re not attached to any creatures.
“Take them out at your own risk,” Elis answers me. “They might be feral.”
“And your shark won’t be?” I ask him with a questioning look.
“I’ve seen her at her worst. I can handle it.”
He doesn’t say anything else and walks to the door, but then pauses.
“Let the past be where it is and don’t presume what the future could bring you. It could be joy,” he says to no one in particular.
Except it was said so quietly that Iknowonly a bat could have heard it.
And then he disappears, and I turn to Léandre, hoisting his father’s wings on his shoulders.
“We’re good to go?” he asks me, as if he didn’t just witness Elis go rogue on us.
Are we, though?
I look at the holo on my wrist.
Five minutes have passed already.
“You can go,” I tell him. “The wings need to be sewn back quickly.”
“You’re not coming?”
I look at the butterfly and lizard tank.
I can definitely carry those.
“I’ve got two more tanks to open,” I tell him as I walk past him to the butterfly tank.
I start pushing the buttons I remember Elis used when I’m cut short by Léandre.
“Say what you do out loud. I’ll do the lizard,” he says as he moves in front of the other tank.
Don’t swoon, Cassiopé.
We work in tandem, and the two tanks open at the same time.
Léandre stuffs the lizard in his pocket carefully, and I keep my butterfly in my hand as we run to the door.
That’s when I hear it. The soft sound of people trying to walk discreetly.
No one had been here for a while, but we obviously triggered an alarm.
“Faster,” I tell Léandre as we run, but it’s more for myself than for him. It seems that I have no stamina, and I’m barely keeping up with him.
When he realizes I’m not following, he’s already at the hole in the wall. He turns to come back and get me, but this is when the soldiers I heard come into view, and they’re closer to me than he is.
I see the dilemma in his eyes. He knows what Elis said about the wings and any minute that the wings stay like this is a minute that will make it harder for any doctor to sew them back onto Gabriel’s back.
“Go,” I tell him, and yet he’s still not moving.
“I’m not leaving you here,” he says.
Stubborn man.
