Page 52 of Lost

13

Other Kevin

Kevin made his decision quickly. He could leave—fast. He could run away, back to Utica Square, call G-ma, and return to the ridge. Or he could get his butt up off the bench he felt practically adhered to and go in the morgue and harvest some stinking red vampyre blood to camouflage his smell and get on with the job he’d set out to do.

He knew what Zoey would do.

Kevin moved as quickly and silently as possible. His gaze swept the area as his ears strained to listen for even the smallest sound of anyone approaching while he walked across the meditation garden to the door to the morgue. When he got there, he didn’t pause. Kevin opened the door and ducked within.

He’d been to the morgue once before. It’d been with General Dominick right before he’d been promoted to lieutenant. They’d had a skirmish with a group of humans who had formed a militia unit east of Broken Arrow in the middle of some state-owned lands that had once been a Boy Scout camp but was now a mess of deserted trails and overgrown woods. The humans had refused to give up. Neferet sent in her Red Army.

It had been a brutal massacre. Every human was killed. The Red Army lost a dozen soldiers. The general had asked for volunteers to bring the bodies of the fallen red vampyres back to the House of Night, and Kevin had immediately stepped up, thinking that driving a military truck piled with dead vamps was a lot better than staying and joining in with the rest of the army as they tore the humans apart and devoured them. General Dominick had been impressed with Kevin’s ability to handle the job and immediately gave him a field promotion.

So, Kevin knew exactly where he was going—though he wasn’t eager to get there.

He followed the entry hallway all the way to the end, ignoring the doors to his left and right. They were full of blue vampyres that had died or been killed in battle and blue fledglings that had rejected the Change. There wouldn’t be any red vampyres in any of those rooms, as Neferet made sure to keep her Red and Blue Armies segregated, even in death.

There were no markings on any of the doors, except the very last one at the end of the hallway. That door was marked clearly with a large red X. Kevin didn’t hesitate. He opened the door and slipped inside the dark room.

The smell was the first thing that hit him. The room was cold, kept that way so that the bodies wouldn’t decompose too much before they could be burned and then discarded like trash. There was little in the room except metal tables and metal cabinets lining one wall. He quickly counted ten tables. Only one of them was occupied. Averting his eyes from that table, Kevin hurried to the wall of cabinets and began searching through the medical supplies.

It took little time to find a glass jar with a lid.

Kevin took the jar and went to the occupied table. A body lay there, covered by a bloody sheet.

Just do it. Just get it over with.

Kevin lifted the sheet from the body and sighed sadly.

“Damn, dude, that musta hurt.” The cause of death of the young red vampyre that lay there was obvious. Something had smashed into his head. The whole right half of his face, from his cheekbone up, was a mess. Kevin wanted to avert his eyes. He didn’t want to look at the guy’s face, but he couldn’t seem to stop himself.

The dead vampyre had been so young! His face, frozen in death, was hideous on the wounded side, but the rest of it didn’t even look like he was eighteen. “You can’t have been Changed for very long.” He spoke quietly to the corpse. “Me either. I remember Changing so well. I remember how scared I was, knowing that my humanity was slipping away from me. I still don’t know what’s worse. Totally losing your humanity and turning into an eating machine or hanging on and understanding just how much of a monster you’re becoming.” Kevin rested his hand on the kid’s cold, lifeless shoulder. “I’m sorry. I’m going to try my best to stop anyone else from becoming a monster, but I need your help. This isn’t gonna be pleasant, and I’m real glad you can’t feel anything, but I’m still sorry I have to do this to you. Okay, well, I’m going to get it over with, then I’ll cover you back up.”

First, Kevin lifted the dead vamp’s arm, turning it so that he could get to the underside of the forearm. “Again, dude, sorry.” Then, he pressed the nail of his index finger hard against the flaccid skin, drawing it slowly along the major artery from wrist to elbow. The skin split easily under Kevin’s preternaturally sharp fingernail, and he worked quickly, squeezing and pressing to coax the settled and congealed blood into the glass jar.

The smell was awful—worse even than living red vampyres, which was pretty damn terrible. But Kevin kept at it, moving from one arm to another, and then finally rolled the body on its side to expose more settled blood. It was slow working. The blood was sticky and clotted, and utterly disgusting to milk from the dead body. Eventually, Kevin found himself having to stick his fingers in the slash wounds he was making and scoop the gooey stuff out. Bottle filled, he finally screwed the lid on before going to the sink.

Carefully, Kevin lifted his sweatshirt and the T-shirt he had on under it. With a grimace of disgust, he rubbed a line of foul-smelling bloody goo on his belly, just above the waist of his jeans. He also pushed up his sleeves, rubbing more blood into each of his elbow creases. Satisfied that he would pass a red vampyre sniff test, he washed his hands, the jar, and then grabbed a bunch of paper towels from the metal dispenser positioned over the sink. Kevin wet half of the paper towels and then went back to the body.

“I’m never eating anything that looks like strawberry Jell-O again. Ever,” Kevin told the corpse. “I won’t leave you like this. Not that anyone would notice. They’re gonna wheel you into the crematorium probably without even looking at you. But still—it isn’t right to leave you like this.”

Kevin cleaned the blood from the body, repositioning his clothes, and even wiping down the table. When the dead vampyre looked semitidy, Kevin again put his hand on the dead kid’s shoulder.

“Thank you. Your blood will make it so that I don’t get caught—so they don’t know I’m different. I’m going to change things here. I give you my word. I’m going to be part of a miracle. I know it can happen because I’ve seen it. I’ve felt it. And now I live it. I’m going to make sure red vampyres aren’t monsters anymore. I promise.” Kevin bowed his head and whispered to his Goddess, “Thank you, Nyx. Please welcome this kid to your grove. He didn’t ask for this. No matter who he was when he was human, good or bad, he didn’t deserve this.” Then, slowly, Kevin pulled the bloody sheet back up over the young red vampyre’s body.

Kevin slipped the jar inside the satchel’s internal pouch—well away from his g-ma’s delicious cookies. Then he slid the strap over his shoulder again and went to the door, opening it just enough to peer into the hallway, breathing a sigh of relief when he saw it was deserted.

Not wasting another second, Kevin rushed down the hallway and out the door. He slipped around the side of the morgue that faced the rest of the school grounds and studied the area. A familiar feeling of terrible unease crawled up his spine as he realized that instead of a black sky, the world around him had begun to shift to gray and pink.

Dawn!Kevin wanted to kick himself.Of course I feel uneasy. In fifteen minutes the sun is going to rise and fry my ass!

He didn’t have any time to waste. Pulling his hoodie down to cover most of his face, Kevin strode quickly and with confidence across the schoolyard.

He saw no fledglings, and the only vampyres he noticed were Sons of Erebus Warriors as the day shift began relieving the night guards. Kevin cut across campus to the back entrance to the Field House and the abandoned equestrian center, and kept his face turned away as he walked past two Warriors who were discussing the officers’ briefing that Neferet had announced they needed to attend in the auditorium at 2000 hours the next day.

It took everything in him not to give a big fist pump and yellYes!An officers’ brief wasexactlywhat he needed—and what Dragon needed to hear about!

Once Kevin was inside the Field House he followed the hallway, taking a couple turns until he came to an indistinct door that he desperately hoped led to the basement, just like it did in Zo’s world. He tried the door handle,and it was locked!