City of Whispers (City of Whispers #1) (19 page)

“Help her!” I shouted. James and Scott ran over to us.
James grabbed Leila and half-carried, half-dragged her to the door while Paulo
and Dwayne covered them from the air and Scott and I covered them from the
ground. I was full of rage at the vampires and wanted to keep killing, but
Scott grabbed my arm and asked me whether one death wasn’t enough for that
night.

Beth let us in the door and covered her mouth with her
hand when she saw Leila. Leila was still alive, but she looked bad. She had
already been weak and pale, and now she looked like she might not make it. Her
eyelids fluttered from time to time, but she didn’t make a sound. Scott
suggested it might only hurt her to carry her all the way up to the sixth floor
so James carried her up to an open second floor apartment and lay her on the
bed.

Beth went to get Naveen. When he saw Leila’s bite he
stepped away from her. “Is she dangerous?”

“She’s barely conscious, you prick,” James said
through clinched teeth. “How can she be dangerous?”

Naveen inched up to Leila and began cleaning her bite
wound.

“Why would she go out there?” James asked.

“I think she hated vampires so much she wanted to kill
them. She didn’t care if she died in the process.” I gave them an abbreviated
version of the story Leila had told me that day. I left out the parts about
Desmond. I lied and said she had escaped when the vampires had taken her out to
kill her.

Naveen stepped back from cleaning Leila’s wounds. “Now
what?” he asked angrily, “I’ve cleaned her up just so we can kill her?”

“We’re not going to kill her,” James retorted.

“What, we’re going to keep a vampire in here?” Naveen
asked.

James started to stammer something, but seemed unable
to find the right words.

“Or perhaps you want to wait until she’s conscious?”
Naveen asked.

“Screw you,” James said.

Soon, Paulo and Dwayne had joined us. Scott had told
Dwayne about Leila’s open window and Dwayne had woken Paulo. They had shot
vampires from the fire escape even after we had made it inside. They told us
that the vampires had begun to scatter after they realized the food was gone
and Dwayne and Paulo had closed Leila’s window and the wooden covering.

“He’s right,” Paulo said, “we have to kill her. We
can’t let her turn into a vampire.”

“What if she doesn’t?” I blurted out.

“What do you mean what if she doesn’t?” James asked.

“Let’s just watch her for a few days and see if she
turns,” I said. I still wasn’t sure I wanted to reveal my secret. Even though a
month had gone by, they might still want to kill me, or at the very least kick
me out of my own building.

“Oh that worked out really well for Tony,” James said.
Whose side was he on?

“Do you know anyone who’s been bitten and hasn’t
turned into a vampire?” Naveen asked.

“I don’t,” Scott said. He gave me a warning look.

“Just because we don’t know anyone who has survived
doesn’t mean it isn’t possible,” I argued.

“Do you remember that half-vampire woman we found
upstairs?” Beth asked quietly. Of course I did. “She had all those painkillers
by her bed. She was in so much pain, and then she died anyway. I think Leila
has been through enough already.”

I was shocked. I didn’t expect Beth to be on the “kill
her” side. Maybe she just wanted to spare Leila the suffering, but still...I
was glad I had never told anyone but Scott about my bite.

“But what if there’s a chance?” I asked.

Naveen shook his head. “There is no chance. No one
survives. You either die or you turn into a vampire. Maybe someday we’ll have a
cure, but not in time for Leila.”

“What the hell do you know?” I snapped. “Have you ever
actually seen someone turn?”

Naveen looked distressed. “I’m a doctor that’s all,
and my colleagues and I have done a lot of research on vampires.”

“You weren’t even here when this whole thing started.
How many vampires have you even seen up close anyway? You just hide out in the
damn building all night.”

“Okay, okay.” Scott put his hand on my arm. “Maybe we
should talk to Tony, ask him about the details of his wife’s transformation.
Didn’t he say she was bitten in the day and started showing symptoms that
night? We have a little time at least.”

“I’m not leaving Leila,” I said stubbornly. “The rest
of you will kill her if I leave.”

Leila’s eyes fluttered open. She looked around at us.
“I didn’t die did I?”

Beth shook her head. “No honey, you didn’t die.”

Leila put her hand up to her bandage and cringed. “Was
I bitten?”

Beth nodded.

Leila turned to me. “I can’t go back to the tunnels.
You promised me I would never go back there.”

“That’s right,” I said. “That’s why we pulled you out
of the street and brought you back here. You know you killed a lot of vampires
first though,” I lied.

“I only killed one.”

“Well okay, but that’s pretty good.”

“Why did you do it?” James asked.

“They wanted to kill me, and I wanted to kill them
first,” Leila said matter-of-factly. She turned back to me. She seemed as sane
as she had been that afternoon in the park. “Ailis, you promised me I wouldn’t
go back. I don’t want to become a vampire either.”

“We’re going to watch you okay?” I tried to comfort
her. “Why don’t you rest now?”

“I don’t want to be a vampire,” she repeated. “I don’t
want them to ever find me.”

“You won’t and they won’t,” Beth said, patting Leila
on the head. “Now please rest and I’ll sit with you for now.”

Paulo, James, and Naveen insisted on sitting with Beth
and Leila. In the meantime, Scott and I went upstairs and knocked on Tony’s
door. It was the middle of the night and he looked frantic when he answered.
“What is it?”

I told him what had happened, and that we needed
details about his wife’s transformation.

He agreed. “Give me a few minutes to get dressed okay?
I’d like to take a look at her.”

We went back to the second floor apartment where Leila
was. I took Scott’s arm before we went in the door. “I should tell them I was
bitten.”

Scott shook his head. “You saw them in there. I don’t
think it would matter that it’s been over a month. They’re going to kill Leila
tonight and they’ll kill you too if you tell them.”

“Maybe they’d just make me leave.”

“That still wouldn’t save Leila and then we’d be out
on our own.” I noticed that he used the term “we” instead of “you.”

“We have to give her a chance,” I argued.

“We’ll try, but there’s only so much we can do. Ailis,
don’t tell them.”

We heard Tony walking down the stairs. We knocked on
Leila’s door. Naveen opened it and asked, “Where’s Tony?”

“Right here,” Tony said as he came down the stairs. He
was wearing jeans and a bulky sweatshirt even though it must have been 90
degrees in the building.

We all went into the apartment. Paulo was sitting on
the sofa. I assumed Beth and James were in the bedroom. “I’d like to see her
right away,” Tony said. “My wife started showing symptoms almost immediately.”

“I thought it took some time,” I said.

“Look I was there okay?” Tony said irritably. I didn’t
want to argue with him.

Naveen led Tony to the bedroom while asking him about
his wife’s symptoms. Tony seemed agitated. It must have brought back terrible
memories for him.

I walked over to the sofa and began to sit by Paulo.
Suddenly I understood the bulky clothing. I leaped up and dashed for the
bedroom. “Scott, stop him!” I yelled.

Scott looked puzzled, but as I dashed into the bedroom
I saw I was too late. Tony had already pulled a small stake out from under his
sweatshirt and raised it halfway in the air. Leila had her eyes open and was
just staring at him. She had no expression on her face, it was completely
blank. Tony plunged the stake through her heart. Leila whimpered, and then was
still.

Beth screamed.

“Holy hell!” James shouted.

Everyone else looked too shocked to react.

Tony turned toward the rest of us. “I’m sorry, but
there was no hope for her,” he said. He looked miserable or I might have hit
him. “The pain and suffering Sophie went through...and I have kids upstairs to
think of.”

He looked around. Everyone looked sympathetic except
perhaps me. “You understand right?”

Almost everyone nodded. “All the same, I’d appreciate
it if you wouldn’t tell my children.” No one tried to stop Tony as he walked
out the door.

“What time is it?” Naveen asked, breaking the silence.

“I don’t know, probably 1 or 2 in the morning. What
does it matter?” James replied.

“So 6 or 7 back home.” Naveen nodded. “I’d better
start making my report.”

“Who gives a damn about your report?” I snapped at
him. “I thought you came here to help us, to prove to everyone that we were
safe and we could leave. You haven’t done anything so far except mooch off our
resources and make us retell our worst nightmares. Are you and your doctor
friends going to come up with a cure for Leila now?”

Naveen looked embarrassed, “My reports are quite
important, Ailis. We need to know as much as possible about the behavior of
this virus. Perhaps, if it wouldn’t be too offensive, I might conduct an
autopsy?”

“Sure, go ahead, cut her open while she’s still warm.
She’s dead now, what does it matter?” I stormed out of the apartment and Scott
followed.

“Thank God I never told them,” I said as we reached my
apartment. “They’re all a bunch of butchers. You were right, they’d kill me now
if they knew about my bite and then let Naveen cut me open. Maybe he could send
me to his doctor friends and they could run experiments on me like a lab rat.”

Scott came inside and locked the door behind him. “You
can never tell them, Ailis.”

“Yeah, I know, that’s what I just said.”

“And I will never tell them.”

“I know you won’t. You really saved my life, Scott.
Why didn’t you tell anyone? Why did you sit up with me? You’re different from
the others.”

He looked at me. “I’m not saying I would have done it
for anyone, but I thought you deserved a chance. You and I could have stayed
with Leila, but the others would have thrown her out of the building. I can’t
say I blame them all that much either. They’re just scared and trying to
survive.”

I tried to sleep that night but couldn’t. I kept
thinking of Naveen cutting Leila open and writing his report for the people in London. I drank some wine
to help me sleep. I wondered if it would become a habit now that I had started.

I dreamed about the hospital ward again with the
doctors with British accents. There was a locked ward and people whispered
about it, but I couldn’t hear what they said. Suddenly, I was outside and I
realized I was in London.
There were vampires everywhere. I saw one climb up a fire escape through a
window and I heard a woman screaming. I realized I was the one screaming and
woke up covered in a cold sweat. Scott was shaking me.

“Maybe we should just sit up,” Scott said.

I couldn’t believe I had taken this long to realize
what was going on. “You were right about Naveen,” I said. “He’s been hiding
something from us.”

“What?”

I looked Scott right in the eye. “The virus is in London, and Naveen better
pray to God my sister isn’t still there.”

21

“What are you talking about?”

I began dressing hastily. “I keep having dreams about
a hospital and doctors with British accents. I thought it was just Naveen
giving me the creeps with his vampire obsession. But seriously, why do you
think he cares so much? Why do you think our government let him in? Why don’t
we have an American doctor?” I put my collar on.

“You aren’t going to go find him right now are you?”

“Yes I am.”

Scott began to dress as well. “Don’t do anything
stupid, Ailis. Have you heard from your parents? Wouldn’t we have heard
something if the virus was in London?”

“I haven’t spoken to them since right after Seth died.
Besides, the government could have been keeping it under wraps. I want my
sister out of there now.”

“Well what are you psychic? You can sense vampires
across the street, but can you do it from across the Atlantic?”

“I don’t think so, but I don’t know. Maybe it’s my
sister, sometimes when something bad happens to her I just know. Maybe it’s
Naveen’s crazy reports and I figured it out subconsciously, but does it really
matter?”

“It matters if you’re going to go kick the shit out of
someone over it.”

I burst out the door and dashed down the stairs to the
second floor apartment where Leila had died. It was quiet. Naveen must have
gone back to his apartment already.

I rushed to Naveen’s apartment with Scott on my heels
and pounded on the door. Naveen answered wearing a pair of shorts. “What is
it?”

I punched him on the chin.

“Bloody hell, what’s wrong with you?” Naveen staggered
back, clutching his face.

“How could you not tell anyone about the vampires in London?” I shouted back.
“Even after I told you my sister was there?”

Scott tried to take my arm but I dodged him and
tackled Naveen, catching him off guard while he nursed his face. I started
punching him all over. Scott pulled me off and I tried to kick Naveen in the
side, but he rolled away groaning.

“What is wrong with you and how did you know about the
vampires?” My heart sank. It was true. I had been hoping that maybe I had lost
my mind and gone after someone over a silly dream.

“I’m just that smart I guess.” I gave Scott a look
that said “I told you so.”

“We’ve been keeping them quarantined,” Naveen said.
“It happened right after New York,
but we were able to catch the infected people and keep them isolated.”

“What? You don’t think people tried that here? Let me
go
,
Scott,” I snarled.

Naveen moved back. “Don’t let her go.”

“I’ll let you go when you calm down,” Scott said,
still holding my arms.

“When is the last time you talked to London?” I asked Naveen.

“Day before yesterday, and everything was fine.”

“Well everything’s not fine.” I was still trying to
struggle against Scott, but I considered giving up. I wasn’t going to kill
Naveen...probably not, anyway.

“How would you even know?” he shot back. “I think I’d
know if something went wrong.”

“Did you give your report this morning that you were
so excited to give?”

Naveen suddenly looked concerned. “No, I wasn’t able
to reach them.”

“Let me go I’m fine,” I said to Scott.

“You sure?”

“Yes,” I said. Naveen looked suspicious, but Scott let
me go. I didn’t attack Naveen again. “Call them now.”

Naveen took out his radio and tried to reach London. There was no
response. “This isn’t terribly unusual,” Naveen said. “I often have trouble
reaching them.” He didn’t seem convinced by his own words, and neither did I.

“Keep trying,” I said, and left Naveen with his radio.

“Now what?” asked Scott. It was close to daylight. I
went to Paulo’s apartment and knocked on the door. Scott followed me. Paulo
answered in his pajamas.

“We need to talk to the outside,” I said.

“Right now?” Paulo asked.

“Yes, the vampires are in London. Naveen knew the whole time and didn’t
tell us. Now he can’t reach anyone there.”

Paulo’s eyes grew wide. “Jesus, I’ll call them right
now.”

We got on the radio and were able to reach a different
man than the one we usually spoke to. It had never occurred to me that the same
person didn’t work twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week operating that
radio.

“Manhattan,
is everything okay?” the man asked. He sounded sleepy.

“Are there vampires in London?” Paulo blurted out.

The man sounded wide awake at once, “How did you know
about that?”

Paulo groaned.

“That goddamn doctor told you, didn’t he?” the radio
man asked.

“Yes,” I said, “and now he’s scared because he can’t
get in touch with his people,” I said. “So how bad is it?”

The man sighed. “I suppose it doesn’t matter if you
know now. They’ve been trying to keep it quarantined in a hospital there.
Seemed like they were doing a fine job of it too, that’s why we let Dr. Patel
come over. He had made himself an immediate expert on the disease. We truly
thought he could learn a lot, maybe find a cure, or at least tell us whether it
was safe to let the rest of you out.”

“That’s bullshit,” I said. “It’s obviously safe to let
us out. If he thought it was airborne he wouldn’t have come here in the first
place.”

“The way I understand it,” the man on the radio said,
“he has some family affected.”

“Oh,” I responded. “Well now I have some family affected,
and I want to speak to my parents.”

“In London?
You can’t talk to London.
Even I can’t talk to London.
They’ve just quarantined the city.”

My heart sank. “Well I need to speak to my parents,
and they aren’t in London.
I know you have their contact information on file. Call them up and put them on
the radio.”

“I’m not sure I’m authorized to do that...”

“For Christ’s sake man,” Scott shouted, “we go weeks
without speaking to our families and she finds out her sister is in the only
other vampire-infested city in the world...don’t you have a family?”

“Well um, yes, but I need to check with a
supervisor...”

“Do you have kids? What if you had one in Manhattan and one in London
right now?”

The man on the radio was silent for a moment, then
said, “I wasn’t able to reach them. Radio back at 5:00 this evening okay?”

“Five o’clock?” I shouted. “Go find them! How long
does it take to—”

“Yes, five o’clock,” the man sounded like he was
becoming angry. “We’ll find them, but we have procedures for these things. It’s
more complicated than it sounds. We don’t want this to leak out yet so please
just do as I say.”

I wasn’t sure I trusted him, or that he had even tried
to contact my parents, but what choice did I have? I agreed we would radio back
that evening. It was already early morning.

Paulo reminded us we had one of our own to bury. We
thought it would be nice to bury her in the middle of Bryant Park where she
could have plenty of sunlight.

Paulo said he would organize a few men to dig the
grave. I went back to Naveen’s apartment. “Any luck?” I asked when he opened
the door.

The look on his face said it all. “You were right,
Ailis, I don’t know how you knew, but it’s spread. London is quarantined now.”

I nodded. “We just talked to our people and they told
us the same thing. Why didn’t they at least move vampires out to the middle of
nowhere if they insisted on keeping them alive?”

Naveen shrugged. “The best doctors in the world are in
London and they
wanted the best doctors in the world on the case.”

“And now nobody can get in or out of the city?”

“Right.”

“I bet all the right people made it out just fine,
just like they did here,” Scott said.

“Apparently not everyone,” said Naveen, staring at the
wall behind me. He smiled. “Apparently they made a big gaffe there. They left
everyone else to rot and got the politicians and their families out, but
someone got left behind.”

“Good, maybe then they’ll actually do something about
it,” I said.

“That’s the funny thing, Ailis,” Naveen replied. “They
do
want to do something about it. Have you ever heard of Richard
Ashdown?”

“Of course,” Scott replied, “he owns half of London and a series of luxury resorts in the Virgin Islands.”

Naveen nodded. “Well, his son, his
only
son,
was not one of the privileged few given the opportunity to evacuate the city in
time. Apparently he has a swanky flat in Chelsea
with a panic room and everything. Mr. Ashdown wants to hire a team of
mercenaries to go in and rescue his son, but so far, no one wants the job.”

“So?” I said. “Money can buy anything, I’m sure he’ll
find someone. London’s
only been quarantined what, for a few hours? A day?”

“Yes, just under twenty-four hours,” Naveen said.

“Anyway,” I said, “I don’t know what this has to do
with anything. I have a hard time caring about this guy’s son getting looked
over when no one even considered my sister.”

“I understand, Ailis, my father was one of the first
infected. He was a doctor as well, one of the first to research this virus. He
was the true expert. I just hope they killed him before he was given an
opportunity to run around the streets of London.”

So that was the family connection. “I’m sorry to hear
that,” I told him. “But when you first saw a vampire here, you seemed so
shocked, so frightened. You had so many questions. The guy on the radio said
you were an expert on vampires, and now you say your own father was infected.”

“Well, I faked that a bit,” Naveen said sheepishly.
“After my father was infected, I studied his papers day and night, but my
father had made his colleagues swear that they wouldn’t let me see him or any
of the other vampires. I contacted your government to see if they would let me
come over here to study vampires ‘in the wild,’ as it were. I submitted some of
my father’s research on the virus under my name. I’m not proud of it, but it
was the only way I could come over here and find a cure or a vaccine or
anything to help stop this.”

“You didn’t have to lie to us,” I said. “Did you
really think we needed more people lying to us? I could have gotten my sister
out of there before London
was quarantined.”

“I know and I’m so sorry, Ailis,” Naveen said. “But
listen, you have an opportunity here.”

“What?”

“After Mr. Ashdown was turned down by his ordinary
band of mercenaries, he thought of you. He’s been following Manhattan
in the papers like everyone else, and as soon as he found out about the virus
in London, he
set his people to doing research, and of course your name came up a lot.”

I had read a lot of sensationalized stories about
myself in the papers we’d received. Ashdown must have pictured me as queen of
the vampire-slayers. “You can’t be about to tell me what I think you are,” I
said.

Naveen smiled. “His people contacted my people. Ailis,
he wants to hire you to go to London
and find his son, Richard Junior. He has a lot of important friends. If your
sister is still alive—”

“I want to talk to this guy,” I interrupted. “I’ll go,
but on my terms.”

“Ailis, maybe you should think about this,” Scott
interjected. “You don’t know London,
you don’t know what kind of condition it’s in.”

“I know Nina’s there.”

“You know what it was like the first two weeks,” Scott
said gently. “The chances that she’s even survived the first day...”

“So what, I stick around this charming city and go on
with the lovely life I’ve made for myself and assume she’s dead?”

“Ailis,” Naveen interrupted, “I’m sure you can name
any terms you want. Mr. Ashdown has the means to grant them.”

“When can I talk to him?”

“Whenever you like. He’s waiting to hear from you.”

Scott held up his hand. “Naveen, will you please give
us a minute?”

“Sure,” Naveen said.

Scott and I walked out of Naveen’s apartment and out
of the building. We started walking toward Bryant Park out of habit. “Ailis, I
think you should think about this. You might be immune, but you aren’t bullet
proof. You’re still human, you can still be killed. Think of your parents.
You’re stuck in this hell-hole, but you’re relatively safe here.”

“For how long? One of these days they’ll run out of
people in the tunnels, and then they won’t hold back. We don’t know how many
vampires there are, but I’ll bet there are enough to break down our defenses if
they were all determined, or if Desmond decided it was a good idea. Weren’t you
the one that said I had to get out of here?”

“They’ll have to let us out someday, Ailis, you’ve
seen the write-ups, public opinion is in our favor.”