“The doctor will be in any second now. Look, I’m supposed to let some other guys know when you wake up. You up to talking to some people after the doc gives you the okay?”
“Depends on who it is. Although I’m afraid I can guess.”
“Military. Lots of hardware on their chests.”
Will nodded. They’d want to debrief him. It was S.O.P. “Yeah, whatever. First, though, I’d like to know about my foot.”
The kid reached down to pull the covers away, revealing the well-bandaged foot. “You’ve still got it. That’s good news, right?”
“That depends. Do I get to keep it?”
“Looks like. The doc will be able to tell you more.”
“The doc” did tell him more. He told him the foot would never be one hundred percent, that he was going to have to bear up to some intense physical therapy, and that he would have a limp for the rest of his life. He would walk, but never run. He would need to use a cane.
He did not accept that prognosis.
He spent the next month in the hospital. The PT was painful, but it was a far cry from the other tortures he’d endured. During that time he was debriefed by the military and declared an American hero by the press. He received a huge cash settlement for the damage done to his foot, and that was in addition to his pension. He was showered in accolades, awarded the medal of honor and a purple heart, and retired with honors, all before he ever got out of the hospital.
He didn’t want to retire. He didn’t want the damn money or the medals or the press. But with the foot the way it was, he didn’t have much choice in the matter. So he took the cards he was dealt, and he endured the PT, and he got his ass out of the wheelchair and walked through the hospital corridors at night with the help of a cane, because he couldn’t fucking sleep anyway.
Especially that last night-his final night in the hospital. He’d been there a month, and they would be sending him home the next morning. “Home” was a word that meant nothing to Will. He’d been a soldier for so long, he didn’t have a home. He had nowhere to go. Nothing to do, really. Money? He had plenty of that, the one thing that had never mattered to him.
He felt as if his life had been gutted. And when he tallied the things he had lost, there was one, foolish, ridiculous item that always topped the list. He’d lost his fantasy. That Gypsy camp in some faraway time and place where he used to escape the pain, and the beautiful woman who had inhabited it. He often found himself wondering about her, just as if she were real. “What ever became of Sarafina?” he would ask himself, before his common sense would kick in to remind him that she was a figment of his imagination, a tool created by his mind to enable him to cope with the torture and imprisonment.
He’d tried like hell to conjure her image to mind during the physical therapy sessions, but apparently they hadn’t been painful enough to invoke her. He couldn’t find that place in his mind anymore, the one where he used to retreat to be with her. And though he knew she wasn’t real, he worried about her, what had happened to her, how she had adjusted to the change.
Hell, when he thought about it, maybe there was a reason his mind had conjured the beautiful Gypsy girl and her tragic tale for him. Maybe he’d known, somehow, deep down, how drastically his own life was about to change, and maybe he’d created her so it wouldn’t seem quite as bad in comparison. Sure, he’d lost a lot. Full use of the foot, his career in Special Forces, his entire life’s work. But she’d lost more. She’d lost her lover, her family, her tribe-and then her humanity when she’d been transformed into something else. He wondered how she had dealt with that, if becoming a dark creature had changed who she was inside. Had she become evil just because it was expected of her, or was the change purely physical, like the change in him was?
He thought of these things as he limped along the quiet hospital corridors at 3:00 a.m. There were only a handful of nurses on duty at that hour, and they tended to cluster in the break room around the TV, sipping coffee and chatting. At the prescribed intervals they would emerge to check on patients and administer meds. One nurse would emerge every half hour or so to prowl the wing, ensuring that all the patients were all right, and of course they came out if the phone rang, or a patient buzzed, or a monitor sounded an alarm.
He liked the nights. They were the only time he could be alone to walk unassisted and unhindered. The nurses knew how painful it was for him to step on the foot, even now that it was healing. So they tended to cheer for him with every inch he gained, as if he were a toddler taking his first steps. He hated it, though he knew they were only trying to encourage him. He far preferred privacy during torture, he decided.
The walking cane was hospital issue: stainless steel, with a rubber-coated crook at the top and a tripod with brown rubber tips at the bottom. He would definitely find something better when he got out of here.
That last night, he was traversing an empty stretch of hallway, where no one was at work. The hospital lab was in this section, but it was all but abandoned at this hour. A few people came and went, but none from his wing and none who questioned him. It was his favorite place for night walking.
Wearing an expression that said he knew exactly what he was doing was all it took to keep everyone off his back. No patients roomed in this section, so nurses weren’t milling around. His own wouldn’t be in to check on him for an hour yet, and if they did happen to peek through the door in the meantime, they would see the blanket-covered shape of a man lying sound asleep with his back to them. Because that was what Will wanted them to see.
God, his skills were going to be utterly wasted in retirement.
There was a sound, a rattling sound, that did not belong. It brought Will’s head up slowly and set his juices flowing. It had not been a loud noise or an alarming one-just an out of place one. And it came from behind the door on his left, from a room that was completely dark beyond the mesh-lined safety glass.
That told him two things very clearly. Someone was in there, and they were not supposed to be.
It was too much to resist. Will glanced up and down the hallway, saw no one, and quietly put his hand on the doorknob, then turned it. It was unlocked and gave easily. Pushing the door open, he slipped inside, noting how much more effort it took now to move soundlessly. He used to be able to slide through shadows like a panther. Now his gait was uneven and slow, and he had the damn cane to deal with, keeping one hand constantly unavailable.
The front section of the room was empty, but he sensed someone in the rear. He really had no reason to go any farther. Common sense told him to notify security and back off. But he didn’t. He hadn’t seen any action in so long that he was aching to know just how good he could be in this state. How effective. Could he handle something as mundane as an employee stealing a little medication for recreational use?
That wasn’t what he found, though.
What he found was a man who seemed about to leap out the open window. His back was toward Will. He wore a black cotton shirt and dark blue jeans, and one foot was already up on the sill, hands braced on both sides, a sack slung over his shoulder by a long strap.
“Don’t jump,” Will said quickly. “There’s no need. I’m not security, I’m a patient.”
The man stilled, then slowly set his foot down on the floor again and turned to face Will.
Will studied him, frowning as a creeping familiarity rinsed through his mind. The man’s skin was pale, but not in an unhealthy way. It was luminescent, like a pearl. His eyes, too, held a strange glow, an undeniable power. It was invisible, but palpable. There was something else about him, too. Something that marked him as “different” to Will’s trained mind, but he couldn’t for the life of him define how. Just that this man was not like others.
And then it hit him. It was the same sort of perception he’d had of Bartrone, the vampire in the fantasy.
The man’s eyes widened just a little as he studied Will in return. But he quickly schooled his features. Will could