Читать книгу Twilight Fulfilled - Maggie Shayne - Страница 9

Jane Hubbard exited a taxi, and stood looking at the front of a massive and beautiful building. Winged angels made of stone flanked the tall, wrought-iron gate, which had opened to let the taxi enter. It had proceeded along a circular drive with a giant fountain in the center, where a statue of the beautiful St. Dymphna stood, holding a lighted oil lamp—with a real flame, no less—in one hand, like something straight out of Aladdin, and a sword in the other. The sword pointed downward, its tip piercing a writhing dragon at her feet, and water spurted upward from the slain serpent, arching gently back down again into the pool below.

The building had once been known as the St. Dymphna Asylum, as attested by those very words engraved into the white stonework above the entry doors, but was now known as the St. Dymphna Psychiatric Hospital. A more modern sign just beyond the gates said so.

But the place didn’t look modern. It looked a century old. Maybe two. And as comforting as the angels and the saint were, Jane felt a shiver of apprehension when she studied the chain-link fence that enclosed the manicured lawns.

Melinda, at her side, squeezed her hand. “It’ll be like a vacation, right, Mommy?”

“That’s right, honey. That’s right.”

Jane had no reason to mistrust her government. The official who had shown up at her door had been female and kind. She’d known about Melinda’s condition—the rare Belladonna Antigen in her blood. Jane had known, too. She’d known that the condition made her baby bleed like a hemophiliac. She’d known that it made donors extremely hard to find. And she’d known that it meant her daughter, now seven, probably wouldn’t live to see forty.

What she hadn’t known—had never even suspected—was that it made her a favorite target of creatures that were not supposed to exist. Vampires, the federal agent had told Jane, were real. All the hype in the news of late had been true. And while most of the monsters had been killed by the vigilante movement sweeping the nation, there were still some at large. Any human being who possessed the Belladonna Antigen was at very great risk of being victimized by them.

Especially now that humans and vampires were virtually at war.

And so the government had set up a haven for these rare humans, a place where they could go and be protected, cared for and absolutely safe, until this vampire problem was under control.

Jane would do anything to protect her little girl. It was the just the two of them. Had always been. Melinda was special. She was more special than even the government or her own doctors knew. Jane had always protected her.

And that was what she was doing now. Protecting Melinda.

Holding her little girl’s tiny hand, she stepped through the arching, churchlike, wooden double doors of St. Dymphna’s, and wished she could shake the feeling that she was making a terrible mistake.