Читать книгу Ravenfall - Narrelle M Harris - Страница 5

‘Those bastards are still watching me, Dr Sharpe.’

The heavy-set man’s gaze darted about the surgery, momentarily alighting on the doctor’s face and then away again. ‘The pigeons at Boleyn Ground. My neighbour’s bleeding cats. A mongrel outside the offie on Queen’s Road followed me all the way into West Ham Station last week, right onto the platform. And last night a wolf followed me home.’

James Sharpe made a note in Mr Bernetti’s file but didn’t bother to point out London didn’t have wolves. Mr Bernetti imagined he was watched by a lot of things, from the ducks in Regent’s Park to tiny people hiding in post boxes. He claimed that zombie mice were living in the walls of his Barking Road flat, when he wasn’t suspecting the council workers of casting spells on the traffic. Poor sod.

So many people claimed to see monsters, but most people were utterly self-delusional, or, like Mr Bernetti, labouring under a messed up brain chemistry that wouldn’t leave them be.

‘We’ll look at that prescription of yours, then see if it helps.’ A faint rolling of the r’s, a mild flattening of the vowels, betrayed a residual Scots accent, the remnants of James Sharpe’s Edinburgh childhood.

‘Please,’ Mr Bernetti’s palms pressed to his bald head as though to keep it from splitting. ‘I can’t sleep. Fucking cats watching me all night. And that wolf downstairs, rooting around the bins and setting off all the car alarms. Big red eyes and howling at the moon.’

The moon had been full last night, and would be again tonight. Something for James to check out, then. He knew Mr Bernetti’s address and it wouldn’t hurt to go for a walk and take a sniff around. The poor beggar might be delusional, but from time to time, even the delusional were not mistaken.

After all, James Sharpe hadn’t come back eighteen months ago from the war in Afghanistan, undead and with an inconvenient craving for human blood, just to believe that all monsters were imaginary.

James referred Mr Bernetti to the psych clinic in Upton, renewed his anti-psychotics in the interim, and sent him on his way.

The nurse ushered in the next patient. The boy was skinny and unkempt, not at all unusual for the people who came to this clinic. The Lester Avenue Community Clinic in Plaistow had a waiting room full of people surviving on the poverty line; and many who were barely surviving at all. This boy was one of the many who had no real address. “In the alcove under the railway bridge” was hardly something the Royal Mail would recognise anyway.

James gestured towards the chair.

‘How can I help you,’ he glanced at the paperwork the nurse had handed him, ‘Peter?’

‘Don’ call me that,’ said the boy irritably.

‘All right. Can I call you something else?’

The boy peered at him. ‘Folks call me Blue.’

James made a note. ‘All right, Blue. How can I help you today?’

‘I need me blood done.’

James’s fingers tightened imperceptibly around the biro he held. His teeth itched but remained retracted, and he heard his grandfather’s voice in his head. Shouldnae be hungry. Fuck yer dain, Jamie? Damn. Mr Bernetti’s full moon wolf story had him twitchy.

With deliberate calm, he asked, ‘You need a blood test?’

‘Yeah. Make sure it’s clean an’ that.’

‘Do you think you have an infection?’ James’s fingers relaxed. Gud lad, said his grandfather’s voice, that angel on his shoulder.

Cheers, Granda.

‘Nah, I reckon I’m good. I ain’t done any needles since last test, an’ I ain’t even give a blow job wivout a condom neither since then, an’ I don’t never do fucking, so iss prob’ly fine.’

‘I don’t like to order blood tests without a good reason, Blue. If you’re confident, and your last test was clear, you don’t have to.’

‘But I want to. Iss like a promise I made, see? He said iss all right, but if he’s gonna take care of me, like he said, I thought this would be proper.’

‘Who’s taking care of you?’ James laid the pen down so it was clear he wasn’t going to make notes, but Blue shrugged awkwardly and said nothing.

In the silence, James inhaled. Held his breath. He could smell a confusing bundle of scents, most of them unpleasant: body odour, unwashed feet, stale beer, halitosis. The boy had made some attempt to bathe with rainwater in the last week. James couldn’t detect anything more sinister, and while he wasn’t happy with the implications, Peter – or rather, Blue – was recently eighteen and legally capable of making his own decisions, even terrible ones.

‘Do you feel safe with this man?’ said James.

Blue stared at him with large eyes, astonished that anyone would care. ‘He’s all right.’

‘You know you don’t have to–’

‘Better’n most,’ Blue said, regarding James through narrowed eyes, ‘An’ better’n the street, y’know?’

James knew, in a roundabout way. He’d walked the streets a lot in the months he’d been back in London after his medical discharge from the army. Night after long night, week after lonely week, month after interminable month, he’d walked away his unsleeping nights. He’d seen things that might have shocked him, if he hadn’t already spent years in Afghanistan, seeing many things that were so much worse.

Doing things that were so much worse.

James shut down that unhelpful train of thought. ‘I can order a test if you want to be sure.’

‘Yeah. I do.’

‘I’ll give you a general exam as well.’

Blue shrugged again, but nodded too, so James gave Blue a physical and took two vials of blood. Apart from being undernourished, the boy seemed in good shape.

‘Come next week for the result,’ James said, ‘I’m here Wednesdays and Thursdays. But I don’t think you’ve anything to worry about.’ The blood smelled healthy, but James couldn’t exactly say that.

Blue scurried out of the surgery. James waited until the door shut before he took up the second vial of blood. He only needed one sample for the test, but he always extracted blood himself instead of sending the patient to the nurses, and he always took an extra vial. Not strictly ethical, but so much better than the alternative.

James unstoppered the vial, held it to his lips and tipped it back. The blood flowed over his tongue and down his throat, but was absorbed long before it ever got to his stomach. He licked at the glass to capture every drop. No sense in wasting any.

Blue was fine. James could taste the vitality in the sample. Low on sugars, overactive thyroid too, but no diseases, no infections. Provided his new guardian didn’t turn out to be a violent bastard, Blue would be fine.

James binned the empty vial in the hazardous wastes unit. He’d had his shot of blood now. He ought to be right for the rest of the day. No more supernatural jitters.

Last night, a wolf followed me home.

Ah, bugger. James wondered if he should go walking again tonight to search for that alleged wolf. It would get him away from the suspicious eye of his lodger, Baxter, at least.

The alternative was to stay at home, holed up in his room so as not to disturb the irritatingly necessary Baxter, and read all night. Or stare at the walls. Or clean his gun. Again. He’d done that every day after his return, as well. Disassemble the gun. Clean it. Reassemble it. Load it. Hold it.

But part of the curse was that James Sharpe had a fierce will to survive. That quality was what had made the transformation possible, he’d been informed by the sick bastard who’d made him. Without that implacable determination to survive, the process of dying and being reborn as this… this… thing would have foundered at the dying part.

‘You’re a long time deid,’ his grandfather used to say.

You don’t know the half of it, Granda.

James hadn’t chosen this, but he had fought for it all the same. That will to survive had left him, every day, putting his service pistol back into a box, back into the drawer, away. This transformation had taken almost everything from him, but that drive to continue – whatever it took.

Yet he clung to the remnants of himself. He couldn’t be a human being any more, but he could try to make up for what had happened after he awoke, changed. He’d sworn he wouldn’t succumb to that again. He’d keep the beast chained, and be as human as possible, with the voice of the best man he’d known as the whisper in his ear to help. He would practise medicine and find a way to make this thing he was, if not of use, then not a danger.

A little blood once a week from samples he took at the clinic, he found, was enough. Sometimes he supplemented it with animal blood from the butcher – chicken and pig were most easily obtained, and a cup of it every few days was sufficient.

James washed his hands. He poured a glass of water and swilled it round his mouth, swallowed it down to make sure he got every last bit of Blue’s blood into his system. Human blood was better than animal blood, more satisfying to his physiology. Better still if it was given freely, he’d learned, but that was hardly likely. Granda was long dead, James didn’t have friends, and his lodger didn’t like him very much. At least this way, he got what he needed with minimal harm.

The nurse knocked to introduce another patient – a teenage girl with her crying infant. James could already scent the ear infection. Surreptitiously, he spat on his finger and smeared it over the ear thermometer. He’d prescribe antibiotics too, to be on the safe side, but as he inserted the instrument in the infant’s ear, he knew the healing properties of his saliva – evolved to cover up evidence of sharp-toothed bites – was the one good thing about being a vampire.