The Cure - Act 4
“Where the hell is he?” The Slayer strode back out onto the street, shrugging her shoulders in annoyance. “I thought you said he’d be here.”
“He obviously came to feel he couldn’t trust me,” Addison said regretfully. “Coming to you was a mistake.”
“If you found him, what would you have done?” Niki demanded. “Lecture at him while he handed you over to the Nosphorus?” Her former Watcher ground his teeth but was silent. “I need a drink,” and she was off down the street. “Maybe Pearce has had more luck tracking him down.”
Pearce was waiting at the Nail Biter, his mouth still agape. He had returned after a fruitless search of the darkening streets of New York to find the bar empty and the barkeep in his current condition.
As Niki opened the door from the bottom of the steps her face assumed an expression similar to the vampire’s. With eyes wide and mouth hanging open she was silent for a long moment. The Watcher, however, felt no such shock. “What the bloody hell is that?”
‘That’ was a broad dark pool of blood extending across the floor to their feet, directly beneath the upside down body of Hobbs, suspended by his ankles from a flickering light fixture, swinging gently back and forth.
It was clear that the corpse was fresh as the blood stain was still expanding over Hobbs’ pale face from his thoroughly lethal neck laceration and dripping in a constant rhythm into the center of the still expanding pool of dark blood.
The flickering of the lightbulb near his feet cast intermittent shadows down over his body and alternated the color of the pool between dark red and gloss black.
Niki gulped. Surely Logan hadn’t... Had he...? Niki slowly stepped through the growing pool and made her way to one of the back storage rooms. The door to the left was still empty and dominated by the rubble from the hole near the ceiling. The door on the right was now dominated by the rubble of what had been the table Hobbs had set up to cure Logan of the Nosphoric Plague. Among the rubble, the Slayer could find no sign of what she was looking for.
“The book’s gone.”
“Okay,” the three walked down the lamplit sidewalk, the vampire in the lead, “where would a psychotic plague-sufferer go?” The vampire waited for either of the other two to answer and decided to answer his own question. “Where did they go last time?”
“That... warehouse,” Niki suggested, her voice still a little subdued. There was really no part of her mind that wanted to believe Logan was acting under his own volition. Then again, without the table or book to reconstruct it, she was confronted with the possibility of having to kill her exboyfriend. Neither possibility appealed to her.
“We might as well start there,” Pearce shrugged. “But we shouldn’t go unarmed.”
Thirty minutes later the three were walking very gloomily towards the broad front of the warehouse in which, only a few weeks ago, they had slaughtered the original Nosphorus and his plague-suffering minions.
Out of the several heavy suitcases Addison had brought from London, Niki had taken a small but deadly looking iron mace and long ornate, but assuredly non-mystical dagger. Addison himself carried nothing but Niki’s own shotgun, resting comfortably on his left shoulder as he and the Slayer followed her new Watcher towards the darkened building.
The vampire carried nothing at all but wore an uncharacteristically amusing T-shirt bearing the slogan ‘Just Say No’ — deciding it would work as well, if not better than nitrous oxide in removing the fear from his attacks.
The three approached the door with a trepidation not felt even before their last visit to this place.
With a tremendous clang, the metal door swung inward into the darkness and slammed against the inside wall. Without fear, Pearce strode inside. His acute senses had already picked up the position of this building’s occupants. He and the other two were expected.
As the three moved cautiously between the rows of crates and barrels, only Pearce kept his gaze directly ahead. His eyes picked up the source of the dim glow in the deep darkness. It was directly ahead.
“You think I’m infected,” the human croaked, his lips dry and his eyes red. The three rounded the corner and stopped. “You think I have the Nosphoric Plague,” Logan said tiredly.
As Niki and Addison took in the sight, Pearce, who had already pieced together what was likely happening here, answered. “Yes, we do.”
Logan dropped his gaze to the book he held open before him. “‘Those suffering from the latent effects of the disease find themselves unable to resist the commands issued them by those in whom the disease is full and active–’ in other words: the Nosphorus themselves.” Logan slowly closed the book and set it down on a nearby crate. He moved back to the figure sitting tied to the old chair under the only lit bulb in the entire warehouse.
With a gag in his mouth and his ankles, wrists and waist bound to the metal of the chair, the junkie vampire couldn’t do more than mumble curses as Logan raised his hands over him and began to recite some words in ancient Macedonian.
“What are you doing?” Addison’s voice contained slightly more panic than he had intended to reveal. He lowered the shotgun to Logan’s chest level.
“If a plague sufferer has to obey a Nosphorus,” Logan explained wearily, as though he were speaking through a nearly debilitating migraine, “then I can show you I’m not a sufferer by creating a Nosphorus and disobeying him.”
“You’re fucking insane!” Niki shouted, stepping past Pearce. “If you are infected, then you’ll have just released another Nosphorus on this city!”
“I’m not infected,” was the man’s simple answer. “And I’ll prove it.” With his hands again raised over his subject, he closed his eyes and restarted his recitation. Thin threads of electricity danced off his fingernails. The vampire tied to the chair struggled valiantly, mumbling behind his gag.
“Logan, if you don’t stop,” Addison paused for effect and cocked his weapon, “I will shoot you.”
Logan ignored the old man and continued his recitation, the energy dancing over the vampire’s head, making his thin greasy hair stand on end.
Niki’s heart raced. With the sudden, earsplitting crack of the shotgun, she felt reality slow. Had Addison just...? Surely not. But as the slow progression of reality continued, she felt the wash of light from the business end of the gun to her left and the shower of sparks after it. Cold terror shot up her spine. The sudden premonition of Logan lying on the floor, his body riddled with buckshot fought its way, unbidden into her mind. And just as soon as reality had slowed, it resumed again with the confusion of what happened next.
Pearce was the first to duck as the pellets ricocheted off of the invisible field protecting Logan and his subject – the tiny pieces of metal screaming off into the darkness. In less than a second, Addison cocked his gun again and fired again, lower.
This time, the ricochet brought one of the pellets so close to Niki’s cheek that it drew a thin line of blood and a sting of pain. She backed up a step with a frown and touched a finger to her face. Looking back to her ex, she saw the electricity building until, with a flash, it was done.
The three onlookers watched as, quite irate, the vampire in the chair began to thrash in agony. Slowly and quite obviously painfully, his normal vampiric features began to distort and change. His ears became long and bat-like, growing thin and membranous. His nose and jaw drew outward, like a rat and his already pointed teeth became even longer and more needle-like, pointing outward from his broad mouth. With a tearing sound, his new face tore through the gag, the wet hiss of his voice screaming in pain. He struggled futilely against his expertly tied bonds and shrieked as the plague infiltrated his body.
“Logan,” Niki pleaded, raising her mace. “Don’t do this. Kill it.”
Logan ignored her and approached the new Nosphorus. “Tell me something,” he requested in his tired, depleted tone.
Niki closed her eyes. Protected by Logan’s new found sorcery, they could neither kill the Nosphorus, nor prevent Logan from releasing him.
The Nosphorus shifted in his restraints and looked the at Logan with cold hunger. “Listen and obey: Free me.”
Logan leaned in close to the hideous thing tied in the chair. “Bite me.”
Taken aback, the Nosphorus turned to the others in the warehouse. He opened his wide rodent mouth and drew a breath to command the truly infected, but he stopped suddenly. His gaze dropped to the stick of wood protruding from his chest. Logan released it just as the Nosphorus dissolved to dust on the seat of the chair, the ropes falling away.
“Proof enough?” the human asked tiredly. He sat heavily down in the chair, dropping his head into his hands. Somehow, it was clear that the shield between himself and the others was dissolved.
Niki walked slowly nonetheless, eventually placing a gentle hand on his shoulder. “There was another way,” she said quietly. Her fingers deftly found his shirt collar and pulled it back on either side, revealing untouched flesh. No bite marks. She let out an ironic sigh. Somehow she wasn’t much comforted by his physical health.
The walk back was dominated mostly by silence. Addison tried to lighten the mood by explaining how he had had Logan’s firm contact Rachel to explain how Logan was called away on a sudden, three day trip to Boston, and though Logan was grateful, he was too tired to express it.
The four passed the Nail Biter in silence, Logan completely oblivious to the nervous glances down the steps of the other two. A passing thought was that the book he had lifted from behind the bar while Hobbs wasn’t looking was still at the warehouse. But he was much too drained to care.
Back in the shadows of the vast warehouse, a solitary man in a black suit, carrying a black briefcase, lifted the ancient book from the crate where it had been left. With a series of subtle clicks, he opened his case and set the book inside it, closing the case again and moving on silent shoes until he was directly beneath the single lightbulb. Reaching towards it, he took the hot glass bulb between his fingers, giving it the gentlest of twists. The light went out.
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