“Jonathan—” Mrs. Bellamy reached for her daughter’s arm, her blue eyes wide with fear.
“Shut up, Irene. He doesn’t know anything. I would suggest you leave, Dr. Barlow. I doubt I’ll miss a second time.”
Oliver needed to keep him talking a few minutes more, just long enough for Felipe to come, so they could get the girl away from them.
“I’m a necromancer,” Oliver said to Mrs. Bellamy. She averted her gaze, but he pressed on. “I can feel when people hover in that space between life and death. That feeling drew me here. If you let him continue, you will lose your daughter like you lost your husband.”
Mrs. Bellamy stared down at her daughter, her throat working. Somewhere deep inside, she knew the truth. When she put herself between Amelia and her brother, Dr. Yates scoffed.
“Really, Irene? You would believehimover me? I only have Amelia’s best interests at heart,” he said, stepping closer to the tilting vials of blood.
“Did you have Herman Judd’s best interests at heart too?” Oliver called, trying to keep the doctor’s attention on him. “And everyone else you killed? Amelia certainly wouldn’t be the first person you murdered with your treatments.”
“What is he talking about?”
Mrs. Bellamy turned to her brother, betrayal and confusion etched into her features, but the doctor barely paused as he stilled the tilting machine.
“Your brother has been killing people at the institute and harvesting their bodies to enhance his powers and the powers of his wealthy benefactors. What he’s doing to your daughter isn’t a treatment; it’s punitive.”
Dr. Yates ripped the vial from its brass arm, letting the other side list dangerously. Turning to Oliver, Yates slammed his empty palm against the lab table. “Enough!”
Thick, dark blood swirled dangerously in his other hand. Beside him, his niece whimpered, her eyes fluttering as the guttering feeling returned and a hint of metal wafted across the room.
“Your kind deserves it,” Yates spat, brandishing the vial. “You degrade yourselves, give in to your baser urges, mix with those beneath you, yet you are still given power beyond your wildest dreams. Power you don’t deserve and do nothing with. If we can’t stop you from breeding, then we must take what should have been ours.”
Ripping out the stopper, Dr. Yates locked eyes with Oliver as he raised the vial in a mock salute. Oliver futilely lurched forward, knowing he could never reach him in time, when a knife whizzed past his shoulder. The vial exploded in a hail of glass, bathing the doctor and his sister in blood. At Oliver’s shoulder, Teresa Galvan stared at her handiwork in awe. Footsteps hammered behind them, and in the space of a breath, Felipe swore, yanked his daughter out of the doorway, and trained his revolver at the doctor.
“Don’t move! You are under arrest, Dr. Yates, by order of the New York Paranormal Society. Put your hands up and step away from the girl,” Felipe yelled as the doctor wiped the blood from his face and shook the glass from his clothes with a sneer of disdain.
Mrs. Bellamy looked from the men to the spatters of blood staining her bodice and gloves as if watching a play gone horribly wrong. Blood dribbled from small cuts on her lip and forehead. As she touched her mouth and came away with reddened fingers, Mrs. Bellamy’s hand trembled. With a desperate cry, she grabbed her daughter by the arms and dragged her toward the edge of the table. Amelia’s head lolled as her mother tried to lift her up. The flame struggled to stay lit.
“Mrs. Bellamy, please don’t—”
Before Oliver could get the words out, Dr. Yates lunged for the remaining vial. Felipe stared, the realization dawning a second before he surged forward. The doctor downed the blood in two gulps, smashing the glass into the wall as he turned to Felipe with his palms raised. The lights hummed and pulsed as the air prickled with static and the smell of a coming storm. Oliver’s heart pounded in his throat. Rivulets of electricity crawled up the walls and reached across the table. Mrs. Bellamy yelped, dropping her daughter as she stumbled away. Amelia writhed and sucked in shallow breaths at the electricity crawling over her body. The guttering flame called to Oliver’s powers, but he couldn’t take his eyes off Felipe. A venomous smile crossed the doctor’s bloodied lips as lightning crackled in his palms. Oliver wanted to call to Felipe, but the words refused to come.
Oliver covered his ears as a bang and a flash followed by a scream echoed through the brick building. Running inside, Teresa screamed for her father, but Oliver grabbed her before she could get too close. She twisted in his grasp, all sharp elbows and sinew, but they both froze when the gunpowder haze parted to reveal Felipe standing with his revolver raised. The crackles of lightning fizzled out in time with the blood pouring from the doctor’s leg. Yates stared at the wound in disbelief as he sank to his one useable leg. Then, his gaze hardened with a ragged breath, and the stench of molten metal filled the room.
“Felipe, watch out!”
Tossing the gun, Felipe dove behind the nearest bench. The electricity arched high, hitting the table with a smoldering snap. A low, moaning howl came from Amelia’s throat a second before her body clenched and buckled. Her mother called her name and futilely tried to hold her still. Behind them, Oliver’s gaze snagged on the forgotten tray.
“Turn her on her side,” Oliver ordered, ignoring the tether’s insistent pull.
Scrambling over the worktable, Oliver leapt for the tray of syringes and vials as the doctor tried to stand but slipped in the blood pooling beneath his feet. Oliver loaded the syringe with shaking hands, eyeing the electricity crackling riotously over the doctor’s form. Charging forward with bared, bloody teeth, Yates grabbed Oliver’s arm. The glass vial dropped from Oliver’s hand as biting pain tore into his flesh. Twisting back with gritted teeth, Oliver stabbed the needle into the meat of the doctor’s shoulder and pushed the paralytic home. They locked eyes as anger gave way to shock and then blankness until the doctor slumped back. Letting him drop, Oliver shook out his numb, buzzing arm as the feeling returned to his fingers.
“Oliver, come quick. I think she’s getting worse,” Felipe called.
Mrs. Bellamy and Felipe stood on either side of the girl. Her mother smoothed her red hair from her forehead and whispered for her to wake up as Felipe held her on her side. The seizure had ended, but the closer Oliver got, the stronger the pull in his chest grew. Stopping several feet away, Oliver swallowed hard as he took in her grey pallor and fast, labored breaths. He didn’t want to touch her or get too close, but when Felipe held his gaze, a squeeze of comfort passed across the tether. He had to do something. Before he could ask, Teresa appeared at his side and handed him his wet bag. He didn’t even remember dropping it.
“Mrs. Bellamy, please stand with Miss Galvan while I examine your daughter,” Oliver said, relief washing over him as the woman nodded and stepped aside. Steeling himself, he approached the work bench. Up close, Amelia Bellamy looked even worse. As he put on his stethoscope, he noted how gaunt and dehydrated the girl looked.Abuse on all fronts then, he thought, glaring at her mother as he listened to her heart. It was fast, so fast it skipped beats but thundered on.
“The shocks have sent her heart into an arrythmia. If we can’t get it under control, she could—”
Then, Oliver felt it. That heart clenching moment when potential became actual. Amelia Bellamy drew in a shuddering breath as her heart writhed out of rhythm. She was dying beneath his hand. Panic flooded Oliver’s brain. He wanted to resist. He didn’t want to tether her, but she was dying. In his breast, the tether stretched to reach for her against his will. Meeting Felipe’s brown eyes over Amelia’s body, Oliver pointed helplessly to his chest.
“Can you fix it? Whatever it is,” Felipe whispered.
“I don’t know. I don’t know what kind of drugs he’s given her.” Oliver ground his jaw as the tether strained and bucked dangerously. Beneath his hand, Amelia’s pulse raced. At any moment, her heart would stop. “I don’t know what to do.”
