Chapter 5
1065 Words
The silence Sarah left behind was louder than the sirens outside. Chloe stood in the center of the trauma room, staring at the tangled mess of wires and the indented pillow where a ghost had just been sitting.
"Chloe?" Sarah’s voice crackled through the doorway again, more tentative this time. "The guards are checking the stairwells. Dr. Aris is fuming. How does a man with no pulse outrun a twenty-something nurse?"
"I told you," Chloe said, her voice sounding far away even to her own ears. "He was fast. I’ve never seen anything like it. Maybe it was a shot of adrenaline? People do crazy things in shock."
Sarah walked over, her eyes narrowing as she looked at the open window. "A shot of adrenaline doesn't make you jump out of a fourth-story window, Chlo. And it definitely doesn't explain why the EKG looked like a drawing of a horizon line."
Chloe turned away, busy snapping on a fresh pair of latex gloves to begin cleaning the room. It was a mechanical habit, a way to hide her shaking fingers. "The equipment is old, Sarah. We’ve been complaining about the monitors in Three for months. It was a glitch."
"A glitch," Sarah repeated, crossing her arms. "Right. And I'm the Queen of England."
She stepped closer, her bubbly persona dropping for a rare moment of genuine seriousness. "You’re a terrible liar. You’ve always been too honest for your own good. Whatever happened in here, you’re wearing it. You look like you’ve seen a miracle or a car crash, and I can’t tell which."
"I'm just tired," Chloe whispered. It was the only defense she had left.
"Go home," Sarah sighed, reaching out to squeeze Chloe's shoulder. "Your shift ended twenty minutes ago. I’ll handle the paperwork for the 'disappearing glitch.' Just... be careful on the train, okay? Boston is weird tonight."
Chloe nodded, grateful for the escape. She stripped off her scrubs in the locker room, her skin feeling sensitive and raw. When she pulled her jeans on, she felt the weight of the gold coin in her pocket. It felt warmer than it should have been.
As she walked out of the hospital's main entrance, the night air hit her like a bucket of ice water. The city was alive with the hum of midnight traffic and the flickering glow of streetlamps. She felt exposed. Every shadow looked like a tall man in rags; every rustle of wind sounded like a whispered name.
She reached her apartment building in the South End, a modest brick walk-up that usually felt like a sanctuary. Tonight, it felt like a cage. She climbed the stairs, her mind replaying the way his eyes had changed—the way the crimson had bled into the whites until he looked like something forged in a furnace.
She entered her dark living room and didn't turn on the lights. She walked straight to the window, looking down at the street.
"I know thou art there," she whispered into the glass, subconsciously mimicking his rhythm of speech.
There was no movement. No shadow leapt from the trees. But the air in the room suddenly changed. The temperature dropped five degrees, and the scent of the hospital—bleach and latex—was replaced by something that smelled like old cedar and rain-drenched earth.
Chloe didn't scream. She didn't even turn around.
"You shouldn't be here," she said, her voice steady. "The police are looking for you. My friend thinks I'm crazy."
"Thy friend is wise to doubt," a voice rasped from the corner of the room.
Cassius stepped out of the darkness. He had found new clothes somewhere—a heavy black hoodie and dark trousers that he must have stolen from a clothesline. The hood was pulled back, revealing his sharp, aristocratic features. In the moonlight, he looked less like a monster and more like a fallen prince.
"I came to return what was lost," he said. He stepped forward, his movements so fluid they seemed to defy physics. He held out a hand. Resting in his palm was a small, silver stethoscope. "Thou dropped this in thy haste to save a life that is already forfeit."
Chloe turned then, her back against the window. She looked at the stethoscope, then at him. "You came all the way here for a piece of medical equipment?"
Cassius looked away, his jaw tightening. "I came because the thread would not break. In the dark, thy heartbeat is the only sound that does not wound me."
He moved closer, stopping just inches from her. Chloe could feel the cold radiating off him, but she also felt a strange, magnetic pull. He was paranoid, his eyes darting to her door at every creek of the floorboards, yet he was standing in her living room, vulnerable in a way she couldn't understand.
"What is thy name?" he asked softly. "I heard the others call thee, but I wish to hear it from thy own lips."
"Chloe," she said. "And yours is Cassius? I saw it on the seal of the coin."
"Cassius of Carcassonne," he replied, the words sounding like a funeral march. "A name for a man who died in the year thirteen hundred and forty-seven."
Chloe’s breath hitched. "Thirteen hundred... You’ve been around for seven hundred years?"
"Longer..." he said quietly. He reached out, his cold fingers hovering just near her cheek but not touching. "The world has grown loud, Chloe. And I am very, very hungry."
The hunger in his eyes wasn't just for blood. It was for something much more dangerous: a reason to stay in a century that didn't want him.
Before she could speak, a heavy knock thudded against her apartment door.
"Chloe? It’s Sarah. I know you’re in there, your light is off but I saw you at the window. Open up, I brought wine and questions!"
Cassius’s face transformed instantly. The veins darkened, and his eyes flashed red. He looked at the door, then at Chloe, his body coiled like a spring ready to snap.
"If she enters," Cassius hissed, his voice dropping into a predatory growl, "I cannot guarantee the safety of her soul."
- Writer
