Her salt-and-pepper hair was done up in a topknot. She had a lab-coat on over the navy blue tunic and pants and a battered brown briefcase under her arm. The shoes and make-up threw Fred a little. Flawless lipstick, eye shadow, mascara and eyeliner, high-heeled pumps that looked like they’d just come off a shop-shelf.

 

“Hi, I’m Diane Page,” the woman extended her hand. “My Amo asked me to look in on you.”

 

Fred glanced at Diane’s gray wristband and swung the door until she was looking at it through a crack between door and doorframe. “Amo Tresten?”

 

“My Amo is Sargo,” Diane corrected.

 

Fred didn’t know a Sargo.

 

“Diane is the physician, Mam’selle,” someone explained from behind Diane.

 

Fred inched the door wider open and craned her neck, tried to see behind the tall woman, “Jude?”

 

“I have brought assistance for Amo Spike, Mam’selle.”

 

She blinked furiously at the prickle of tears. Crying wouldn’t help, she’d done that for the last two hours and Spike was still broken.

 

“Come on in,” she opened the door all the way and stepped aside. “I’m Fred, that’s Dawn,” she gestured at Dawn who was leaning on the room’s central pillar, “that there’s Xander,” he glanced at Diane from the bed, “and that’s our…on, on, he’s Spike, our Amo.”

 

He lay on a table in an alcove in the wall opposite the bed. She had tried to staunch the flow of blood with wads of ripped up towel, but the wads got saturated as soon as they touched his wounds and there were no more towels to rip up.

 

Diane went into the alcove and placed her briefcase at Spike’s feet. “How long has been unconscious?”

 

“After the haircut…about a couple of hours.”

 

“Closer to three and a half,” Xander’s first words since choosing the Fifth Ranking.

 

He had carried their bags up from the Amphitheatre, dumped them by the pillar, taken the plastic wrappings off the mattress and pillows, sat on the corner of the bed and hadn’t moved.

 

She’d been the one to tell the guards where to lay Spike, the one to receive the ‘Welcome to Fifth Ranking’ cotton bags from the guards and the one to follow them in the tour of the new home. Circular courtyard with four rooms leading off it: two bedrooms, a bathroom and a furnace room. Round fire-pit in the center of the courtyard, marble butchers block-cum-kitchen cupboard to one side of the fire-pit.

 

Torches, lamps and matches in the kitchen cupboard, new blankets, sheets and floor rugs in the bedroom wardrobes, broom and dustpan in the bathroom closet, pots and pans, dinning room and Baths, more rules and markets and she’d cut the guards short, her head spinning with too many details.

 

“How to get my Amo better is the only detail I need for now,” she’d said.

 

Giving her the iron key to the courtyard gates, an indigo and three maroon bands, the guards left her to work that detail out for herself and she wished Xander would do something more useful than sitting on the corner of the bed.

 

“Can you help?” She asked Diane as Spike’s blood and Xander’s uselessness leaked unchecked.

 

“It’s what I’m here to do,” Diane worked the combination on her briefcase, snapped it open and revealed reels of bandages, cotton swabs, bottles of Aspirin, a few boxes of band-aids, a scissors and a handful of needles and syringes.

 

The lady better be a miracle worker, Fred thought.

 

Diane erected a shoulder-high screen between the alcove and the rest of the room, “Could you get me a bowl of water?”

 

Xander didn’t move, Dawn sniffed, Jude rubbed the wart on the tip of his nose.

 

Clenching her jaw, Fred snatched a lamp from the windowsill and went out into the courtyard. She hadn’t seen a bowl in the other bedroom or in the furnace room, but thought there might be one in the shower room. No bowl under the sink or in the closet opposite the toilet door, metal pail in the shower cubicle. She took it to the sink and turned both taps on, gasping as freezing water splashed onto her hands. 

 

“There isn’t any hot water,” she put the pail on the floor beside Spike’s table and stayed behind the screen, trying to not look away from naked Spike.

 

“You need to light the furnace before you can have hot water,” Diane wet a swab and scrubbed at the dried blood around Spike’s shattered kneecap.

 

He moaned; she picked at the flakes of waxy bone sticking to the jagged edges of his knee wound and he whimpered low in his throat. He was bleeding again. Diane wet another swab and briskly wiped his chest down, diligent with scouring the skin around the hole in his side. A rib shifted, poked through the hole and Spike thrashed his head.

 

Fred hated to question, but the swabbing sure seemed rough. “Is this…I mean is it procedural?”

 

“What are you doing to him?” Dawn asked sharply.

 

“Cleaning him up, child. I can’t see a thing with him crusted.”

 

Diane swabbed, Spike fainted, regained consciousness twice and fainted both times. Fred could see through the crusted blood. Spike’s nose sloped off to one side and ballooned with his cheekbone, his eyes were swollen over and his tongue swelled out of his inflated lips.

 

He looked like road-kill.

 

“Hold him down,” Diane said as Spike went into a sequence of jerks.

 

Nausea stirred up Fred’s stomach. “Hold him…? I th-think the pain and blood loss are sending him into shock. Shouldn’t we be replacing the blood and using pain-relief to hold him down?”

 

“Pig’s blood,” Dawn said as school teacherish as Diane, “It’s closest to human with the energy-giving platelets. And Spike hates goat.”

 

“You are on Fifth Ranking, Mam’selle. Fifth Ranking Earners are served human blood,” Jude said.

 

“Clear that with Amo Xander,” Dawn shot Xander a filthy look. “He doesn’t like it when humans give blood to vampires.”

 

“You think that’s okay Dawn? For people to get rounded up and…”

 

“Yes, I think it’s okay for Spike to live, Xander. I choose him over humans who probably cheered Tresten on tonight,” Dawn rolled up her sleeve, stormed round the screen to the table and held her wrist to Spike’s mouth. “Spike?” she pressed down, harder when his lips didn’t move. “Open your mouth Spike, open your freaking…open Spike…!”

 

His mouth was open and Fred suspected Dawn knew that the problem was the swollen tongue filling his mouth.

 

“Dawn, please stop that,” the nausea rolled up to Fred’s throat.

 

Dawn carried on trying to feed Spike and telling him to open his mouth.

 

“Dawnie,” Xander became useful, wrapping his arms around Dawn and lifting her away from the table.

 

She spun to face him when he put her down, slapped him so hard a ‘crack’ sounded and her handprint glowed red on his cheek. Xander raised his hands and backed into the pillar.

 

“Sorry,” he said.

 

Dawn choked out a half-sob and rushed out of the room.

 

*    *    *    *

 

She sat at the edge of the fire-pit, pulled her knees to her chest and wound her arms around her legs, cold. The mad in her went out and the sad came back. She’d had this kind of sad before, in the school hallway when Buffy told her about their mom and at the top of the tower when Buffy jumped. You cried until the tears dried up, but the sad didn’t dry up.

 

Spike would bleed until he dried into ash and those jackasses in there would stand around waiting for orders from Diane.

 

“Mam’selle Dawn?”

 

“Go away.”

 

Jude sat across from her and scooped up a handful of ash from the pit. He poured ash from his fist to his open palm. When his palm was full and his fist empty, Jude opened out his fist and closed his palm on the ash, raised that hand so he was pouring ash from fist to palm again.

 

Dawn watched the gray-black ash trickle down. “Is Xander letting you bring the blood?”

 

“It is not his place to prevent me.”

 

“So you’re rounding up the…one or two…” it was too hard. She wasn’t okay with humans being rounded up, but also, she wasn’t okay with Spike drying up. “This sucks almightily.”

 

“Your Amo is not the only blood-eater in…”

 

“Blood-eater?” She asked, grossed out by the pictures in her mind, “can we stick to vampire?”

 

“We may. Vampires are not the only blood-eating species of demon…”

 

“Please stop with the blood-eating. I’m seeing Jell-O made out of blood.”

 

“A quarter of the Trail’s population relies on blood and prefers it to be human,” Jude stopped pouring the ash. “Amo Tresten is firm on providing Fifth, Sixth and Seventh Rankers with what they prefer, but there are not enough humans in the Trail to feed even half of Fifth Ranking for a day.”

 

“It’s like the guy who’s going up the stairs at six miles per hour and the other guy who’s coming down the same staircase at ten miles per hour and you have to work out how many minutes before they bang heads if the staircase is a mile long.” Dawn frowned at the lifeless fire-pit, “I get most of those wrong.”

 

The warts around Jude’s mouth went flat like he was going to smile, “It is indeed a question of mathematics. Tresten demands blood, the Trail cannot supply it, so the Pirates do. They go into your dimension and bring to the Trail doors refrigerated motor transports with blood, blood by-products and equipment. My Runners and I distribute it to the appropriate chefs and Earners. Anything can be ordered into the Trail in this way…except firearms. Amo Tresten has a dislike for modern weaponry.” 

 

Hope hurt Dawn’s chest. She nodded at Jude, unable to say her thanks.

 

“I will collect a cooler from the kitchen here on Fifth Ranking and send a Runner to find splints. When I return, I will help Diane set Amo Spike’s bones, for I have had much practice of training broken bones in my gaming pit. Your Amo will be whole again soon, Mam’selle.”

 

Jude blew into his fist and opened it out over the fire-pit. Glinting red and orange, the ash floated onto the charred wood in the pit and lit it into a small fire.

 

“Wow,” Dawn said, impressed.

 

“It is our secret,” Jude stood and dusted his hands on his tunic. “I should be in trouble if Diane hears I have played magic.”

 

“Got you,” Dawn said.

 

The courtyard gate clicked open and shut and she was alone and scared again.

 

*    *    *    *

 

Not only did Jude’s Runners bring splints, but they also brought towels, I.V. equipment, firewood, a set of cast-iron Dutch pots and basic kitchen and tableware. They went back for metal rods when Fred suggested wooden splints on a vampire weren’t a good idea, and using the bandages, helped Jude ‘train’ Spike’s bones to the rods.

 

Diane was operations director, instructing Dawn and Fred to stay out of the way and coordinating the business of lifting Spike off the table, cleaning it, padding it with blankets and a sheet, settling him onto it, hooking the I.V. in and covering him with a sheet. It felt like an E.R. in there, everyone except the relatives peeking in at the glass in the door knew what was going on.

 

“He’s got nothing on under the sheet,” Dawn kept repeating.

 

“He won’t notice,” Diane kept replying. She dissolved six Aspirin in a mug half-filled with blood and handed it to Fred, “make sure he drinks it all and repeat the dosage every three hours.”

 

Fred stared into the mug.

 

“I’ll come by tomorrow at noon to change the dressings and fix a new blood-bag on the drip,” Diane put two bottles of Aspirin on the shelves in Spike’s alcove, added two spools of bandage, closed her briefcase and tucked it under her arm. “The guards know how to get hold of me if you need me before then.”

 

Still staring into the mug, Fred stammered, “A-aspirin thins blood, he’ll bleed faster with aspirin. And it’s not strong enough for the pain and he can’t drink,” she felt like the aspirin was mocking her from the mug. “Haven’t you got anything stronger – morphine?”

 

“I’ve got Aspirin,” Diane wrapped the bloodied swabs in a hand towel and dropped it in the pail of water.

 

“But Jude’s Pirates can bring morphine in, right?” Dawn stated, not hesitant.

 

Diane smiled sharply at her. “Jude Runs for Amo Tresten’s priorities and pain killers are not high on that list.”

 

“What did you do – flunk out of med school? You’re the doctor and you’re supposed to prescribe Tresten’s medical-type priorities,” Dawn said.

 

“Save all that fight for the night ahead,” Diane said, walking toward the door. “Perhaps I should have said this at the start, but I’m a speleologist. I wouldn’t know how to administer morphine even if I had it.”

 

Courage sometimes comes from unlikely sources and watching Dawn refuse to be daunted by Diane gave Fred the courage to speak out.

 

“We’ll go alternative, use poppies or nightshade or…”

 

“There’s insufficient sunlight to support the growth of vegetation in the Trail,” Diane interjected.

 

Xander cleared his throat. “Thought I saw a tree in the courtyard. Big maple, the type that needs sunlight to grow?”

 

Jude smiled at his boots as Diane fumbled with the briefcase. “I’ve certainly never seen poppies growing in the Trail,” she said.

 

“Okay so we’ll use fungi. They grow well in caves,” Fred said because they’d be leaving Spike in pain never. “Maybe Pylean caves weren’t as fancy as the Trail, but they produced Death’s Angel.”

 

“You have been to Pylea?” Excitement crept into Jude’s voice, “I traveled there once, but found the ban on music too harsh a dictate on my nature. Pylea and Dyulin are not dissimilar. We also have Death’s Angel and its custodians in The Trail.”

 

“We’ll have to gossip when Amo’s well again,” Fred didn’t look away from Diane. “Speleologist, that means slicing, filtering and measuring and the apparatus to do it with. Can you spare a beaker and set of scales, maybe your expertise to make sure I’m doing this right?”

 

“Sorry, Fred, sorry,” Xander shuffled, “my lack of with you is complete.”

 

“Death’s Angel is a mushroom with sedative properties. Good thing is it’s not addictive in its stable form. Bad thing it has more poison than sedation and you need a sack of it to extract one dose of pain-relief,” Fred adjusted the sheet to cover Spike’s feet. “The mushrooms grow in colonies and have a symbiotic relationship with a species of Giant Toad. The toads absorb fluid from the mushrooms through their skins, synthesize it into venom and store it in humps on the backs of their heads.”

 

“This is crazy,” Diane muttered.

 

Fred disregarded her. “The venom leaves morphine light-years behind in terms of pain management and knocks you out at the count of zero. Side effects include psychedelia, temporary paralysis and addiction if you’re a demon. Death is the only side-effect humans have to worry about,” Fred exhaled, intense glance on Dawn then Xander and finally on Spike. “It’s worth a shot, isn’t it?”

 

Dawn twined the drawstring of her pants around her index finger. “Will he be out of pain?”

 

“Pretty much out of everything,” Fred said.

 

Diane firmly shook her head. “The environment is incredibly unhygienic for extraction and I don’t have the proper equip-”

 

“You have a mortar and pestle, don’t you? That’s standard apparatus, not hardly sophisticated for a holder of PhD in Cave Medicine,” Fred crossed her arms on her chest, tightening her hands on her upper arms.

 

“I’m sorry, Fred. I can’t condone your methods and would feel uncomfortable participating in any way,” Diane said with an air of finality.

 

She turned for the door again, and, “I do the Snoopy Dance,” Xander blurted.

 

Diane stopped, “Pardon?” She smiled hesitantly.

 

“You know Charlie Brown’s mutt?”

 

“Snoopy the aspiring Pulitzer nominee. Yes, I know him.”

 

“I’m not aspiring to much, but I do a first-class Snoopy dance when I get fiendishly desperate.” Xander said and Fred could just about smell the caramel burning in his eyes.

 

Diane giggled like he’d told her she didn’t look a day over thirty. “Oh I’m sure it’s not that bad.”

 

Spike pushed his head back in the pillow and made a rattle in his throat. The rattle pulled Fred’s fingernails loose and she wondered that Xander could look calm as he said, “It’s that bad, Doctor. This whole thing is hideous and we need your help.”

 

“Alright,” Diane set her briefcase on the floor, “alright. You owe me a steak dinner, cooked by you in a Dutch oven.” She paced to the space between the window and Spike’s alcove and asked Jude, “Could I have a table and stools here? Also, send the Runners out for…”

 

…Fred got lost in the middle of the long list.

 

*    *    *    *

 

The black, yellow-stripped toads in the glass tank were stunned with carbon monoxide from a smoldering firebrand.

 

Dawn sat on a stool at the new table, wriggled her fingers into a pair of latex gloves and sliced mushrooms. The Runners brought in more mushrooms, Diane set out lab equipment on the worktable and Jude placed a hand on Spike’s chest to limit his movement.

 

Xander was now the only relative in the E.R., taskless as the medical team rallied round Spike.

 

Fred lifted a sleepy toad from the glass tank, slid a hypodermic needle in the bulge behind its head and drew out a milky fluid from it.

 

“Strawberry flavored toads and mushrooms,” Dawn said of the mushrooms and toads that had the sweet scent of strawberries.

 

“Here goes,” Fred eased the needle into Spike’s jugular and depressed the syringe. He stopped moving immediately.

 

The silence in the room echoed the silence inside Xander, both silences shattered when Dawn scrapped her stool on the stone floor as she skipped up to hug Fred. They were laughing.

 

Xander took the pail out to the courtyard and stood under the tree’s thick boughs, his breath coming in gasps and the pail tilting in his hand as the non-silence inside him spoke.

 

You bring pain, baby. You bring nothing but suffering.