Chapter Text
The shaded lamp cast green hued light over the old, yellowed pages of the book. Ruby sat curled up in one of the big leather chairs and ran her forefinger slowly down the page. Over a year of this and this was the first time she’d gotten close to the end. There was always something
Dracula.
She turned the page carefully. It was a first edition and cost more money than she’d probably ever see in one place. The last thing she needed was to rip it now.
“It’s not the truth you know,” Mina commented, her clear, clipped voice carrying through the dusty silence. She sat at the table, trailing her fingers over the Braille studded pages of her own books. “Not really.”
Ruby marked her place with an envelope and looked up. She hoped Mina hadn’t been reading her mind since she’d rather been hoping she’d gotten the wrong end of the stick all these years and Mina Harker would snuff it any page now.
“I just figured I should read it,” she said. “It seemed like the start of all this. The Harkers and the Van Helsings. The half-lives.”
Mina tilted her head, her profile pale and perfect. “Not the start,” she said. “A start, perhaps; one with truth wrapped in a romantic libel to make it more palatable.”
A smile tugged the corner of Ruby’s mouth and she shrugged. “Wow,” she said. “Good thing you told me, otherwise I’d be expecting Mr Tibbs to turn up in a tuxedo next time.”
That earned her one of Mina’s faint - why, you are an entertaining urchin – half-smiles before the psychic went back to her books. Ruby had gotten over being jealous of her and Luke years ago – say it often enough and it might be true one day – but she wished she could do that. Have all that poise and just use it to squash people.
“Do you really think that’s what I’m like?”
Ruby paused in the middle of opening the book. “I think you shouldn’t read people’s minds.”
“Sometimes it’s difficult,” Mina said. She turned, blind eyes searching out the source of Ruby’s voice. “When I’m close to someone.”
“I can move back.”
“Emotionally close.”
“We aren’t close,” Ruby found her place again. “You think I’m in the way.”
Mina smiled again and raised her eyebrows. “I thought I was the psychic,” she said. Her thin, elegant hands lay clasped in her lap. A stained bandage wrapped her left wrist where a vampire had gouged chunks of her tainted flesh from her bones. It was why she wasn’t hunting tonight. “And you haven’t been in the way for a long time, Ruby. Are you going to tell Luke?”
Ruby flicked the page.
“No. I was thinking I’d just disappear and wait for him to come and find me. Then all of a sudden he’d realize what he’d been missing and it’ll be just like a movie!”
Mina smiled and turned back to her Braille. OK, so maybe Ruby had day dreamed about that scenario a couple of times. She’d daydreamed about a lot of things. That didn’t mean she’d ever thought any of them would really work. She ran her fingers through her hair and looked over at Mina.
“I’ll him tonight,” she said. “When he gets back.”
It shouldn’t be possible for a back to look that smug, but somehow Mina’s managed it.
She was on the last page when Galvin and Luke came staggering back from the Hunt, Galvin leaning heavily on Luke’s shoulder and dragging a leg that was bloody from thigh to ankle. Mina’s hands froze in mid-air over the pages and she lifted her face, worrying tightening her face.
“Ruby?” she asked “Are they alright?”
She could tell him later.
“Galvin’s hurt.” Ruby set the book aside and scrambled to her feet. “I’ll get the medical kit.”
“Thank you.”
Mina rose hurriedly to her feet and walked over to help them, one hand touching Luke’s arm and one Galvin’s. They looked right together, the three of them. Warriors, Smiters of the Half-life. Ruby got the medical kit from Galvin’s office – he kept it locked up but Ruby figured that if he really wanted to keep her out he’d get a better lock and ran back out.
She stopped dead at the top of the short flight of stairs and stared.
“Oh god,” she said, covering her eyes. “Now I’m scarred for life. I’m going to have to become a lesbian.”
“Ruby!” Luke snapped. “This isn’t the time! He’s hurt.”
“He’s wearing silk novelty boxers.” Ruby jumped down the stairs and handed the box to Mina. She opened it and plucked out what she needed with such surety it was hard to believe she couldn’t see. A mixture of the scientific – antiseptic and stitches – and the magical – feverfew and charmed bone needles. She touched Galvin’s knee and walked her fingers along his thigh to the top of the wound. She doused the already festering wound in antiseptic and set to stitching.
Ruby ducked back to Galvin’s office and found the other thing he kept locked up, the half-bottle of whiskey in the bottom drawer. She snatched a glass from the shelf and went back out, pouring a glass for Galvin. He took it off her and tossed it back in one, squinting his eyes shut against the bite.
“Thank you,” he grunted. His hand tightened around the glass, knuckles poking white through his skin, when Mina jabbed the needle into his leg. He jerked his head towards the table. “Go check on Luke? We lost the girl.”
Guilt and grief were almost visible weights on Luke’s shoulders, pulling his shoulders down and slumping his whole body forward. Tell him tomorrow, Ruby rescheduled the conversation again. She went over and perched on the arm of the chair, slipping her arm around his shoulders. He didn’t seem to notice at first. Then the stiff line of his body slackened and he leant into her, pressing his head against the point of her shoulder and squeezing his eyes shut.
“It wasn’t your fault,” Ruby reminded him.
A ragged chuckle shook his body. “Then whose was it?”
“Tibbs,” Ruby said. “His fault. Not yours.”
Luke made a raw sound and scrubbed his fist over his eyes. It had been hard – the last few months. Something had happened, or was going to happen, and Half-Life activity had rocketed in both frequency and virulence. Tibb’s in particular.
“Not your fault,” Ruby repeated.