Chapter 27: Make a Deal With God - The Night Market

Pepper ran.

Her breath came in shallow, panicked gasps, her boots hammering down the linoleum corridors of the hospital like gunfire. Fluorescent lights above dashed past, each one briefly illuminating the panic carved into her face. Doors and signs blurred – X-RAY, OUTPATIENTS, VISITOR RECEPTION – none of them mattered. Only forward. Only the next corner. Only Claire.

‘Hey! Hey! No running!’ a voice barked from behind a desk. The security guard was a smudge of colour, and ignored.

She careened around the next junction, catching herself on the corner with a hand that shook like a leaf in a storm. At the elevator, she smashed the call button with her fist again and again, as if force might summon it faster.

Behind her, Laik caught up. He slowed, breath steady. She heard his voice but couldn’t look at him. She didn’t reply. Couldn’t.

The lift doors sighed open. She stepped in. So did he.

The hum of the cables. The numbers ticking upwards. Her knuckles were white around the railing. Her throat burned. Laik said nothing.

When the doors slid open on the right floor, she was already moving.

The hallway stretched ahead like a reaching tunnel, far away and oddly still. Low lighting did nothing for the foreboding. The air was thick with antiseptic. As if death couldn’t be kept out, so they tried to clean around it.

She pressed the night buzzer with a shaking hand and leaned toward the speaker.

‘P-Pepper Montgomery,’ she said. ‘I’m here to see C-Claire.’

The door buzzed open, and she stepped through.

Even Laik, who had seen centuries of suffering, of bodies broken and bloodied, found himself faltering. The ward was hushed, the beds half lit by the soft, sterile glow of machines. Sleeping shapes in white sheets. Plastic tubing glinting like glass veins. The beep of monitors, each one measuring a life in real time.

He slowed behind her, glancing from face to face, reading stories in their stillness. Laik was fluent with death. This wasn’t it. Not yet. But it waited here. Lurking at the edges of every monitor, behind every pale eyelid.

Claire’s room was half lit.

A nurse stood by her bed, checking the IV line with a quiet efficiency that suggested routine, not urgency. But the machines – the slow mechanical pump of the ventilator – told another story.

‘She’s stable,’ the nurse said softly, with a glance toward Pepper. ‘But the situation has changed. She’s contracted an infection which her immune system cannot take care of itself, so we’re helping with that. Her oxygen levels dropped too far, so we’ve moved her onto full ventilation.’

Pepper’s stomach plummeted.

‘How . . . How long, uh, does she . . . Um . . . y’know?’

‘I’m sorry, I can’t discuss that, you would need to talk to the doctor on call. Would you like me to fetch him?’

‘Please, yes.’

The nurse touched her gently on the arm. ‘I’ll be at the desk if you need me.’

And then she was gone.

The door clicked shut behind them.

Claire didn’t move.

She lay still in the bed, barely recognisable from the sister Pepper had spoken to days earlier. Her skin was pale, the colour drained from her cheeks. Her chest rose and fell in sync with the quiet, relentless hiss of the ventilator. Wires and tubes sprouted from her, connected to blinking machines that made electronic murmurs so soft it felt like the equipment was whispering.

Pepper walked forward slowly, her steps uncertain. Her fingers reached out to brush Claire’s hair back from her forehead, gentle, like it might snap away. She sank to the edge of the bed, bent over, and rested her forehead against her sister’s arm.

‘Hey, you. Sorry I’m late, but I’m here,’ she said. Her voice was hoarse. ‘This, uh . . . This is Laik . . . a friend from work. Wish you could meet him under better circumstances. You’d like him. Acts tough. You’ll tell him off good.’

Behind her, Laik stood silent.

‘She always looked out for me,’ Pepper finally said, not looking up. ‘Even when she shouldn’t have. I was . . . wild. Angry. Always running from something. Claire used to say I was born swinging and never figured out when to stop. And she never tried to fix me. She just made space for me to figure it out. Told me that I needed to . . . I needed to see what was happening in front of me. Just let it in so everything could make sense.’

She laughed once, but it broke halfway and caught in her throat. The tears began.

‘Even when we had nothing, she’d find a way to feed me. She’d take the hit if someone came knocking, and they did. She used to say I’d grow out of acting like the world is out to get me. That one day I’d have to stop running.’

She sniffed and looked down at the motionless figure, forcing a smile.

‘Guess that ain’t happened yet. I – I remember, once, I sprained my ankle climbing some stupid scaffolding at a builder’s yard. I just wanted to see a different view than day in, day out. She carried me home two streets on her back. Didn’t even tell me off. Just patched me up. When I could walk properly, we went up there together and spent the night eating chips and watching people walk by.’

Laik swallowed. His throat was tight.

Pepper looked at him now, face drawn, eyes red.

‘I can’t . . . it’s too much, I mean . . . just look at her.’

Her hand found Claire’s – cool, limp, and far too still. She gripped it tighter, pressing her forehead against the arm, the cannula tube jutting out from the hand making it awkward.

‘She’s not just a sister,’ Pepper murmured. ‘She’s everything. The only real bit of family I’ve ever had. Fucking Mum died, Nan died, everyone left me, Laik, but she stuck around. The only one who knew how to keep me going. I love her. I love her.’

A guttural sniffle and then she pulled her head up, eyes burning, staring directly at the wall. Her breathing was deep and desperate. And when she turned towards him, she was fierce with intent.

‘Wait . . . I . . . wait, what if . . . If you made her like you,’ she said, standing to face Laik. ‘If you turned her, made her one of you, she’d be fine, right? Is that part from the movies real? That if you make her a vampire, all this goes away? Makes her b-better. You can do that!’

His eyes softened. ‘Pepper—’

‘Don’t act like this isn’t an option! I know it cures things, I’ve heard about it, that part of the movies is real. You said it yourself, didn’t you? Told me, like, last week or . . . some, some time! Didn’t you? Yeah, it cures things. What’s the fucking difference? Just do it, yeah? Don’t just fucking “Pepper” me!’

Laik took a breath and stepped closer. ‘It’s not the solution you think it is. And it’s not your choice to make. Not for her.’

‘She’s dying!’

‘And if she wakes up after what we do? And she doesn’t want it? What then?’

Pepper’s face crumpled.

‘She’d forgive me.’

‘She might, true. Or she might hate you forever. You don’t know what she believes. Some people . . . they go mad. Because they think God’s abandoned them. Because they think becoming this is a punishment. Everything they thought was true suddenly isn’t anymore. And if she can’t hold on to who she is . . .?’

He didn’t finish the thought. He had seen the outcome too many times.

Pepper clenched her fists. ‘So, what? So, we just wait? We just let her slip away?’

Laik’s voice dropped, almost a whisper. ‘I’ve lost people too.’

‘No, you took them, there’s a difference!’ she fired back, jabbing a finger at him. ‘And you can fix this for me – but you don’t wanna . . . Can’t believe you would, would stand there and . . . you don’t . . . you . . .’

The tension snapped like a thread. Pepper struck his chest with her fist – a drained, futile motion that barely rocked him – and then again, then again until they became weak and pathetic. Her face buried in his shirt, sobs breaking from her in hard, ragged gasps.

Laik caught her. He wrapped his arms around her, slow and steady. His hand cupped the back of her head, held her as her body trembled. Her howls were primal. Pained. They stayed like that, together in the hum of machines and the whisper of filtered air, until her voice shattered to a croak and tears continued to spill but not so fiercely.

‘Promise me,’ she choked, her voice small and scratchy. ‘Fucking promise me we’ll get the Rose and fix all this. Promise me, Laik, because I need to . . . I need to hear you say it.’

His voice was low. Honest. He closed his eyes and pressed his lips to her hair.

‘I promise.’

And she believed him.

But lacked the nerve to reveal that should she cure Claire with the Eternal Rose, then there would be nothing left to rid Laik of the monster within.

A realisation that made her sob harder.