Ch. 22

Michael came out of the store with fifteen bags in his arms, and Rosemary with seventeen. They were both struggling, but Rosemary wasn’t struggling as much as Michael, seeing as she was stronger.

“Michael, do we really need this much food? This is going to last us until we’re twenty, let alone when we get back to Prague,” complained Rosemary. They had used half of her money in that store alone, and she didn’t want to think about all of the other stops she had to make.

“So, where to next?” Michael asked Rosemary.

“Well, first we have to stuff more food into each bag, and get rid of the extra ones. Then I have to go to the hospital and get my wing checked out. Don’t worry, it’s a vampire hospital. We’ll need to get some medications just in case, too. Then buy some disguises and more clothing. After that, we can start going to Brno,” replied Rosemary.

They found an empty bench and started putting the food in. Rosemary said the spell, “Rethgil.” That made the bags lighter so Michael could easily carry them. Once they were done, they had eighteen bags with food in them, and fourteen bags without.

When Michael had all the bags steady in his arms, Rosemary said, “We need to go a few blocks left until we get to a tree with black leaves. That’s the hidden entrance. I had to go there when I had the flu. And vampires get it worse than humans do.”

Rosemary and Michael walked until they saw the tree. It was huge, and the leaves truly were black. The phrase ‘Esenaripimav latipsoh’ was written on the trunk.

“What does that mean?” Michael asked Rosemary while he attempted to switch the position of a bag from his right arm to his left.

Rosemary replied, “It means ‘Vampiranese hospital.’ I can open it, but I don’t know if the password has changed. It changed once, but I don’t know. Let me try. Nepo.”

The words on the door vanished, and was replaced by a doorknob with numbers on it. Rosemary typed in the numbers 2 12 15 15 4 18 15 19 5 14. Then the doorknob turned and opened to show them an elevator.

Once they were in, Michael asked, “What was that?”

“ ‘Nepo’ means ‘open,’ and that was my name and age. Two, twelve, fifteen, fifteen, four, eighteen, fifteen, nineteen, and five spell my original first name, Bloodrose. Fourteen is my age. Get it?” Rosemary asked, looking at Michael. He nodded when the doors opened and let them out.

Rosemary walked straight over to the front desk and asked to see Dr. Redrain. A few minutes passed and a young looking vampire walked over to Rosemary. He had jet-black hair, a long nose, and red eyes. He was abnormally tall, and looked stern.

“Hello, Bloodrose. Nice to see you again. Just one question. Why pink? I thought you hated that color,” asked the man, who Michael took as Dr. Redrain.

“I borrowed it from Susan. We wanted to blend in with the humans, since I didn’t have enough time to get an airplane. Oh, right, Michael, this is Dr. Redrain. He’s a friend of Bodoleck’s. Redrain, this is Michael, my human companion. He’s not lunch,” Rosemary added in a threatening tone.

“Why would I want to do anything to a human companion of yours? I still remember what your mother did to me when I started to approach a chipmunk that had landed in her backpack. Trust me. Those wounds will never heal properly, and that was from over five-hundred years ago,” said Redrain. He shook Michael’s hand, who was still nervous being in the same room as vampires he didn’t know he could trust or not.

Redrain turned back to Rosemary and asked, “What are you here for this time? You don’t look ill, so what’s the problem?”

Rosemary took out her wings and showed him her wings. He looked at it closely, and then said, “Let me go and get you a room. This needs proper inspection. Let me get Dr. Fangblood. She’s better at this stuff than I am. Here’s the key. Room 11.”

He handed Rosemary a small gold key and showed her a door to their right. They he left the room to a door on the left asking a person, “Where’s Fangblood? I have a patient for her.” But the door closed and they could here nothing else in the conversation.

They waited a moment, but then Rosemary said, “Well, I don’t want to not be there when Dr. Fangblood comes. Let’s go.” Michael followed her, still carrying the bags of food.

The door opened for them, and they entered a dark hallway. All of the doors were dark red with gold numbers on them. The colors on the walls were unidentifiable because the lights on the ceiling were so dim. But they could still tell that the odd numbers were on the left side and the even on the right.

It only took a few seconds for they to find their room. This one was much lighter, but the walls were still a dark purple, which was probably the color of the walls in the hallway, but they couldn’t be sure.

Michael dropped the bags on the floor in the corner, flopping down on a chair. He looked around, seeing how different this hospital was from a human one. There wasn’t a computer, there were dark colors, not light, and there were grotesque pictures on the walls of different illnesses and injuries that vampire could have. The one labeled ‘flu’ was the worst one. Large boils one the face, severe rash on the arms and legs. The whites of the eyes were yellow, and the feet were swelled to about two feet long.

When Rosemary saw Michael looking at the picture, she laughed and said to him, “Don’t worry, I didn’t get it that bad. Just half of that. And you can only get it five times per reincarnation. So that would be every two-hundred years or so.”

“Oh. I get it once every five years or so,” said Michael.

There was a knock on the door. A moment later, a woman came in the room, along with Dr. Redrain. The woman was also tall, and had flaming red hair that was starting to go gray. Her purple eyes were kind, and her full, pale lips were curled into a smile.

“Hi, Bloodrose. I hear that your wing has been injured. What happened to it?” Dr. Fangblood asked. She sat down on a chair in front of Rosemary, waiting for an 
answer.

Rosemary hesitated, debating on whether to make up something or not, but decided that telling the truth would be the best in this situation. Eventually, she said, “Veripema shot it with her arrow.”

Fangblood was taken aback. She hadn’t expected this answer. When she realized that it was probably true, she asked, “Why would she do such a thing? I know she’s evil, but why would she try and kill you?”

“She wants him, and the spell that my mom found. Now she is willing to kill me, and eat him as a side snack. Veripema tracked us down at Susan’s and now we’ve been on the run for a week. We’re heading back to Prague, and we have to make some stops on the way back,” Rosemary replied. Her face and voice were calm, but Michael could tell that she was just as worried as he was.

“But why not take a plane? Why are you running there?” Fangblood asked, close to standing up now.

“If I know my aunt like I think I know her, she’ll have all of the planes guarded. Trains are too slow. Running, and flying, are my only options. I have the bottle, now I need to get something from the fairies,” said Rosemary. Her eyes glowed with such determination that neither Michael nor Fangblood had ever seen before.

Fangblood, giving up to the truth, said, “Okay. Let me see how your wing looks.”

When Rosemary moved for her to see the wing better, Fangblood gasped saying, “It’s poisoned!”