The Fourth Roommate

Chapter 7: The Right Kind of Blood

Archer continued to pull Basil on, one hand clamped over his shoulder in what could have been an enduring gesture. It made spiders crawl up and down Basil's spinal cord.

The car hadn't taken them far—not even off campus. They had gotten out at the massive athletic recreation center, a place for the largest of university gatherings as well as indoor track meets.

As soon as the pair passed over the black tartan and into the open dome, ceiling high as a church, people came running over. Basil didn't recognize one, but they all had one thing in common—long sleeves.

"Where are they?" Archer asked immediately, not stopping in his pace and not letting go of Basil.

"They dragged him further down the hall," one replied. "To keep out of the way." They passed the center of the dome. In the middle several people were pulling a large black tarp off the ground and began to fold it. Dark juices slid to the center of the cover as they did so. Stray cups and wrappers were everywhere, giving the sense of a massive gathering since dispersed.

On the other side of the rec center Archer threw himself through a door leading to the locker rooms. Upon their entrance, everyone looked up. A couple more Prophets were standing off to the side, out of the way. However several others were crouched over something on the ground. One such person was Gull.

He locked eyes on Basil and in an instant had Archer thrown against a locker. "You brought him? I tell you to go grab bandages and you bring him? We had a plan Archer! He was supposed to sit quiet and blind at the apartment—nothing more."

"You told me one of the contestants got stabbed," Archer yelled back. "Stabbed and on the edge of death! We're going to need more than bandages if we don't want the police sniffing around a murder!"

"We had a plan!"

"Well maybe you should have made sure the guy didn't have a knife in the first place!"

"Hey," Ramon said before Gull could shout back. He was still on the ground next to what Basil was now sure was a person. "Enough you two. What's done is done. Now all we can do is see if it'll be worth it."

As if awaiting the signal, every Prophet in the room reached into their pockets and pulled out a set of cards. At first Basil thought of playing cards, but they were nothing of the sort—strange words and pictures were on each. Tarot cards.

After a minute in which the only noise was the flipping of cards, then they each looked up in turn. "Positive ions," one girl said, and three others echoed. One said, "Negative spirit," but was ignored completely.

Gull spat out of the side of his mouth. Archer smirked and pushed him off, heading straight for Basil. Basil took several instinctive steps back, heart pounding, but Archer took him round the shoulder and guided him forward.

"So roomie, looks like we got a bit of a job for you. Sorry for the short notice."

The crowd around the body on the floor dispersed before him. The young male on the floor had a face of sheet white. However the dirty towel round his abdomen was quite colorful.

Archer laughed lightly, as if caught in the midst of preforming a modest mistake. "Our friend here got himself a bit roughed up. Think you can patch him up for us, doc?"

"I..." Basil's mouth had gone completely dry. He wasn't a doctor—not anything close. The most he'd ever done was bind up a sprained ankle at the clinic. The dying teenager shuttered in his pain-filled stupor.

At Basil's side Archer smiled encouragingly. Just behind, Gull glared.

With a nervous swallow, Basil bent his knees to kneel at his patient's side. He removed the towel gingerly and lifted up the soaked shirt. Well, it definitely wasn't a sprained ankle.