Crypt - Joey Quintero, Sierra Aguirre-Stoker, Shane Barrett

Sierra thought she’d seen the worst it could get when she and Pete had to pry silver stakes out of Shay’s wrists with the noon sun beating down on them, and then watched Shay have what amounted to a seizure in the back of their commandeered truck due to lack of blood to heal himself. 
That doesn’t hold a candle to what she’s looking at now. 
The figure curled up in the corner of the crypt doesn’t look like anything more than a dessicated corpse. 
She can’t bring herself to move from the doorway, even though she knows she has to let the medical triage team through.
If Shay hadn’t remembered the bookie from his underground fight days and put the clues together that she was also infected with vampirism, if he hadn’t bothered to try and track her down for Chimera’s pilot program of the pre-fledgling interventions, if they hadn’t found her obituary that listed her next of kin, and if they hadn’t managed to convince the family that they really did need to know where their sister was buried…
Sierra doesn’t want to know how long the vampire in question would have moldered away in this place. This crypt hasn’t been used in almost a century. She wouldn’t have even thought to check it for the vampire they were looking for. 
But Shay had known.
There had been only one attack in the vicinity of the cemetery where Josefina Quintero was buried, in the past two weeks since her internment. That meant one of two things. Either the vampire Joey had risen as was hunting in a place that disguised her actual home earth, or she’d somehow forced herself not to feed since attacking a jogger the night after her burial. 
For a fledgling, either was a difficult concept to envision. Fledglings, especially non-hunters, generally lack much self control in any respect. Planning a feeding routine that hides their whereabouts is generally an action of a more seasoned, less desperate vampire, and forcing themselves not to feed would take a superhuman control that few vampires possess even at Emma’s age.
But Shay seemed to think that Joey could have done it. He’d told Sierra what little he knew about the self-made bookie while they canvassed the area.
“I knew she had something she was trying to protect. She was quiet. Kept her head down. She made decent money but she was never dressed flashy, never acted like she kept it for herself. I think she was taking care of her siblings. But she never once said anything about them. Never let on that she had any family. Because if anyone there found out about it, they could be used as leverage if someone wasn’t happy with their bets.”
“So you think she’s capable of assuming she’s now a danger to them, and stopping herself the only way she can imagine how?”
“If anyone was going to be able to lock herself away, I think Joey would be.” 
Shay had stopped in his tracks and pointed at the old crypt that belonged to the Lucero family. “If she’d be anywhere, it would be there.”
It’s ironic, Sierra thinks, that the final resting place of members of a founding family of the Chimera agency is also the place Joey Quintero tried to save her family from her fledgling self. 
The triage team pushes her aside, spreading out a sort of handled tarp on the ground and lifting the vampire’s huddled body. Somehow, she’s still moving. Just a little, resisting touch on the instinct of a wounded animal, but she’s far enough from her home earth, and isolated from it by the silver, that she can’t even sleep during daylight.
Sierra would have the head of anyone who put a vampire through this kind of torture on a silver platter.
But Joey did this herself.
She probably didn’t know what she was going to experience. Not if she didn’t know there are safe ways to feed, alternatives to real blood.
But she had to have known it would be bad.
And chose it anyway.
Shay is standing about five feet from the crypt. Any closer, and its silver would affect him too. Honestly Sierra’s surprised no one’s ripped it all out of the place yet; this isn’t the best neighborhood anymore. But maybe the people around here have got a taboo against taking from the dead. Or are afraid one of the family members got bitten on the job and don’t want to risk letting them out. 
He’s watching the triage team running back to their van with a look on his face Sierra has seen all too often in the past couple days.
“She’s just blood-starved.” It’s horrifying, and Sierra might never get that image out of her head, but vampires can starve for years and come back from it as long as they’re fed real blood. More than a few grave robbers learned that the hard way over the years. “They’ll take care of her. Get her back.”
“I should have found her sooner.” Shay’s not looking at her, but his eyes are shining with unshed tears. “A lot sooner.”
“Look at me.” Sierra puts herself between him and the retreating van. “You found her now. I wouldn’t have. I would have assumed the silver would repel her and she’d choose the path of least resistance. Most fledglings do.”
Shay flinches.
“Sorry.” This is…a special case. The last person on record at Chimera who’s had this much control was Emma, who locked Arion out of her head after less than a week of being turned. “I’m just saying.”
“Three weeks, Sierra.” Shay rubs a hand over his face, and it comes away damp. “I missed her by three weeks. She was still human.”
“And you’re proof that being a good person doesn’t have to end when your humanity does.” Sierra says. “Someone who could do that?” She gestures behind her to the crypt. “She’ll be a shoe-in for mentorship. Maira will be all over it.”
“I should have thought of her sooner. Told you sooner.”
“Shay. There was no sooner. The pre-turn program just got off the ground days before she died. We were still looking for potential candidates in rehab programs and homeless shelters. Interviewing vampires like you to see if they knew anyone else at risk.” Sierra shakes her head. “You put her name at the top of the list as soon as you saw the checklist of likely markers and remembered how she reacted to blacklights whenever she came near them at the fights. You had no way of knowing she’d been hit by a drunk.” Honestly, Sierra has no idea how Joey functioned apparently normally as long as she did, if she was infected at least by the time Shay met her four years ago.
No wonder she was able to shut herself in a silver lined tomb.
She’d been crushing every ounce of the venom in her system for years.
“I just wish we’d found her before this had to happen.” Shay swallows. “She doesn’t deserve this.”
“Neither did you.” Sierra puts an arm around him. “But none of us can go back. The only way we can go now is forward.” She takes a single step toward the car, and Shay follows. “We can’t save her life. But we can help her have a good un-life. So let’s focus on that. Can we do that?”
Shay nods. “Yeah.”