by J. R. Ward
“I’m scared,” Nate said.
Murhder and Sarah both turned to the young, and Murhder became very aware that he was the only one who knew what the boy was talking about. The change was coming to him. Soon.
“Would you like me to stay in here with you?” she asked the young.
“Yes, please.”
When Nate looked over at Murhder, the answer was easy. “Sure,” he said. “I’ll stay with you, also.”
There were two chairs along the long wall opposite the bed, and Murhder let Sarah choose the one she liked first. He wasn’t particular because either way, he was going to get to sit close to her. As they settled in, he wanted to hold her hand. She looked worried.
Especially as she stared at Nate. The young did seem wiped out, his skin too pale, his breathing shallow, his eyes fluttering to a close so hard, the tortured wince turned his face into a death mask.
That was the transition for you.
“God, what they did to him in that lab,” she muttered under her breath.
Yes, he thought. But it was also what the young was about to go through—and as the reality of Nate’s impending transition really hit, Murhder wondered how the hell all this was going to work when it came to Sarah. She was bound to learn about the race now, either from her trying to treat John Matthew’s wound or from what was going to happen here in this hospital room very soon.
And then what? Was she going to be repulsed by it all?
By Murhder, himself?
Without conscious thought, he did reach for her hand—and it wasn’t until he felt her warm palm against his own that he realized what he’d done. Glancing over, he met her eyes and waited for her to pull away, look away . . .
She squeezed his hand and held on.
As a feeling of warmth spread throughout Murhder’s chest, the two of them went back to staring across at the young, so small and fragile in the big, clinical bed. Sometime soon thereafter, food was brought in by a doggen in uniform, steak and steaming potatoes for him and Sarah, white rice with ginger sauce for the young’s sensitive stomach.
The pair of them ate in silence—Nate couldn’t seem to tolerate anything, not even that signature fare for those about to go through the change—and the next thing Murhder knew, the trays had been cleared, the young was back asleep, and he and Sarah were staring at each other.
He knew exactly what was on her mind. It was what was on his.
But now was not the time for sex. And here was not the place—
“Will you tell me what’s going on with this?” she said quietly. “All of you. These facilities. The staff. This is not a casual, cobbled-together operation, and I want to understand what the hell’s happening here.”
Okay . . . so maybe they weren’t thinking about the same thing.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
As Sarah put the demand out there, she didn’t expect her commando to answer with total honesty. Something as extensive as all this? Something as expensive as all this? They didn’t want to be known, and they had the resources to keep it that way—so he wasn’t going to spill any secrets to a woman he’d just met. But . . . dayum.
And there was another reason she’d asked. She wanted to hear his voice, have that strange accent of his in her ear . . . watch his lips move as he enunciated his words.
Like he was doing right now.
Shoot, she needed to pay attention.
“—take care of our own, that’s all,” he said with the kind of finality that suggested he wasn’t going to go any further with the discussion.
Before she could do any kind of follow-up, Nate tossed and turned over on the bed, his frail legs moving under the blankets, his head going back and forth on the pillow. Just as she was wondering if she shouldn’t go and get help, he resettled, seeming to sink back into sleep.
“Who are you, though,” she said absently as she stared across at the boy. When there was no reply, she looked back to her commando. “I mean, what group are you affiliated with?”
The man looked down at his hands. “Does it really matter?”
“I just want to know who you are,” she said. And funny, as she spoke, she wasn’t sure what worried her more: whatever his answer was going to be—or how desperately she wanted to know it.
She thought of Gerry and shifted uneasily in her chair.
“Can you tell me your name at least?” she asked.
At that moment, there was a knock on the door, and they both said “enter” as quietly as they could. What came in was . . . utterly unexpected.
The woman was tall and slender, and instead of being dressed in street or even hospital staff clothes, she was draped in a fall of white fabric that started at her shoulders and went all the way down to the floor. With her dark hair swept up and away from her face, and her hands tucked into the sleeves of the robing, she seemed like something out of a religious ceremony. From Greece or Rome. Back in, like, 1500 BCE.
A vestal virgin.
But that wasn’t the half of it. She had an ethereal, unnatural beauty, her skin seeming to glow, an aura surrounding her and somehow charging the air with heavenly electrons.
A saint.
Abruptly, the woman stopped just inside the doorway, recoiling as she saw the commando.
“ ’Tis you.” At that, she bowed very low, such that Sarah could see the complicated twist that her hair had been wound into on the top of her head. “Sire, you have returned.”
Her voice had the timbre of a concert violin being played by a master, her speech not so much words, but musical notes.
An angel.
The commando cleared his throat. “How are you, Analye. And this is Sarah.”
There was a brief pause of confusion. And then the woman bowed again. “Mistress, it is my honor to serve. May I please approach the young?”
Sarah stiffened in her chair.
“Yes,” the commando interjected. “And maybe we’ll just give you guys some privacy.”
As he went to stand up, Nate’s voice cut through the awkwardness. “I don’t feel well.”
Sarah frowned as the woman went over to the bedside. That unnatural glow seemed to intensify, surely as if that robe with its strangely iridescent threads had been hit by a theater light instead of the dull fluorescent panels in the ceiling. And then Sarah had to rub her eyes because clearly her vision was off. A distortion, like heat rising off hot pavement in the summer, created waves in the air between the woman and the boy, warping that which should have been static such as the wall behind them, the bed between them, the pillow his head was on—
The commando stepped in front of her, blocking her view. In a low, grim voice, he said, “We need to leave now.”
A strange tingling had Sarah pulling up the sleeves of her fleece and looking down at herself. Both of her arms were alive with goosebumps, the skin bearing a chill that could not be explained from a drop in temperature in the room.
The door into the hall opened wide and the female doctor leaned in. She took one look at the boy, and then stared hard at the commando.
“You need to get her out of here. Now.”
Sarah knew damn well she was the subject of that order. But she shook her head. “I’m not leaving him. I don’t know what the hell is going on here, but I am not leaving him—”
“I don’t feel right,” Nate said roughly. “I don’t . . .”
Sarah burst to her feet. “We need a crash cart!”
The woman in the robe calmly looked over at the commando. “It is time, sire. It is upon him.”
“What’s wrong with you people?” Sarah glared at the doctor. “Do something! He looks like he’s seizing!”
For godsakes, if she were a clinician, rather than a researcher, she would jump up on that bed and start chest compressions—or do whatever had to happen to stabilize him. Meanwhile, everyone else just stared at the child as his small hands gripped the sheets and balled up wads on either side of his body. Arching back, he opened his mouth and let out a s
ound that didn’t seem human at all.
It was the cry . . . of an animal.
As the high-pitched wail faded in the bald room, Sarah felt the blood leave her head, a sudden warning rising up through her consciousness.
She thought of those lab experiments. Of the results that were inexplicable. Of the strange accents, this secret lair, that female in the robe.
Losing her balance, she fell back into the chair and stared up the commando’s powerful body.
Abruptly, she realized she had been asking the wrong question.
It was not “who.”
“What are you?” she breathed.
Murhder drew a palm down his face. This was getting in way too deep, way too quickly for the human woman. He’d thought they’d have some time before the transition came unto the young, time for her to get a good look at John Matthew’s wound, time for her to weigh in on that, time for Murhder and her to . . .
Explore their attraction.
After which, she would have to return to her life in the human world.
Instead, the change had arrived and there was no stopping it—no doubt the stress of the escape and coming here had jump-started the process. Or maybe Nate’s body had always meant for this night to be the one.
What the hell did it matter.
“I need to feed him,” the Chosen said urgently. “May I have your consent as guardians?”
Murhder swallowed hard. Then looked to Doc Jane. Part of him wanted to order the female healer to give the permission. He certainly didn’t feel like anything close to fit-parent material. But he had to remember what he had promised Ingridge.
“Yes, you have my consent,” he heard himself say.
Doc Jane spoke up. “Get her out of here. She can’t be a part of this.”
Nate’s bloodshot eyes popped wide, and he looked around frantically. “I want Sarah! Don’t make her go!”
It was the last comprehensible thing he spoke.
As he fell into a state of mumbles, Sarah narrowed hard eyes up at Murhder. “You will have to take me out of this room in pieces. Am I making myself clear?”
Murhder sat back down and rubbed his palms on his thighs, up and down, up and down. As he felt Doc Jane’s glare, he muttered, “I’ll take care of it.”
Doc Jane cursed. “This is not right and it is not good. For her.”
On that happy note, the physician backed out of the room—and in the wake of her departure, he was very clear on why Sarah staying and watching this had bad idea written all over it. The more vivid the memories, the harder they were to scrub. But like he wasn’t going to have to patch over whole sections of her recollections now, anyway? What was one more thing?
Okay, based on his life story, that was probably the wrong question to pose to destiny.
“What is she doing?” Sarah whispered. “Oh, God . . . what is that woman doing?”
Murhder looked over to the bed, even though he didn’t need visual confirmation to know what was going on. The Chosen had pinned up her left sleeve within the folds of the robing and brought her wrist to her mouth—and now she was puncturing her vein with her fangs.
Meanwhile, Nate was definitely in the thralls of the change. The poor kid was thrashing on the bed, his body contorted by the pain inside his skin, the hunger in his marrow, the need for his cells to have a sustenance only members of the opposite sex could provide him—
Except then the scent of that blood hit the young’s senses and he froze even in the midst of his suffering. In slow motion, his head cranked toward the Chosen.
There were no pupils to his eyes. They were nothing but white in the midst of his wide lids.
Fixated, he opened his mouth and released that high calling sound again, like a bird of prey about to be provided fresh meat.
“For your sustenance,” the Chosen said in the Old Language.
The sacred female extended her wrist over his open lips, and as the first drop of blood hit the young’s tongue, his body started to shake so hard, he levitated off the mattress—
Murhder felt a slap on his own arm and then pinpricks of pain.
Sarah had grabbed onto him, probably without even realizing it, her nails piercing his skin. Meanwhile, her other hand was braced against the wall, her face drawn in lines of horror.
Shit, he really should have gotten her out when he could.
The Chosen lowered her vein directly to the young’s mouth and Nate grabbed onto her hand and forearm, as if he were afraid the source of his very life would be taken away before he got what he needed.
“What are they doing . . .” Sarah’s voice trailed off weakly. “What . . .”
Murhder hung his head and wondered what the hell he had been thinking, allowing the human to come here, be a part of this, see what for all intents and purposes could not be unseen. Selfish. So selfish.
The problem was that after so many years of drowning alone in his insanity, he had missed feeling grounded and connected—and not merely to everything around him, but to one special person in particular.
This was going to cost the human dearly, however.
Yet another in his long list of regrets.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
After Sarah’s decade or so of medical science education and training, she was very well acquainted with the way the human body functioned, how the mechanisms of sight and hearing worked, how the channels of information gathering and processing ran along neuropathways, how the brain managed the flows of sense and thought.
All of that academic crap went out the window as she stared across the hospital room and watched a boy open his mouth and latch on . . . to a woman’s wrist.
He was drinking.
Blood.
She could see his throat working as he swallowed again and again.
Simple logic told her she needed to stop what was happening. There was never a reason for a human to give their blood orally to another person. This was both dangerous, given all of the blood-borne pathogens that could be carried, and unnecessary.
But she returned again and again to those scans.
“What are you,” she repeated without taking her eyes off the bed.
She was dimly aware that she was gripping the commando’s arm—and there was no letting go of it. In some strange way, she was convinced the connection was the only thing keeping her on the earth.
And then things began to happen to the boy.
Things that . . . could not possibly be explained.
The first sign of what was to come was a popping sound, like that of a finger joint being cracked. Then there was another. Louder this time. Like a vertebra during a stretch after someone had not moved for a while.
After which began the transformation: Under the sheets, down where Nate’s feet were, something was moving—and not as in back and forth. As in growing longer.
Sarah’s eyes got even wider as beneath the thin blankets, his toes began to extend down the bed. At first, she told herself it was just because the pain he was in had made him point his foot. But that could explain only so much.
More pops. Even louder now.
And his feet moved still further . . . as if his legs were growing.
Sarah looked up to where he was gripping the arm of the woman and holding the source of the blood to his mouth. Before her very eyes, she saw his elbow distort under his skin, the bony protrusion seeming to curl into a fist and twist before—snap! It was in a different position.
The same thing happened to his jaw. Initially, she assumed the disfiguration of his face occurred because his mouth was wide open due to being latched onto that wrist—but soon she realized that whatever was happening to his legs and his arms was affecting his entire body. He was growing.
Not by millimeters. By leaps and bounds—
Abruptly, his forehead seemed to bubble forward, his brow ridge undulating under his skin, his ears moving outward.
More popping.
Sarah felt something wet on her hand and looked over a
t where she had gripped the commando’s bare arm. Her fingernails had sunk so deeply into his skin, his blood welled in crescents.
When she looked at him in alarm, his eyes were remote. As if what was going on across the room was no mystery at all—but her reaction was what concerned him.
Sarah snapped her hand back and wiped it on her pants.
She had spent all her professional life on the lookout for revelations about the mysteries of the human body, her days and nights devoted to the pursuit of breakthroughs in knowledge and lightning strikes of hyper-deductive reasoning that ultimately relieved suffering and cured disease.
She had never, ever expected that the biggest discovery of her career would not be about humans at all.
Sarah had no idea how long it took. Hours could have passed. Days. Who knew.
But she sat through the entire . . . whatever it was . . . not feeling the chair under her, not caring that she had to go to the bathroom, not aware of anything other than the boy’s maturation process.
That was the only framework into which she could fit what she witnessed.
Nate had started out looking like a nine or ten year old boy. Then some kind of craving had come over him, and that woman had arrived. She had bit herself in the wrist, put the open wound to his mouth . . . and somehow as he drank from her, his arms and legs grew by inches upon inches, and that wasn’t the only change in him. His face became that of a man’s, growing a jawline and brows. His hands elongated, his shoulders widened, his throat thickened. His chest doubled, then tripled in size, until it split the small hospital johnny down the middle.
There was incredible pain. Horrible pain. Then again, it was clear that the process wasn’t coordinated, some bones and muscles growing before the joints did, others lagging behind. It was impossible for her to tell what was going on internally, but his organs—his heart, lungs, stomach, intestines, liver and kidneys—had to be doing the same.