by Ruby Dixon
"Liam," Andrea murmurs, her voice low and soft.
I turn toward her, drawn.
She remains at Benny's side, a towel in a bowl of water next to her hand. Benny's asleep—or rather, unconscious. He thrashes in the bed, his face covered in sweat. His smell is more sour than ever, and Andrea's lovely face is drawn with worry.
"What can I do to help?" I murmur, crouching next to her. I devour her with my eyes, wanting nothing more than to touch her face and hold her close, but she's stiff and defensive, as if I'll tell her something she doesn't want to hear.
She studies me for a long moment, then reaches out and takes my hand in hers, surprising me. "I need you to promise me something."
"Anything, Andrea. You know I would do anything for you."
Normally she'd blush at my fervent words, but today, she doesn't. She just looks sad and tired. "If we die, I need you to take the news back to Fort Shreveport. Tell Amy and…tell Gwen." She swallows hard, her eyes glassy with unshed water.
A low growl forms in my chest, and I have to fight the urge not to drag her against my chest and hold her against me protectively. I can't do anything against the unseen dangers that attack Benny and the others. More than anything, I wish I had my battle form so I could grab her in my claws and just fly away from all of this. "Andrea, no."
"You won't? Should I ask Gabe?"
"You're not going to die," I tell her fiercely, and this time I can't stop myself. I grab her shoulder, then her fat, yellow braid, winding it around my hand as if it'll somehow keep her here. "No one's going to die. Not you. Not Benny. I won't let it happen." I feel the wildness surging up inside me, and for a moment, a burst of violence flares in my brain. I want to fucking destroy this entire building and raze it to the ground—
"Liam," she says softly, her hand covering mine. "Atalim. Stay with me."
I take three deep breaths, nostrils flaring, and then I bury my face in her hair, drinking in her scent. "You're not going to die, Andrea."
"I'm just saying…just in case." She touches my jaw lightly. "Maybe it won't hit me. And Benny's doing all right, I think. Better than some of the others."
"Yes," I say, because what else can I say? He's not dead, but I don't think he's doing better than the others. I think he's sinking a little more with each hour.
Andrea smiles up at me, her expression sweet. "You've been so good to me, Liam," she murmurs. "I just wanted to say thank you for being there for me. Always. Every time I've needed a friend, you've been there."
"You are more than just a friend, Andrea. You know this." I reach up and touch her cheek anyhow, because I have to. I must.
She leans into my caress, closing her eyes. "Sometimes I wish we were just back up on that roof together. Everything seemed so simple that night. And now…"
"Now it is still as good," I promise her. "The days change, but the feelings do not. You are still everything to me, Andrea. You always have been."
Her eyes open and she gazes up at me. "Atalim…"
Benny cries out, his body stiffening. She jerks away, immediately reaching out to her brother. He rolls to his side and vomits, the spit on his lips dark and frothy. That's not a good sign. I've carted off enough dead with Gabe to know that those that died all threw up blood before they went.
"It's okay, Benny," Andrea whispers over and over. "I'm right here. It's okay." She holds him while he retches, and when he finally collapses into the bed again, she brushes his hair off his forehead. "You're hot. I'll bathe you and we'll cool that fever down, okay?"
Benny doesn't answer. His eyes slide shut and he falls unconscious again, drifting back into sleep.
My Andrea doesn't notice that, though—or she doesn't care. I recognize the determined look on her face as she wrings out the cloth and then gently moves it over his face and neck. She's going to give everything she has to Benny and I hope it's enough. I touch her braid one last time. "Can I get you anything?"
"More water?" She looks up at me, apologetic.
"Of course." I brush my knuckles over her cheek and then move to the buckets so I can refill her bowl. I know she's tired. The hours grow late, but I know she won't sleep, just like she won't eat. She's too focused on her brother.
It makes me feel helpless. I want to do something, but I know there's nothing to do except wait and help Gabe. He's another that hasn't taken a break since we arrived. I glance around the room and I see he's holding a cup of water to a sick woman's mouth.
Even though he is not drakoni, even though he eyed my female, I have grudging respect for the man. He could have left, stealing these people's food and supplies. It's out for anyone to take and they are far too weak to protect themselves. Instead, he risks himself to help the dying.
Benny cries out in sharp pain, drawing my attention. I move quickly to Andrea's side, where she's staring in shock at her brother.
"What is it?" I ask.
She looks up at me, her face bleached of color. For a moment, I think she's going to tell me that he died, but Benny's still panting, lost in fever. "His arm…I just touched it and he cried out. Something's wrong with it." She bites her lip and then looks up at me. "Can you hold him?"
I nod and move to his other side. It pains my heart to grab her sick brother by his thin arms and hold him while she examines him. He cries out in pain when she gets near his armpit, and when we gently ease his arm up, Andrea gasps.
"Oh god," she moans, her hand fluttering over the ugly thing revealed.
There's a large black lump under Benny's arm. It's dark and the skin around it is taut and reddened, and when she gently touches it, he screams out in pain again, thrashing.
"I don't understand," she says, shaking her head. I gently ease him back into the bed and he immediately tucks his body close, curling around his arm and hiding the spot from sight. "This…this isn't the flu."
"What is it?"
Her face is ashen as her eyes meet mine. "Plague. I think…I think it's the black plague. Oh fuck, the rats." She presses her hands to her forehead. "The fucking rats!"
"I do not understand," I say slowly. "Tell me what the difference is between the plague and the flu."
Andrea closes her eyes, and when she opens them again, tears stream down her face. "The difference is that people generally survive the flu. The Black Plague wiped out half of Europe. I thought it was gone but…we never had to worry about rats in the Before." Her fingers press to her mouth. "I can't believe it."
“What do we do?” I ask.
“If it’s a plague, there’s no hope.” She shakes her head, expression bleak. “There’s nothing to do except wait to die.”
22
LIAM
Benny sleeps, and he sleeps heavily. He’s no longer thrashing with fever, just still and quiet, as if waiting for the end.
Andrea cries herself to sleep in my arms. She tells Gabe her suspicions, and they check a few of the others and find the hard, black lumps on every person. Some are in armpits, some at the neck or behind the ear. One unfortunate dying man has them on his genitals. It is plague, she tells me as she sobs against my neck. An old, deadly one brought on by rats and their filth.
I hold her as she sleeps, her breath shuddering as if she still wants to cry in her dreams. It’s quiet, the entire building dark and gloomy. There were a few candles lit on the tables, but we’ve let them all burn down except for one. The smell of the dead and the sickness grows worse, and I repeatedly bury my face in Andrea’s hair to try and chase it away. The wildness gnaws at the back of my thoughts, and I hate that it comes for me, even now, when I want nothing more than to be here for Andrea, to support her as she waits for her brother to die.
Because it does sound like he’s going to die. Another eight people have passed. There are a few more that won’t see the morning, and the room is getting slowly cleared out. The woman who tended to everyone is one of the ones that won’t see the morning; she’s been vomiting blood for the last hour, and Gabe rests at her side, offering her drink
s and helping her through the worst of it.
I hold my female close, trying to imagine this sickness. The drakoni have nothing like it. We don’t weaken or get ill from outside factors. To think that I could lose her to something like this frightens me beyond anything I can imagine. I’m still coming to terms with the fact that Andrea can never be mine. I never thought I would be in danger of losing her so quickly to something like this.
I press my lips to the top of her head and hold her close.
Andrea shivers against me.
My body goes stiff. No.
She’s just cold.
I caress her cheek, rubbing my fingers along her skin. She feels warm, warmer than before. Flushed. Her skin is dewy with heat and I lean forward and take a deep drink of her scent. There. The smell is there. That awful, clinging, dark miasma has invaded her scent.
She’s sick.
“No,” I growl, holding her close. I cup her head and pull her tight to me. “Andrea, no. You will fight this. You will not get sick.”
“Mmm, what?” She rouses from her sleep, but her movements are languid, as if her limbs are too heavy.
“Look at me,” I demand, gripping her jaw between my fingers and tilting her head back. “Andrea, look at me.”
Her head lolls back and she blinks sleepy, unfocused eyes at me. And then she shivers again. “I’m so cold, Liam.”
Hot, fierce rage rushes through me. No. No, I cannot lose Andrea. I hold her close, but her smell makes my body react. The aching hunger I have to possess her is added to the helpless rage I feel until I know I’m coming apart at the seams. I picture her, wrapped up in sheets and in the room with the dead and white-hot fury blasts through me, making my skin itch and my entire body flare.
I’m going to utterly lose my mind.
I close my eyes and take several deep, long breaths. Andrea murmurs something unintelligible and then drifts back to sleep. I hold her for a moment longer, and then because it’s making the possessive fires in my mind go wild, I lay her down gently next to Benny and tuck the blankets around her.
She shivers and shivers, and the rage eating away at my mental walls grows.
No.
This is not fair.
I get up and leave her side, even though it’s destroying me to abandon her. I can’t stay there, though. If I keep breathing in her sickness-touched scent, it’s going to make me lose control.
If my mind is gone, I cannot help her. There has to be something I can do. There must be. I refuse to just sit and let this happen.
I will not let my female die.
I pace the room, lost in my furious thoughts. The female dragon’s mind is distant, but it weighs heavily on me, as if waiting for a chance to touch my own. The pressure from her does not help, either. Focus, I remind myself. Think of your mental walls. Make them strong.
I’m so lost in thought that when Gabe touches my arm, I round on him, snarling. I know without seeing that my eyes are black with fury, and I can smell the smoke curling from my nostrils. “What?” I grit out, clenching my hands.
“Two more dead,” he says grimly. “Help me move them?”
I don’t care about the dead strangers. The only person I care about is in bed with Benny, shivering next to her brother. “Andrea is sick,” I tell him.
“Yeah. I think I’m coming down with it, too.” He puts his hands on his hips. “Gonna keep going for as long as I can, but it might not be that long.”
I notice for the first time that his skin is reddened across the cheeks and his eyes are glazed. For a moment, I am utterly furious at him. “You cannot be sick, too. I need your help!”
“You think I want this?” He gives me a tired smile. “Trust me, I would like nothing more than to go home, but I don’t have that option.”
“Tell me what I must do.”
“Bury us?”
I growl again. “I am not giving up.”
“No, I guess you’ve got too much fire in your belly for that.” Gabe looks at me, speculative. “You’re not sick?”
I shrug, furious. “Why would I get sick? I’m not human.”
He reaches out and puts a hand on my brow, then peers into my eyes. “You feel fine?”
I bat his hand away. “I am as I ever was, except I am growing angrier by the moment.”
“Are your people magic? Is that how you change forms? How you breathe fire? Or is that something that’s genetic?”
“Why?” I ask, impatient. I want to return to Andrea’s side, to hold her for as long as I can. If this human will not help me, I need to figure something else out. “Why does it matter if I’m magic or not?”
“Because you’re not sick. And because I am.” He gives me a faint smile. “And because Andrea’s sick. And I’m trying to figure out how to fix that.”
He has my interest again. “Go on.”
Gabe rubs his hairy jaw. “So…one of the ways that people prevent illnesses is to infect someone with a small amount of the same thing, so their blood knows how to react to it. I’m just wondering what would happen if we added a bit of your blood to a human’s blood.”
“It would burn Andrea,” I tell him, imagining my fires tearing at her from within. I think of how close we came to mating and how I would have burned her. “Even with fever, your bodies are not hot enough to handle my blood without pain. We have fire in our veins, the drakoni.”
“Magic, then,” Gabe continues to rub his jaw. “Have you ever had anyone take your blood?”
“No.” I look at him skeptically. “You think if we give them my blood it will cure them?”
“Probably not, but I’d rather try something than just sit around on my ass and wait for the end to come.”
I like this idea. It fills me with hope. Is my blood not part of my spirit? Perhaps whatever living magic I have can help Andrea and Benny survive. “It will burn them,” I caution him again. “And you, if you want to try it.”
“Pain is better than dead,” he says bluntly.
I agree. If I must hurt Andrea to save her…then I must. “Show me what we must do.”
Gabe offers to go first. I want to save Andrea first, of course, but if this is a deadly idea, it's good to try it out on the male instead of my love. Gabe finds tubes and needles, and then tells me in great detail what he's going to do. He's going to locate a vein in my arm, connect to my blood, and then transfer it over to a vein in his arm. It seems a foolish thing, but humans apparently share blood often? He says he used to do this back in the Before, when he was something called a “paramedic.” So he pushes at my skin and eventually sinks the needle in, then puts it into his own arm. The small tube fills up with blood and I watch as it moves over to his arm.
The moment it hits, I can tell. His face contorts with pain and he grabs at his arm. I grab at it, too. "I told you it would hurt," I warn him.
"Fuck. Right." His face gets wild eyed and he clenches at my hand, but doesn't pull it out. His breath pants between gritted teeth and the smell of burning flesh begins to perfume the air. I look down between us and his arm is blistering around the needle, the skin red.
He waits for as long as possible and then rips the needle out of his arm. It's less than a minute, tops. "I can't do more. I'm sorry. It's like I'm being burned alive." He gets up, clutching his arm, and paces around as if that will somehow take care of the pain.
I watch him as he paces. "Do you feel better?"
Gabe looks over at me, his face pale and sweaty as he clutches his arm. "Are you kidding? I feel like shit and my arm's still fucking killing me."
I snort. "I told you."
"I know. I know." He sits down and closes his eyes, trying to compose himself. "We won't know for a while if this works or not. Do you want to wait to try it out on Andi and Benny?"
I look over at my female—because in my head, she is mine. She is quiet and still in the bed next to her brother, who is racked with chills. I don't like how silent she's been. Some of the others that got quiet right away never woke
up. The room around us is emptier by the hour, and it worries me. "I do not think we have time to wait."
"I think you're right." He gets up and grimaces, flexing his arm, then wraps a cloth around the wound to protect it. "You might want to tie her down."
The thought is revolting to me, but I saw how much Gabe fought, even though it was his idea. The pain was too much for him to bear, even knowing it was coming. I won't tie her up, but if I have to, I'll hold her down with my good arm.
When I sit down next to her bed, though, her eyes open and she gives me a tired smile. "How's Benny?"
"Sleeping," I say, then launch right into it. "Gabe has an idea we're going to try."
She sits up and sees where Gabe has bandaged his arm. She looks over at me, and when Gabe pulls out the tubing and needles, she seems surprised. "Blood transfusion? With you, Liam?"
"I am not sick," I point out. "Not at all. My people do not get such things."
"So a blood transfusion to try and pass your immunity to us?" She catches on quickly, my smart, beautiful Andrea. "Good idea."
"It will hurt," I warn her, hating that she's going to be in pain. I reach out and smooth the sweaty hair back from her face. "Gabe said it was intense, the pain."
"I can imagine. It's because your blood is so hot, right?" Her eyes are tired, unfocused, as if even this small conversation is too much for her. "Will you hold me when you do it?"
"Of course."
She takes my hand in hers. "Do Benny first."
I hesitate, because she is the one I want to save most of all, but I know this is important to her. "If you want."
Andrea nods. "Please."
So we move to Benny's side of the bed instead. He sleeps on, completely unaware even as Gabe inserts the needle in his arm and then hooks the tubing to me. A moment later, though, the screaming begins. Andrea goes pale as she leans over her brother, pressing down on him with her weight. Gabe does the same, his knee holding down Benny's arm and his hand on his shoulder so he doesn't rip the needle out. He thrashes under their grip, sobbing, and I hate the stench of the burning skin, the way his skin blisters around the needle. Gabe lets it go on for what seems like forever and then pulls the needle out, rubbing a cream over his arm. "Antiseptic," Gabe says, and covers the wound with a bandage as if that will somehow stop the pain.