Pulse

by Danielle Koste

  He had to have been the last of the doctors left, all eye witnesses of the events now destroyed, except for the three left alive in the room.

  A sickly smile swept Miller's face as they approached, reminding Rowan too much of when Lyall had attacked William the first time. Miller was more blood than cotton in her lab coat now, soaked in a cocktail of different blood, her face and teeth stained with carnage. All at once, Rowan found herself rooted to the floor, terrified just like the first day she’d walked into that containment room, seeing a new monster all over again.

  Then, the smile shifted a little on Miller’s face, a ghost of something else crossing her expression. Something like, fear?

  “What’s happening to me? I can’t stop...” Her mouth dripped unswallowed blood when she spoke.

  “I’m not surprised. Someone as self-serving and greedy as you with the virus. You’ve never had to deny yourself anything, have you, doctor? Well, don’t worry. It’s over now,” Lyall said, taking a step forward, unafraid of the beast in front of him even though Rowan had the feeling that Miller could snap him in half like a twig.

  Probably thinking the same thing, Miller laughed, viscous liquid dripping from her spread lips. “Are you going to stop me?” she asked, cackling again when Lyall’s eyes became hard and determined.

  It happened almost too quickly. Lyall attacked, and in a repeat of their last encounter, Miller caught him. This time, she slammed the dying boy down onto the floor with her, hard, and Rowan heard bones snapping. Lyall’s pained expression confirmed it had been his body breaking. In less than a moment, the boy who Rowan thought would forever be unstoppable, was stopped.

  Miller didn’t milk her advantage, unwinding to her feet and looking over Lyall instead of inflicting more damage. “You forgot. I’ve fed now. I’m even stronger than earlier. And you’re weaker. There’s not even really a point in killing you now, is there? You must be on your last hour.”

  Lyall tried to catch his breath, winded and most likely fighting a few broken ribs. He tried to roll over, slowly and painfully. Miller helped, using her foot to kick him onto his side, making the boy on the floor scream in agony. She chuckled, finding pleasure in the torture, barely taking notice to Rowan.

  “I would kill you, but it would be interesting to see you just waste away from my antivirus. I can’t say I’m not curious to how exactly it will happen. I imagine dying on a cellular level will get painful.” Miller pushed her foot into his side again, getting another scream. “You’re not healing anymore, I see.”

  Rowan didn’t know what to do. She was frozen with terror. She knew she had to do something, she knew that she had a better chance at taking Miller than Lyall ever did, but when she was terrified it was hard to feel like she had the ability to do anything. He was overpowered physically, and Rowan found herself overpowered mentally.

  Miller shoved him again, and Rowan turned away to avoid seeing the pain on his face. Tears filled her eyes, of sadness and hopelessness and frustration. She tried to remember why they were there, tried to remember that angry growl of the animal inside her when she thought about tearing Miller apart. She tried to remember Cameron, his neck ripped open and mangled, and Phelps, coughing up blood as he died. She needed to do something, if not to save herself and Lyall and everyone else unfortunate enough to be in the area, but for the people Miller had already stolen from her.

  She opened her eyes to blink away the wetness, and her gaze found the pool of blood on the bed around William’s body, and this time she couldn’t help but stare. Again, her vision shook, and the longer she stared, the more violent the tremor became. Rowan felt like her skin burned from the inside, her heart pounding, banging, urging her forward. The beast unwound and emerged from the deep, dark part of her abdomen, and it was like it was trying to force its way out through her chest and her throat.

  Beside her, Miller was busy torturing Lyall, entertained like a child with a new toy, but the sound of her laugh and his yells of pain became distorted and murky to Rowan, like hearing a noise above the surface while underwater. All there was for her in that moment was the metallic smell around her, and the blood, drip, drip, dripping onto the floor from the drenched bed sheets. Her shaking vision stopped abruptly, and the monster shoved her forward.

  Before she even realized what she was doing, her hand was in the pool of red, shiny and smooth and so tempting, and she licked it off her fingers. It tasted like everything she imagined and more. Her mouth watered, and her stomach twisting like she had been starving and had no idea until this very moment. It wasn’t enough though, her thirst was unsatisfied.

  Rowan grabbed William by the back of his head, then buried her face into the wound at his neck, a wound Lyall had made, Miller had reopened, and she was now feasting from, swallowing down the thick elixir as it leaked into her mouth. With every swallow, the monster inside her showed more of its skin, taking over her thoughts with insatiable growls.

  “What on earth is going on here?” Miller said, the words barely registering past Rowan’s untamed starvation. When the other woman laughed, she stopped, the monster hissing something dark as her eyes finally left her red feast to focused on something else.

  Miller raised an eyebrow when Rowan finally raised her gaze. She hadn’t noticed before, but her gray eyes had lightened with the new addition to her blood, becoming an almost ghostly silver. It made the woman look even more unnatural, even more terrifying, just like Lyall's ice blue gaze had made him. Human Rowan would have been scared stiff, but monster Rowan was in control now.

  “I knew something was strange about how you almost killed me back at the laboratory. Seems like we have another little blood sucker after all.” Miller was having a grand time messing with the two of them. Everytime she laughed, Rowan felt her pupils shudder and refocus, the animal taking a new target.

  “Here, wait, let me guess. Our lovebirds had a romantic night, that ended in someone accidently making a meal of the other. You must have forgotten how the virus worked, didn’t you? I don’t blame you, most people have trouble worrying about protection when the moment strikes them.”

  A toothy grin spread wide across her face and Miller finally took a step away from Lyall and moved towards Rowan. She leaned over the bed and grabbed her under the chin, holding her face up to look her in the eye. Rowan watched the woman’s pupils, wide and black like when Lyall was possessed with the hunger. Was she also so terrifying?

  Miller rubbed her thumb across Rowan’s cheek, like the way a parent wipes a smudge off a child’s face. Her hand came back red. “Look at us. Still following down the same path, more alike than ever, I’d dare say. Imagine what we could do now. Together, Rowan. We could be unstoppable.”

  She felt the monster rear inside her, thrashing against the walls that contained it. She felt like if she let it, it would explode from her flesh, and she’d no longer even be human anymore. Just the dark, shadowy thing inside of her. The idea felt wonderful. She wanted to let it tear her apart. She wanted to let it tear the world apart.

  She looked at Miller, most likely a mirror image of herself just as the woman had suggested; blood on their faces and hunger in their eyes, fire dancing in the deep darkness of the woman’s pupils, because she thought that she had everything in her control, including Rowan.

  But the human inside her remembered.

  Rowan remembered red, but the red of Cameron’s blood, spilt all over the floor, flooding around him. She remembered Phelps, coughing, his heart barely fluttering as he spoke to her. She remembered the rooms of bodies they had to pass just to get here, face to face with the woman who’d stolen everything away with her greed.

  She remembered that Miller had to die for this to end, and she had to be the one to do it.

  They didn’t want any more bodies, but to make sure there wasn’t, she had to make one more with her own hands, and she didn’t mind the idea at all. Lyall told her that she didn’t want to be a killer, but the monster disagreed. Her eyes went down to Miller�
�s throat, and it purred at the idea of tearing it opened. More blood. She wanted more blood. She was ready for it. Her first kill.

  Miller didn’t expect Rowan to do anything, because she raised an eyebrow when she reached out for her neck. Rowan clawed at the skin, but Miller only laughed, prying her fingers away dragging her to her feet by her hair. She had no chance of winning a power struggle against the other woman. She was already far stronger than her, even with the hunger fueling Rowan’s rage. She caught Miller by surprise last time in the labs, and it seems like the doctor was not going to allowed that opportunity again.

  Lyall, on the other hand, had been completely forgotten by both of them. So when Rowan saw his shape slide carefully to his feet behind Miller, she reacted, twisting and struggling to distract the woman that held her.

  Miller growled, tossing her to the ground forcefully. The humor was gone from her face. Now she was just annoyed.

  “I’ve offered you so much, and this is really how you repay me? I should have known any assistant of Phelps’ would be an ungrateful little brat. I thought you would be smarter than this, Rowan. You are smarter than this. This boy has already given you all he has to offer; immortality and a good fucking. It’s time to grow up now. Come with me instead, and we could have everything.” She leaned down again, placing her hand on Rowan’s head, and sweeping back a strand of matted blonde hair. Miller offered one last, tender smile, and added a stolen line, “You look so much more appropriate in red, anyway.”

  Rowan gazed up at the woman, letting her face soften to see the darkness in Miller’s eyes shift to satisfaction, and then down to angry disappointment again when Rowan shook her head. “I’m sorry, doctor. Even with the same virus, I could never be the same kind of monster as you.”

  Miller had just enough time to snarl and tighten her grip in Rowan’s hair before her expression shifted to surprise and her fingers slacked. Behind her, Lyall pushed the plunger down on the syringe that he’d stuck deep into Miller’s neck, adding to Rowan’s words, “Besides, red is a terrible color on you.”

  Miller yelled, swinging around wildly in reaction to the unforeseen assault. Lyall retreated immediately, but his injuries made him slow, and Miller connected a limb, knocking the dying boy to the floor again. Miller dove for him, murder in her eyes, obviously intending to finish the boy off, but Rowan lunged forward also, grabbing her around the neck and wrestling her back.

  Miller growled loudly again, turning her sights back to Rowan, twisting and bending to try and get her off. Just like at the labs though, she held on tight and dug her nails into the woman’s skin, letting herself be crushed against the floor but never letting go. If she just waited long enough for the antivirus to set in, she would win. She just needed to hold on.

  It happened faster than she expected. Miller’s struggles became more wild and desperate, but her strength diminished rapidly. Becoming confused herself, she yelled as she wrestled, “What have you done to me?”

  “Just a little antivirus, courtesy of Robert Phelps. You should be happy. Unlike yours, this one won’t kill you,” Rowan strained out an answer, twisting her body to lock her arm around the woman’s neck tight.

  She tightened her hold around Miller’s throat, cutting off her air. The woman continued to struggle hard, but she simply did not have the strength anymore to fight now that Rowan was the only one with the virus. After a long moment of gasping and choking, Miller fell limp, and Rowan released her grip and shoved her body away.

  There was no time to catch her breath. The fire had spread during their confrontation and she could hear the beams giving under the heat, the building ready to collapse at any moment. She dragged Miller out of the room, down the flaming hall and out to the fire escape, then returned for Lyall. She managed to get them both down to ground level before a flash fire blew out one of the windows from the floor they had been on. Rowan could hear the firemen coming, so she left Miller, disappearing into the alleys behind the hotel with Lyall’s nearly unconscious body.

  Once she was far enough away from the scene, the smoke and blood and loud sirens less assaulting to her senses, she stopped to recuperate. Laying Lyall down, she sat on her knees and let her head fall back, taking in a deep inhale. The smell of blood saturated the air, but she closed her eyes and focused on her heart, beating loud and steady, and it calmed her, pulling her away from the bloodlust lingering within her. She wouldn’t let it take her again. Once was enough.

  Her head finally a little clearer, she remembered, the pieces of everything that happened falling into place and a dreadful realization taking over. She moved quickly again, panicking, patting her fingers over the pockets of her bloody jeans, the antivirus and syringe gone.

  “Why? Why did you do that?” Rowan turned to Lyall, who clutched at his ribs while propped up against a back alley wall. There was fire in her eyes, but her anger dissipated the moment she saw him. She heard his pulse immediately, the beat so slow and weak. While her heart punched against her ribs, his barely pattered.

  She touched him suddenly, petting over his hair and face, panic in her chest and her lungs, like knives through her ribs, making every breath hurt. “No, no, no,” she muttered in denial, calling for him to not give up on her. She tried to help him sit up further, but he winced against his broken bones. She hadn’t known he’d been injured so badly.

  His eyes lacked color and life when he lifted them. When he inhaled, his throat sounded arid as a desert. “You lied to me,” he said, barely a whisper, trying to sound playful but failing horribly.

  Rowan bowed her head, putting her cheek to his chest to hear that tiny flutter of a heart beat. She willed it not to stop. “I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t know if you’d want it back. I—”

  “I knew you had it. With Cameron. Your eyes...” His words were short, strained, painful.

  Tears drowned her vision. “If you knew, why didn’t you ask for it?”

  She felt stupid, selfish. She should have just given it to him. He wouldn’t be here, dying painfully if she had just given it to him. He would have been able to fight Miller if she had just given the virus back.

  But she held it, selfishly, and now she worried it was too late.

  “I didn’t want it… Not like that. I didn’t want... To be alone with it again.” He barely got the words out, shutting his eyes and taking a deep breath after them. His heart skipped.

  Rowan panicked, grabbing at him, not hearing the little flit of the muscle in his chest. Not yet. No. It couldn’t be too late. She bit violently at the palm of her hand, until it hurt, until she couldn’t take it, and then, until the skin tore open, and the wound poured blood. With shaking fingers, she opened his mouth and put her palm to his lips. The blood dripped to his tongue, out the corner of his mouth. She flexed her fingers to get more flow, but the wound was already healing.

  “Don’t do this, Lyall,” she whispered, desperately begging, putting her head to his chest to search for that tiny little noise again.

  When she didn’t hear it everything crashed down on her, and the sobs swelled up in her chest. She lost everyone to this, even the one person that she had the opportunity to save, and now she was where Lyall started: a monster, all alone.

  “You can’t leave me like this. I need you. I don’t want to be alone either...”

  His heart had stopped fluttering though, and for a second the dark alley was too silent. Even the monster in her stopped its growling to weep instead.

  Then, he inhaled.

  Sharp and strong and so loud to her sensitive ears, his heart beating again wildly, like he’d woken up from a bad nightmare. Rowan sat up, shocked, and stared as he panted. She watched with wide eyes and shallow lungs as he came back to life, still not sure if what she was seeing was really happening.

  She counted the times his chest rose and fell, then when she confirmed he had caught enough air, she stole his mouth, kissing him with wet, bloody, sobbing kisses until he had to reach up and grab her face to stop her smo
thering. His forehead to hers, she gave a small, breathless, thankful laugh to his lips, and she felt his curl against hers. She smiled, kissing him again, only to get a whisper muttered against her lips.

  “Whoever you’ve been eating tastes familiar.”

  With the grim joke Rowan growled and shoved at him, but Lyall caught her around the back of her neck to keep her close, and she waited as he opened his eyes. They focused on her, and she was trapped by icy blue once again. Her wolf was back, and the monster in her bones purred.

  About the Author

  Danielle Koste is born and raised Canadian, but currently lives with her significant other in the equally snowy and cold Stockholm, Sweden. While working a day job and learning the language of the locals, she spent her free time honing the craft she always had a passion for. Movies, music, and video games are among her favorite time-wasters.

  PULSE is Danielle Koste’s first published book. You can experience more of her work online at one of the following locations.

  www.daniellekoste.com