by Kelly Meding
More specifically, to the fact that I could no longer move it. I tested my arms and legs to no avail. They felt squeezed, legs flat together and arms at my sides. Like a mummy. I forced bleary eyes open—an unfamiliar ceiling of dark, rough-cut wood. Unfamiliar smells of pine and earth and burning wood permeated the dark-paneled room with its antique dresser, sunset water-color, and single door. Serenity was in that room, just not in me. Not while my entire body was wrapped up in a damned sheet, some ass-backward method of strait-jacketing me.
What the hell—? Oh, right. I’d almost become a half-Blood.
A choked sob caught in my throat, followed by a high-pitched keen. It wasn’t the time for a mental breakdown, but I was alone and in a strange place and my emotions had other plans. My body trembled and shuddered. The keen upgraded to a wail.
Then Wyatt was there, hands framing my face, looking down at me. His eyes were bloodshot, red-rimmed and puffy, smudged with dark circles. He hadn’t shaved in a while. He was breathing hard through his mouth. I tried to quiet my cries and merely succeeded in changing the wails to silent sobs.
He didn’t hold me, and I wanted him to. Instead, the pressure around my body loosened. The makeshift wrap fell away, releasing arms I could barely work. It didn’t matter. He gathered me up, held me close, and I sobbed into his neck. Sobbed for what I’d almost become, and for the fear Chalice had once felt at the prospect of living when the last thing I wanted to do was die. Wyatt stroked my back and arms, cooed soft words, coaxed it all out.
I cried myself back to sleep, because when I woke next, we were side by side in bed, my back pressed to his chest. I was free of the restricting sheet, carefully spooned beneath a heavy blanket instead. Naked except for a long T-shirt and panties. Safe with Wyatt, and very much still human.
Laughter gurgled in my throat.
“Evy?” The arms around my waist tightened.
“Glad to be alive,” I forced out between loose giggles. My voice was hoarse, throat dry and tight. From one extreme to the other—maybe I had lost it after all.
“Me, too.”
The momentary hysteria subsided after a few minutes. I rolled around to face him, moving easily in the large bed. His onyx eyes seemed to pin me to the bed and never let me go. It wasn’t a horrible idea. Every last muscle ached with exhaustion, like I’d been smashed beneath a steamroller and allowed to slowly reinflate.
“I almost didn’t come back,” I said.
He went stone-faced. “I know.”
“How long?”
“You fought it for six days.”
My mouth fell open. I didn’t believe him. Six days drifting in and out of Hell. Battling to retain control of my body and mind. His expression never changed. Six days. “Where are we?”
“A hunting cabin north of the city. Tybalt knows a guy who comes up here in the fall, and Gina said she stayed here before. We needed someplace safe, away from people. You wouldn’t stop yelling, fighting us.…” His jaw clenched, loosened. “At first, she wanted to chain you.”
I shuddered. “You came up with the sheet trick?”
“Yeah, and it barely kept you down. Every time one of us got too close, you’d try to bite us. You bucked me off a few times. David, too. Phineas was the only one strong enough to hold you down. Your hair changed a little, but it’s gone back. You’d fight and scream the most awful things, then cry and shriek, then go quiet, and then start all over again.”
“For six days.” I could only imagine the things I’d said out loud in that time, especially stoned out of my gourd on vampire saliva. “I remember some voices, I think. You told Gina to stop once.”
Fury lit a fire beneath his stone-faced demeanor; I couldn’t imagine how hard he was battling to keep his temper under control. “There at the end, your eyes changed. It was enough for her. She … She said I could do it, or she would do it.”
I swallowed against nausea. This was the second time she’d tried to kill me. “And?”
“I told her to go fuck herself, that no one was killing you unless they killed me first. We had a bit of a scuffle.”
“You and Kismet got into a fight?”
He touched the corner of his right eye. When I looked closer, the bruising was distinctly darker than the other eye. “Yeah. She came toward you with a knife, then you just up and screamed no like you knew. But it was you, Evy, not the person who’d been screaming at us all week. You.”
“Good timing.”
“You think?” He stroked my cheek, featherlight. “Your eyes had changed back. Gina finally left on my promise not to unroll you until you’d woken up and verified you were normal.”
“Relatively speaking. Wait, you said Phineas?”
“Yeah, he was here for most of the week. When you woke yesterday, I sent him home for a shower and some sleep. He should be coming back later today.”
Knowing that Phineas el Chimal, one of the last surviving Coni shape-shifters in the city, had been here all week surprised me. And in some ways, it didn’t. His loyalty was unwavering, his heart true. “Was Kismet here the whole time?”
“A lot of it. She rotated in and out with her team when they weren’t active, so we were never alone. David and Tybalt were here a lot, too. We kept it quiet. So far, no one outside our group knows about this.”
The effort they’d gone through astounded me. Six days of waiting for me to either change or die, coming to a cabin in the woods like conspirators planning their destructive legacy. Keeping a deadly secret. “How long was I out this time?”
“About a day since you first woke up, so in total it’s been a week.”
“Holy hell.” I brushed the thick stubble on his cheeks. “You need a shave.”
“You don’t like the mountain man look?”
I quirked one eyebrow. “I think it’s going to burn when I kiss you.”
He leaned over and pressed his forehead to mine. Our noses touched. “Don’t tempt me.”
“Why?”
Perfect question. His mouth slanted over mine. It was a chaste kiss, though I longed to deepen it. I was just out of a week-long coma—my breath couldn’t be all that amazing. As expected, his whiskers grazed my cheeks, a delicious friction on my skin.
“Still want me to shave?” he asked as he pulled back.
“Definitely, Mountain Man.” I cleared my throat, desperate for a glass of water. “Have we heard from Thackery since he shot me?”
“No.” He practically growled the word.
That surprised me. “He wasn’t alone. He had some teenager with him. Hard to tell who he was, and, no, Thackery didn’t introduce us. But he did say he had more of what he shot me with, this parasite gel, and that he was going to use it to get what he wanted. I was a test to prove he was serious.”
Wyatt propped up on his elbow, thinking cap on. “He’s made a weapon out of vampire parasites?”
“Yeah, that’s what he said. He also said that the second vial, the one I cut my hand on, was some kind of antivenin.”
“It wasn’t an antivenin or any sort of antidote. We had a sample of it checked by Erickson’s men. It’s a tracking dye similar to what we use, but the range is much smaller. He estimated a distance of maybe five hundred feet for it to be traceable.”
And I’d put my hand down right on top of it. Brilliant. “Could Thackery have used it to track me here?”
“Unlikely. You’d have needed a higher dose than what little might have entered through your cut hand. We were also on the move for a while before we brought you here, and Phineas did a few flyovers of the mountains to make sure no one was watching.”
I felt only a tiny bit better about that. “So Thackery had no reason to think I’d survive being turned, other than my healing ability.”
“He took a big gamble on it, yeah.”
“He was taking a big gamble on every—The crystal!” I jackknifed to a sitting position, nearly cracking my skull off Wyatt’s chin. “Shit, did we get it?”
“We have it, E
vy. He didn’t back out of that part of the deal.”
“Where?”
“It’s at Boot Camp, in a lead-lined box, three sublevels down in R&D, locked far away from people.”
Weariness mixed with relief, and I flopped back down against the pillow. Wyatt stayed upright, a looming presence. “Amalie is okay with that?” I asked.
He shifted. “We told her Thackery never gave it up.”
“You what?” I gaped at him in amazement, unsure if he was being smart or suicidal.
“Gina and I made the decision. A few hours after you were shot, Deaem called on Amalie’s behalf to find out our status. We told her what Thackery did to you, and that we never recovered the crystal.”
“But why?”
“Amalie doesn’t know how to destroy it, she won’t keep it at First Break, we still don’t know who Jaron said betrayed who, and the last place Amalie said was perfectly safe was robbed. Do you think I should have given it back?”
“Not when you put it that way. I guess the gnomes didn’t have a magic crystal that heals vampire infection, huh?” It was a tease that came out a serious question.
Wyatt’s expression got impossibly darker. “She never offered to help, and we haven’t heard from her since.”
Nice to know where I rated with the Fair Ones nowadays. “Anything else happening I should know about?”
“Nothing that can’t wait until you’re back on your feet.”
“Okay.” I’d been asleep for a whole damned week, but weariness settled over my limbs like a wet afghan. My body had been through more than just broken bones this time. I’d battled and expelled a parasite intent on changing not only my physical functions but also my brain chemistry. I’d fought for my soul and won.
Yeah, more sleep was allowed. My eyes drooped shut. Wyatt’s weight left the bed, and I snapped awake again.
“I’ll be in the other room for a while,” he said. “I’ve got some things to do, then I’ll be back. Promise.”
“ ’Kay.”
I slept, knowing full well things weren’t settled yet. Thackery had issued a threat in the train yard, one he’d not yet put into motion. Better to rest while I could, because sooner or later—as it always did—the shit was going to hit the fan.
Chapter Nine
I woke the next morning alone. The bedroom door was shut. Beams of golden light hit the floor in thin strips, cast through the room’s only window, announcing it was still daytime. It took a few tries to get my engines going fast enough to throw off the covers and haul my ass out of bed. I was awake and ready to get back into things, and I didn’t fall over when I took a few steps toward the door. Good news for me. I padded across the chilly wood floor on bare feet.
The brass knob turned, and the door opened as I reached for it. Wyatt stepped back, eyebrows arching. “Hey, morning,” he said, surprise melting into a grin. “You look rested.”
“I would hope so.” I ran my hand through my tangled, somewhat greasy hair. Gross. “I’m also desperately in need of a shower. Can’t imagine I smell that great.”
He chuckled. “You smell fine, but you’ll probably feel better. Bathroom’s over on the right.”
“Clean clothes?”
“Dresser drawers. Listen, I need to run into the city for a bit—”
“So go. I don’t need a babysitter.” The way his mouth twitched alarmed me to a small degree. “What?”
“Just think of David as a silent guest, then.”
“David?” I peered past Wyatt’s shoulder into a wide wood-paneled living room. A fire crackled somewhere out of sight—the source of the burnt-wood odor—and an actual deer’s head was mounted on the wall by the front door. I spotted a familiar mound of black hair above the back of an ancient, sagging sofa.
“He and Kismet’s group are the only people who know you’re not dead, so she brought him into her Triad to replace Tybalt. It’s temporary, though, as far I know. Sooner or later, David will be assigned to a new Handler.”
I blinked. A week was a long time to be out of things. “Replace Tybalt?”
“They won’t make allowances at Boot Camp for his condition.” Wyatt practically spat the words, as though simply speaking them disgusted him. “Gina can’t keep him in her Triad, but she’s also not going to just turn him out on the street. They’ve been together too damned long.”
“Fuck.”
“Yeah.”
I hated it. Fucking hated everything about it. Tybalt was a Hunter. The people he’d fought for, bled for, and sacrificed half an arm for had turned against him. Just like they’d done to me.
“Go run your errand,” I said, finished with the depressing conversation. “I really need that shower now.”
I slipped past him, waved hello at David, and locked myself in the bathroom. It was small, with an old-fashioned claw-foot tub and single tiny window. After seven days of wrestling with my inner demons and sleeping, I got my first glimpse in the mirror. My hair lay flat as I’d ever seen it, shiny on top and tangled at the ends. My skin was dull, a little too pale, lips dry and cracked. I yanked off the long T-shirt. I’d lost weight, leaving both hip bones more pronounced than they used to be. Ribs, too.
My fingers absently stroked the spot above my left breast where the dart had struck, sure I could still feel its sting.
I stayed in the shower until the hot water turned lukewarm, taking time to untangle my hair, wash it thoroughly, then scrub every inch of skin twice. I also used Wyatt’s disposable razor to feel female again. The mirror was so steamed up I didn’t bother using it. The only items on the sink’s narrow ledge were a toothbrush, toothpaste, and men’s deodorant. Since it was that or BO, I used the sport stick, wrung my hair and blotted out what water I could, then wrapped another thick, fuzzy towel around my body.
David’s head was barely visible over the arm of the couch. Looked like my babysitter was taking a nap. Not that I could blame him. The cabin didn’t have a television, or any books that I could spot, so his entertainment choices were limited. I crept back into the bedroom and shut the door.
A startled cry stuck in my throat. Wyatt was sitting on the foot of the bed, silent as a statue, hands folded in his lap, watching me. Intently. While my pulse returned to normal, I put my hands on my hips and said, “I guess David had a long night. He fell asleep out there.”
He nodded, never breaking that stare. My stomach quivered. I knew that look. I’d seen it several times in the past, usually about ten minutes before I left him high and dry, and myself equally frustrated.
“How’d your errand go?” I asked. Had I been in there an hour? “Don’t suppose you bought me my own deodorant?”
Slowly, he drew to his feet, hands falling to his sides. He closed the small distance between us in long, paced strides. Butterflies erupted in my stomach.
“Wyatt—” He silenced me with a finger to my mouth, his skin cool. The finger traced around the edges of my lips and across my cheek, until his right hand cupped my jaw. I leaned into his touch, usually so warm, now strangely cool and smooth. He was close, barely a pocket of air between us, and me in a damned towel.
I cleared my throat and tried again: “David’s outside.”
He nodded, silent, and dipped his head. I accepted him without protest. His right hand tightened as his mouth descended. My eyes started to close, then snapped open at the oddness of the kiss. There was no heat, no spark. I was kissing a stranger, and when he parted his lips to deepen the kiss, I flinched. He tasted wrong. Almost sour, nothing like Wyatt. The scent was wrong. Everything was wrong.
I yanked back. Something stung my neck.
The desire in his smile morphed into a sneer as the lights went out.
Cold fear snapped me awake. I tried to strike out, but nothing happened. I flexed fingers that didn’t move. My entire body was numb from the neck down, not responding to desperate attempts to sit up, reach out, do something. I couldn’t even turn my head. Couldn’t feel anything beneath me, but the angle of the c
eiling suggested I was in bed.
What the fuck’s going on? The words rang in my head and couldn’t make it past my lips.
The mattress sank nearby, then Wyatt appeared in my line of sight. My heart hammered and my stomach churned. Sweat broke out on my forehead. What was wrong with him? He gazed down at me as though he’d never seen me before. Up and down the length of my—oh no. I struggled to tilt my head down and managed enough angle to realize one horrifying reality—my towel was open, and I was naked.
Terror seized my chest and squeezed. This wasn’t Wyatt; it couldn’t be. He’d never do something like this to me, not even as the most horrible, sinister April Fools’ prank in history. But my eyes told me he was. He was swabbing at my hip with something chilly.
“No.” The sound was garbled, barely a word. He looked at me and smiled, lips curling back from his teeth. Horrible intent was in that smile. I shuddered. Two of my fingers twitched, and my heart leapt. Was the sedative wearing off?
He reached out of sight and drew back with a long-needled, wide-body syringe. I stared, dumbfounded, as he shifted back and lowered the syringe. Pierced my hip. White-hot spikes shot through my abdomen and leg, and a garbled scream erupted from my throat. Down it went. Pressure against my hip, all the way to the bone. Pained, confused tears sparked in my eyes. The strangest pulling sensation accompanied the agony in my hip.
I closed my eyes, breathing deeply, staving off full-blown panic. This wasn’t happening; it was another hallucination. Maybe I hadn’t actually survived the vampire parasite. Maybe I was a Halfie and this was Hell. I was in Hell, that’s it. No way Wyatt was doing this.
Wake up, Stone, please! Somebody, wake me up!
The wail caught in my throat and choked me. I coughed and curled my toes. The numbness had become a strange tingle. I flexed the muscle in my right thigh, felt it respond.
Wyatt reached past me to put the syringe—now full of something dark red from my body—on the bedside table. Came back with a second syringe, just as big as the first. Please, not again. Don’t take any more.