“Here we are,” she said, looking relieved. “Try this one, buddy.” She popped the blue rubber ring into Toby’s mouth, and he gnawed on it, shifting back and forth from tiny monster to human as he worked his aching gums. She took Toby from him as Pan pulled his hand away and furtively stuck it in his pocket. He didn’t want Eulyssa to feel bad if her precious Toby had broken his skin, and from the feel of it, he certainly had. It would heal quickly, as all things did.
“I better get him home,” she said, watching the baby’s eyelids grow heavy. “Thanks for being so cool about everything.”
“Of course,” Pan said with an honest smile. “Kid’s family, right?”
“Right,” she laughed as she bundled Toby back into his stroller. “See you next week, Pan.”
“See you then!”
They parted ways and Pan pulled his hand from his pocket. Blood pooled up from his finger in six tiny pinpricks which burned like fire. He was about to shrug it off when he remembered how Killian had ended up in the hospital in the first place. A twinge of panic struck his gut, and he stopped mid-stride to watch the tiny wound. Blood flowed freely for several minutes without clotting or slowing, and his concern deepened. The heat increased, and his finger began to swell and redden. He turned toward the hospital, then hesitated. It was barely a scratch, and he felt foolish for bothering Snow with it, especially now that he had a mystery case on his hands. It would heal, he thought, and turned around again.
He’d only walked five paces when the pain in his finger suddenly doubled. A second examination showed his skin swelling and peeling around each puncture as the blood darkened. Without another moment of hesitation, he spun on his heel and ran toward the hospital. People tried to get his attention as he ran, late appointments who were wondering why the shop was closed, but he didn’t stop. It was uncharacteristic for him to ignore anyone, but the panic racing through his blood on a wave of heat was enough to drive him outside of himself. He leapt through the doors into the hospital as the skin on his hand began to turn a bright, unnatural red. He expected the hospital to be as quiet and accommodating as usual; but in an instant it was obvious that it wasn’t.
A crowd of shifters in full-form were scrambling and wrestling in the hallway just outside of Killian’s room. Shouts echoed through the halls, saying things that Pan couldn’t understand with his human-shaped ears. He shifted his ears alone to listen, but kept a safe distance. Shifters in beast form were unpredictable at best.
“Hold him!”
“I’m trying!”
“I’m sorry, Henry, I’m sorry, I can’t stop, it won’t let me stop I have to run!”
“You run and you’ll spread this thing all over Regis Thyme!”
“I know! I’m sorry!”
“We can’t hold him, Snow! Think of something else!”
“Surround him! Run him to the back field!”
“That’ll take us right through town!”
“The other back field, you dolt! Five miles from everything! Go! North! Now!”
A stampede of shifters was bearing down on him, and he barely ducked out of the way in time. As they barreled out the doors, the two shifters in front morphed back to human and shouted at the townspeople to make way. Shifters scattered left and right to avoid the thundering ball of fur and white coats as every doctor in Regis Thyme herded one terrified shifter out into the last wild, untouched acres of their walled-off city. Pan stood trembling in the wake of it for a moment, then looked around the silent hospital.
“Bernadette?” He called. “I think I have a problem!”
No one answered. She must have gone with the others, he thought. He didn’t know how long it took for this thing to start messing with Killian’s head, but he knew he couldn’t just sit around for god knows how long waiting for the doctors to return. He ran out the door and followed the haphazard pack out into the wild prairie, chasing their footsteps through the bent and broken grasses. The breeze turned cold as he ran, contrasting painfully with the heat coursing through his system. The instant it hit his heart, he knew. A numbing, hot, prickly tingle squeezed with each beat of it, spreading like wildfire through his body, burning him up from the inside out. Unwillingly, he glanced down at his finger. Black webbing, thin as strands of hair, spread out from each tiny mark. His finger was three times the size it should have been, and the skin, stretched beyond its limits, began to crack. He considered biting it off for one wild, panicked moment, then quickly decided against it. His finger wasn’t the problem anymore. The infection was in his blood.
CHAPTER SIX
Killian’s vision was as wrong as the nerves firing in his body. It flashed from red to shades of grey, confusing his senses as the doctors chased him out of town. Lungs burned and he coughed, spewing thick liquid out of his mouth, but he couldn’t stop running. He had to run. He had no choice. The fire forced him to keep moving, and soon the doctors fell away behind him. Faster and faster he ran, until the world whipped by him in a blur. The wall rose up on the horizon, thirty feet tall and thick as a building, topped with deadly spikes. He was upon it before he’d fully registered its existence, and he turned on a dime. He ran along the wall until the conjoining wall stopped him, then he turned and ran the other way.
Somewhere in the part of his mind that was still capable of thought, he knew that this wall spanned twenty miles, as each of the four walls did. So it was a bit of a shock to him when he ran into the opposite wall and had to turn around again. Halfway back, he caught a scent. He didn’t register it consciously, but he knew he needed it. He turned and followed it, brushing past the crowd of stunned doctors like a force of nature, through the wild acres to a scrubby tree which stood alone in the open. The tree didn’t capture his attention. It was the thing climbing through its branches that he wanted. Words and concepts escaped him. He was pure instinct. He reached the tree and pulled the animal down from it, tossing it over his shoulder. He couldn’t stop moving. The heat from the white, shivering shifter scorched his skin. Water. He needed water. A glassy pond winked at him in the lengthening sunlight. Racing toward it, he neither stopped nor slowed as the ground beneath his feet turned from dry grass to mud and then fell away entirely, water enveloping him and his burden.
The sudden temperature shift shocked his senses, and for a moment he was human again. His brain switched on and he realized that he was holding Pan, in shifter form, underwater. His body reacted before his mind, and he was a beast once more, breaking the surface with Pan in tow. Pan’s eyes were glassy and flicking through the empty sky, seeing things that weren’t there. Killian couldn’t stop moving in spite of himself, and he swam with violent strokes around the pond, splashing water up and out, keeping Pan’s head up out of the pool as he moved. The heat in his core switched instantly to a frozen ball, and, gagging from the shock, he crawled frantically out of the pool, dragging Pan behind him, and collapsed on the shore. His muscles burned and his bones complained, but the fire had finally cooled. He rested a moment against the smooth, cool grass, basking in the stillness. His pleasure, however, was short-lived.
A moment after he fell, his bones began to shatter. Screaming filled his ears, and after a moment, he realized that it was his own. His muscles stretched, condensed, and twisted, contorting his tortured body into unnatural shapes. The memory of his first change came sharply into focus. This was the same, only ten times worse. This was pure, unadulterated hell. On and on the torment went, until he detached from his body, retreating into a blade of grass which waved in and out of his vision. He became the grass, moving in the wind, flexible and strong. He was green, then orange, then purple until he was black, and black he stayed for an eternity. As the moon came up on a cold autumn breeze, Killian lost consciousness.
Chaos fell away from Pan’s consciousness, trickling into the space around him to reform as reality. The stars came into focus first, then the grass under his back. His feet were cold and wet, and he realized that they were submerged. His muscles twitched restlessly and he
sat up, trying to remember where he was and how he got there. The great wall of Regis Thyme was at his back. In the distance, far to his right, the soft glow of the city lights were a yellow fog against the black of night. He turned his head to the left, then froze in fear. Beside him, sleeping like a baby, was a massive wolf. Hesitantly, he reached out to touch it. Was it real? Could it be just another hallucination? The silky texture of the black fur startled him. It was real…and very, very familiar.
“I could be wrist-deep in this fur for days and never get bored,” he muttered, making the connection in the roundabout way of one whose brain has been through too much in too short a time. “Killian, what did you do?”
He stroked the thick fur, searching for a heartbeat or a twitch to let him know that Killian was still living. The giant chest expanded under his searching hands as breath filled it, and Pan sighed with relief. He pet the animal hand over hand, almost obsessively. He desperately wanted to wake Killian, but he was so very afraid. What if this was like the first change? What if Killian was going to go on a bloody rampage the second he opened his eyes? These worries and more whipped through Pan’s mind as his hands moved over the silky fur. He shifted his weight slightly, rolling onto his hip, and was instantly aware of something hard and painful in his pocket. He pulled it out with a wince, then began to laugh.
“Have flute, will travel,” he murmured to himself. He put the piece to his lips and began to play a mournful tune, sad and sleepy to slip seamlessly into Killian’s dreams. Ever so slowly, he increased the tempo and the mood, coaxing Killian to crawl out of this animal and back into the waking world. An hour went by, then two, but still he played until his mouth was dry and his lips were chapped and aching. He was just beginning to feel hopeless when the sleeping form before him began to change. It wasn’t like the other shifts. A beast shifter would ripple in a quick, smooth motion from head to toe, changing within a moment from beast to human. Killian’s shift was different. He resumed his overall shape first, shimmering between a full-blooded wolf and a beast. With his next breath he was a beast, though his glossy wolf fur still covered him in place of the wiry, henpecked look of a shifter’s fur. His body changed again, into a human with fur and fangs, and Pan felt a bit sick to his stomach. Still he played, convincing himself that it was the music which was bringing his friend back. Another excruciating ripple, and the fur melted away, the fangs retracted, and all that was left was Killian.
He looked better than he had when Pan had peered at him through the hospital wall. His color had returned to normal, and he no longer seemed to be in pain. Pan lay a hand on Killian’s forehead to check his temperature, pulling it back almost instantly. Killian felt like ice, burning Pan’s skin with cold.
“You must really not want me to touch you,” Pan said, masking his worry. “I can take a hint.”
He looked back toward the city, and estimated that it must be at least five miles to the hospital. He and Killian were near the crook in the wall, with nothing visible around them but wild acres of grass, brambles, and the occasional tree. He sniffed the breeze. There was no one around who could help them. Pan was just gearing up to carry Killian back when the man groaned and rolled on the ground. His eyes fluttered open and Pan’s heart leapt for joy.
“Hey,” he said, gingerly touching his fingertips to Killian’s cheek. “You okay?”
Killian’s eyes burned like coals in his face. The intensity startled and aroused Pan, turning something inside him into molten need. Killian didn’t say a word. He moved in a fluid motion from lying to sitting to pressing Pan back against the grass. His lips were like ice, soothing and exotic as they pressed insistently against Pan’s. He wanted to resist. He wanted to talk it out. He wanted to be sure that this was what Killian wanted, to answer all the questions which suddenly arose in his mind; but he couldn’t. He was responding to Killian’s need with a need of his own, a need that stretched over thirteen years, from the moment that he was turned. With a gasp and a growl he fell under Killian’s spell, grinding against him, battling his tongue, pulling and pushing and sliding against the other man, thirsty and wanton as a teenager.
Clothes flew away, ripped off and wriggled out of, and then they were fire and ice, sweat hissing into mist as they slid over each other. Pan throbbed and ached with lust, arching against Killian as Killian pressed insistently into him. It had been too long. Pan wasn’t ready. With a growl of frustration, Killian shoved two fingers into his mouth, slathering them with saliva before sliding them into Pan. A gasp escaped his throat, followed by a cry of pleasure as Killian stretched and fucked him with his fingers, paving the way for ecstasy. Pan was lost on the waves of pleasure, writhing and bucking on the grass, inching ever closer to release.
A savage roar was his only warning before Killian plunged into him, filling him with his hot, hard, throbbing cock. The knot formed, locking them together, pressing on Pan’s sweet spot. He came hard in a blinding flash of pleasure, but Killian wasn’t done with him by far. He thrust into him again and again, forcing every drop of cum to trickle out, pounding even as Pan fell flaccid and began to harden again. Pan was just along for the ride now. Killian was an animal, lustfully driving into Pan with primal snarls and groans, pummeling him as Pan dug his nails in and hung on for dear life. Killian’s breath quickened in his ear, his thighs turned to quivering steel, and Pan cried out in pleasure as he was taken hard over a second peak, doubled in pleasure for the heat of Killian’s seed spilling inside of him. Still Killian didn’t stop. He lifted Pan’s hips and slammed into him, over and over again, until there was nothing left to spill. They hung there together for a moment, locked in bliss; then, with a heavy sigh, Killian collapsed, unconscious. Pan wasn’t far behind. His final thought before drifting away was a hope that they would wake up before they were found.
CHAPTER SEVEN
“That damn beeping,” Killian muttered. “Why does it always beep?”
“It’s how we torture our patients,” Bernadette’s cheerful voice answered him. “The monitors don’t actually tell us anything, we just keep them on to beep you awake. You had quite the day, didn’t you? Didn’t expect to see you up so early.”
Killian peeled his eyes open slowly, expecting to see the same nightmare he’d fallen into. But everything seemed unnervingly normal; the colors were brown and cream, as he remembered they should be, and Bernadette filled the room with her clean soap-and-roses scent. He pushed himself up in his hospital bed and looked around, stopping short at the sight beside him. A shock of blue hair lay across a white pillow on a bed which had been placed in his room.
“We figured you could use the company,” Bernadette said with a mischievous grin. “Considering the poor boy has the same affliction you do, it couldn’t do any harm.”
“How?” Killian asked, feeling a bubble of guilt-riddled fear rise up within him.
“We aren’t sure,” she said, shaking her head. “He has tiny punctures on his finger, just deep enough to pierce the sub-dermal layer. It’s really small, maybe a baby? I don’t know what he would be doing with a baby though. Dr. Snow is running tests, it might be a new kind of source. Maybe the bugs evolved? Could have been a coincidence, Damian’s biting you I mean. Whatever happened, he managed to find you, or vice versa. We couldn’t keep up with you, racing all over the place like you were in the Indy 500. But we found you this morning, you and Pan. Don’t know how, but your skin’s healed. Fever broke, too. You’re as fit as you ever were.”
“What about him?” Killian asked, nodding at Pan beside him.
Bernadette frowned and cast a worried look at the other bed. “I’m not sure. Dr. Snow says it’s spreading faster through his system than it did through yours, and his fever is much, much worse. He was hallucinating this morning, gibbering on about snakes in the grass. Hasn’t moved in a while though. That could be a good thing, but it could also be a bad thing, you know?”
Killian nodded.
Bernadette sighed, and turned to straighten Pan’s blank
ets. “Oh! I just remembered. The doctor was wondering if you did anything particularly physical immediately after you were bit. I guess he thinks that Pan’s running around out there could have been a catalyst.”
Killian frowned thoughtfully, then shook his head. “Went to talk to Boris, but I walked. Then he shouted at me a bit, and we went to Broderick’s. I didn’t walk more than three blocks altogether, and I took my sweet time with it. I did get my heart rate up just before the hallucinations started, though. Boris was being unreasonable, and I lost my temper. Got sick pretty quickly after that.”
“Hm,” she said, nodding and scribbling a note on his chart. “I’ll let Dr. Snow know myself. Get some rest, now. Four hours is not nearly enough time for you to recover from that marathon you ran.”
“How long was I running?”
“I really don’t know, hun. None of us do. You were too fast to follow, and when you stopped it was too dark to find you. When we did, though….” She trailed off with a squeamish look. “I’ll let Dr. Snow fill you in. He’ll be by to see you in a little while.”
She bustled out of the room and went on her way, leaving Killian with nothing to do but watch Pan sleep. Something tickled the back of his brain, something that felt important, but he couldn’t recall what it was. He sensed a missing piece every time he looked at Pan, and soon he found himself staring. Feeling like a creeper, he shook himself and pulled a book from the box beside his bed. He only made it two pages in before the now-familiar tingling began in his legs. Fighting it hadn’t worked, in fact, it had failed rather spectacularly, so he decided to take a different tack. He’d joined yoga classes a year ago (more for the view than for the fitness, as Pan was an avid yoga enthusiast), and had become rather skilled at it. He discovered quickly that the deep stretches soothed his restless body as long as he never stopped moving. He worked through the hour-long session he’d memorized, then began it again. This put him in a rather embarrassing position when Henry entered the room.
Dying to Live: The Shifter City Complete Series Page 21