Everafter Series 1 - Everafter (8 page)

“Jesus Christ.” I was shaking now. This fucking thing was inside me, changing me. I couldn’t think anymore. I could barely breathe. “What the hell is it doing to me?”

At that moment, the door opened. The woman who entered was so impossibly beautiful that she momentarily distracted me from my full-blown panic. She looked to be in her mid-thirties and wore a dark red pantsuit that I knew had been designed with her specifically in mind. Tall—though not quite as tall as I—and slender, she carried herself like a queen. Raven black hair cascaded down her back, falling to her waist, and her eyes were the color of rain-dampened slate. I had the truly bizarre impulse to hop off the table, get down on one knee, and swear fealty to her. And then I noticed her companion—a hulking man who looked like his muscle-bound torso had barely fit through the doorway. He was clearly a bodyguard. His carriage reminded me of Penn, my father’s chief of security: strong, confident, capable of breaking a man’s neck without the slightest hesitation or remorse. Whoever she was, she didn’t need me if she had someone like him.

“Good afternoon, Harold,” she said in a husky alto. She took one step toward me, extending her hand. Her skin had a rich, olive tone to it. “And Valentine Darrow. A true pleasure.”

“Um,” I said. And instantly hated myself.

She laughed. “Helen Lambros. You must call me Helen.”

“Hello,” was all I managed. Her touch was cool against my sweating palm. The part of my brain still capable of functioning on a rational level was wondering who she was, and why she had so cavalierly joined a private conversation between my physician and me.

“Valentine and I were just discussing the parasite,” said Clavier. His tone was distinctly deferential.

“Ah.” Helen took a seat at the conference table, crossing one elegant leg over the other. Her bodyguard leaned in one corner of the room, bulging arms crossed over his massive chest. “Please,” she said, gesturing toward me. “Continue.”

“Ever since you were infected, the parasite has been changing your DNA,” Clavier explained. “Some of these alterations are beneficial. You will discover that your senses are slightly sharper and your endurance greater than in the past. And already, you have stopped aging. The other changes, however, can be troublesome. The parasite reacts poorly to sunlight, and will make you more sensitive. But most significantly of all,” and here he exchanged a meaningful glance with Helen, “you must drink blood in order to replenish that which the parasite consumes.”

Silence reigned in the room. I leaned forward, blinking hard in my total and utter disbelief. I wasn’t going to age? I had to drink blood? “What?”

“Two days ago, you spoke to me of your unquenchable thirst, Valentine. Your body is not craving water. It is craving blood.”

I laughed, because this was fucking psychotic. I didn’t care who the hell was sitting at this conference table, and what kind of crazy charisma she had going for her—Clavier was a nut job, a quack, and I was getting the hell out of here. Now.

“Thanks ever so much for your professional opinion,” I sneered as I limped toward the door. How much more ridiculous could this get? Was he part of some kind of crazy religious sect or something? How had I gotten caught up in this bullshit?

But when I pressed down hard on the door handle, it wouldn’t engage. I tried again—nothing. I spun around as quickly as I could, struggling not to betray my sudden terror. Trapped. Fuck.

“I know this is difficult to believe, Valentine,” Helen said in her bewitching, melodious voice. “But Dr. Clavier is only giving you the medical facts.”

When I scoffed at that in a show of bravado, he pointed toward the microscope. “See for yourself.”

What else could I do? He was appealing to logic. I was in training to be a doctor. The results would speak for themselves. And besides, I was shut up in here, at their mercy. I could either throw a futile tantrum, or follow orders.

I turned slowly and walked to the back of the room, trying not to let them see just how frightened I was. A cabinet door opened and shut behind me, but I didn’t look back. I perched on the stool that Clavier had vacated and pressed my eye to the lens. With a few slight twists, the slide came into focus. My blood. The red cells were most abundant, of course, while the larger white cells were much more infrequent. For a moment, I was captivated by the complex beauty of it—so many components, all working together in harmony. To keep me alive.

And then I saw the parasite.

It had a half-moon shape, like a scythe, and it was in the process of devouring a red cell from the inside out. My God, I thought, watching the monster effortlessly eat through the cell’s membrane. It was reproducing in there. And when the cell burst…

My stomach pitched and rolled, and I clutched hard at the table edge to keep myself upright. That thing and the thousands of others like it in my bloodstream were incontrovertible proof that something was terribly wrong with me. Unless—and the shock of this revelation turned my knuckles white—unless this wasn’t my blood. What if this was some elaborate ruse? Sure, I’d been watching him as he made up the slide, but not closely enough to see through a sleight of hand.

I ripped off the Band-Aid and opened the drawer in the same movement, yanking out a fresh slide and squeezing the tiny hole in my arm as hard as I could. A drop of blood welled up and I caught it on the glass. I looked over my shoulder, certain that the big guy would be two-thirds of the way across the room by now to stop me from exposing the lie…but they were all where I had left them, watching me. Expressionless.

Snarling, I discarded the old slide and snapped the new one into place, but when I peered back into the lens, the same horror awaited me. I slumped. Clavier wasn’t lying about the parasite. Could he be telling the truth about everything else? I didn’t want to believe it. How was I supposed to take them at their word when they were talking about the stuff of thriller novels and horror films? Vampirism? Eternal youth? One thing I knew for certain: that thing inside my blood was killing me, not making me ageless. And how the hell had I been infected in the first place?

A sudden suspicion made me lurch to my feet and stagger toward Clavier, despite the blinding surge of pain that radiated up my thigh. “You! Did you do this to me? Put this in me? In the hospital—did you?” I was eye to eye with him now, but no matter how close I got, he refused to take a step back. His preternatural calm infuriated me, and I clenched my right fist, finally surrendering to the violent impulses that had been plaguing me all week—

At that instant, an aroma filled the room: sweet, tangy, metallic. My head whipped around and saliva flooded my mouth. My throat spasmed, the burn so intense that I couldn’t help but cry out. Behind me, Helen was squeezing the contents of a bag of blood into a mug.

A bag of blood.

My brain was repulsed. The idea of drinking that was anathema. It was sick, twisted, wrong. Perverted. But my body took a step forward, and then another. Tears leaked down my face as the fire in my throat blazed hotter than it ever had. My gaze was locked on the cup. I wanted it. Needed it. The scent wafting up from it was…heavenly.

“You are starting to understand, aren’t you?” Helen said quietly. My brain demanded that I stop moving, but my body continued its slow stalk toward the table. “The parasite is making you immutable and stronger. Though you can be killed, you have already ceased to age. But it demands blood in return. For the rest of your existence, you will crave it—crave it like nothing else on earth.”

Alexa,
my brain howled.
It’s Alexa that I crave, Alexa that I need. More than what is waiting on that table, more than anything.
But my legs continued to move. The urge to lash out at Clavier had been completely subsumed by the impulse to gorge myself on the contents of that mug.

“Drink,” Helen ordered, taking a shallow sip before holding it out to me. I stood before her, breathing hard, hands trembling. My eyes were transfixed by the small movements of the viscous fluid as it sloshed gently against the ceramic walls. Need spiked through me, crackling under my skin, white and hot. It reduced me to instinct. I had to feed.

I snatched the cup from Helen’s hands and tilted it to my lips. As the first thick rush hit my tongue, my brain screamed in revulsion. But for the first time since I’d woken from my coma nearly two weeks ago, the thirst eased. I drank and drank, tilting both my head and the mug to catch every last drop. When it was empty, I set it onto the table and licked my lips. My throat throbbed greedily. The fire was slightly muted, but still present.

“More.” It was a demand, an imperative. My rational thought was bound and gagged. I channeled the will of the parasite.

“Yes, more. You will always want more.” Helen’s long, low laugh began to wake me from the feeding-induced haze. The aftertaste lingered on my teeth, my tongue, a so-sweet hint of copper. “What you just consumed has barely taken the edge off. Cold, preserved blood is a poor substitute for that taken from the source.”

I blinked and shook my head. Coming out of the thirst-induced fog felt like waking from a lucid dream. I looked at the mug on the table. I had drained it. The hairs on my neck stood straight up, but otherwise, my body refused to react. It was satisfied. Sort of. And my nausea had disappeared. “The source?”

“Bagged blood will not sustain you,” Clavier said, stepping forward to dispose of the remnants of the bag. “Only blood taken directly from a live human is truly nourishing.”

My brain rebelled again, and without the enticement of that rich aroma to distract me, the panic returned full force. “You want me to kill people? Just to…to get a fucking meal?” Oh God. How the hell had this happened? What was I going to do? I had to go to the police. To turn them in. And myself. I would starve without blood. The parasite would destroy me—I’d seen that for myself. But did that even matter, if I saved countless lives?

“Of course not,” said Helen. Once again, her silky voice silenced my gibbering internal monologue. “We don’t countenance murder. It is quite possible to take enough blood for your needs without harming the donor.”

My brain, racing a mile a minute, was on to her euphemisms. Suddenly, the bite mark on my side made perfect sense. He had infected me—bitten me to gorge himself and in the process, transmitted the parasite. “Taking blood” was violent. There weren’t any “donors”—only victims. Like I had been. But I wasn’t innocent anymore. Now I was part of the problem.

My head was spinning. This was just too fucking much. I sank into one of the free chairs around the table.

Vampires existed.

And I was one of them.

“Who are you?” I whispered.

Helen rested her palm on my hand before lightly brushing my knuckles with her crimson-tipped fingers. The scrape of her nails against my skin sent shivers up my spine. “We call ourselves the Consortium,” she said. “Here in the City, we have many resources. All of them will be at your disposal.” She paused in her relentless stroking to squeeze my hand. “You deserve a full explanation, Valentine. And you will get one.”

Alexa. The thought pierced through my anxious confusion and I looked down at my watch. I needed to get home to her. But what the hell was I going to tell her? Would she believe me? Would she be afraid? Would she leave me?

“Alexa…my girlfriend will start to worry,” I managed to say. “I have to figure out how to—to tell her about…this.” I rubbed at my temples. How the fuck was I going to do this? “Can I come back? For the explanation?”

Helen’s fingertips migrated to my chin. She raised my head so that I was forced to meet her gaze. Eternal, she had said. I wondered how old she was, and shivered.

And then she spoke the most terrifying words that I could imagine.

“You must realize, Valentine: Alexa is in danger. From you.”

Chapter Six

The car moved slowly down Second Avenue, caught in rush hour traffic. I stared out the window at the lights of St. Mark’s, winking cheerfully at me in the gathering dusk. Almost home. I wanted to beg the driver to turn around. I couldn’t do this. But I had to. I had to.

My teeth sank through the layers of her skin, cutting through the vessels below. She screamed, flowing around my hand as her blood burst across my lips and dribbled down my chin. I raised my head, spattering droplets in a fine shower across the crisp, white sheets, finally at peace.

The memory of the dream was paralyzing—ice in my veins, frozen tendrils ripping into my heart and slicing it to pieces. Even the simple thought of Alexa’s blood set my thirst ablaze, even more potent now that it had a focus. Of course I wanted her in that way, too. It made perfect sense. I needed her heart, her mind, her body. And now her blood.

The pain was debilitating. Clutching at my stomach, I leaned forward and rested my head between my legs. My thoughts were spiraling like Yeats’s falcon. The sickly sweet smell of the car’s air freshener was cloying. If I vomited now, it would be blood. More, I needed more. Needed Alexa’s—no. Not Alexa, not ever. So I had to do it. Else, I would destroy her. I bit down hard on my bottom lip to stifle a sob.

Oh God,
I begged silently.
Turn my heart into stone so I can survive this.

I shut my eyes. Behind them, my last conversation with Helen and Clavier played out, tormenting me.

“You must realize, Valentine: Alexa is in danger. From you.”

At the words, my chest constricted painfully. Every untainted cell in my body protested, but the truth lay in those infected by the parasite. The dream flickered in my memory, dark and sinister. I had torn out her throat in my imagination, days ago. How long before my body’s need overruled my brain, my heart?

“No,” I whispered. “Oh, no.” I turned my gaze on Helen. I could barely hear my own voice over the sound of blood rushing through my ears. “What can I…how can I keep from—”

“You must let her go,” she said.

I stared at her in disbelief, the utter absurdity of the thought overruling every other emotion. Let her go? It wasn’t possible. I was hers and she was mine—my love, my desire, my fate. We might not have sworn vows officially yet, but in my head, I had already said them all. For richer or for poorer. In sickness and in health. Till death do us part.