Everafter Series 2 - Nevermore (26 page)

And then Sebastian stepped forward. “I’ll do it.”

“Since when are you a martyr?” the woman sneered.

He ignored her and focused on me. “Just so we’re clear: I’m doing this more out of the desire to stonewall my father than for any other reason.” He faced his kin. “And any of you who are planning to run straight to him once they let us out of here can go ahead and quote me.”

I pulled Alexa in close, relief threatening to overwhelm me. I didn’t want to cry in front of this pack of power-hungry dogs. “Thank you,” I said.

Sebastian nodded. “What happens now?”

I forced my chaotic thoughts into order. “Now…now we need to find somebody with the virus who can transfuse you. Do you know your blood type?”

“O negative.”

“Seriously?” When he nodded, I had to hold myself back from punching the wall. O negative was the hardest type to transfuse, since people with that type could only accept blood from other O negatives, who were rare to begin with. Finding someone who was O neg, infected, and willing to donate several pints of blood was not going to be easy.

“Well, this is going to be easy,” Alexa said.

I frowned at her, confused by the dissonant echo of my own thoughts. “What—”

“I’m O negative, too.”

*

I didn’t argue with her until we were out of earshot of Brenner’s kin. After asking Sebastian to meet us in half an hour in the medical wing, I had called Karma to see whether she could get the other shifters released. Given the level of animosity toward the Consortium in that room, some of them might, as Sebastian expected, try to find their father. If Helen and Malcolm put tails on all of them, maybe they could discover his location.

Besides, they had fulfilled their end of the bargain. I owed them their release, and I wanted them to have the memory of a vampire who had kept her word.

But once Alexa and I were back in our room, I let all pretense at calmness drop. Pressing my back to the closed door, I opened my mouth to beg her to change her mind. We could find another match. It would take some additional time, but someone would—

“Don’t, Val. Don’t say it.” She drew me just far enough from the door so that she could wind the fingers of one hand in the short hairs at the back of my neck. She cupped my face with her other hand, and I leaned into her touch.

“I know what you’re thinking. I know that my giving as much blood as you’ll need for Sebastian’s transfusion might incite the panther. But
you
know that I have a much stronger control of her than most other shifters do over their beasts. I can do this. I should be the one to do this.”

I wanted to be strong. I wanted to be supportive. If I opened my mouth, I would be neither. So I buried my head in the gentle dip between her shoulder and neck and inhaled deeply, imprinting her scent in my cells, my soul.

“I can’t lose you,” I whispered against her skin.

“You’re not going to.” She pulled far enough away to meet my eyes. “This is going to work.”

She couldn’t know that. Alexa was asking me to have faith—not in the science, but in her
.
And the fact of the matter was that if our roles had been reversed, I would have asked for the same thing. She was my partner, my equal, and as much as I wanted to protect her, I had to honor this decision.

Her lips pressed gently to my chin, then skated along my jawline. When she kissed me fully, I met her with everything in me. Cradling her face in my palms, I drank her in without breaking flesh.
Mine.

If my cell phone hadn’t rung, we might never have stopped. But at its persistent buzz, we reluctantly parted, Alexa smoothing her thumb across my wet mouth as I fumbled in my pocket. The phone quivered in my hand like a captured hummingbird. As I connected the call, I put it on speaker.

“Sebastian.”

“I’m ready,” was all he said.

When Alexa reached for my hand and squeezed, I squared my shoulders. It was time to finish this. Time for the Consortium to assert itself against the specter of Balthasar Brenner—to prove to him that we would not be cowed by his threats. That we were stronger and smarter even than the juggernaut of his tyranny.

“We’re on our way.”

*

Sebastian and Alexa lay parallel to each nother, their beds separated by only a few feet. Soon, they would be intimately connected, Alexa’s poisoned blood flowing into Sebastian’s veins. Focusing in on Alexa’s monitor, I noted the slight dip in her heart rate. It was a good sign. For the past hour, they had both been under a gradual sedation—slow enough, I hoped, to keep their inner beasts from raising an alarm. By this point, they were both nearly unconscious.

The door opened to admit Kyle, and I did my best to smile in welcome. “Thanks for coming.”

“Of course,” he said, and I watched his gaze shift between the two prone bodies on the beds before us. “What can I do?”

“We’re going to be transfusing Sebastian with Alexa’s blood,” I said. “I want an extra pair of hands, just in case.” I would have preferred to have Karma keeping me company. If anything did happen, she would be better equipped to react with a show of strength. But she had to work at keeping Helen and Malcolm safe, especially with Darren still free and able to do his master’s bidding.

“Wouldn’t Dr. Clavier be a better choice than me?” Kyle sounded uncertain, and he looked hesitant. I held his gaze.

“I don’t trust him. I do trust you.”

His eyebrows arched in surprise, but all he said was, “Okay.”

“I need you to monitor their vital signs during the procedure, while I focus on harvesting the antibodies that Sebastian should produce. If this goes according to plan.”

“So I’m watching the monitors. What do I look for, specifically?”

The steadiness of his voice and the specificity of his question were reassuring. “Just keep me appraised of any fluctuations that you see. I’ve set the alarms for anything below sixty or above one hundred and twenty.” They were fairly conservative parameters, especially since I didn’t know Sebastian or Alexa’s normal resting heart rates, but I wanted to err on the side of caution.

“All right.” Metal grated against tile as Kyle pulled one of the free chairs in between the feet of the beds. From there, he would have a clear view of both machines. I felt him scrutinizing me as I prepped Alexa’s right arm and Sebastian’s left hand. “You’re going to pump her blood directly into him? I’ve never seen anything like that before.”

“It’s actually a more rudimentary technique.” I bent over Sebastian and inserted a peripheral IV line into the large vein that bisected the back of his hand, then closed off the port. The monitor didn’t register any sharp change in heart rate, and I nodded in satisfaction. So far, so good. “Back in the old days, before doctors knew how to preserve blood, all transfusions had to be done directly.”

When I turned to Alexa, I had to fight back the instinctual surge of anxiety that attended the sight of her motionless body.
Focus.
I raised her bed as high as it could go by pressing a button near her head. Gravity would carry her blood into his vein.

I ripped open the package of a sterile cannula and connected one end to Sebastian’s port. And then, as gently as I could, I inserted the other end into Alexa’s arm. In the instant before her blood began to flow down the insulated line, its rich tang pierced the air and set my throat afire. A tremor ripped through my body, jostling the needle in her vein, and her heart rate jumped. I froze, watching as frown lines appeared across the bridge of her nose and her head shifted restlessly against the pillow. Was the panther starting to push already?

“What’s happening, Val? Are you all right?”

I breathed through my mouth and forced back my thirst. “I’m okay. Just had a moment there. How is she doing? Going back to normal?”

He nodded, his eyes riveted on the monitor. “Slowly, yes.”

“Okay.” I took a few more breaths before turning back to Sebastian. “Here we go.” Ignoring the panicked voice in my head that was screaming at me to stop this madness, I opened the port and watched the crimson thread slide those final few inches home. They were connected.

In an effort to make the procedure as un-traumatic as possible, I had chosen a high-caliber line, which would deliver Alexa’s blood more gradually than the normal cannula that was most often used for transfusions. For the next several minutes, as Kyle kept his attention on the monitors, I prepped the materials that I needed to draw and store Sebastian’s blood. Someone donating blood would usually give one unit—perhaps two at maximum. I was hoping to get three or even four from Sebastian before his body, or his wolf, rebelled.

When one of the monitors began to beep more insistently, I forced myself not to look up from the bags that I was hanging on the rack below Sebastian’s arm. I had told Kyle that I trusted him, and now I had to.

“It’s Sebastian,” he said. “His heart rate just jumped and now it’s accelerating steadily.”

“Good,” I said, opening more packages of line.

“Good?”

“His body is reacting. Producing antibodies.” It felt strange to be pleased that the deadly virus was already starting to affect Sebastian, but I couldn’t afford to look at that bed and see him as my friend. It was hard enough watching Alexa’s eyes move beneath her fragile lids, unable to tell anything about her mental state but fearing the worst. At that moment, her head thrashed once again on the pillow, as though she were fighting off some kind of nightmare.

“Her pulse just spiked,” Kyle said. “And now it’s increasing. Faster than Sebastian’s.”

“Keep an eye on it. Let me know when either of them hits one hundred.” I chose the number as a benchmark more than anything else, hoping I was right to believe that they weren’t likely to shift unless their heart rates surged close to two hundred. In the meantime, I knelt on the floor next to Sebastian’s bed, arranging the bags and the cooler in which they’d be stored as efficiently as possible. I might have to get his blood out of the room in a hurry, if one of them did end up shifting.

“Alexa’s at one hundred,” Kyle said into the terse silence. “And Sebastian’s getting close.”

“Damn it.” I had wanted to hold off for a few more minutes, but if Alexa’s condition was already deteriorating then I couldn’t wait. Working quickly, I secured a tourniquet around Sebastian’s right arm and ripped open another package of line. He flinched under my touch, and I did my best to keep my hands gentle, even as I slid the needle into his bulging vein. Within moments, his blood—hopefully swarming with antibodies—was running steadily into the first bag.

Now I was faced with a dilemma. Sebastian’s body was being attacked from two sides—by the virus flowing into his system and the precious fluids draining from it. Would it be wise to keep transfusing him so his blood supply didn’t drop precipitously? Or would it be best to halt the influx of the antigen? I had no idea, and making the wrong decision might jeopardize this entire operation.

As I watched, his lips grew taut, the grinding of his teeth audible beneath the accelerating beeps of the monitors. Swallowing down a surge of dread, I looked over him to Alexa. Her head twitched against the pillow and her hands seemed to be trying to clench into fists. I didn’t want to restrain her, but if I held off, she might hurt herself.

The first bag was almost full and I forced myself to stay put until I could change the line. But once Sebastian’s blood was streaming into the second bag, I hurried to Alexa’s side and wrapped the bed’s cuffs around her arms with as much tenderness as I could manage.

“You’re doing great, baby,” I said, smoothing the hair back from her forehead. When my hand came away moist with sweat, I knew we didn’t have much time.

A muted groan, low and animal, worked its way out between her clenched lips. Tears rose up to blur my vision and I dashed them away with one swipe of my arm as I entwined the fingers of my free hand with hers. But they felt more like claws, scrabbling against my palm in search of freedom. The alarm on her monitor pierced the air as her pulse surged over one-twenty, and her whole body flinched at the noise. I scrambled to turn it off, then bent to press a kiss to her cheek. Her skin was fevered.

“I am so sorry, love. So sorry.” The words came out a harsh whisper.

“The second bag, Val,” Kyle said. “It’s almost full.”

Reluctantly, I returned Alexa’s hand to the bed and went back to tending Sebastian. He had grown restless too, and subtle shudders ran beneath his skin every few seconds. This couldn’t go on much longer. I would have to stop at three bags. I switched the line and double-checked the integrity of the two full units before placing them into the cooler.

“Just hang on for a few more minutes,” I said. And then, suddenly, the door opened. I stood and turned.

And froze.

“Hey, Darren,” Kyle said.

Chapter Twenty-two

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” Darren glared at me, the veins in his neck standing out like blue cords against his flushed skin.

“Whoa, take it easy,” Kyle said, stepping forward as he raised a placating hand. He probably thought that Darren had taken umbrage at what I was doing to Alexa and Sebastian. “Val is just trying to hel—”

Abandoning all pretense, Darren swept Kyle aside with one powerful shove that lifted him off his feet and sent him crashing into the wall, where he stayed, wheezing at the force of the impact. In another moment, I knew, Darren would set his sights on me. Or worse—Alexa, Sebastian, and the precious blood I had collected. I had to get him out of the room.

I vaulted over Sebastian’s bed, marshalling every ounce of strength and speed at my disposal, and barreled into Darren. When I made contact, I wrapped my arms around his thick waist and forced him out into the hallway. Sebastian’s monitor erupted into shrill alarm, and I had a split second in which to wonder whether he and Alexa could sense Darren’s presence, before I was preoccupied with defending myself.

“Get that needle out of Alexa’s arm!” I shouted to Kyle, then slammed the door shut in the process of dodging Darren’s heavy fist. But his next punch was already incoming and caught me squarely in the stomach. My breath left me all at once, and I barely evaded being put into a headlock.