Frequency (The Frenzy Series Book 3) (2 page)

The dingy yellow plastic pail might as well have been a crystal ball. I didn’t make it one foot inside the door before the vomiting began, and when it started, I couldn’t stop it. For days. I suddenly knew what Porschia felt like after changing.

Nothing helped her. She couldn’t stomach meat. She couldn’t hold down blood. She couldn’t do anything but lie around or scream from the pain. The fluctuation between the two extremes was enough to drive a sane person mad. Ford stopped by during a particularly terrible episode, and she told him to leave and let her die alone. He came back that night with their father and a pot of chicken soup. She refused to take her dress off; the one Maggie made her. She said she still wanted to feel like herself when she died. When I tried to tell her this storm would pass, she would scream that it wouldn’t.

She was calm when her father visited, or as calm as she could get, simply lying in the bed crying. He sat at her bedside and brushed the flyaway strands of hair from her face. “You’ll be okay. You’re the strongest night-walker I know,” he told her with gentle confidence.

She just shook her head. She’d been sick often since turning, but this was something entirely different. Ford stood at her door watching the exchange while I sat in the window sill. I didn’t want to intrude, but didn’t want her to hurt someone she loved, either. She didn’t seem to be hungry at all, which was a very good thing, but her heart was completely broken. Saul was gone and she blamed herself. Even worse than that was the fact that she was sick and she couldn’t garner enough energy to leave her bed, let alone go into the city after him.

But what would she do if she could? She couldn’t bring him back into the Colony, but I wasn’t sure if she realized that or not at this point.

Her family didn’t stay long. “I need to rest,” she lied. I could see the sheen of sweat breaking out on her forehead. Her father kissed her temple and stood up, the bed bouncing back into shape. Ford waved at his sister from the doorway.
Take care of him
, she mouthed. Ford nodded and disappeared behind their father, giving her one long, last look.

That night she tossed and turned, rolling from side to side, moaning from the pain and screaming from hallucinations. She swatted at imaginary wasps and looked at me in terror as she called me Mercedes and scooted away like I was the one who hurt her.

“Get back! I don’t want you to Infect me!” She clutched her sheets and pulled at the headboard.

“Porschia, I’m Tage. I’m not Mercedes. You’re safe.”

She shook her head vehemently.

“Listen to my voice. I am Tage. Mercedes isn’t here. She’s in the city. You’re at Roman’s house.”

“You’re my sister. I know my own sister! You’re here to bite me and kill me! You killed Mother. You killed Saul. You ruin everything you touch and I hate you! I. HATE. YOU!”

Porschia clawed at her face until I held my hands up and backed away. “I’m leaving. I won’t hurt you, Porschia.”

“You always hurt me. You always kill,” she sobbed.

Her wails filled the air as I closed the door and pressed my shoulder blades against the wall. Roman appeared in front of me. “She’s not getting better.”

“No shit.”

“It was the darts – whatever it was on the darts poisoned her. I haven’t felt well since then either,” he admitted. His dark eyes searched me for weakness.

“I got hit and I feel fine,” I argued. I’d thought about the darts, but the couple I took didn’t take me down; then again, the tips barely touched me because of my jacket. They didn’t faze me at all. But maybe they had used something else on her...

“How many times did you get hit?” Roman asked. “Once? Twice? Porschia looked like a well-used pin cushion.”

I beat the back of my head against the wall once. Porschia’s cries and whimpers came from behind me, soaking through wood and wallpaper, soaking into my flesh and bone. “What can we do?”

Roman smiled. He’d been waiting for me to offer. He looked out the hallway window, saying, “We find out what poisons a vampire.”

“And how do you propose we do that?”

With a wide smile, he ticked his head toward the city. “We destroy every one of them until they tell us what we need to know.”

I pushed away from the wall, cracking my knuckles. “I’m down with that.”

“Thought you would be,” he said, walking toward the stairs. “We need to find someone to stay with her. And she’ll have to go into the cell until we get back so she doesn’t hurt anyone.”

“Ford will do it.”

Roman paused at the bottom of the steps. “I’ll go ask him. You stay with her. She’s happy to see you when she’s lucid.”

“She isn’t lucid often now.”

He looked at his feet and then up at me. “Then let’s change that.”

Mercedes stepped into my room. This had been my room since childhood, while hers was just across the wall. She didn’t knock and she didn’t even ask to come in from outside the door. She just barged in there like she had the right to speak to me and invade my privacy. “Get out!” I yelled. “I’m still angry at you.”

“What for?” she asked breezily, easing the door closed behind her with a soft click. “I didn’t do anything to you.” Mercedes tried to look innocent, but she knew she was guilty. She knew it. She. Knew. It.

She knew.

She knew.

She knew.

“You did. You got Infected. You hurt Mother. You took Saul and I saw you bite him. I love him!”

Mercedes smoothed her dress over her stomach and sighed sadly. “I didn’t hurt Mother and I’m not Infected.
You
are. That’s why you’re locked up in this place, that’s why they’re all afraid of you, and that’s why they sent the mosquitoes. They’ll eat your blood and rid you of this affliction. Don’t you hear them buzzing?” Mercedes smiled. “They’re coming now.”

A high-pitched squeal sounded near my ear and I swatted clumsily at the air. More buzzing. More tiny shadows. She was right. Mosquitoes, first a few, then an entire army of them, flew into my room from the open window. I leapt from the bed, trying to get to the window to close it. It was open, just a few inches, but enough to let them in.

Pushing harder and harder, gritting my teeth, I tried to close the window. Finally the wooden frame gave way, but I’d pushed too hard and it slammed shut with a bang. The glass pane fractured, splintering slowly up the middle with the tiniest pinging sound at each start and stop. A thousand tiny buzzing sounds swirled around me and I realized the mosquitoes were pushing on the outside of the glass. They saw the weakness in the barrier separating us and were using it to their advantage. Acting as one, they landed on the pane and pushed the glass in until it shattered, spraying me with shards and splinters.

Tiny cuts spread across my skin until I looked as though I was made of lava, like something primordial and deadly. But I knew their plan. The blood was what they wanted, and the splintered glass brought it to the surface for them. They were coming for my blood, my life.

The bugs swirled through the air and came for me; a black, seething mass. I ran, slicing the tender soles of my feet on the discarded glass shards and shredding them into slivers of flesh and sinew. With one last cry, I lunged and finally reached my bed. I covered myself with the blankets but the mosquitoes were too strong. They tore the fabric from me, landing on me and drawing from my skin. Mercedes’ laughter echoed through the room as I fell to the floor and they fed from every exposed piece of flesh.

They fed.

I fell.

I died.

Mercedes laughed.

Mercedes killed.

Mercedes ruined.

A lifetime later, strong hands lifted me from the floor. Had the mosquitoes cleansed my blood? Did they really take the Infection from me? Was I really a rotter or was my sister, whom I’d loved so much, a liar?

My eyelids were heavy, filled with dead mosquitoes and tainted blood. My ears were filled with the same. “This is only temporary, Porschia,” a voice called out.

What was only temporary? Death? Life? Infection? Cleansing?

“Porschia?” Ford asked tentatively. I blinked my eyes open and saw my brother peering cautiously at me from between two metal bars. The cell. I was back in Roman’s basement.

“Why am I here?” I rasped. “What did I do?”

He shook his head. “You didn’t do anything, Porsch. This is just a precaution. I have to stay with you for a little while today.” The tiny window let sunlight spill into the room, just enough to illuminate my baby brother’s concerned face.