The Dark Side (22 page)

Remembered stinking of it herself when Tate had held her.

When he’d taken her blood and her mind.

“Rhianna, just breathe. In and out,” Marco said softly.

Her face twisted. I watched as she struggled to slow her gasps, wincing with each sucked in breath, each hitch and pound in her pulse. Breathing this hard had to be hurting her.

But I knew the fear was hurting her worse.

“Slower.” Marco’s voice seemed to come from nowhere and everywhere, floating on the air like a song playing on an unseen radio. “Just breathe. Easy. You’re safe here.”

Gradually Rhi’s breath grew calmer and her heart slowed. When her pulse was almost normal, Marco nodded. “Good. That’s good. Now, Rhianna, I want you to listen to me.”

She nodded. “I’m listening.”

“I need to tell you what’s happening.”

I saw his eyes flick to the clock on the wall above the bed. Four thirty. Sunrise would come all too soon.

“O-okay.” Her heart rate had bumped up a little again but her voice was mostly calm.

“The virus is changing you. You’re going to feel hot.”

“I’m hot now.”

Her face was flushed. I’d assumed it was from panic but now the pink staining her face—making her look healthy and normal instead of sick—was ominous.

“All right. So you will feel warm. And then you will get cold.”

“I’m going to die?” It sounded like a child’s voice in the dark.

“Not die, Rhianna, change.”

Marco lied too easily. I didn’t care what the arguments were. Becoming a vampire was death.

“Will it hurt?”

“There will be some pain,
bella
. But only for a little while.”

I didn’t know if that was another pretty lie.

“Can’t you give me something?”

“No. The drugs won’t work on you now. But you will be all right, I promise.”

Rhianna swallowed. “Can I see my parents?”

I looked at Dan, hoping he might relent.

But he shook his head. “I’m sorry, Rhianna. We have to contain this virus. Until we can control it, we can’t risk your parents coming in here.”

“But it’s blood-borne, isn’t it? How would they catch it? Why can’t they be here if you can?”

“Ashley and I are werewolves,” Dan said. “We can’t get the vamp virus too.”

That was what we were telling ourselves anyway. Because if Smith and friends had finally made a better version of their mutated vamp virus, perhaps one day it could affect weres. I didn’t want to think about what a vampire shifter might be like.

“It’s not safe for your parents, Rhi,” I said, taking her hand again. Her skin burned against mine. Her eyes were bright with fever, her cheeks pink. She didn’t look like someone about to die. “Vampires can be unpredictable when they change. The three of us are stronger than...your parents.”

I wondered whether we should tell her the whole truth—that Marco was here to control her if needed—but he shook his head at me slightly when I met his gaze across the bed.

“I just want to see my mom,” Rhianna said. Tears leaked under her eyes. “Just one last time.”

“You can see them after,” I lied. “Once we know everything is okay.”

“My parents hate vampires,” she said. “They’re not going to want to see me.”

“They love you. They’ll adjust to this.”

“I don’t think so.” She closed her eyes again. “How much longer?”

“Sunrise is about two hours away,” Dan said softly.

More tears. I left Marco still crooning something soft and Italian to Rhianna and went to Dan, huddling into him. His arm closed around me, strong and comforting. I wished I could stay there forever.

“I’m going to leave you to it,” the doctor said. “Hit the buzzer if you need help.”

I couldn’t really blame him for fleeing the scene. I didn’t want to stay either. I looked back at Rhianna. The color had faded from her cheeks.

Fear flared. I went over and put my hand on her forehead. She was cooler. Much cooler.

“Is it supposed to happen this fast?” I asked Marco.

He frowned. “Everyone is slightly different.” He kept his voice low, staring down at Rhianna. Her eyes were still closed, the fine blood vessels in her eyelids standing out against the too white skin. Marco looked back at me and shook his head.

“Too fast?” I mouthed.

He nodded.

“Is something wrong?”

A very Italian shrug which I took to mean, ‘let’s wait and see.’

So we waited. The hands on the clock kept moving forward and Rhianna kept growing colder and colder. When she started shivering we piled on blankets.

It didn’t seem to help.

I went in search of more. As I came back with another couple of blankets the nurse had warmed, my cell rang.

I ignored it and started tucking the blankets around Rhi. It didn’t stop the shivers running through her body but her teeth stopped chattering.

The phone went silent then shrilled into life again.

“You should answer that,” Dan said.

I shook my head. “They’ll call back. I’m surprised it even works down here.”

“It could be Bug.”

“She’ll be asleep.” The ringing cut off again and I relaxed. “See, nothing important.”

“Check the number.”

“Look, nothing is more important than Rhi right now. Your team would call you if something big had happened, right?”

His pager had already buzzed once. They were keeping him posted but so far the Taskforce agents had found no sign of the vampires who’d attacked us. Not that I’d expected there would be.

I went over to my purse and dug around for the phone. If I switched it off, then I wouldn’t have Dan nagging me to answer it.

Just as I picked it up, it shrilled to life again, making me jump half a foot. I flushed and answered the call. “Ashley Keenan.”

“Ms. Keenan. I hope you enjoyed our little message this afternoon.”

Smith. Fuck. “Not as much as I enjoyed killing one of your freaks.”

Dan’s head snapped around at the snarl in my voice.

“What do you want, Smith?” I figured I might as well let Dan know who was on the line.

“I called to see how the girl is doing.”

“She’s just fine,” I said.

“Really? Somehow I doubt that.”

“Listen to me, you sick bastard. Leave me alone, leave my family and friends alone or I swear you’re going to regret it.”

“Why are you so angry if your friend is fine? She’s not, is she? Let me think. I’d suspect that right now she’s feeling a little under the weather. Cold perhaps?”

I snarled again, this time a full growl, the sort of wolf sound you shouldn’t try in human form. It hurts your throat. Dan’s fingers blurred as he tapped out a text message on his phone and he made a ‘keep it going’ gesture at me.”

“Tut, tut, Ashley. That is not polite.”

“Fuck you.”

“Don’t speak to me that way. I told you to stop what you were doing. I told you there would be consequences.”

“And now I’m telling you to expect some consequences yourself. I’m going to nail your ass to the wall, Smith. I will hurt you. Tate got off easily. You’re going to pay.”

“I don’t think so.”

“I—” Rhianna suddenly let out a piercing scream, her body bowing up off the bed like all her muscles had suddenly cramped.

“Sounds to me like your friend is not feeling so well after all,” Smith said. “Perhaps I’ll leave you to it. Though I‘ll be interested to hear how things turn out. I’ve made some improvements to the formula since last we met.”

Rhianna screamed again, her back arching upward as her body spasmed. I hurled the phone across the room. It smashed against the door, raining splintered metal and plastic down on the floor.

“Help her,” I yelled at Marco.

“She can’t hear me right now,” he replied calmly. “We have to wait this part out.”

Rhi screamed again, an agonizing sound that went on and on until I felt like someone was carving the noise into my brain with a blunt blade. Then it cut off abruptly and Rhi collapsed back on the bed.

“Rhi! Shit.” I bolted to her side. I couldn’t see whether she was breathing. My fingers pressed into the uninjured side of her neck. There. A pulse. Weak and thready and way too slow, but a pulse. It stammered and jerked, like a car struggling to start on a cold morning. “Marco, now what?”

“Now the change really begins and we see if she will listen to me.”

“What do you want us to do?”

“Just stay where you are. You might need to hold her down if...”

“If you can’t establish whatever link it is you have with your lineage?”

He nodded. “Yes, if I have to give her my blood, she will most likely fight it.”

“What do we do then?”

“Contain her, make her drink. If we have to, we knock her out.”

“The doctor said drugs wouldn’t work on her.”

“There are other ways to knock someone out.”

I shivered at his matter of fact tone. “I don’t want to hurt her.”

“We may not have a choice. If we can’t control her, she may hurt herself worse than anything we can do to her.”

I looked at Dan. “What do you think?”

Dan had agent face again. “I think we have to listen to Marco. He’s the expert.”

“Don’t they teach you this stuff in the FBI?”

“Yes, but I’ve never witnessed it. And they never taught us about handling a vampire who’s infected with a mutated virus and whose sire is dead and not around to help.”

Uncharted territory. Even for Marco if I thought about it. “Okay.” I nodded at Marco. “Where do you want us?”

We positioned ourselves around the bed, Marco on her right, me on the other side, Dan beside me. Minutes ticked by while Rhianna’s breathing grew labored and her pulse shimmered and skipped.

I reached for Dan’s hand, squeezing hard and we watched as shudders wracked her body, each one punctuated with hoarse moans.

Marco watched her, his expression strangely distant, as if he was watching a half-forgotten memory. His eyes seemed very green, the green of forests, of life. A strange color in the face of the undead.

“Do you remember?” I asked him. “Do you remember what it felt like?”

“A little...” He made a gesture. “It is like an
incubo
. A nightmare long past.”

“Did it hurt? Do you remember pain?”

“No one remembers pain,” he said softly. “We remember it hurt, we do not remember the sensation itself.”

“But still a nightmare,” I said.

“What do you remember from your first change?” he asked. “The pain or the sensation afterward?”

“Both.”

He raised an eyebrow at me.

“But mostly the feeling afterward.”

“So it is for us.”

I wanted to believe him. But it was hard to believe that dying wouldn’t hurt.

The sounds of Rhianna’s breathing grew too loud in my ears, the pause between each breath a little too long.

I was about to ask Marco how much longer when Rhi started screaming again, writhing on the bed as if she was trying to turn herself inside out. The dressing on her neck turned suddenly red.

“Should she be bleeding?” I said, looking around for something to help. “Get the doctor.”

“Let me try to calm her again.” Marco put his hand on Rhi’s head but she twisted away from him with another shriek, as if his very touch had burned her.

I moved without thinking, shoving at him. “You’re hurting her.”

Marco fell back.

“Ash, he’s just trying to help,” Dan said.

I scrubbed a hand across my face, trying to hold back the

tears rising again. If Dan was defending Marco then there was definitely something wrong with the situation. “He’s
hurting
her.”

Rhi screamed again, her voice scratched and ragged.

“She’s hurting regardless,” Dan said. “Let him do what you brought him here to do.”

I stepped back. Dan was right. I had to let Marco try. Marco leaned closer to Rhianna, put his hand on her arm. Her screams redoubled, so agonized I expected to see the skin on her arm blistering where his fingers lay.

But it remained pale. Unmarked.

Unlike the bandage, which was almost soaked through, adding the sharp scent of blood to the other smells flooding the room. Though her blood didn’t smell entirely normal to me. There was an edge to it...not the soured acid of vamp blood, not quite, but no longer purely human. It was another reminder that what was happening was inescapable.

I glanced at the clock. Sunrise was still an hour away. I didn’t think I could take another hour of Rhianna screaming.

“Is it going to be like this until....” I didn’t want to finish the sentence.

Another infuriating shrug from Marco. “It is not an exact science. Some succumb a while before and rise again with the sun. Some have less of a delay.” He looked down at Rhi gravely and I realized he was listening to her heart, the same as me. “I do not think Rhianna will be much longer.”

“Until she succumbs?” I said bitterly. Such a pretty word for dying.

“Let us hope. It will be easier for her.”

“None of this passes any definition of easy.”

“I know,” he said. “I am sorry for this, Ashley.”

A sizzling tide of blame rose in me but I choked it back. Me screaming at Marco wasn’t going to change anything. And I needed him for Rhianna.

She screamed again, though this time it was shorter, softer. She gasped at the end then went quiet.

I focused on her, straining to hear the next breath. I heard her heart beat, once, twice, a struggling third, and then there was silence.

My knees buckled. Marco caught my arm and I yanked myself free of his grip, turning blindly toward the chair I could no longer see through the tears suddenly bathing my face.

“She’s dead,” I said.

“Only for a little while,” Marco offered.

“No.” I shook my head, as if I could shake myself free of the sudden all-consuming grief. “No. The Rhianna I knew is dead.” Sobs choked my throat and I hid my face against my knees, bent double with the weight of the sadness. How was I going to face her parents?

I felt arms go around me, lifting me. I didn’t resist, just turned myself into the warmth Dan offered and cried.

The tears felt endless, I tried to stop myself but every time I managed to struggle to some semblance of control, I’d take a breath and then start over again. Dan just murmured in my ear and stroked my hair. Thankfully his scent did a pretty good job of masking the fact that Rhianna’s human smell was fading.