“Natalie!” Day screams at the same time Beetle yells, “Get away from her!”
Rage floods through me, and I lunge at Sebastian. We crash to the floor.
“I’ll kill you!” I yell. “I’ll fragging kill you!”
He laughs, the sound mad, frenzied—a man who doesn’t care. His cold eyes are like silver coins; the infection has spread right through him.
“Natalie, oh God, oh God,” Day sobs behind us.
Ba-boom . . . ba-boom . . .
I punch Sebastian, over and over. Blood seeps out of his bruised lips, but he doesn’t stop laughing. Panicked voices cut through the air as the others arrive:
“Oh God, my little girl—” General Buchanan.
“Where’s Craven—” Natalie’s mom.
“In the laboratory—” Elijah.
“We need to get her downstairs—” Beetle.
“Don’t take the blade out—” Evangeline.
“She’s dying! Oh God, oh God. Natalie—” Day.
Ba-boom . . . ba-boom . . .
No! NO! NO!
There’s a crunch as I break Sebastian’s nose.
“Don’t die, Natalie, please don’t die—” Day.
“Put pressure on the wound—” Beetle.
Ba-boom . . .
NO!
I shoot a look over my shoulder. Natalie’s struggling to breathe. I whip back around on Sebastian, pain, anger, terror shredding my insides. Hot tears stream down my cheeks.
“I’ll fragging kill you!” I scream.
“Go ahead!” he spits. “The whore got what she deserved, just like her sister.”
I yank his head to one side and plunge my fangs into his neck, not caring about the risks of infection. Venom pulses out of my fangs, flooding his body with Haze. He flails, his fists pounding against my chest, but I refuse to let go, even when his body becomes limp and my fangs are drained. I don’t stop until I know for certain Sebastian Eden is dead.
I rip my fangs out of his neck and wipe my bloodied mouth, tossing his body aside, then race over to Natalie and carefully pick her up, the blade still buried deep in her body. We dash down the stairs to the laboratory.
Her heart, my heart, is just a faint whisper inside my chest.
Ba . . . boom . . .
Natalie is like a rag doll in my arms, her blood seeping over my hands, dripping over my boots. Her usually peach-blushed skin is a pale gray color, her soft lips parted like she’s awaiting a kiss. Her breaths come in slow bursts. Everything is just a blur. I can’t think straight. All I can focus on is the ice creeping into my heart.
No, please, no. Don’t let Natalie die, please, please, please . . .
We enter the laboratory. Dr. Craven’s eyes widen with shock when he sees her.
“What happened?”
“Sebastian stabbed her—” Natalie’s mom.
“He’s here?”
“He’s dead.” General Buchanan. “Help her, please.”
Dr. Craven lets out a broken breath, then nods. “Put her on the gurney.”
I place Natalie on her side on the steel gurney while everyone rushes around, getting all the equipment set up. This is where Natalie had her first emergency heart transplant when she was eight years old, so the laboratory is well stocked. I stroke Natalie’s ashen face. She’s so cold. Her lips are blue. She has just minutes left.
Ba . . . boom . . .
“You have to save her,” I plead, my voice choked. “Please, don’t let her die.”
Dr. Craven pushes me aside. I step back as he removes the blade and begins the operation, with the help of Day and Evangeline, who pass him the tools. There’s a crack of ribs. I look on, helpless, as I watch the life slip out of Natalie’s broken body. Everyone is shouting, crying, barking instructions at each other, but their voices sound muted and far away, like I’m sinking deeper under water. Memories of my first weeks together with Natalie flash through my mind, with every beat of my heart:
A pair of cornflower-blue eyes lit by the headlamps of a passing truck.
“Can you fix her—” Emissary Buchanan.
“The valves are badly damaged—” Dr. Craven.
The touch of her fingertips against my lips during Tracker training.
“You have to save her—” Natalie’s father.
“The damage is too severe—”
Lying side by side on Beetle’s barge, the stars glinting above us.
“We’re losing her!—”
“Please, Craven! Do something. She’s our little girl—”
The fierce look on her face as she announced to the whole world that she loved me.
“I can’t save the heart—”
“Take mine!” I cry out, ripping off my shirt. “Give her my heart!”
Beetle doesn’t hesitate—he wheels over another gurney, placing it beside the operating table. I lie down. Evangeline hurries to my side.
“Are you sure, Ash?” she whispers, taking my hand.
I nod.
“There’s no time for anesthetic,” Dr. Craven says.
“Do it,” I reply.
I stretch an arm across the two gurneys as Dr. Craven makes his first incision. My fingertips find Natalie’s. Warmth seeps out of her skin with every passing second.
Please let there be time.
There’s a moment of resistance, then my skin splits. Cold air rushes over parts of my body that were never meant to feel it. I grit my fangs as my nerve endings blaze like fire.
Just hold on, Natalie.
There’s a crack of bone followed by stomach-churning, head-swimming pain.
I love you . . .
Viselike hands squeeze around my heart.
I love . . .
My vision blurs as Dr. Craven lifts something glistening out of my chest.
I . . .
38.
ASH
SILENCE.
That’s the first thing I notice when I wake up. A deafening stillness that trickles through my veins, where my blood once rushed with life. The blood is still there, but now it’s just a stagnant soup for the Trypanosoma vampirum to thrive in. I can almost feel them squirming about inside me. I’d forgotten what it felt like; they’ve been dormant for months. My heavy lids struggle to open, my lashes tangled together like the ivy that once crept over the church where Dad and I lived. Light pierces my sensitive eyes and I immediately close them again, groaning.
My head feels foggy and it hurts like hell, like I’ve got a killer Haze Headache, but it’s nothing compared with the searing pain in my chest. I lift a sluggish arm—How long have I been asleep? All my muscles feel weak—and press my hand against my bare chest. Beneath my fingers are the rough edges of metal stitches holding together pink, puckered skin, and below that . . . nothing. Just deep, endless emptiness.
Natalie! I bolt upright in bed, nearly passing out from the sudden burst of pain. Gah! It feels like I’ve been cracked open like an egg and scooped out, but I realize that’s pretty much what happened. Blood trickles out of my stitches as I gingerly climb out of bed. My bare feet touch the cold floor. I’m in a bedroom, although I’m not sure whose. It’s sparse, with white walls, marble floors and a double bed covered in white sheets.
I’m wearing only black pajama pants, so I grab the blanket and drape it over my shoulders, then head to the door. My hand hovers over the handle, unwilling to turn it, suddenly gripped with fear. What if I was too late? What if Natalie died? As soon as I step over that threshold, I’ll know. But if she’s dead, I don’t want to know.
I consider going back to bed, so I can hold off finding out the truth for a little while longer, but that’s all I would be doing: delaying the inevitable. Natalie is either dead or alive. No amount of time is going to change that, so I might as well find out now. I turn the handle.
The corridor is empty. My eyes instinctively drift toward two bloodstains on the carpet. One belongs to Natalie. The other belongs to Sebastian. I’d been dreaming about him. In my nightmare, he was sitting in a rocking chair, laughing manically as he metamorphosed from a human into a wolf, then back to a human again. I rip my eyes away from the bloodstains.
I hear Beetle’s and Day’s voices coming from the room at the end of the hallway. I tentatively pad toward the white door and place a shaking hand on the doorknob. I shut my eyes. Do it. I enter the room. Beetle is standing by the balcony at the far end of the bedroom. He’s holding a black-and-white kitten, which playfully paws at his top.
Elijah and Evangeline are standing beside him. Elijah has his arm casually looped around Evangeline’s waist. She warily eyes the kitten in Beetle’s hands. Day is perched on the end of the double bed, wearing a simple teal dress, her silky black hair tied into a long braid. She’s got a new pair of glasses—these have fine metal rims—although they still stubbornly slide down her long nose. Next to her is her younger brother, MJ. He’s twelve years old, with dark skin, chocolate-brown eyes and thick black hair. His gray shirt is ill fitted because of his hunched back—MJ was born with a condition that causes curvature of the spine.
He looks up and beams at me. “Ash!”
“Hey, squirt,” I say, my voice croaky from lack of use.
“Ash?” a soft voice says to my right. I glance toward the bed. Natalie is lying on top of the blankets. She looks very tired and pale, her blond curls hanging in loose waves around her heart-shaped face, but she’s alive. She’s alive!
I rush over to her, ignoring the pain in my aching body, and gently pull her into my arms. I kiss her softly, tentatively, not just because I’m worried I’ll hurt her, but because I’m afraid she’ll push me away. We no longer share a Blood Mate connection; there’s nothing binding her to me. She may not want me anymore. As if reading my thoughts, Natalie’s fingers twist through my hair and she draws me closer. All my doubt vanishes as I sink into the kiss, and for a moment, just a fraction of a second, I swear I feel a heartbeat echoing inside me.
Natalie pulls away, biting her lip. She’s crying. I cup her face in my hands and gently rub her tears away with my thumbs.
“What’s wrong?” I whisper.
“I thought I’d lost you,” she says.
“Me?” I say, confused.
“You’ve been unconscious for nearly two weeks,” Beetle says.
“What?” I say, flabbergasted.
“You nearly died, Ash,” Natalie says quietly. “The Trypanosoma vampirum in your blood didn’t immediately kick in, because they’d been dormant for so long. You weren’t getting any oxygen to your organs.”
“Dr. Craven had to give you a transfusion of Evangeline’s blood,” Day adds.
I glance at Evangeline and give her a grateful smile.
“You were brain dead for a few minutes,” Beetle says. “Of course, nobody noticed any difference at first . . .”
“Hey!” I say, and everybody laughs.
“Then there was the other thing,” Beetle says. “You might want to look in the mirror.”
I wander over to the mirror and look at my reflection. It takes a moment to realize that the boy I’m staring at is me. Black hair. Gaunt face. Pale lips. Silver eyes.
Silver.
“You got infected with the retrovirus when you bit Sebastian,” Natalie says. “Thankfully, you didn’t have a bad reaction to it, like he did.”
I study my reflection, trying to get used to my new look, the new me. I turn to Natalie.
“Were you infected too, when I gave you my heart?”
“The Wrath in my system killed the retrovirus before it could do anything,” she says. “I guess I got lucky.”
I smirk and she laughs, realizing the irony of that statement.
“So you’re still sick?” I ask quietly.
She nods. “But I’ve been taking my medication.” She points to the black syringe case on her nightstand. “Dr. Craven is optimistic I’ll be better in a few months.”
The black-and-white kitten wriggles out of Beetle’s grasp and bounds onto Natalie’s bed.
“Who’s this?” I say.
“Mittens,” Natalie replies. “My parents got her for me to replace . . . erm . . . you know.”
Day narrows her eyes at Evangeline, who flushes slightly. I reach out a hand to pet the new kitten, but it hisses, giving me the stink-eye. Natalie giggles.
“We should probably give Ash and Natalie some alone time,” Day says, standing up. “I’m sure they have plenty of catching up to do.” She starts walking to the door with Beetle and MJ, then sharply turns and rushes over to me, flinging her arms around my neck. I grunt with pain, but let her hold on to me. “Thanks for saving Nat. You’re a good guy, Ash Fisher.”
I grin as she pulls away and hurries out of the room.
“Roach and Sigur need to see you as soon as you’re up to it,” Beetle says. “There’s a lot of business to attend to.”
I groan, rolling my eyes. “Can you tell them I’m still unconscious?”
Beetle smirks. “Sure thing, bro.” He leaves the room.
Elijah pads over to the doorway. He leans against the door frame while Evangeline sits down on the edge of the bed. Natalie holds Mittens close to her chest.
“How are you?” I ask Evangeline.
“There’s good days and bad. I miss Edmund terribly, but then I remember it wasn’t real.” She sighs. “It hurt losing my heartbeat again, but not as much as I thought it would.” Her glittering black eyes flitter toward Elijah, and he smiles. “I can live without it.”
Evangeline stands up and kisses my forehead, then plants a soft kiss on Natalie’s cheek. She walks over to Elijah and takes his hand. They leave the room, shutting the door behind them. Natalie and I are alone. Mittens leaps off the bed and paces over to the balcony.