Chapter 27
There’s no time for me to wonder how he got it or why it was in his pack instead of mine. Chase needs me. He needs the antidote.
He’s shaking, pain wracking his entire body.
I’m not strong enough to hold him down, but I give it my best try.
I place the antidote on the ground a few feet away from him; safe and sound.
Then, yanking my hand free from his since the intense trembles led to him loosening his hold, I climb on top of Chase again.
I straddle him, doing what I can to get him to stay still.
If the antidote is going to work, I have to get him to drink it without him accidentally biting off one of my fingers in the process.
I try to pin both of his arms down at his side, careful of his wound at first before I give up on keeping the bloody cut clean and just try to get him to stop moving. Here’s hoping that the antidote really will cure everything.
Blood is everywhere. This close, I can’t miss the bite. His t-shirt sleeve was cut short enough that it didn’t offer any resistance to the sharp claws and fangs of a lurker. It’s nasty, but if Chase got away with only one chunk out of him, the antidote will fix him.
I just have to get it in him.
Right when I have him where I want him, his teeth start to chatter so frantically, I have no fucking clue how I’m going to do that.
Finally, I let go of his arms—and immediately have to lean back to avoid getting hit in the face when he starts bucking wildly, throwing his arms up in the air as the venom works its way through him.
Hot tears sting my eyes again. I rub them roughly with the back of my dirty, bloody hand. Suck it up, Xandra. We’re not going to sit here and watch Chase die.
The plan hits me like a lightning strike, terrifying yet electrifying at the same time.
Leaning over, pressing my tits against his flailing chest, I crush my lips against his. The part of Chase that’s still Chase, that’s still aware of what’s going on… it responds to me. He relaxes slightly—at the very least, he stops thrashing so violently—and presses his mouth hungrily against mine.
Only he’s not hungry to feed. He’s hungry to touch. To taste. To kiss.
To fuck.
His hand goes to my lower back, shoving me further against him. I gasp. He thrusts up against me.
I have hope.
If we get out of this in one piece, I’ll fuck him. I’ll kiss him. I’ll pretend to be Hallie until he recovers if I have to… anything to keep Chase Knight in this hell on Earth with me.
So while my twin’s fiancé’s tries to fuck his way through our clothes, I thrust my fingers through his hair with my left hand, holding him in place. I reach out with my hand and, thank fucking God, I swipe the antidote on my first try. I grab it and try to pop the stopper with one hand.
It’s impossible. If I’m going to do this, I need both hands. It would probably help if I could see what I was doing, too. But that means breaking away from Chase and hoping he doesn’t start convulsing again.
Somewhere in the back of my mind, I’ve given up any hope that Maverick will help me at all.
I have to do it. Hoping it works, I jerk away from Chase, a flash of relief running through me when I don’t take any of his hair with me when I untangle my fingers from the strands.
Sitting up enough to see what I’m doing, I use both of my hands to yank the stopper out without spilling any of the antidote.
It’s stuck tight and I curse, straining to get it out.
Without me there to occupy him, Chase starts groaning and bucking and growling. I nearly go flying, and it’s all I can do to keep the antidote from sloshing out of the vial once I finally do get it open.
Kissing worked once before, and I just hope like hell that it will again.
Cooing “baby” to get his attention, I slam my mouth against his, calming him enough that I can scoot closer to his face.
Then, lifting the antidote close to his chin, I use the edge of my teeth to bite down hard against his bottom lip.
Chase gasps at the shock of my fierce action and the sudden pain, and he opens his mouth just wide enough that I can shove the vial in between his teeth.
The last drop of antidote oozes out of the glass tube when the pain from my bite is overcome by whatever is going on inside of Chase.
He gargles on the antidote and I rub his throat with my left hand, trying to get him to swallow.
I keep the vial in place, holding it tightly with my thumb and pointer finger so that there’s nowhere for him to spit it out.
So relieved that he’s swallowing, I let down my guard.
My fault.
I never expected Chase to clamp his teeth down right on top of the antidote vial.
I know instantly that one of my fingers is broken, if not both.
Slivers of shattered glass are stuck in my hand and Chase’s tongue, and I only hope that the antidote will fix that, too.
I can’t even tell if the shards have cut me because my hand is already coated, slick with blood from Chase’s bite mark.
I don’t feel any pain, though. Oh, no. That’ll come later.
I’m still straddling Chase, but the antidote has accomplished one thing, at least: he stopped moving again, no taser required. His breathing is labored, more of a whimper than anything, but he’s alive.
And that’s all that matters.
Keeping him between my legs, I shift forward, scooting on my knees until I can reach his face.
With the pointer finger on my undamaged hand, I pluck at his eyelid.
Yes. Not a single hint of lurker in his gaze.
Not a single speck of black ink save for his pupil.
They’re still the same beautiful pretty blue shade as they were this afternoon.
The antidote worked. It had to have.
The antidote—
Chase is out. In my limited experience, whenever a survivor was given an antidote, it takes a while for it to do what it’s supposed to. The host body needs every bit of energy it has to fight against the lurker venom. It’ll win, the antidote will work, but it takes time.
Good. He doesn’t need to distract me while I find out what the hell is going on with Maverick.
Climbing off of Chase, I whirl on Mav. “What the fuck were you doing with my antidote?”
I expect him to deny it. I’m a loose cannon with a hair-trigger temper and the ability to build a firebomb and a flamethrower—and I’m furious. I’d deny it, too. Pretend I also had the brilliant idea to sneak around with an antidote tucked in a sock.
That’s what I would do.
Maverick doesn’t.
Taking a tone that screams “dad dealing with irrational teenage daughter”, he holds up his hands in a placating gesture as he says, “Kid… Xandra, you gotta stay calm. Getting angry isn’t going to solve anything.”
Wrong answer, dickhead.
I dive for the ground and snatch up Maverick’s gun before he can even blink. My hands are covered in Chase’s sticky blood. One of them is badly damaged, though I haven’t come down from my adrenaline high to feel it yet.
But, no matter how much I’m trembling, I don’t drop the gun the way that Maverick must have when I appeared in the clearing, dragging Chase with me.
“You had it,” I say, my voice shaking before it bursts out as a shout: “You asshole! Fucking answer me! How long have you had it?”
There are times when a survivor’s sense of self-preservation really kicks in. When facing down a slightly deranged, undeniably murderous woman fifteen years your junior… one who’s covered in blood and unsteadily wielding a gun she doesn’t really have any clue how to use… that’s a pretty good one.
Facing down the barrel of his own gun, the cop might’ve thought about lying to me for all of five seconds in an attempt to talk me down like I was a jumper or something before changing his mind.
He has to understand that the only way he’s going to get out of this without a bullet hole in him somewhere is by telling the truth—
“Since the first night.”
—even if it’s something I don’t want to hear.
“What?”
He gulps. His hands are still hovering in the air, though he keeps looking at a place somewhere near my knees. I don’t blame him for not making eye contact. If looks could kill, he’d be a dead man right now.
“Alexandra,” and his voice is so similar to Jack’s, I jolt. “Put the gun down. I’ll tell you what happened—”
I steady my arms. “No. Truth first. Then I drop the gun.”
“You won’t like it.”
Funny. He said something similar when we were in East Jersey and he was telling me all about his brilliant plan to save me from the block.
He’s right. I didn’t like it then, and I won’t like it now. Still, I’m loyal. Trustworthy. If I give him my word, I’ll stand by it.
“I probably won’t,” I agree, “but either tell me the truth and you get your gun back or fuck with me and I’ll shoot into the sky.”
His fingers flex. That same familiar gesture when he knows he’s outmatched and thinks he can just outlast his opponent.
It didn’t work with Darryl. He had to waste one of his precious bullets on blowing the old convict away. Now there’s only one left, and while I could no more murder Maverick after all these weeks together than take out Chase before he fully Turned, I’ll throw that bullet away if I have to.
“The truth, Mav. I want the truth.”
“Fine. Jack told me you’d have one. It was his ace in the hole, the reason I was willing to stick around and let you tag along. With an antidote, you’d be safe if…”
“If what?”
He shakes his head. “You started to stir right when I got it out of your pack,” he tells me, answering one question, but not the other. He shudders out a breath. “I didn’t hear anything that night when I put the fire out—”
“You didn’t?” I squeal.
“No, and I was shocked to hell when there really were lurkers out there.”
I fucking knew it!
His tongue darts out nervously, dabbing at the corner of his mouth. He keeps his head bowed, shadowing his face. “I did it so you wouldn’t see me going through your backpack if you woke up, and then I told you I heard something out there when you did.”