Chapter 59 Susenyos
SUSENYOS
It transpired in slow motion.
The tips of Kidan’s fingers had blackened like volcano ash, spreading toward her black veins. Kidan screamed again and it jolted Susenyos into action. He placed a hand on her forehead, trying to ease her convulsing form.
“What’s happening to me?” Her eyes were wet.
It ruined him to hear the pain in her voice.
“Try borrowing strength from the house, Kidan. Now.”
She squeezed her eyes shut, and he waited with bated breath. When she screamed again, he knew this was something dangerous.
How was it possible Kidan was infected by black rot when the floor bore no signs of it?
Samson was the only person who walked around with the infection, the disease continuously feeding off his eternal energy.
And Samson was only infected by touching the ground where Talaa’s dead body was.
This disease didn’t travel from skin to skin.
Susenyos fumbled for his phone and called Taj, ordering him to hurry. Vampire blood would heal her. It had to.
He put Kidan’s top back on and could only hold her hand, let her squeeze her pain onto him while they waited.
He needed to be strong, but his thoughts pounded into him with the same crushing phrase.
She’s infected just like Talaa. You’re going to watch her die too.
Sweat broke out along Kidan’s temple. Her fever spiking. The inky veins were reaching into her arms, spreading faster than usual.
Taj burst through the door. “What the hell is happening—oh shit.”
Susenyos was in bed with Kidan, trying to soothe her but failing. She moaned against his chest and his heart twisted.
“Hurry!” Susenyos yelled. “Your blood.”
Taj snapped into action, cut his wrist, and placed it before her pale lips. They watched in horror as Kidan coughed back out Taj’s blood.
“She’s rejecting my… blood.”
Susenyos’s heart shattered. “Give it to her again. That’s impossible.”
Taj was pressing down on Kidan’s squirming arm, studying the veins. Her face was severe when he looked up. “Yos.”
“No,” he snapped with a slash of rage that made Kidan flinch. “Look at the ground. Black rot starts on the ground and only those that walk on it are infected. This doesn’t make sense. This isn’t—”
“It is,” Taj cut in, face hard. “We would know this infection anywhere. It is. I don’t know how she has it, but she does.”
Kidan struggled on the bed, fighting against the spreading black veins reaching her elbows. Susenyos’s mind raced with the image of her dying, the sound of war drums pounding, pounding, pounding. Taj waited for his command. But what cure was there for this?
If a cure existed, Talaa would have lived.
Turn her into a vampire.
There was only one cure. The only reason Samson hadn’t been entirely consumed.
“Yos…” Kidan’s lips were cracked. The sudden change to her yellowed skin tone from just a few minutes was terrifying.
“I’m here.” He grabbed her hand and felt it slick with sweat.
“It hurts, Yos.” She cried into her pillow.
Susenyos’s eyes filled with pain.
He grabbed her face, and she shook like she was both cold and hot.
“Am I dying?” she whispered, teeth chattering. “Feels like it.”
“No,” he growled. “You’re sick. That’s all.”
She tried to smile but it came out as a grimace. “Maybe death wants me now.”
“I want you. I need you and I will set this house on fire before I let you die,” he said with lethal promise.
Her rich brown color had become pallid, but her eyes were still dark brown, and they studied him with such warmth. He couldn’t bear it.
Something final crossed her features. “June… we never talked.”
“No.” He clenched his jaw. “None of that.”
“Yos—” Taj started but one furious glance from Susenyos silenced him.
The pain must have extraordinary because Kidan went limp, falling unconscious. Susenyos’s ears roared like a tumultuous sea.
He was frozen, unable to discern if Kidan was still breathing.
He was back in the tunnels with his mother, in the woods with Talaa. He prayed this time would be different. He wouldn’t lose another person he cared about.
The quiet was ceaseless. It broke him into a million pieces.
Then a soft sound traveled to his ears. A bird’s heartbeat. Delicate and weak… and yet… he could hear it.
One, two, one, two.
He could see the invisible lines on Kidan’s wrist where he couldn’t before, pinpoint exactly where her butterfly bracelet had slightly irritated the skin.
He could count the individual strands of hair woven into her sleek braids and smell the different notes to her body—the traces of rose lingering on her clothes, the smell of citrus on her lips, and the odor of yeast from her rotting hand.
But most of all, his maddening thirst for her blood was back with a vengeance.
Susenyos was a… vampire again.
In Adane House.
Why would the house return his immortality now?
Then his gaze shifted to the wall, and golden thread reflected on his face, his eyes sliding into the motion of reading. Horror eclipsed his features.
If Susenyos Sagad endangers Adane House, the house shall in turn steal something of equal value to him.
“No,” he whispered.
Susenyos staggered back until Taj righted him.
“What is it?” Taj’s worried face came in and out.
Susenyos used his friend to focus.
“I’m doing this to her,” Susenyos whispered. He studied his palms, saw the invisible blood, and then looked to her limp body. “I did this to her.”
Taj grabbed him by the shoulders. “What are you talking about?”
“It changed.” Susenyos met his friend’s eyes with dread. “What I valued changed.”
Taj’s confusion didn’t clear until he squeezed Susenyos again, sensing the return of his immortal strength. Taj trailed a line to Kidan’s form, she was breathing shallowly. He swore.
“The house is taking her from you.”