Chapter 21
21
Recovered Journal of Dr. Georgia Clark
May 30, Year 1, Emergence Era
We’ve tried so many different ways of approaching the plague. We’re missing something, something huge. It’s right in front of us. Nothing is unsolvable, not even this goddamn virus.
I scream awake, my chest on fire as I draw in a huge gulp of air. Burning, dying, I can’t survive the explosion of agony, the sheer wall of torture. I thrash, tearing at my skin.
“Georgia!” someone yells.
The world is black, but I’m awake. I’m awake to feel every ounce of flame. I am nothing but pain.
“Just breathe.”
I can’t. It hurts too much. Let me die. Let me die. Please let me die .
“Never!” the voice says.
Time passes, the flames receding, my vision still empty. I don’t know how long. It’s like I’m floating through the night sky, no stars, no moon. Just cold nothing tinged with a never-ending burn.
“Don’t move. Don’t fucking move. I can’t tell where the blood is coming from. Fuck!” Hands probe at me.
I shrink away from them.
“Georgia, please.” A growl near my ear.
My skin prickles to life, pins and needles everywhere.
The hands return despite my flailing.
Warmth joins the uncomfortable sensation, and I hear water. My vision turns into a gray blur. Each breath chars me, my body struggling to simply exist.
“That’s better. Better.” A low mumble.
Blinking, I reach out and feel someone moving, their hands on me again. It doesn’t hurt nearly as bad now. I let out a big breath and cough, convulsing almost from the force of it.
“Shh.” The hand is smoothing along my face.
“Valen?” I ask though all I can make out is a blur.
“Yes.” He pours water along my body, and I realize I’m in a bathtub.
“What’s happening?” My voice is a croak. I blink hard, desperate to see him, to see anything.
“You’re safe.”
“I’m never safe.” I fall into a coughing fit again, my respiratory system feeling like it’s turning inside out.
More water splashes against me, and I have the odd thought that this is like being born.
The next time I open my eyes, I see him. He pours water across my chest, his gaze intent.
I draw my arm up to cover myself.
“Don’t.” He grips my wrist gently. “I have to see.”
“See what?” I swallow, my throat barely cooperating.
“I had to … I had to …” He swipes his hand along my ribcage.
I’m naked. The water is dark pink. Blood. My blood.
I scramble away from him. “Stop!” My voice is a squeak.
“I had to,” he says again.
“What?” I look down at myself, my skin red and raw. Not bleeding. I run my palms along my sides and down into the water. “The blood.” I can’t tell where it’s coming from. Am I bleeding out?
Valen sits back.
“What happened?” I reach forward and yank the stopper’s chain, the water draining in a gurgling flow.
One arm across my breasts, I stare at the rest of me, at the pink skin along my sides and arms.
“Valen!” I snap at him.
He looks up, his eyes sunken, his skin gone so white it verges on blue.
I lean over the side of the tub. His wrists are open, ragged as if chewed into by an animal, blood pooling beneath him.
The torn flesh—I remember. It comes back in a screaming whirlwind. Gorsky tried to kill me. Did he? Am I a vampire now?
Valen leans to the side, then topples, splayed onto the floor as he bleeds.
“What the fuck?” I climb out of the tub and drop, my legs refusing to cooperate. “Valen!”
Dazed, he stares up at me.
“I had to,” he whispers.
“Had to what?” But I know. I already know what he’s done. He’s used his blood to heal me. My pain is gone. After the beating I took, I should be dead. Collapsed lungs, broken bones, shattered ribs, head trauma—a mortal cocktail.
“You—you won’t die, right?” I kneel beside him, my nudity forgotten, everything forgotten except survival.
He smirks weakly. “Worried for me?” he rasps.
“Glad to be rid of you.” Déjà vu creeps through my gray matter. We’ve had this conversation before. Once. Only once?
“You gave me your blood. You … saved my life. Your blood can save lives?” I’m frozen now. Too many thoughts crashing into me at once. Valen should die. Maybe he will if I do nothing. If I wrap myself in a towel and just leave. I could do it. I should do it.
“Decisions, decisions,” he whispers, still taunting. Then he closes his eyes. “I never should’ve found you. A gift undeserved.”
His lips are blue, his body still. Dying. I have to let him die. It will save lives. This is for the best. I can’t intervene, no matter how much my idiot bleeding heart instinct says otherwise.
I hover, tears welling as I look down at him. Not a human, but a creature. A soul? I don’t know. But he saved me. Gorsky, a fellow human, gave me no such grace. But Valen did. He gave me his blood—a lot of it from the looks of him. He endangered himself for me. Why? I guess it doesn’t matter why. Even a monster can do something deeply human. Even a human can do something monstrous. Like … like Juno. Can I do the same? Can I let someone die right in front of me when I have the power to save them?
“You deserve to die,” I whisper as I stare down at him. Do I do this? Do I become monstrous, too?
I close my eyes, my head spinning. This choice, it all boils down to this one choice. Who am I? A healer or a destroyer? A soul or a barren, empty shell? A sob tears through me as I lean over him. I know who I am, or at least, I know who I want to be. Though I shudder with the weight of my choice, I press my wrist to his mouth. Cold lips, no breath.
“Valen?” I ask, my voice barely squeaking past the knot in my throat.
He doesn’t stir.
“Valen, you have to drink.”
Nothing.
“Shit!” I look around for something to cut my wrist, but I’ve already searched this bathroom. There’s nothing here.
With my other hand, I lift his upper lip and find the tip of his fang. With a surge of courage or stupidity, I jam my wrist against it. The sting is instant, his fang sharper than any scalpel I’ve ever held.
My blood oozes into his mouth, a thin stream of it escaping along his cheek.
“Drink.” I press my skin against him. “Come on. Come on!”
He doesn’t move.
“Are you dead?” I ask, and for some reason that makes no sense, my heart stutters. “Valen?”
I pull my wrist back.
He moves so quickly I scream. His hands are around my forearm, and he bites me hard on the wrist.
“Valen!” I yell, but his eyes are still closed, his mouth pulling at my vein.
Color is already returning to his skin, the pallor fading as he drinks.
I try to pull away, but he holds me tight, his mouth going hot against my tender flesh.
“Let go!” I wrench myself backward.
His eyes open, and he releases me. I fall on my ass, the wet floor making a loud smacking sound as I do.
“ Kedves verem ,” he purrs.
“Stay back!” I hold out my uninjured arm.
“No.” He cuts his fingertip and presses his blood to my wrist. It heals, the skin knitting together as I watch.
He’s already up and grabbing a fluffy black towel. Then, with unexpected gentleness, he lifts me and wraps me in it.
“You were dead.” I gawk at him. “Was I dead? Am I a vampire now?” My mind races ahead. How do they make vampires? Is it like the old movies? Am I already halfway there? All the way there?
“I wasn’t dead, but you certainly know how to wake me up.” He cuts me a smirk. “And no, you aren’t a vampire. You didn’t die.”
“But—”
“I’ll never let you die.” His face goes stony for a moment.
“Gorsky—”
“Most assuredly dead.” He bares his fangs, a feral look on his face.
“Okay.” I step back and grip the top edge of the towel. “Noted.”
“I wish I could kill him again.” He holds my gaze, wrath dripping from every word. “Slowly this time. I’ve kept a human alive for months before. I could do the same with him. I could strip the flesh?—”
“No, thank you.” I wince.
He refocuses on me. “Where do you hurt?”
“I—” I do a quick mental once over. “I don’t. I should, but I don’t.”
He lets out a sigh, relief in his eyes.
I know it’s only because he wants to get Gregor’s information from me, but for a sliver of a moment, I think he might actually care whether I live or die. Not just for intel on the humans or the truth of whatever happened to Theo—but because he wants me to live. Me, a human. But that can’t be right. He’s a mass murderer. One whose life I just saved.
He gave me so much blood. He risked himself. I don’t even pretend to understand what just happened.
“Are you hurt?” I ask, my voice slightly dazed.
“No.” He glances at his bloody wrists. The wounds have already healed over.
“You saved my life.” I meet his gaze again.
He looks away.
“Why?” A tremor hits me, rattling my teeth from the strength of it.
I’m in his bed before I even know what happened. He always moves fast, but this is a new level of what-the-fuck. He tucks the dark blue blanket around me carefully. “Are you all right?”
“Shock, I think.” My voice trembles. Images flow into my mind, all of them Gorsky, all of them what he did to me. A sob comes from nowhere, ringing in my throat. Tears burn hot in my eyes as I struggle to breathe.
“In slowly,” Valen sits beside me. With a soft touch, he pulls my chin to the side until our eyes meet. “In slowly.” He inhales. I follow him, just breathing as I replay Gorsky’s violence, each blow a hammer hit to my skull. The pain isn’t physical, not anymore. It’s a horror show in my mind, the thoughts welling up like blood from a wound. His manic eyes, the anger that seems to double his strength. “Out slowly,” Valen says, his hand straying to my forehead, stroking my hair back. “Again.”
“I-it’s just sh-shock.” I’ve seen it hundreds, no, thousands of times. In the years of the plague when I worked triage at the hospital. So many people losing their loved ones or losing their own lives. Everyone was in shock at first, the new normal of death not quite settled into our consciousness yet. Until we got used to it, until it was commonplace, until death was part of everything all the time. Even so, I can’t seem to stop shaking. Can’t stop seeing Gorsky bringing the club down again and again as I scream.
“In, Georgia. Slowly.” He models it. I follow again. Then again. And again until my breath no longer hiccups or catches, until I feel the warmth of the blanket, the weight of Valen beside me, the heartbeat strong in my chest. I’m alive.
A strangled laugh erupts from me, and Valen’s brow arches.
“It’s just that I tried …” My suicide attempt feels like it happened underwater, or perhaps in a dream. Like I wasn’t awake when I tried that desperate move. I’m awake now. Nothing like almost being murdered to make you reassess your situation.
“You won’t meet your end here.” He pulls his hand back. “Not in any form.”
“Not until you get what you want.”
“Just so.” He smirks, his eyes shuttering, whatever emotions he’d shown me long gone. “I can make you sleep, if you like.”
“No—” I answer quickly. “Don’t use compulsion on me.”
“All right.”
“Wait, you want me to sleep here?” I ask, worry sending my voice an octave higher.
“Afraid I’ll ravish you?” His taunting arrogance is back.
I can only scowl at him and draw my knees up.
He shakes his head and looks toward the door. “I’m afraid there’s quite a mess in the corridor. I doubt you’d like to trudge through what’s left of Gorsky, but if you’d rather?—”
“No!” My heart rate jumps, panic trying to creep back in.
“Shh.” He turns back to me. “You’re safe here.”
“No, I’m not.”
“Safe from Gorsky, at the very least. And I can assure you no one—save you—” He gives me a pointed look. “—would dare come snooping in my private quarters.”
My cheeks heat. “I wasn’t?—”
“You were.” He stares me down. “Find anything of use?”
“You’re still alive, so no.” The joust is empty. We both know it. I had the chance to end him and didn’t take it. Like a fool.
He rises. “I’ll get the new staff to clean. They’re probably already working on it.”
“How would they know to—wait.” A thought hits me like a brick. “How did you know?”
“Hmm?” He pauses at the hallway doors.
“How did you know I was in trouble?”
He shrugs. “Just lucky timing.” He peers into the corridor. “Unlucky for Gorsky, I suppose.”
“But you were there when I tried to jump, too. You?—”
“Get some rest. You won’t be disturbed. Not by me or anyone.” He steps out and closes the door behind him, ending the conversation like the arrogant prick he is.
The weak part of me wants to ask him not to go far. The part that’s even now trying to replay the attack, the sick crunching sound of my bones, the tang of blood. I yank the cover up to my chin, my grip going tight. Then I hear Valen’s voice outside the door, gruff and rude as he bosses someone around in a foreign language. My grip eases, my body still tense but not enough for me to chip a tooth.
The adrenaline from earlier is long gone, and the more evenly I make myself breathe, the more my eyelids droop. Every so often I hear Valen, his intonation utterly dickish. I relax deeper into the bed. It smells like him. I shouldn’t be here. If I had half the courage of the old me, the one who worked for a cure instead of simply survived, I’d be out of here. This me, though, is weary and terrorized. Different. So different that I wonder if I’ll ever have a chance of being the old me ever again. I don’t think it’s possible.
I’m almost asleep when I hear something fall in the corridor. Valen curses profusely, his words a litany of acid against whoever is out there with him. The new staff, he said. My eyes drift closed again.
It’s fucked up and wrong and sick on so many levels, but I feel safe knowing the worst monster of them all is the one standing guard outside my door.