Chapter 22
Marcus let out a growl, his massive teeth made to tear through flesh glinting in the lab light. The sound rolled through the room like distant thunder—deep, dangerous, and primal. The sound that made me think, yes, someone is definitely about to die.
He made to move forward, and I jumped in front him. Probably not my smartest decision. Standing between an enraged silverback alpha and his target was the sort of thing that usually got you featured in cautionary tales.
“No,” I said, putting my hands on his shoulders as I tried to push him back.
Try is the word here. It was like trying to push a bus with your pinky finger.
No way in hell could I physically stop him if he wanted to rip Addison to shreds.
If Marcus decided to move, I was pretty sure I’d just get carried along with him like an inconvenient backpack.
“I know you want to do it,” I said to him, still pushing him. I couldn’t help it, but my feet were slipping behind me. “But not yet.” Not because she didn’t deserve it. She absolutely did. The problem was dead villains had a terrible habit of not answering questions.
“I say let King Kong deal with her,” said Ronin. “Put her out of her misery. Look at her… it. It’s in pain.” He leaned slightly to one side to get a better look. “Actually, I’m in pain just looking at it.”
I shook my head, keeping my eyes on Marcus. “But we don’t know what she did to Darian.” That was the only thing keeping Addison alive right now. Answers. The second she stopped being useful, all bets were off.
“Tessa’s right,” said Dolores. “We need to know what she did to him.” Even Dolores looked disturbed, and considering she’d once calmly eaten lunch while investigating a zombie outbreak, that was saying something.
I felt the muscles in Marcus’s shoulders relax, and he backed down.
His body was still shaking with barely contained fury, but at least he wasn’t attacking her.
Well, not yet. The silverback’s nostrils flared as he stared at Addison.
If looks could kill, we’d already be discussing funeral arrangements.
Once I knew I could trust him, I let him go and turned around, keeping my body positioned in front of my son. I wasn’t going to leave his sight. Not for a second. Not after everything that had happened. Addison had already stolen enough from me.
“What did you do to my son?” I asked Addison. My voice came out colder than I expected. There was no fear left now, just anger. Pure concentrated mother rage.
Addison jerked, and she leaned on a nearby table. “He’ll be okay,” she said, her voice harsh like it was a struggle to even talk. “He will heal. He’s much stronger than normal children.”
Her breathing hitched between words. Sweat rolled down her temples. She looked like someone whose body had declared war on itself and was currently winning.
“Start talking, you crazy lunatic,” snapped Dolores. “It will not end well for you.” She sounded almost offended. Which, knowing Dolores, she probably was. Someone had messed with her grand-nephew and bypassed her magical expertise. Both were unforgivable.
“Yeah,” said Ruth, pointing a spatula at Addison that I had no idea she’d brought along. “You bad, bad wereape.” She squinted suspiciously. “Very bad. Possibly double bad.”
“Good insult, Ruth,” mocked Beverly. “Really cut right to the bone.”
Ruth beamed like her sister had just complimented her. “Thank you.” Then she pointed the spatula harder. “And I mean it.”
Addison’s face morphed and pulled and I felt sick to my stomach.
The skin along her jaw twitched unnaturally.
Her fingers spasmed. Small patches of dark fur appeared and disappeared along her wrists like her body couldn’t decide what species it wanted to be from one second to the next.
“I only need a little more. Just a little bit more.” Her eyes had that desperate look addicts got, like someone convinced that one more step would fix everything.
“Never going to happen,” I told her. Whatever she wanted from Darian, she wasn’t getting it. Not now. Not ever.
Iris moved closer next to me. “I think she’s suffering from a disease. Look at her skin. The rash on her neck and hands.” Her voice had shifted into professional witch-geek mode. She used the same voice when discussing ancient curses, magical anomalies, and limited-edition grimoires.
I looked closer and wished I hadn’t. The skin along Addison’s neck was mottled and inflamed.
Angry red patches spread beneath the collar of her lab coat.
Veins stood out beneath the surface in strange dark patterns.
Her hands trembled violently against the metal table as if every movement hurt.
The more I looked, the worse it became. She wasn’t just sick.
She was deteriorating. Falling apart right in front of us.
And judging by the way she kept staring at Darian, I had a horrible feeling my son was somehow connected to whatever was happening to her.
I narrowed my eyes. “What’s wrong with you?”
Addison let out a strange wet cough that could have been a laugh.
“Not just me,” she said still holding on to the edge of the table.
“My sister had it too.” Her fingers dug into the metal so hard I thought she might bend it.
Sweat dripped from her brow. One side of her face twitched strangely before settling again.
“Had what?” asked Dolores, moving closer. “What ailment is this?” Her voice had shifted into full magical scholar mode. If she’d had a notebook, she’d already be taking notes.
“The Split,” Addison laughed bitterly. “The real name is Wereape’s Form Dissociation. But everyone calls it The Split. My body can’t decide whether it’s human or wereape anymore.”
Ronin snorted. “No shit.” He gestured vaguely at her entire body. “I mean, that’s kind of the first thing I noticed.”
I glanced at Dolores. “Have you heard of this before? The Split?” I wasn’t believing anything coming out of Addison’s mouth at the moment. For all I knew she could tell me she was actually three raccoons in a lab coat.
“Yes,” answered Dolores. “It’s very rare. And I do remember reading about it years ago, though I’ve never met anyone who suffered from it.” Her expression darkened. “Mostly because very few survive long enough to become a case study.”
“Because they’re all dead,” said Addison and then started to cough.
I looked back at Marcus. “Marcus? You know about this?”
The large gorilla gave a nod. “Yesss. Baddd.”
“You can say that again,” commented Ronin.
I stared at Addison again. “So you have this and so did Allison. You didn’t kill your sister,” I said as the realization hit me. It was why the guard had said that Allison ended up in the medical wing. “She died of this thing… you have.”
“We were both working on a cure,” said Addison. She licked her lips, her tongue stained with blood. “But she didn’t know what I knew.”
“Is it contagious?” I asked her. “Did you give this to my son?” Fear hit as I remember that he, too, had been stuck between shifts for a while.
The room started to spin as I took a deep breath to steady myself.
For one horrible second I imagined Darian ending up looking like Addison. My stomach tried to leave my body.
Addison started to cough again, her body jerking as horrible bone snaps echoed around us. “It doesn’t work like that. You need to be born with the gene. Your son… your son is the key. His blood is the cure. I just… I just need more.”
Something wasn’t adding up. “If, like you say, his blood is the cure, why did you speed his growth? How did you do that?” The question had been eating at me ever since Darian suddenly shot up a decade. It made no sense. None.
“That is something I also want to know,” said Dolores.
“Yeah,” added Ruth. “We want to know.” She was still holding her spatula like a weapon. Somehow she looked ready to both fight and bake.
Addison wiped her mouth as she pushed off the edge of the table and took a step. “He needed to be older for it to work. His hybrid state could stabilize the disease but only after his body reached a certain stage of development.”
I stared at her. “What?”
“The blood wasn’t enough,” she continued. “Not yet. I tested samples. Studied the cellular structure. The regenerative compounds weren’t fully active. They were there, dormant, waiting.”
My stomach dropped. “So you decided to experiment on my son?”
“I accelerated his biological growth,” said Addison, like she was discussing weather patterns instead of my child.
“I created a catalyst designed to stimulate maturation at the cellular level. Endocrine systems. Regenerative pathways. Genetic expression. The older he became, the more active the hybrid markers became.”
I blinked.
Then blinked again.
Because apparently my brain needed a reboot.
“You made him ten years older for a science project?” I snapped.
“I made him viable.”
Rage exploded through me.
“He’s not a laboratory rat!”
“No,” said Addison. “He’s something far rarer.
” Her hand trembled violently and she grabbed the edge of the table again.
“The disease is destroying me. Destroying all of us. Allison discovered that before she died. We found records. Old Nexari records. References to hybrid offspring born from opposing magical bloodlines. Children whose biology could bridge what nature was never meant to bridge.” She pointed toward Darian.
“He’s not just half witch and half wereape.
His blood carries traces of remarkable energy.
It adapts. Evolves. Repairs itself. I needed to know if those properties matured with age. ”
“So you stole years from him?”
For the first time, something that looked suspiciously like guilt flickered across her face. “I didn’t mean for the acceleration to be that extreme.”
“You aged him ten damn years!”
“I was aiming for two.”
Silence filled the laboratory.
Even Ronin blinked. “Well,” he said. “That’s somehow worse.”