Chapter 42
FORTY-TWO
Blood-warm, soft even though it was lumpy, the bed cradled her.
Little creaks and crackles, twitching under her skin.
Her head ached, savagely, and it was loud.
She turned away, burying her face in the pillow, greasy hair rasping against cotton.
She could feel every single strand, every inch of her skin crying out for a shower.
Soughing. In and out. She lay there for a long while before she realized it was someone breathing. No—two someones. The thump-thumps she heard weren’t traffic passing over potholes outside her apartment; they were...
Heartbeats. And a voice. “I think she’s coming around.”
An unfamiliar, male voice.
Movement. Bare feet scrabbling for purchase, the sweat-soaked blankets tangled around her trying to trip and send her headlong, the world spinning sideways; her hip barked the pink-topped dinette table and sent it flying.
Her back crashed against the cupboard, her heels still scrabbling, and she had inhaled to scream.
Reese’s hand clapped over her mouth. “Easy, baby. Easy. I’m here.” Familiar dark eyes, and the smell of him—healthy male, deliciously appetizing, her own unwashed reek disappearing into the flood to make something deep and warm and soft. Comforting.
Everything inside her turned over. Holly gasped against his hand, her stomach jolting.
The starch went out of her legs. She sagged, Reese caught her, she buried her face in his chest and inhaled.
He smelled really, really good—clean and warm, safe and solid.
A tinge of something brassy and sharp that made her think worried, a peculiar sharpness that smelled like hunger, too.
Her nose was on overdrive, sorting and cataloging, impressions flashing so quickly she almost forgot to breathe.
“You’re going to adjust,” Reese said into her hair, his breath a warm spot. “It’s all right. You’re absolutely going to adjust, everything’s okay, you’re doing fine.”
I am not! This is not fine! She inhaled again, deeply, shuddering as her brain shivered inside its bony case.
Finally, when the shakes had passed, she was able to peel her cheek away from his T-shirt. Her throat was dry, she was gummed all over with crusty, nasty effluvia, and she realized her pajamas were in tatters. There was a weird silence outside—snow melting.
She could smell that, too. Pines, frozen water warming back up to a liquid, and a thousand other little things.
Including another person. Unfamiliar, harsh and strange, dangerous. Holly froze, but Reese didn’t seem to notice.
“See? You’re just at threshold, perceptions are shifting. You’ve got better senses now, Holly. You can see more and smell more, and do more. Just let it happen—you’ll adjust. I promise.”
“We all did.” That unfamiliar voice. “Welcome to the family, ma’am.”
Holly stiffened, but Reese didn’t let go of her. He was just as immovable as ever. “That’s Cal. He’s going to help us.”
“N-no—” Her mouth didn’t want to work correctly.
She could taste the sickness leaving her body, her heart pummeling the inside of her ribs like it wanted to escape.
There was a clot of something in her abdomen, high up on the right, but it was swiftly shrinking, starved of nutriment.
Another massive clot behind her stomach, pressing against her heart.
The bits of it elsewhere in her body were shrinking, too, their nasty yellowblack tar-taste filling her mouth as she focused.
They made tiny, almost imperceptible creaking sounds as something else ate them, the same deep unfamiliar heat smoothing and repairing any damage left behind.
Her back didn’t hurt. She felt wobbly, thirsty, and so hungry she could eat cardboard. To be actually hungry again, without nausea—she’d forgotten what that was like.
What the hell? Holly’s head tilted back. She stared up at Reese, seeing the fine lines at the corners of his eyes. The individual threads of color in his irises—if she focused, she could actually distinguish blocks of cells, threadlike colors, a glint off his pupil—
“Holly.” Very quietly, with no trace of anger or fear. “Breathe.”
Another wallop of scent, but this one wasn’t quite so bad.
Her head hurt, a swift lance of pain through her temples quickly vanishing.
Every inch of her began twitching, individual muscle fibers contracting and releasing at random, but there was another jolt of scent from Reese and that stopped.
His heartbeat was nice and even; her own fell into step.
She found herself inhaling as he did, and an odd calm swamped her.
“What.” She had to cough, her throat was on fire. “The hell.”
That got her a smile, and a snort of laughter from behind him. Reese propped her against the counter, one hand at her shoulder. He lifted her arm, and the tremors went down.
“That’s right,” he soothed. “Just got to get your proprioception down.”
What? “Hungry,” she managed.
“I know. We’re just going to teach your body where it is in time and space, okay?
Your nerves need the feedback, it’ll help you adapt.
” He switched sides, lifted her right arm.
There was a final burst of discomfort as the clots of malignant cells buried in her ribcage and abdomen finished shrinking, and a quiet warmth began there instead.
Pancreas. And liver. I knew I was sick, I was right. It wasn’t as comforting as it could have been. She’d been prepared for... what?
To die. I was ready. Only, she hadn’t been. What was she supposed to do now? “I... I want a shower.”
“I’ll bet you do. Here, your knee. Up here.”
Her leg jolted up, almost as if he was a pushy guy she wanted to drive away.
He struck the top of her thigh lightly with the back of his hand, and the touch seemed to snap the limb into place, bringing it back into her body instead of floating off in never-never land.
The other leg got the same treatment, and when he slowly uncurled his fingers from her shoulder, Holly found she could stand up on her own.
The world was full of fresh color and detail, but it no longer slammed into her over and over again like a baseball bat.
“Interesting,” Reese said, and his mouth quirked a fraction. “Hey, Holly. Let’s get some food in you.”
Wait just a second. Her brain finally engaged, spinning through the last few minutes. And the time before, but those memories were curiously darkened, like old photographs. “You—wait. Just hold on a second. This is... you did this to me.”
“It’s a virus,” the other voice supplied, helpfully, and she peered around Reese to see a slightly shorter man, built compact and wide-shouldered, sandy haired, a beard she could tell he didn’t like crawling up his cheeks.
His eyes were very blue, and nothing about him was familiar.
“CTX-48, if you want to be specific, code-named Gibraltar. It crawls into your mitochondrial DNA and—”
“Breakfast first,” Reese said, and Holly slumped against the counter, staring at him. “Explanations can wait.”
Ninety percent casualty... infect... thirty percent... little swarmers... I’m all flesh, Holly. You smell good.
“My God,” she whispered, and Reese’s heartbeat sped up just a fraction. Which meant hers did, too. “What have you done to me?”