Chapter Seven #3
As he spoke, Isaiah felt Hilker’s gaze on him, hot and heavy.
He closed his eyes, but that only made things worse, because then he could see a different world, too—one where somehow, someway, he’d ended up at Hilker’s doorstep instead of the silver fox’s.
Hilker would have given him exactly what he’d wanted, and not a thing more.
But then, maybe, he’d have come back: again, and again, until his body belonged more to a man who only cared for his flesh and fangs than it did to the person they protected.
And he wouldn’t have ended up here.
With Landon.
And Hilker.
A dry laugh rattled out of Isaiah. “The bastard didn’t even fuck me.
I don’t know why that’s the thing I’m still hung up on.
He didn’t have holy silver either. He just shot me and threw me in a metal box.
” A shiver ran down Isaiah’s spine. “He kept going on about how much he wanted to do things to me. ‘You’re lucky,’ he said, ‘they’ll kill you quicker than I would. ’”
Considering the drug now running through his veins, maybe that slow death was still incoming.
From the other side of their wall, Landon said, “You’re not dead yet,” like Isaiah’s heart would keep beating if only they wished hard enough.
As he sat there though, Isaiah felt more and more normal; not good—he was still in a cell with a cot-sized mattress, having lived off minimal food and primarily old, stale blood for weeks—but he didn’t feel any worse than before the serum had entered him.
“Hey, Landon? How did you end up here?” Isaiah didn’t really expect them to answer—until recently, their friendship had been built on trading laughs and tears, not personal histories—and they’d always been clammed up about the topic in the past. But this time, with the subtle beep-beep of Isaiah’s heart in the background, Landon slowly began to speak.
“Did you remember…” They started, then tried again.
“Maybe you heard in the news, back when the crash killed my dad, but they reported that I died with him. I almost did. I’d been flung like a fucking cannonball out of the car before it went over the edge, and I wound up on the other side of the road, in the bushes, in the dark. ”
Their voice wavered, and Isaiah wanted nothing more than to take their hand and squeeze it oh-so-gently.
“Before the ambulance, or the police or anything, someone else pulled over. I think three of them were humans, and they maybe called 9-1-1—they were telling me that I needed to hold on—but I had bled so much already, and the last person—the vampire—started injecting me with venom, to get my blood to regenerate faster. They were arguing over it, the four of them—I remember that, before the pain started. The worst part, you know—other than hearing the experiments and shit—is that I’ve been sitting in this cell all these years wondering if that vampire died in Vitalis-Barron’s labs afterward.
If my mother found her and made her pay for saving my life. ”
Isaiah could have reminded Landon that it wouldn’t have been their fault, even if she had, but he didn’t think that was what they needed to hear right now. Instead, he said, “The vampire who saved you was very brave.”
“Mhm,” Landon mumbled, though they still sounded just as sad as the situation warranted.
“You were very brave, too,” Isaiah added.
“I was just trying to stay alive.” Landon gave a snort. “Ironic, really, seeing how I tried so hard to do the opposite like a year later.”
“That’s just life, princess.”
“Life sucks,” Landon replied. “I don’t love it.”
“Me neither.” Isaiah smiled, despite the nihilism of that statement. “But I love you, and I love the stars, and I love sitting on rooftops, and full bags of lumpia from Tito’s. I bet you’ll love those, too.”
“Yeah. I bet I will.” Landon’s voice was hollow, a vacant space where their hope had been temporarily locked away, waiting for the serum’s verdict.
Isaiah locked eyes with Hilker. “Is it doing anything?”
“It may take a few minutes.”
“Or it might not work at all,” Isaiah whispered, his voice so low that he knew Landon wouldn’t be able to make out the words.
“Perhaps,” Hilker admitted. “Though it’s unlikely.”
“If this does work…” Isaiah paused, listening for Landon’s movement, for any sign they could hear him. He lowered his voice further, leaning toward Hilker as he did. “You know what will happen to me next, right? After I’m not needed anymore, once it’s Landon’s turn…”
Hilker didn’t meet his gaze. “It hasn’t worked yet,” was all he said.
Isaiah wanted to hold onto that. He wanted, so much, to believe that things—as bad as they were, as incomplete as this life was—could just keep going as they had been. But he could feel the future rolling in like a storm, and he couldn’t help but— Fuck.
Isaiah howled through clenched teeth, doubling forward so suddenly that he nearly lost consciousness.
He could hear Landon shouting at him above the heightened rate of the heart monitor, and he tried to call back—thought maybe he even had—with an I’m all right, before even that impulse faded into blackness, and he thought nothing at all.