28
THE POISONER
“Do you feel anything?” I poised my pen above the paper, my timepiece flat on my journal to watch the hands tick.
Phoebe looked down at her hand supinated on the table. The tip of her finger twitched. “Just the tiniest amount. It tingles a little.”
I wrote down her observations as well as my own. We had been testing all morning. I’d bitten her arm about five times already. It seemed like it was only five minutes of paralysis per bite.
I’ve tried gathering enough venom to concentrate it, but as before, collection is extremely slow. I was lucky that I could extract it myself, but I only had maybe two vials.
“Oh! Fingers can move again!” Phoebe squeaked, extremely focused on watching her fingers curl.
“Good job,” I praised, marking the time and observation again, “next time we can test your leg.”
“Oh.” She was less enthusiastic this time. “How many tests will you do?”
“As many as it takes until I understand how it affects Vipera fully.” I watched her hand move, her fingers flexing back and forth.
“What about humans?”
My heart sank to my stomach. I hadn’t checked on John since the last incident.
In all honesty, I was afraid. The mortification of knowing I’d caused such a reaction.
I should have tried to figure it out sooner.
Something was wrong with me. It is my responsibility to negate any suffering for my own survival.
It’s a selfish life, I couldn’t let myself accept it.
“What’s the progress?” Luka didn’t bother knocking before waltzing into the lab, papers in hand. He glanced at his timepiece on the underside of his wrist. “I’m gone today, can you two handle yourselves?”
“What’s the rush, you’re just in time for a new round. Care for a humble donation of a limb and a bit of your precious time?” I suggested innocently.
His smile was nothing but sarcastic. “I’m on handler duty.”
“Secret Fixer things I’m guessing?”
“Ask your husband,” he mocked, then his brow furrowed the longer he looked at me. “You look . . .”
Phoebe and I held our breaths, awaiting the next possible thing to come out of his mouth.
“ . . . better,” he said.
I made an exaggerated gasp and looked to Phoebe. Her mouth dropped open, eyes wide.
“Graced with a compliment?” I blinked in faux surprise as if it were a dream.
“Who knew there was a gentleman burrowed somewhere in that walking corpse.” Phoebe placed her numb hand over her heart.
“Get all your squabbling out now before we have guests.” Luka rolled his eyes.
“Just because you’re afraid of our incoming guests doesn’t mean I am.” I went back to writing.
“Well, you should be,” he said with all sincerity.
“Of who? Mister— Oh, sorry. Sir Astor?”
“Don’t think about it,” he said. “We are already in bad graces.”
“I don’t know why we can’t just capture him. Torture is an effective technique in the ways of persuasion. No Nest to help him, just a single man.”
The words must have struck something, even Phoebe was quiet.
Luka’s eyes were grave. Not just unamused at my comments, but he may have even looked a bit pale. “Do you think this is funny? Some type of game to you?”
“Well, I’m not important enough to hear about the intricacies of the situation.
So I suppose so.” I slapped my pen down since no one would be letting me focus today.
“Why not? I’m making suggestions from what I know.
But don’t let me stop you from enlightening me.
” I gestured in front of me for him to continue.
“A single man.” He repeated my previous statement but with much more venom. I couldn’t tell if he was insulted at the statement or thought it was understated. “He is a thing that has survived every fall of every empire, so fortified in his skin that he could drink your poisons like water.”
“How old, exactly?” I raised a brow.
“Much older than you could possibly imagine.” Luka looked almost pained at my dismissal. “You have not seen the things I have.”
“He can’t be as bad as you say,” I scoffed.
“Perhaps his mystique comes from rumors. Have you really seen it or just heard it? Because last I remembered, you had a reputation for being quite impenetrable, and look where you are now. The oh-so-powerful Nest that Phoebe was raised in, also gone. Silas had played up how dangerous the Vipera are before to scare me, and I found a way to dissolve them like slugs under salt—”
“Leviathan is the exception,” he said with certainty. “You will never be able to kill him. Ever. No one will.”
“If he’s so terrible and scary, why didn’t he just massacre us all when you and Silas killed the Nest?”
“That was entirely Silas’s doing,” he corrected my statement.
“Well, Phoebe still speaks with him.” I gestured to her. Her eyes were completely down in her lap, her nails picked bloody.
The life drained from Luka’s face as his gaze slowly landed on Phoebe.
“What do you mean?” he said quietly, then raised his voice. “Phoebe.”
“He talked to me too.” The admission more of a defense for Phoebe, rather than rationalizing the nuances of father dearest.
The white of Luka’s damaged eye marbled with thin black liquid. When his gaze snapped back to me, a drip of blood ran down his face, following his scar. His eyes were so wide, what little light came into the lab from the skylight reflected from the back of his eyes.
“When?” His voice was so dastardly it was as if I’d told him of some great crime.
Phoebe was beginning to look a little sick.
“When I first woke.” I shifted in my seat. “If he wanted to kill me, he would have in my sleep, don’t you think?”
I was unsure if Luka heard a word I said. The blankness of his stare had me questioning how fast I could run. It was a deep instinctual vibration, my spine tingled a bit.
“Did Silas tell you about his mother?” Luka changed the subject but remained just as eerie.
I shook my head.
“Did you read your father’s paper?”
That statement being the follow-up made my stomach turn, but without context it sounded even scarier.
He must have seen it on my face, because that’s when he went on. “Phoebe.” He didn’t look at her when he spoke. “Did your father tell you about your mother?”
Phoebe lifted her head, but she had the same answer as I.
Luka smiled, shaking his head as he looked at me with disgust. “It may be in your best interests to read about your father’s work.”
“How would you even know?” I sneered.
“I was on the surgery team,” he said. “All of them. We weren’t allowed to know their names, to see their faces. It kept things impersonal.”
My fingers were freezing, no matter how I held them. My heart was pounding so hard that I was getting tremors just trying to keep myself together. I ignored every signal from my body to stop, even when the pain bloomed in my abdomen.
It had been easy to ignore the hunger. The longer I practiced, it would go away. The longer I played the staring game with Luka, the worse it got.
And suddenly there was no Luka, no lab, just an image that faded.
Everything went black.
“Alina.” There was tapping on my face.
In a sea of sparkling stars, my entire surroundings were gone, changed. Suddenly I was in my old room, from when I first woke.
“Christ.” Luka sat up straight on the edge of the bed, hand on his head as if to soothe a headache.
Phoebe stopped her pacing and nail chewing at the end of the bed to rush to my other side. “Thank God!” she cried, her hands grabbing my face and kissing my cheek and head. “This is why I told you to rest!”
“Get off me,” I croaked. When I lifted my head it stung, then weighed itself back into the soft pillows.
“Don’t move.” Luka stood, going to the door to retrieve hot towels from one of the staff.
I shoved the duvet down, trying to roll myself out of the bed.
“Alina, please don’t—”
“What happened?” I couldn’t stop from hyperventilating. The back of my head was hot, the pain was coming back.
“Please settle, you’ll disturb the stitches,” Phoebe begged, holding my hand tightly.
Luka returned, placing the cloth on my head. The warmth did something to settle me, especially since my head was becoming light again.
I grabbed him by the tie, yanking it so hard it tightened around his neck.
He stared, stone-faced as I nearly seethed in his face.
“What did you do?” I barked.
“You’re welcome.” He pulled his tie back from my grasp, hooking a finger in the knot to loosen it. “You had a seizure.”
“No, I didn’t.” I looked to Phoebe.
She looked just as guilty.
“What happened?” I thought I might cry if no one offered any elaboration.
“Did you feed recently?”
I shrugged. “Here and there.”
“Blood straight from the body?”
I lifted my shoulders in defense. “I did,” I admitted, but I wasn’t keen on explaining the circumstance. “On Silas, a few times.”
Phoebe did her best to hide her grimace, bless her soul.
“You’re overexerting yourself,” Luka said, “and malnourished. Do you think you can handle human blood if we did it in very small servings?”
“I don’t know!” I threw my hands up before they landed at my sides, flinching when a twinge of my abdomen acted up. “No one has been very helpful in figuring out feeding.”
“Well, you’re never keen on accepting help anyway.” He stood. “Your head hit the table, so don’t be alarmed by the stitches.” As he spoke he checked his timepiece, then clicked his tongue against his teeth. “I’m late, I’ll let Silas know while we are out.”
I refused to look at him. Then I heard the door close.
The ringing in my ears had finally subsided. The light from outside was nearly gone, the last sliver of red being swallowed by the oncoming dusk, reflected from the building windows across from my room.
“How do you feel?” Phoebe asked.
I glared at her, but based on her expression, she knew the answer was obvious.
“If there’s anything I can do—”
“Leave.”
She bit her lip, lowering her gaze awkwardly. Even if it was reluctant, she did as I asked. Every step she took was unsure, but she made it to the door eventually, and at last I was alone.