Wrong Side Of Dead (33 page)

A shadow moved in my peripheral vision. “Don’t come near us,” I warned, and I fucking meant it. The look I gave Dr. Vansis could have melted steel. “Get the fuck out right now.”

“If he bites you—” Vansis began.

“I’ll deal with it. Out!”

“Leave them alone,” Milo said. “Let Evy do this.”

I would have kissed him if I didn’t think it would get him flattened by my half-werewolf boyfriend. And the simple fact that the thought of having a half-werewolf boyfriend didn’t send me screaming for the hillside (or racing for the nearest sharp object) felt like personal progress. I was finally growing up.

Once the source of Wyatt’s stress moved out of sight, I climbed off and scooted back. Knelt an arm’s reach away to allow him the room he needed to sit up. He gave me a sideways look. An assessing look tinged with fear. I still couldn’t reconcile those silver eyes in a face I knew so well.

“Did I hurt you?” he asked.

“No.”

“Not this time. You should kill me before I do.”

A flash of anger that he’d even suggest such a thing ripped through me so fast that my hand jerked. “Not going to happen.”

“I’m not me anymore.”

“Yes, you are. You are Wyatt Truman. I don’t care what’s happened to you physically. You are the same.”

“I don’t feel the same.” He cast about the room, as if he could divine answers from the stark white walls. “I feel like a stranger in my own body.”

“Funny, I kind of know what that’s like.”

He held up his hand, bloody fingers facing me. “You didn’t become a monster.”

“No, I didn’t,” I said. “Because I was already a monster.”

“Not like this.”

“I was a worse kind of monster because I let myself be made into one. I killed anything you told me to kill, and I never asked questions. I killed a girl my age to get out of Boot Camp, and I never asked questions. I never let myself think there might be a better way. A black-and-white world was easier to live in.”

I scooted closer to him and reached for his hand. He withheld it a moment, then grasped my wrist tightly. His pulse thrummed, and heat radiated from his skin. “Six months ago I’d have killed you just as you asked me to, because this is wrong. It’s unnatural. But you know what? So am I. I live in the body of a dead girl. I can teleport, I can heal from almost anything, and I can survive a Halfie bite. I’m exactly the kind of scary, ubermagical creature we always feared and hunted.”

“And now,” Wyatt said, “I’m a scary, magical werewolf half-breed.”

“See? We’re perfect for each other.”

He smiled. Those teeth scraped his tender lip, and he winced. Closed his eyes. “God, it still burns.”

“What burns?”

“Everything. The wolf is in my head. He can smell you.” His grip on my wrist tightened. “Wants to claim you.”

Oh boy. I swallowed hard, working to stay calm and not show the sudden flash of nervousness such a statement caused. Wolves sensed fear. I touched his cheek. “The wolf isn’t allowed to have me,” I said. “Only you, Wyatt.”

He opened his eyes, and for a moment they weren’t human. The animal had come out. Silver overtook most of the white, and the pupil became less distinct. Then he blinked, and while still the wrong color, they were human again. He pressed into my hand. Inhaled.

“I don’t think it’s going to be that easy,” he said.

“What has ever been easy for us?”

A puff of air that might have been a soft chuckle crossed my wrist. “Good point. How is this happening?”

I had no clue. Therian history said that infected humans were killed or went bat shit from the fever. Wyatt had transformed. Two explanations came to mind. The simplest was that Wyatt’s connection to the Break, being Gifted, affected the change. His tether to magic kept him from being consumed.

The other explanation was far more sinister—Amalie or Thackery manipulated this group of Lupa somehow, altering the way the infection worked. To what end, I couldn’t begin to guess, and I was done underestimating the lengths to which either Thackery or the Fey would go in order to meet their goals.

Not that I was going to share that particular theory with Wyatt. “I wish I knew,” I said. “But it’s happening and, in some ways, I’m grateful. What’s that saying about a gift horse?”

“I suppose. I want—”

“What? What do you want?”

“To taste your blood.” With a cry that echoed what I felt in my heart, Wyatt scrambled back and away. He hit the far wall and stopped, curling tight into himself and covering his face with his hands. “Fuck!”

I left the chasm of distance between us, too stunned to think properly. Certainly nothing had ever come easily for either of us, but we’d never faced anything quite like this before. An enemy we couldn’t fight physically was not my forte, and much like a human infected with the vampire parasite, the Lupa virus was changing Wyatt from the inside out. No one had experienced a Lupa infection in centuries. And certainly not the infection of a Gifted human. No one knew what to expect.

Could he beat this?

“Wyatt, tell me what you’re feeling,” I said.

“Angry,” he said, the word slightly muffled but no less powerful. “Aroused. Hungry.”

The perfect trifecta of emotions. “Okay, angry. What do you want to do with that anger?”

“Hunt. Fight. Eat.”

“What do you want to hunt?”

“Anything.” He raised his head, that animalistic glint back in his eyes. “God, your blood smells so sweet, Evy. I don’t think you should stay in here.”

The room suddenly felt twenty degrees cooler, and a chill ripped down my spine. It was a warning as much as a statement, and I felt the horror of it in my bones. “I trust you, Wyatt.” Somehow my voice didn’t shake.

“I don’t trust myself.”

Logic shooed me toward the door. My heart kept me still. “Then trust me.”

“I don’t want to kill anyone.”

“You won’t.”

“But I want to. The wolf wants to. He wants blood.”

“Wyatt, you’re in control. You can control the impulses
of the wolf, I know you can. You’ve done it so far.”

“He’s stronger than I am.”

“Bullshit.”

He moved faster than I’d ever seen him—across the room in a blink of time. He knocked me backward and straddled my waist. His hands held my wrists by my head, and his face hovered just above mine. The glinting silver eyes and drying blood created a grotesque mockery of the man I loved. My guts twisted into knots of fear and panic, but I forced myself to not struggle. To stay perfectly still beneath his hold, even though my body screamed at me to fight back. To get away, get out from under, get to a safe distance.

“Is this bullshit?” he asked, breathing hard through his open mouth. “No, it’s a fucking nightmare, Evy, and I can’t wake up from it. I can’t shut it off. Please kill me before I hurt someone.”

Promise you’ll kill me when you’re done
.

I hadn’t thought I could survive Thackery’s torture with my soul intact, and I had. Wyatt didn’t think he could survive this, beat back the wolf, and be whole again. Be himself.

But he could. And I knew he could.

“Make a deal with you?” I asked, echoing those fateful words spoken to Thackery nearly two months ago.

Wyatt blinked. Started to shake his head, then stopped. He pressed his forehead to mine, the intense heat making me sweat. This close I smelled his own fear—the sour scent of perspiration, mixed with something even more primal. He inhaled deeply through his nose, held it, then expelled it hard through his mouth. Blood-scented breath brushed my lips, and I shivered.

I hated every fucking thing about this, and nearly jumped out of my skin when he said, “What?”

“I want a week. At least a week to help you. Isolation,
chains, whatever you want, but I want you to try with me. Try to beat this.”

“Why?”

“Because I love you, you jackass.”

He raised his head and gazed at me with a chaotic mix of pride, love, terror, and pain. “I thought I was a dumbass.”

“Dumbass, jackass, any kind of ass.”

He smiled. “I love you, Evy. I’m sorry for turning my back on you.”

“You had every reason. I was a coward.”

“No, I was wrong.”

“It doesn’t matter now.”

He seemed to realize his exact position over me and made a surprised sound caught somewhere between a grunt and a squeak. He climbed off and scooted back until he could lean against the wall. The thin gown had twisted immodestly, but he didn’t seem to notice the draft. I sat up slowly, careful not to show my utter relief at being free. I hated being held down like that, by anyone.

Wyatt traced a finger across his teeth. “How can you look at me and not see a monster?” he asked.

“Because I didn’t fall in love with your black eyes and straight teeth, Wyatt Truman,” I said, recalling his own words to me so many months ago. “I fell in love with your confidence and your loyalty and your ability to piss me off in five words or less. In the way you can see the logical side of things that I usually can’t. All of that is still there, Wyatt. It just has to work a little harder now.”

He gave me a wry smile. “I’m not you, Evy. I won’t heal from this.”

“You don’t know that.”

“You’ll risk it?”

“Yes.”

“I don’t—” He cleared his throat, eyes suspiciously
bright. “I don’t know if I can live like this. Or if I want to.”

Goddammit, I was not going to cry. “Give me a week. Please.”

“What if they don’t give me a week?”

“They who?”

“The Assembly.”

A blast of anger flushed my cheeks. “Fuck the Assembly, if they think they get to dictate your fate. Their decision to eradicate the Lupa centuries ago is what led us to this. They don’t get to decide if you live or die.”

“Don’t be so sure, child,” a deep, vaguely familiar voice said behind me.

Wyatt froze, tensed, hands splayed against the wall on either side of him. I twisted around and onto my knees, one hand automatically reaching for the knife still strapped to my left ankle. I stopped before I actually grabbed it, once I recognized the faces standing in the doorway.

Flanked on either side by Astrid and Marcus—each wearing identical expressions of disgusted surprise—was Elder Marcellus Dane of Felia. He was the one who’d spoken.

“Don’t be so sure of what?” I asked as I stood up. Kept myself between Wyatt and the door.

Elder Dane ignored my question, his attention on the man crouched behind me. He seemed more fascinated than upset, but I’d learned a long time ago to never underestimate the poker face of a Therian. “Remarkable,” Dane said. “There has not been a recorded human infection by a Lupa in centuries.”

“Yeah, no shit.”

“Stone,” Astrid said sharply. A warning to stop being so snippy with a Clan Elder. One who’d just indirectly threatened Wyatt’s life, and that was not okay with me.

“Wyatt’s broken no Therian laws,” I said. “His life isn’t up to you to save or end.”

“On the contrary,” Dane said, “his infection by a Lupa makes this an Assembly matter by default.”

“Because the Assembly ordered the extinction of the Lupa Clan five hundred years ago?”

“Yes. They were a destructive, bloodthirsty Clan then, and their habits have obviously not changed. Your human now carries their genes in his blood, and it must not be allowed to spread.”

“You don’t know that he can spread it.”

“Half-Bloods are just as infectious as full-Blood vampires.”

“He’s not a vampire, and neither was the bastard who bit him.”

Astrid and Marcus shared a look behind their Elder’s head. I didn’t know what it meant, but at least they weren’t rushing to Dane’s defense.

“You would take the risk of him infecting other humans?” Dane asked.

“I would take the risk of him infecting me,” I replied. “He’s fighting the effects of the wolf, and he’s strong enough to beat it. We just need time.”

“Time is in short supply of late.”

“I’ve noticed.”

He quirked a bushy eyebrow. He was either annoyed at being talked back to, or amused at the novelty of it. I imagined most Elders were used to the whole “I say jump, you say how high” method of giving orders.

“Look,” I said, “let Dr. Vansis run some tests, at least. In the meantime, I will keep him isolated.”

A moment passed, and then Elder Dane nodded. “I admit, I did not come here prepared to pass judgment on this matter,” he said. “In the absence of an appointed voice of the Assembly, I have volunteered to act in that capacity.”

Fancy way of saying that with Jenner dead, Dane got the job. “So you’re here about Thackery.” And considering the fact that both Astrid and Marcus were here, instead of down the hall, meant only one thing.

“You’re done questioning Thackery?”

“The exercise proved fruitless, even with the administration of Sodium Pentothal,” Marcus said. “He gave up nothing of use, despite the loss of three fingers.”

Ugh. Instead of a sense of poetic justice, the knowledge disturbed me. “So we still don’t know where he’s keeping Ava and Aurora?”

“No. Just that they are with the three surviving Lupa children.”

“What about the vampires? Did anyone—”

“Phineas informed us of the vampire Isleen’s theory. We’re looking into the name Matthew Goodson and any connections to Thackery.”

“Nothing from Thackery on that?”

“Just gloating over how perfectly his plan to infect them worked.”

Fucker
.

“Don’t assume,” Wyatt said. His interjection stole everyone’s attention. He was concentrating on the floor, conjuring up the words. Keeping his thoughts together. “Don’t assume he’s finished.”

“He’s in custody,” Elder Dane said.

“The hybrids at Boot Camp. The sinking ferries.”

“He means that Thackery likes redundancies and backup plans,” I said. “Just because we have him here doesn’t mean there’s not something out there waiting for a signal. Something bigger.”

“Something capable of infecting the other vampires?” Marcus asked.

“Exactly.” The thought of it chilled me. I also couldn’t believe that I hadn’t thought of it sooner. “He has three Lupa soldiers left who could be out there doing anything for him. Even flipping a switch on a countdown. He said that something was already in motion that we couldn’t stop.”