The last thing I needed was for the vet to think I’d caught some kind of zombie-induced insanity. He’d be forced to report me for quarantine, and I’d spend the rest of the day unable to do a thing to save Zev.
“I know this probably seems really weird to you,” I told Vaughn, thinking understatement all the while, “but I’m okay. Nothing hurts. Nothing’s broken. And I’m about as sane as I get.”
I waited for Vaughn to ask me how my recovery was possible, but he didn’t. He just nodded. “I’d tell you to take it easy,” he said, “but based on the pile of bodies in the basement, I’m guessing that ‘easy’ isn’t really your style.”
There was a light note of censure in his voice—though I was pretty sure he disapproved more of my aversion to bed rest than to the fact that I’d dispatched a horde of zombies to the great beyond.
“What time is it?”
Giving voice to the question felt like showing my hand, but I wasn’t used to not knowing, and today, more than any other day, each minute, each second, was crucial.
Every second I lay here was another second that Chimera Biomedical had Zev—another second that they could be coming for me.
“You were out for just over an hour,” Vaughn said, “assuming Skylar’s timeline of the ‘you-know-what incident’ is somewhere close to the mark.”
My lips curved upward at the idea of Skylar referring to zombies as “you-know-whats,” but the second my brain registered the fact that I was smiling, a wave of nausea passed through my body, bringing with it a kind of bleak hopelessness I recognized as regret.
Skylar.
Despite my best efforts to the contrary, I liked her. She was brave and openhearted and insane—and now she knew. She knew what I was, or—more to the point—what I wasn’t.
I wasn’t normal.
I wasn’t human.
I was a liar.
I shouldn’t have cared what she thought about me. I should have been more worried about who she and the others might tell, but instead, all I could think about was the fact that they’d hate me now.
They’d have to.
“Hey.” Vaughn’s voice was soft as he chucked me under the chin. “None of that.”
“None of what?” I said, wiping all trace of emotion from my face.
“Don’t go working yourself up over nothing.”
“Nothing?” I was incredulous.
“You should rest.” With those words, Vaughn stood, and I followed his gaze to the doorway. Elliot was standing there, his face as unreadable as his brother’s. Beside him, Bethany had both arms crossed over her chest. Her mascara was smeared, her clothes torn, and I knew just by the way she was holding her chin that she wasn’t going to be giving in to tears again any time soon.
From somewhere behind them, Skylar pushed her way into the room. “You’re okay,” she said, her voice uncharacteristically low. “I was pretty sure you would be, but you never really know, and then when you wouldn’t wake up …”
I tried to say something, but the words stayed in my throat, unspoken, unsure.
“I am so, so sorry Kali. I swear, I didn’t mean for you to have to save me. I heard a noise downstairs, and Bethany was all ‘see yourself out,’ and so I did … via, you know, the basement. I thought I was supposed to be there. I had a feeling, but maybe it was a bad feeling, because the next thing I knew, there was a zombie. And then there were two. And then there were three….”
“Skylar,” Elliot interjected. “Breathe.”
Obediently, she took a breath.
“So I climbed on top of the safe, because I knew I just had to wait. I knew you’d come back. I knew you’d … do something.” Skylar frowned. “But I didn’t know it would be like that. I didn’t know they’d hurt you. I didn’t!”
“Skylar.” This time, I was the one who interrupted her babbling. “I’m fine.” She didn’t look convinced, and I felt compelled to elaborate. “It didn’t even hurt.” Realizing how close I was treading to the edge, to speaking words I’d never said out loud, I looked down and made a thorough study of the back of my hands. “I can’t—when I’m like this, nothing hurts. I could take a bullet to the gut, and I wouldn’t even feel it.”
Elliot winced. Vaughn’s expression never changed. Skylar’s bottom lip trembled.
“You promise?”
This was not how I’d expected this conversation going. “I promise.”
For a moment, you could have heard a pin drop in the room. Bethany broke the silence. “That’s too bad,” she said, “because right now, I’d kind of like to slap you, and it just won’t be the same if you can’t feel the pain.”
This was closer to the reaction I’d expected.
“I’ll go,” I said, sitting up, finding my way to my feet.
“Go?” Bethany repeated incredulously. “You’re not going anywhere. You are going to move your mouth, and words are going to come out, and you’re going to explain how any of this is even remotely possible.” She narrowed her eyes. “And … go.”
“I don’t know what you want me to say.” My arms hugged my chest, like I could keep my emotions from the surface by sheer force of will. “I already told you guys. I’m not normal. I’m a freak. I showed you the ouroboros—that’s not normal. Normal people die when they’re bitten. I got stronger. Normal people go crazy if a zombie takes a chunk out of their arm. I took a little nap. I don’t know why. I don’t know how. All I know is that I’m not normal.”
Skylar’s babbling tendencies must have been contagious, because I couldn’t stop myself from elaborating.
“I’m not even human.”
If I’d felt naked before, I felt vivisected now—like someone had taken a knife and sliced my body open, like the others were getting ready to paw through my insides, chunk by chunk.
Skylar was the first to recover. “Oh,” she said. “I thought maybe you were a little bit human.”
Inside my mind, Zev snorted, and I pushed back the insane urge to laugh. A little bit human, I thought. Story of my life.
“What are you?” Bethany’s words didn’t sound like an accusation, but she didn’t sound curious, either. If anything, her voice was hesitant, guarded.
“I don’t know,” I replied. Her eyes flashed, but before she could say a word, I preempted it. “I think I’m some kind of hunter. When there’s something preternatural around, I can feel it, and there’s this desire, this need to fight. I don’t get tired. I don’t feel pain. And as much as I’m capable of tracking the beasties down, they can track me.” I ran my fingertips gently over the length of my arm. The skin was puckered, still healing, and for the first time, I thought of what I must have looked like with pieces torn out of my flesh, my eyes bloodshot and feral.
“They like my blood,” I said lightly. “If they smell it, they come for me, so I go for them first. It’s illegal, and people think it’s wrong, but I have to.”
“So this is a regular thing for you?” Bethany asked, her eyebrows arched nearly into her hairline. “Killing zombies, playing cat and mouse with your friendly neighborhood dragon …”
“There was nothing normal about that dragon,” I retorted. “But to answer your question, yes. I hunt. If something kills people, I kill it.”
Bethany aimed her gaze heavenward. “This explains so, so much.”
I thought she was thinking about all the little things I’d said and done in the past two days, but she disabused me of that notion pretty quickly.
“I mean, no wonder you’ve got a savior complex. You do this for a living.”
I almost pointed out that nobody paid me, but Bethany was on a roll.
“And when you saw I had an ouroboros, you knew that if you could get it to swap, you could kill it.”
I thought of the parasite feeding me strength and thirsting for blood in return. Killing it had been the plan, but now it was as much a part of my body as my skin or my lungs.