I wanted to ask what Edward had said. I hoped he wasn't coming to shoot me. If I had to go, I wanted Jessie to do it, not Edward. He seemed so frail lately. My dying would not help. My dying by his hand would certainly hurt.
I wanted to ask, but I never got the chance. As we sat down to formulate some kind of plan, the room suddenly went dark and cool. I heard the trees rustle, even though the windows and the doors were shut.
I smelled leaves, evergreens.
I was hungry. Starving. My belly growled, or maybe the sound came from my mouth. I wasn't sure. I had to eat or the hunger would consume me. The madness flickered at the edge of my brain. Food. Blood.
Meat.
Dimly I felt myself slide from the couch to the floor. Damien was there, lifting me, carrying me to the bed.
I turned my mouth toward his neck, but he smelled like wolf, not man. I scented fresh meat nearby. My gaze went to Jessie.
She narrowed her eyes. "Don't even think about it."
But I did. The hunger was a living, breathing, aching thing in my stomach. I half-expected it to burst out and devour everyone near me. I placed my hands over my middle and moaned. But the sound that came out of my mouth was something else entirely.
I understood how the hunger caused sane men to go mad. I was a little crazed myself. Then the fever ripped through my body; like a fire it blazed. My skin burned, my scalp tingled, and darkness cloaked my mind.
I awoke in the woods - naked, alone, covered in blood. My hunger was gone, my belly distended. The sun was rising in the east. I had no idea where I was. I remembered nothing of what I had done.
And I didn't care.
That was the strange part. I'd in all likelihood killed, then eaten, my friends, maybe even my lover -
though I doubted Damien would have stood still and let me devour him. Literally, anyway.
But now that the hunger was appeased, all I cared about was making sure that the next time it came I had plenty of people to hunt.
I ran through the forest, felt the breeze on my skin, through my hair. I reveled in the dirt beneath my feet.
I jumped into a river and washed the blood away, then lay in the sun and let the water drip from my body into the earth. The remnants dried in the heat, and I drifted to sleep.
When I awoke again, someone was pressed spoonlike against my back. I turned and found Hector, naked like me and aroused. He kissed me and as he did, we both changed.
I sat bolt upright in bed. Or at least I tried. Someone had tied me down. Again.
I was sweating, shaking, crying, but I wasn't in the woods. Obviously I never had been.
"What happened?"
I fell back on the pillow, turned my head. Jessie sat in a chair.
"Kill me," I rasped. "Promise."
"I already did."
I closed my eyes. "It's awful, Jessie. I don't want to be like that."
"I know."
We sat together, silent. I kept my eyes closed until I stopped seeing myself in the woods, with Hector, stopped tasting... horrible things, stopped hearing screams that had never truly happened. At least not yet.
"Where are the boys?" I asked.
"Gone."
"What?" I tried to sit up again. The bonds scraped along my already-raw wrists and ankles. "You didn't let them go after Hector. He'll eat - "
I stopped. "Eat them alive" had once been an expression; now it was reality.
"They aren't hunting. They went to pick up Elise and Mandenauer."
"But they shouldn't be alone."
"Someone had to go, and I thought it was best if I stay."
She left unspoken the reason why. Damien wouldn't kill me. Will probably couldn't.
I wanted to stay awake, but the virus made me weak. The fever made me toss and turn. The changes made me ache. My back burned, which wasn't new. However, my bones were doing something weird.
Snapping, popping, shifting. My eyes hurt. My nose tickled. My teeth seemed too big for my mouth.
I fell back into the void where Hector waited. My dreams, fantasies, or whatever the hell they were remained pretty much the same. Blood, death. A little bit of doggie-style sex.
I awoke to a silver sheen drifting through the windows and across my bed. The moon was cool. It soothed the fever, calmed my racing heart, called me to come and dance in its light, naked and alive.
Murmurs on the porch. My ears tuned in. I could hear everything they said.
"This could kill her." I recognized the voice of Dr. Elise Hanover. "We haven't tested the serum yet."
I'd never seen the woman, only spoken to her on the phone. I couldn't see her now, except for a slim shadow among all the other shadows clumping together on the porch.
"We will test it now."
That was Edward, always calm, in control, regardless of the situation.
"I won't let you kill her on the off chance you might save her," Damien insisted.
"You have nothing to say about it."
"I do!" I called.
The group went silent and still, then filed into the room.
"The gang's all here," I murmured.
Jessie, Will, Edward, Elise, and Damien hovered near the door, as if afraid to come near me. I didn't want to know why.
Elise was the first to move. She clipped across the wood floor wearing heels the shade of fine porcelain.
Her stockings were sheer. Her suit a pure sea green.
She could have been a model - tall, bone thin, with platinum hair that would be long if she ever released the tight coil cemented to the back of her head.
Her skin matched her shoes; her eyes were dark blue, nearly violet. There wasn't a flaw on her face. And she had a Ph.D., too. Life was hardly fair.
"I've invented a serum," she said.
Her voice was as lovely as she was - low, husky, far too sexy for a scientist. Every man in the room, except for Edward, stared at her with his mouth open.
"However, I don't know if it works."
"So I heard."
They all exchanged glances. If I'd been able to hear them whispering on the porch, the change had already begun.
Behind Elise's back, Jessie made a face and rolled her eyes. Dr. Hanover was too perfect for words. We had to hate her. It was a matter of pride.
"The choice is up to you, Leigh."