Page 1 of A Taste Of Truth

Chapter 1

Ally

Idon’t know what part of this place we’re in, but at least it’s warm. Modern, though. It’s all polished steel surfaces and white floors. I guess it’s a medical station or something similar. Whatever it is, we’ve been in it for twelve hours now. I know that because there’s actually a clock on the wall.

And still there’s no change.

Glancing over at Gray, I keep twirling this little silver knife around on my fingers, and continue wondering what he’s doing on a computer set up at the side of the room. He’s been on it constantly. If not that then he’s been fiddling about with syringes and cocktails of drugs, as if he knows what he’s doing with them. Some have been injected into Malachi, others simply put aside as if they’re going to be needed at some point soon.

I don’t really understand why, nor do I have the faintest idea why I’m still even in this room, but I am. I helped him hold Malachi down. Then watched on in near fucking horror as he half came round, had some kind of fit, and then started throwing up. Gray was right. He was so strong under my hands. He bucked and struggled, near pushing Gray off him at one point, as I kept gripping his hair. It’s all I could see in my vision, all I could feel in my veins.

Power, strength, aggression and rage.

And then, I watched again as Gray managed to inject something else into his bloodstream. A few minutes passed, like a whirlwind slowly losing its force, until he finally came to a stop and his eyes closed again. He’s been like this ever since. Pale. Out cold. And so fucking still even I’m occasionally checking if he’s breathing. The room might have changed, and thankfully I’m now in some clothes again, but to me there’s nothing else but Malachi and nothing changing any time soon by the look of it.

Hannah, the mad woman, puts a cup of coffee down by my side, her feet silently padding away from me towards Gray. She leans on his shoulders, stroking them as she stares at whatever’s he’s currently doing on that computer.

I don’t know how she’s gone from a mad freak to a reasonably sane woman, but she’s been kind to me since we got here. Calm words. Smiles. She even found me these clothes I’m in, pretentious as they are, and then told me to sleep for a while. I didn’t. Haven’t. Won’t. Not until I know he’s awake and breathing properly again. Don’t really understand the sense of desperation inside me about that yet, but either way I haven’t even talked, let alone slept. I don’t know these people.

And I don’t understand any of what’s going on either.

“How much longer?” she asks.

“I don’t know. These results are horrendous. He must have been on them permanently,” Gray replies. “Fuck knows how he’s managed to hide that from me.” She pushes on his neck muscles, eventually running her hands to his forehead. His eyes close, fingers going to them as if he’s trying to push the tension away. “This has to stop. They were never meant for constancy. I would never have-“

“I know,” she says quietly. “We’ll deal with that when he comes round.”

“Is Faith on her way?”

My frown drops, as I spin this little knife again - Faith. I’ve heard that name a few times now.

“No. I haven’t called her.”

He spins on his stool and looks at Hannah, surprise all over her face. “Why not?”

“Give me a reason why I should?”

“Wife?”

“Bitch?”

“Hannah, she needs to see this.”

“No. If his life was good with her, he wouldn’t have done this in the first place. You’re all he needs for now.” She looks over at me. “And maybe her.”

I keep staring at Malachi, unsure why he would need me at all. He doesn’t. Maybe he doesn’t need his wife if Hannah’s statement about bitch is to be believed, but I’m no one to him. Play, hunt, bargains. That’s what I am. Nothing more than that. Perhaps, in my foolish little world of trying to help I thought I could be more than that. Look where that got us.

He did it again anyway.

My gaze drops to the bandage on his wrist, mind still spinning circles about why he did do it again. We made a new bargain, discussed honesty and tit for tat. He seemed alright with that. And then he collapsed at my feet, having told me to live my life and stop running, when all he wanted to do was end his.

“Who is he?” croaks out of me. I cough, clearing my throat after so long of not speaking. Both their gazes come to me, Gray’s brow arched as if I’m some kind of fucking anomaly in the room to be analysed. “And who are you?”

“What do you mean?” Hannah answers.

My head tilts at her. “What’s his life like? Is he scared of something? Worried?” Unlikely I would think, given his entire aura of in control of everything, but something’s not right.

“Not that we know of. He’s hard to read most of the time,” she says.