Page 28 of Bloodbane
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Monsters
{ R U B Y }
The strangled sound escaping my throat is somewhere between a whimper and a groan, carrying with it every ounce of certainty I have in my body that I’m never, ever drinking again.
Clenching my teeth against the wave of nausea quickly becoming a tsunami does nothing to ease the painful spasms in my stomach. I need to throw up… but I can’t. Throwing up means rolling onto my side so I don’t choke, and any movement risks my skull cracking open from the sheer force of the pounding currently happening within. I don’t try and stop the pitiful whine as it slips past my parched lips.
“Rise and shine, Sleeping Beauty.”
Grayson’s voice floats down from directly above me, tempting my eyes open. I snap them closed again when the room starts to spin immediately.
“No rising,” I mumble. “And definitely no shining. I have the worst… hangover… ever.”
“You’re not hungover,” Grayson murmurs, pressing something wet and freezing against my forehead.
“Fuck!” I jerk away, scrambling to a sitting position before dropping my head to my hands and pushing against the violent thumping inside. “Fuck,” I mutter again, silently begging my stomach contents to stay put. “Are you trying to give me a heart attack or hypothermia?”
“The cloth is barely cool. You’re burning up.”
I raise a hand to my forehead: both are the same temperature. Realizing the flawed system of measurement, I drop my hand. The telltale heat prickling my eyes—as if they’re simmering gently in my skull—lends weight to Grayson’s claim. So I was wrong. It’s not my period, then. “I might be a tad under the weather,” I croak. “I’m sure it feels worse than it is.”
There’s a heavy pause. “It isn’t.”
With effort, I reopen my eyes to find Grayson staring at me from beside the bed, twisting a washcloth between his hands.
“Don’t worry. I’m pretty sure if I were contagious, you’d already be sick after last night.”
“We need to talk.”
I try to ignore the coiling in my gut; those four words are never the harbingers of anything but bad news. As far as messengers go though, I can’t be mad at mine. The morning after has done nothing to dull the shine of my attraction—even despite the mortifying rejection. For a fleeting, ridiculous moment, I’m glad to be sick so I can blame my red cheeks on the fever rather than embarrassment. I’m also grateful Grayson has found an old sweatshirt of Cooper’s—even if it is about three sizes too small—because I don’t think I could get through the coming talk if I have to contend with that face and that body on display. And that train of thought is precisely what got me into this mess.
“Yeah, look, I’m sorry about last night. I’m not usually so…” I gesture vaguely before wrapping my arms around my still-cramping stomach. It’s a half-truth. “That wasn’t why I asked you here, I swear. I had no ulterior mot—”
“Evans, stop.” Grayson holds a hand up to silence me. “This is about your illness.”
Back to Evans. I plaster a wan smile on my lips, pretending the retracted intimacy doesn’t phase me in the least. “Well, that doesn’t sound ominous at all.”
“It’s only going to worsen. You were bitten. You’re infected.”
My heartbeat quickens, as does the throbbing in my head. “Infected? You mean like... like rabies? No, Milo gave me shots.”
“More like Lycanthropy.”
It takes a moment for the word to filter through the fog dulling my brain. I’m not exactly a Greek lexicon, but B-grade horror movies are my jam. “You know you’re a free man now, right? You don’t need the whole insanity defense bit.”
“The wolves that attacked you weren’t ordinary wolves, they were lycans.”
“Lycans?”
Grayson nods, his face expressionless. “Wolf-shifters.”
“You’re saying…” I clear my throat, trying to dislodge the ridiculousness tangled around the words I’m about to say out loud. “You’re saying I was attacked by werewolves ?”
So wound up trying to fight my attraction to Grayson, prove his innocence, and reclaim my memories, it never occurred to me that he might be completely certifiable. “I’m not sure what—”
The words catch in my throat as Grayson’s lips pull up. It’s not a smile, not exactly, there’s no emotion behind it, just lips parting and lifting to reveal dazzling white teeth and—
What the fuck.
My breath catches as the two cuspids push down, growing until they’re twin spikes. Until they’re… fangs.
A strange hollowness spreads through my mind, almost like all thought has been sucked into a vacuum. But gray eyes are staring at me expectantly.
“Th-that’s, uh, that’s a neat trick, it’s some weird biology thing, right? Like double-jointedness or something? And here I thought I was special because I can lick my elbow…”
“Evans.”
“No, that’s not—it’s not—” I shake my head before wincing and reaching up to press the heel of my hand against the rhythmic pounding of my temple once more. I’m moderately confident my brain is going to explode within the hour. “I don’t understand.”
Grayson runs the pad of his thumb over a fang. Blood, so dark it looks black, spills from the clean slice before he rubs his finger on the fabric of his borrowed sweatpants. When he lifts his thumb again, the blood is gone. So is the wound.
The bubble of laughter bursting from my throat is bordering on hysterical. My mind is spinning uselessly, trying to find the joke, the punchline, the logic. It’s not possible. I cross my legs beneath the damp sheets covering my body and pull a pillow into my lap, hugging it tightly with trembling arms.
“You’re a… a…” My throat feels like sandpaper. “Lycan?”
“No. Vampire.”
Vampire. It’s ridiculous. It’s impossible. Except I can’t deny what I just witnessed with my own eyes. Unless…
Grayson’s eyes narrow. “You don’t believe me.”
“Oh, no, I do. It makes perfect sense. Great twist. I hope I remember it when I wake up.”
“This isn’t a dream, Evans, it’s a living nightmare. I’d hoped to spare you the revelation that a world exists within your own. I have done all I can to shield you, but you’re a part of it now. There is no more pretending.”
“There are no such things as vampires and werewolves. You didn’t ride into town on a unicorn, and no magical trolls live in the forest. No. Just no. There’s one of two things happening right now: either I’m dreaming or you’re delusional.”
“I understand it’s a lot to process, but we don’t have the luxury of time for you to work through your denial. The full moon is close. It might already be too late. I need you to trust me.”
Grayson’s fingers—cold to my feverish skin—gently trap one of my own and lift it toward a pointed peak. The pain is swift and sharp. I want to jerk away but the strong grip traps my hand in place as blood pools on my fingertip. Repeating his motions from moments ago, Grayson lifts his free hand to his mouth and slices his same thumb open. This time, though, he doesn’t wipe the blood away—he lets it drip into my wound. Dark blood obscures bright, and the pain in my finger disappears completely. A cool thumb sweeps away the black-crimson mess and my mouth falls open. The only lingering proof the cut ever existed is a single, fine, charcoal line.
“Look familiar?”
My hand flies to my chest. My heart increases to a frantic rhythm below my fingertips as I trace the scar for the millionth time. I have spent more hours than I can count staring at the strange scar on my chest: the unnatural color so at odds with the other marks surrounding it. I’ve never come close to explaining it.
Until now.
“I don’t understand.” The tight grip trapping my hand relaxes, and I lift it closer to my face, staring at the scar. “How?”
“I… found you.”
“But that was over twenty years ago.”
“I’m older than I look,” Grayson drawls darkly.
Fragments of my dreams splinter through me: the accident, the blood, the pain in my chest, the screech of metal, and the snow gusting into the car. That is always where the dream dies and the world turns black. But now, for the first time, I remember.
“You pulled the door off the car, pulled me out of it…” The images in my mind are hazy, obscured by time, but I cobble them together the best I can. “You stopped my bleeding.” I fist the sheet, needing to anchor myself to something real and tangible as the layers of my small world are peeled away. “You saved me then just like you did that day in the clearing.” A strange sense of calm envelops me. I don’t know if it’s acceptance or I’m just passing into the eye of the storm, and more chaos and confusion await me on the other side. “Okay.” I blow out a deep breath. “Okay,” I repeat more to myself than Grayson. I refill my lungs with air that suddenly feels different than it did just a moment before—heavier, thicker. “I have a few questions.”
A small smile plays on Grayson’s lips. “Just a few?”
“The day in the clearing… what don’t I remember?”
“I suspect the wolves caught your attention and you went to investigate. I don’t know if they attacked for hunger or sport, but they had no intention of letting you live. I stopped two but the third got away. I laid you in your truck before I crawled beneath it to escape the sun.”
Sunlight. Vampires. Strict dietary requirements.
I nod slowly, the events from the past few days taking on a whole new light. Grayson hadn’t lied to me, not once. I just didn’t have a way to connect all the dots until now.
“But the bodies in the freezer are human.”
“Lycans transform back to their human form in death.”
I should probably be writing this down. I settle for rubbing small circles over my throbbing temples. “So if the two dead men are lycans, that means the third is…” I want to smack myself in the head. How could I have been so blind? “Shit. It’s Arlo, isn’t it?”
Grayson confirms my suspicion with a curt nod.
‘He almost killed you.’
I had misunderstood Grayson’s comment yesterday. I thought he was talking about the incident at Thayne’s, but how could Grayson have known that? No, he’d been talking about the day in the clearing. So, Arlo had tried to kill me twice. But…why? And…oh. More dots connect and flare up like fairy lights on a Christmas tree, all blinking at once. “Arlo, the bodies in the freezer, they’re all… Thayne’s cousins are all…” I swallow the word harshly. “Can you tell who’s a… Is Thayne…?”
Something dark and dangerous simmers in Grayson’s eyes. “He’s the pack leader. He’s their Alpha.”
My heart stutters in my chest, the ache of the skipped beat echoing through me with each new thump against my ribs. No wonder Thayne had rejected me. Hell, it’s probably why Grayson had too. I’m fine for a little fun, sure, I’m a novelty. But in the end, I’m nothing but a trespasser in their world—a trespasser with tainted blood.
“Is the bite the reason that I’m so, umm…” I scramble to think of an adjective for horny. “So keyed up?”
Pale eyes dip to the heat crawling up my neck before Grayson nods. The affirmation I’m not losing my mind should bring relief, but it makes everything seem so much more real in the worst way.
“Can it be stopped? This… whatever is happening to me, can you stop it?”
“I’m going to try.”
“And then all of this will go away? The sickness and uh, these impulses?”
“It should.”
The lack of conviction in Grayson’s voice is terrifying. He’s making it sound like a Hail Mary.
“What happens if it doesn’t work? What happens if I turn into a… what happens if I turn ?”
Grayson’s gaze finally leaves mine, drifting to settle on the window. The silence gnaws at me until I can’t stand it any longer.
“Grayson?”
“You’ll lose yourself. Your bones will break and reform, and you’ll be reborn as a wolf. You’ll hunt and kill anything that crosses your path from sundown to sunrise. And every month after, the cycle repeats. You will live like that for the rest of your life, always at the mercy of the moonrise. There is no cure.”
Grayson’s answer is slow-coming and devoid of emotion, but each word bleeds horror into me until there’s no space for anything else.
“I’ll hurt people, won’t I? If I turn.”
Grayson hesitates. “Most lycans I’ve crossed paths with are cruel creatures in human form and brutal when transformed.” He fingers the sleeve of scars burned into the flesh of his left arm. “A lycan did this to me,” he grinds out, the words low and raw. “I can’t make this choice for you, but you must understand that what we are—lycans, vampires—it’s not natural, we’re not natural. We’re monsters.”
Monsters. The word reaches out from the past and wraps a hand around my throat. I can’t believe Thayne could be what Grayson is describing. But if he is, if it is possible to be kind and sweet and funny only to lose yourself completely, that’s somehow worse than choosing to embrace the darkness within. Because I know firsthand that darkness isn’t reserved only for creatures with fur or fangs. I was raised by a monster. I won’t allow myself to become one.
“You’re not a—”
“I devastated your life once already,” Grayson bites out. “I was fleeing the mutts that were torturing me. I didn’t even see the car before your father swerved to miss me. I’m the reason your parents are dead, Ruby. I can never replace what I’ve stolen from you, but I can stop you from losing yourself.”
The words slice into me and all at once, the agony is no longer just ravaging my body, it’s burning through my soul, too. Grayson is the reason my parents are dead. But he’s the reason I’m alive. Blinking back the stinging in my eyes, I push the new information away. It’s too much to process, too much to feel, just too much. If I try to process it now, I’ll fall apart, and I’m not sure I’ll have the strength to pull myself back together. I’ll deal with it later. If there is a later.
I fight to keep my breathing steady. “How do I stop it?”
Grayson looks like he’s waiting for me to break apart, break down, or try to break him. When no reaction is forthcoming, he visibly resets and follows my lead.
“The infection is in your blood. Draining the contamination and replacing it with clean blood may stop the transformation.”
He nods toward the dresser set against the wall, and I follow Grayson’s line of sight. Blood bags and assorted medical paraphernalia are piled high on the wooden surface. Complex machines and an IV stand are positioned beside them.
“You’re the one that broke into the clinic last night.”
“Of course.” Grayson does not look the least bit contrite.
“I needed supplies.”
After all the ifs and maybes, it’s oddly comforting knowing Grayson has given this plan at least a little forethought.
“I’m guessing that the draining part you mentioned requires you to bite me.” I hug the pillow tighter to my chest. “Will it hurt?”
“My saliva has chemicals that mimic human endorphins. You’ll feel pleasure, not pain.”
I catch my cheek between my teeth. “But if you bite me, won’t it be the same as the wolves? Won’t I become like you instead?”
“Vampires and lycans both have toxins designed to corrupt a victim’s bloodstream. With shifters, it’s spontaneous—injected with every bite while in wolf form. Vampires have full control.
I can bite but not inject venom. Taking blood won’t change you.”
“Okay.” Now that I’ve accepted everything in my world has gone full-tilt topsy-turvy, each new revelation is easier to absorb. Still, I don’t love the idea of having all the blood drained from my body… again. I scratch my nails over the pillowcase, seeking a textural distraction. “So… How long have you been a vampire?”
“A long time.”
“Right, but how long are we talking? Long is subjective, right? The 1940s are a long time ago, but so is ancient Egypt and the Roman empire, so, you know…”
When Grayson’s gaze drifts down to rest on my neck, I have the distinct impression he’s watching the fluttering of my pulse, too quick for my would-be casual conversation.
“I was a Norseman when I was damned.”
My jaw drops open. “A viking ?” At Grayson’s raised brow, I offer a sheepish smile. “Actually, yeah. I can see it.” I feel a little stupid for not seeing it earlier. “Who turned you? Was it—”
“Evans. We don’t have time for this.”
“Sorry. It’s just… I guess I’m a bit nervous, I might be stalling a little. But you’ve done this before, right?”
“No.”
“Are you sure it’s going to work?”
“No.”
“Is there a backup plan?”
“No.”
“And it could kill me?”
Apprehension flickers across Grayson’s face. “Yes.”
I plaster a smile on my face; it trembles a little but holds. Live or die, those are the outcomes I can live with. Either is better than becoming a monster.
“Excellent. What are we waiting for?”