Page 35 of Hunted By Fae

To have my blood…?

My lips part.

The idea is a sick one.

I blink on the poorly vision that she is, the sickliness eating away at her, inching her closer to death. She’s probably hours away from it, if not moments.

So… what’s the harm in trying?

Maybe my blood will save her.

Maybe it will give her the strength to fight.

Maybe this idea is absolutely fucking nuts… but I can’tnottry.

I kick up from the chair and, throwing a look around the rec centre, see that just one nurse is still here.

Smith is in the kitchen, Louise has been in and out with the bodies of the dead, and I guess she’s back outside again.

If there’s a time for it, it’s now.

I stalk for the metal cupboard across the court. It’s all stocked neatly with bandages, gauzes, phials—but I lock my sights onto one row.

Nurse Miller doesn’t pay any attention to me, not even with a curious glance, as she holds the hand of a dying man and whispers softly to him.

I know he’s dying, on the verge, because in their final hour of the black plague, they bleed. Eyes, nose, mouth, ears. Then a seizure strikes them. It ends with their heart stopped—and they are gone.

I won’t let that happen to Tess.

I grab two things from the medical cupboard.

The biggest syringe I can find and a rubber strap.

Truthfully, I have no fucking idea how to do this, but I rush back to her bedside with purpose.

My heart slingshots at the sight of her.

I falter.

A trickle of fresh, crimson blood slips out of her left nostril. It trails over the curve of her top lip and lingers on her cheek.

Her final hour has begun.

I throw myself to the edge of her bed.

I waste no time before I’m ripping the packaging apart, then winding the rubber strap around my bicep. It works, fast, and the veins protrude from the inner soft curve of my arm.

I glide the needle of the syringe into the particularly blue, bulging vein.

It’s awkward to do this on myself, to draw out my own blood with just one hand manoeuvring a syringe so big. It takes a moment longer than I have to waste before the syringe is full of my blood.

Crimson.

Looks just like hers.

But it’s not—and it might just save her life.

I slide the needle out before I move for her.