Page 36 of Hunted By Fae

Guess there’s no need to sanitise the needle, not when I’m doing it like this.

And if I don’t try, if I waste any time, she’ll definitely die within the hour.

If Louise catches me—

I don’t wait for it to happen, for anyone to come back into the rec centre and find me slipping the needle of the syringe full of my blood into Tesni’s arm.

Thank the gods Tess is so fucking pale, I can see all her veins shooting around the soft, fragile skin of her inner arm—and I lock my stare onto one thick vein.

I angle the syringe, and slide it in.

I inject it all.

Maybe it’s enough, but it doesn’t feel like it. Certainly isn’t worth the risk of not doing it again. So I do it again.

And again.

Even a fourth time.

Roughly 500ml of my blood into her body.

I might feel dizzy for a bit, but that’s manageable. People donate blood all the time. About the same amount, too.

I slip the syringe into the bin next the bed—and just as it clatters, the backdoors are knocked open.

I don’t look over my shoulder to see Louise bringing the wheelbarrow inside, I listen to the familiar rolling of the harsh wheels clattering in an annoying echo.

My back to her, to any gazes she might through my way, I am quick to dab a cotton ball over the red spot on Tesni’s limp arm, then toss it into the bin. Then I wipe the damp cloth at her face, at the trail of blood that—if Louise does care to glance at—will reveal her final phase.

I can’t have anyone knowing about that yet.

I need to see if the blood works first.

So now, I just… wait.

SEVEN

BEE

The rise and fall of Tesni’s chest is a lullaby threatening to lure me to sleep.

My temple is rested on my folded arms tucked on the edge of the mattress. Exhaustion wears me down, but I fight the lull.

Gaze glued to her face, I watch for any slight change. So far, none.

No colour has returned to her washed-out complexion.

But Tesni is always so pale.

I sometimes teased her that she’s a glass of almond milk, that watered down effect to her, a translucence of sorts.

I don’t exactly wear a warm hue on my own flesh, not without the aid of summers in Spain, but there’s something hollow about her complexion—just like her eyes that echo with a hundred-mile stare, and even the shade of her hair that seemed to want to be strawberry, but only ever had enough pigmentation to become a burnt-ish sort of blonde.

I look up the length of her blanket-draped form to her face, sweaty and pasty, and I see the friend, thesoul sister, that will take a part of me with her if the plague wins this battle.

And it is battling.

My blood did something.