When she reopened her eyes, she found him staring at her, and she was struck by how strong he had to have been to get over the torture as much as he had.
“You never lied to me before,” he said grimly. “Given what’s at stake, I’ll ask you to pay me the respect of not starting now.”
Xhex took a deep breath and felt like the floor was opening beneath her feet so some version of Dhunhd could swallow her down. She was responsible for everything that had been done to him.
“The truth is …” Xhex wished she had a better answer for him. “I don’t know. Everyone’s different. Some people rebound, eventually. Some …”
“Stay insane, right?” When she didn’t reply, he muttered, “Jesus Christ, Xhex, I need to know where I stand. I got a brief return to what seemed like normal when I was getting us out of that lab, but now … I don’t know whether that was a hiccup or a trajectory out of this hell I’ve been in.”
“I can’t answer that. No one can.”
“I’ve been twenty years off the planet, unable to connect. I guess I was just hoping that the way I felt on that evac means I’m … okay.”
The sadness in his voice was backed up by fear, and Xhex found herself wanting to punch the concrete wall. “This is all my fault—”
“No,” he snapped. “You don’t own any of this. I decided to come after you, and your relations did what they did to me. Did what they did to you, too.”
“But you had no idea what you were walking into. And that is on me. And then you protected me after I burned that first lab down by letting the Brotherhood think it was you.”
Murhder went back to focusing on the floor, and as things got quiet, she knew he was replaying all kinds of bad scenes in his head.
“When do we ever know what we’re walking into,” he said in a low voice. “Destiny is not a straightaway. It’s cluttered with corners and all of them are dark. We make the turns we do … and find ourselves where we are.”
As he stopped talking, she became very aware that she owed him.
The question was, how did she repay the debt he refused to acknowledge or entertain.
The next time Sarah looked at the clock—the one on the lower right-hand corner of a computer screen—the lineup of numbers read five eighteen. Sitting back in the office chair, she cracked her spine and wondered whether that was five in the afternoon or five in the morning. It had to be afternoon, she decided, as in late in the afternoon, almost twenty-four hours after she had driven to BioMed with her backpack and those credentials from the safety deposit box.
As well as some vague idea of rescuing someone she wasn’t sure actually existed.
What a day. After hours and hours of studying John’s case, her mind was spinning with everything she had learned. After studying slides and test results, and talking with the staff, and processing it all through the filter of her own training and experience she was …
Jazzed.
It was the only way to describe the feeling. She was alive. Excited. Focused.
She did not like the fact that John had something wrong with him. Or that his loved ones were worried. But the idea of solving the problem, getting him cured, returning him to full health? In this new landscape of anatomy and immune system? Given that no one was really sure what the pathogen was?
It was the chance of a lifetime in a totally new horizon.
And of course, in the back of her mind, she was wondering how all of this could help humans with cancer. Vampires were apparently like sharks. They didn’t get the disease. So why not? Especially as so much about them was the same.
Although so much was different, too.
“You hungry?”
The sound of the deep male voice behind her made her nape tingle—and not because she was frightened.
Spinning her chair around, she looked up at her commando. He’d taken a shower and changed clothes, although now everything was black, just like the other men—males. His long red-and-black hair was damp on the ends and he smelled … heavenly.
“Is Nate still okay?” she said.
“He’s doing very well. He ate something and now he’s resting.”
“What did he have?” Like he was her kid or something. “That ginger and rice—”