"They'll bring food. That's about it."
Her heart ached for him. "I'm sorry, Sin. No one should be sick alone."
"Yeah, well, we all muddle through, don't we?"
Kat supposed. But it seemed terribly harsh and a wave of guilt went through her. No one should suffer without having someone to take care of them. It broke her heart to think of Sin in this bed with no one to bring him food and check his temperature.
She tried to reach for him, but suddenly the entire room spun and started to fall from the bed.
Sin caught her against him and cursed as he felt the heat coming off her body. She was on fire. "Kat?"
She didn't answer him. Instead, she made a strange gurgling noise.
"Kat? Are you all right? Speak to me!"
"She can't."
He looked to see Zakar in the doorway. "Where the hell have you been?"
"Out," he said with a hostile note in his voice.
"Out where?"
He shrugged nonchalantly. "You've got bigger things to worry over than my previous whereabouts."
"Such as?"
Zakar jerked his chin toward Kat. "Your girlfriend must have been bitten by one of the gallu. What she's doing right now is converting into one of them."
Sin couldn't breathe as his brother's harsh words rang in his ears. He looked down at Kat on his bed, and while she might be burning with a fever, there was no sign of her changing over into a demon. "What do you mean, she's converting? She wasn't bitten."
Zakar indicated her with his hand. "Trust me. I know the symptoms. She's becoming one of them."
Sin cradled her against his chest. Even though she was unconscious, her eyes were half-open. Her body was completely limp. Her features were as beautiful as ever. Calm. Serene.
She wasn't becoming a demon. He refused to believe it. There was no sign of her teeth changing. Of her hands deforming. She looked as she always did.
His brother was wrong. "She's just sick."
Zakar laughed at him. "An immortal goddess, sick? Have you lost your mind?"
"I get sick," he said defensively. "It's possible she gets sick, too."
"Do you really believe that?"
No, but he wanted to, desperately. He honestly couldn't cope with the thought of her becoming a demon he'd have to kill.
Sin tightened his grip on her, afraid Zakar might be right. "What can I do?"
"Kill her."
"Bullshit!"
There was no mercy in Zakar's eyes as he watched Sin. "You know what I know. There's no cure for this. There's no way back. Once the conversion starts, it's over for the victim. All you can do is put her out of her misery."
Still, he denied it. The thought of killing Kat...
He couldn't bear it. In only a short time, she'd come to mean way too much to him. "You're immune to the demon venom."