a dragon had breathed fire across the room.
Nita healed her burst eardrums, and sound flooded back into the world. The fire alarm rang tinnily, and the faint sounds of screams from outside echoed through the room like the voices of ghosts.
Her mother was gone.
Chunks of cooked flesh were spattered across the room, charred beyond all recognition. A few pieces of a spinal column lay on the floor, and one of her mother’s boots was still mostly intact, though the leg it had been attached to was gone.
There was nothing else.
She let out a shuddering breath, stumbled to her feet, and took a tentative step forward, needing to see, to make sure that her mother was gone.
But not even bones, only ashes remained when Nita rose. Not even her mother could put herself back together after being blown to literal smithereens.
Nita’s mother was dead. And she was never, ever going to hurt Nita again.
Nita let out a long breath. She’d expected to feel relieved, but she didn’t. Just vaguely satisfied, like she’d finally completed a long overdue task.
She walked slowly across the room, kicking a fragment of skull out of her way, and left through the shattered hole where the door used to be, down the blackened hallway, its walls on fire, and to the stairwell.
Her mother would never control Nita’s life again.
Forty-One
NITA SPENT the next three days at the hospital by Kovit’s bedside.
Kovit had a room to himself in the far corner of the hospital. Normally, hospital rooms were shared, but because of Kovit’s notoriety in the news, other patients’ misgivings, and the fact that he unconsciously fed on the pain of everyone around him, the hospital had agreed to give him his own room.
A policeman stood outside the door, and Nita wasn’t sure if it was to make sure Kovit didn’t escape or protect him from the zealots, reporters, and curious bystanders who kept trying to swing by his room. Either way, while Kovit was unconscious and helpless, it was a boon to have the police presence—it saved Nita a lot of effort.
When he’d come out of surgery, Nita had asked the doctor his prognosis.
“It’s too early to tell. Honestly, I never thought he’d survive the surgery. He shouldn’t have.” The doctor had frowned softly. “I’ve never worked on a zannie before, though. Do they have healing skills like vampires?”
“Not that I’m aware of,” Nita had whispered, but she’d thought about the vampire blood Kovit had drunk that morning, known to improve healing and lifespan, and her own blood running through his veins. Maybe it had been enough.
“Ah. Well. He’s been lucky so far.” The doctor had given her an encouraging smile. “We’ll see if it continues. We’re not out of the woods yet.”
Nita hadn’t been able to return the smile, or any of the other optimistic comments the doctor had made in the days since then. She just listened to the steady beep of the heart monitor and watched as Kovit’s sleeping face grew more and more hollow.
Outside the hospital, the world changed and morphed. Countries suspended INHUP operations pending investigations, exposés were done on various INHUP founders. The Dangerous Unnaturals List was taken down in most countries—most, but not all. Never all.
Nita had leaked what information she could to the press, and a reporter had been able to get access to INHUP’s research facility in France, where he’d filmed and photographed a comatose Nadezhda Novikova. She looked young, far too young for her age, and rumors and theories flew fast and furious. The pictures were analyzed, and old scarring on her neck made people scream vampire, but it wasn’t until one of the scientists at the research facility spoke out that the theory was confirmed.
For days, headlines blared articles with titles like Dangerous to Us, or Dangerous to INHUP’s Internal Politics? The DUL History Exposed. And in the center of it all, the scandal around Kovit raged, information and misinformation flying fast and free. A transcript of Nita’s first conversation with the police right after Kovit was shot was leaked to the press and made more headlines, igniting further speculation. Kovit’s sister had been fired from INHUP and had vanished. Reporters and private investigators tried to hunt her down, but so far no one had found her, and she wasn’t speaking out.
Police had come twice more to visit Nita and ask her questions. She kept her story as consistent as she could, making sure all the lies she wove in were things that only INHUP could prove