Nightshade

by Michelle Rowen

  I couldn’t help but hear the twist of pain in his voice and wished I could take it away. But as much as I wanted to I couldn’t exactly help with a lifetime of emotional neglect. Hell, I was surprised Declan had turned out as well as he had.

  Then again, he did kill people for a living.

  I put the antidote case down on the edge of the bed. The hopelessness I’d felt downstairs started to sink in further. “I honestly don’t know what to do.”

  “Then let me make the decision for you,” he said fiercely. “Let me inject you with the cleanser right now and you go back to the life I stole you away from. Forget about all of this.”

  “Forget about you?” I asked, my throat tight.

  He nodded. “It’s better this way. And it’s what you want. For this all to go away. For you to wake up from this nightmare. And the solution is right here.” He picked up the case and unzipped it.

  “But Matthias—”

  “Matthias will be dealt with. Don’t believe for one moment that the Nightshade formula is the only solution to this problem. We’ll figure out another way that doesn’t result in you getting killed.” His expression hardened. “I said I’d protect you, and that’s exactly what I’m going to do, even if it means I’ll never see you again.”

  I met his gaze and I saw pain there. It was probably the same pain reflected in my own eyes. “I don’t know.”

  “Then know this: They’re wrong about you. You’re a civilian. Completely untrained. I’ve seen courage in you and a hell of a lot of tenacity and stubbornness, but faced with a vampire king and a trip down to the bowels of his lair with no way out?” He shook his head. “You’d crumble under the pressure. He’d see you as a plant and order your death before he even came close to tasting your blood. Then this would all be for nothing. You see?”

  I frowned at that. “You don’t think I could do it?”

  “No, I don’t,” he said firmly.

  I didn’t even take offense at his lack of confidence in my Mata Hari abilities since he was absolutely right. Whatever qualms I had about taking the antidote faded away.

  I would fail. Matthias would still be alive and I’d be dead.

  Declan must have seen the change in my eyes because his tense, worried expression relaxed a fraction. “Good. Then it’s settled.”

  “So I’m just supposed to go back to my old life and pretend none of this ever happened to me? Knowing about the looming threat of Matthias?”

  “You’ll forget. It’s only been three days, after all.”

  “I won’t forget you.”

  He turned away so he wasn’t looking at me directly. “So you agree with me. You’ll take the cleanser now.”

  “Yes, I agree.”

  He didn’t wait to see if I’d change my mind again. He immediately got the vial of amber liquid out of the case and filled the syringe with it.

  “You look like you’ve done this before,” I said.

  “Only thousands of times.”

  I looked down at myself. “Where’s the best place?”

  “Stomach. It hurts less there.” His lips twitched a little. “Or your ass. Lady’s choice.”

  “Let’s go with the stomach.”

  “Just relax.”

  “That’s not exactly a word that’s in my vocabulary this week.”

  “Pull up your shirt.”

  “Yes, sir.” I rolled up the edge of my tank top to bare my abdomen. Declan stroked his fingers over the skin just beneath my belly button and, despite my anxiety, a ripple of heat moved through me at his touch. It was a reminder of what had happened between us only an hour ago.

  “Here’s good. I was told earlier it doesn’t have to be directly into a vein. It’ll find its way.” He didn’t hesitate, perhaps thinking I was going to have second thoughts and want to be sent to Matthias on the next shuttle to the underground. The needle pinched as it slid into my flesh and I held my breath as Declan released the blood cleanser into me.

  The difference between life and death took no time at all.

  “Thank you.” I touched his face and then hugged him against me. His body was so hard, all angles. There was no fat, no softness to him. He stroked my hair and held me gently against him as if he was afraid of breaking me.

  “When the drug’s finished working and you’ve had some time to rest, I’ll drive you back to San Diego,” he whispered.

  “What about the police? Won’t they be looking for you?”

  He shook his head. “We have people all over the place including with the police. Our work here is sanctioned by the government. They like to keep it quiet and cover up any incidents. This isn’t the first time I’ve had to take somebody out in a public place. It’s usually quickly swept under the carpet. Though, I do wish I blended in a bit better. Sometimes I get recognized by people with good memories, but it hasn’t been a big problem in the past. People tend to forget the things they want to.” He straightened up. “You should go to bed.”

  I grinned despite myself and slid my hands over his broad shoulders. “Is that a suggestion or a proposition?”

  He smiled faintly back at me. “A suggestion. The cleanser will make you very tired for at least twenty-four hours. I spoke with Dr. Gray about the side effects when it was delivered earlier.”

  He was right. I already felt weary right down to my bones. “I need to have a shower first.”

  He nodded. “I’ll stay close in case you need me.”

  I was about to say I did need him. That I wouldn’t forget him. That maybe I didn’t want to simply leave and go back to my old life when the poison was out of my system. But I didn’t say it. Things were complicated enough without me adding to the mix.

  After brushing his lips softly and chastely against my forehead again, Declan left me in the room alone.

  My head felt cloudy and the deepening weariness quickly spread through me. I felt like sleeping for about three days straight. But first, I really did want that shower.

  I stepped under the hot jet of water and washed my hair. Noah had bought me shampoo and conditioner from his Walmart trip, as well as shower gel. He even had good enough taste not to go generic. The warmth beat into me and I willed the anxiety to leave my body. However, it seemed to be in no hurry to depart.

  I tried to let the memories of everything that had happened to me over the last few days wash away. From being grabbed by Anderson and injected, to Declan kidnapping me, to the blood servants at the gas station and abandoned house, the vampire at the diner, the arrival here, Tobias’s death when he bit me, my escape attempt, the monster dhampyr lunging at me, and finally how good it had felt to be with Declan in my temporary bed only a short time ago.

  There were definitely some low points and some high points in the mix.

  I turned off the taps and wrung the water out of my hair. Then I grabbed a bath towel and wrapped it around myself. The mirror was fogged up so I used my forearm to clear it. I looked tired and gaunt. I ran my fingertips along my cheekbone, then down my neck—which still bore the bruises from Anderson’s brutal attack with the syringe—and the fading bite marks.

  “Back to normal soon,” I told my reflection. “Promise.”

  Then I cocked my head to the side and drew a little closer to the mirror. Strange, my eyes looked darker than normal. They were normally blue like my mother’s had been—cornflower blue, she’d always called them. But at the moment, they looked almost ... black.

  A wave of pain suddenly crashed into me with absolutely no warning. It felt as if I’d been slit right through my center. I braced myself against the counter.

  “What the hell ... ?” I began, before I was hit again, even harder than before and I cried out.

  Agony. My chest felt as if it was going to explode, my heart rate tripled in seconds, every beat helping to radiate the searing pain through my core. A primal scream tore from my throat.

  Only a few seconds later, I felt hands on me just as my legs gave out. Declan was there and he turned me ar
ound, holding me up on my feet or else I’d collapse to the ground.

  “What’s wrong?” he demanded.

  “I ... I don’t know.”

  His once emotionless face was now etched in concern. “Another spell? Maybe this is what happens as the poison is getting out of your body. Maybe this is how the blood cleanser works.”

  I gasped for breath. “No ... this is different. It feels different. Worse.”

  I cried out again and clung to him as the pain made it impossible for me to speak.

  It wasn’t a blood cleanser. The thought came to me in the middle of the white-hot agony. Dr. Gray said it had been used before successfully. She’d told Declan about the side effects. She would have warned me it would make me feel as if my body was literally turning inside out.

  “Look at me,” Declan said harshly. “Look at me, Jill.”

  I tried. I wasn’t entirely sure I was successful since the world blurred in front of my eyes.

  Declan held my face between his hands. “Fuck. Your eyes are ... I ... I need to get help.”

  “Don’t ... please, Declan. Don’t leave me.”

  He didn’t leave. Instead, he yelled for help. Yelled for Carson or Noah or somebody to come here and help us. I didn’t know how they’d help, though. I was going to die from this. No one could possibly live through this much pain.

  Declan’s blurred expression changed. His eye widened and he swore again, softly as if he was seeing something that scared even him—scared someone who killed vampires on a regular basis.

  That wasn’t a very good sign.

  I turned as much as I could toward the mirror. My eyes were black now, not even an illusion of them being blue anymore. Tears, black like tar, slipped down my cheeks from the corners of my eyes. And my hair ...

  My hair.

  There was a darkness oozing from my scalp. I reached up but Declan caught my wrist.

  “Don’t touch it,” he said.

  Don’t touch it? But it was already on me. Already in me. This darkness slid through my blond hair as if it was inside the shaft itself. My hair slowly turned black from root to tip. Black like my eyes. Black like the substance I’d been vomiting for three days that I didn’t know what it was. Black like the tears I was shedding right now.

  Nightshade.

  The next thing I knew, I was in the shower and the water running hot enough for me to notice through my pain. Declan was trying to wash the Nightshade off me. I saw the facecloth he held, previously white, and now streaked with black. The bath towel I’d wrapped around me fell to the base of the shower stall.

  “What the hell?” Noah had run into the bathroom, alerted by Declan’s call. “What the fuck are you doing to her?”

  He sounded furious, as if he’d walked in on something horrible. Well, he had. I could only imagine what it looked like from Noah’s perspective. Declan, fully dressed, holding my limp naked body in the shower as he attempted to wash the blackness out of my hair and off my face.

  Unfortunately I couldn’t speak or move at the moment. The pain continued to tear at me with its sharp teeth and claws. It felt as if I was being devoured from the inside by something invisible. Something that hated me.

  “The cleanser,” Declan snapped. “This is what it did to her.”

  Noah held his hand to his mouth, his eyes wide with shock. “The cleanser wouldn’t have done that. What did she take? What did it look like?”

  “It was yellow. A dark yellow color. One vial in a case. Dr. Gray gave it to her and told her it was the cleanser.”

  “No,” Noah said, panicky. “The cleanser serum was clear—I saw it. The yellow serum ... that was the fusing potion.”

  “What the fuck are you talking about?”

  “Fusing potion ... it was being developed for the original agent who was supposed to be injected with the Nightshade. I went through the files tonight—although, as usual, I wasn’t exactly supposed to. But top-secret files really should be locked away somewhere as far as I’m concerned. I’m very nosy!”

  The pain finally began to ease off just a little. I was trembling despite the hot water. Declan pulled his fingers through my drenched hair. He had me against him tightly, my front against his chest. My head rested limply against his shoulder and I forced myself to listen to Noah to help figure out what was going on.

  “What did the file say?” Declan demanded.

  “The side effects associated with the Nightshade—they’re caused because it doesn’t bond properly with the blood. So the body ... it attempts to reject it, sort of like if she got a new organ. The fusing potion was created to help fast-forward the body’s acceptance of the formula.”

  “I don’t understand what you’re talking about.”

  “Okay, okay.” Noah wrung his hands. “The fuser bonds her blood to the Nightshade so that her blood cells are literally infused with the poison instead of existing side by side. And holy hell, I bet that hurt like a bastard. Parachemistry is not the gentlest science in the universe.”

  My blood. Changed. Bonded with poison.

  “What are the complications?”

  “Is she unconscious?” Noah asked.

  “What the fuck are the complications?” Declan repeated, louder. “What did you read?”

  “Well,” Noah swallowed nervously. “The big one is death, of course. Nightshade is a new formula, but fusing potions have been used before to help merge foreign compounds to human blood.”

  A short pause before Declan barked, “And what else?”

  “It’s always been tested on nonhuman subjects—and ... and never successfully. So ... shit. I don’t know what to tell you, Dec. It doesn’t look good.”

  Never been used successfully before. And never on a human subject. I was a walking, talking lab rat. Currently without the walking and talking.

  “Dr. Gray did this to her.” Declan pushed the wet hair back from my face. My eyes were open but rolled back into my head. “She lied to us, made us believe this was the cleanser.”

  I think I was in shock. But the pain was finally subsiding like a malevolent tide.

  “Maybe she had the formulas mixed up,” Noah reasoned.

  “You really think so?”

  “No. But I don’t want to believe she’d be this heartless.”

  “She wants Jill to go to Matthias’s lair to kill him. And when Jill said no, Dr. Gray took it into her own hands to make sure she didn’t have a choice in the matter. Fucking bitch.” Declan reached past me to the faucet. The hot water quickly turned cold. I gasped out loud. “Good. You have to snap out of it, Jill. Now. There’s no time.”

  “B-bully.” My teeth were chattering.

  He looked relieved I was vaguely coherent. His gaze flicked to Noah. “I’m taking her out of here.”

  “You think that’s a good idea?”

  “A real hospital might be able to help her. I never gave the thought a chance before, but now ...”

  “There’s no reversal. They can’t treat her with dialysis. It’s too late for that. The fuser worked. I mean, fuck me. Look at her hair. And her eyes. But if she made it this far without croaking ... that’s a good sign, right?”

  Declan lifted me in his arms. “Go get her clothes.”

  Noah didn’t argue. He disappeared into the bedroom.

  Declan set me on my feet. My legs felt like Jell-O. He ran a fresh towel over me to dry me. “Jill, can you hear me?”

  I nodded shakily. “Y-yes.”

  “Did you hear what Noah said?”

  I nodded again.

  “And you’re okay with that? With my taking you out of here?”

  “B-better ... late than n-never.” My teeth chattered. Now that the pain had faded, it felt as if ice water slid through my veins, numbing me.

  Noah returned with some clothes, black yoga pants and a light blue tank, and Declan hurriedly dressed me. I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror. My skin was pale white. And my long hair, previously blond with a bit of help from the salon ever
y other month, was now jet black. Ditto the irises of my eyes.

  “Oh my God,” was all I was able to say about that disturbing sight.

  “Where are Carson and Dr. Gray?” Declan asked.

  “Downstairs still. Waiting a bit before they check on Jill. I don’t think they expected her to take the so-called cleanser quite this quickly.”

  “When they come looking for her, you can tell them I overpowered you.”

  “Not hard to believe. Uh, will you be back?”

  “Yes,” Declan hissed. “And then me and my father are going to have a talk about Dr. Gray.”

  He didn’t make it sound like a friendly father/son discussion over a couple of beers.

  “Good luck,” Noah said, casting a worried glance at me.

  Declan carried me in his arms out of the bedroom and down the stairs without another word to Noah. Before I knew it, I felt the hot night air on my face. Even though it was dark out it had to be close to ninety degrees outside. I heard a car door open and then he gently placed me inside on the passenger seat.

  “Whose car is this?” I asked, my voice barely audible.

  “Carson’s. Lending me his car is the least he can do tonight.”

  “Where are we going?”

  “There’s a town twenty miles from here. They have a hospital. We’ll figure this out, Jill. Just hold on.”

  Was Noah right? Was I going to die? It had been my biggest fear since the moment I’d been grabbed in my office building’s lobby. Death. I still hadn’t had enough time to adjust to that possibility. There had been a time in my life when I’d wanted to die. Life seemed too difficult to handle—I had the scar on my wrist to prove it. But I’d battled through that depression. I’d just really started getting better when this happened.

  And at the moment, I felt weak and exhausted from whatever that fusing potion had done to my body. As far as I knew, I’d be having another wave of pain any minute, and I honestly didn’t think I’d live through it. I wasn’t even sure I wanted to live through it. Compared to what I’d just experienced in the bathroom, a quick death was my preference by far.

  No one stopped us as Declan drove out of the tiny town.

  “I’m not in pain anymore.” I was too weak to move. My body felt as if it had just participated in a triathlon from hell.