Another kick, a quickening of his pulse.
I nuzzled into him, shivering with hope. “I’ll always be grateful that you found me. So glad that you gave me your trust. So honoured that you put your life before my own. But I need you to come back now, Sully. I miss you so much. It’s killing me not being able to talk to you. Not seeing your eyes or hearing your voice. I know you’re in there. Your heart reacts to mine because we’re linked in every possible way. So why won’t you wake?”
Tears squeezed from my eyes as I murmured, “What’s trapping you? What can I do to bring you back?”
The monitor recorded a skip of nonsense. A flurry of half-beats and speed.
I sat up, my own heart pattering with growing worry. “You know...if you can hear me, I’ll tell you anything you want to know.” I switched to happier subjects as his pulse continued to scatter across the screen.
I never took my eyes off the irregular hills and valleys. Was this development a good thing or bad?
Keeping my hand on his, I murmured, “Are you hungry? Do you miss your chef’s delicacies?” I kissed his cheek and lay alongside him. “If you wake, I’ll gladly make whatever you want. How about some of those mushroom stuffed aubergines? Or that tempeh satay? Your food is one of the first things I fell in love with. And Lebah? Seeing where you grow all your fruit and vegetables...it made me fall in love with you because you have so many pieces to fall in love with. So many facets to discover.”
His pulse kicked again, making my brow pucker in concern.
“Sully...”
Goosebumps sprang over me as I put my hand in his. “Sully...if you can hear me...please squeeze my fingers.”
I stared and stared.
I waited and waited
I begged and hoped and prayed.
And nothing.
“Am I interrupting?” Dr Campbell smiled and waved from the threshold of Sully’s bedroom. The critters that shared his home had grown used to the influx of guests, staying on their perches and chosen rafters.
Dr Campbell looked around as a butterfly fluttered past followed by a hungry kingfisher. One of the Komodo dragons that Sully promised wouldn’t eat my toes lumbered out of the bathroom where he’d been sunning himself while Nirvana splashed musically in the background.
I winced as a dragonfly flew too close to a gecko who’d positioned himself by Sully’s pillow; his tongue snatched the iridescent jewel from the sky and munched on folded wings.
Glancing at the heart monitor, my concern faded a little.
The peaks and blips were back to a steady line, perhaps a little faster than normal but strong and sure.
Dr Campbell cleared his throat. “Is this a zoo or a bedroom?”
“It’s both...a symbiotic existence.” I forced a smile and sat up, pushing aside my long hair that I hadn’t bothered to wash or brush in days. “Everything okay? Is Jess alright? What about Skittles?”
That was another thing I found exceedingly hard.
I wanted to go see Skittles so, so badly.
I missed her.
I would’ve given anything to run to the infirmary and tell her I loved her and missed her, but I was under villa arrest, and as much as my body itched for a swim in the sea and my heart begged to see Skittles, I would never leave Sully...under any circumstances.
My patience would be rewarded. My steadfastness would bring him back.
You’ll see.
“Yes, fine. Everyone is healing. In fact...” Dr Campbell disappeared for a moment, returning with a tray and a tiny perch that’d been sticky taped in place. “I have someone who wants to see you.”
“Skittles!”
I leaped off the bed, only to freeze.
The tiny caique went crazy. Her twirls and chirps broke my heart as I backed up and rested my fingertips on Sully’s arm.
I was unbelievably happy to see her but absolutely terrified of losing Sully.
I can’t let go.
Dr Campbell saw my pain. Marching toward me, he held out Skittles on her tray. Her little green wing still held a splint and bandage but that didn’t stop her from trying to flap and fly to my finger.
I shivered in pure delight as I held out my hand and Skittles immediately hopped onto me, her talons wrapping tight around me almost like an avian version of a hug.
“Hey, tiny bird.” I brought her to my lips, kissing the top of her feathered head. “You’re looking better.”
She puffed up and launched into a happy song complete with squawks and cackles, a serenade interrupted with scolding.
I laughed and looked at Dr Campbell. “Thanks for bringing her. Can she stay here? I’ll look after her.”
“Of course. I figured you missed her and aren’t exactly in the position to leave your needy patient.” He looked at Sully. He seemed whiter than usual. His island tan had faded a few days ago, but now his skin was almost translucent.
Icy worry dripped down my spine.
He frowned. “Is he well?”
I licked my lips, panic a common sensation in my chest, billowing out of control. “I...I don’t know. His heart has been spiking. I thought he might be waking up so I was talking to him.”
“What did you say?”
“Just about how we met and that I love him and can’t wait to share life with him again.”
“Huh.” Dr Campbell sat down on the edge of the bed just as Pika swooped in.
My shoulders slouched in relief as the crazed parrot tore around the room at warp speed, his squeaks and caws so at odds with Skittles’s scolding song. He sounded positively pissed off. His wings snapped with annoyance. His black eyes gleamed with rage.
“Where have you been?” I asked as the parrot tucked in his wings and dive-bombed Sully. He jerked them out at the last second, halting his arrow and plopping onto Sully’s chest.
He hadn’t visited Sully once.
I hadn’t seen him since the beach when we first arrived, and I’d been at a loss as to how to bring him home. Sully needed his feathered friend. He needed something else to cling to, besides me.
But I couldn’t explain to a bird that Sully wasn’t ignoring him intentionally. That he didn’t want to be this silent and still.
“Pika...” I went to Sully’s head while Dr Campbell took Sully’s wrist and counted his pulse. Worry clouded his elderly face.
Unable to fret about yet more things I couldn’t control, I focused on helping Pika first. “He still loves you, Pika. He...just can’t wake up right now.”
“Lazy! Lazy! LAZY!” Pika stomped around, his little legs soaring up and slapping down on Sully’s chest. “Sully. Pika. Hungry. Tired. Now, now. Lazy!”
The spew of English made no sense. The poor bird chaotic with confusion.
Skittles slouched on my finger, eyeing up her broken-hearted brother. She squeaked softly, ripping Pika’s beady-eyed attention to her. He let out a cry so full of hurt he even made Dr Campbell suck in a breath.
And then his tyranny began anew, hopping onto Sully’s cheek and scratching at the thick beard that hid his face. “Lazy!”
“Pika...it’s okay.” I tried to grab him, but he skipped to Sully’s left eye and pecked at his eyelashes. “Hey, don’t do that.”
Pika took wing, fluttering like a mad Ping-Pong ball around the rafters. He continued to squeak and chatter, his speed turning him into a blur.
“Slow down. You’re going to hurt yourself!” I cringed each time he went too close to the wall. The sugar glider scurried from its snoozing spot, swatting at Pika as he rudely interrupted his nap.
Skittles made no move to flap after him, either aware her wing hurt or smart just to let her brother have his temper tantrum.
Finally, Pika once again dive-bombed Sully, landed on his head, and buried himself in Sully’s hair before squeaking with grief. His little feathered chest flurried from exertion, and his eyes closed, rubbing his beak through Sully’s strands, preening him with the softest chatter of sadness.
Oh, God.
How could a tiny parrot symbolise everything I was feeling?
The chaos for a cure? The impatience for this to be over? The ever-constant panic that he might never wake up? And the all-powering need to be close, to ensure he kept breathing even if it meant I had to force that breath into his lungs myself?
“Eleanor.” Dr Campbell looked up, catching my stare.
Everything inside me froze. One giant blizzard frosting everything. “What...what is it?”
“Call the other doctors. I think we have a problem.”
“What? What problem?” My screech sounded like Pika’s, manic and desperate. “What’s happened?” Launching onto the bed, I smothered myself alongside Sully.
His skin was on fire.
Sweat drenching him.
No!
Skittles joined Pika in Sully’s hair as I hugged him and kissed him and cursed, cursed myself.
I hadn’t been touching him.
I’d forgotten while welcoming Skittles.
This is all my fault!
“Don’t do this, Sully. I’m here. See? Feel me? I’m here.” I clutched his fingers. I kissed his palm. “Wake up.”
The heart rate monitor let out a tattered screeching beep, bringing the Geneva doctors running from the living room. Louise took one look at Dr Campbell’s concern and my mania beside him and leaped into action.
Checking Sully’s vitals, she stayed calm even as the monitor screamed with a slew of irregular thrums.
Sully’s heart wasn’t crashing like normal.
His pulse wasn’t dropping or growing weak.
It was skyrocketing.
“He’s at two hundred and thirty beats per minute.” Louise snapped her fingers and pointed at one of her colleagues. “Get the defib ready. If he flat lines again, be ready.”
“God!” I pressed my head into Sully’s neck, inhaling the wrongness of him. The sickness, the staleness. “Come on. What are you doing? Stop it, Sullivan. Just wake up and stop this!”
His heart rate climbed again.
“Two forty. Shit!” Louise shoved Dr Campbell aside as she wheeled a machine toward the bed.
“Do something. Stop it!” I cried.
“We can’t stop it,” Louise barked. “This isn’t treatable, not in his current condition. We have to deal with the aftermath once his system reboots.”
“He’ll die.”
“He’s moments away from cardiac arrest. His heartbeat is too fast. The only thing to do is to shock him when he reaches the end.”
“What about a beta blocker?” Dr Campbell asked. “Elixir has a habit of causing arrhythmia. Beta blockers—”
“No. All drugs are risky in his current weakness.” She crossed her arms. “Beta blockers might crash him.”
“Two-sixty!” one of the other doctors yelped. “He’s not going to make it.”
“No! NO!”
Pika screeched as I swooped to my knees.
Skittles hopped out of my way as I cupped Sully’s head and pressed my lips to his.
I kissed him.
Properly kissed him.
I drove my tongue down his throat, and I tasted the death that Sully had ingested. I blew air past his tongue and drove my hands against his mayhem-mangled heart. And I snarled with every temper and fury I ever felt.
I embraced the heat.
I swallowed the fire.
If he wanted to die...so be it, but he would do it with my words chasing him to the grave and my broken heart scattered at his feet.
“Sully Sinclair, you listen to me. Whatever you’re doing. Whatever you see or hear or feel...stop it! I love you. That’s all you need to focus on. I. love. You. I love you, and I’m not leaving, but if you leave me, you son of a bitch, I will never think about you again. I will erase all memory of you. I will sell myself to the nearest bastard and let him hurt me until the day I die because no one could ever hurt me as much as you are right now.”
I slapped him. “So fight. Fight for me, you bastard. Otherwise, you kill both of us. Do you hear me? You die, I die. Is that what you want? Because if it is, keep going. Die for all I fucking care. Give up after everything we’ve done for you. Go on. Take my fucking heart and—”
“He’s in a tachyarrhythmia. Three fifty BPM.” Louise lost her calm bedside manner.
Pika took wing.
Skittles scurried away.
And I went fucking wild.
Chapter Twenty-Four
SOMETHING STRUCK ME.
Over and over.
Pain on top of pain.
But the external pain was nothing, fucking nothing, to the hellfire I now existed in.
I remembered.
All of it.
Thanks to Eleanor, she’d unlocked my broken mind.
Her stories of our beginning.
Her murmurings of love at first sight and belonging.
Fuck!
It unlocked the gates.
It granted back my sins.
It poured them down a chute until I drowned beneath them.
Memory after memory.
Realisation after realisation.
Of what I was.
Of what I am.
I couldn’t escape.
It wouldn’t stop.
I thought my love was pure. I believed I was a simple man who loved a simple girl. That we’d found each other through simple measures and lived a simple life.
Fuck!
I was the antichrist.
Diabolus.
A demon’s brother, devil’s protégé, and Prince of Fucking Darkness.
That was why I couldn’t wake up.
Why the blackness refused to let me go.
This was where I belonged.
In the shadows and the inky shade where only filth survived.
Every despicable thing I’d done.
Every girl I’d purchased.
Every guest I’d indulged.
Every vial of elixir.
Every program of Euphoria.
Every bite of Drake’s torture.
FUCK!
Flames of absolute damnation obliterated the darkness I’d been living in.
A fire struck into full catastrophe, ready to burn me alive.
Truth became my pyre.
This was my cremation.
My systematic incineration.
Every disgusting act.
Every murder.
Every life.
I’d skinned a woman for her refusal to leave the fur trade.
Bludgeoned a man for his role in slaughterhouses.
Poisoned and watched my parents drown.
Trapped my brother in a VR world and had animals tear him limb from limb.
I’d used people for my own gains and failed all the creatures I’d tried to save.
I was worthless.
Less than worthless...I was scum.
Who the hell could love me?
Who the fuck could even look at me after what I’d done?
Flames licked around my non-existent legs.
My legs might not exist, but the pain did.
Pain was my punishment.
It chewed through me until my bones turned to char. Flames snarled over my skin, turning my corpse into dust.
My organs popped and sizzled.
My heart shrivelled up and vanished in an inferno.
And I recalled why I couldn’t trust.
Why I couldn’t get close.
Why I couldn’t be happy.
Because it was all my fucking fault.
I was the product of my end.
I’d chosen my path.
I’d stolen every drop of happiness from others because I would never experience such joy.
Until her.
Until the dream turned nightmare.
Until I purchased a figment of my imagination.
A speck of fucking hope.
That was how I’d come to know Eleanor.
I’d bought her.
I’d requested men to grab he
r, steal her, and send her to my shores.
What a fucking monster.
I’d torn her from her friends and family.
I’d trapped her and molested her.
I’d stolen her heart and left her for vengeance and now...
Now, I wanted to fucking die.
I intended to keep my promise.
I didn’t deserve to live.
Two brothers who were the epitome of evil would be gone, and the world would be a safer place.
My body seized.
I gasped as the flames crept higher, burning my cock, my stomach, my lungs.
It took everything.
It scorched me, blackened me, destroyed me.
Something sharp struck my face.
A parrot squawk ripped through my ears.
Pika.
Even the parrot that I’d loved for half of my life couldn’t absolve me.
I’d killed on his behalf.
I’d arranged for the deaths of so many men who still used animals as their test subjects.
Blood suddenly poured into my prison.
A tsunami of crimson life force, hissing with hate as it met the flames of my cremation.
It painted my flame-riddled corpse.
It clung to me.
The blood of my past.
The blood of my truth.
It poured down my throat.
It struck a match on my soul.
Fire howled.
Pain exploded.
And I burned out.
My invisible form collapsed into a pile of bone charcoal.
Traffickers.
Purchases.
Girls.
Goddesses.
Teeth.
How fucking wrong I’d been.
How stupid I was to believe I could be redeemed.
This was burnout.
Not mental. Not symbolic.
Real.
Literal and legitimate, it didn’t just wipe out my power or my pain.
It burned me alive.
It sacrificed me.
Removed me.
It chewed through everything I had left, flames and fire, pain and promises.
It burned me until there was nothing left to burn.
Until there was nothing left of
Lust.
Love.
Life.
Me...
Chapter Twenty-Five
HE DIED.
He died while I pounded on his heart and begged into his ears.
He died as his pulse blazed past survivable.
Fifth a Fury (Goddess Isles, #5) Page 18
