Hotbloods 5_Traitors

by Bella Forrest

  Creeping down to the bottom step, I scanned the entrance hall and peered around the corner of the hallway into the kitchen. Ronad was sitting at the island, with Sarrask padding around the room, lifting a glittering cluster of crystals to the light. This was my chance!

  I darted down the hallway, running past the kitchen doorway with the stealth of a ninja before hurtling down the labyrinth of corridors that led to the basement. Unless Sarrask was some kind of wizard, there was no way he could stop me this time.

  Rounding the last corner that led to the basement steps, I almost swore out loud as I barreled into Kaido. His papers went flying, cascading around us like confetti. Knowing I’d only upset him if I yelled, the way I wanted to, I bit my tongue to keep silent, feeling the rush of metallic blood in my mouth.

  “Riley!” he squeaked.

  “Sorry, I was just having a morning run,” I lied.

  “Perhaps you should wear bells so people might know when you’re coming.” Kaido ducked down to retrieve his papers, and I sank to my haunches, helping him gather them.

  “Hey, you never did come and get me to try out another experiment,” I said, handing him the last fallen sheet.

  He looked at me blankly. “Yes, I asked you to participate, didn’t I? Would you be interested in assisting me now, or are you in the middle of an exercise regime? I would hate to disturb your metabolic flow.”

  There’s the Kaido I know and like, I thought to myself, pleased we were on friendly terms again.

  “Actually, you bumped into me at the perfect time. I was just on my final sprint. So, if you’ve got the time, I’ve got the time.”

  “Actually Riley, it was you who bumped into me,” he remarked firmly. “Regardless, if you would follow me, we can get our investigation underway.” With that, he strode off down the hallway, with me in tow.

  Ten minutes later, I was strapped into the weird chair with nodes taped against my temples, the tiny needles biting into my skin. Kaido was harping on about side effects and safety measures, but I was too distracted by the glowing plants pulsing away in their tanks. There was something oddly soothing about the way they glowed, like watching a lava lamp before going to sleep.

  “Now, if you would just relax, I will inject the serum into your system,” he said suddenly. My attention snapped to the large needle in his hand. A luminescent green liquid radiated in the syringe, making my pulse quicken.

  “I’m not going to turn into the Hulk, am I?”

  “I am not familiar with this person, though I have never heard of a serum that can transform one person into another, with such specificity,” Kaido mused. “I think you will be fine.”

  Feeling anything but relaxed, I sat still in the chair, feeling the prick of the needle as it went into my skin. I couldn’t watch as he pushed down on the plunger, but I could feel something strange running through my veins, as his latest concoction entered my bloodstream.

  A split second after, my eyes seemed to sharpen, my muscles burning. I felt a weird sensation in my mouth, my teeth hurting, my brain searing, as though someone had set fire to my cells. A million thoughts and visions raced through my mind, some of them memories from my past, others things I didn’t recognize.

  I saw towering infernos engulfing civilizations I’d never seen before. I saw faces of strange, alien beings, their mouths opening and closing, as though they were trying to say something to me. Jean and Roger, waving to me from the front porch of our house. Bashrik inside a gunship that was ablaze, plummeting to the ground, his eyes wide in fear. Angie and Lauren, running across an open battlefield, putting pressure on the wounds of dying soldiers as bullets rattled around them. Navan, shrouded in shadow, his mouth opened in a scream.

  The images shifted, and I was in the Texan heat again, watching lumberjacks bathing by a creek. I glimpsed Jethro between stalks of corn, holding Ianthan by the scruff of his neck, yelling something into his face. Then, Angie was beside me, showing me something on her phone, while Lauren rolled her eyes. I could almost feel the sweat and smell the grassy scent of the fields and the earth beneath our feet.

  A swirl of shadow and embers tore through my mind, twisting up like a tornado, devastating everything in its path. It scourged the Texan fields, until everything was on fire, the images shifting into something else.

  The warm sunlight was gone. In its place, a coldblood on a throne, in an icy palace, a crown of jagged icicles on his forehead. He wasn’t someone I recognized, but there was something about him that resonated in my mind—a thought, niggling in the hidden part of my brain. His eyes were pitch black, with the tiniest flicker of fire within, where the pupil ought to have been.

  His eyes locked with mine, and I felt my body disintegrate. A searing pain crashed through my nervous system, the inner blaze burning me up. Looking down, I saw my skin turn to ash, the gray petals fluttering away on an unseen breeze. I opened my mouth to scream, but no sound came out.

  * * *

  I came to with a gasp of air, clawing every available breath into my lungs. My chest heaved, and I felt like I was drowning. Kaido was peering down into my eyes, a concerned expression on his face. Behind him, Sarrask stood with his arms folded, looking at me.

  “Get me out of these things!” I screamed, fighting against my restraints.

  “You need to relax, Riley,” Kaido said. “You’ve had an adverse reaction to the serum. This is your body’s way of fighting it off, that’s all. You will be fine in a few minutes, once the reversal serum sets in.”

  “You need to get me out of these restraints!” I bucked against them, prompting Kaido to move toward me so he could obey. “What the hell did you give me? And what the hell is he doing here?” I snapped, rubbing the raw skin of my wrists as Kaido released them from their cuffs. It seemed I’d been fighting against them while I was under, too.

  “Hey! Don’t talk to me like that!” Sarrask snapped. “I just heard the commotion, and I thought you might need me. I mean, to…” He trailed off, rubbing the back of his neck.

  Kaido cast a suspicious look back at Sarrask before edging closer to me. “I gave you the serum I told you about a few weeks ago. It would appear that, as anticipated, it had the opposite effect on you,” he explained, keeping his voice low enough that Sarrask couldn’t hear. He was clearly thrilled despite my discomfort and the unwanted presence of his brother. “I have a feeling there will be some exceptional findings for me to discover. Can you recall anything?”

  I tried to grasp for the vivid images I’d seen, but as soon as I reached for them, they crumbled away like dust in my hands. I couldn’t remember anything.

  “It’s all gone,” I whispered.

  “That’ll be the reversal serum taking effect,” Kaido murmured, undoing the last of the ankle restraints. “It acts as a buffer to prevent your mind from damaging itself while trying to remember things it shouldn’t. I imagine your brain is blocking off sections that the serum may have overstimulated.”

  I frowned at him. “What does that mean?”

  “I can tell you more once I have studied the raw data,” he said, his voice barely above a whisper. “However, if my suspicions are correct, I may have something very special to offer you in a week or so. I do not like vague dates, but I cannot say when my results may be ready. I must say, even from the initial readings, this is extraordinarily exciting.”

  “Can you tell me anything before I go?” I didn’t know whether to share in his excitement or be terrified of what the “offer” might be.

  “No previews, not until I am absolutely certain of things!” Kaido insisted, his eyes flickering toward Sarrask. It was clear Kaido didn’t want his brother to know what he was up to, and I didn’t blame him. Already, Sarrask had a patronizing expression on his face.

  “Neurobotany is a bunch of nonsense,” he remarked as I struggled to my feet.

  Kaido shot him a look. “Only to those who do not understand its intricacies. Brains are far more fascinating than rocks!”

  Sarra
sk snorted. “At least rocks can be put to some use. What can you do? Watch pretty lights flash up on a screen when someone eats a twig?”

  “Don’t listen to him, Kaido,” I said. “He doesn’t need to know how important your work is. Don’t give him the satisfaction of an argument.”

  “The wisdom of your species continues to surprise me,” Kaido mumbled, helping me to the door of his lab. “Now, if you don’t mind, I would like to be left in peace.”

  Sarrask smirked. “So you can get down and dirty with your glowing plants?”

  “They are bioluminescent flora!” Kaido cried indignantly, and he slammed the lab door in Sarrask’s face. I felt sorry for the poor guy, but I didn’t want to stay anywhere near Sarrask. Feeling woozy, I set off down the narrow corridor, walking through the drawing room and out into the hallway beyond.

  “Are you happy now?” I asked, as Sarrask followed beside me. “Why do you have to wind him up like that?”

  Sarrask raised a curious eyebrow. “Why do you have to humor him like that?”

  “I’m not humoring him, Sarrask. I happen to think that what he does is fascinating, and there’s a lot to be discovered in his findings,” I replied. “He’s dedicated to what he does. You would know that, if you bothered to speak to him, instead of endlessly bringing him down. You’d think, after a lifetime as brothers, you’d have learned some compassion!”

  “How could I feel compassion for someone like him?”

  I whirled around, bristling with anger. “Because he’s precisely the kind of person who needs compassion. He has been stomped on his whole life because he’s different. He thinks he’s got a sickness he can fix, but that’s a load of crap! He’s not sick at all, but you’ve all made him feel like he is. He thinks he owes his parents something, just because he dares to exist!”

  “You don’t understand Vysanthean culture, Riley. He does owe our parents a great debt,” Sarrask countered. “My parents should have killed him as a child, once his mental deficiencies became apparent. They spared his life, and he owes them for that sacrifice.”

  I stared at Sarrask, aghast. “Sacrifice? What sacrifice? They let their child live—how the hell is that a sacrifice? There is nothing wrong with him. He’s just wired a little differently!” I yelled. “I may not understand ‘Vysanthean culture,’ but I understand the concept of—”

  I didn’t get to finish, as Sarrask swept toward me, his lips suddenly pressing against mine, his hands holding my face, his body too close. Horrified, I pushed him away, shoving him hard in the chest, my eyes staring up in shock. He gazed down at me, looking almost as surprised as I was.

  He opened his mouth as if to speak, when a harrowing cry ricocheted down the hallways toward us, shattering the stunned pause that rippled between us. My head snapped back in the direction of the pained howl.

  Lorela screamed again.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Without waiting for Sarrask, I tore off down the hall and up the stairs to Lorela’s bedroom. Ronad was already sitting at her bedside, gripping her writhing body in his arms, trying to hold her still.

  “What’s wrong, Lo? Tell me what’s wrong!” he urged, shaking her, but Lorela’s eyes were squeezed shut, her hair plastered to her damp forehead, her face screwed up in agony. A moment later, she went limp, the pain overwhelming her, forcing her into a state of unconsciousness.

  Sarrask hurtled into the room behind me. He took one look at his mother before disappearing down the hallway again, yelling for Kaido.

  “What happened?” I asked, lunging forward to hold her up. With his hands free, Ronad lifted her lids to check the state of her eyes and pressed his fingertips to the side of her neck, searching for a pulse.

  “She overdosed.”

  An object on the nightstand caught my eye, and my stomach sank. It looked like a bottle of the sleeping elixir Ronad had brought her a few weeks earlier, when we had stolen the pay device from under the bed, but there was a different symbol on the front. Now, the whole thing was lying sideways on the nightstand, empty.

  “How?” I whispered, knowing Sarrask could appear again at any moment.

  Ronad flashed me a frantic look. “I don’t know! All I do know is, she’s downed a whole bottle of painkiller!”

  “That’s not sleeping tonic?”

  He shook his head rapidly.

  “Do you think she got it herself?” I asked. If this was a suicide attempt, which it very much looked like, Lorela had evidently wanted to take the tonic and quietly slip away, not realizing just how painful ingestion of that much painkiller would be. It had to be burning up her insides, considering the agony of her scream and the echo of pain still written across her unconscious face.

  “I’ve got no idea. I definitely didn’t give it to her,” Ronad hissed. “I don’t know what to do, Riley—you’ve got to help me!”

  Fortunately for me, Jean’s unyielding love for trashy hospital dramas was about to come in handy, at long last. The first thing I knew about making someone throw up was to mix a load of salt with warm water, but since we didn’t have either on hand, things would have to get gross.

  “I’ll hold her; you put your fingers down her throat,” I instructed, hopping up onto the bed and sliding behind Lorela’s floppy body. I wrapped my arms around her waist, keeping her upright.

  Ronad looked at me like I was insane. “You want me to do what?”

  “Put your fingers down her throat. We need to get her to throw up before that stuff really does some damage!” I said. “Come on, you’ve worked in special ops. Haven’t you seen anyone get poisoned before?”

  “Yeah, but we usually have antidotes on hand,” he replied, pulling a face.

  “Right now, all we have are human tactics, and we’re running out of time!”

  That seemed to knock Ronad out of his daze, as he scooted forward on the bed and pried open Lorela’s mouth. He took a nervous breath before inserting his fingers as far back as he could. Her body spasmed in my arms. Her diaphragm convulsed, her muscles forcing the painkiller tonic up and out of her throat.

  Ronad removed his fingers and wiped them on his pants as dribbles of the tonic emerged from her mouth. I leaned Lorela over the edge of the bed, where the rest of the liquid oozed out in a purplish pool, peppered with chunks. It was like Roger always used to say, whenever I was sick as a kid: “There are always carrots, and you don’t even like carrots!” It seemed the Vysantheans had done one better—they didn’t even eat solid food, and yet there it was… I swallowed the half-digested fruit trying to push its way up my own throat.

  I was patting Lorela’s back, getting the last of the tonic out of her stomach, when Sarrask and Kaido entered. They both looked down at their mother, then glanced at me and Ronad.

  “What are you doing? Get your hands off her!” Sarrask snapped.

  “I’m saving your mother’s life!” I shot back. At least in his anger, he wasn’t about to lunge for my lips again.

  “What happened to her?”

  I looked at the bottle on the nightstand. “She managed to get her hands on some painkillers and took the whole bottle. I think she was trying to—”

  He cut me off. “You don’t need to say it,” he muttered. “I know how sick my mother is. I just never thought she’d actually do something like this. I must have forgotten to lock the medicine cabinet the last time I was here.”

  Meanwhile, Kaido stayed rooted to the spot by the door, his eyes wide in panic. “Is she alive?” he asked, his voice barely above a whisper. His whole life began and ended with his parents. I didn’t know if he could understand the nuance in what she might, or might not, have done.

  “Thanks to Riley, she’s breathing again,” Ronad said, moving to the other side of the bed so Kaido could sit beside his mother. It was a small gesture, but one that warmed my heart. Maybe my stern words to Ronad were having an effect.

  “I’ve called the royal emergency medical services. They said a doctor would be with us as soon as possible,” Kaido
murmured, trembling. Where someone else may have reached for her hand, he couldn’t—I saw the conflict on his face.

  “It’s not a physical disease that’s done this, Kaido. You can hold her hand. There’s no risk of infection,” I said encouragingly, but Kaido shook his head.

  “She does not have the motor function to hold my hand in return. The action would be futile,” he reasoned, though he didn’t seem content to sit and watch her. He was antsy, like he wanted to do more.

  “Do you have any serums downstairs that might help bring her around?” I asked.

  He smiled nervously. “I would not want to try any of them without thorough preliminary testing. I could not take the risk, in case I further damaged her.”

  “Where in Rask’s name is this doctor!” Sarrask raged, though it had barely been five minutes. “What’s the point of an emergency service if it takes so long for them to get here?”

  “She’s mostly out of the woods, Sarrask. You can calm down,” I said, keeping my eyes on Lorela’s face. Her head was lolling against my shoulder, her chest rising and falling steadily. A soft groan found its way out of her mouth. I didn’t know if she was out of the woods, but Ronad didn’t look as terrified as he had before as he checked her vitals and listened for the strength of her heartbeat.

  Sarrask narrowed his eyes at me. “I can’t just calm down!”

  “Fine, then go downstairs and wait for the emergency personnel. They’ll need someone to guide them up here,” I replied.

  For a moment, it looked like he was going to defy me, out of pure obstinance, but then he turned on his heel and stomped out of the room, his footsteps echoing back as he descended the stairs. The room fell into somber silence, with only the wheeze of Lorela’s lungs to punctuate it.