nevermore

by Nell Stark

  “Oh God,” she choked out. “No.”

  And that’s when I felt it—the tickle against my nose, familiar from the aftermath of a jog on a cold winter’s day. When I reached up to brush the moisture away, the side of my index finger came away red.

  Red. I stared at it, first in confusion and then in disbelief. My nose was bleeding. How could my nose be bleeding? I had only returned to New York three days ago. I hadn’t engaged in risky behaviors. I was sick, but it didn’t make any sense.

  I had been confident in my invulnerability. I had promised Val that everything would be fine. And now, when the next full moon rose into the sky, the power of its tidal forces would rip me apart. I would die. I knew it.

  Deep inside my mind, the panther howled in fury.

  valentine

  Chapter Eighteen

  If Alexa hadn’t been sleeping in our bed after taking a mild sedative, I would have torn the room apart in fury. Instead, I sequestered myself in the Consortium’s gym and hammered at a heavy bag until sweat sluiced down my face like tears and every muscle burned. My brain was a storm of anguish and fear. I couldn’t think, but I had to. I had to figure out a way to find a cure.

  How had she gotten sick? If the pathogen were airborne, Karma and Sebastian would have come down with it weeks ago. Had Brenner somehow infected her with it in Africa? But she hadn’t been drugged or even unconscious—only imprisoned.

  I stopped my frenzied dance around the bag and held it in place as my breathing began to slow. On the edge of tears, I rested my forehead against my gloved hands. Why had I let her convince me that she was safe? My instincts had known better. I should have found a way for her to escape. Or better yet, we could have escaped together…

  Together. I pushed off the bag as the horrifying epiphany lanced through me. Over the past few days, we had been together in every way possible. We had made love more times than I could count, and Alexa, determined to satisfy my desperate thirst, had urged me to drink from her repeatedly.

  There was only one logical conclusion. She had gotten it from me. I had been the one to make her sick.

  All of the fight went out of me, and I sank to the floor. Beyond thought, I stared into the abyss of despair that had opened in my brain. Ever since I’d been turned, I had been nothing but a danger to her. No matter what she did to try to change that fact, or how often she tried to deny it, the truth continued to slap us both in the face. And now, that truth was going to kill her.

  “Val!” I raised my head at the sound of Karma’s voice bouncing off the cement walls. She hurried across the room. “I’ve been looking everywhere for you. Are you—”

  Cutting herself off, she stopped a few feet away and watched as I got to my feet. She didn’t make a move to touch me. I was in no mood for comfort. Beneath the despair, anger churned sluggishly, awaiting its chance to burst into the open.

  “I made her sick,” I said without preamble. “I did. Me.”

  Karma took a step backward, every muscle taut as the fear washed through her. I didn’t think it was possible to feel worse, but that simple gesture of rejection made my gut churn.

  “What are you talking about?”

  “It’s the only explanation that makes sense.” I kept my eyes on the wall past her shoulder, so I wouldn’t have to see the incrimination on her face. “This thing isn’t airborne, or you’d be sick. And Alexa doesn’t shoot up. The only person she’s been sleeping with is me.”

  “But vampires haven’t been falling ill. You haven’t demonstrated any of the symptoms, have you?”

  I shook my head. “Vampires must be able to carry it.”

  The doubt didn’t leave Karma’s face. “Even so. How did you get infected?”

  There was only one logical answer, and its implications made me want to scream. “The transfusion. Has to be.” My thoughts were spiraling into binary. Either Clavier had infected me on purpose, or he had not. The answer didn’t really matter. The only thing that mattered now was Alexa. And she was sick because of me.

  “Oh, Val.”

  She crossed the gap between us and grasped my shoulders. “We are not giving up. Do you hear me?”

  Her eyes were beautiful—chocolate flecked with gold. I let the conviction in them anchor me against the nihilistic winds of my own despair.

  “In our meeting, you said something about lab results. Can I help you get them?”

  Her resolve set my panic temporarily at bay. She was right. There was something I could do. Right now. I could be proactive, instead of continuing to wait for Sean to send along the results. “I’ll make a call.”

  “Good,” she said, her hands falling away from me. I leaned against the wall and dialed Sean’s extension at the lab, praying that he had chosen to work late tonight.

  “Hi, Sean,” I said, certain that my voice betrayed my gratitude at hearing his. “It’s Val.”

  “Val, hey. We’ve missed you. Are you hanging in there?” Like the rest of my lab, Sean thought that I’d had to leave suddenly because of a family emergency. Which wasn’t all that far from the truth, now.

  “Yeah. Hanging in. Actually…remember those tests I asked you to run last week? The results would be handy right about now.”

  “You have good timing,” Sean said. “I just got them back a few hours ago. Was about to e-mail them to you. I’m sorry they took so long to come in—I had to run them on the DL, and it’s been a busy week.”

  “I understand.” I tried to keep my tone light. “And thanks again.”

  “Sure thing. Hurry back, Val.”

  I glanced at Karma as I ended the call on my phone and tapped over to my mailbox. “He’s going to e-mail what he’s got.”

  She nodded, bent over her own PDA. “And they’re holding Sebastian in the cells on level two. Along with several of his siblings?” Karma was staring at the screen as though she couldn’t believe what she was reading.

  I frowned at the implications. “Jesus. Do you think they’ve rounded up every one of Brenner’s whelps who lives in the city?”

  “As collateral.” Karma’s eyes were troubled. “Every piece of correspondence I’m reading has Malcolm’s digital signature on it alongside Helen’s, but I don’t like it.”

  “Do you think they’ll stop us if we try to visit him?”

  When Karma only shook her head, I realized just how upset she was. I was willing to bet that locking up Sebastian and his siblings had been entirely Helen’s idea. I wondered if it had been easy for Helen to convince Malcolm of her desperate wartime logic. Or had he been reluctant to enforce martial law on his own people?

  Deeply unsettled, I continued to refresh my inbox every second until Sean’s message came through. The wait while my phone downloaded his spreadsheet was interminable, but when I was able to inspect the data, I found more questions than answers. As expected, Shade had significant levels of both bipolar and antipsychotic medications in her bloodstream.

  She was also pregnant.

  “This can’t be right,” I said, even as I scanned the supporting data. Shade had been grieving for Gwendolyn. She hadn’t mentioned anything about a baby. Hell, she had practically resigned herself to dying from the same affliction to which her lover had succumbed. Besides, the drugs she was taking presented significant risks to a fetus. I couldn’t believe she had been pregnant. But the hormones in her blood couldn’t lie.

  Or could they?

  I flashed back to nearly a month ago, when I had first seen the devastating effects of the Were pathogen while at Luna. After watching the agonizing spectacle of Vincent’s aborted transformation, I had tapped into the Consortium’s research on Weres, hoping to find a logical explanation for why he had been unable to shift. All I had discovered was that, by an unknown mechanism, pregnant Weres did not transform. But what if that was how the pathogen operated—by tricking the host body into believing it was pregnant?

  “What?” Karma’s voice was laced with the urgency we both felt. “What did you find? Val?”
>
  I looked up as I realized there was a very simple way to test my hypothesis. All it required was a trip to the nearest pharmacy. Helen wouldn’t let me go anywhere, but Karma was free to move about as she wished.

  “You asked how you can help,” I said, reaching into my back pocket for my wallet and then pulling out a twenty. “I need you to buy a home pregnancy test.”

  *

  I sat on the edge of the bed, listening to the rustles of movement in the bathroom as Alexa followed the instructions of the pregnancy kit. The whole scenario was a daydream turned nightmare. There had been many sleepless nights over the past few months when I had tried to calm my body and my soul by imagining Alexa pregnant with our child—the gentle bulge of her belly, the peace that would radiate from her face, the quirky cravings I’d trek across the city to satisfy. Now the pathogen lurking in Alexa’s blood had put every dream in jeopardy.

  The bathroom door opened and she stepped out, holding the test strip. “Hey.” She sat next to me, and together we stared at the indicator, waiting for either a plus or minus sign to appear.

  “I love you,” I said, brushing a tentative hand across her knee. She trapped it and held it to her body.

  “Stop blaming yourself. I’m the one who wouldn’t listen.” When I nodded without meeting her gaze, she gripped my chin. “I mean it, Val. I don’t regret making love with you. I don’t regret begging you to drink from me. I need you, and I need to be here, with you. We’ll figure out how to beat this.”

  “I know,” I said hoarsely, not because I did, but because I knew she was trying to convince herself. I wrapped an arm around her shoulders and leaned in to kiss her temple. “I know we will, baby.”

  I kept my eyes closed and savored the smoothness, the fragrance of her skin—until she tensed. “Well.” The single syllable trembled. “That’s surreal.”

  I looked down to the sight of a blue plus sign but felt no exultation at being right. Despite knowing what to expect, it was a shock. I rubbed Alexa’s back until I found my voice. “I’m going to take this to Clavier and Helen, okay?”

  She nodded, and when I stood, she pulled up her feet so that she was curled on the bed facing the window. I pressed a kiss to the nape of her neck. “Is there anything I can get you?”

  “I was planning to hunt tonight,” she said after a moment’s hesitation. “The panther has been restless for days. I kept promising that I would give her a chance to run. And now…”

  Swallowing hard, I glanced at the bottle of pills on the nightstand. “Do the meds help?”

  She rolled over and reached for my hand, and I sank back onto the bed. “I’m not sure. I’m afraid if I take them too often, the panther will feel trapped. Which would only make this whole situation worse.” She brushed my knuckles against her cheek. “But they do seem to stop me from getting too anxious.”

  I wanted to cry. I wanted to punch something. Instead, I reached over her for the television remote. “It sounds like a distraction is in order. You know, crime shows can be pretty effective.”

  The ghost of a smile played along her lips. “Oh yeah?”

  “Mmm-hmm.” I spotted her phone behind the pills, and scrolled through the contacts list until I found Karma’s name. “And I’m going to put you on the line with Karma, okay? I know she would love to bring you a few books. Or some tabloids to poke fun at.”

  Alexa tugged at my hand until I was close enough to kiss. “You are very good to me,” she said before brushing her lips across mine.

  “I love you,” I said, keeping my voice soft so she wouldn’t hear the snarl of tears in the back of my throat. “See you soon, okay?”

  Pushing the call button, I handed her the phone and walked out of the room, determined to make Clavier see reason. But when I arrived at his office, he wasn’t there. Perhaps he was in the restricted basement facility. I wondered if they had put up increased security precautions around the makeshift hospital after I’d stumbled into it. As I was turning toward the doors at the end of the corridor, though, I saw Tonya leave one room and walk down the hall. Quickly, I moved to intercept her.

  “You’re back,” she said, a smile of recognition spreading across her face. “You know, when you didn’t tell me your name the other day, I had to ask my friends. Kyle told me all about you, Valentine.”

  I ignored her flirtation. “I’m hoping you can tell me where to find Dr. Clavier.”

  She rested one palm on my sternum and plucked at the collar of my shirt. “Harold is in a meeting with Ms. Lambros. Since he can’t be disturbed, maybe I can help you?”

  “Actually,” I said, removing her hand, “I’ll take my chances with disturbing him.” I sidestepped, and was several paces closer to the exit before her human reflexes registered my movements. “Thanks for the help,” I called over my shoulder as the fire doors closed behind me.

  *

  Darren stood outside Helen’s office, his massive arms folded across his chest. “You can ask,” he said, “but I can tell you right now you’re not going to be able to see her. At least a dozen people have been turned away already today.”

  Those dozen people must have stood on decorum and the conventions of polite society. I had no intention of doing so. I barged into the antechamber and blatantly ignored Helen’s secretary. But when I closed my hand around the doorknob to her office, I found it locked.

  In that moment, the door epitomized everything that was blocking me from discovering a cure for Alexa. The rage I’d been holding back since the morning finally boiled over, drowning out the secretary’s indignant words, the scrape of her chair against the floor as she stood, Darren’s heavy footfalls behind me. For the first time, I embraced the strength that was my right as blood prime of the line of the Missionary.

  I twisted. The knob snapped off, splintering the wood around it, and the door swung open to the sight of Helen rising to her feet, face dark in anger. Clavier sat in the chair in front of her desk, and when he saw me, he grimaced. I didn’t let any of them speak, but held up the plastic indicator.

  “Alexa is ‘pregnant.’”

  Darren’s hand landed on my shoulder, but I stood still, eyes locked with Helen’s. Silence reigned for several seconds, broken only by the ring of Helen’s private line. She didn’t answer.

  “Shut the door,” she said, gesturing sharply for me to come inside. Her voice was ice, but I didn’t care. I shrugged off Darren’s grip and stepped over the threshold, easing the battered door closed behind me. As soon as we were alone, she pointed an accusing finger.

  “That little stunt was absolutely ridiculous. You need to learn—”

  Refusing to be cowed, I cut her off and focused on Clavier. “The pathogen tricks its Were host into a chemical pregnancy. I don’t know how. But maybe that’s the key to stopping it.”

  Clavier folded his hands on top of his crossed legs. “I’ve known this for weeks, Valentine. But congratulations on figuring it out all on your own.”

  Red tinged my vision at his sneering words. He had known? And he hadn’t done anything to stop it? My frayed temper snapped again and I lunged forward to twine my fingers in the expensive material of his oxford shirt. I lifted him into the air and shook him, hard.

  “You fucking bastard!” When he struggled, choking, I shook him again. “Tell me how to fix this, God damn it!”

  “Enough.” Helen’s voice carried a venom that sliced through the roar of my heartbeat. “Release him. Now.”

  When I let go, Clavier fell back into his chair, clutching at his throat. I could have killed him. I still wanted to. Trembling as the rage and adrenaline swept my blood, I balled my hands into fists.

  “We have known how the pathogen operates for some time, Valentine,” Helen said. “And we have tested several treatments. But none of them have been successful.”

  “You gave it to me!” My arms ached with the effort it took to keep my fists at my sides. I wanted to make Clavier bleed. Dimly, I registered Helen’s phone ringing again, but again,
she didn’t pay it any mind. “If you hadn’t, Alexa would still be well!”

  I’d only seen surprise cross Helen’s patrician features one other time—also in this office, several months ago, when Alexa had asked to become a shifter so that she could sustain me for eternity. Maybe her expression was false, and maybe it wasn’t. Either way, I rounded on Clavier.

  “It was the transfusion that you administered.”

  “Accident,” he said, coughing.

  I braced myself on the armrests of his chair. “Why should I believe you? Why, when you keep blocking me?” I looked back over my shoulder to Helen. “Is this some kind of punishment for refusing to be your goddamn Missionary?”

  At that moment, the door banged open again. Malcolm Blakeslee stood at the threshold and he was trembling—not in fear, but with the effort it took to restrain his beast. Instinctively, I pushed off the chair, out of his way.

  “You haven’t been picking up your phone,” he said to Helen.

  “As you can see, I’ve been engaged. What is it you—”

  “I have him on the line.” Malcolm held aloft the device in his right hand. “He is demanding to speak to the both of us. And he is growing impatient.”

  Helen bared her teeth. “Fine. Put him through.” As Malcolm laid the phone on the desk and keyed it to speaker, I watched her take a deep breath. “We are both present, Balthasar.”

  “Helen.” His voice was a rich baritone, and he sounded almost jovial. No doubt having the upper hand put him in excellent mood. “It has been so long.”

  “Not long enough.” Despite the animosity I’d felt toward Helen recently, I admired the way she stood up to Brenner. “Say your piece, and be gone.”

  He laughed sonorously. “Oh, that’s not quite how it’s going to work. I have terms to propose, you see. For your surrender.”

  Helen and Malcolm exchanged an inscrutable glance, and Malcolm’s grip on the desk tightened enough for the wood to protest. “I’m afraid you won’t find us amenable, Balthasar,” was all he said.