Cassie Alexander - Deadshifted

His eyes rose to meet mine, gaze somber. “You’d better stay that way.”

“Or what?” I challenged, ludicrously imagining Asher miniaturized, going into my blood vessels to punch out germs by hand.

“Or else,” he said, leaving his threat to the universe hanging in the room.

Neither of us wanted to go to sleep. I lay pressed against his side, my head on his chest, as he flipped through TV stations. At home we didn’t really watch TV, so it was something of a novelty, even the commercials. We eventually settled on an old vampire film. It was hilariously inaccurate—all the vampires were sexy and incompetent, instead of disgusting and deadly. I found myself wishing we had popcorn to throw at the screen.

“Are you ever upset that shapeshifters don’t get TV shows?”

“No. It proves my kind’s better at hiding their tracks.”

I thought about this. “Vampires do live longer. Presumably that means they have to work harder at hiding it. Plus, they have to drink blood. Your kind can just go to Burger King.”

Asher’s eyebrows raised, but he was still watching the show. “Yes, but they can mesmerize people into thinking they weren’t there.”

“But you can do that, too. Blending into a crowd, changing form—”

He made a thoughtful noise; I heard it rumble in his chest. “True. I think their real problem is that eventually they all get greedy.”

“Probably.” One of the vampires on screen did an awful job of chasing a hapless victim whom I was pretty much at this point hoping would die. “Anna offered to change me once.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. When I was stabbed.” I gestured to my stomach. I still had the scar. I hadn’t thought about it in a while, but now I wondered how big it would stretch as my stomach did, and if I’d have to get a C-section due to the residual damage inside. The way the vampire who’d stabbed me had been going, I was lucky to still have a uterus at all. “I still wonder how she’s doing sometimes.”

“Anna’s immortal. I’m sure she’s fine.” He pointed at the woman who’d just tripped on the screen during her escape. “Why can’t she just run? Our kid is taking track.”

I gave him a nervous grin he didn’t see. That was the first time either of us had said anything explicit about my pregnancy since our decontaminatory showers. Joking about things was the first step on the path to normalcy. “She can’t run because they couldn’t afford a bigger set.”

The woman on the screen was screaming louder now as the vampire neared. At least the on-screen vampire was hot. He looked winded from having chased her, though, in a way that a real vampire would never be.

Asher suddenly clicked off the remote. The screaming didn’t stop.

We both sat up. “It’s close,” he said.

In one move he’d stood and was pulling clothes out of the drawers on his side of the bed. I followed his lead on my side, and he looked over at me.

“What?” I asked.

“You’re staying here.”

I frowned at him while latching my bra closed. “I’m not like that, Asher.” I tugged a T-shirt down over my head.

“Please. For me.”

I stood there, caught between action and inaction. I wanted to go. I wanted to help. I felt trapped by motherhood, though I wasn’t even showing yet.

The screaming went on—and Asher wasn’t the only one with a stubborn past. He sighed. “If there’s trouble, promise me you’ll leave.”

“Done,” I said, and quickly yanked pants on.

I tucked a room key into my pocket as I followed him outside. There was already a stream of people traveling down the hall in assorted disarray, robes and pajamas, bare feet and slippers.

“I need a doctor!” Our next-door neighbor was in the hallway, holding his door open with one foot, looking out at the growing crowd. “Is anyone here a doctor?”

“How convenient,” I muttered as Asher elbowed forward. I imagined someone walking in on their loved one in the process of having a heart attack. Given the median age on this ship, times the ample buffets—then I realized I recognized him. It was the father of the two kids from our safety lecture the other day, the one with the boy who’d been choking this morning. He looked haggard now, but his eyes lit up in hope at seeing Asher. “Come in, please, hurry, he’s in the bathroom—”

Asher pushed past him and I followed. The mother was crouched over her son in the tub, her hand covered in blood.

“He had a fever, he wanted to take a bath—” she explained. Her hand was clutched her to chest, and she was sobbing big tears. Pillows were wedged in on either side of her boy, and everything was wet. “It’s you. From this morning—” she said, recognizing Asher. “What’s wrong with him? What’s wrong with my son?”

This was more how I thought Liz’s fear should be. “Let’s wash your hand off.” I knelt down and pulled her up and away, to make room for Asher to see the boy. She held her injured hand to her chest like a baby bird.

The woman and I jostled against each other in the short hallway to the other half bathroom. I got her hand underneath the sink and went into autopilot. “What happened?”

“His fever, it was so high. They gave me Tylenol downstairs, and I put him in the tub, and ran cool water on him like he wanted, and then he started to shake—like he was having a seizure—I didn’t want him to swallow his tongue so—” That explained the pillows, and the nasty gash on her hand. Too bad so many people still believed that old myth. She hissed as I scrubbed in soap.

“This’ll hurt,” I warned, too late.

“I don’t want to leave him—” She began pulling her hand away from the water flow. It was clear she was in some kind of shock. Not the blood-loss kind—her kid had been kind enough to miss any arteries—but at being bitten by her own child. No wonder all she’d been able to do was incoherently scream.

“I know. But we need to give them space to load him up, okay?” I said, pulling her back to finish my scrub-down.

There came the clattering of a gurney past our door, and then the three–two–one as medics coordinated their efforts to get the child smoothly onto the board. I wrapped the mother’s hand in a clean towel and we emerged from the bathroom after seeing the gurney pass back out into the hall.

“I’m going with him,” the mother demanded.

It was just as well—she needed stitches, and iodine wouldn’t hurt. “Hey—” I reached out and grabbed the last medic in line. “She’s his mom, and she’s cut her hand.” No need to announce in the hall that her own boy bit her.

It was Marius, the Afrikaans man Asher’d spoken to this morning. His haircut said ex-military, but his face was kind. He nodded curtly. “Come along,” he said to her, and then “Make way! Make way!” to the still-growing crowd outside, with a booming voice.

Together, Asher and I watched them leave, running with the boy down the hall, his mother in tow. The husband stayed behind with his terrified daughter clinging to his leg, her glasses making her wide-set eyes look even bigger than they were. The crowd slowly started to disperse now that the show was over. Asher looked to the man once the medics were out of sight.

“If anything happens to either of you, fever, seizure, dizziness, anything strange—call them immediately. And we’re right next door.” He pointed at our door.

“You think it’s contagious?” the father asked, his face pale.

Asher gave me a dark glance. “I don’t know.”

We were quiet on the short way back to our room, where we performed another elaborate hand washing and showering ritual. When I finished my shower, he was waiting for me outside. “You’re on room arrest.”