Kelly Meding - Another Kind of Dead

He laughed, and in that horrifying, deep-chested, inhuman sound, I understood what my heart had kept trying to tell me—the thing holding me down was not my Wyatt. It was something else.

“Help!” I didn’t manage many decibels, but I repeated my plea as I sought my tap. Couldn’t find it. I couldn’t drum up the correct emotional cocktail of loneliness to make my Gift work. Rage rioted in my pain-addled brain.

His weight shifted. I wept, furious at my weakness, disgusted at my inability to protect myself. He leaned down. I could smell his sour breath puffing near my face.

Not again . My eyes snapped open. I saw his neck.

I reared up and sank my teeth into his throat. Fucking hard. I locked my jaw and skin broke. Blood filled my mouth, thick and oily. He bucked, hands beating my hips and chest, but I didn’t let go. I clamped down harder, digging into his neck like a stray dog who’d finally found a meal.

I didn’t see the pot until it smashed into my temple. Lights flashed in my eyes. Something buzzed in my ears. My jaws relaxed. He rolled away, gasping. His blood was on my face, my tongue, everywhere. I rolled and spit and retched. Then the most beautiful sound in the world made it through the buzz—voices. Not the scary, no-one-hears-them-but-me voices—real ones, on the other side of the cabin door.

Confused, cold, and in desperate agony, I did the only thing I could think of—I took a deep breath and screamed as loudly as I could.

Not-Wyatt backhanded me. The world blurred. Fists were beating on the door. Two male voices shouted. Familiar voices. My attacker had a dish towel pressed to his throat. He made a dive for his abandoned syringe.

Over the din, I recognized one voice screaming my name. Relief only made my tears surge, and I returned the call with everything I had left. “Phineas!”

Syringe in hand, not-Wyatt hauled ass to his feet. The door rattled. He was caught. With primal rage in his eyes, he turned on me. Fire exploded in my ribs, compounding the throbbing in my head. The front door broke open with a dull crash.

“Fucking hell—”

“What the—?”

The activity around me was a blur. I cradled my wrist to my chest, pulled my legs up, and curled in as tight as I could manage, shivering, aching. Heard grunts and slaps of flesh on flesh. Someone hollered. A thud. Footsteps. A hand on my shoulder.

“Evy?”

I cracked one eye open, saw his face so full of rage and concern, and the irrational side of my brain took over. I yelped and scrambled away, backing up until I hit the kitchen cabinets and rattled the things above. New bruises throbbed, and my wrist felt numb, ready to fall off.

Wyatt was frozen so perfectly where he’d knelt that he could have been a statue. Same size as the other one, same face, same every-damn-thing.

No, not the same. This one had talked. He’d said my name.

“Evy, it’s me,” he said again, desperate.

Nothing. I couldn’t move. Couldn’t speak. Only my throbbing body kept me from pitching into the haze that had crept around the edges of my vision.

Phineas el Chimal appeared behind him. His narrow face was stony, predatory blue eyes full of cold fury and bloodlust. Our eyes met, and those emotions shifted immediately into something softer. Protective. He stepped out of sight, then was back with a folded blanket. He approached cautiously. I hated that I didn’t pull from him as I’d pulled from Wyatt. Hated that I let Phin wrap me in the scratchy blanket and wipe my face with a damp rag. He was my friend, a were-osprey and one of the last of his Clan, but he wasn’t the man I loved.

No, the man I loved was left on the kitchen floor, while Phin cradled me in his arms and carried me back to my room. Phin tucked me into bed and piled on the covers. I couldn’t stop shaking. I was starting to shut down, and I fought to keep it together.

“You’re safe now,” Phin said. He picked up the first syringe, his mouth puckering. “He took this from you?”

From beneath my cocoon of blankets, all I could manage was a nod. His eyes flickered to me, so many mixed emotions in them.

“David?” I croaked, teeth chattering.

“Alive, but unable to move.”

“Him?”

Phin inclined his head toward the door, listening.

“Being tied up as we speak, and none too gently. The resemblance is remarkable.”

I grunted, wanting to cry again for no good reason.

He crouched until we were eye level. I wanted to hide from the ferocity in his gaze and was glad that his anger wasn’t directed at me. “Evangeline, I must ask—”

“He didn’t.” I swallowed, a fresh round of tears clogging my throat. “The drugs wore off.”

“He tried to steal from you, and for that he deserves death.”

“We need to find out what his game is first,” Wyatt said from the doorway. “Then we’ll fucking kill him.”

Phin shifted so I could see past him. Only my intense shivering prevented me from flinching at the sight of Wyatt. At the misery he exuded in his slumped shoulders and in the downturn of his mouth. He understood what had happened, the perverse way I’d been manipulated, and he was at a loss as to how to fix it. At as much of a loss as I was.

I closed my eyes. Saw Wyatt’s face above me, leering down. Felt hands on my skin, pressing roughly. Hitting. I tried to alter that image, change it to a new face. Anyone else’s face. It didn’t work. A tear trickled down the side of my nose when I opened my eyes again.

“He took blood from my hips,” I said. “Deep down, from the bone, I think. He drugged me so I couldn’t move, but it wore off.”

“Bone marrow?” Wyatt said. “Why would someone come here and steal your bone marrow?”

“We shall have to ask the thief,” Phin said. “And then we shall ask the person who hired him.”

“Has to be Thackery,” I said, surprising myself with the lucid connection. “He hits me with the parasite, hoping I’ll heal. He’s checking my blood so he can make his antidote.”

Wyatt’s eyebrows arched. “Natural antibodies. Holy shit.”

“I’m his own goddamned petri dish.” Fury blossomed in my chest.

“Then why the charade?” Phin asked. “Thackery could have sent his people here to overpower your friends and kidnap you, or simply kill you and take your blood. Why this way?”

“To fuck with my head. If his bloodsucker out there hadn’t stopped to cop a feel or two, he would have been in and out before I could move again.” I couldn’t look Wyatt in the eye. Shame heated my cheeks. “My brain would’ve had a hell of a harder time separating the real Wyatt from the fake one, had that been the case.”

The former made a strangled noise. I shut my eyes. The shivering had lessened to an occasional tremble, but my broken wrist shrieked. All I wanted was another shower, so I could scrub the feeling of those unfamiliar hands off my body. Wash every molecule of his thick, inhuman blood from my skin.

“Evangeline, do any of your injuries require medical attention?”

There didn’t seem to be an inch of skin that did not ache or smart. My ribs were sore, my head throbbed, my mouth hurt—but all were things that would heal on their own. “Bastard broke my wrist. Need to set it.”

“Let me see it.”

With Phin’s help, I got my arm free of the blankets. He cradled my hand as gently as he could, and I tried not to cry out. Failed. Wyatt appeared next to him long enough to hand over a sports bandage, then retreated to the doorway. My heart wept for the distance he was keeping. Phin wrapped his fingers around my wrist. I held my breath.

“This will hurt a great deal,” he said.

“No shit. Do it.”

He did. It did. I was crying again by the time he’d firmly wrapped my wrist in the bandage and secured the ends, tight enough to allow the bones to mend. I collapsed back under the covers, exhausted, and closed my eyes, willing the tears to stop. I had to get hold of myself, calm down, and think rationally about this.