Kat Falls - Inhuman

Chorda shuddered and blood welled around the blade and streamed down his striped ribs. The tiger-king fell to his knees and then onto his side. He stared at me, black lips working. He reached toward me as if still trying to take my heart…. Then his hand dropped and his eyes rolled back in his head.

“Rafe,” I whispered. I crawled over to where he lay with his gashed arm flung out as if he couldn’t look at it. The pool of blood around his forearm was spreading fast and wide. I grasped his hand and elevated his arm to slow the bleeding, but only a tourniquet would stop it.

“He’s dead?” he rasped, trying to tug his hand from mine.

“Yes.”

I cast about for something to use to bind his arm. His silk bowtie. With one hand, I pulled it from around his neck while the ever-growing pool of blood soaked my knees. I looked down and all at once I realized that it wasn’t Rafe’s blood. It was Chorda’s, seeping from his body that lay nearby. Chorda’s infected blood, which had puddled around Rafe’s arm and drenched his open wounds. “Oh, no. No,” I whispered.

Our eyes met, Rafe’s searching mine, and then he twisted his face away.

Maybe Chorda’s claws had torn only his sleeve. I lowered his arm into my lap and peeled back the shredded, bloodstained material. My hair curtained my face and hid my horror at the gashes in his skin. I gathered up the folds of my dress and tried to wipe his wounds clean, gently at first, but then frantically as desperation set in.

A groan tore from his throat and I froze. My vision blurred and trembled with tears. “I’m sorry,” I murmured and quickly bound his arm with the silk tie as best I could. When I’d finished, Rafe brought my hand to his cheek, which was warmer than before. He turned his face into my palm, resting there, eyes closed.

“It’s my fault.” The words broke apart as I spoke them. “I killed him and his blood got in your cuts.”

“No.” Sweat cut trails through the dirt on Rafe’s face as he pushed himself up and got to his feet slowly. His breath came in gasps. “Chorda bit me an hour ago.”

I rose on unsteady legs. “You’re just saying that.”

“He did. He — Look.” He pointed past me but I didn’t turn. I was searching for the truth in his face. “Lane, up there,” he insisted, nudging me around.

A blinking light dominated the night sky, growing larger the closer it got, until we could hear the hum of rotary blades.

“It’s Everson,” I told him. “The patrol picked him up from the castle roof.”

“Told you he’d get you back to Arsenal.” Rafe was trying for smug, but all I could hear was the low vibration of fear in his voice.

The hovercopter swept the ground with a spotlight and sent the ferals scuttling and slinking into the shadows. Everson had come for us, but it was hopeless. We didn’t dare leave the cage until the ferals cleared out of the zoo. I watched helplessly as the hovercopter veered south.

“You’ve got to get out there and signal them,” Rafe said, pressing me toward the door.

I faced him. “If we get you to Arsenal, Dr. Solis can give you the inhibitor. Maybe it’ll stop the virus from taking hold.”

“People have tried that. It doesn’t work.” He glanced at the hovercopter, heading away. “Go,” he growled.

“If you don’t leave this cage, then neither will I, and Everson won’t find either one of us.”

He glared at me, but when I didn’t relent, he exhaled sharply. “You are such a pain.”

I took that for acquiescence and ducked under his undamaged arm, draping it over my shoulders. He let me help him to the cage door. But just as I opened it, a dark shape dashed past. I jerked back as more shapes leapt along the tops of the outside enclosures. My eyes skipped over the fleeing ferals, looking for a place out in the open, but where we wouldn’t be attacked. Gunfire rattled on the other side of the building, giving me an idea.

“Come on!” I hurried out of the cage with him and down the path. He cursed under his breath and pressed his arm to his chest, but he kept up.

We rounded the building only to find ourselves in the middle of a nightmare. We backed up against the brick. The handlers had taken cover on the carousel. They popped up from behind the painted animals to shoot at the ferals. Blood sprayed as they managed to drop a few, but the ferals surged forward. More ferals came running up the path, sniffing out their prey. The handlers kept shooting until their clips were empty. There was a stunning moment of silence, and then the ferals attacked. They leapt over their dead, and the remaining humans scattered.

“Wait here,” I told Rafe.

“Where’re you —” he began, but I took off.

I ran for one of the dead handlers, stopping only long enough to pluck a flare gun from his apron, and headed for the carousel. As the ferals stormed the gates and swarmed over the zoo fence, I climbed onto the back of a carved elephant. I gripped the edge of the carousel’s fiberglass canopy and swung up my leg.

The canopy was sturdy enough to stand on. From up there, I spotted Rafe limping along the path. “Stay where you are,” I called.

Of course, he didn’t listen. Bleeding and swearing, he clambered onto the canopy beside me.

“You are such a pain,” I told him, and was rewarded with a strained smile that turned into a grimace as a shudder went through him.

“Shoot already.” He jerked his chin at the gun in my hands.

I fired the flare gun into the sky. An instant later, the world around us felt like a hallucination as the flare exploded and illuminated the scattered bodies of ferals and handlers.

“They saw.” Rafe pointed to the blinking light in the distance.

Sure enough, the light changed course.

As Rafe watched the hovercopter circle back, I saw that his aqua eyes now had a golden sheen, like sunlight reflecting off the surface of a lake. I couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe. “Your eyes …” I pressed my hand to his cheek before he could pull away. He’d grown so much warmer since we’d left the cage. “Please come back to Arsenal with me and let Dr. Solis look at you.”

“They’d shoot me on sight.” Rafe took my hand from his cheek, holding it curled in his own. “Can’t blame them. I’d shoot me.”

My heart lurched. “What does that mean? Rafe?”

“Nothing. Just promise me something….” He looked down at my hand fisted in his and pushed his fingers into it, compelling me to entwine my fingers with his. A move that was perfectly him. He’d pushed himself into my heart much the same way. “Promise,” he went on, “that if you hear about a grupped-up tiger gone feral, you’ll hire a hunter to put me down.”

“No,” I gasped. “You’ll have years before that happens and by then, Dr. Solis will have found a cure.”

But the doctor could only find a cure if he had all the strains. Everson’s words came back to me: “A cure would save everyone.” He might be a guard through and through, but I was a hypocrite, because suddenly I was grateful that he’d made the choice that he had.

“Promise me, Lane,” Rafe pleaded, letting me hear the depth of his anguish.

“Okay. I will,” I said, hating the promise even as I made it. “But only if I hear about a feral infected with tiger, which I won’t because I’ll be on the other side of the wall.”

A smile touched Rafe’s lips, genuine this time. “You’ll be back. A fierce girl like you belongs on the wild side.”

I released his hand to move closer, not caring that he was fevered, and gently slipped my arms around his ribs. Rafe tensed at my touch, but then drew my face to him and brushed a ghost of a kiss on my forehead. The soft warmth of his lips sent a wave of longing through me and I tightened my hold on him as the hovercopter neared, its hum growing steadily louder.