“Clean clothes?”
“Dresser drawers. Listen, I need to run into the city for a bit—”
“So go. I don’t need a babysitter.” The way his mouth twitched alarmed me to a small degree. “What?”
“Just think of David as a silent guest, then.”
“David?” I peered past Wyatt’s shoulder into a wide wood-paneled living room. A fire crackled somewhere out of sight—the source of the burnt-wood odor—and an actual deer’s head was mounted on the wall by the front door. I spotted a familiar mound of black hair above the back of an ancient, sagging sofa.
“He and Kismet’s group are the only people who know you’re not dead, so she brought him into her Triad to replace Tybalt. It’s temporary, though, as far I know. Sooner or later, David will be assigned to a new Handler.”
I blinked. A week was a long time to be out of things. “Replace Tybalt?”
“They won’t make allowances at Boot Camp for his condition.” Wyatt practically spat the words, as though simply speaking them disgusted him. “Gina can’t keep him in her Triad, but she’s also not going to just turn him out on the street. They’ve been together too damned long.”
“Fuck.”
“Yeah.”
I hated it. Fucking hated everything about it. Tybalt was a Hunter. The people he’d fought for, bled for, and sacrificed half an arm for had turned against him. Just like they’d done to me.
“Go run your errand,” I said, finished with the depressing conversation. “I really need that shower now.”
I slipped past him, waved hello at David, and locked myself in the bathroom. It was small, with an old- fashioned claw-foot tub and single tiny window. After seven days of wrestling with my inner demons and sleeping, I got my first glimpse in the mirror. My hair lay flat as I’d ever seen it, shiny on top and tangled at the ends. My skin was dull, a little too pale, lips dry and cracked. I yanked off the long T-shirt. I’d lost weight, leaving both hip bones more pronounced than they used to be. Ribs, too.
My fingers absently stroked the spot above my left breast where the dart had struck, sure I could still feel its sting.
I stayed in the shower until the hot water turned lukewarm, taking time to untangle my hair, wash it thoroughly, then scrub every inch of skin twice. I also used Wyatt’s disposable razor to feel female again. The mirror was so steamed up I didn’t bother using it. The only items on the sink’s narrow ledge were a toothbrush, toothpaste, and men’s deodorant. Since it was that or BO, I used the sport stick, wrung my hair and blotted out what water I could, then wrapped another thick, fuzzy towel around my body.
David’s head was barely visible over the arm of the couch. Looked like my babysitter was taking a nap. Not that I could blame him. The cabin didn’t have a television, or any books that I could spot, so his entertainment choices were limited. I crept back into the bedroom and shut the door.
A startled cry stuck in my throat. Wyatt was sitting on the foot of the bed, silent as a statue, hands folded in his lap, watching me. Intently. While my pulse returned to normal, I put my hands on my hips and said, “I guess David had a long night. He fell asleep out there.”
He nodded, never breaking that stare. My stomach quivered. I knew that look. I’d seen it several times in the past, usually about ten minutes before I left him high and dry, and myself equally frustrated.
“How’d your errand go?” I asked. Had I been in there an hour? “Don’t suppose you bought me my own deodorant?”
Slowly, he drew to his feet, hands falling to his sides. He closed the small distance between us in long, paced strides. Butterflies erupted in my stomach.
“Wyatt—” He silenced me with a finger to my mouth, his skin cool. The finger traced around the edges of my lips and across my cheek, until his right hand cupped my jaw. I leaned into his touch, usually so warm, now strangely cool and smooth. He was close, barely a pocket of air between us, and me in a damned towel.
I cleared my throat and tried again: “David’s outside.”
He nodded, silent, and dipped his head. I accepted him without protest. His right hand tightened as his mouth descended. My eyes started to close, then snapped open at the oddness of the kiss. There was no heat, no spark. I was kissing a stranger, and when he parted his lips to deepen the kiss, I flinched. He tasted wrong. Almost sour, nothing like Wyatt. The scent was wrong. Everything was wrong.
I yanked back. Something stung my neck.
The desire in his smile morphed into a sneer as the lights went out.
Cold fear snapped me awake. I tried to strike out, but nothing happened. I flexed fingers that didn’t move. My entire body was numb from the neck down, not responding to desperate attempts to sit up, reach out, do something. I couldn’t even turn my head. Couldn’t feel anything beneath me, but the angle of the ceiling suggested I was in bed.
The mattress sank nearby, then Wyatt appeared in my line of sight. My heart hammered and my stomach churned. Sweat broke out on my forehead. What was wrong with him? He gazed down at me as though he’d never seen me before. Up and down the length of my—oh no. I struggled to tilt my head down and managed enough angle to realize one horrifying reality—my towel was open, and I was naked.
Terror seized my chest and squeezed. This wasn’t Wyatt; it couldn’t be. He’d never do something like this to me, not even as the most horrible, sinister April Fools’ prank in history. But my eyes told me he was. He was swabbing at my hip with something chilly.
“No.” The sound was garbled, barely a word. He looked at me and smiled, lips curling back from his teeth. Horrible intent was in that smile. I shuddered. Two of my fingers twitched, and my heart leapt. Was the sedative wearing off?
He reached out of sight and drew back with a long-needled, wide-body syringe. I stared, dumbfounded, as he shifted back and lowered the syringe. Pierced my hip. White-hot spikes shot through my abdomen and leg, and a garbled scream erupted from my throat. Down it went. Pressure against my hip, all the way to the bone. Pained, confused tears sparked in my eyes. The strangest pulling sensation accompanied the agony in my hip.
I closed my eyes, breathing deeply, staving off full-blown panic. This wasn’t happening; it was another hallucination. Maybe I hadn’t actually survived the vampire parasite. Maybe I was a Halfie and this was Hell. I was in Hell, that’s it. No way Wyatt was doing this.
The wail caught in my throat and choked me. I coughed and curled my toes. The numbness had become a strange tingle. I flexed the muscle in my right thigh, felt it respond.
Wyatt reached past me to put the syringe—now full of something dark red from my body—on the bedside table. Came back with a second syringe, just as big as the first.
As the numbness wore off and I caught hold of my initial panic, I felt my tap to the Break return. It snapped into place like a rubber band. I tried to picture the living room, someplace where David would see me and wake the fuck up. I found a few tendrils of loneliness and grasped them. The second syringe broke skin. I closed my eyes, pulled on everything I had, and slipped into the Break.
A scratchy wool rug burned into my naked back. The mounted deer’s head loomed above me. I wrenched my head toward the sofa. David lay flat on his back, staring up at the ceiling. Probably drugged with whatever I’d been given. Shit.
The bedroom door squealed open.
I twisted onto my stomach, my limbs still not quite cooperating, like rolling through syrup. My legs were heavy, dead weights. I reached out with both hands, grabbed a handful of the faded area rug, and tried to pull. A foot pressed down on the small of my back. I screamed, although there was no one to hear me. We were in the middle of nowhere.
He kicked. Pain flared in my left side, and it knocked the wind out of me. I felt sick as I gasped. Struggled as he flipped me over on my back and straddled my thighs. I kicked and bucked to little effect, terror overtaking good sense, still lacking full control of my body.
The first blow filled my mouth with blood. The second bounced my skull off the floor, and I saw stars. He
