35
BRODERICK
“Say it. Say the words…”
I was delirious. My mind, in a constant fog. My body burning… eating itself alive…
“I can’t help you unless you say it.”
She was breathtakingly beautiful. A red-tressed, flowing-haired goddess. I thought she was an angel, to tell the truth. An angel of mercy, sent to bring me over, safely, to the other side.
I tried to sit up, but my chest flared with pain. Somehow I managed to crane my neck down, and my already heavy heart sank even further. The bandages were soaked through. My wounds still ran with pus, all stinking and white and yellow.
But I was alive… and they weren’t.
My God…
My unit. My men. My responsibility. I’d failed them all. I deserved to die.
You did everything you could.
I shoved away my own voice of reason. I simply didn’t want to hear it. Besides, the stench was overpowering. The agony, even more so.
“There’s a piece of shrapnel lodged just beneath your heart, Broderick. If they try to extract it, you’ll die.” The voice was soft, soothing. Almost musical. “But you’ll also die if they don’t…”
I writhed beneath the thin white sheets, sweat pouring off of my fever-soaked body. Somehow I knew she was right. I could feel it. I knew it as certainly as I knew my own name: I’d never wake up tomorrow.
“I’ll take it out for you,” the angel said. “And I’ll let you live, as well.”
Her scent was strong as she hovered over me, all perfume and jasmine and… something else. Something more powerful. Something coppery and primal, I couldn’t put my finger on.
“There’s little time,” my angel spoke softly. “In just minutes you’ll be dead.”
I punched the button on my morphine drip. In the back of my drug-addled mind, I knew I’d already maxed it out.
“I’m offering you life. Hope. A new beginning.”
I clamped down with my jaw. Squeezed so hard it felt like my teeth would shatter.
“This is your last chance, Broderick.”
She leaned forward, brushing her lips against me.
“Your very last moments in this world.”
She kissed me, more with pity than with passion. I sighed as her mouth moved lower, over my chin, my neck, my chest.
I could feel the infection in my veins now. It ran through every inch of me, just beneath my skin.
“Broderick…”
It was white hot. Sizzling agony.
“Save yourself.”
I was dying of thirst. Her lips were cool, clear water…
I gulped hard. Finally I nodded.
“Is that a yes?”
I nodded again, this time more vigorously. In my weakened state, I noticed my chin barely moved.
“You have to say it, Broderick. I need the words.”
My throat was bone dry. My tongue glued to the roof of my mouth.
I opened my cracked lips and spoke anyway.
“Do it,” I murmured. “Help me.”
Her mouth moved to my lips again. Her eyes bore into mine.
“Tell me to—”
“Make me,” I gasped.
Her eyes flared, two green jewels sparkling in the hospital’s dim light. It was what she wanted. Precisely what she’d been waiting for.
“Make me.”
The angel’s smile of pity turned to one of enthusiasm, even rapture. She bent her head, lowered her lips…
As her teeth broke through I barely felt anything at all.
I blinked away the memory, shoving it back to that dark place I seldom visited in my mind. I needed to focus. Focus on masking myself from Karessa. Focus on staying close enough to Serena, while still putting out feelers for Damien, who I could sense even now was moving in my direction.
There wasn’t a lot of time. Damien was bringing two pursuers with him. I could smell them now, their scent riding the air. Christophe. Lionel. Running full tilt, in my direction.
I inhaled deeply, filling my great human lungs with air.
Make me.
Karessa had taken my life, and yet she’d given it too. Damien’s choice had been no less made for him, and he’d adjusted famously. I’d always hated him for that — hated him for the ease at which he was able to accept, adapt, even thrive.
I’d hated him and I never understood why. But now I did.
Make me…
It had taken me all these years to come to terms with who I was. All those long years of turmoil, just so I could—
I could hear them now, rushing this way. The sound got my blood pumping. I tilted my chin upward, allowing it to be a catalyst for the metamorphosis. I felt the familiar, rising heat of the shift.
My eyes rolled into my head. My lips curled backward, stretching over my teeth…
Make me.
I was who I was.