everafter Read online

  The door opened onto a lobby, furnished in the Art Deco style. A bank of elevators was set into the wall on the right. A turnstile to the left of the receptionist’s desk blocked casual access to the rest of the first floor. The receptionist was a woman—tanned, thin, and blond. I caught her appraising glance, but wasn’t even remotely tempted. I didn’t go for the waifish look, for one thing. For another, Alexa owned me. The memory of her lips against my stomach made my throat burn.

  “I’m Valentine Darrow, here to see Dr. Clavier,” I said. She typed some kind of query into her computer, and the attached printer spat out a plastic card imprinted with a bar code.

  “Room 317,” she said, her fingers, adorned with bright red nail polish, grazing mine as I took the card. “This will open it for you.”

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  Hi-tech. Impressive. “Thanks,” I said, turning toward the elevators.

  The third-floor corridor felt like something out of a Star Trek episode. Light from fluorescent lamps glittered off the metallic walls and floor. The air smelled of disinfectant, and my palms began to sweat as I flashed back to the hospital. Unlike the hospital, though, this place was silent. Creepy. I rolled my shoulders in an effort to shake off the weird feeling and slid the card beneath the infrared scanner glowing redly on the wall. It was like swiping my savings card at the grocery store, only much less mundane. The door slid open. This was like no physician’s waiting room I’d been in before. Yes, it held an examination table, a desk with a computer on it, and a rack on the wall containing a stethoscope and a blood pressure cuff. But there was also a small conference table surrounded by four chairs, and strangest of all, a lab bench, complete with pipetting equipment and what looked like a really nice microscope. I debated between sitting in a chair or perching on the examination table and decided for the latter. The trademark crepe paper crinkled beneath me, and I had to fight the urge to kick my dangling feet like I had when I was a child. Instead, I leaned back on my elbows and started to daydream. Dr. Clavier would come in, draw some blood, run a few tests, and discover that I had some kind of minor chemical imbalance, like a mild thyroid problem. He would prescribe a pill. Within days, the weird thirst would go away and I would start feeling stronger. He’d direct me to a really good therapist—maybe even a psychiatrist, who could prescribe some meds that would help with my anxiety. If I could stop being so afraid, I’d be able to focus enough to get caught up on my schoolwork. The nightmares would disappear, and the thought of making love with Alexa wouldn’t frighten me at all.

  The door opened. I sat up straight as Dr. Clavier entered, wearing a white lab coat, black slacks, and those same tinted glasses. “Hello, Valentine,” he said, setting what I assumed was my chart down on the desk. “How are you feeling today?”

  So much for small talk. Clavier was a good lesson in how not to build rapport with my future patients. “Pretty much the same as Monday,” I said. “Except thirstier, if that’s even possible.”

  “Mmm. I’d like to draw some blood in order to run a few tests.”

  I rolled up my left sleeve without needing to be asked, surprised

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  that he didn’t have a technician to do this kind of thing for him. He applied a tourniquet and unwrapped a needle and syringe before gently grasping my elbow with his left hand. His fingers were cool against my skin. I watched as he inserted the needle deftly into my vein. I expected him to try to distract me with a question, the way nurses usually did, but he remained silent.

  “Let’s take a look,” he said, once two vials were full and a BandAid was covering the small puncture wound. He gestured toward the microscope. “I’ll just be a moment.”

  I watched him remove a sterile eyedropper and slide from a drawer under the lab bench. He added a drop of my blood to the slide and affixed it to the microscope stage, then he peered into the lens and adjusted the focus. I gripped the examination table hard, watching for some kind of reaction. But he had none.

  After a moment, he stood, withdrew a cell phone from his pocket, and pressed one button before replacing it. Then, he walked to his desk, leaned against it, and crossed his arms over his chest. My heart was pounding against my rib cage as I tried to decipher his lack of expression. What the hell was wrong with me? Why was he being so…abnormal? Usually, physicians frustrated me with their forced friendliness, but Clavier’s laconic style was brutal.

  “You have been infected with a parasite,” he said finally. “A very rare parasite, called Plasmodium sitis.”

  There was no truly effective preparation for hearing bad news about your health. Despite having known that something was wrong with me, I freaked out. My autonomic nervous system went crazy, dumping adrenaline into my system and making me want to run for the door. I dug my fingers even harder into the metal edge of the table, willing myself to calm the fuck down. Most of the parasites I’d ever heard of were treatable. I just needed to not panic, so that I could get all the details from Clavier.

  “I’ve never heard of that one,” I said, willing my voice not to shake. He actually smiled a little. How the fuck could he be smiling?

  “Most people haven’t.”

  “What does it do and how do we treat it?” I asked, in as businesslike a voice as I could muster, even though what I really wanted to do was punch that smiling mouth of his.

  “Plasmodium sitis is a fascinating little creature.” His voice had

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  dropped slightly, and had a musical quality to it. He wasn’t looking at me, but at the microscope—as though he could see my blood sample from his desk. “We’ve been studying it for decades and still don’t understand it fully. Put simply: it is a blood eater.”

  My brain was in hyperdrive. The only way to keep myself from panicking was to fall back on rational thought processes. “It eats blood. Like…like the malaria parasite?” But even as the question left my mouth, I knew I was barking up the wrong tree; my symptoms were nothing like those of malaria.

  Clavier shook his head. “It does consume hemoglobin, but the mechanism is completely different. And this particular parasite is very, very greedy—it not only feeds off red blood cells, but from elements in the plasma as well. Most disturbing of all is its viral behavior.”

  “Viral behavior?” The fear was starting to win. Parasites are multicelled organisms. Viruses are genes covered with protein. Apples and god damn oranges.

  “Plasmodium sitis is so very thirsty,” Clavier explained softly. He sounded like he was talking about a lover, not a pathogen. “It has a use for almost every component in the bloodstream. It alters human DNA by injecting part of itself into T-cells and modifying the cytokines that they release. These new cytokines still act like the carrier pigeons of the cellular world, but instead of sending messages about an immune response to other cells, they pass along the same alterations made in the first. A domino effect, if you will.”

  “Jesus Christ.” I was shaking now. This fucking thing was inside me, changing me. I couldn’t think anymore. I could barely breathe.

  “What the hell is it doing to me?”

  At that moment, the door opened. The woman who entered was so impossibly beautiful that she momentarily distracted me from my fullblown panic. She looked to be in her mid-thirties and wore a dark red pantsuit that I knew had been designed with her specifically in mind. Tall—though not quite as tall as I—and slender, she carried herself like a queen. Raven black hair cascaded down her back, falling to her waist, and her eyes were the color of rain-dampened slate. I had the truly bizarre impulse to hop off the table, get down on one knee, and swear fealty to her. And then I noticed her companion—a hulking man who looked like his muscle-bound torso had barely fit through the doorway. He was clearly a bodyguard. His carriage reminded me of Penn, my

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  father’s chief of security: s
trong, confident, capable of breaking a man’s neck without the slightest hesitation or remorse. Whoever she was, she didn’t need me if she had someone like him.

  “Good afternoon, Harold,” she said in a husky alto. She took one step toward me, extending her hand. Her skin had a rich, olive tone to it. “And Valentine Darrow. A true pleasure.”

  “Um,” I said. And instantly hated myself.

  She laughed. “Helen Lambros. You must call me Helen.”

  “Hello,” was all I managed. Her touch was cool against my sweating palm. The part of my brain still capable of functioning on a rational level was wondering who she was, and why she had so cavalierly joined a private conversation between my physician and me.

  “Valentine and I were just discussing the parasite,” said Clavier. His tone was distinctly deferential.

  “Ah.” Helen took a seat at the conference table, crossing one elegant leg over the other. Her bodyguard leaned in one corner of the room, bulging arms crossed over his massive chest. “Please,” she said, gesturing toward me. “Continue.”

  “Ever since you were infected, the parasite has been changing your DNA,” Clavier explained. “Some of these alterations are beneficial. You will discover that your senses are slightly sharper and your endurance greater than in the past. And already, you have stopped aging. The other changes, however, can be troublesome. The parasite reacts poorly to sunlight, and will make you more sensitive. But most significantly of all,” and here he exchanged a meaningful glance with Helen, “you must drink blood in order to replenish that which the parasite consumes.”

  Silence reigned in the room. I leaned forward, blinking hard in my total and utter disbelief. I wasn’t going to age? I had to drink blood?

  “What?”

  “Two days ago, you spoke to me of your unquenchable thirst, Valentine. Your body is not craving water. It is craving blood.”

  I laughed, because this was fucking psychotic. I didn’t care who the hell was sitting at this conference table, and what kind of crazy charisma she had going for her—Clavier was a nut job, a quack, and I was getting the hell out of here. Now.

  “Thanks ever so much for your professional opinion,” I sneered as I limped toward the door. How much more ridiculous could this get?

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  Was he part of some kind of crazy religious sect or something? How had I gotten caught up in this bullshit?

  But when I pressed down hard on the door handle, it wouldn’t engage. I tried again—nothing. I spun around as quickly as I could, struggling not to betray my sudden terror. Trapped. Fuck.

  “I know this is difficult to believe, Valentine,” Helen said in her bewitching, melodious voice. “But Dr. Clavier is only giving you the medical facts.”

  When I scoffed at that in a show of bravado, he pointed toward the microscope. “See for yourself.”

  What else could I do? He was appealing to logic. I was in training to be a doctor. The results would speak for themselves. And besides, I was shut up in here, at their mercy. I could either throw a futile tantrum, or follow orders.

  I turned slowly and walked to the back of the room, trying not to let them see just how frightened I was. A cabinet door opened and shut behind me, but I didn’t look back. I perched on the stool that Clavier had vacated and pressed my eye to the lens. With a few slight twists, the slide came into focus. My blood. The red cells were most abundant, of course, while the larger white cells were much more infrequent. For a moment, I was captivated by the complex beauty of it—so many components, all working together in harmony. To keep me alive. And then I saw the parasite.

  It had a half-moon shape, like a scythe, and it was in the process of devouring a red cell from the inside out. My God, I thought, watching the monster effortlessly eat through the cell’s membrane. It was reproducing in there. And when the cell burst…

  My stomach pitched and rolled, and I clutched hard at the table edge to keep myself upright. That thing and the thousands of others like it in my bloodstream were incontrovertible proof that something was terribly wrong with me. Unless—and the shock of this revelation turned my knuckles white—unless this wasn’t my blood. What if this was some elaborate ruse? Sure, I’d been watching him as he made up the slide, but not closely enough to see through a sleight of hand. I ripped off the Band-Aid and opened the drawer in the same movement, yanking out a fresh slide and squeezing the tiny hole in my arm as hard as I could. A drop of blood welled up and I caught it

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  on the glass. I looked over my shoulder, certain that the big guy would be two-thirds of the way across the room by now to stop me from exposing the lie…but they were all where I had left them, watching me. Expressionless.

  Snarling, I discarded the old slide and snapped the new one into place, but when I peered back into the lens, the same horror awaited me. I slumped. Clavier wasn’t lying about the parasite. Could he be telling the truth about everything else? I didn’t want to believe it. How was I supposed to take them at their word when they were talking about the stuff of thriller novels and horror films? Vampirism? Eternal youth?

  One thing I knew for certain: that thing inside my blood was killing me, not making me ageless. And how the hell had I been infected in the first place?

  A sudden suspicion made me lurch to my feet and stagger toward Clavier, despite the blinding surge of pain that radiated up my thigh.

  “You! Did you do this to me? Put this in me? In the hospital—did you?”

  I was eye to eye with him now, but no matter how close I got, he refused to take a step back. His preternatural calm infuriated me, and I clenched my right fist, finally surrendering to the violent impulses that had been plaguing me all week—

  At that instant, an aroma filled the room: sweet, tangy, metallic. My head whipped around and saliva flooded my mouth. My throat spasmed, the burn so intense that I couldn’t help but cry out. Behind me, Helen was squeezing the contents of a bag of blood into a mug. A bag of blood.

  My brain was repulsed. The idea of drinking that was anathema. It was sick, twisted, wrong. Perverted. But my body took a step forward, and then another. Tears leaked down my face as the fire in my throat blazed hotter than it ever had. My gaze was locked on the cup. I wanted it. Needed it. The scent wafting up from it was…heavenly.

  “You are starting to understand, aren’t you?” Helen said quietly. My brain demanded that I stop moving, but my body continued its slow stalk toward the table. “The parasite is making you immutable and stronger. Though you can be killed, you have already ceased to age. But it demands blood in return. For the rest of your existence, you will crave it—crave it like nothing else on earth.”

  Alexa, my brain howled. It’s Alexa that I crave, Alexa that I need. More than what is waiting on that table, more than anything. But

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  my legs continued to move. The urge to lash out at Clavier had been completely subsumed by the impulse to gorge myself on the contents of that mug.

  “Drink,” Helen ordered, taking a shallow sip before holding it out to me. I stood before her, breathing hard, hands trembling. My eyes were transfixed by the small movements of the viscous fluid as it sloshed gently against the ceramic walls. Need spiked through me, crackling under my skin, white and hot. It reduced me to instinct. I had to feed.

  I snatched the cup from Helen’s hands and tilted it to my lips. As the first thick rush hit my tongue, my brain screamed in revulsion. But for the first time since I’d woken from my coma nearly two weeks ago, the thirst eased. I drank and drank, tilting both my head and the mug to catch every last drop. When it was empty, I set it onto the table and licked my lips. My throat throbbed greedily. The fire was slightly muted, but still present.

  “More.” It was a demand, an imperative. My rational thought was bound and gagged. I channeled the will of the parasite.

  “Yes, more. You will always wa
nt more.” Helen’s long, low laugh began to wake me from the feeding-induced haze. The aftertaste lingered on my teeth, my tongue, a so-sweet hint of copper. “What you just consumed has barely taken the edge off. Cold, preserved blood is a poor substitute for that taken from the source.”

  I blinked and shook my head. Coming out of the thirst-induced fog felt like waking from a lucid dream. I looked at the mug on the table. I had drained it. The hairs on my neck stood straight up, but otherwise, my body refused to react. It was satisfied. Sort of. And my nausea had disappeared. “The source?”

  “Bagged blood will not sustain you,” Clavier said, stepping forward to dispose of the remnants of the bag. “Only blood taken directly from a live human is truly nourishing.”

  My brain rebelled again, and without the enticement of that rich aroma to distract me, the panic returned full force. “You want me to kill people? Just to…to get a fucking meal?” Oh God. How the hell had this happened? What was I going to do? I had to go to the police. To turn them in. And myself. I would starve without blood. The parasite would destroy me—I’d seen that for myself. But did that even matter, if I saved countless lives?

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  “Of course not,” said Helen. Once again, her silky voice silenced my gibbering internal monologue. “We don’t countenance murder. It is quite possible to take enough blood for your needs without harming the donor.”

  My brain, racing a mile a minute, was on to her euphemisms. Suddenly, the bite mark on my side made perfect sense. He had infected me—bitten me to gorge himself and in the process, transmitted the parasite. “Taking blood” was violent. There weren’t any “donors”—

  only victims. Like I had been. But I wasn’t innocent anymore. Now I was part of the problem.

  My head was spinning. This was just too fucking much. I sank into one of the free chairs around the table.