Once Upon a Twist (17 page)

He twitched all over, little jerks in his fingers, arms and head. His mouth gaped and an ugly, familiar growl rumbled in his throat. Sanity slipped from his expression and for a frightening second he looked like the monster who had attacked her at Grandma’s.

“Jeremy, calm down.” Her tone was firm, harsh, but oddly controlled considering her heart felt like it was on a mission to gnaw its way through her chest. “Relax.”

All the twitching and jerking stopped. He stared at her for a long moment. She hoped her face was stern enough. Hoped she had him back.

“I’m losing who I am,” he whispered. “I almost went there. I can feel it coming, Red. There isn’t much time.” She’d never been so glad to hear him use her nickname.

Those yellow eyes shone from dark sockets. The color of his face was greyer now and the skin he’d wiped from his lids was rapidly darkening. He was going too fast. Grief soared through her, but she wouldn’t crumble now. Later, if things didn’t work out. Not when they still had a chance.

“Have you mixed your formula with the cure?” she asked.

He threw her a look that insinuated she was mad.

“I mean, if you mixed the disease in its concentrated form with say, a person’s blood, then mixed in the cure and injected it into the person, would that be less a shock to their body? Would that help the cure take?”

She didn’t know much about chemistry or biology, had spent most of the lessons flipping through magazines, but it made sense to her. Jeremy didn’t answer, only stared at her with a vacant look. She thought she’d lost him again.

“Jer?”

“It might,” he said. “But it might accelerate the change or create something else.”

“Isn’t there a way to test it?” She thought of the man she’d killed this morning and could have kicked herself. He would have been the perfect subject. “The Wolf.” A plan formed in her mind and she almost bounced off the chair with excitement. “I can lure the wolf
here.
We could test it on him.”

“NO!” His tone startled her. “You. Are. Not. Going. After. The. Wolf.”

He spoke the words through a clenched jaw, his eyes burning, driving home his refusal. “It might be the only—”

“Red, that wouldn’t work. The wolf has the full strain of the disease. It would be like giving a headache tablet to a patient suffering a full blown migraine. I can be the experiment. Worst case scenario, I’ll change faster but you have the gun. Best case I…”

Those stranger eyes softened. “I have some clean samples of my blood I was testing on. I can mix up a few batches, then try it on a sample of my infected blood. If it clears the virus, we can test it on me.”

She didn’t like the word
test
when it referred to him. Still, he was trying to do it as safely as he could even though what they faced was unknown. She cleared the table and brought the items he needed, suspecting his energy had waned. Not once did he get up, and his arms were slow and lethargic as he worked. If it wasn’t for the crease in his now stone colored forehead, she’d swear he wasn’t even trying.

Watching him transfer liquids from test tube to test tube made her uneasy. There wasn’t a clock in here, and she couldn’t be sure how much time had passed. Was it dark already? The government would come soon, and the thought made her want to demand that he hurry up. But it was clear in every determined movement that he was fighting to do this. Fighting to stay
him
, to stay with her and she couldn’t make any more demands of this man.

Ruby could only guess at the internal struggle he must be having to do this for her. If she hadn’t asked him to go look for Grandma, he wouldn’t be hurt in the first place. Her shoulders slumped as she watched him work.

“I’m sorry, Jer. If I hadn’t asked… you wouldn’t have been…”

His gaze met hers, and even though they were fully yellow, the emotion behind them was all his. A year ago, she wouldn’t have believed him capable of such depth.

“This isn’t your fault. It’s all on me. Don’t torture yourself, sweetheart. Please.”

He had it wrong, but she wasn’t going to argue with him. Not now. Instead she nodded.

Jeremy smiled, but didn’t look like he bought the lie. “Okay, I’ve tried it with three consistencies.”

She watched him use a sucky thing to pick up some of the liquid and drop it onto a slide. He put the same amount of another substance next to it, slipped the glass onto the microscope and checked the lens. “Shit.”

“Too much?” she asked, but the slide cracked, answering her question as the blood and mixture sizzled. She slumped forward, wondering if she shouldn’t be using this time with him to get to know each other better, tell him how much he meant to her, instead of putting them both through this.

He went through the process on another slide. She expected the same thing to happen again, but nothing did. When his gaze rose from the microscope, he shook his head. “Not enough this time.” 

Third time lucky? Ruby hoped so with all her heart. Time seemed to slow down as he placed the mixture in the slide, carefully brought it to the microscope and looked down. His breath caught in his throat, then he burst into a croaky laugh that somehow managed to sound gooey.

“It worked.” When his head rose this time, he was smiling, triumphant with shock and awe. “You’re a genius, Red. I may have to marry you.”

She grinned at him, allowing herself to hope even though so much could still go wrong. “It worked?”

He nodded. Suddenly he was moving faster, taking the cure, and vials of his blood and mixing them eagerly. Her smile slipped as she realized this was it. They’d test the formula on him and either he’d die, turn quicker or heal. Time ticked on, the agents couldn’t have been far, but finally he had a syringe filled with the new formula.

Suddenly he froze. “Ruby, there’s something I have to say.”

Her throat tightened. “You can tell me after, when you’re healed.”

He sucked in a breath and it sounded wet, like his lungs were filled with fluid—more likely they had rotted into mush. Tears pricked her eyes.

“I love you. Always have, always will.”

The change was almost complete. His skin wasn’t much different from the monster she killed earlier, his eyes bright yellow, but they shone with emotion. His love.

“I love you too, Jer. Even when I thought you wanted someone else, I still loved you.”

His smile pulled his skin tight across his pale lips. “I’m going to inject it straight into my heart since the thing’s still beating. It should spread the formula faster.” 

She held her breath as he lifted the syringe and gently pressed until the amber liquid spurted from the needle. Jeremy placed the tip just over his heart and closed his eyes
. Her
heart took off and her head spun. This was it, now or never.

“The gun,” he whispered.

She picked it up with shaking hands and pointed it at him. Could she kill him if it all went wrong? Ruby didn’t think so. But she had to. She couldn’t let him live as a monster.

Jeremy sucked in another deep breath, then stabbed the needle into his heart. He emptied the plunger immediately then pulled it out. The syringe clattered to the floor, empty, and he slapped a palm to his chest over the wound.

A crashing sound echoed through the house. She turned, expecting to see a SWAT Team or something, but what appeared in the door to the lab took her breath away. The wolf pulled its lips back in a terrifying grin. It had found her. Idiot that she was, she hadn’t set up Jeremy’s security before they made it to the lab.

Jeremy panted behind her and groaned as if he were in pain. She pointed the gun at the wolf, desperate to look back and check on him. Desperate to see if it was working, or if she had lost him. The wolf sank back into a crouch and she pulled the trigger. The shot clipped the skin of the wolf’s back leg, slammed the butt into her already aching shoulder and she stumbled backward, dropping the gun.

The wolf didn’t need another invitation. It pounced. Instinctively, Ruby held both her arms out to protect her face, but what use was that really? Hot knives—or maybe it was the wolf’s teeth—sunk into her arm. She cried out, kicking wildly with her legs. The thing’s jaw didn’t ease its hold and a horrid crunching sound came from her arm.

The agony that followed made the edges of her mind murky, like she was about to pass out. That would have been fine, anything to escape the pain. The wolf released her arm as she rose to her knees. She was eyelevel with the creature now. Its yellow gaze almost comforting. It licked her face and she cringed back. The smell of death and rot and disease tainted its breath.

“Red, no…” she heard Jeremy’s voice, a broken whisper in the distance right before she collapsed onto the floor, knocking her head against the tiles.

Her mind was going, she was losing her grip on reality but welcomed it as the pain in her arm subsided. The last thing she registered was a male voice she didn’t recognize. Then everything went dark.

Chapter Eight

Jeremy’s body was on fire. It coursed from his heart, through his veins to every part of him. But the focus of his attention wasn’t the burning, or the fear of what he would become, it was the anguish he felt seeing Red lying on the floor beneath the wolf.

“In here,” a voice shouted. Parish appeared in the doorway, a sig held out in front of him.

Jeremy couldn’t let go of the table. The fire ripping through his veins had locked him in place. He pleaded with his eyes, begged Parish to kill the wolf, to help Ruby. Parish fired the gun. It ripped through the wolf’s skull. The thing whirled on Parish with a growl.

“Holly fuck.” Parish leveled the gun again, aiming for the wolf’s eyes, and fired twice more.

Blinded, the wolf staggered over Ruby’s body and slammed into a unit. Parish glanced at the table. He dove for one of the tubes. “This the cure?” he asked Jeremy.

Jeremy nodded once. Parish sucked the contents out with a spare syringe and tracked the wolf. The creature had calmed, and its ears twitched, listening to Parish’s footsteps. Two other men in black arrived. They all walked into the lab, pointing their guns at the wolf.

Its head swung around to face the other agents, no doubt hearing their heavy steps. Parish leaped forward and stabbed the thing with the syringe. The wolf went down, body twitching, next to Ruby.

Jeremy’s eyes blurred with tears, unable to see from this distance if she was still breathing.

“Jeremy?” Agent Parish asked. “Do you know who you are?”

He nodded. The burning got worse, but the excruciating throb in his heart hurt more.

Parish’s gaze took in the equipment in front of Jeremy, the test tubes, the syringe on the floor. Another of the agents dragged the wolf away from Red, tied its snout with rope and hauled its body out of the room. But it wasn’t necessary. The wolf’s body was melting fast, just like Parish knew it would.

“Did you cure yourself?” Parish asked.

Jeremy cleared his throat. “I don’t know. This is a test.”

Parish nodded, but pointed the gun at Jeremy.

He didn’t care, his gaze went back to Red. “It bit her, too. Broke her arm, I think.” His voice broke.

This was all Jeremy’s fault. He came up with the formula that created the wolf, and now she had to suffer. This wasn’t something he could forgive himself for. If the new formula he injected into himself worked, he would be around to save her. He’d brought her nothing but hell since he’d met her.

Parish crossed the lab to Ruby. He crouched down, gun still in hand.

“Hurt her, and I’ll kill you,” Jeremy promised.

Parish backed away from her and his eyebrows shot up. “I won’t hurt her. I hope, for both your sakes, what you did worked.”

Jeremy hoped so too. If he could save Red, he didn’t care about anything else. “Keep her safe until we see what this formula is doing to me. If it works, then I’ll try it on her.”

The fire inside seemed to be growing more bearable as he spoke. He looked down at his hands. The color wasn’t quite tan, but it wasn’t grey either. His body was changing again, maybe even back to the way it was before the wolf. Sucking in a breath, he noticed his lungs weren’t like wet sponges absorbing oxygen anymore.

Parish nodded. “Agent Berwick, get a med team here now and transport for the civilian.”

“Ruby,” Jeremy corrected. She wasn’t a
nobody
, and it pissed him off that Parish would treat her like one.

The look Parish gave him was full of curiosity. Jeremy knew what came next. He’d be that damn lab rat. Least he still had his mind, and it was stronger now. More focused with every passing second. He could help with the tests, make sure the worst of the disease was gone. After he would help Red, and make Parish swear she wouldn’t be harmed. He’d get the bastard to sign a contract in his own blood if that’s what it would take.

And if he could save her, then he’d have to find the strength to leave her.

***

Ruby opened her eyes again and groaned when she saw the man next to the bed. He’d been there every time she’d woken and the things he’d told her hurt her head to think about. There was no dumbing down explanations. With him it was all big, fancy words. All she could understand—the most important thing—was that Jeremy had cured them both.

The man had also said nothing would happen to her and that he’d sworn to Jeremy that they would give her protection in exchange for her silence. She had to sign some kind of disclosure to seal the deal, but she wouldn’t have said a word to anyone. The only person she had left was Jeremy, and she’d told this guy that too.

Grandma hadn’t made it. The agents had killed her before they could save her, and though it still caused her pain—probably always would—she’d grieved in the days she’d spent here alone. As soon as they let her out she’d have a proper burial. Maybe they could bury her in the woods near Jeremy’s cottage. That way Grandma would always be close.

Her mind went back to the lab, the wolf, the pain. Lifting her plaster covered arm, she couldn’t feel a thing now, though she suspected the morphine drip had something to do with that.