Page 98 of A Study of Blood and Ichor

“I need to hear it from him!”

Vain blew out a sigh, then pressed his lips together. “Listen to me, Ava. What Rory said was true. An exorcism cannot be successful if the host vessel refuses to let go. You could never exorcise me from him because he never wanted me gone in the first place.”

I shook my head. “That’s not possible.” But it was. How else could I explain it? How many theories had I sought out and exhausted only to fail at every one?

“Rory let me in. He accepted me into his body, and I have protected him for seven years. I am the only thing keeping him alive now.”

I froze again. “What does that mean?”

Vain glanced down at Rory’s arms. “I healed him the moment I possessed him. These wounds were once a death sentence. If I were to extract myself from him, he would return to the state I found him in when he was very nearly dead. These cuts were too deep for too long. The moment I leave his body, they will reopen and he will bleed out in seconds. But even if he could be healed physically, nothing could repair the scars the possession would leave on his mind afterward. Because our bond has only strengthened after all these years, Rory wouldn’t survive the separation.”

It felt as if a knife had been plunged through my chest, and Vain was the one twisting the blade, tearing my heart to shreds.

I clenched my teeth until my jaw ached. “So, you’re possessing him and eating away at his mind and his soul until there’s nothing fucking left of him?”

Vain’s eyes softened yet held a warning in them. “I cannot control it. It is not my intention, but the force of my nature.”

“Did you know?” I whispered loud enough that I knew Rory would hear it. But he didn’t pull himself forward.

Vain blinked once. “He knew. He knew the risks from the beginning.”

I shoved his chest with both hands. “Shut up! Rory, tell me yourself, you coward!” My voice broke as I yelled, but it was no use.

“I did tell you that you wouldn’t be able to exorcise me, mellilla. You knew from the start.”

“Don’t,” I snarled, my fists clenched in the sheets. I’d been so sure it had been a grand lie, some trick or riddle I might be able to solve. I wasn’t sure what hurt more; knowing Vain had never once lied to me, or realizing that I had been too stubborn to see the truth.

Rory and Vain coexisted as one. There would always be a wrongness, an unnatural peculiarity to their bond no matter how hard I tried to look past it. Rory would never know the quiet of his own mind without Vain again. He would wrestle the demon for control until Vain overtook him completely and all that remained of him was a hollow shell, and he was nothing more than a ghost. From the start, I’d never had any real chance of saving him.

A wave of nausea struck me, and I suddenly felt flushed, my skin clammy as I struggled to swallow. Even my limbs shook as I moved to get up from the bed. Vain’s hand shot out and encircled my wrist, keeping me locked in place. “I’m sorry, mellilla. Truly, I am.”

I looked deep into Vain’s eyes, searching fervently for any sign of gray. Finding them empty, I yanked my hand from Vain’s grasp and moved toward the door, not caring that I would be walking into the hallway completely naked. Vain’s bedroom suddenly felt claustrophobic. The walls swam, the floor underneath my bare feet wobbling. I wanted out.

My head pounded, and every breath shattered in my lungs as a hopeless ache settled in the pit of my stomach. I stumbled a few feet away from the door and Vain appeared beside me in an instant, his arms braced against my waist to steady me. He spoke, but the words were muffled against the buzz in my eardrums. As his lips moved, his eyes shifted from black to gray, back and forth, the sight making me dizzy. I couldn’t make sense of either of them.

My heart and mind raced. But as I tried to shove myself away from them, my legs gave out from underneath me and tremors began to wrack through my body. The edges of my vision darkened, and the last thing I remembered was one of them catching me before I collapsed to the ground.

TWENTY-SEVEN

Rory

“She’s not going to turn, is she?”

I don’t know, Vain said after considering for a long moment. If she were, then I think it would have happened by now.

Vain had done everything in his power to flush as much of the remaining ichor out of Ava’s body as he could. Once she had stopped seizing, he forced her to throw up twice, leaving a dark stain behind on the floor of our bedroom. It hadn’t looked like much, but it was enough that we hoped that whatever was left in her wasn’t enough to turn her.

I’d carried her into her bed, and Vain had hooked Ava up to an IV to detox her system and keep her stabilized. For two days she remained unconscious.

Each time we would check on her I leaned in and pulled back her lips, afraid I would find her canines had turned into deadly fangs. But no matter how often Vain tried to convince me otherwise, I never believed that she would be okay.

There’s not much more we can do for her now but to wait. Holy water is rare to come by.

Ava had destroyed the only bottle of holy water that Vain owned, and it would be useless to try to find and acquire more now. Even if by some small miracle we got our hands on a bottle, it would be too late either way. Ava would either have turned or recovered on her own. All we could do was wait.

I sat in her room with her and forced myself to endure the weight of my guilt as I monitored the uneven rise and fall of her chest. The way her eyes danced beneath closed lids. The beads of sweat dotting her flushed cheeks and her brow before soaking into her hair.

Every day, her fever came and went suddenly, and Vain and I brought cold compresses and soft towels to keep it at bay. There were even points when she would slip in and out of consciousness where paranoia took over and Ava would scream out the same name.

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