Page 67 of This Vicious Hunger
Then she empties the entire contents into her mouth in one smooth gesture, swallowing it down in a single gulp.
“Olea—” I start, and then stop. That’s more than ten times the dose I took. She lets the bottle drop with a heaviness. I watch her eyes, heavy-lidded and sleepy. She doesn’t move at first, fists balled, curved lips parted as she inhales deep, and then deeper, drawing in the musky scent of the coming rain. “How do you feel?”
“I feel…” The words are slurred, drunken. She licks her lips and I think she must be tasting honey. “I feeleverything.” She grips hold of my outstretched hands, skin to skin, her palms pressed to mine and our fingers intertwined. “Did you feel it? It’s like lightning in my veins. It’s like…”
She surges forward and plants her lips on mine. The kiss is hungry and vibrant; I taste the nectar on her, running my tongue over hers. She presses her forehead tight against mine, nose to nose, breath mingling. Her skin is warm, warmer than I have known it outside of fever. She kisses me again.
I pull back, watching as the inky tendrils across her hands begin to dissipate. She marvels at the sight of her smooth, milky-white flesh returning. Pale, peachy nails, wrists speckled with a thousand tiny freckles. She beams at me with lips the colour of burning bush berries, pink and soft. Her eyes are warm brown chocolate cut with mint. She is as lush and fresh as a dewdrop.
Desire roars within me as she launches herself at me again, kissing my lips and then my jaw, my neck, the soft, exposed skin at my throat above my collar. She pushes me back into the dry earth, straddling me, a whoop of pure pleasure ricocheting through her, her hands on my chest.
“You did it!” she crows. “You actually fucking did it. Thora, you beautiful, beautiful—”
She stutters into silence. Her gaze has caught on the white circle of the sun. In its welcome light she is ethereal, her skin glowing in contrast to her dark curls—glossy and thick and near black as damp soil. I reach for her breast eagerly, but the expression on her face gives me pause.
“Olea?”
She grips my shirtfront with both hands, her whole body goingrigid as some kind of seizure takes her. I scramble upright, nudging her off my legs. She lands in the dirt still shaking, trembling so hard that her teeth rattle in her skull.
“Olea!” I shout.
But my voice falls on deaf ears. The seizure continues, brutal and angry and hard, racking her body until she can do nothing but lie on the ground. I rush to help her, trying to hold her still or cushion her head against the earth. The new colour leaches from her skin as fast as it came, leaving her grey and cold.
“Olea?” I whisper. Thunder rolls in the distance. I feel the first fat drops of rain on my head and in seconds the sky is open and the rain is pouring, gushing, drowning us both in rivulets so thick and deep it might wash away everything. The vial, the mixture. But not what has happened. It is too late for rain to fix that.
The antidote has failed.
Olea is dead.
Chapter Thirty-Two
Rain lashes down hard. The garden becomes a quagmire amidst the deluge. I cradle Olea’s body in my arms for what feels like forever but is in actuality perhaps only half an hour. The sun continues its ascent, and Olea’s skin begins to grow hot beneath its touch. It does not redden or come up in welts, but I feel the heat radiating off her, like holding my hand too close to the flame of a candle—and it isn’t long before the rain begins to sizzle when it lands.
At first I attempt to shield her with my body. I hunch my shoulders and curl around her like a browning leaf, but the sun is fierce—brighter and hotter than it should be through the rain. Its rays feel like knives against my skin, each prick drawing out what little energy I have left. I do not cry. I have nothing more to give.
Dr. Petaccia appears at my side like a wraith. I don’t hear her arrive. The rain is like a roaring static inside my ears. Blink, water, blink, Olea, blink, water, blink—Petaccia. She wears dark robes over her usual outfit, black leather gloves, a mask over her nose and mouth, and a hood pulled up over her hair. I stare at her blearily, confusion and sadness and anger all blurring into one freezing emotion.
“She collapsed,” I babble. “A seizure, I think—”
“Move,” she says dispassionately.
When I don’t immediately drop Olea’s head from my lap, the doctor gives my shin a hard, fast kick. I yelp in pain. The agony is wrong, disproportionate to the violence; my whole body aches with it, tendrils of fire licking outwards from the bruising flesh until every part of me hurts. I scramble away before Petaccia kicks me again, fixating on the way Olea’s lifeless hand drops to the dirt.
Petaccia lifts Olea’s body as if her bones are hollow. Her dirty nightgown trails in the muck, arms limp and head lolling back. The doctor strides with purpose, not hurry, to the tower. Every step carries Olea farther away from the antidote, from me and our freedom, back to her prison.
I crawl after them, barely able to lift my arms. My strength has gone, sapped into the earth. Sickness swirls inside me and I retch filmy white bile into the dirt. My skin is fire, my innards a sluggish icy slurry. The pain in my head is a pounding so heavy, so loud, it pushes my eyelids shut. I will die from this grief.
I drag myself to the door of the tower and through into its warmth, and then follow the damp trail down, down the spiral stairs, step by step on my backside until I reach the basement. This windowless room is clearly a pantry of sorts, small sacks of potatoes and carrots and flour hanging from hooks on the walls, a slice of buttered bread half-eaten on a plate on the side. Petaccia has repurposed a thin low dining table, swept aside metal candlesticks in a clatter, and placed Olea on its surface, black dirt marring the white cloth beneath.
I sag against the wall and watch as Petaccia lights a handful of pillar candles scattered around the room, moving to them with grace and ease, as if she knows well where they will be. Sheworks methodically. First she checks for a pulse in Olea’s neck and wrists, shining a candle flame at her pupils and testing the reflexes in her knees. She bends away from Olea’s body, keeping a careful distance between them as much as she can, touching only when necessary.
Olea’s skin is alabaster, her hair raven. There is no colour in her lips. The inkiness on her hands and feet is gone, but the skin left behind is white as salt. She is almost perfect, except for the stillness of her chest. A storm howls inside me, a horror worse than any I’ve imagined in my life.
“Can you save her?” I croak.
Petaccia seemingly notices my arrival for the first time. She purses her lips and then shakes her head. “No,” she says simply. “She’s gone.”
“But…”You have to save her, I think, though I know it’s pointless. I saw her take her last breath. “You’re a doctor. Can’t you do something? Shock her, or—”
