Total pages in book: 118
Estimated words: 112001 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 560(@200wpm)___ 448(@250wpm)___ 373(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 112001 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 560(@200wpm)___ 448(@250wpm)___ 373(@300wpm)
“I love you,” she whispered as her eyes teared up. “What am I going to do without you?”
What she really needed—what they needed—was a miracle—
The door to the patient room swung open, and at first, all she saw was red—and her brain misinterpreted both its placement and its source: For a split second, she thought Daniel had somehow bled out. But why would what belonged in his veins be upright and standing in the doorway—
“Blade?” she asked as she sat up on her elbow.
“May I come in?”
The question was so formal, so out of place—because hello, he shouldn’t be here—that she nodded reflexively. “What are you doing in our lab?”
And that was when she saw C.P. Phalen standing behind him. The woman was looking fragile, her eyes wide and confused, her hand going to her temple and rotating as if her head was aching from trying to grapple with what was going on.
“He’s got something,” the woman said in a stilted way. “For Daniel.”
Lydia glanced at Daniel. Then she disentangled herself and swung her legs over the edge of the bed. “I don’t… understand.”
Well, wasn’t that the theme for the night, evidently.
Blade came a little farther forward. “I have a cure for him.”
As the words, in that accented voice, hit the airwaves, they went into her ears. But they made no sense.
“I’m sorry, wh—”
Gus barreled into the room, half his face covered with shaving cream, a razor in his right hand. The doctor was shirtless, the scrubs on the bottom half of him hanging low on his hips, his well-defined torso flexing with muscle—and marked with bruises.
“What the fuck… is going… on…” His words trailed off. “It’s you.”
“Good evening, Augustus.” Blade bowed at the waist. “You’re looking better than when I saw you last.”
“You… were the one who got me out.”
“I did.”
“You sound like him,” Gus said remotely. “Your accent.”
“Yes, I have a similar one to him. But I am not he who hurt you.”
“You know who did, though.”
“Yes, I do.” Blade inclined his head to Gus. “That is not why I have come, however. It is your patient whom I have sought out. I have the solution to his little problem.”
Gus’s eyes narrowed. “The man does not have a little—”
From out of a pocket in the robe, Blade presented a small glass box, about the size a pair of earrings would come in. From Lydia’s vantage point, it was hard to see what was inside—
Blade looked at her, and her alone. “If you want him to live, I will give her to him.”
“What the fuck are you talking about,” Gus snapped.
“She will cure him.” Blade’s eyes were steady and sure as they held hers. “His cancer will be gone, over a period of weeks. As if it never was.”
Gus started talking to C.P. Phalen in a hard, cutting voice, the word “security” getting used a number of times: Where is security. When is security coming. Why did security let this crackpot in—
Blade ignored the commotion. And so did Lydia.
“He will be as you knew him then. The man he once was. That is what you want most in the world, is it not.”
“What is… it,” she whispered.
The symphath in the red robing stepped even closer to the bed, and she made sure she kept herself between the two, protecting Daniel with her body.
“She is a love of mine. I bred her.”
It was a scorpion. In the little glass box… an albino scorpion stared out through the portable prison, its tiny pincers and curled stinger so small, Lydia had to squint.
“Her venom is the way to kill his cancer.”
Lydia’s chest constricted as all her breath left her. “A… cure?”
“Yes. She is a very special member of her breed, and her sting works in humans, for their disease of the cells. It will cure him—as long as we get it into him now. If he becomes much sicker, he shall not be strong enough to handle it.” Blade held out the little box to her. “If you want him back… I will give her to you.”
“Why would you… help us?”
Blade’s eyes traveled over her face as if he were memorizing her features. And then he said, with evident sorrow, “I have my reasons. That is all you need to know.”
“I don’t trust you.”
“Allow me to show you how I am so certain.”
Without warning, her mind became filled with images that were like memories, except they were about events she had never seen or experienced. She saw… decades of… things, all around the scorpion and its venom… and people. And it was from the point of view of someone… else…
Blade, she thought. These were Blade’s memories.
When the deluge stopped, she put her hand to her temple and tried to rub away the ache that had sprung up there. Just as C.P. had been doing as she’d walked in.