“But you’re hurt too. Look!” Abby pointed at his left leg.
He hadn’t felt anything before, but with the pain of the change fading, he became aware of the itchy burn. His leg was wet. A cool breeze chilled the dampness, giving him goose bumps on the left side of his body. He reached down. His fingers found the source of the blood, a hole just above his knee.
The scent of his own blood filled his nostrils and he groaned. A familiar tingle charged up his spine.
No. Not again. He didn’t have the strength to endure another change. Would he lose himself again? Lose his mind? His heart? His soul? Forever?
“You need a doctor,” Abby said.
“No!” His voice had deepened again, signaling the change.
Abby didn’t move away but the others did. Raul lifted the gun again but didn’t aim it.
“If I change again, Raul, shoot me,” Tarik demanded.
“No!” Abby shrieked. She caught his face between her hands. “Listen to me, Tarik. You can’t give up. I care about you, dammit! Do you hear me? I hardly know you, but I need you and I won’t let you give up. You’re a strong man. A human being with a heart and soul and mind. Don’t believe what that animal told you.” She indicated Torborg. “You deserve to live. You deserve happiness. You deserve everything that bastard took from you. You deserve a future. Don’t let him take even that away. Don’t let him win!”
Abby’s friend stepped closer, stood next to Abby in a show of support. “I don’t understand what’s going on here, but I know Abby. I’ve never seen her like this. She cares you. I mean really, really cares. And this woman hasn’t felt these kinds of feelings for a man in a long time.”
Raul lowered the gun. “I don’t want to shoot you. Dammit, what the fuck did he do?”
Breathless from the effort it took to fight with his own body, Tarik shook his head. “I’m not sure if I’ll ever know now. And I don’t know how much longer I can hold on. Look what I did to him. I was gone. It was like I’d left my body. I didn’t think. I only smelled and tasted. All that I knew was the hunger. The awful hunger.” He pushed himself off the ground. The gravel bit into his feet but he didn’t give a damn. He needed to get away from them. He didn’t know himself anymore. He didn’t trust himself.
“You need some clothes. Some money,” Raul said, seeming to understand what Tarik was about to do. He picked up Tarik’s shredded clothes and shook his head. The phone fell out of Tarik’s pocket, revealing its less-than-intact status. It was a cell phone pancake. Raul blocked his path to the woods. “You can’t run around like this. You’ll die of hypothermia, even if you don’t bleed to death. At least let me get you some clothes from the hotel room.”
“No.” Tarik pushed past his friend. “I need to leave. It’s better this way. No one else will get hurt. If you can’t see that then fuck you.”
“Bastard!” Abby screamed behind him. “You blind, selfish bastard.”
Selfish? Tarik briefly considered ignoring her but he couldn’t do it. It was the tone in her voice. The anguish. “I’m doing this for you, for all of you, not me.”
“Fuck that.” She glared at him. Furious and defiant and beautiful. “Forget about me.”
“I can’t.”
“Think about the others,” she shot back, taking a step toward him.
“What others?”
“The others like you.” She took a second step toward him, and a third. She didn’t speak again until she was standing less than three feet from him. Her chin was lifted in hard determination but her eyes were soft, pleading. “Do you suppose Omega made more like you? Do you think those other people might be suffering too? That they might need your help? Men. Women...children.” Her voice softened. Her lower lip trembled. He ached to taste it. To kiss her until the trembling stopped. Until they both had forgotten about all their troubles. “Do you think those people might deserve your help? With Torborg gone, who’s going to find them? You’re the only one right now who knows about this. Maybe this is what you’re meant to do.”
He hadn’t thought about the possibility of others, or of what he might be able to do for them. But who was to say he could do anything at all? There were so many things he didn’t know, like precisely how his genetics had been altered. “The chances that I can help anyone else like me are slim to none. I have no answers.”
“Not yet, perhaps.” She moved closer, until her fiery eyes were mere inches from his and her breasts didn’t quite brush against his bare chest. “I believe you can find the answers. I believe in you so much…” She turned toward her friend and smiled then turned back to him again.