He could still taste Malloryn's blood.
"We're losing him!" Ava cried.
"Be patient." Malloryn. The prick. Cool and commanding even now. "Give the virus time to work its way through him."
Kincaid's chest heaved. Then he was rolling-or being rolled-and he choked up the blood in his lungs, his throat working desperately for oxygen. He couldn't breathe. Pressure flooded his head, pounding through the veins at his temples.... His ears rang, and his eyeballs bulged in their sockets.
The world went black, sensation fading.
Everything was warm, and dark. A cocoon devoid of sound. Silence. Nothingness.
Peace.
Then... a single voice intruded. "...keep him breathing...."
Pressure on his chest forced pain back through his lax muscles, and a mouth hovered over his own, forcing air into his lungs. Kincaid swam up through the nothingness, crying out silently as he fell back into his body with a heavy feeling. Sensation hammered back into him, twice as agonizing as before as all the nerve endings in his body fired to life again. He wanted that peace again. No pain there in the warm dark, but there was something holding him back.
Something....
"I'll never forgive myself," Ava whispered, and distantly he thought he felt a cool hand in his. "He tried to save me."
Don't cry, luv. But she was, and there wasn't a damned thing he could do about it.
He wanted to kiss away her sadness. To curl her in his arms and let her feel safe there forever. To hold her one more time... that was worth the pain and the fear and all the complicated emotions that roared through him.
What would you do if you had a future? Orla had once asked, and he couldn't answer her then.
But he could now.
I would love Ava. Forever.
Someone breathed into his lungs, and Kincaid started to thrash. There was something happening deep in his chest, a pain, an agony, but also a kindling, as though someone stoked the fires on a steam engine. Hot little sparks fired along his nerve endings. The world went dark, but this time it was his vision, rather than his senses fading.
"He's back, he's breathing!" That sounded like the duke.
Jaysus. Was Malloryn resuscitating him?
Kincaid thrust upward. "G'away...."
"There he is. Get some more blood into him!" Malloryn yelled. It was all so very distant, as though there was a bubble around Kincaid, keeping their voices at bay. "Or he'll start convulsing."
A hot coppery scent washed past his nose, and his mouth watered.
More. I want.... The urge to strike and take what he wanted was blinding.
"Drink," someone urged, and then there was a woman's wrist against his lips, and the sweet scent of Ava's perfume. Her wrist. Her blood welling in his mouth, hot and salty, and both disgusting and yet insanely seductive, for some reason.
"Drink and live," someone else murmured. "The more of the virus we can get into him, the better his chances of surviving."
Byrnes?
Then sound rushed in with a snap that made his ears pop.
Kincaid came to, cradled in Ava's lap, his mouth wrapped around her wrist as he swallowed her blood. He wanted it. Wanted more. Maybe it was his body hungering for heat after the chill of his near death, or maybe it was the predator awakening inside him. He didn't know, but his chest hurt like a bastard, and he'd never been so aware of all the aches and pains in his body.
"That's it," Ava whispered, stroking his hair.
Malloryn loomed over her shoulder, helping to hold Kincaid up.
He caught a glimpse of Ava, her blonde curls frizzing around her worried face like a halo. And it was everything, in that moment, to see her; his reason to live. The light in his dark world. He tried to capture her wrist, but his fingers barely worked. Somehow she sensed it, and he felt her take his hand.
"I love you," Ava whispered. "And I'll be waiting for you when you wake."
* * *
Kincaid groaned. "Too much... light."
His eyes ached. He pressed his palm into them, but something held his other hand back.
"You've lost your mech hand," Ava said gently, and he realized she was pinning his left arm to the bed so he couldn't use it. "We've bound it up, but you might hurt yourself with the stump."
His mouth watered again, every scent that spoke of Ava dominating his senses. She felt warm. So warm.
The light dimmed as she turned the gas lamp down as low as it could go.
"How do you feel?" Ava murmured, and her pale face swam into view.
Insanely hungry. How the hell had she managed to abstain from drinking blood for so long?
Ava saw it in his face and tipped the flask of blood to his lips. It wasn't disgusting anymore, and maybe that was what frightened him the most. Had he become what he despised? Or was this... new territory to be explored, a new life to begin, just a sidestep of the man he'd truly been.