Every other day(36)

No.

I pulled at the fabric, wrenching it away from my stomach. The flesh underneath was smeared with messy streaks of blood, like someone had been finger-painting on my torso, but the red color did nothing to mask the image of a snake eating its own tail.

The ouroboros.

No. This couldn’t be happening. This wasn’t the plan. My blood was poison, and the thing inside me was supposed to be dying. It was supposed to be gone.

Kali.

I didn’t want to be hearing the voice. I didn’t want to still be infected, to know that come dawn, I might still be dying.

You’re not dying. The human body can’t handle the bite. Yours can.

In tandem with the words, the ouroboros on my stomach trembled and then an inklike substance began to bleed outward from its surface. Like vines climbing a wall, string-thin wisps of gold snaked their way across my skin, up my torso, around to my back.

I couldn’t tear my eyes from the mark’s progress. As it painted me in crisscrossing lines, the ouroboros glowed with an unearthly sheen. Beads of sweat gathered on the surface of my skin, and unable to resist, I dragged one bloody finger across the length of the symbol, tracing it, feeling it—

Your wounds are healing. At this rate, you’ll be fine within an hour, but until then, you need to mask the smell of your blood.

There was no way I’d be completely healed in an hour. I was fast, but not that fast.

There are some advantages to getting bitten.

The voice in my head was clearer than it had ever been, like its owner was whispering the words directly into the back of my neck. My eyes focused on a point in the distance, and I saw him.

The man from my dreams.

He was a head or so taller than me, his skin lighter, his eyes silver. Shadow clung to the surface of his body, but this time, I could see an unearthly light through the darkness.

He didn’t belong here.

Neither do you.

I met his silver eyes, so dark I could feel myself getting lost in them, and for a moment, I saw him somewhere else: cement walls, blackened floor, blood.

Kali. Focus.

The words were sharp, and it took me a minute to process the fact that the voice in my head was yelling at me.

The people who left you here will expect your body to be discovered soon. They’re counting on it being ruled a hit-and-run. They’ll be surprised enough when your body doesn’t turn up. The last thing you need is to draw every beast in a thirty-mile radius to your side.

I hated to admit it, but the chupacabra had a point.

The second that thought crossed my mind, a low, rumbling chuckle echoed through my brain. I’m not a Nibbler, Kali. Nibblers can’t talk.

Nibblers? Nibblers?

You’re not a chupacabra? I asked silently, because that was what he seemed to be implying.

No. I’m not.

He sounded fairly certain, but I couldn’t help asking again. You’re seriously not the chupacabra who bit me yesterday?

I’d started hearing the voice right after I’d been bitten. The simplest explanation was usually the right one—even if it involved assuming that a parasite was capable of speech.

I’m not a Nibbler, Kali. I have a Nibbler.

I looked down at the symbol on my stomach, pictured one on his.

So I have a chupacabra inside my body and you have one inside of yours and that lets us play psychic telephone?

He had to realize how ridiculous that sounded.

More ridiculous than thinking that a Nibbler can talk?

After spending the past eighteen hours trying to keep Skylar, Bethany, and the whole motley crew from thinking I was insane, I really wasn’t in the mood to be mocked by the voice in my head.

The voice that apparently did not belong to a chupacabra.

If you’re not the thing that bit me, I said sharply, who the hell are you?

I knew before the response came that he would give me his name—Zev.

What the hell are you? I amended my silent question, and Zev answered with a question of his own.

What the hell are you?

In the distance, the man I’d seen disappeared back into the depths of my mind. My body stiff, I climbed to my feet.

What the hell was I—how many times had I asked myself that same question?

I wanted answers—lots of them—but there was no denying that Zev’s suggestion about making myself scarce was a good one: I was injured, and even with my healing abilities kicked into overdrive, I wasn’t in any shape to fight off every monster that came creeping out of the woodwork. My blood was everywhere. The air was thick with it. It was only a matter of time before the wind carried the scent to the wrong nostrils.

This isn’t over, I told the mystery boy in my mind. You are going to answer my questions.

Silence.

Without another word—out loud or internal—I turned and walked up to the road, half naked and covered in blood, trying not to think about the mark on my stomach or the distinct feeling that life, as I knew it, was over.