He cursed his weakness, both of body and mind. He needed more blood, hot human blood. It would speed his healing. There was something terribly important eluding him. It slipped in and out of his mind, leaving pain and fragments in its wake. If he could just hold it for a moment he might remember, but it never stayed long enough to do other than drive him mad. It was unbearably frustrating to have his memory taken from him.
Shea groaned softly, the sound cutting through him like a knife. She was shivering, even in her heavy robe. His gaze quickly jumped to her face. She was in pain. He felt it in her mind. Instinctively he laid a hand on her stomach, fingers splayed wide. Something was happening inside her body. Again his head seemed to splinter as he tried to catch the memory. He should know. It was important for her.
Shea rolled over and came to her knees, clutching her stomach. Her eyes were wide with fear. She was extremely cold, as if she would never be warm again. Shivering, she could only rock back and forth as wave after wave of pain shook her small frame. Heat was burning her insides, eating through her internal organs, squeezing her heart, her lungs. She rolled off the bed onto the floor, landing hard, attempting to protect her patient from whatever virus she had contracted. The towel unraveled, and her hair spilled out like dark blood pooling around her head. Her abdomen was on fire. A fine sheen of perspiration coated her body; across her forehead was a faint ribbon of scarlet.
Jacques tried to move, to get to her, but his body was not his own, lying heavy and useless. His arm couldn’t reach her. His every movement brought pain rippling through him, but his world for so long had been pain, he knew no other. It had been his only reality in the darkened eternity of the damned. Pain only added to his iron will. He would live for all eternity and find those who had taken his past. He would turn that same iron will to finding a way to help Shea.
Shea’s slender body writhed, locked, writhed again. She rolled to her knees, tried to crawl toward her medical bag. She wasn’t thinking; the movement was blind, instinctive. She had no idea where she was or what was happening to her, only that the fire consuming her had to stop.
He struggled, raged at his inability to move, to help her. Finally he lay back, crawling into her mind as he had many times before in an effort to save himself. Come to me, to my side.
The whisper of sound, the thread of sanity, was in her head. Shea knew he had not spoken aloud. She was hallucinating. She groaned, rolled over, and curled up in the fetal position, making herself as small as possible. She would not go near him. If this were contagious, he would not survive such a virulent flu.
What if she didn’t survive? What if she had brought him here, and, with no one to care for him, she left him to die slowly of starvation? Somehow she had to tell him there was blood in the icebox. It was too late. Another wave of fire beat at her, attacking her internally, spreading to every organ. She could only draw up her knees like a mortally wounded animal and wait for it to pass.
You must come to me. I can help ease the pain. The words penetrated her next moment of lucidity. He sounded so tender, so unlike the way he looked. She didn’t care if she was going crazy, if she was making his voice up; there was a soothing quality, like the touch of gentle, cool fingers on her body, to the voice in her mind.
Shea was going to be sick. Something in her, some ridiculous shred of dignity, made it possible to drag herself to the bathroom. He could hear her, fighting to stop the endless stomach spasms. Her agony was worse for him than his own, his rage at his impotence growing until he was consumed with it. Fingernails lengthened to murderous claws, tore holes in the sheets. Outside the wind picked up, howled at the windows, and ripped through the trees. A low growl rumbled in his throat, in his mind, increasing in volume. She was trying to protect him. He was a male of his race, his duty to take care of his own, yet she was suffering the fires of hell and refusing his aid lest she somehow give him her illness. He knew it was hers alone, that the fire twisting her insides was something important. She had to come to him; he did not know why, but every instinct, every cell in his body demanded her compliance.