Blood poured from my nose, and Dalton looked at it hungrily. This didn’t make any sense. This man, the one standing before me now, wasn’t anything like the person I had come to know since returning to New Haven, much less the boy I grew up with.
Dalton’s mouth twisted into a determined, but sullen, smirk. Still, he held my arm tightly.
“This isn’t how I wanted it to end. You should know that.” His voice was light and apologetic. “Even if it wouldn’t have been you, even if it had been one of those random girls who looked like you, I still didn’t want it to come to this.”
“It doesn’t have to,” I said, trying to tug free of him. But he was supernaturally strong; I would’ve had a better chance of pulling off white after Labor Day than breaking free of his grip. “You don’t have to do this.”
“I do.” He ground his teeth together. “I don’t have a choice.” His bright eyes filled with tears. “Do you think I wanted to be this? Do you think this is what I envisioned for my life?” He stomped hard against the ground, causing a crack in the pavement.
Damn, he was strong.
“I had a good life, Char. I had ambitions. I had dreams. I had a fiancé. And do you know what she did when she found out?” Tears tripped down his cheeks now. “She just left. Said she couldn’t handle it, that she didn’t think she had the constitution to care for a sick person.”
“Sick?” I muttered, my face tensing as my eyebrows drew together.
“Cancer.” The word left him like a breath.
Images of my mother flooded my mind the way they always did when that horrible word was uttered. I always figured time would change that. But I was wrong. Even now—in the most dangerous situation of my life—her face was the first thing I saw.
“Stage four,” he continued. “There was nothing the doctors could do. There was nothing anyone could do. They just expect me to rot away, to lie around and wait to die.” He shook his head. “And do you know the worst part? By the time it’s finished, what they bury won’t even look like me.” He stared past me for a moment, then shifted his gaze to the ground, but his hand never left my arm. “And I’ve tried, Char. I found as much blood as I could after that old man came to me. But it wasn’t enough. The magic always wore off, just like he said it would.”
“What old man?” I asked, wincing as his hand tightened around my arm, his nails digging into my skin.
“That doesn’t matter!” He yanked me closer. “None of it matters, because it wasn’t enough.” He blinked hard. “But he showed me what I needed to do. I had to kill that stupid Conduit and change myself.” He shook his head, slowly lifting his gaze back to me as he gentled his tone. “Have you ever killed someone, Char?”
“You don’t have to do this, Dalton,” I said emphatically. “It doesn’t have to be this way. Maybe we can help you … somehow …”
“It changes you,” he said. “It digs deep down into you and steals away things.” His Adam’s apple bobbed. “Things you didn’t even know could be stolen.”
“Dalton—”
“I had to,” he said, as if begging me to understand.
And the scary part was, some small part of me could. Some small part of me wondered how far I would have gone to save my mom from the same fate Dalton had faced. But I wouldn’t have gone this far.
“I couldn’t die like that,” he continued. “I had come too far. I had done too much to let it all end like some chump, connected to machines and living off applesauce and medication.”
His eyes filled with some dreadful emotion I could not pinpoint. Desperation? Determination? Or was it agony and regret?
“And that’s still true,” he said. “I hate to do this, but I can’t just give up on life. I’m sorry, Char. I can’t. Why should it be me who dies? Why does fate get to decide?”
I shook my head. I didn’t know what to say. That’s just the way it was. He couldn’t play God. It wasn’t right. “So—so what are you going to do?”
He let out a slow sigh. “I need more Supplicant blood. All of a Supplicant’s blood. The right Supplicant’s blood,” he added. “That’s the only hope it might be enough.” His cracked his knuckles in front of him, then slanted his gaze toward me. “I really wish it wasn’t you. Please don’t make this harder for me.”
“Harder for you?” A new wave of anger came rushing through me. “What are you expecting, Dalton? That I’m going to willingly sacrifice myself for you? Clearly you would not do the same for me.”
He bit down on his lip and shook his head. “Sorry it has to be this way.”