Tiffany is strapped to one of the chairs and sleeping soundly. Ali rests beside her, wide-awake and without straps. Cole stands behind his girlfriend, an avenging angel ready to protect the reason his heart beats at any cost, and a pang of envy shoots through me. Reeve and Weber are here, too, arranging needles and vials on one of the trays.
“Here.” Frosty leads me to the only available chair. “Reserved just for you.”
“Thanks,” I mutter, easing down.
He stays beside me, but he will no longer meet my gaze.
“What’s wrong?”
“He doesn’t want you to do this,” Ali says.
I frown. “We’re just filtering my blood, right? No big deal.”
“It’s a little more involved than that.” Reeve putters around the equipment. “We know that what affects the spirit affects the body, so whatever is going on inside your spirit will manifest in your blood, even in the smallest way. So, we’re going to put you on dialysis and filter out as much Z-toxin as possible and hopefully rid you of thánatos. Afterward, we’ll inject you with a serum we’ve been working on, one that should strengthen dynamis.”
Should. My gaze slides to Ali. “Has the serum not been tested?”
“No. You and I are the lab rats.”
“Something I object to,” Cole says.
Frosty nods. “Agreed.”
Too bad. “I’ll go first.” Let me suffer the effects if something goes wrong. “If I survive, and it works, Ali can be next.”
“No,” Frosty says, sharp and stinging. “Why don’t I go first?”
“I’ll go first.” Cole crosses his arms over his chest.
Ali shakes her head. “You guys aren’t the yin and the yang, so you can suck it. Us girls got this.”
Before a word war can kick off, I ask, “Why is Tiffany sedated?”
“We took a sample of her blood, wanted to know if she’s tainted like the rest of you. The results were inconclusive.” Reeve taps the belly of a syringe and squeezes out excess liquid. “As for the slayers, everyone but you has lost every ability except the one to separate spirit from body. I blame whatever poison Tiffany used.”
Anger rises—Tiffany!—but I beat it back. I don’t want to accidentally unleash a stream of energy.
Cole meets my gaze. “You’re one of us now, and if you don’t want to do it, you don’t have to do it.”
I’m one of them? Seriously?
A smile breaks through, and I can’t stop it. I catch myself rubbing the Betrayal tattoo, not because I feel guilty but because the word has lost its power over me.
“I want to,” I say. “What are you waiting for, Reeve? Let’s get this party started.”
I hate this. I hate this so freaking much I’m close to snapping. How can I stand here while Milla is turned into a test subject? What kind of man does that make me?
The kind who wants to save his friends, who knows this might be the only way to return them to their former glory.
Right. But is that a good enough reason?
I sweat bullets as Reeve pushes the tray closer to Milla then sits beside her. It’s time for dialysis, and that’s fine. People do that every day without complications. Kat did it four times a week. It’s the serum I’m worried about. It’s uncharted territory. Milla could be hurt. Or worse.
Panic nearly overwhelms me, but I remind myself Ali has gone through something similar. When she was infected with massive amounts of zombie toxin and the antidote couldn’t save her, she was certain dynamis was a cure-all. We refused to try. We’d never used our fire on another slayer, had only seen what it could do to agents—the same thing it does to zombies—and we didn’t want to risk her life; she continued to grow worse until the zombie side of her completely took over the human side and only then, when faced with losing her anyway, did we relent. In minutes, it worked.
Had we used it in the beginning, we would have prevented months of suffering for Ali.
And yet, as Reeve ties the tourniquet on Milla’s arm, I say, “I think we should come up with another plan.”
Milla peers up at me with a hefty dose of confusion. She looks so tiny in the leather chair, so vulnerable and in need of a protector.
I have to step up and be that protector. I will.
In the past few weeks, I’ve learned so much about her. I know her in ways she may not know herself.
As a child, she failed to save her sister from her father’s wrath. At least in her mind. Four months ago, she failed her brother, her entire crew. Now she’ll do everything in her power to help—even if it means harming herself in the process.
“You aren’t a lab rat,” I tell her.
“I am today. If it hurts, it hurts. I can handle pain.”
“You handle it better than anyone I know, but that doesn’t mean you should have to.”
She links her fingers with mine. “I want to do this. I have to. The problems started with me, and they’ll end with me.”
“Besides, there’s not much risk involved,” Ali says. “Because of the vision, we know Milla lives long enough to save you...which means she’ll live through this.”
Always we come back to the vision, and I’m sick of it. She might not die today, might only wish she did.