I placed a hand over his, shaking my head. “You’re going to be fine.” My lower lip trembled as his breathing grew more ragged. “You’re going to keep that promise. Because I love you too much for you to leave me here.”
He seemed to gain a little more strength, just for a moment. “I love you, too,” he breathed. “My forever heart.”
His strength gave out, his arm dropping into my lap.
“Cyrus,” I said as his eyes slid closed. They didn’t open. “Cyrus,” I cried.
His chest continued to rise and fall.
But his breathing sounded so terrible.
I clutched his hand to my chest, rocking back and forth, tears cascading down my face.
I offered up a prayer to whoever would hear me. Loud. Shrill. Terrified.
I begged for my husband’s life.
* * *
For two days, I thought he would die.
His breathing would stop.
His skin was so hot I could barely stand to touch him.
He never opened his eyes.
He never responded to me calling his name.
But finally, I touched his arm, and his skin did not burn.
Finally, the sweat diminished.
Finally, he gripped my hand.
Finally, he opened his eyes.
“My forever heart,” he said as I gathered him into my arms, holding him to me as I wept tears of gratitude.
Chapter 21
I looked over at Cyrus as he carved his way through a man who had died two nights ago. The family had donated his body to Cyrus so that he might further study.
I noted the hard set to his lips.
I saw the steady firmness in his hands.
I saw the raw determination in every corner of him.
It had been one week since my husband had nearly died. A week since he stopped breathing for a few minutes. A week since I thought I was a widow.
Cyrus was alive.
But he’d been odd.
Quiet.
Reserved.
More focused and determined than ever to learn. To understand.
I had asked him, over and over, what was wrong. If something had happened while he was sick.
But he only told me that he needed to work. He was fine. He just wanted to focus.
Something was different.
A frantic knock on the door sounded just a second before two bodies barged inside, one of them carrying a small child. They frantically started shouting about their daughter, to please help her.
Cyrus told them to lay her on one of the tables and he immediately set to diagnosing what was wrong with her.
“I…” he shook his head after just a few minutes, looking back toward her parents. “Your daughter is dead.”
The mother’s face hardened. “But she is not gone,” the woman insisted. “I can feel her. Fix her!”
Cyrus’ face seemed uncertain. But he looked at that poor girl’s parent’s faces. And he saw their desperation.
Turning back to the girl, he dipped his fingers in a bowl of ash beside his table. He rubbed it over his hands.
He leaned down, listening to her chest. He pushed his hands into her stomach, feeling her organs. He placed his fingers to the side of her neck, feeling for the pulsing of her heart.
For several minutes, Cyrus searched her body. He closed his eyes as he ran his hands through the air over her.
I watched in fascination as he leaned over her. I watched him take in a breath. And he put his face to hers, his mouth covering hers, and breathed into her.
He then put one hand on her chest, the other on her stomach. And he pressed. Depressing her chest a bit. In a rhythm, the same as a heart would beat.
He breathed into her once more, before beating her heart for her once again.
For several minutes, he repeated the process. Breath. Beats.
And then a sound came to every ear. A small breath in.
With wide, surprised eyes, Cyrus watched her.
Rise and fall. Rise and fall, her chest went.
She breathed.
And a moment later, her eyes fluttered open.
“Father?” she called. Her voice was hoarse. “Mother?”
With sobs and cries of joy, they snatched her, holding her to their chests. “Thank you,” the father said, his eyes full of wonder as he looked at Cyrus. “You…you brought her back.”
“You snatched her from death,” the mother said, gently reaching out and touching Cyrus arm.
His eyes still dazzled, Cyrus gave a little smile and a nod.
The family, still together because of Cyrus, walked out, carrying their child like the most precious cargo in the world.
His eyes were still wide when he turned to me.
I beamed at him, amazed. I held my arms out, hugging him to me. “That was incredible, Cyrus. You brought her back from death.”
“She’s alive,” he breathed. “She…she was dead. And now she is alive.”
* * *
I felt it, then. The shift.
Cyrus had been fascinated with life since the day I met him.
But from that day forward, it changed.
All Cyrus could think about was cheating death.
Chapter 22
I lost him then.
I lost my husband. The man I loved.
From then, over the next two years, all Cyrus cared about was science and magic and death. He scarcely even saw me, though I was always there.
And then, two years later, after dozens of tests, he came to me with a gleam in his eye.
“I’ve done it,” he said.
“Done what?” I asked. Fear started creeping into my voice. Because that look in his eye? It could lead to no good.
“Created the cure,” he says. He held up a vial filled with black liquid.
“Cure?” I asked in a breath.
“The cure for death.”
Chapter 23
“Please don’t do this,” I begged that night. Cyrus whirled around his shop, gathering things. Double-checking notes. In general, pacing. “You have no idea what is going to happen if you take that! What if…what if it kills you instead?”
“I’ve run dozens of tests,” he responded, though he was hardly aware of me at all. “I’ve made adjustments as needed. Every subject has been successful. This is going to change the world, Sevan!”
I grabbed his arm, making him look at me. His eyes were too bright. Too wild.
“Men are not supposed to live forever,” I said, turning my voice calm. “It is the natural order of things, to one day pass away. You’ve done incredible things with your life, Cyrus. Is it truly not enough?”
His eyes narrowed. “There is so much more to this world. I will never have the time to learn it all. I will never live to see it all, and all the life it holds. This…” he held up the vial again. “This is true greatness. This will change the course of history.”
Tears welled in my eyes. Slowly, my fingers fell away from him as Cyrus stepped out of my grasp.
He stood by the door. I watched as he unstopped the vial.
And tears rolled down my face as he brought the glass to his lips, and drank his creation.
* * *
“Is it a coma?” a very far away voice calls through the dark.
“She is still reactive,” another one says. “This is something different.”
“Is she ever going to wake up?” a familiar one asks with fear.
“I don’t know,” someone else says quietly.
My eyes flutter. Fuzzy shapes float above me. Hazy shadows mix with light.
“Logan?” someone calls me.
But I can’t answer.
Not when my heart is broken.
Not when I’ve lost the man I love.
Not when terror is racing through my blood as I watch the man I married bound down the street like an animal. He leaps through the air. His eyes glow brilliant red.
Fangs extend.
He lands on top of the man.
And he bites into his neck.
* * *
Numbly, I sat in a chair, staring at the wall.
I could feel him, as if there were a tether tied between us. Across the room. Watching me. Waiting for a response.
“Please say something, Sevan,” Cyrus said.
My eyes remained fixed on the wall.
Twice now he had promised me he would not kill again. Twice he had sworn he would find a way to fix this.
He had tried. I would give him that. Cyrus had spent hours in his shop, working and scheming and testing.
But three times now he had killed an innocent.
Three times now he had hunted down a person. He had grown fangs. His eyes had ignited brilliant, blood red. He had drunk their blood. Every bit of it until they were stone white, their body looking depleted and empty.
“I don’t know if I can cure this,” Cyrus had just admitted. “I don’t know if I can reverse it. Any of it.”