Free Everafter Series 1 - Everafter by Nell Stark, Trinity Tam

devouring a red cell from the inside out. My God, I thought, watching the monster effortlessly eat through the cell’s membrane. It was reproducing in there. And when the cell burst…
    My stomach pitched and rolled, and I clutched hard at the table edge to keep myself upright. That thing and the thousands of others like it in my bloodstream were incontrovertible proof that something was terribly wrong with me. Unless—and the shock of this revelation turned my knuckles white—unless this wasn’t my blood. What if this was some elaborate ruse? Sure, I’d been watching him as he made up the slide, but not closely enough to see through a sleight of hand.
    I ripped off the Band-Aid and opened the drawer in the same movement, yanking out a fresh slide and squeezing the tiny hole in my arm as hard as I could. A drop of blood welled up and I caught it on the glass. I looked over my shoulder, certain that the big guy would be two-thirds of the way across the room by now to stop me from exposing the lie…but they were all where I had left them, watching me. Expressionless.
    Snarling, I discarded the old slide and snapped the new one into place, but when I peered back into the lens, the same horror awaited me. I slumped. Clavier wasn’t lying about the parasite. Could he be telling the truth about everything else? I didn’t want to believe it. How was I supposed to take them at their word when they were talking about the stuff of thriller novels and horror films? Vampirism? Eternal youth? One thing I knew for certain: that thing inside my blood was killing me, not making me ageless. And how the hell had I been infected in the first place?
    A sudden suspicion made me lurch to my feet and stagger toward Clavier, despite the blinding surge of pain that radiated up my thigh. “You! Did you do this to me? Put this in me? In the hospital—did you?” I was eye to eye with him now, but no matter how close I got, he refused to take a step back. His preternatural calm infuriated me, and I clenched my right fist, finally surrendering to the violent impulses that had been plaguing me all week—
    At that instant, an aroma filled the room: sweet, tangy, metallic. My head whipped around and saliva flooded my mouth. My throat spasmed, the burn so intense that I couldn’t help but cry out. Behind me, Helen was squeezing the contents of a bag of blood into a mug.
    A bag of blood.
    My brain was repulsed. The idea of drinking that was anathema. It was sick, twisted, wrong. Perverted. But my body took a step forward, and then another. Tears leaked down my face as the fire in my throat blazed hotter than it ever had. My gaze was locked on the cup. I wanted it. Needed it. The scent wafting up from it was…heavenly.
    “You are starting to understand, aren’t you?” Helen said quietly. My brain demanded that I stop moving, but my body continued its slow stalk toward the table. “The parasite is making you immutable and stronger. Though you can be killed, you have already ceased to age. But it demands blood in return. For the rest of your existence, you will crave it—crave it like nothing else on earth.”
    Alexa, my brain howled. It’s Alexa that I crave, Alexa that I need. More than what is waiting on that table, more than anything. But my legs continued to move. The urge to lash out at Clavier had been completely subsumed by the impulse to gorge myself on the contents of that mug.
    “Drink,” Helen ordered, taking a shallow sip before holding it out to me. I stood before her, breathing hard, hands trembling. My eyes were transfixed by the small movements of the viscous fluid as it sloshed gently against the ceramic walls. Need spiked through me, crackling under my skin, white and hot. It reduced me to instinct. I had to feed.
    I snatched the cup from Helen’s hands and tilted it to my lips. As the first thick rush hit my tongue, my brain screamed in revulsion. But for the first time since I’d woken from my coma nearly two weeks ago,