Free Bloody Kisses by Virginia Nelson, Saranna DeWylde, Rebecca Royce, Alyssa Breck, Ripley Proserpina

going on with Barton and all the scratching. He seemed to be working something pretty awful on his bicep.
    “What’s that? Were you bitten?”
    “Just a scratch. Itches like a motherfucker, though.” He hadn’t stopped scratching and his uniform shirt was bore a dark stain that grew as she watched.
    “Let me see it.”
    “Doc,” he began.
    “Barton, let me help you.”
    “I guess you are pretty handy with that ax.” He unbuttoned his shirt and peeled it off. “Fuck,” he said, when he saw it.
    It was obviously so much more than a scratch. The flesh around the wound had putrefied, and it was spreading.
    “Jesus Christ, it feels like there are bugs under my skin.” He started scratching again, and this time, he tore into his skin, beneath it.
    Elizabeth didn’t want to know, didn’t want to see. But she couldn’t turn away, she had to help him. He’d saved her.
    And if she didn’t do something, he might be the one to end her. The whites of his eyes were tinged with red. It wouldn’t be long now.
    “I’m changing, aren’t I?” He shook his head. “Goddamn it.” Barton couldn’t stop scratching and tearing at himself. “Take my sidearm.”
    “I can’t.”
    “Take the goddamn sidearm.”
    She pulled the gun from the holster. It was heavy in her hands, foreign. She’d never shot a gun before, and she didn’t want to have to start, but unless she was hatcheting her way out of this place, she was going to have to.
    “The safety mechanism, push it to the right. Right is right and left is dead. Go on, now.” He said this as if he were speaking to a recalcitrant child.
    But they both knew how this was going to end. She wasn’t a little girl who wanted to stay up past her bedtime. She was a grown woman, a doctor and scientist who had given an oath to help people, not… Though she supposed that she would be helping him now.
    A bullet to the head was the only thing that could.

Chapter Four
    W hen the Bureau 7 installation came into view, urgency surged and with it, adrenaline. Adam could feel the chemical changes in his flesh as the body prepared for war.
    A visible change came over him. The network of veins under his skin expanded, giving the appearance of some vine-like infection spreading across his body. This allowed for increased blood flow to all of his muscles that in turn increased in size. He could feel his bones expanding, hardening.
    It was sheer agony.
    But it was pleasure, too. It had been so long since he’d felt this primal strength, a sense of purpose. He hated that part of it, that he didn’t feel whole, or real, without it. He was a shadow, a spirit, drifting in the ether until the Bloodline called him. Then he became corporeal, the only real thing in a pit of shadows.
    Electricity crackled around his fingertips, which only happened in cases of immediate threat to life.
    Adam docked quickly and, as soon as the boat was secure, he ran for fence. He didn’t hesitate to grab hold of it, the electric charge in his hands stronger than the voltage of the fence. The gate slid open for him, but if it had slid open for him, it was open for anything that wanted in.
    Or out.
    Fuck it. Containing the infection was not his circus or his monkey. He was there for Elizabeth, and he was pretty sure even if humanity wiped themselves out, he could keep her safe.
    Images of a man—a genetically modified man—burned in his brain. He was with Elizabeth now. He’d tried to help her, but he’d been infected. He’d demanded she take his gun.
    The woman who’d once been that sweet child raised the weapon with shaking hands.
    He could feel her fear, her sorrow, and her guilt.
    Adam was torn between wanting to change that for her, to take that weight from her, and wanting her to feel every second of it. What had she been thinking agreeing to come to work for Bureau 7?
    It kept coming back to that, and he supposed, if he was able to get her out alive, he could ask her.
    Hopefully, she wouldn’t be too