Chomp

Agnes’ breathing had remained constant for the past seven hours. Her chest rose and fell like clockwork; it had taken the doctors ages to finally stabilize her, but the oxygen mask seemed to be helping quite a bit.

Glancing at the clock that hung on the wall over the door, I realized just how long it had taken. Izzie would be up, terrified, no doubt thinking I hadn’t made it home from the blood testing because I hadn’t managed to fool it again.

I took my phone from my pocket for the first time that night. Sure enough, there were fourteen missed calls and a text.

Where r u??? please call me Im scared daddy

My fingers raced across the keyboard, replying as quickly as I could. I could only imagine how panicked she must have felt.

Hey Noodle. I’m okay, everything went fine today.

Unrelated incident, I’m at the hospital. Can’t talk, but will be home tonight. Don’t answer the door for anyone.

I watched the screen as it showed her typing back instantly.

OK I was so scared

and I wont

Despite not being related by blood, something told me my daughter took after Bryan. I was midway through typing ‘love you’ when a doctor entered the room. He eyed my phone, his lip curling, so I slipped it back into my pocket.

“Any more news?” I asked, getting to my feet. He had been in Agnes’ room many times throughout the night, each time without very much information.

“As I’ve told you several times, sir. We think it was probably just a bad reaction to some food,” one of the doctors had said when she had been admitted. “She’ll be better in no time.”

He plastered on a quick smile before fiddling with the drip bag that was hooked up to her arm. With a nod, he ducked back out of the room as quickly as he had entered it.

I had to wonder why they were lying.

I hadn’t been present in any of the testing rooms; as expected, they wanted to keep the patient’s checks as private as possible, and I wasn’t listed as an emergency contact to be allowed to know any more than what the receptionists could release.

Yet it still felt completely wrong.

Her scent was completely different that day, and I found it hard to chalk that up to mere food poisoning or allergies. Then there was the matter of her vomit; the consistency and colour was like that of thick oil, though it didn’t smell anything like it—it didn’t smell like anything I could put my finger on.

Regardless, it shouldn’t have been in her. Yet none of the doctors I spoke to had mentioned anything about checking her internal organs.

There was also the option of me being completely paranoid.

Was it possible I had seen and smelled and felt the wrong things, that I was thinking this was more than what it was? It was highly unlikely, and not even worth my time to entertain.

Agnes was sick with something, of that I was sure.

I popped my head out the door and glanced both ways down the corridor. Save for an elderly lady napping in a wheelchair, it was empty. The doctor probably wouldn’t be back for at least another hour, but all I needed was two minutes.

I shut the door quietly, grabbing the small plastic chair I had been sitting on for the fast seven hours and placing it in front. It wasn’t that it would prevent anyone from entering, but it would at least give me the extra auditory warning.

Approaching Agnes, I looked her up and down. Her skin seemed oddly sallow, her veins far darker than they should have been. I reached over, grabbing the arm that didn’t have any tubes in it.

Her skin normally smelled of fire—incense when she was younger, gunpowder now—but the scent was gone now. Glancing over my shoulder—more out of habit than anything else—I unsheathed my fangs and gently pricked the skin at her wrist.

I forced them back in and pulled away, observing. The unhealthy greyish blood that pooled at the wound did so slowly, like it was far too thick. It was the furthest thing from appetizing, but I ran my tongue along her wrist regardless.

It was like someone had sprinkled rat poison and petroleum into butter, and I gagged at the taste. Whatever it was that was making Agnes sick, it wasn’t occurring naturally.

And it certainly wasn’t any food allergy.

“Give her this.”

A man’s voice stirred me. When had I fallen asleep?

“But sir, the dosage in this—”

“It wasn’t a request, Lyon.” My eyes fluttered, but I kept them shut. That icy, demanding voice was certainly familiar, but when did Darius get here?

“And while you’re on a roll with actually following orders like a good little boy, tell me what he’s doing here.”

The disdain in his voice immediately said he was referring to me. Risking a small peek, I half-opened one eye, assessing the situation.

Darius stood with what looked like a fully cooked meal in his hands, speaking with the doctor from earlier. While it seemed a little strange to deliver such a large meal to someone sleeping in a hospital, it wasn’t an unkind gesture. Still, Agnes was passed out cold, not ready to move for quite some time.

I closed my eye again.

Doctor Lyon’s heart beat loudly in my ears, and he reeked of fear; it was a far cry from the irate, useless doctor from the night before. “He accompanied her to the hospital in the ambulance, sir. Hasn’t left her side since. I thought it would have looked suspicious if I asked him to leave without a proper excuse, so I allowed him to stay… Is he… He isn’t a soldier, is he?”

Darius’ laugh was cold. “Fat chance that could ever stand up to anything more frightening than a one-legged puppy. As long as you’ve been careful to hide her dosages, there shouldn’t be a problem. I’ll handle him.”

There were a few clicks of what sounded like expensive shoes on the linoleum floor that started off strong and faded into the distance. I was left with the sound of Doctor Lyon’s racing heart and Agnes’ breathing machine.

Dosage.

The word rang through my ears, echoing several times over. I wanted to force myself into believing that I had misunderstood, that whatever they had meant was not effectively conveyed by their speech.

But it would have been dangerous to believe that.

Faking a large yawn, I stretched and opened my eyes. “Good morning,” I mumbled, the grogginess in my voice only half-faked.

Lyon had his hand gripped around the medical drip bag that fed into Agnes’ arm, and looked as though I had fired off a gun in his face.

“G-G-G-Good morning, s-s-sir!” he squeaked. “I have to go now!”

With that, he spun on his heel and shot out through the door. My blood shot cold through my veins. Darius might have been good at façades, but Lyon clearly wasn’t.

I strode up to the table at the end of Agnes’ bed and examined the meal that Darius had left for her. It seemed innocent enough; some sort of barbecued chicken, an asparagus dish, and a macaroni and cheese casserole all sat on plates covered by cling wrap.

Pulling the wrap off the chicken, I raised it to my nose. There were the usual scents present: the juicy smell of meat, the strong Montreal steak spice it was seasoned with, and the smell of the charcoals embedded into the flesh. But there was something beyond that.

It was the same, eerie smell that Agnes’ blood had given off.

Whatever it was, Darius was giving it to her through her food. But to what end? Despite racking my brain, I couldn’t seem to think of any sort of reason that the prick would consider logical. The concoction was poisoning her blood at the very least; she had mentioned having hearing and sight issues before as well.

God only knew what else it was doing to her.

The sound of loud retching interrupted my thoughts.

My head snapped up to see Agnes, scrambling to get to her side so that she didn’t choke on her own vomit; it was the same black tar-like substance that she had spewed up last afternoon, and it hit the floor with sickly spatters.

When her puking turned to dry heaves, she finally flopped onto her back again, breathing heavily. Her cheeks were flushed, but the rest of her was far paler and more exhausted than it ever had.

“Agnes?” I called softly. Her pupils were dilated, not focused in one particular spot.

She gave a weakened sigh. “D-Dar…ius?”

“It’s… It’s Adrian,” I replied, walking over to her side. Holding my hand an inch from her forehead, I didn’t even need to touch her to feel how badly she was burning up.

“Oh… Oh… It’s Adrian…” She laughed softly. “Sorry, I can’t… My eyes are…”

“I know, it’s okay. And while I know this may seem like a really inappropriate question, I need you to answer it as best you can. Okay?”

Her head wobbled up and down in a sort of make-shift nod.

I stepped around the large pool of black vomit at the side of her bed and made my way back to the table with the food. “How long has it been since you ate something from Darius? And… How often do you do it?”

“Huh?”

“Just answer, please. It’s important.”

Agnes’ eyes fluttered, and she wrapped her blanket around her more tightly. A shiver ran down her spine before she answered. “Dinner… He makes me dinner… Every night. Darius does.”

Which meant that, every night, Agnes was ingesting more and more of the poison that unknowingly started shutting down her organs. What struck me as odd was that it was only food. Unless… it wasn’t? I glanced at the medical drip bag that hung from a hook near her bed. Since when was it legal to have an opaque bag, anyway?

If it were antibiotics, I could always run and get the nurse. If it wasn’t…

Grabbing the fork from the table, I stabbed it into the drip bag and dragged it downward. My heart sank as the same black fluid dribbled down from the bag, hitting the floor and mixing with her vomit.

She screamed as I yanked the tube from her arm, sending blood spurting all over the already soiled sheets.

“You need to leave Darius,” I said quietly. It was the only way I could restrain myself from yelling.

“Fuck… Adrian, not… not now,” she spat. “I’m… not well, and I can’t—” She was interrupted by another round of violent vomiting. This time, it was more grey, mixed with the strong tang of blood. I plucked a couple of tissues from the side table and wiped the sticky substance from her mouth.

“You don’t understand, Agnes. He’s the reason you’re like this.”

“W-Wha…?”

I threw the tissue behind me and grabbed her hands. “He’s the reason you’re sick. He’s poisoning you—every meal you’ve eaten from him, he’s put something in it to do this to you. Even your doctor’s in on it.”

She coughed up a little more fluid, though most of it was blood. I grabbed another few tissues to wipe it away.

“—Loves me!” she screamed noiselessly, shutting her eyes tightly. “Darius… Never do that.”

“Well he has,” I insisted. “I don’t know why, but he has.”

She shook her head violently from side to side, her cheeks raging an even more alarming red. She was boiling up from inside—what was left of her, anyway. “No!” she whimpered, hot tears running down her already fiery cheeks. “Just make it stop!”

It was then that I realized I could.

But that split second of realization was immediately whipped from my mind. Agnes’ words meant different things to her than to me.

“Adrian… please… Make it s-stop…”

Despite her trembling lip, her words couldn’t have been clearer. My heart jumped into my throat. Whether she knew what I was was neither here nor there; she knew I could make her pain bearable. But she couldn’t possibly be thinking straight with all that was going on in her body. Was it the right thing to do?

I swallowed hard.

“Are you sure?”

Incoherent whimpering was her response, and she clasped my hand back, digging her nails into them.

I pressed my lips gently to her burning, sweaty forehead, feeling her uneven heartbeat pounding in my ears. Her ginger hair was in mats, soaked by her feverish sweat along with the pillow. Her neck had just as much rolling off it, her veins almost black.

I unsheathed my fangs once more. Letting one of my venoms spurt, I drove them into her.