broken barrier, but before he could get to the door, he collapsed to the ground, falling into the shattered glass. Lucy hobbled toward him and pulled him away from the ground of shards. Her paramedic’s instinct kicked in, and she examined him cooly to see how bad his wounds were.
She wedged him with his back to the wall and placed the damaged arm across his lap so it fell into the good one. She expected tears, sweat, panting, exhaustion, but he sat placidly, staring out after Cain’s retreat. ‘We have to go after him,’ he said in a low voice.
‘We can’t,’ Lucy said. ‘We’re in no shape. Least of all you.’
He looked at her, a look of shock crossing his face, as though he hadn’t expected to see her standing over him. ‘You’re covered in blood,’ he said.
‘Autumn’s.’
‘Did you…’ he started to ask, but seemed unwilling to follow through on his thought.
‘What?’ she asked.
‘Did her blood get in your mouth? In your wounds?’
She recalled the acrid taste, some of which lingered still at the back of her throat. ‘Some.’
Adam reached up tenderly with his good hand, and took her wrist, the one cut by the manacles that had allowed her escape. Thick black blood caked the cut, a deep ridge of it lining the wound. Carefully, Adam pulled away at it, peeling it like a layer of dead skin. It came away, revealing the skin beneath unbroken.
‘How?’ she asked, although she already knew the reason. Blood. Blood that turned Cain from corpse to monster. When they found Cain, he had blood around his mouth, as she did. ‘Wait, am I?’
He shook his head, but his eyes told a different story. ‘I don’t know. I wish I could say. This is not an exact science. Rituals and ways that have not changed for centuries govern us. I’ve never turned someone, so I don’t know how it works, exactly. I mean, I dimly recall, but…’ He was babbling, this man made almost entirely from muscles and composure. Babbling like an idiot. He was scared, and his fear wormed its way into her.
Was she about to lose everything? Was her fate the same as Cain’s? She’d faced death so many times over the years she no longer truly feared it. She’d looked into the eyes of those who’d gone quickly, and those who went hard, and none of that scared her. But this did. Turning into that, whatever Cain was. She wasn’t sure she could handle the thought of it.
Adam closed his eyes, sighed, and opened them again. ‘We have to find him,’ he said.
‘Your arm is broken, and my knee is pretty fucked.’
He smiled. ‘That knee?’
She looked down; she’d had her weight on her bad knee for the past few minutes, with nary a twinge of pain in sight. Her fingers moved over her jeans and found the swelling had disappeared.
As she checked herself over, finding evidence of the traumas of the last few days miraculously absent, Adam stood, still cradling his arm. ‘This will take a few hours,’ he said. ‘But we don’t have that long.’
‘What will Cain do?’
‘That’s not Cain anymore. He’s in there, sure, but he’s not at the wheel. There is no choice for him but to satisfy the thirst. He broke off from attacking you because he sensed he’d find easier pickings elsewhere. Animal instinct. We have to find him and stop him.’
‘How?’
‘He’s strong, but not used to his power yet. He’ll kill easily, but make mistakes.’
Sirens sounded in the distance. Not far in the distance. Lucy straightened herself out, brushing herself down despite it doing nothing to improve her look. She wanted to run and find a shower, stay in there for days, wash this off. But it wasn’t an option. ‘Let’s go find him.’
Facing the broken glass, Lucy felt power coursing through her, raw, animalistic. She hated it. Loved it. Wanted more. To die. To live. Racing into the night, she wondered where the hell she could get more.