Chapter 5 - Veronica

" Should be dead ?" I say, laughing at first, then registering the absolutely horrified look on Maisie's face, which sobers me. "What the hell are you talking about?"

Her gaze flits between Percy and me. Percy is still sitting on the ground. When I glance down at him, I really see, for the first time, that he's in immense pain. Despite everything, it makes a pang of empathy zing through my chest. I don't want him to hurt.

There are beads of sweat along his brow, and as I look at him, he bends at the waist, tucking his head between his knees.

The emotions whirring inside me are hard to pick out and impossible to hold onto. Seeing him here, like this, is such a stark contrast to the man I knew back in New York City. The man who would pick me up on a whim, spinning me over his shoulder and laughing as I screamed with laughter to be put down. The man who took me on the wildest adventures—to indoor skydiving, sunrise kayaking, and a beer tasting that included a brew made from squid's ink.

That Percy was all fun, all sunshine, a constant ray of hope and positivity. This Percy has been through something—the apparent psychological break he was suffering from when he kidnapped me.

A shiver runs over my skin, pricking up goosebumps, and I look away from him.

I can't help it—despite how much I've worked with the therapist, the memories are like intrusive thoughts, coming flooding back no matter how many times I try to stop them or keep them from completely zoning everything out.

A path in the middle of the woods, just outside of Rosecreek, is beautiful in the daylight but terrifying at night. That's where I was when Percy appeared, and seeing him again was like having cold water dumped over my body. Not only was I still pissed at him for leaving me, but I was also, apparently, still very much in love with him.

I'd known it the second he stepped out of the trees, his clothes hanging in tatters from his body, his expression full of pain and confusion.

"Percy?" I had said, stepping toward him, and the violence with which he turned his head, snapping his gaze to me, made me flinch. He didn't look like himself—for one, he had a long beard where his face was usually clean-shaven. But it was more than that—something unrecognizable behind his eyes. Something dark. Something I had never seen there in him before.

"Veronica," he'd breathed, that dark cloud clearing from his eyes for a moment. It was too difficult to read all the emotions crossing and muddling up on his face. And then, in one breath, a word that will always chill me to the bone for the rest of my life, his mouth had twisted, his eyes shining with a kind of anticipatory grief.

" Run ."

He didn't have to tell me twice. Fear shot through me, choking my throat and making my blood thick, but I had never been the kind of person to freeze in the face of a crisis. I had been in far too many emergency rooms, doing blood transfusions and monitoring patients with gunshot wounds, stab wounds, whole chunks of their bodies missing.

So I turned, and I ran. Although I'd been lost in the woods for an hour, and regardless that I'd already run several miles at that point, I ran, my feet pounding against the soft trail, the leaves mulching under my feet.

The trees flew past me. It was, without a doubt, the fastest I had ever run in my life.

But it wasn't fast enough. A second later, Percy appeared on the trail in front of me, breathing heavily; that dark cloud returned to his eyes. I didn't even have time to turn before he had me over his shoulder.

It didn't matter how much I struggled or kicked, trying to get away from him. It was like his arms were made of steel, his strength physically impossible. Inhuman.

While talking with my therapist, we've explored how my helplessness at that moment made me inflate his abilities in taking me. I was exhausted, tired, thirsty—had been wandering the woods for hours at that point. It made sense that he would have a handle on me. Especially given the fact that, according to his team, he'd been surviving on his own in the woods, suffering from a psychotic break, for several years at the point.

And nobody knew he was out there or had ever seen him, apparently, until me.

He'd carried me, kicking and screaming, for what felt like miles. It was the longest nightmare of my life, presented with the opportunity to escape, but completely unable to do so. From my knowledge of stalkers and crime, I knew that once they got you to the second location, your chances of getting away lowered considerably.

That's why, when he opened the door to that cabin, I'd broken into the most soul-splitting sobs of my life. He'd carried me down the ladder, setting me down carefully on the floor, his face an empty mask of calm, although I was fighting him with everything I had. It took him a few minutes to tie me to the cement column with rope.

He whispered something about keeping me safe. About protecting me. One of the most chilling memories is the way his face looked like his soul had left his body, like he was nothing more than a robot acting on phantom whims.

Then, he climbed back up, pulled up the ladder, and shut the door.

I thought I was going to die down there, alone in the dark. I'd made my voice hoarse from screaming into the dark, begging and pleading every god I didn't believe in to grant me respite from what was happening to me. I bargained with anything I thought would listen.

Later, I woke up to the sound of the door opening and Percy coming down the ladder again. Carrying another body.

He set that one down, too, and for a terrifying moment, I thought the person was dead, and I screamed. Percy had looked over at me thoughtfully, then disappeared upstairs. After returning and leaving water behind, he left again.

That person—someone in the area for hiking season, woke up and untied me. We both drank heavily from the water jug he'd brought down to us. It was hard for me to talk because my throat was so hoarse from the screaming, but she told me her story, and I told her mine.

As the weeks passed, more and more people joined us in the basement, lowered inside with ropes once there were too many of us. Always, he was muttering something about keeping the humans safe .

When we dated, I'd always thought he was secretive, not wanting to introduce me to his friends or family. But this was a whole new level of delusion. This was another thing entirely—something I'd been fearful of the first time I noticed I had a stalker back in my hometown. But I never thought it would be Percy who ended up making that nightmare come true.

"Maisie," he says, his voice choked, and the nurse turns, grabbing an emesis bag and handing it to him right before he vomits violently inside. I stare at him, heart pounding. What's wrong with him? Is he sick?

"Maisie," I say, turning to her and taking her arm, making her focus on me. "What the hell are you saying? I should be dead? Is there a virus going around? What is it?"

"I—" Maisie starts, glancing between me and Percy. Something that I don't understand passes between them, but when she looks back at me, she clears her throat and then nods. "It's a blood-borne pathogen," she says, clearing her throat, and I get the feeling that she might be making this up as she goes. "Percy contracted it, you also contracted it when that person bit you—"

"That was real ? I ask, bringing my hand to my neck and finding a bandage there over a tender spot on my neck. Yes, someone actually bit me. And they gave me some sort of blood-borne pathogen.

A chill runs through my body at the thought. My entire life, I've been so careful while working as a nurse to make sure I didn't contract things from my patients. And now, here I am, after one interaction with a weirdo, dealing with the very thing I've been skillfully avoiding.

"Veronica," Percy says, and I turn, watching him struggle to pull himself up to sit again. "Are—are you—"

"Maisie," I say, turning back to her, feeling my pulse skipping quickly. "Give him whatever you gave me. Why is he reacting like this?"

"I didn't give you anything," she says, her eyes darting between us. "I think you might have…antigens."

I glance back at Percy, who has slumped down, so his back is against the wall.

"Do you have a crash cart?" I ask, pushing up my sleeves. "We have to help him."

"A crash cart isn't going to do anything," Maisie says, shaking her head, tears forming in her eyes. "I've seen this before."

"Well, we have to do something!" I say, the last word rising in both volume and pitch. "We can't just sit here and watch him die."

"There's nothing, no antidote—I mean, cure—that can help him!" she says, and for one panicked moment, we're just looking at one another, nurse to nurse, aware that this man is going to die.

No .

"Maisie," I say, taking her by the shoulders. " Think . Think about what you saw. Think about what you know about the pathogen. I've never encountered it before, but there has to be something—"

"You're immune," she breathes, her eyes skipping up to meet mine. "So if we introduced some of your blood to him, it might—"

"Okay," I say, nodding and flexing my arm, ready for her to draw from me. "I'm a universal donor. Let's do this."

Maisie shakes her head, worrying her bottom lip.

"I think—I think we don't have time to do a transfusion," she says, shaking her head. "But I have a different idea."

" No ," Percy says from the floor, but I can't see why he would object at getting something that might save his life. Besides, I'm not letting him die, even if he fights against it.

One part of my brain, the part that is endlessly traumatized by him, the part that is too rational, screams at me that being here is a bad idea. That letting Percy die would be the right choice. But the other part of my brain, the part that's strangely and unexplainably connected to Percy, can't handle the idea of him dying here in front of me. Or, at all.

I was angry with him when he left me. I cried and yelled and threw wadded-up tissues across the room. But, more than anything, I just wanted him to come back. For so long after he left, I would have taken him back into my life with the simplest of explanations. Being apart from him was physically painful in a way I couldn't explain.

My elderly neighbor, Ms. Pearl, a woman I drank tea with every Wednesday, had laughed when I described the feeling, rubbing my fist over my chest.

"That," she had said, "darling, is just plain old love."

I look at Percy now, notice that his veins are darkening. I don't know anything about this pathogen, but it's incredibly potent if it's working this quickly.

"Whatever you think," I say, nodding at Maisie, "you're the expert. Just, please—let's do something ."

"Percy," Maisie says, her eyes tracking across the room, meeting with his. He's barely conscious, his breath coming shallow and quick, his eyes struggling to focus. "We're going to have to do a blood-bond."