Chapter Sixteen

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Nathaniel

As soon as we walked into, somehow, the crystal ball, seeing it fall away, leaving us in what felt like the beginning of the maze yet again, though the vines were now missing, I felt it.

A cold, coiled dread working its way up my spine, wrapping itself around my throat.

I didn't understand the sensation, or why it suddenly felt like my chest was getting tight, and my face going fuzzy.

And then…

"What's wrong?" Roxanne asked when I pulled to a startled stop at my sudden realization.

"Nothing," I insisted. Though she didn't look convinced, she kept trudging forward.

I fell half a step back, so she couldn't look directly at me, still with our hands entwined, and acted on the very human urge I felt burning in my chest.

To take a breath.

I thought it would feel strange, that it would take a moment to remember how to do it. But the act was instinctive, the most base human instinct to survive involved sucking air in through the nose and feeling it expand your lungs.

The urge to cough overtook me. Like my lungs were full of dust that had settled over the past three hundred years.

I fought that back, not wanting Roxanne to know what was happening to me, figuring I could try to discreetly take breaths when she wasn't focused on me.

"I thought I was supposed to be the lazy one?" Roxy asked, shooting a grin over her shoulder at me.

"I'm just letting you… ow," I hissed, feeling something slice across my arm, cutting through the material of my shirt and jacket to split open my flesh.

"Was it one of those stupid vines?" she asked, turning back to reach for my arm. "Punishing you for your sudden sloth, perhaps?" she teased, but the smile fell as she looked at the wound.

"What is it?" I asked, looking down but mostly seeing the bunched fabric of my jacket.

"Get this off," she demanded, not waiting for me to act but roughly stripping me out of the jacket.

I'd fantasized about her taking my clothes off more times than I was willing to admit. But there was nothing sensual about this moment.

Her hands went to my shirt, grabbing both sides of the slit material and ripping them wider, so she could inspect the wound better.

"Bad?" I asked, feeling the burn of it.

It didn't feel like a typical cut, either. That kind of heated sting.

This felt unnaturally painful, a stabbing, throbbing sensation that was, alarmingly, spreading up my arm.

"Roxy?" I asked as her eyes went huge.

"Get this off too," she said, frantically working at my buttons with clumsy fingers, her hands shaking.

Whatever was going on, I think we can conclude it was not good if she was reacting that way.

Even as she freed all my buttons and moved to push the material of my shirt off of my shoulders, I knew she was right to worry.

Because when I tried to lift my arm to help her take the shirt off, my arm didn't budge. I couldn't make it move.

And the pain? It was moving up to my shoulder now.

"No no no no no," she whimpered as she took me in.

Trying to steel my own nerves to be strong for her, I glanced down to see what she was looking at.

My skin, usually pale and smooth, was a mottled red. And spiderwebs of mulberry-colored lines were moving their way up my skin.

"I can't move my arm," I told her, watching as her green eyes flicked up to mine, horror making them rounder as water flooded them. "I think if it keeps going, it will paralyze me completely," I added, already feeling the dead weight of my shoulder.

I didn't want to say it, but I didn't want to think about what was going to happen when it made its way to my throat, my chest, my lungs.

"What could be doing this?" she asked, her voice taking on a hysterical edge. "What… infects vampires like this?"

"Nothing," I told her, feeling the pain start to pierce down my back, a thousand little knives searing my flesh at once as I tried not to cry out, not to panic, not to stress out Roxanne any more than she already was.

"But… but that doesn't make sense."

"My powers are gone here," I reminded her. "Perhaps it is not about what infects vampires, but what can infect any average human."

"Maybe," she said, moving around me to check my back. I didn't have to see to know the same redness and spiderwebs had spread across the skin there as well.

The pain was moving down my ass, teasing toward my thigh.

It wouldn't be long before I could no longer hold myself up.

"Listen to me," I said, grabbing her with my one good arm. "It has to be something you have the power against. A salve, an elixir, something you can create with your skills."

The pain seared down my leg, making me grit my teeth, but not quickly enough. A pained groan escaped me.

"Help me to the ground," I said as my leg became dead weight.

Roxy's hands shot out, grabbing me immediately, trying to help hold some of my weight so I didn't drop down as the pain moved across my pelvis and started down my other leg.

"Please fight it," she said, kneeling beside me, eyes too flooded, making the waves cascade down her cheeks, falling in fat drops onto the ground beside me.

I had nothing to offer her right then as the pain stabbed at nearly every inch of my body. Nerve endings I didn't know existed fired, making my body tense, my muscles spasming.

I lost my fight with silence.

The grunts and groans of pain quickly became curses and cries as the agony spread like a venom through my system.

"Okay. Okay. I'm gonna try," Roxanne said, sniffling hard as she whipped around, looking for some sign of what had cut me, what might be the cure for me.

Seeing something, she jumped to her feet, rushing toward the hedge, grabbing at whatever it was with her bare hands.

I wanted to tell her to take care, to not end up like me.

But I was nearly mindless with pain as it spread over my chest, down my other arm, then back, heading up the sides of my neck, creating a blinding, brutal agony in my temples.

I couldn't hold in the scream as it escaped me.

Roxanne whipped around, eyes huge, tears still streaming.

"I… I think I found it. I just need to work on a… something," she said, dropping down on her knees near my sliced-open arm.

"No, please," she cried as a pathetic whimper escaped me. "Please hold on."

While I didn't believe this labyrinth would kill Roxanne, a fellow witch, I didn't have such reservations about me, an enemy of theirs.

It certainly felt like I was dying.

I might not get another chance to say anything. I could feel the pain digging into my brain.

I had to say… something.

Mustering what was left of my strength, I looked up at her pretty face. Full of grief and horror for a man who forced her into this situation.

"It's been a pleasure… watching you remember who you truly are."

With that, the pain screamed through my brain.

And I was thankful for death when it came for me.