Darkness Fades (Page 34)
“I feel so much better,” he says and even his voice sounds stronger.
I open my mouth to ask if he thinks it worked—if maybe that’s the cure—or if he thinks he might have turned into a Day Taker—or worse something else—but we’re interrupted when Nichelle bursts inside the room, panting and gasping for air. Mathew purposefully looks in the other direction from her, as though he’s working on something at the table.
“Sylas is back with the others,” she says, breathless, pressing her hand to her chest as she reaches the center of the room.
“That’s good.” Mathew pretends to be moving things around. “Why don’t you send him in here? But just him, not the others.”
She nods, giving his back an inquisitive look. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine.” He shoos her away. “Just really busy.”
She still looks lost as she turns and exits the room, letting the door bang shut behind her.
“Why are you hiding from her?” I ask him, sitting down at the table beside him.
He glances up at me, looking even healthier than he did before Nichelle ran in. “I don’t want to get anyone’s hopes up yet. Not until we can be sure I’m cured. For all I know, my blood still might not be human. And if it does work, we need to find a way to make it in large amounts—enough to cure everyone that has been infected… because it’s going to take more blood than you have in your body.”
I glance down at the veins in my arms, purple just below my pale skin. “Do you have any idea on how to do that? How to tell what you are and how to create my blood?”
He shakes his head. “I’m not sure, but I’m going to start by studying your blood and mine. And…” He trails off as he wanders over to the counter, his strides so much sturdier, and he carries his back straighter.
He bends down in front of one of the bottom cabinets and then glances over his shoulder before slipping his hand into his pocket. He takes out a key and moves it towards a lock on the cabinet door.
“What are you doing?” I ask as he unlocks the door.
He drops the key into his pocket, opens the door up and then reaches inside. “Getting something important.” When he pulls back and stands up, he has a vial in his hand.
“What’s that in your hand?” I question, gripping the handle of my knife while wondering if he’s up to something; if maybe he’s turning into a Higher. His hair isn’t white, though, or his eyes. Plus, he has emotion in his expression.
He slowly lowers his gaze to the vial in his hand as he unfolds his fingers from the glass. Then stretches his arm out to me. “This is the original virus.”
I step back, stunned. “What?”
“The original vampire virus,” he says. “This is what started it all.”
It doesn’t look like something that would harm the world; in fact, it looks innocent. White and sparkly. When the liquid hits the light, it shines brighter than anything I’ve ever seen.
“That’s it?” I ask, leaning in to get a good look at it. “That’s what changed the world to what it is?”
He shakes his head as he tucks the virus into his pocket. “No, a lot of greed was the cause of why the world is what it is,” he says. “But yes, this is what started the vampire spread.” He pauses as he gets lost in thought. “It spread so quickly, you know. One host would get infected and feed off something then who they fed off would change and start to feed. Within days, well, the world was a mess. The Highers took the opportunity to make it seem like they could offer protection when really what they wanted was control and more test subjects to use to find their perfection.”
I frown, remembering the colony. “I can remember.”
He smiles sadly. “You can remember what the world is, but not what the world was. It wasn’t that bad of a place.”
I wish I could remember it all, but I only have bits and pieces of my memories. I wonder if they’ll all come back to me. “So why do you have that?”
“Well, I kept it mainly to study it and try to figure out a way to get rid of it,” he says, closing his fingers around it. “But now I’m going to study it to figure out how it replicates itself. How it takes over the body of the host and turns them into a virus.”
“Why, though?” I ask. “Shouldn’t you be studying yourself and seeing if you’re human.”
“I am,” he says, placing the virus carefully into his pocket. “But I want to study this, too. If we did find the cure and it’s in your blood, the virus might help us figure out a way to spread it quickly. If we can figure out the process, then we can replicate it with the cure.”
“So that every person infected with the cure becomes the cure,” I say, nodding understandingly.
“Yes,” he says brightly as he whisks over to the table. “Now I just have to see if you and I are the answers to the cure.”
“Why would you two be the answer to the cure?” Sylas says from behind me.
Mathew’s green eyes widen and he quickly tries to turn away before Sylas can see he’s healing. Sylas strides over to him, grabs his shoulder and with a lot of effort, forces Mathew to turn around to face him. He observes him closely; the once weak man who now looks a lot younger, stronger and has green eyes that were once pale.
“Did you do it? Did you find a cure?” he asks Mathew in shock. When Mathew doesn’t respond, Sylas looks at me. “Kayla, what’s going on?”
“We might have found something,” I say. “But…” Before I can further explain, Sylas moves up to me and throws his arms around me in the weirdest embrace ever. “I can’t believe it,” he says, pulling me closer to him. “We have a cure. Finally, we have something to fight for.”
He seems so much more weightless, like his rough shell has crumbled with the idea that there’s hope. More than I would have expected and part of me wonders if his whole tough guy act was a facade created to mask the worry that we’d never protect or save the world. I’m about to tell him that we might not have a cure—that Mathew isn’t even sure if he’s human, and if he is, we’re not even sure how to make enough of a cure to spread it yet—but he seems so happy, and Sylas never seems happy, so I decide to follow what Mathew did and keep quiet. Mathew and I exchange a look and make a silent agreement to keep our lips sealed.