The Lair

CHAPTER FORTY

Lily

Lily didn’t even see it happen, just felt the sharp and sudden pain flare through her foot. When she looked down, it took several long heartbeats to process what she was seeing at all. What was that in her shoe? How had it gotten there? What the hell?

By the time she put the pieces together and figured out it was an arrow, Carter had already picked her up and was running through the store. Away from the Tick, but also away from Josie.

She bucked in Carter’s arms, twisting and yelling for him to stop, but his crushing grasp was too tight. “The baby!” she cried. “You can’t leave the baby!”

He ignored her. A moment later, he burst out of the store and into the night. The Cayenne and a smaller Mazda were parked right out front. He deposited her on the passenger seat of the Mazda.

The trunk of the Mazda was open. And beside the car stood Stoner Joe. Who she’d thought was dead. The shock of seeing him warred for attention in her already scrambled brain. She dismissed it. She’d process that later. After.

Joe, who had been siphoning gas from the Cayenne into the Mazda while moving supplies from one vehicle to the other, stopped what he was doing.

Unnaturally pale he asked, “Where’s the baby? What happened?”

Carter was already rummaging for the ax she’d told him about. He seemed not to even hear Joe’s questions.

The arrow . . . the Tick . . . But Lily couldn’t think of that yet. They were still in danger, and Josie wasn’t out yet. The longer they all stood here talking, the more likely it was that another Tick would show up.

So she pushed aside her shock and answered. “There was a Tick. We’ve killed it. I think. He’s going to make sure.” By the time she finished the sentence, Carter had found the ax and disappeared back into the building. “You should wait a minute then go in after Josie. She’s upset, but fine. The freezer in the back. There’s food there, too. In a backpack. Don’t leave that. We’ll need it later. And there’s a sippy cup with some milk in it. Don’t forget that. And—”

Her words trailed off as her head suddenly spun. She’d forgotten to breathe there for a minute. “Just go,” she ordered. She just needed a moment. To be alone. To think. To plan.

Joe bolted for the door.

She was immediately sorry she’d sent him away. Not because sending him into the building was dangerous. Carter was finishing off the Tick right now. Not because she didn’t think Josie needed rescuing, because of course she did.

But because now that he was gone, it seemed impossible that he’d really been there.

Joe was dead. She was so sure of that. If he hadn’t been dead these past two months, then where the hell had he been?

She couldn’t believe that McKenna had died, only to have Joe show up alive, hundreds of miles from where he was supposed to be. Here. Now. When Josie needed him so badly.

It was unimaginable.

So had she imagined it?

Was this how it started? With hallucinations?

Because—holy crap—she’d thought she’d have more time. Three days, right? That’s what the news shows had said. Three days of extreme flulike symptoms before the transformation happened.

But maybe the news had been wrong. Maybe it was three days normally, but not if a friggin’ Tick stabbed you with an arrow covered in friggin’ infected Tick blood. Maybe when that happened it was three minutes instead.

Jesus.

Fear and panic wrestled inside of her, fighting for dominance, but she couldn’t let them win. Because in just a few minutes, maybe less, Carter was going to walk out the door, and she needed to have a plan by then. Carter wouldn’t be thinking clearly. So she’d have to think clearly enough for all of them.

But all she could think was that she didn’t want to go like this. All the times she’d thought about it and planned for her own death, she hadn’t really believed it would go down like this. She’d been arrogant enough to think she was too smart to be infected. Too prepared. Too strong.

Christ, she was an idiot.

She forced herself to look down at her injury. Just seeing the arrow sticking out of her shoe made the pain pulse up her leg. Okay, first things first, get the arrow out. It would hurt like hell but it gave her something to focus on. Something to do. Some way to clear her mind of the racing clutter.

She reached into her back pocket and pulled out the pocketknife. Her hands were shaking so badly she had to use her teeth to open it. The arrow went straight through the tongue of her sneaker. She pulled the lace out of the shoe and flared open the sides. She moved quickly, ignoring the pain. The pain didn’t matter. What mattered, what really mattered, was that she see it with her own eyes. That she see the bloody arrow, penetrating her foot. Otherwise, how could she do what needed to be done next? Unless she saw it, she wouldn’t be strong enough.

She slid the flat of the blade between the tongue of the shoe and her foot and sawed the knife back and forth, cutting the tongue off. Every slice of the knife jostled the arrow and she had to clench her teeth to keep from crying out. Then she pulled the shoe off her foot, leaving the arrow. Just as she’d thought, the arrowhead was embedded entirely in her foot, the point protruding from the bottom. Pulling it out would do more tissue damage than pushing it cleanly through. She sucked in five sharp inhalations, then held her breath as she drove the shaft of the arrow the rest of the way through her foot and pulled it out.

Choking back a sob, she let the arrow drop to the ground and she collapsed in the seat, her head rolling to the side.

Her mind raced with treatment options, even though she knew none would work. She’d been to Girl Scout camp every summer since she was six. She’d taken dozens of first aid classes. Yeah, she wasn’t a doctor or a nurse, but she didn’t need any formal training to know she was screwed.

“Joe, get me the first aid kit, a bottle of water, and the soap out of the back.”

She opened her eyes to see Joe standing maybe ten feet away, cradling baby Josie in his arms. Carter was a bit farther away, stripping down to his underwear. Again she blinked, trying to force her spinning head to reason. Was she hallucinating?

She looked to Joe. “You’re alive? And here?”

He nodded as he pulled out a gallon jug of water and tossed a bar of soap to Carter. “Yeah. I’ve been at a Farm. I got picked up on the way to Utah. It’s a long story.” His gaze dropped to her foot. “Lily, man . . . I’m sorry.”

Carter chucked the last of his bloody clothes into a pile and started washing his hands. He responded to Joe’s comment before Lily could. “It’s okay. She’s going to be fine.”

“Carter, I’m not—”

“You’re gonna be fine. We’ll clean the wound. Flush it with water.”

He rinsed his hands and gave them a shake, looking over his own body for more blood. When he didn’t see any, he disappeared behind the back of the Mazda and she could hear him rummaging around for clean clothes. He came out a moment later, dressed in jeans and gray hoodie like the one he’d been wearing when he rescued her from the Farm.

The sight of it made her heart ache even more. He’d done so much for her. This was going to be hardest on him. So much harder on him than on anyone else.

“Listen to me, Carter.” Her voice shook with fear, but she pushed it aside. “A wound like this can’t just be cleaned. I’m infected.”

“No. You’re not.”

“The Tick’s blood—”

“It’s just like snake’s venom. I’ll suck it out. It’s only been, what, five minutes? That’s soon enough.”

“No. It’s not. Trust me. Twelve years of summer camp first aid classes. If you’re bitten by a venomous snake, the venom reaches your heart within sixty seconds. There’s no way to suck it out. The human heart beats too fast.”

All this time she’d thought that the human heart would save them all—that love would rescue them. And now her own heart had killed her. Just as surely as the Tick had.

Carter came over to her, crouching to look at the wound. After his careful scrub-down, he didn’t touch her foot. A sign that some part of him knew she was right. He wouldn’t say it aloud. She didn’t blame him. She didn’t want to say it either, but it had to be said.

She scooted to the edge of her seat and took his face in her hands. That beautiful face she loved so much. She made him look at her. “Here’s what’s going to happen. You’re going to get in the Cayenne with Josie and drive away.”

“No!”

“Just a mile down the road. There’s a”—she frantically tried to remember what else was in this Godforsaken town—“a Dairy Queen. It’s just down Main Street. You’re going to wait there. Joe will meet you there in five minutes. Ten, max.”

“No,” Joe said quietly, shaking his head and holding Josie even closer.

Carter said nothing, but his gaze dropped and he couldn’t look at her.

She looked up at Joe, who stood there holding his beautiful baby girl in his arms. She’d sworn she would do everything in her power to keep Josie safe. Letting go now, knowing that she couldn’t do that in person, was like ripping her heart out. She didn’t want to die.

And yet, she was doing everything she could to protect Josie. She understood now what McKenna had meant about that. This was her fighting for Josie. Making them do the right thing. Choosing death when life was no longer an option. That was fighting, not giving up.

“You can do this for me, right Joe?” He was shaking his head. “Yes. You can. I know you don’t want to. But it’s the right thing. It’s easier to do it now. We have no idea how long I’ll have. I’d rather go now than risk putting anyone else in danger.”

But Joe was still shaking his head. “No, Lil. I don’t think I can.”

What was she going to do if she couldn’t convince either one of them?

She still had her handgun, but there were no guarantees that a gunshot would kill her. She was still mostly human, but who knew how long the virus took to kick in. For all she knew, her epigenetics were already switching around to change her body. When Sebastian had turned Mel, it had started so damn fast.

No. She needed one of them. Even if she shot herself, she needed someone to dispose of the body and make sure she didn’t regenerate.

“Joe, listen to me. You can do this.”

“No, Lily. I can’t.”

She saw the resolution in his gaze. Saw what it would cost him. Dear, sweet Joe. Joe was a pacifist. And he’d just found out about McKenna. Carter must have told him on the drive down, because his eyes were red-rimmed. Besides, he hadn’t asked about her, which he surely would have done if he didn’t already know she was dead.

The guy had just lost the love his life and now she was asking him to do this horrible thing. To someone he liked. Shit.

Still, it needed to be done and Carter wasn’t going to do it. So she dug deep, wracking her brain for something that would make this easier for Joe. “I was there when McKenna died. There were Ticks coming. She was bleeding out. And I left her there so Josie and I could escape. I let her die.”

But he just shook his head, like he didn’t believe her. “Nah, Lily. You wouldn’t have done that. And I can’t do this.”

“Damn it!” she cursed. “Don’t you two get it? I’m turning into a monster. Already! You have to do it now while you can!”

Carter shoved himself to his feet and stormed around to the other side of the car and started digging through a bag on the driver’s seat.

“No. It’s not going down like this.”

She turned in her seat to watch him. What did he mean, it wasn’t going down like this? It had already gone down. There was nothing any of them could do.

Yeah, she got it. The situation sucked. They hated having this choice thrust on them. They hated feeling helpless. She got that. That was how she’d felt when Mel . . .

And that’s when it hit her.

“Carter, no!”

But the phone was already in his hands. He’d already dialed Sebastian.