Sweat broke out across his chest and neck as he wrestled with those useless urges. “What is this place,lille mus?”
She sniffled. Then, in a raw but practiced voice, she explained, “You’re here to be infected with a sickness. You’ll be locked in with me for three days. If you’re not sick by then, Papa will move onto another three days of— of contact. And if you’re still not sick, then…” Josephine cut herself off. Her shoulders hunched again. “It never works. He always ends up having to use me in the end. I’m sorry.”
Otto shook his head in a vain attempt to clear his thoughts. He could barely follow what she was telling him, but he wasn’t entirely sure it was the drugs that made it difficult.
“What kind of sickness?” he pressed. “And why? Why are you here with me?” He eyed her more closely. Lifting his face a little, he sniffed the air again, hunting for any trace of sourness in her scent. “You don’t smell sick.”
“I am,” she answered. “It’s not something you can catch from the air, or even my touch. Papa knows that, but he’s a scientist. He needs to test everything a thousand times.”
A sharp pang of worry struck him. Tone hardening, he asked, “What sickness is it?”
Her voice was muffled by the folds of her sleeves when she said, “It’s new. Papa said he found it in a rabid vampire. It took ten men to kill him. He thought it was strange that he didn’t show signs of dying, so he experimented.” She turned her headjust-so,allowing him to get a glimpse of her pert nose and furrowed brow. Gods, she was a delicate little thing. When he touched her, would she shatter?
And hewouldtouch her. The animal needed—
Otto shook his head, trying to focus his wandering thoughts.You’re a prisoner, fool. Figure that out first.
Misreading the gesture as impatience, Josephine flinched and rushed to finish, “He thought he could make people stronger if he infected them.”
“Withwhat?”
One eye peered at him. Even in the gloom of the cell, he could tell that it was as blue as a winter sky. In a voice barely above a whisper, she answered, “Lyssa.”
“Lyssa,” he echoed, uncomprehending.
“Yes.” Her voice was so soft, it required a predator’s hearing to pick up that single word.
It took a moment for his foggy mind to place the word.
He’d heard it whispered in the same hushed tones people used when speaking about rabies, or childbed fever. It was a killer — random, cruel, and terrifying to witness.
A young man in his village had been bitten by a lyssa-infected vampire when Otto was still too young to understand what that meant. All he remembered was the stark look on the faces of the elders who gathered in his father’s house, and the guttural, animal howling of the young man chained in the shed next door.
Otto and his family were not at risk of catching the disease, but others in the village, mostly arrants, were. Something needed to be done to keep everyone safe. Besides, it was not merciful to let lyssa take its true course. Executing the infected was the only kind option.
His father, being the closest thing to an alpha they had, took responsibility. He still remembered the haunted look in his eyes when he returned from the shed and quietly washed his hands in the basin by the stove. The water was pink when he was done.
Senses strung taut and heart beginning to throb with acute panic, Otto raised his head and sniffed again. Hislille musdid not smell sick. She didn’t have the telltale signs, either. There was no elongation of her limbs, no foaming snarl, no jagged claws. He’d only glimpsed the young man through a small hole in the side of the shed before his execution, but Otto would never forget the monstrous symptoms he witnessed.
She could speak coherently and move as a healthy person might. She did not have extended fangs, nor the insatiable need to bite anyone and everything. There was no wildness in her.
Lyssa was known for turning its victims into raving, violent monsters — their bodies transformed into beasts bent on infecting others before they expired in a haze of foam-speckled blood and madness. It came on fast and burned hot. He’d never even heard of someone surviving more than a week with it.
If his Josephine had it, she would not only be showing the signs, she would almost certainly already be dead.She must be mistaken, then.
Relief washed through him. Slumping against the cold stone wall of the cell, he tried to offer her a comforting smile. “Lille mus,it’s all right.”
That glimpse of her sky blue eye disappeared again as she returned to burying her face in her knees. “It’s not.”
“I can’t get lyssa,” he explained. Otto’s fingers curled on the tile floor, moving instinctively to comfort her even when she wasn’t near enough to touch. Though he fully believed she was mistaken, it wouldn’t hurt to reassure her. “It only takes vampires and arrants. I’m a shifter.”
Perhaps it was stupid of him to puff up a bit when he said the last sentence, but he didn’t care. He was a shifter — a damn impressive one. It would suit him just fine if she noticed that. “You are safe with me,lille mus.”
He watched her shoulders rise and then fall slowly as she took a deep breath. “They always say that.”
His brows dropped down into a deep furrow. “That you are safe with them?”
“No. That they won’t catch it.” Her slight frame trembled. Otto’s gaze flicked to the shawl coiled on the floor.
