"You little shit." The words came out slurred, the toxin clearly affecting the immortal's motor control, even though it wasn't incapacitating him. "You'll pay for this with your worthless life."
"Tarik!" One of the others stood up. "Put him down! He's the scientist Lord Navuh brought to work on the enhancement project."
"I don't give a damn about who he is." The hand around Dimitri's throat tightened, and dark spots bloomed at the edges of his vision. He clawed at the immortal's wrist, but it was like trying to pry apart an iron vice.
"I'm going to kill this piece-of- shit human." Tarik's face was inches from Dimitri's, twisted with fury, his fangs fully elongated and dripping venom.
The hiss came a split second before those monstrous fangs pierced Dimitri's flesh, and a white-hot lance of agony started at the junction of his neck and radiated outward in waves. He screamed, his body convulsed, and the world narrowed to that single point of contact where Tarik's fangs had sunk into his flesh.
The cold slithering of venom replaced the fire of the incisions, and Dimitri felt himself shutting down.
This was death.
He was dying. The immortal was killing him, and there was nothing he could do to stop it.
At least the pain was gone. At least he'd died trying to do what was right.
Somewhere far away, Mattie was screaming.
Suddenly, the fangs pulled out of his flesh, and Dimitri crashed to the floor in a heap of nerveless limbs. Blood was pouring down his chest, soaking through his shirt, and the bar tilted around him, the ceiling spinning overhead.
"—going to kill him, you idiot!" Someone was shouting. "Lord Navuh needs him, and he will execute all of us for interfering in his enhancement project."
Dimitri tried to move, tried to get his body to respond to his commands, but everything felt wrong. Disconnected. Like his brain was sending signals that got lost somewhere along the way.
"He stabbed me with poison." Tarik's voice was thick, the words slightly garbled.
"Look at him. He's half dead while you are still standing. What if he's the only one who knows the antidote? Besides, your life will be over anyway if Navuh finds out you murdered his pet scientist."
Dimitri's vision was fading, darkness creeping in from the edges. He could hear them arguing about what to do, how to cover this up, but the words were becoming harder to follow. Like listening to a conversation through water.
"...just say he got into a fight..."
"...got drunk..."
"...let's get out of here before..."
Then they switched to a different language, and he couldn't follow at all. Didn't want to. He no longer cared.
Dimitri was at peace, and he was drifting.
Nothing mattered anymore.
Mattie mattered. Where was she? Was she okay?
Dimitri tried to turn his head, tried to find her, but his body refused to cooperate. The last thing he heard before the darkness took him was her voice, distant and distorted, calling his name.
"Dimitri! Can you hear me?"
Her voice pulled him back from somewhere dark and formless. He felt drugged, woozy, and if it was anyone else's voice, he wouldn't have bothered to open his eyes because the void was calling to him, luring him to leave all his earthly troubles behind and drift toward the eternal. Toward peace.
He forced his eyes open for her, and when he saw her face hovering above him, pale and tear-streaked, he knew he had made the right choice. He had to stay in this world for her.
She needed him.
"He's waking up," a male voice said from somewhere to his left. "Thank God."
Dimitri recognized the voice. It was the barman. Anil.
