“Oh, God, they know.” Decker wasn’t sure if it was relief or horror lacing Laurie’s voice.
The preacher straightened, face strained, and disappeared into his chapel. He returned in a clean shirt, stumbling in a trance to retrieve the others.
Decker knelt in the dirt. His hands brushed gently through Nathan’s hair, once long and sleek, now matted and lank. He’d worked through the last tangle as they rounded the corner, Laurie leading them like a prophet.
Willa let out a low whistle, crouching on her heels next to him. “He look like this before you got to him?”
“He used to be more—wolf than this,” Safine joined them, frowning as she bent over to get closer.
Decker thought she brushed hair away from her face. Maybe it was his.
Black spots clouded his vision and he blinked them away.
“I saw him a couple weeks ago. Didn’t look good then. He said—” Decker struggled with the flashes of memory. “He was here for Laurie. Someone needed him.”
“Needed me?” Laurie stood next to the blurred outline of Sister Inez, his face a sickly pallor rivaling the white of her habit.
The lightning from feeding turned into molten sparks within his body, and Decker clutched at Nathan’s cold chest. Shreds of shirt moved under his fingers, sloughing away from his damp skin.
Decker recoiled.
Stitches held Nathan Griggs’ body together.
Crossing his chest, above his heart, jaggedly running across his stomach like he’d been taken apart and pieced together. The stitched wounds seeped and blistered.
Safine cursed.
“The girls in Santa Fe were like this. ‘Cept this one is still alive.Was,” Willa said, standing up. “I think we found one of Dr. Whitton’s experiments.”
Decker’s throat closed, his tongue thick and dry. Black spots appeared and his vision tunneled before the world went dark.
