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Delight rushed into her veins as she pictured it. To feel the final pulsations of his heart. To squeeze a few more drops of life out of him and savor the taste of his end.

Adrenaline. Dopamine. Thrill rushed up Eryn’s spine as life flickered out of the man.

Nothing she could do to stop it. Nothing anyone could do. Death was inevitable.

Sensation crackled in her chest. Fulfillment. Satisfaction.

Instinct guided her, carried her, and she closed her gloved hand over his wound.

Energy stirred within her. Warm and comforting, like a hug after years of loneliness. A voice after months of silence.

And she felt… alive.

As his life slipped away, it flowed into her.

The chaos of the room blurred behind her. Even the humans knew it was time to let him go.

A sob shuddered in Eryn’s chest.

Like stopping a gulp mid-swallow, she cut off the flow.

Horror and disappointment swelled in her throat until she couldn’t breathe.

Days ago, she felt a sick satisfaction when someone died.

Now… after the second dose… she was…

A monster.

Slow, erratic beeps merged into a flatlined absence of cardiac impulse.

Eryn kept pressure on his wound. Sobbing. She opened her mouth to call a code.

“Eryn. He’s gone.” Holden walked into the silent room and stopped at her side.

Too practiced with death—more than any ED she’d worked before—the staff shed their tears and did their jobs.

“You did everything you could.”

Salty tears arrowed down her cheeks, seeping into her mouth until she tasted her own grief. “I’ll wash up and tell his family.”

“I just got off the phone with his brother’s wife, to tell her that her husband didn’t make it. I’ve got a rapport with the family already; I’ll tell them. Go get cleaned up and head home.”

Eryn’s shoulders fell. Releasing her patient, his blood already drying on her purple gloves, she snapped off each and stopped in front of the sink. “Okay,” she whispered, and added with a dry, swollen tongue, “Thanks.”

Holden shared an exhausted, sad smile as Eryn slipped past him.

Warm water gushed over her hands. Eryn scrubbed and left the room.

So many dead, and all for her.

Weary stares watched her trudge toward the locker room.

If she hadn’t been surrounded by her colleagues, would she have been able to stop? To stop…

What had she done to him?

The rush of it. Thirst she’d never known, sated.