Miracle - Chapter 10: Chapter 10

"What are you doing?" Maddy demanded as Ezra shook a blanket out over the ground, then picked me up and laid me on it with the hard round thing tucked behind me so that I couldn't lay all the way down. It turned out to be a motorcycle helmet. A really big one.
"How long ago was he bitten?" Ezra asked. He had a flashlight in his teeth, and after he finished settling me down he passed the light over my leg.
"I don't know! Maybe like twenty minutes?"
Ezra grunted and produced a magic marker from somewhere inside his big hoodie. He started drawing on my leg, around the bite inside my knee.
"What the hell? Mister, we don't have time for this. You gotta get him into town."
"That's what we don't have time for," Ezra said around the pen cap in his mouth. He lifted my leg up, found the second bite on the back of my thigh, and drew around it, too. "Your brother needs antivenin. The nearest hospital that carries it is a hundred miles from here. We're going to have to improvise."
"Improvise how?" Maddy barked.
Ezra pointed behind him. "Bring my bag from the bike." He pointed the flashlight into my eyes then. It kind of stung but I was too busy staring at him to care. My head felt light, and my leg hurt in deep, throbbing, stabbing waves. I was also really, really sleepy. And I noticed that Ezra had sweat dripping down the sides of his face, with shadows under his eyes that I hadn't seen before. His complexion looked kind of gray.
I frowned. "You don't look so good."
"You're one to talk."
Did he just joke with me? He hadn't cracked a smile, but I could have sworn I caught a glint of teasing in his eyes. I smiled back at him and fought to keep my eyelids open. "I didn't think you were coming."
"I keep my promises," he said, directing the light onto my busted lip, then down to my colorfully bruised stomach. Three deep lines formed across his forehead, and his jaw clenched up. "You're going into shock."
"Here," Maddy said, dropping some kind of black bag next to Ezra's hip, then falling to her knees beside me. "Shit, his leg's so swollen. Aren't we supposed to tie it off or suck the poison out or something?"
"No." He didn't elaborate, just opened up the bag and started pulling stuff out. Bottles, and little metal tools, and a zippered pouch that, when he opened it, was full of syringes. He held a few of the bottles up to the light and when he found the one he wanted, shook a white pill into his hand. A silver flask came out of his pocket, and he showed them both to me. "Open up."
I didn't even ask what it was, just let him put the pill on my tongue and swallowed it down with the contents of the flask, which turned out to be water. "My head hurts," I said thickly.
"I know. That one will help with the nausea. And this one," he put another pill in my mouth, "is for pain."
I swallowed it down too.
"You some kind of doctor?" Maddy asked with wide eyes.
"Something like that." He unzipped his giant hoodie and pulled it off. Underneath, he had on a black tank top. Damn, his arms and chest were all muscle. I sighed a little as he laid his hoodie over me, tucking it up under my chin. I guess I had been cold, because it felt so wonderfully warm and smelled so incredibly good that all I wanted was to curl up under it and sleep forever.
My head fell forward onto my chest, and I tried to push the helmet out from under me because it was uncomfortable and I really wanted to lie down. Ezra wouldn't let me, and he lifted my face up again. "You can't go to sleep, Connor. Okay? This is important."
"I'm tired," I complained.
"You have questions, don't you? About me."
I blinked at him wearily. His handsome features were swimming a little, but the one thing that was rock steady was the way he held my eyes. "Ask. Anything you want. I'll answer."
"Wait," Maddy interjected. "Connor, you know this guy?"
I lifted a hand to gesture between them. "Ezra, Maddy. Maddy, this is Ezra. My guardian an—agh! Fuck, my leg hurts—angel."
Maddy gaped at both of us. "You mean he's... you're real? Like, for real, real?"
Ezra only made a low grunting sound. He was fishing around inside his bag again, this time pulling out a medicine tube. He put some of the cream inside onto a fingertip and reached across me, touching it to the bite near my knee.
"Ow!" I protested as he smeared the stuff around the puncture wounds. "Ow, ow!"
"This will desensitize the area," he said, sitting back. "But we can't give it long to work." Now he was putting together one of the syringes. An uncomfortably big-looking one.
"What's that for?"
"I'm going to remove the venom," he said. "As much as I can."
"That won't work. It's all through me already." I could practically taste it on the back of my tongue.
Though that could have been the vomit, I guess.
He held the syringe up to the light, then looked at my leg. "Are you going to start asking your questions? I said I'd answer them."
"I have a question," Maddy said hotly. "Who the fuck are you? Have you really been following my brother all this time? He's been telling stories about his imaginary shadow man since we were in grade school. I thought he was making it up."
Ezra gripped my leg, around the bite mark, and I cried out a little. Then there was another piercing, burning pain as he inserted the needle. "I'm a research scientist," he replied, holding my leg steady. "I work for a foundation called Elioud Biogenesis. And yes, I've been monitoring Connor for a very long time now."
"Why?" I gasped, though it came out more like a whine. That needle hurt. I had no strength in my fingers, but I was grabbing at the blanket under me anyway.
"Because you're my responsibility." Finally he pulled the needle out. The big syringe was full of blood. I collapsed backward a little in relief. I was more tempted than ever to pass out, but how could I when he was finally offering answers?
"Are you our dad?" I asked.
His eyebrows went up. I guess that wasn't a question he'd been expecting. "No."
"Brother?"
"No."
"Are you one of their experiments too?"
"I told you, you're not an experiment."
"Study specimen then. Whatever it is you people do to kids before they're born, did they do it to you, too?"
"No."
"Do what?" Maddy said. "Connor, what the hell are you talking about?"
"His company gives some sort of injection to pregnant ladies and then pays them for it," I summarized, slurring through the words. "They did it to Mom when she was having us, that's where our child support has been coming from."
"Are you shitting me right now?"
"And whatever it is they do, it's bad news. I think it has something to do with puberty. Like, kids are fine up to that point and then something starts happening and things go to hell."
Ezra was injecting my blood into some sort of a clear bottle that already had another liquid in it. But he looked over at me with an expression I would almost describe as pride. "You always were extremely smart, Connor."
"I can't figure it out, though. Tyler's a sadistic asshole, but used to be, he'd rather chew his own arm off than have me anywhere near his dick. Justin was a good guy, today he turned into an asshat. Then there's Marvin Pemberton, and that rando in the pickup, and..." My heart actually clenched a little in the middle of my woozy rambling. "And Pete from the rodeo. Who I bet's never liked a guy in his whole life. Maddy and I are the lab rats, but it's everyone else who's lost their minds. Hey. Hey, what are you doing?"
Ezra had just stuck himself in the elbow with a different syringe. I watched with wide eyes as his blood pulsed in little waves into the vial. "I'd say you're doing pretty well putting it together so far," he said calmly.
"I don't know anything!" I fired back in frustration. "Why are all these people acting like... like..."
"Animals," Maddy finished for me.
Ezra pulled the needle out of his arm, set it aside, and stabbed himself with another one. As that one started filling too, he glanced over at me. "It has to do with your pheromones," he said. "The both of you. Now that you're ripening, the pheromones you produce are more than the human nervous system can handle. As you mature the amount you give off will increase, and the harder it will be for others to resist their attraction to you."
"Pheromones?" I repeated under my breath.
"They're particularly difficult for human males to process when they're being given off by another male. Your current societal taboos around homosexual attraction can evoke other powerful responses in addition to arousal. Most commonly, rage. And violence. It can be a very bad combination."
He pulled the second vial of his blood out and started in on a third one. I was still dizzy and sleepy, but now my brain had latched onto these new pieces of information. I couldn't fall asleep until I'd made sense of them. Which I was pretty sure was exactly what Ezra was counting on.
"Timmy Riker didn't go crazy," I breathed, pieces starting to click together in my head like the falling squares in a Tetris game. "Or... he did, but not on his own. Somebody hurt him." I thought of Marvin's fingers digging into me. That stranger on the road who'd tried to force me into his truck. Tyler's sloppy kiss, and the feel of his dick rubbing my stomach. A horrible black feeling welled up in my gut, foul and suffocating. I'd gotten off so easy, in comparison to what could have happened. In comparison to what had likely happened to Timmy, to cause him to go so far off the rails. "Somebody really, really hurt him. Didn't they?"
If what Ezra was saying was true, then slicing up his face wouldn't have helped. It wouldn't have mattered how ugly he was, every man within literal sniffing distance would have been...
Oh, god. The doctor. The priest. With his own body giving off poison to everyone around him, it was hopeless. Timmy had tried to defend himself in every way he knew, but nothing worked. Nothing, until he finally had no choice but to...
I planted a hand on the ground and dry-heaved. My stomach had long gone empty, but that didn't matter. And my teeth were chattering again.
Ezra's hand shot out and caught me. "Calm down," he said, and squeezed my shoulder.
"I can't. I can't, Ezra, I don't wanna live like that." I tried pushing his hand off. "Let me die. Just go, I don't want your help, I don't want to—"
"Connor. Listen to me, listen. I'm not going to let anyone hurt you that way, you understand?"
How was he going to stop it? If Tyler hadn't taken his sweet time torturing me tonight, he and his friends could have easily had time to gang-rape me, or even castrate me like he'd threatened to, before Ezra had gotten here. And these pheromones or whatever were going to keep getting worse? No. No way, I couldn't deal with that. Timmy had the right idea, but I wasn't going to wait as long as he did.
"Shit." Ezra knocked his helmet out from under me, laid me down on my back. I was hyperventilating, with stars dancing in the periphery of my vision. I couldn't feel my hands anymore, or my feet.
"What's happening?" Maddy cried.
"He's having a panic attack. It will speed up the venom's progression to his vital organs. I have to sedate him, give me that syringe. No, the other one. There."
I wanted to push him off. He'd be doing me a favor to quit trying to help me. But I couldn't move. There was a sting in my upper thigh as he injected me with something.
"Connor? Easy, bubba, just breathe. It's going to be okay." Maddy turned on Ezra. "What was he going on about, who's Timmy?"
Ezra just shook his head, not taking his eyes off of me. A warm liquidy feeling was creeping through me, softening my muscles and making it hard to focus. When he was satisfied that I wasn't going to work myself into a heart attack, he grabbed the three vials of his blood and started pouring them into the bottle that he'd put my blood in. Except my blood didn't look like blood anymore, it was a pale milky color that mixed with his like cream in strawberry syrup.
"I don't get it," Maddy said to him after a second. "Whatever these pheromone things are, they don't seem to be bothering you."
"That's 'cause he's only half-human," I mumbled. "Right?"
Ezra had his hands wrapped around the blood-bottle, staring at it so hard he looked constipated. "That's right."
My eyelids were too heavy. I couldn't hold them up anymore, and they cut off my view of him as they closed me in. "What's the other half?" He was quiet too long, so I used my last bit of strength to slap my hand against the blanket. Well, it was more of a weak pat, but I meant it like a slap. "You promised to answer."
"Something you don't believe in," he said softly. "Hold on, Connor, I've almost got it."
Something I didn't...? What the hell was he talking about?
Oh. I remembered.
"Angel," I whispered, just as I felt another sting against my upper arm. "You're half angel."
There was a word for that. Hadn't I just been reading about it? Somewhere... sometime recently. Think, Connor.
But I couldn't pin it down. I was drifting in and out of consciousness now. At some point there was dry, cool air rushing in my face, but I was also surrounded by the smell of cloves and lemon and warm skin, and there was a loud hypnotic rumble underneath me. Then I was being bounced into a bright little space, with lots of voices and screaming sirens and more stings, so many more stings in my arms and my leg. And a really annoying pressure around my arm that kept inflating at intervals frequent enough that I couldn't fall all the way asleep like I wanted.
Ezra was half angel. But angels weren't real. And even if they were, all the lore said angels weren't supposed to mix with humans. An angel who broke the rules wouldn't be an angel anymore, would they? Because angels exiled from heaven became demons.
Half demon, then. Which wasn't any more believable. But I definitely had to stop thinking of Ezra as some great hero, because the stuff he and his company were involved in was pure evil. What had happened to Timmy Riker was pure evil. What was happening to me and Maddy now, that was evil too. And why? What was the point of altering babies in the womb so they'd grow up to be sex magnets to everyone around them? Sounded pretty diabolical to me.
I came to again when I was being vibrated some more, from darkness and sharp pointy lights into a wash of whiteness so bright my eyes felt like they would explode, so I had to keep them shut. More stings, more voices. Maddy's hand in mine, and I knew it was hers because nobody else's fit the way hers did. We were twins, after all.
Maddy. Maddy, oh my god. Maybe she wasn't facing as much hate as me, but she was still in a ton of danger. If our pheromones were such a problem, she was going to be a target too. No matter how scared I was, I couldn't leave her to face that alone.
And there, that was the difference between me and Timmy Riker. He hadn't had anyone. Not even his mother could understand what he was going through. But I had Maddy. We were inseparable, even in this. So I had to stay here, for her.
I hurt, but now it wasn't localized so much as a state of being. Sometimes I could pick out specific sensations: my throat was dry, my head pounded, my leg ached. Though maybe that last one was a good thing. If it hurt, that meant it was still attached. No amputation, at least not yet.
Clarity started coming back with the sound of Ezra arguing with someone.
"You're a fool, Ez. If the council finds out you did this you'll be excommunicated."
"I'm being careful."
"Careful, my angelic ass. You nearly killed yourself getting down here, walked into the middle of a human town with a snakebit Eljo, and made sure they all got a fine, up close look at you dropping him off. You have any idea how hard it was to swap his test results, and try to explain how he got six full doses of antivenin in the middle of the Godforsaken desert?"
"I didn't have a choice."
"Oh yes you did. You could have let him be, like I've been trying to tell you from the beginning. The kid's good as worm food and you know it."
"I'm going to protect him."
"You can't. You know once they ripen it's just a matter of time. Look at the state of his face. He's got a cracked rib, to boot. Humans are monsters."
"I've got an application before the council. As soon as they approve it—"
"The council hasn't approved anyone for an Eljo pet in the last three centuries. They're nothing but trouble."
"I'll keep him out of the way. They won't even know he's there."
"Forget it, Ez. How about you focus on the new crop of brides instead? You know your father expects you to claim one this year, you're only about five years overdue. I hear there are some real treats in this year's batch. Hell, you could just put in for the Eljo's sister. You've seen her, right? They're basically clones of each other. I bet the Doc would give you another couple years to wait for her if you asked."
A negative grunt. He really didn't waste words, this guy.
"Suit yourself. But do me a favor and stop putting all my hard work at risk too. You and your little screw up are not my problem."
Who are you calling a screw up, I wanted to ask, but my body wasn't responding to the signals of my brain. I couldn't get my eyes to open or my limbs to move. I also couldn't bring myself to be bothered by that. Apparently, my emotions were paralyzed too.
"When do you think he'll wake up?"
"Thanks to those sedatives you gave him, he's working through a coma. Your guess is as good as mine. Although... huh."
"What?"
"He's got lucid brain activity."
"You sure?"
"See for yourself."
The side of my bed dipped, as if someone was leaning on it. "Connor?" Ezra said quietly. "Can you hear me?"
Yes, I can fucking hear you. And I have questions. Many, many questions, you jerk.
He chuckled. "I'm sure you do. But you need to focus on healing for now."
A shimmer of surprise ran through me. Wait. Can you hear me?
"Yes. I can hear anything you think to me."
Because you're an angel? Or half-angel, or whatever...?
"We're Nephilim," he said. That was it! That was the word I'd been trying to remember.
And you can read minds?
"No. But I can hear thoughts, if the person thinking them means them for me."
Like... praying?
"Exactly."
Is that other guy Nephilim too?
"Who, Bo? Yes. He's a friend. He's going to take care of you until you're well enough to go home."
He doesn't like me.
Another chuckle. I was really wishing I could get my eyes open, because I desperately wanted to know what he looked like when he smiled. "You're safer with him than human doctors."
Where am I? A hospital? Where's Maddy, is she okay? What's an Eljo? Are you getting married?
"Okay, okay. That's enough for now. You're at Amarillo General. Your sister's fine, she'll be back in the morning. I have to go, but I'll check on you as soon as I can. Rest."
Don't leave! I wanted to reach for him, but my hand remained peacefully unresponsive at my side. I felt him cover it with his, though.
"It's okay, Connor, you're safe here. You don't have to be afraid."
Easy for you to say. Didn't your friend call me worm food?
"You heard that?"
Ezra. What's going to happen to me? What's going on? You can't leave me here with all these questions, my brain's gonna short-circuit.
He sighed. I felt him fold my hand between his, and his palms were dry and warm. "I've already told you too much. I have to get back before I'm missed."
Back where?
"Home."
Where's that?
"Enoch's Peak. It's in Colorado."
That's... really far away.
"Yes."
No, I mean it's too far. Between the time Tyler pushed the S.O.S., and when you showed up, that was only like an hour and a half, maybe.
"It was ninety-seven minutes."
A map from geography class pulled up in my head. You can't get from Colorado to Prickly Pear in ninety-seven minutes. True, we were in the northern panhandle of Texas, and maybe if he lived at the very southeastern border of his state he could have made it there that fast. But any of the Colorado mountains were at least a three hour drive from us. I didn't know where Enoch's Peak was, specifically, but as soon as I could operate my body again I was going to find out.
"Nephilim can."
You have wings?
"No. Now go back to sleep, Connor."
I am sleeping.
His hand left mine to pat the top of my head. "Michael's balls, are you always this argumentative?"
Only when I'm in a coma.
He laughed. A deep, rumbling laugh that made everything in my body go pleasantly mushy. His hand ruffled my hair, and my bed sprang back up as he moved away from me. "Take care of him, Bo."
His friend made an unimpressed humming sound. I heard a door open and close.
Hey, Bo. Can you hear thoughts too?
There was no answer. The two of them must have left together, which was frustrating. There was still so much I needed to know. And with no one here to answer me, and no ability to wake myself up so that I could research, I was left with nothing to do but inventory the information I had so far.
Nephilim. I'd run across the term when I was searching for Elioud Biogenesis. The Nephilim were offspring of angels and human women, and the Elioud were offspring of the Nephilim. Given the name, it was a safe bet that Elioud Biogenesis was a Nephilim operation.
And they were doing something insidious to unborn human babies. Injecting mothers with something that made their kids develop crazy sex pheromones as teenagers. They gave the kids annual doctor exams. And apparently, when they turned fifteen it was some kind of turning point.
Didn't Mrs. Moss mention something about a school? A school for the study participants, that they had to attend if they were invited. What if that was just the excuse the Nephilim made up to take their modified creations out of circulation, before they started inciting chaos everywhere they went?
But Timmy Riker had never been invited to any school. I had never been taken to any checkups, and from what I'd overheard from Mom on the phone, the company hadn't been giving her payments for me either. They didn't seem to care about either one of us. That seemed absurdly unfair, given what Ezra said about how male subjects were in particular danger.
It also begged the question, why was Ezra interested in me if his company wasn't?
What was I missing? There had to be a purpose. Evil scientists, half-human or not, wouldn't have put together an operation this elaborate without a reason. Were they creating sex slaves? Did they run some kind of super high tech prostitution ring, selling genetically engineered kids to rich pervs bored with the usual options?
That Bo guy was right, humans were monsters.
He'd said something else, though. Something about pets not being allowed. I think he'd been talking about me, as if Ezra was thinking about slapping a collar and leash on me and giving me a pillow at the foot of his bed. Well, if that's what he had in mind it was so not happening.
Though I don't know, he might be able to talk me into it.
Oh. Oh god, what was wrong with me? This wasn't some kinky fantasy, this was some seriously messed up, Lovecraftian shit. No. No, Connor, think.
What else had Bo said? Something about a council. Ezra getting excommunicated. He mentioned ripening, which was the same odd term Ezra had used when he told Maddy and me about our pheromone problem. Then he was riding Ezra about getting married soon, and I didn't like that either. Not just because it confirmed that Ezra was straight—dammit—but also because it had come with such misogynistic overtones, stuff that sounded just like crap that would come out of Tyler's mouth. And then he said—
You could just put in for the Eljo's sister. They're basically clones of each other.
Holy shit.
Holy. Fucking. SHIT.
My eyes sprang open.