Hell Flower

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The creature let out an earth-shaking yelp. When it landed on the side I had injected, its leg buckled beneath it. Wet, bloody fur collided into me as it fell. I grabbed at the matted fur, pushing myself back and out of the way to keep its weight from crushing me.

It slumped into a heap in my lap. The fur receded from my hands and slipped like sand through my fingers. The painful sound of bones breaking and crunching pounded in my ears. The pulsing and shifting resonated and vibrated through my body.

The wolf lying in my lap became a human. Alex's body lay still, slumped over my knees, his head turned away from me so I couldn't see his face.

"Oh my God!" I gasped, panting to catch my breath as my heart raced. I'd never witnessed what it actually looked like when someone used the Hell Flower injection on me, so I didn't know. Was this what was supposed to happen?

"Alex! Are you okay?" His only movement was weak, uneven breaths. He was still alive.

I pushed his dark hair back from his face so I could see him. His eyes were closed like he was unconscious. Three deep scratches ran all the way from his forehead to his lips, just barely missing his right eye. One inch in another direction, and he would have been blinded.

My stomach turned as I noticed the splotches of red growing on the denim of his jacket. I remembered the wounds on the creature he had been only seconds before—fur matted in blood and skin torn all the way to bone. I swallowed down a heavy lump in my throat.

"Please, wake up," I whispered.

Suddenly, his body convulsed. He rolled off of my lap, retching as black, vile blood spewed out of his mouth. It landed on the ground in a sticky glob. His entire body shook as he braced himself on his hands and knees. With a gag, he spit up another mouthful of blood.

I was frozen in placed as I watched him. The same thing had happened to me after Liz had given me the Hell Flower injection. It must have been a side effect of the poison. That was it.

But then he was sick again, and I could tell something wasn't right.

He didn't seem aware of his surroundings. He crawled a few feet to get away from where he had just vomited up blood, and then he fell back onto his side, rolling so he was on his back. His chest heaved with erratic breaths. His shirt was torn completely open in the front, revealing the deep wounds across his body.

I crawled over to him so I could look into his eyes. My arms and legs shook painfully beneath me. I was barely able to hold myself up.

His black pupils were swollen almost to the point where they completely swallowed the blue irises. He wasn't looking at anything. I wondered if he could even see right now.

"Alex, it's going to be okay," I said. "You're going to be okay."

He blinked a few times, finally making eye contact with me. He forced a pained smiled and shook his head. "I'm sorry, Allison," he said. He heaved a gasping breath that sounded empty, like he wasn't able to get oxygen into his lungs. "I'm not."

"Stop!" I screamed at him, anger suddenly raging through me. The hand that I could feel—the one that was sliced open—clenched into a bloody fist. "You knew this was going to happen, didn't you? You knew that because I bit you, the exorcism would work this time. That's why it didn't work last time, isn't it? Last time, the wolf didn't have anywhere to go, so it couldn't be evicted from its host. You knew. You knew. You knew!"

I slammed my fist down onto his shoulder, for a second forgetting how injured he was.

Despite the wounds covering him, he didn't even wince. I remembered that was where I had stabbed him with the needle of Hell Flower. That side of him was probably completely numb by this point.